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,