The Salvus Murus of the ancients became the Saumur of to-day in the year 948, when the monk Absalom built a monastery here and surrounded it with a protecting wall. Up to the thirteenth century the city belonged to the "Angevin kings of Angleterre," as the French historians proudly claim them.
The city passed finally to the Kings of France, and to them remained constantly faithful. Under Henri IV. the city was governed by Duplessis-Mornay, the "pape des Huguenots," becoming practically the metropolis of Protestantism. Up to this time the chief architectural monument was the château, which was commenced in the eleventh century and which through the next five centuries had been aggrandized and rebuilt into its present shape.
The church of Notre Dame de Nantilly dates from the twelfth century and was frequently visited by Louis XI. The oratory formerly made use of by this monarch to-day contains the baptismal fonts. One of the columns of the nave has graven upon it the epitaph composed by King René of Anjou for his foster-mother, Dame Thiephanie. Throughout, the church is beautifully decorated.
The Hôtel de Ville may well be called the chief artistic treasure of Saumur, as the châtteau is its chief historical monument. It is a delightful ensemble of the best of late Gothic, dating from the sixteenth century, flanked on its façade by turrets crowned with mâchicoulis, and lighted by a series of elegant windows à croisillons. Above all is a gracious campanile, in its way as fine as the belfry of Bruges, to which, from a really artistic standpoint, rhapsodists have given rather more than its due.
The interior is as elaborate and pleasing as is the outside. In the Salle des Mariages and Salle du Conseil are fine fifteenth-century chimneypieces, such as are only found in their perfection on the Loire. The library, of something over twenty thousand volumes, many of them in manuscript, is formed in great part from the magnificent collection formerly at the abbeys of Fontevrault and St. Florent. Doubtless these old tomes contain a wealth of material from which some future historian will perhaps construct a new theory of the universe. This in truth may not be literally so, but it is a fact that there is a vast amount of contemporary historical information, with regard to the world in general, which is as yet unearthed, as witness the case of Pompeii alone, where the area of the discoveries forms but a small part of the entire buried city.
At Saumur numerous prehistoric and gallo-romain remains are continually being added to the museum, which is also in the Hôtel de Ville. A recent acquisition—discovered in a neighbouring vineyard—is a Roman "trompette," as it is designated, and a more or less complete outfit of tools, obviously those of a carpenter.
The notorious Madame de Montespan—"the illustrious penitent," though the former description answers better—stopped here, in a house adjoining the Church of St. John, to-day a maison de retrait, on her way to visit her sister, the abbess, at Fontevrault.
From Saumur to Angers the Loire passes an almost continuous series of historical guide-posts, some in ruins, but many more as proudly environed as ever.
At Treves-Cunault is a dignified Romanesque church which would add to the fame of a more popular and better known town. It is not a grand structure, but it is perfect of its kind, with its crenelated façade and its sturdy arcaded towers curiously placed midway on the north wall.
Here one first becomes acquainted with menhirs and dolmens, examples of which are to be found in the neighbourhood, not so remarkable as those of Brittany, but still of the same family.