Old Touraine; the life and history of the famous chateâux of France . converted to the faith, and the goodbishop was constrained to retreat for rest to hislittle cell at St. Symphorien, backed by the lime-stone rock and peering down across the greenswardto the river, where later on was to rise the nobleAbbey of Marmoutier, whose greatest abbot wasthe famous Alcuin of York. The immense popu-larity of St. Martin, both in England and France,is evident from the vast number of legends con-nected with his name upon the Continent, and fromthe fact that even after the purging of the Calendarhis name
Old Touraine; the life and history of the famous chateâux of France . converted to the faith, and the goodbishop was constrained to retreat for rest to hislittle cell at St. Symphorien, backed by the lime-stone rock and peering down across the greenswardto the river, where later on was to rise the nobleAbbey of Marmoutier, whose greatest abbot wasthe famous Alcuin of York. The immense popu-larity of St. Martin, both in England and France,is evident from the vast number of legends con-nected with his name upon the Continent, and fromthe fact that even after the purging of the Calendarhis name remained upon the list of saints recognisedby the English Church. The first church dedicatedto St. Martin was built by his successor; the next,which was burnt in 994, was rebuilt by Herve in1014, and only two towers of it remain, the Tourde IHorloge and the Tour de Charlemagne, in theRomano-Byzantine style, with traces of restorationin twelfth-century Gothic. The tomb of St. Martinwas the ancient sanctuary, the Delphic oracle of .JllM. /O (Patlicdxal at ^Ootit,. Ooutalne Sarli/ &Gldtoti/ 37 France, the centre of the Merovingian world/where its kings came to question destiny at theshrine round which the Counts of Blois and of An-jou broke so many lances. Mans, Angers, and allBrittany were dependent on the see of Tours, whosecanons were the Capets and the Dukes of Burgundyand Brittany, the Count of Flanders and the Patri-arch of Jerusalem, the Archbishops of Mayence, ofCologne, and Compostella. At Tours there was amint for money as good as that at Paris, and invery early times silk and precious tissues were madehere of finer fabric than in all the rest of France,until Nantes and Lyons joined the capital in com-petition with the older centre. But soon after St. Martins days, by 419, theVisigoths were in Poitou and Berry, and in a fewyears the Tractus Armoricanus revolted fromthe yoke of Rome; then the Tourangeaux joiningthe men of Anjou and Maine entered the great con-federa
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1900, bookpublishernewyo, bookyear1900
