Encyclopedia
Saint
Martin of Tours , was a bishop of Tours whose shrine became a famous stopping-point for pilgrims on the road to
Santiago de Compostela. Around his name much legendary material accrued and he has become one of the most familiar and recognizable
Roman Catholic saints. Some of the accounts of his travels may have been interpolated into his
vita to give credence to early sites of his
cult. His life was recorded by a contemporary, the hagiographer Sulpitius Severus.
Early life
Martin was named after
Mars, the god of war, which Sulpitius Severus interpreted as "the brave, the courageous". He was a native of
Sabaria,
Pannonia . His father was a senior officer in the Imperial Horse Guard, a unit of the
Roman army, and was stationed at Ticinum, Cisalpine Gaul .
At the age of ten, he went to the church against the wishes of his parents and became a catechumen or candidate for baptism.
When Martin was fifteen, as the son of a veteran officer, he was required to join a cavalry ala himself and thus, around 334 was stationed at
Ambianensium civitas or Samarobriva in
Gaul . It is therefore likely that he joined the equites catafractarii Ambianenses, a unit of
cataphracti listed in the Notitia Dignitatum.
The Legend of the Cloak
While Martin was still a soldier at Amiens he experienced the vision that became the most-repeated story about his life. He was at the gates of the city of
Amiens with his soldiers when he met a scantily dressed
beggar. He impulsively cut his own military cloak in half and shared it with the beggar. That night he dreamed of
Jesus wearing the half-cloak Martin had given away. He heard Jesus say to the angels: "Here is Martin, the Roman soldier who is not
baptised; he has clad me." . In a later embellishment, when Martin woke his cloak was restored, and the miraculous cloak was preserved among the relic collection of the Merovingian kings of the
Franks.
Countering the Arians
The dream confirmed Martin in his piety and he was baptized, but served another two years before he declared his vocation and left his legion at
Worms and made his way to the city of
Tours, where he became a disciple of Hilary of Poitiers, a chief proponent of Trinitarian Christianity, opposing the Arianism of the
Visigothic
nobility. When Hilary was forced into exile from
Poitiers, Martin returned to Italy, converting an
Alpine brigand on the way, according to his biographer Sulpicius Severus, and confronting the
Devil himself. Returning from
Illyria, he was confronted by the Arian archbishop of Milan Auxentius, who expelled him from the city. According to the early sources, he decided to seek shelter on the island then called Gallinaria, now Isola d'Albenga, in the
Tyrrhenian Sea, where he lived the solitary life of a
hermit.
With the return of Hilary to his see in 361, Martin joined him and established a monastery nearby, at the site that developed into the
Benedictine Ligugé Abbey. He traveled and preached through Western
Gaul: "The memory of these apostolic journeyings survives to our day in the numerous local legends of which Martin is the hero and which indicate roughly the routes that he followed." .
In 371 Martin was acclaimed bishop of Tours, where he impressed the city with his demeanor, and by the enthusiasm with which he had temples demolished or burnt, altars smashed and sculpture defaced. It is an indication of the depth of the
Druidic folk religion compared to the veneer of Roman culture in the area, that "when in a certain village he had demolished a very ancient temple, and had set about cutting down a pine-tree, which stood close to the temple, the chief priest of that place, and a crowd of other heathens began to oppose him; and these people, though, under the influence of the Lord, they had been quiet while the temple was being overthrown, could not patiently allow the tree to be cut down" . Sulpicius affirms that he withdrew from the press of attention in the city to live in Marmoutier , the
monastery he founded, which faces Tours from the opposite shore of the Loire.
Martin's order at Marmoutier
Sulpicius Severus described the severe restrictions of the life of Martin among the cave-dwelling cenobites who gathered around him, a rare view of a monastic community that preceded the Benedictine rule:
- Many also of the brethren had, in the same manner, fashioned retreats for themselves, but most of them had formed these out of the rock of the overhanging mountain, hollowed into caves. There were altogether eighty disciples, who were being disciplined after the example of the saintly master. No one there had anything which was called his own; all things were possessed in common. It was not allowed either to buy or to sell anything, as is the custom among most monks. No art was practiced there, except that of transcribers, and even this was assigned to the brethren of younger years, while the elders spent their time in prayer. Rarely did any one of them go beyond the cell, unless when they assembled at the place of prayer. They all took their food together, after the hour of fasting was past. No one used wine, except when illness compelled them to do so. Most of them were clothed in garments of camels' hair. Any dress approaching to softness was there deemed criminal, and this must be thought the more remarkable, because many among them were such as are deemed of noble rank.
Defender of the Priscillianists
His role in the matter of the followers of Priscillian was especially remarkable. Priscillian and his partisans, who had been condemned by the Council of Saragossa, had fled; furious charges were brought before Emperor
Magnus Maximus by some bishops of
Hispania, led by Bishop Ithacius. Martin hurried to the Imperial court of
Trier on an errand of mercy to remove them from the secular jurisdiction of the emperor. Maximus at first acceded to his entreaty, but, when Martin had departed, yielded to the solicitations of Ithacius and ordered Priscillian and his followers to be beheaded , the first Christians executed for heresy. Deeply grieved, Martin refused to communicate with Ithacius, until pressured by the Emperor.
