Saint-Calais

Saint-Calais grew beside the River Anille around a Benedictine abbey that gave the town its name. The abbey's buildings and church formed the heart of a settlement serving the countryside on the eastern edge of Maine. In 1562, at the beginning of the Wars of Religion, Protestants were massacred in Saint-Calais; a Protestant lord subsequently seized the prior and monks, and the abbey was burned. The violence marked a sharp break in the life of the religious community and the town that had grown around it.