Normans landed at Rouen; the
following day they burned the abbey of Saint-Ouen.

Rollo, having become a Christian, and a peaceable possessor of Normandy,
ordered the abbey to be repaired, and had the relics restored which the
monks had carried off to secure them from the profanation of the
Normans.

The monastery soon took the name of Saint-Ouen; instead of that of
Saint-Peter, by which it was previously known.

The dukes Richard I and Richard II followed the example of Rollo, and
continued the restoration of the abbey.

Such was the reputation of this monastery, that the emperor Otho, who
had laid siege to the town during the reign of Richard Ist, surnamed
_Sans-Peur_, demanded a safe conduct to come and perform his devotions
at Saint-Ouen.

Nicolas, son of Richard IIIrd, and the fourth abbot under William the
conqueror, caused the edifice, which had subsisted until then, to be
demolished, and laid the first stone of a new church in 1046. Nicolas
died too soon to complete the work; it was not finished until the year
1226, by William Ballot, the sixth abbot, who caused it to be dedicated
in the same year, on the 17th of october, by Geoffroy, archbishop of
Rouen.

The cloister and other buildings necessary for the use of the monks were
finished under Rainfroid, the seventh abbot; but, in 1236, only ten
years after the completion of this church, the work of eighty years was
destroyed by fire in one day.

Through the liberality of the empress Matilda and Henry IInd, her son,
the monks of Saint-Ouen succeeded in rebuilding their monastery; but it
was again completely destroyed by fire in 1248.

At last, the celebrated Jean (_John_) or _Roussel Marc d'argent_, the
twenty-fourth abbot, was elected in 1303. Fifteen years later, he laid
the first stone of the present magnificent church, which is so generally
admired. In one and twenty years, during which the works of this edifice
proceeded, the choir, the chapels, the pillars which support the tower,
and the greater part of the transept were finished. These buildings cost
63,036 livres five sous tournois, or about 2,600,000 francs of the
present money.

The edifice was not entirely completed until the beginning of the XVIth
century; but, the tower existed before the end of the XVth. An english
tourist[15] has expressed the following sentiments on this magnificent
church:

"You gaze, and are first-struck with its matchless window: call it rose,
or marygold, as you