Note 339 — Chapter X · Gothic Art in Normandy[314]

St. Ouen derived its name from the bishop who succeeded St. Romanus and governed Rouen for forty years in the VII century, aiding the founders of Jumièges, Fécamp, and St. Wandrille. He had been blessed as a child in his father’s castle near Braine by a passing guest, the Irish missionary, St. Columbanus, and he loved to trace thence his vocation. So rich grew the abbey of St. Ouen that it ruled half the city as temporal lord. In the XV century the English expelled Abbot Jean Richard, a builder of the present nave, to substitute a prelate docile to themselves who sat as judge at Jeanne’s trial. But the pope restored Jean Richard in 1434, and he lived to entertain Charles VII in his monastery when that king came as victor to Rouen in 1449. Vacandard, Vie de St. Ouen (Paris, 1902).