What would you do with half?

The recruit

Sabaria → Ticinum (today Szombathely, Hungary → Pavia, Italy)

• He was born on the edge of the Empire, to a father who had fought his way up to tribune and believed in the old gods.
• At ten the boy ran off to a church. At twelve he wanted the desert.
• At fifteen an imperial decree came for the sons of veterans. His own father turned him in.
• They chained him, swore him in, and gave him a servant.
• He cleaned the servant’s boots. He served him at table.

Margin noteBorn c. 316 by the old reckoning, c. 336 by recent scholarship. I never asked him. He would have changed the subject.

The cloak

Amiens

• A naked man at the city gate, begging. Everyone walks past.
• Martin has already given the rest away. All that is left is the army cloak on his back.
• So he draws his sword and cuts it in two.
• Some people laugh at the soldier in half a cloak. Others, who own far more, go quiet.
• That night he dreams. Christ is wearing the half he gave away.

“Martin, still only a catechumen, clothed me with this.”

Margin noteHe was baptised at eighteen. The dream did not make him proud. I checked.

The refusal

Worms, 356

• The night before a battle, Caesar Julian pays out a bonus, man by man.
• Martin’s name is called. He will not take the gold.
• Julian calls him a coward.
• Then send me out first tomorrow, he says. No shield, no helmet. I will walk ahead of the line.
• They lock him up to hold him to it. At dawn the enemy sends envoys and asks for peace.

“I am a soldier of Christ. I cannot fight.”

Margin noteNobody died that morning. I think that was the point.

The apprentice

Poitiers, then the Alps

• Out of the army, he goes to Hilary, bishop of Poitiers, the sharpest mind in Gaul.
• Hilary offers to make him a deacon. Martin says he is not worthy. Again and again.
• So Hilary offers the lowest job in the church instead. That one he takes.
• Crossing the Alps to see his parents, he is ambushed. An axe goes up. Another robber stops it.
• Tied up, asked if he is afraid, he answers that he has never felt safer. He is sorry, he says, for the man holding the rope.

Margin noteThe robber walked him back to the road and later became a monk. This story is said to come from him.

The hut

Ligugé, then Marmoutier beside Tours

• Even as bishop he would not live like one.
• Two miles from Tours, between a cliff and a bend of the Loire, he built a hut of wood.
• About eighty others followed. Most dug their rooms into the soft rock.
• Nobody owned anything. Nobody bought or sold.
• One kind of manual work was allowed: copying books.

Margin noteMany of them came from good families and soft beds. I mention it because I did too.

The kidnapping

Tours, 371

• Tours wanted him as bishop. He was never going to say yes.
• So a man named Ruricius knelt and begged him to come to his dying wife. There was no dying wife.
• The road was lined with townspeople. They walked him in like a prisoner.
• Some of the visiting bishops sneered: dirty clothes, hair a mess, not bishop material.
• Then someone opened the Psalms at random and read a verse aloud. It named his loudest opponent, Bishop Defensor. The crowd roared.

Margin noteThe verse ended: “…to defeat the enemy and the defender.” In the Latin we used, the word is defensorem.

The fact-checker

Near Tours, and a village with a pine

• People prayed at a roadside grave they said held a martyr. Earlier bishops had put an altar there.
• Martin asked the oldest priests for a name and a date. Nobody had either.
• He stayed away until he knew. Then he had the altar taken down.
• Elsewhere, villagers dared him to stand where their sacred pine would fall.
• He stood there. I report that the tree went the other way.

Margin noteI was not at the pine. I spoke with people who were. Judge as you like.

The banquet and the Devil in purple

Trier, and a cell at Marmoutier

• At the emperor’s table in Trier, Maximus sends his cup to Martin first, as an honour.
• Martin drinks, then hands it to his own priest. Not back to the emperor.
• Another night, alone in his cell, a figure appears: purple robe, gold crown, gold shoes, light everywhere.
• “I am Christ,” it says. Martin says nothing. It says it again.

“I will not believe Christ has come unless I see him bearing the marks of the Cross.”

The light went out. No scars, no Christ.

Margin noteHe told me this one himself.

The last journey

Candes → Tours, November 397

• Old and worn out, he went to Candes because the priests there were quarrelling.
• He made peace between them. Then the fever came.
• He would not have a mattress. He lay on ashes.
• He died on 8 November. They took him up the Loire by boat, and the banks were full of people singing.
• He was buried in Tours on 11 November. That is still his day.

“Lord, if your people still need me, I do not refuse the work.”

Margin noteMy book ends before this. He was alive when I finished it. I told the rest in letters.