Martin
was born in German Sabaria about the year 316. His father, a military
tribune, was transferred to Pavia when Martin was still quite young and
the boy accompanied him to Italy. Upon reaching adolescence, Martin was
enrolled in the Roman army in accordance with the recruiting laws of the
time. Touched by grace at an early age, he was among the first
attracted to Christianity, which had been in favor in the military camps
since the conversion of Emperor Constantine.
Martin's regiment
was soon sent to Amiens in Gaul, and this town became the scene of the
celebrated "legend of the cloak." One bitterly-cold winter day, Martin
met a shivering and half-naked beggar at the gates of the city. Moved
with compassion, Martin divided his coat into two parts and gave one to
the poor man. The part he kept for himself became the famous relic
preserved in the oratory of the Frankish kings and known to all as
“Saint Martin’s cloak.”
Martin, who was still only a catechumen,
soon received Baptism and was finally released from military service at
Worms on the Rhine. Freed from his obligations, he hastened to set out
to Poitiers to enroll himself among the disciples of St. Hilary, the
wise and pious bishop whose reputation as a theologian was already
spreading beyond the frontiers of Gaul. However, he desired to see his
parents again and returned to Lombardy across the Alps. The inhabitants
of this region were infested with Arianism and bitterly hostile towards
Catholicism. Martin did not conceal his faith and was very badly treated
by order of Bishop Auxentius of Milan, the leader of the heretical sect
in Italy. He was very desirous of returning to Gaul, but learning that
the Arians also persecuted their opponents in that country and had even
succeeded in exiling St. Hilary to the Orient, he decided to seek
shelter on the island of Gallinaria, now Isola d’Albenga, in the middle
of the Tyrrhenian Sea.
As soon as Martin learned that an
imperial decree had authorized St. Hilary to return to Gaul, he hastened
to the side of his chosen master at Poitiers in 361. After having
obtained permission from him to embrace the life of a hermit, which he
had adopted in Gallinaria, he settled in a deserted region now called
Ligugé. His example soon drew a great number of monks who settled near
him. Such was the beginning of the celebrated Benedictine Abbey of
Ligugé. Martin remained about ten years in this solitude and often left
it to preach the Gospel in the central and western parts of Gaul where
the rural inhabitants were still plunged in the darkness of idolatry and
given up to all sorts of gross superstitions. The memory of these
apostolic journeys survives to our day in the numerous local legends
where Martin is the hero and which roughly indicate the routes that he
followed.
When St. Lidorius, second Bishop of Tours, died in 371
or 372, the clergy of that city desired to replace him by the famous
hermit of Ligugé. But, as Martin remained deaf to the prayers of the
deputies who brought him this message, it was necessary to resort to a
ruse to overcome his resistance. A rich citizen of Tours by the name of
Rusticius went and begged him to come to attend to his wife who was in
the throes of death. Without suspicion, Martin followed him in all
haste, but hardly had he entered the city when, in spite of the
opposition of a few ecclesiastical dignitaries, popular acclamation
constrained him to become Bishop of Tours.
Consecrated
on July 4, Martin fulfilled the duties to his office with all the
energy and dedication that he had demonstrated in the past. He did not
however change his way of life. He fled from the distractions of the
large city and settled himself in a small cell a short distance from
Tours, beyond the Loire. Other hermits soon joined him there and thus
was gradually formed a new monastery that surpassed the Ligugé and came
to be known as the Majus Monasterium, the “great monastery” or
Marmoutier.
Thus, by an untiring zeal and great simplicity
Martin administered to his pastoral duties and so succeeded in sowing
Christianity throughout the region of Touraine. Nor was it a rare
occurrence for him to leave his diocese when he thought that his
appearance in some distant locality might produce some good. He even
went several times to Trier, where the emperors had established their
residence in order to plead the interests of the Church or to ask pardon
for some condemned person.
His role in the matter of the
Priscillianists and Ithacians was especially remarkable. Martin hurried
to Trier, not to defend the Gnostic and Manichaean doctrines of
Priscillian, but to remove him from the secular jurisdiction of the
emperor. The Council of Saragossa had justly condemned the Spanish
heresiarch Priscillian and his partisans and angry charges were brought
before Emperor Maximus by some orthodox bishops of Spain, led by Bishop
Ithacius.
Maximus at first consented to Martins’s request but
when he departed, Maximus yielded to the solicitations of Ithacius and
ordered Priscillian and his followers to be beheaded. Deeply grieved,
Martin refused to communicate with Ithacius. However, when he went again
to Trier a little later to ask pardon for two rebels, Narses and
Leucadius, Maximus would only pardon them on the condition that Martin
make his peace with Ithaeius. To save the lives of his clients, Martin
consented to this reconciliation, but afterwards reproached himself
bitterly for this act of weakness.
After a last visit to Rome,
Martin went to Candes, one of the religious centers created by him in
his diocese and there he was stricken with a malady, which ended his
life. Ordering himself to be carried into the presbytery of the church,
he died there at the age of about eighty-one, with the same exemplary
spirit of humility and mortification that he had always practiced in
life.
Wednesday, November 11, 2020
St. Martin of Tours
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