[3] In the Gallo-Roman times, a hamlet called Vinciacum was set up near quarries where stones required for the building of Caesarodonum (Tours) were extracted.

In 1162, St. Thomas Beckett, Archbishop of Canterbury, took part to a council in Tours with a Scottish monk named Aberdeen (c. 1120–1180).

Louis XI (1423–1483; King in 1461) enjoyed Touraine and stayed often in his castle of Plessis (today in Plessis-lès-Tours), where he ended his life in a very shanty atmosphere; the King believed he had leprosy, was scared by imaginary plots and superstition, and was surrounded by a court dominated by astrologers and charlatans of that ilk.

The humanist Justus Lipsus called him in Leyden in 1583, but he quickly came back to Antwerp, where he died and was buried in the Notre-Dame cathedral.

Plantin was conferred the title of Architypograph of the King and the monopoly on the release of certain liturgical books in Spain and in the Spanish colonies.

He wrote there parts of his master series, Les hommes de bonnes volonté, in which he expressed his "unanimist" ideas.