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Martin Of Tours c. 315-397

Our knowledge of Martin is derived from his friend and biographer Sulpicius Severus. The many and striking miracles he ascribes to his hero provoked incredulity at the time and still provoke it today. But he asseverates his veracity in tones which carry conviction, and, when allowance is made for inaccurate reporting, mal-observation and misinterpretation, the miracles are incredible only to one who denies the existence of a spiritual world. Substantially we can trust Sulpicius.

Martin, born about 315 at Sabaria in Pannonia (now Hungary), was the son of an offlcer in the army. Both parents were pagans, but, when he was still a boy, he had himself enrolled as a catechumen. As a soldier's son he was a conscript. As an officer at Amiens he shared his military cloak with a beggar, and, the following night, he saw our Lord wearing the halved cloak. In consequence he was baptized but remained reluctantly in the army. Two years later barbarians invaded Gaul. Martin asked leave of his commander, probably Constantius, to resign his commission. 'I am a soldier of Christ, it is not lawful for me to serve.' Charged with cowardice, he offered to stand unarmed in the forefront of battle. The barbarians, however, surrendered without a fight. Martin was then permitted to leave the army (probably in 339).

The bishop of Poitiers, St Hilary, ordained him an exorcist. He spent the ensuing years in various places and was for some time a hermit in an island off the Italian coast. He converted his mother and was flogged for public opposition to the Arians. He rejoined St Hilary when that bishop returned from exile and founded at Liguge, near Poitiers, a hermitage which soon expanded into a community of hermits.

He was elected bishop of Tours for the repute of his holiness, though perhaps still more for the miracles which attested it. An influential minority, however, of his future flock and some of the bishops who assembled for his consecration-noblemen or landowners-objected to a bishop who was not a gentleman: 'a man so contemptible with dirty clothes and unkempt hair.' He was consecrated on July 4th, 371.

He did not abandon his monastic life, but made his headquarters a monastery of the eremitical type, which he founded outside Tours. Having clothed a beggar with his tunic, Martin sang mass in a rough garment flung down by his irate archdeacon. When he blessed the people five members of his congregation saw a ball of fire surround his head. At prayer he encountered demons, often under the guise of heathen deities, and Satan disguised on one occasion as our Lord. Satan once taunted him with admitting as monks men guilty of grievous sin. 'If you, yourself,' he replied, 'would, even now, repent of your misdeeds, I have such trust in the Lord Jesus Christ that I would promise you mercy.' He conversed with angels and was often visited by SS Peter and Paul. Questioned by Sulpicius and his friends about an indistinct conversation overheard in his cell, he admitted that 'Agnes, Thecla, and Mary' had been with him. Thrice Martin raised to life a man dead or apparently dead. He cured a woman with an issue of blood, a leper by a kiss, a paralytic by pouring oil into his mouth. A troop of soldiers beat up Martin when his uncouth figure made the mules shy which were dragging their wagon. His companions bore him off unconscious, but the mules would not budge. The soldiers discovered their victim's identity and, when they had begged his pardon, the mules moved forward.

Martin was the apostle of the country districts, forcibly destroying sanctuaries venerated by the pagan rustics. He once accepted a challenge to stand where a sacred tree he had ordered to be felled must crush him in its fall: it swerved aside, and the marvel produced wholesale conversions. A pagan's sword raised to behead Martin fell down powerless. When violent opposition prevented his demolition of a temple, he saw in prayer two protecting angels. He returned to the village and there was no further interference. Helen, the saintly wife of the usurping Emperor, Maximus, waited humbly on him at table. At the instigation of his courtier bishops, Maximus put the heretic Priscillian to death though he had promised Martin to spare his life. Martin refused to communicate with these bishops, and yielded only to obtain the recall of a tribune dispatched to Spain for further executions. He over-awed Count Avitianus into the release of a batch of prisoners he had destined to torture and death.

Martin fell mortally ill at Candes, a village in his diocese where his services were required as peacemaker. As he lay dying his disciples implored him not to leave his flock at the mercy of wolves, the powerful section of opponents whose victory he foresaw (see Brice). He made the immortal reply of the good shepherd: 'Lord, if thy people still need me, I will not shirk the toil. Thy will be done.' The sacrifice was not asked, for he died on November 8th, 397. Three days later, on his present feast day, he was buried at Tours. He was the first neither martyr nor reputed martyr, to receive the cult of a saint. His shrine became the most venerated Gallic sanctuary.


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