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place · TOURS, October 2, 1860 AD

A red cross and a lamp mark the wall hiding St. Martin's tomb

Diggers in a Tours cellar uncovered the choir of his old basilica, then learned that the grave lay under the house next door.

Edition of

Saint Martin of Tours
An ink-and-wash drawing of an empty barrel-vaulted stone cellar, its floor dug open around a ring of old dressed-stone foundations, with shovels leaning on the walls, a coil of rope and two oil lanterns, and worn steps rising to a daylit doorway on the left.
A cellar in Tours on the site of the old basilica of Saint Martin, where diggers uncovered the foundations of its choir in October 1860 AD.
About this picture

AI-generated image, in the manner of a nineteenth-century reportage drawing in pen, ink and wash. No person appears in it.

TOURS, October 2, 1860 AD — On October 2 a commission went down into a cellar in Tours and began digging for the tomb of Saint Martin of Tours. It found the foundations of the choir of his old basilica. The grave lay on the other side of the cellar wall, and the work stopped.

St. Martin was the third bishop of Tours, from 371 AD until his death in 397 AD. For centuries pilgrims came from all over France to his grave. After the pilgrimages ended, the people of Tours never accepted that they were gone for good.

The grave was lost in stages. In 1562 AD Calvinists sacked the basilica and scattered St. Martin’s bones, and the great national pilgrimages ended that year. An arm-bone and part of his skull were saved and taken to the cathedral of Tours. At the Revolution the basilica became a stable, and in 1797 AD its vaults fell in. The town then cut streets through the ruins on purpose, so that devotion to St. Martin could never start again there. The rue Saint-Martin runs nearly parallel with the old nave, and the rue Descartes follows the line of the transept. Rows of small houses went up over the parts of the site the streets did not cover.

For years the people of Tours believed the grave lay under one of the new streets. After the French kings returned to the throne, a public collection was raised to rebuild the basilica. Its organiser dropped the plan because he was sure the tomb lay under the public road. Then a plan of the old church, drawn in 1802 AD, turned up in the archives of the prefecture. It fixed the exact position of the tomb and showed that it lay not under the road but under one or more small houses. In 1857 AD Cardinal Morlot, then archbishop of Tours, bought those houses. He did not take possession of them until this year.

The cellar the commission went into this week lay under a house that stood over the site of the high altar. The house also covered a large part of the area behind the altar, once called Le Repos de Saint Martin (St. Martin’s Rest). The diggers found part of the old foundations of the choir, just where they had expected them. The tomb was not there. It lay beyond the cellar wall, under the house next door, and the commission halted the work until the Church could get into that house too.

In mid-November a large red cross was drawn on the cellar wall, opposite the spot where the tomb was thought to lie. A small lamp was hung from the ceiling and kept burning there day and night.

About this story

Catholic Saints News tells the lives of the saints as news from their own time and place. This story was written with AI from the historical record, and we read and approved it before it ran.

The Saints' words. This newspaper will never make a saint say something the historical record does not preserve.

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Image. AI-generated image, in the manner of a nineteenth-century reportage drawing in pen, ink and wash. No person appears in it. .

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A painting of an empty paved forecourt before a large plain brick basilica with tall arched windows, a tiled portico on columns to one side with a wooden bench beneath it, and no people anywhere in the scene.
About this picture

AI-generated image, in the manner of Italian trecento fresco, from the paper's reference portrait based on Miracle of Fire (scene 8) (Simone Martini (1284-1344), between 1312 and 1317, Chapel of St. Martin, Lower Basilica of San Francesco, Assisi) View source artwork.

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