The shrine
The veneration of Martin was hugely popular in the
Middle Ages. His body was taken to Tours and the simple
shrine erected over his
sarcophagus was increased to a great
basilica, as the shrine of St. Martin of Tours became a major stopping-point on
pilgrimages; the later bishop, Gregory of Tours, made it his business to write and see distributed an influential
Life filled with miraculous events of the saint's career. The basilica was sacked by
Huguenots during the Wars of Religion, in 1562, then utterly demolished during the
French Revolution, when two streets were opened on the site, to ensure it would not be rebuilt. In 1860, excavations established its former site and recovered some fragments of architecture.
Hagiography
The early life of Saint Martin that was written by Sulpicius Severus who knew him personally , while it expresses the intimate closeness the
4th century Christian felt with the Devil in all his disguises, is at the same time filled with accounts of miracles so extravagant as apparently to challenge disbelief. Some follow familiar conventions— casting out devils, raising the paralytic and the dead— others are more unusual: turning back the flames from a house while Martin was burning down the Roman temple it adjoined; deflecting the path of a felled sacred pine; the healing power of a letter written from Martin, indeed "threads from Martin's garment, or such as had been plucked from the sackcloth which he wore, wrought frequent miracles upon those who were sick."
The first occasion on which Martin restored the dead to life was that of the catechumen who lived with him in his cell near
Poitiers. He returned from a three-day absence to find
- The body being laid out in public was being honored by the last sad offices on the part of the mourning brethren, when Martin hurries up to them with tears and lamentations. But then laying hold; as it were, of the Holy Spirit, with the whole powers of his mind, he orders the others to quit the cell in which the body was lying; and bolting the door, he stretches himself at full length on the dead limbs of the departed brother. Having given himself for some time to earnest prayer, and perceiving by means of the Spirit of God that power was present, he then rose up for a little, and gazing on the countenance of the deceased, he waited without misgiving for the result of his prayer and of the mercy of the Lord. And scarcely had the space of two hours elapsed, when he saw the dead man begin to move a little in all his members, and to tremble with his eyes opened for the practice of sight. Then indeed, turning to the Lord with a loud voice and giving thanks, he filled the cell with his ejaculations .
In one instance, the
druids agreed to fell their sacred fir tree, if Martin would stand directly in the path of its fall. He did so, and it miraculously missed him very narrowly. Sulpicius, a classically educated aristocrat, related this anecdote with dramatic details, as a setpiece. Sulpicius could not have failed to know the incident the Roman poet
Horace recalls in several
Odes, of his narrow escape from a falling tree — a tree that Horace says, addressing it, was "reared with a sacrilegious hand for the destruction of posterity" .
William M. Branham made the claim that Saint Martin
played a key role in church history.
Folklore
On November 11, St. Martin's Day, children in
Flanders, the southern and north-western parts of the
Netherlands, the Catholic areas of
Germany and
Austria participate in
paper lantern processions. Often, a man dressed as St. Martin rides on a horse in front of the procession. The children sing songs about St. Martin and about their lantern. The food traditionally eaten on the day is
goose. According to legend, Martin was reluctant to become bishop, which is why he hid in a stable filled with geese. The noise made by the geese betrayed his location to the people who were looking for him.
Also in the east part of the Belgian province of
East-Flanders and the west part of
West Flanders, children receive presents from St. Martin on November 11, instead of from
Saint Nicholas on December 6, or
Santa Claus on December 25.
In recent years the lantern processions have become widespread even in Protestant areas of
Germany and the
Netherlands, despite the fact that most Protestant churches do not recognize
Saints as a distinct class of believers from the laity.
Many churches in
Europe are named after
Saint Martinus also known as Saint Martin of Tours. St. Martin is the patron saint of
Szombathely, with a church dedicated to him, and also the patron saint of
Buenos Aires.
In
Latin America, he has a strong popular following and is frequently referred to as
San Martín Caballero in reference to his common depiction on horseback.
Influence on Wine
St. Martin is credited with a prominent role in spreading wine making throughout the
Touraine region and facilitated the planting of many vines. Legend has it that he first discovered the concept of
pruning the vines after watching a donkey eat some of the grape clusters.
References
- Sulpitius Severus On the Life of St. Martin. Translation and Notes by Alexander Roberts. In A Select Library of Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, New York, 1894,
Bibliography
- Lörincz, Zoltán Szent Márton, Savaria szülötte . Szombathely, B.K.L. Kiadó - Pannon Lapok Társasága. This book contains an essay on St Martin and his cult in Hungary and Europe, with a discussion of artworks depicting his life.
External links
