The Life of Saint Martin · Chapter II

From Pannonia to Italy: The boy who ran away to church and was taken to the army in chains

Martin was born at Sabaria, a town in the province of Pannonia, but grew up in Italy, at Ticinum. His family had a good social standing by the standards of the time, but his parents were pagans. His father had begun his military life as a simple soldier and had later risen to the rank of military tribune.

In his youth Martin himself followed the career of arms, serving in the cavalry of the imperial guard during the reign of the emperor Constantius and then under the command of the Caesar Julian. It was not, however, by his own choice: from a very early age that extraordinary boy thought of nothing but serving God. He was only ten years old when, against his parents’ wishes, he ran away to a church and asked to be accepted as a catechumen. A short time later, already wholly turned towards the things of God in a way that was striking for his age, at twelve he dreamed of going to live as a hermit in the desert — and he would have done so had he not still been so young and frail. Even so, with his mind always on monasteries or the church, he already carried in his heart as a child what he would later carry out with such dedication.

Meanwhile, the emperors issued a decree obliging the sons of veterans to enlist in the army. Martin’s own father — who could not bear to see his son’s religious leanings — denounced him and handed him over to the authorities. That is how, at just fifteen, Martin found himself arrested, put in chains and forced to take the military oath. He took with him only one slave to attend him, but he completely reversed the usual roles: it was the master who served the servant. More often than not it was Martin himself who took off the man’s boots and cleaned them, and the two of them sat down to eat together at the same table, almost always with Martin serving the meal.

At Ticinum (Pavia), the young soldier Martin, just fifteen years old, turns the Roman hierarchy upside down and kneels in the tent to take off and clean his own servant’s military boots.

He spent almost three years in the army before being baptised, but he always kept well away from the vices into which soldiers usually fall. He treated his comrades-in-arms with immense kindness and uncommon generosity, and he had a patience and a humility that seemed beyond human strength. As for the simplicity with which he lived, there is no need even to praise it: he led so austere a life that, even then, he seemed more like a monk than a soldier. With this way of being he so won over his fellow soldiers that they all felt enormous respect and affection for him.

Even without yet having received baptism, he was already living in practice as a true Christian by the works he did: he helped those in difficulty, came to the aid of the most wretched, gave food to the hungry and clothes to those who had nothing to wear. Of his army pay he kept nothing for himself beyond what was needed to eat each day; even then he took the words of the Gospel seriously and did not worry about tomorrow.