Marmoutier Abbey, Tours

425), affirms that Martin withdrew from the press of attention in the city to live in Marmoutier (Majus Monasterium), the monastery he founded several miles from Tours on the opposite shore of the river Loire.

Sulpicius described the severe restrictions of the life of Martin among the cave-dwelling cenobites who gathered around him, a rare view of a monastic community that preceded the Benedictine rule: Many also of the brethren had, in the same manner, fashioned retreats for themselves, but most of them had formed these out of the rock of the overhanging mountain, hollowed into caves.

Pope Calixtus II preached crusade again in 1119,[1] convincing Count Foulques V d'Anjou to take part and leading to his subsequent role as King of Jerusalem.

In 1162 Pope Alexander III, who came to reside in Tours after being chased from Rome by Frederick Barbarossa, consecrated the monastery's new Chapel Saint Benoit.

The abbey eventually grew too small for its inhabitants, and was completely rebuilt at the start of the thirteenth century under the leadership of Abbot Hugues des Roches.

Ascending many steps, we went into the Abbot's Palace, where we were showed a vast tun (as big as that at Heidelberg), which they report St. Martin (as I remember) filled from one cluster of grapes growing there.The abbey was disestablished in 1799 during the French Revolution, and within a few decades the bulk of its buildings had been demolished.

American writer Henry James visited the abbey in 1883, being guided through the various buildings by "a chatty nun", as described in his book A Little Tour in France.