Saumur

Saumur, a town of France, dept. Maine-et-Loire, on the left bank of the Loire and on an island in it, 38 miles by rail W. by S. of Tours. The most prominent buildings are an old castle (now arsenal and powder magazine), the 16th-century town-house, some interesting churches, and private houses of good French architecture. There are a town museum and a cavalry school with some 400 pupils. Rosaries and articles in enamel are manufactured. Pop. 14,772. Saumur was a stronghold of the Protestants during the reign of Henry IV., at which time it contained 25,000 inhabitants. Its prosperity was annihilated by the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, and its population reduced to a fourth. From 1598 till 1685 it was the seat of a famous school of Protestant theology, the most conspicuous professors being John Cameron of Glasgow (1577-1625) and his pupils Amyraut (or Amyraldus, 1596-1664) and Cappel (1585-1658). The school was noted for its freedom in biblical criticism and its less rigid doctrine of the divine decrees; it was even denounced by the opposing school of Sedan as heretical for teaching a hypothetical universalism—the view that God had not by arbitrary decree excluded any from being saved by the death of Christ. Saumur was brilliantly captured by Larochejaquelein and the Vendéans in the summer of 1793. The largest dolmen in France is $\backslash frac\{1\}\{2\}$ mile south of the town; and prehistoric caves line the river close by.