"--The inmates
of Jumieges continued, however, to increase in number; and the revenues
of the abbey would not have been adequate to defray the expences of the
new building, had not Abbot Robert, who, in 1050, had been translated to
the see of Canterbury, supplied the deficiency by his munificence, and,
as long as he continued to be an English prelate, remitted the surplus
of his revenues to the Norman abbey. He held his archiepiscopal dignity
only one year, at the expiration of which he was banished from England:
he then retired to Jumieges, where he died the following spring, and was
buried in the choir of the church which he had begun to raise. At his
death, the church had neither nave nor windows; and the whole edifice
was not completed till November, in the year 1066. In the following July
the dedication took place. Maurilius, Archbishop of Rouen, officiated,
in great pomp, assisted by all the prelates of the duchy; and William,
then just returned from the conquest of England, honored the ceremony
with his presence.
I have dwelt upon the early history of this monastery, because Normandy
scarcely furnishes another of greater interest. In the _Neustria Pia_,
Jumieges fills nearly seventy closely-printed folio pages of that
curious and entertaining, though credulous, work.
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