Ithier governed St. Martin’s at Tours from 770 to 791. Soon after 791 he died, and was buried in a grave at the entrance of the nave of the abbatial church of Cormery, on the north side. The place can still be pointed out. Fridugisus, the Nathanael of Alcuin’s letters, who was designated by Alcuin as his immediate successor, became abbat of St. Martin’s after Wulfhard II. He built a stone church, the west front of which still stands in considerable part, with the eleventh-century Romanesque tower, most of which still stands, applied to it, the east wall of the tower being the west front of Fridugisus. Plate VI shows a capital which has recently been found, evidently of the time of Fridugisus. Considerable parts of the later Gothic walls still stand. They are carefully tended by M. Octave Bobeau, the local correspondent of the Minister of Public Education, whose apartments are in the refectory of the abbey. The curé of Cormery, M. l’abbé Jaillet, is a most obliging guide to the ruins, as also to his own very fine cruciform parish church. In these most recent days “his own” is a misdescription. The inventories have been taken, and Monsieur le Maire is the master of the parish church and its services. The large house of the abbats of Cormery is now a dwelling-house in connexion with the communal school. An early engraving in a French account of Touraine shows that the western tower was crowned with a gallery and spire, not unlike that shown in the illustration of Marmoutier, Plate V. Some commentators suppose that the “other monastery”, which Alcuin informs Arno he has built some eight miles from the city, was this monastery of Cormery. But the distance named is not easily reconciled with the geographical facts, and Alcuin could not properly have stated that he was the founder of Cormery. Cormery provided a home for the severer side of the monastic life, St. Martin’s and Marmoutier remaining secular. Cormery being a considerable distance away, a Benedictine abbey, of St. Julien, was established in the eastern part of Tours, in the tenth century, by Archbishop Théotolon, and a Romanesque abbey-church was built, the square tower of which still remains; the church in its present state has some ancient paintings, and deserves a visit. Being within the limits of the ancient Roman town, it would naturally be under the jurisdiction of the archbishop. This will be a convenient point at which to give further details[212] of the remarkable licence of Hadrian for a permanent bishopric of the western part of the present city, at that time a district separate from the ancient city, in which latter was the stool of the archbishop of Tours.