When Martin died, the people of Poitiers flocked to Condate to claim the body of their former abbat. But the people of Tours asserted their better claim, and carried him off in a ship to Tours. The body of the saint was landed from the ship on the south bank of the Loire, and deposited in a small oratory; the spot was called the Station of the Body of St. Martin. It was moved thence to a more central spot, and miracles began to be wrought at its new abode. Briccius, his successor in the bishopric, built a church over it in the eleventh year after the Saint’s death. Perpetuus removed this church and built a more magnificent structure. The rich gifts of kings and others made the church of Perpetuus very beautiful. St. Odo, in a sermon on its destruction by fire, described it as lined with various coloured marbles; in one place the walls were red with Protonis marble, in another white with Parian, in another green with Prasine. This church was burned by Willicharius. Chlotaire I rebuilt it. The Normans burned it again in 853 and 903, and soon after the year 1000 it was rebuilt by Hervey the Treasurer in the form in which it existed to the time of the Revolution. The Calvinists pillaged it, as has been said above. At the destruction in the time of the Revolution the various parts of the church were sold to speculators, and under the First Empire all disappeared except the two towers which now remain. The Cathedral church in the old Roman city, the eastern part of the present city, was burned in the wars between Louis VII of France and our Henry II, who was Lord of Tours and Count of Anjou. In 1861 a rock-hewn tomb was found under a house which was known to stand on the site of the high altar of the Abbey church. A subterranean chapel was built over the tomb, and adorned with red granite. This is now the Confessio of the new basilica of St. Martin. There had only been two bishops of Tours before Martin. The first, Gatian, died in 301. He had officiated secretly[203] in the remarkable cave, across the front of which the ancient church of St. Radegonde now stands, with its inscriptions. Sca Radegundis Gemma Galliæ Pretiosissima, Ora pro nobis. S. R. Regina Galliæ. Scus Gatianus Turonum Primus Episcopus huius Parochiæ Fundator Primo Sæculo. Lidorius succeeded Gatian after a lapse of thirty-seven years, and built a small basilica for his bishop’s stool. Martin had, during his bishopric, brought from St. Maurice, in the valley of the Rhone, some relics of that saint, which he deposited in a chapel built by Lidorius, to which also he removed from the cemetery the remains of Gatian. This was the origin of the Cathedral church of Tours, and we are thus enabled to see why its primary dedication was to St. Maurice, and its second and permanent dedication is to St. Gatian.