Many of the monuments and deeds of the greater abbey are now in the prefecture of the department.  The original chartulary or register was saved by the Abbe de la Rue, and is at this time preserved in his valuable collection.  The charters of the Trinity were hid, during the revolution, by the nuns, who secreted them beneath the tiling of a barn.  They were discovered there not long since; but damp and vermin had rendered them wholly illegible.

Lanfranc, whose services at Rome well deserved every distinction that his sovereign could bestow, was the first abbot of St. Stephen’s.  Upon his translation to the see of Canterbury, he was succeeded by William, who was likewise subsequently honored with an archiepiscopal mitre.  The third abbot, Gislebert, was bishop of Evreux; and, though the series was not continued through an uninterrupted line of equal dignity, the office of abbot of this convent was seldom conferred, except upon an individual of exalted birth.  Eight cardinals, two of them of the noble houses of Medici and Farnese, and three others, still more illustrious, the cardinals Richelieu, Mazarine, and Fleury, are included in the list, though in later times the abbacy was held in commendam by these powerful prelates, whilst all the internal management of the house devolved upon a prior.  Amongst the abbots will also be found Hugh de Coilly, grandson of King Stephen, Anthony of Bourbon, a natural son of Henry IVth of France, and Charles of Orleans, who was likewise of royal extraction.—­St. Stephen was selected as the patron of the abbey, in consequence of the founder having bestowed upon it the head of the protomartyr, together with one of his arms, and a phial of his blood, and the stone with which he was killed.

[Illustration:  Monastery of St. Stephen, at Caen]

The monastic buildings now serve for what, in the language of revolutionary and imperial France, was called a Lycee, but which has since assumed the less heathen appellation of a college.  They constitute a fine edifice, and, seen from a short distance, in conjunction with the east end of the church, they form a grand tout-ensemble.  The abbey church, from this point of view, has somewhat of an oriental character:  the wide sweep of the semi-circular apsis, and the slender turrets and pyramids that rise from every part of the building, recal the idea of a Mahometan mosque.  But the west end is still more striking than the east; and if, in the interior of the church of the Trinity, we had occasion to admire the beautiful quality of the Caen stone, our admiration of it was more forcibly excited here:  notwithstanding the continual exposure to wind and weather, no part appears corroded, or discolored, or injured.  A character of magnificence, arising in a great measure from the grand scale upon which it is built, pervades this front.  But, to be regarded with advantage, it must be viewed as a whole:  the parts, taken separately, are unequal and ill assorted.