est form, and
apparently as ancient as the crypt; and they were so placed in the
ground, that the heads of the corpses were turned to the east, a
position denoting that the dead received Christian burial.

NOTES:

[106] _Histoire de la Ville de Rouen_, v. p. 1.

[107] XI. p. 124. A.

[108] The whole of the remainder of this article is transcribed from
_Turner's Tour in Normandy_, I. p. 125.

[109] _Duchesne, Scriptores Normanni_, p. 558.

PLATE LIV.

CHURCH OF ST. PAUL, AT ROUEN.

[Illustration: Plate 54. CHURCH OF ST. PAUL, AT ROUEN.
_East End._]

Next to the church of St. Gervais, that of St. Paul is the most
interesting relic of ancient architecture among the ecclesiastical
buildings at Rouen. Indeed, it may be considered as the only other of an
early date; the round tower attached to the abbatial church of St.
Ouen[110] being altogether inconsiderable, and indebted for its
principal interest to its connection with an abbey endowed with such
extensive possessions, and gifted with so much reported sanctity.

The foundation of the church of St. Paul is of very remote antiquity: it
is said to have been laid by St. Romain, in memory of his great victory
over heathenism, when, triumphant, he erected the banner of the cross
upon the ashes of the temple of Venus. Impure was the goddess, and most
impure were her rites; so that, to use the words of Taillepied, in
speaking of this same temple, "la dedans la jeunesse, a bride avallee,
souloit se souiller et polluer par ordre luxure et paillardise
abominable, ne ayant egard qu'aupres de ce lieu y avoit un repaire de
malins esprits qui faisoyent sortir une fumee tant puante et infecte que
la mortalite s'en ensuyvoit par apres."

This very remark concerning the infectious vapor, seems decisive as to
the feet of the church of St. Paul occupying the site of the pagan fane.
It stands without the walls of the town, upon elevated ground, at a very
short distance to the right of the barrier below Mont St. Catherine, on
the road to Paris, in the immediate vicinity of some mineral springs,
strongly impregnated with iron. Prior to the revolution, the church was
under the jurisdiction of the monastery of Montivilliers. The abbess had
the right of nomination to the vacant benefice; and, till the middle of
the seventeenth century, she was in the habit of regarding St. Paul's as
a priory, and fixing there a colony of her nuns. But they were all
recalled in 1650, an