[401] Hugh of Fleury and Chron. Fr. Andreæ, as above. _Hist. Franc. Fragm._ (_ibid._), p. 160. [402] _Hist. Franc. Fragm._ (_Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, vol. xi.), p. 160. Hugh of Fleury (_ibid._), p. 159. [403] Chron. Virdun. a. 1039 (_Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, vol. xi. p. 144). R. Glaber, l. v. c. 2 (_ib._ vol. x. p. 60), copied in _Gesta Cons._ (Marchegay, _Comtes_), pp. 122, 123. Fulk Rechin (_ibid._), p. 378. To understand the full importance of this grant and of the war which followed it, we must know something of the history of Tours and of the peculiar feelings and interests attached to it. The origin of Tours as a city dates from the time of the Roman empire, when it appears under the name of Cæsarodunum.[404] The Roman _castrum_ was built in a broad, shallow sort of basin, watered on the north by the Loire, on the south by the Cher; it probably occupied the site of some village of those Turones or Turoni, who play a part in the Gallic wars of Cæsar,[405] and whose name in the end superseded that which the place received from its conqueror. The “city of the Turones” became the central point of a network of roads connecting it with Poitiers, Chartres, Bourges, Orléans, Le Mans and Angers;[406] and owing to the convenience of its situation for military and administrative purposes it was made the capital of the Third Lyonnese province.[407] But its hold on the minds of men was due to another gift of Rome, more precious than roads or fortifications or even political traditions. It was the holy city of Gaul, the cradle of Gaulish Christianity. Its first bishop, Gatian, was one of seven missionaries sent out from Rome to evangelize the Gallic provinces in the days of the Decian persecution.[408] S. Gatian’s episcopate of half a century fell in one of the most distracted periods of the Empire; after his death the Church which he had planted remained untended for nearly forty years, and it was not till after the death of Constantine that Tours received her second bishop in the person of Lidorius, one of her own sons, who laid the foundations of a cathedral church.[409] But the fame of the two first bishops of Tours was completely overshadowed by that of the third. The work of S. Gatian and S. Lidorius was confined to their own immediate flock; S. Martin was the apostle not only of Touraine but of all central Gaul. Born at Sabaria[410] in the Upper Pannonia, in the reign of the first Christian Emperor, but of heathen parents, Martin rose to high military distinction under the Cæsar Julian, accompanied him into Gaul, and enjoyed his utmost esteem and regard till he forfeited them by renouncing the standard of the eagles for that of the Cross. Neither the wrath of his commander nor the entreaties of his fellow-soldiers, by whom he was greatly beloved, availed to shake his resolution; he fled to Poitiers, and there found a friend and