In Merovingian times the two most-visited shrines in France were St. Hilary's at Poitiers, and St. Martin's at Tours. When Hilary, the thirteenth bishop here (d. 368), returned from his exile in Phrygia, whither he had been driven for combating the Arian heresy, he brought back from the East a fondness for the interpretation of Scripture by allegory which was to have a strong influence on the iconography of Gothic cathedrals. To pray by St. Martin's tomb at Tours there came north the Italian poet, Venantius Fortunatus, who continued his pilgrimage to the tomb of St. Hilary, the master who had trained Martin in the spiritual life. Never was he to quit Poitiers, where, in 607 he died, its revered bishop. In those days, Radegund, the Thuringian wife of Clotaire, son of Clovis, had retired to Poitiers to pass her life in study and prayer. Scripture and the works of the church fathers were read in Greek and Hebrew, in her cloister. About her gathered pious maidens, chiefly of the Gallo-Roman stock, harried by the rougher peoples from the north. Fortunatus became for Queen Radegund and her Abbess Agnes a sort of self-appointed intendant; he sent them gifts of fruit with verses. Puvis de Chavannes has painted it all on the walls of Poitiers' Town Hall. St. Radegund's tomb became a pilgrim shrine. The savants see no reason to doubt the genuine antiquity of the queen's sarcophagus of black marble now in the crypt of her church, part of which crypt escaped the fire of 1083 and so dates before 1000. The new apse was dedicated in 1099. The three big bays of the aisleless nave are covered by Plantagenet Gothic vaults with eight branches, and along the walls are the same blind arcades and carved carbels as in the cathedral. The sacristy shows an octagonal dome on ribs. The church has no transept, but over the north portal is a XIII-century rose window of deep blue hue, between which and the apse are some XIV-century windows that experimented not very successfully with colored figures in white glass. The porch is good Flamboyant Gothic. Poitiers boasts the oldest extant Christian church in France, the baptistry of St. Jean, in whose walls are Gallo-Roman IV-century vestiges.[203] There is VII-century Merovingian work in its apsidal chapels, and the later Romanesque and Gothic times added their quotas. The ancient well in which baptism by submersion was practiced has been preserved. A son of Poitiers feels doubly a Christian if baptized in the church of St. Jean's. The venerable little edifice to-day lies many feet below the level of the city streets, for Poitiers escaped few of the sackings of history. For safety from the Barbarian invasions some rich Gallo-Roman must have buried the statue of Minerva exhumed in 1902, in the garden of a girls' school, and now in the town's museum. It is a most lovely Greek marble of the VI century, B.C.[204]