Letter from Tours: Before Farrell's army, St Patrick made his presence felt here

St Patrick stained glass window at the  Institution Scolaire Marmoutier,

Andy Farrell may not feel the need, such is his confidence in Ireland’s abilities to take on and beat the best at this World Cup in France, but if the head coach was in need of some divine inspiration a visit to the site of Marmoutier Abbey may do the trick.

It is here on the banks of the river Loire, just to the east of the Six Nations champions’ training base in Tours, that lies the remains of a religious institution dating back to the 4th Century that has an intriguing link to our very own Saint Patrick.

As becomes apparent listening to Olivier Boyer, principal of the Institution Scolaire Marmoutier, the Catholic private school now on the site, legends abound about St Patrick in the Loire, though few are aware.

Even the Irish Examiner’s trusted guide to the region, Marieke Gourdin of the Touraine Tourism Agency, admitted the news that Ireland’s patron saint was the nephew of an early Bishop of Tours, Saint Martin, had come as a surprise.

“We know about St Martin but not about St Patrick here in Touraine,” she confesses. “We know about St Patrick in general but I didn’t know he was St Martin’s nephew.” 

It is local resident and Roscommon native Louise Scott Taylor, the owner of a Paris-based concierge service in the luxury hotel sector, who introduces us to Monsieur Boyer and so begins the tale as he leads the way into the school’s private chapel, complete with a spectacular stained glass window of Saint Patrick.

“The school is putting in place a programme next year to teach the students to become tour guides of the school so we can open to the public on a certain number of days each year,” Boyer said before explaining the background to our story as his tour moves past the 19th century buildings that house today’s boarding school to a series of caves dug out of the rockface behind the site.

“Saint Martin was the third bishop of Tours. He accepted the post on one condition, that he could withdraw from the world for contemplation whenever he needed to. So the area he chose to do that was in Marmoutier in one of these troglodyte caves.” 

Which is the reason why Patrick also made his way along the Loire to his uncle’s abbey.

“When he got to Marmoutier he too took to a cave for a period of contemplation — for how long, we don’t know.” 

How Patrick reached Marmoutier brings us to perhaps the greatest of the saint’s legends in the region, the “Legend of the Miraculous Thornbush”.

“The legends of St Patrick in the Tours region are very much unknown. People don’t really talk about them but once you start to read a little there’s a presence there,” Scott Taylor said. It begins down river, around 35 kilometres west, near a village now called Saint-Patrice.

“He was making his way to visit his uncle Saint Martin and crossed the Loire at Brehemont after being set upon by fishermen,” she continued. “When he got to the other side of the river he was completely soaking wet and decided to spend the night in a cave.

“Before he went into the cave he took off his wet coat and threw it over a bush. The next morning he woke up there was snow on the ground, it was the middle of winter. He lifted his coat off the thornbush to make his way upriver to his uncle at Marmoutier and the bush burst into flower.” 

There’s a further twist in the tail.

On the terrace just above Saint Patrick’s cave was an Irish nun who had a vegetable patch and she dug through the floor essentially and found herself in the cave. She was unhurt, she said and claimed that St Patrick saved her life.

“She was clearly a nun who was very passionate about her Irish heritage,” Boyer said with a laugh.

The final stop takes us up, to the top of a precipitous old lookout tower with views along the Loire to Tours, its cathedral, Saint-Gatien’s, and the Basilica of St Martin. Yet Boyer points out a playing field on the school grounds.

“If the Ireland team comes here to visit that’s where we’ll put in some rugby goalposts,” he declared.