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 he facade shows a style that has nothing to do with the local architecture. Built by JEAN-BAPTISTE DE MORNAT, priest of Venetian origin, this unusual front in Thiérache, reminds us of Italian architecture. The ornamental details, patterns often used in the first half of the XVII century, come from Antiquity or from Italian Renaissance: ancient vases resting on the volutes of consoles, shells decorating the niches and the first floor window, horns of plenty, bunches of grapes, garlands, ribbons adorning the pediment of the portal. The front wall of the abbey church of Saint-Michel is a work of synthesis between the sensitivity of the artist and the science of the land surveyor: It reflects the thinking of DESCARTES who kept the world of quantity to mathematics and left the perception of quality to senses only.
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he buildings surrounding the cloister lay according to the classical Benedictine plan which takes its inspiration from the monastery of Saint-Gall: the church is located north of the cloister. The eastern aisle houses the sacristy and the chapter house on the ground floor, and the dormitory and monastic cells on the first floor. The refectory and the heating room were on the ground floor in the southern aisle. The library is located on the first floor. And in the western aisle you find the accommodation for guests and lay-brothers.
After the 1715 fire the architect, for the sake of economy, left untouched the ground floor which had suffered little. For this reason you can today still admire the part of abbot MORNAT's work which remains intact: the cloister gallery with its stone and brick semi-circular or groined vaults, the chapter house on the eastern aisle and the lodgings on the western aisle.
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ts classical inspiration is perfectly illustrated by a very precise geometrical layout, almost mathematical, sober and balanced.
