66 
THE MONKS OF MARMOUTiER. 
more renowned and a much larger Abbey. S. Martin retired 
from the city of Tours in order to escape the distractions 
caused bv the multitudes who thronged him to see the 
wonderful works he performed, and for many years he 1 i\ ecl in 
the rocks and caves near the Loire, half a league from the 
Cathedral city. On the spot which he so inhabited grew up 
a magnificent monastery, which in the course of time attained 
to such great dimensions and importance that it became 
known as Majus Monasterium —the Greater Monastery of 
France. “ Majus Monasterium has been contracted into 
“ Marmoutier,” and that was the mediaeval, as it is the 
modern, name of the Abbey, in which the great Saint of Tours 
spent his last years. 
Through the French Revolution and other leligious dis¬ 
turbances the Abbey lies now m a more pitiabF luinous 
condition than many of our English monastenes. Ihe olci 
13th century Abbey Gateway still remains; a poition ot 
the north transept of the Abbey Church may still be seen ; 
part of the Prior s House is yet standing \ the ca - \ es and 
grottoes, cut out in the solid rock in which S. Martin used 
to live, are still there, and several chapels, dedicated to othei 
saints who lived there after the time of S. Martin, and hewn 
out of the natural rocks, are still shown to visitois, but that is 
all. The monks are gone, and on the site is now a modern 
School for Girls, conducted by a number of the Sisters of the 
Sacre Coeur, with a beautiful modern chapel attached , but 
their tenure seems at the present time, alas, very insecure, in 
consequence of the recent legislation with lespect to leLgious 
Associations in France. 
This was the place on which in mediaeval days there stood 
the greatest and most important of all the French Monasteries* 
and it was to the Abbot and Convent of this House that Ralph 
Pagnell gave Holy Trinity in the year 1089. 
I do not know whether Ralph knew of the former connection 
between York and Tours. If not, it was a remarkable coinci¬ 
dence that Holy Trinity should have been made a Cell, that is 
a dependent House, of Marmoutier ; for, 3 centuries before, 
Alcuin the York boy and the pupil of Archbishop Albert, had 
built the House of Secular Canons to which frequent refeience 
