St. Martin of Tours
Born: 316 AD
Died: November 8, 397 AD
Feast Day: November 11
Patron of: France
Up until the fifth century, Christians weren’t interested in calling you a saint unless you ended your life in the lion’s mouth, on the gridiron, or shot full of arrows. Martyrdom was where it was at.
Saint Martin of Tours was the first fellow to change all that.
Born in 315, Marin of Tours was the son of an officer in the Roman army and therefore was to enter the army himself, despite his desire to become a hermit. His father was none too pleased with Martin’s leanings toward Christianityt, and doubtless through the years in the army would knock some sense into his son. Martin ended up in the emperor’s elite cavalry corps, where he got two horses, a servant, and a double food ration. He gave away most of the food and he waited on his own servant, to the amusement of his fellow soldiers. He also got a beautiful white cloak lined with lambskin. This was the cloak which, on a frigid night near the city gate, he split with a naked beggar. That night in a dream he saw Jesus wearing the halved cloak and saying “Look, Martin has given me half his cloak, and he is not even baptized!” As a consequence, Martin “flew to be baptized,” reports his biographer.
Two years later, when a barbarian invasion threatened Gaul, Marin refused to enter the battle with his fellow soldiers. He stood before the emperor and asked to resign his commission: “ I am a soldier of Christ, and it is not lawful of me to fight.” When the emperor accused him of cowardice, Martin retorted that he would stand unarmed at the front of the battle and advance alone against the enemy in the name of Christ. He was thrown into prison where, after a night of prayer, he heard the news that the barbarians had asked for peace.
Because of his brave refusal to fight, the peace organization Pax Christi honors Marin of Tours each year as the “conscientious objector saint,” and the Catholic bishops held him up as an example of Christian nonviolence in their 1983 peace pastoral.
When Martin was discharged from the army, he finally fulfilled his dream of becoming a hermit. He lived in happy solitude with a community of hermits who gathered around him for the next ten years. But fame caught up with him at last. In 371 the people of Tours, well aware of Martin’s holiness, demanded him for their bishop. Some of the neighboring bishops thought tours would be better off with a bishop who could do a pair of cufflinks proud- not the unkempt and shabby Martin.
But the people prevailed, much to Martin’s dismay. They invented a ruse to get him into the city, where they forced him to accept the office of bishop.
Unable to tolerate the interruptions of life in the city, Martin soon moved to a cave on the outskirts of town, where he drew more monks about him. Despite his love of solitude, he faithfully visited his diocese during the year, splitting the district up into smaller areas that he christened “parishes.” Martin, the uncle of Saint Patrick, died at 80 and was the first non martyr to be called a saint by the young Christian church.
Originally published in Salt magazine, ©Claretian Publications.
Image: Wikimedia Commons
