In its atmosphere, legends and myths grew in beauty and luxuriance.

Here, as the chroniclers tell us, at the touch of St.Honorat, burst forth a stream of living water, which a recent historian of the monastery declares a greater miracle than that of Moses; here he destroyed, with a touch of his staff, the reptiles which infested the island, and then forced the sea to wash away their foul remains.

Here, to please his sister, Sainte-Marguerite, a cherry tree burst into full bloom every month; here he threw his cloak upon the waters and it became a raft, which bore him safely to visit the neighbouring island; here St.Patrick received from St.Just the staff with which he imitated St.Honorat by driving all reptiles from Ireland.
Pillaged by Saracens and pirates, the island was made all the more precious by the blood of Christian martyrs.

Popes and kings made pilgrimages to it; saints, confessors, and bishops went forth from it into all Europe; in one of its cells St.Vincent of Lerins wrote that famous definition of pure religion which, for nearly fifteen hundred years, has virtually superseded that of St.James.Naturally the monastery became most illustrious, and its seat "the Mediterranean Isle of Saints." But toward the close of the last century, its inmates having become slothful and corrupt, it was dismantled, all save a small portion torn down, and the island became the property first of impiety, embodied in a French actress, and finally of heresy, embodied in an English clergyman.
Bought back for the Church by the Bishop of Frejus in 1859, there was little revival of life for twelve years.

Then came the reaction, religious and political, after the humiliation of France and the Vatican by Germany; and of this reaction the monastery of St.Honorat was made one of the most striking outward and visible signs.