authors,
was established by that saint himself. Du Monstier, in the _Neustria
Pia_, recites the history of its origin at great length: how the
prelate, moved by the entreaties of a rich man, of the name of Volusian,
destroyed, by virtue of the sign of the cross, a monstrous serpent that
ravaged the country; and how Volusian, in gratitude, ceded to him the
domain of Cerisy, upon which he immediately erected a monastery, and
endowed it with the revenues of the property. The annals of the convent
being lost, what is recorded of its history is very short. After the
general destruction of religious establishments by the Saxons and
Normans, that of Cerisy appears to have been left in its ruins far
longer than most others. No hand is said to have been lifted towards its
restoration, till the reign of Robert, father of the Conqueror. By him
the monastic writers all agree that a beginning was made towards the
rebuilding of this monastery; and one of them, William of Jumieges,
adds, that his care of it suffered no diminution from time or distance;
for that, during his wars in the Holy Land, when the patriarch of
Jerusalem rewarded his pious zeal with a present of some precious
relics, he immediately directed them to be here deposited. His more
illustrious successor, in one of the first years of his reign, completed
and richly endowed the convent begun by his father, whose remains he
commanded should be brought from Palestine, for the express purpose of
their being interred at Cerisy. But they were allowed to proceed no
further than Apulia. In the _Neustria Pia_ is preserved a charter of
King Charles VI. dated 1398, in which the various donations conferred
upon the abbey of Cerisy, by the Norman Dukes, Robert, William, and
Henry, are enumerated and confirmed. Its annual income, in the middle of
the eighteenth century, was estimated by De Masseville at twenty
thousand livres. The only property it appears ever to have possessed in
England, was a priory of Benedictine monks at West Shirburne, in
Hampshire.

Architecturally considered, the church of Cerisy is an interesting relic
of Norman workmanship. The certainty of its date, not far removed from
the year 1032, and the comparatively few alterations it has undergone,
render it one of those landmarks, by the aid of which the observer of
the present day can alone attain to any certainty in his inquiries into
ancient art. And yet, in the portion here selected for engraving, the
upper