The Life of Saint Martin · Chapter XIV
The fire that drew back against the wind and the two armed angels at Levroux
At about the same time, in a similar case, Martin was at the centre of another striking event. In a village where he had set fire to a very ancient and famous pagan shrine, the wind began to drive the flames straight towards a neighbouring house that stood right up against the temple. As soon as he saw the danger, Martin scrambled at a run up onto the roof of the house and placed himself directly in front of the advancing flames. What happened next left everyone open-mouthed: the fire was seen to bend backwards, against the very direction of the wind, as though the forces of nature were fighting one another! In this way, thanks to Martin’s intervention, the blaze consumed only what was meant to burn and left the house intact.
In another place, called Levroux, Martin also tried to demolish a great temple, very rich and surrounded by enormous pagan devotion, but a furious crowd gathered against him and drove him from the place with insults and blows. Martin then withdrew to a spot nearby and spent three whole days dressed in a rough penitential tunic and covered in ashes, without eating and praying all the while, asking God that, since human hands had not managed to pull that shrine down, the divine power itself should do so.
At the end of those three days, two angels suddenly appeared to him with spear and shield in hand, like soldiers of the heavenly army. They told him that they had been sent by the Lord to put the crowd to flight and protect him while the temple was demolished: he could go back to the village with his mind at rest and finish what he had begun, because no one would lay a finger on him.
Martin returned to Levroux at once and, before the eyes of all that pagan population — who stood looking on, completely unable to react — razed the shrine to its foundations and smashed all the altars and statues to pieces. Realising that only a divine power could have left them paralysed like that and filled with fear, unable to stop the bishop, almost all the inhabitants of the place were converted to Jesus Christ, proclaiming aloud that only the God of Martin deserved to be worshipped and that those idols, which could not even defend themselves, were worth nothing.
The ancient settlement of Leprosum is today the town of Levroux, in central France (the Berry region), where archaeological excavations have confirmed the existence of a great Gallo-Roman religious centre.
It is worth noticing two very revealing traits of Martin’s way of acting:
1. Fight the idol, protect the people: In the first episode, as soon as he sees the wind throwing the flames of the temple onto the thatched or wooden roof of the house next door, Martin risks his own skin by climbing onto the burning roof so that the neighbour should not be left homeless.
2. Penance instead of troops: When he is beaten out of Levroux, Martin does not go and ask the Roman authorities for soldiers to impose the law by force (as several bishops of his time were already doing). He prefers to withdraw for three days of fasting, dressed in a hair shirt (the cilicium, a rough tunic of goat or camel hair worn next to the skin) and with ashes on his head, just as the ancient prophets of the Bible used to do.