TOURAINE, a French province, bounded on the north by Orleanais, west by Anjou and Maine, south by Poitou and east by Berry, and corresponding approximately to the modern depart ment of Indre-et-Loire. Touraine took its name from the Turones, the tribe by which it was inhabited at the time of Caesar's con quest of Gaul. The capital city, Caesarodunum, was made by Valentinian the metropolis of the 3rd Lyonnaise, which included roughly the later provinces of Touraine, Brittany, Maine and Anjou. The ecclesiastical province of Tours was apparently created during the episcopate of St. Martin (fl. 375-400), who founded the abbey of Marmoutier, near Tours, and whose tomb in the city became a celebrated shrine. Tours was included in the territory of the Visigoths, but the Tourangeans refused to adopt the Arian heresy of their conquerors, and easily accepted the con quest of the province by Clovis (c. 507). The possession of Touraine was constantly in dispute between different Merovingian princes, and the province enjoyed no settled peace until the reign of Charlemagne. He established Alcuin as abbot of St. Martin of Tours, under whom the school of Tours became one of the chief seats of learning in Gaul. From Merovingian times, the administration of Touraine was entrusted to counts appointed by the Crown. The office became hereditary in 94o or 941 with Theobald the Old. His son Odo I. was attacked by Fulk the Black, count of Anjou, and despoiled of part of his territory. His grand son Theobald III., who refused homage to Henry I., king of France, in 1044, was entirely dispossessed by Geoffrey Martel of Anjou (d. io6o) and the county of Touraine remained under the domination of the counts of Anjou (q.v.) until 1204. Philip Augustus appointed William des Roches hereditary seneschal in 1204, but the dignity was ceded to the Crown in 1312. Touraine
was granted from time to time to princes of the blood as an appa nage of the Crown of France. In 1328 it was held by Jeanne of Burgundy, queen of France; by Philip, duke of Orleans, in and in 1360 it was made a peerage duchy on behalf of Philip the Bold, afterwards duke of Burgundy. Charles VII. bestowed the duchy successively on his wife Mary of Anjou, on Archibald Douglas and on Louis III. of Anjou. It was the dower of Mary Stuart as the widow of Francis II. The last duke of Touraine was Francis, duke of Alencon (d. 1584). Plessis-les-Tours had been the favourite residence of Louis XI., who granted many privileges to the town of Tours, and increased its prosperity by the establishment of the silk-weaving industry. The reformed religion numbered many adherents in Touraine, who suffered in the massacres following on the conspiracy of Amboise. Many Huguenots emigrated after the massacre of St. Bartholomew, and after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes the silk industry, which had been mainly in the hands of the Huguenots, was almost de stroyed. This migration was one of the prime causes of the extreme poverty of the province in the next century.
See the quarterly publication of the Memoires of the Societe arche ologique de Touraine (1842, etc.) which include a Dictionnaire geog raphique, historique et biographique (6 vols., 1878-84), by J. X. Carre de Busserolle. There are histories of Touraine and its monuments by Chalmel (4 vols. 1828), by S. Bellanger (1845), by Bourrasse (1858). See also Dupin de Saint André, Hist. du protestantisme en Touraine (1885) ; T. A. Cook, Old Touraine (1892).