November 11/12 – Saint Martin, Bishop of Tours (†397): “St. Martin and the Cloak”
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St. Martin's Day, or Martinmas, as it is referred to in the West, is a traditional feast day preceding Advent, and it marked the end of the harvest season and the beginning of winter. St. Martin was known for his generosity to beggars, and as such, it is also called the “feast day of beggars.” As Martinmas usually followed the winter killing of livestock, an ox was often killed in honor of St. Martin with the meat given to the poor.
While the Latin term of Advent (translated as “arrival” or “coming”), was not introduced until later, by around 490, we see the Church in Gaul (modern day, France) describing the preparatory fast that should be held between the Feast of Saint Martin and Christmas, as Quadragesima Sancti Martini (Forty Days' Fast of Saint Martin).
St. Martin of Tours, the patron saint of France, was born in 336 A.D. around what is now known as Hungary. This was about twenty-four years after St. Constantine made Christianity a legal religion within the Roman empire in 313, though these areas were still heavily pagan. Martin learned about Christ when he was around 10-years-old, and much to the dismay and discouragement of his parents, he became a catechumen. He was called into military service in the Roman army, after becoming an office, did one of his most well-known deeds, and we will read an account of it:
The feast of St. Martin, coming between the first and the later chills of the fall of the year, is usually a very sweet and quiet week. The stillness of autumn is around; the trees of our parks and gardens, the woods of the hillside are all rich in colour, and glow in the sunlight of those few days. To the sense of rest which autumn always brings, the sunshine gives a feeling of hope, a feeling that earth's greenness is dying now only to burst out with new gladness in the spring of the next year. So the body of the saint dies only that his soul may live in the eternal spring of heaven, and the good deeds of his life bloom forth in the memory of men, helping those who follow after to be brave and faithful as he.
Martin was the child of pagan parents. His father was of an old Roman family and a soldier in the army of the Emperor. But while yet a child Martin heard much about Jesus, and what he heard touched his pure young heart. At the age of ten he became a catechumen, that is, one preparing for Baptism. His spirit was stirred by all he heard and learned of the lives of the noble Christian saints and Fathers of the Church who had given themselves up to Christ, and his earnest wish now was to become a monk. But his father wished that he should be a soldier like himself. So at the age of seventeen he was enrolled in the army, and sent with the Roman legions to fight in Gaul. Ready to do his duty in whatever state of life he was placed, the young Martin threw his whole heart into his work, and made a good and brave soldier. But he had not yet been baptized.
One bitter cold night he was riding out on the hillside near the town of Amiens. As he rode along, warmly wrapped in his soldier's cloak, he came upon a poor ragged man who was shivering with cold. His heart was filled with pity. He took his sword, cut his cloak in two, and gave half to the poor man, while he wrapped the other half as well as he could about his own shoulders. His companions were struck with wonder, some jeered, some looked with respect at the kind-hearted young man. But St. Martin did not ask what others thought of his act. All he cared for was to do what was right and kind.
He went gaily on his way with his half-cloak, happy to forego a little warmth himself if he could give the more to others. But that night he had a strange dream. It seemed to him that he saw our Lord among His angels, clothed in the half-cloak he had put round the poor man. Then he thought the Saviour spoke, saying,
“Know ye who has thus arrayed Me? My servant Martin, though not yet baptized, has done this."
~by Jetta Wolff, from Stories from the Lives of Saints and Martyrs of the Church
This dream strengthened Martin’s faith, and he was baptized. He eventually left his career in the military because of his unwillingness to serve under Julian the Apostate (as he came to be called), who was an emperor following St. Constantine, known for his persecution of Christians and his attempts at reviving paganism. Martin then went to the city that is now Tours, France, where he fervently began to preach the Christian faith and oppose Arianism, a widespread heresy of that time, and the very one that St. Nicholas famously opposed at the council of Nicea roughly a decade before St. Martin was born. Martin later became a disciple of St. Hilary of Poitiers, a great and well-known theologian of the West, and went to the monastery not far from Poitiers, where there grew a vibrant monastic community around him.
At the same time that Julian the Apostate was desperately trying to make paganism attractive to the masses, it was Christians such as Martin (or “Galileans” as Julian referred to them), who thwarted him at every turn, simply by caring for those around them and drawing many to Christ through their love and their actions. In a frustrated letter to a pagan high-priest, Arsacius, Julian complains that “it is disgraceful that, when no Jew ever has to beg, and the impious Galileans support not only their own poor but ours as well, all men see that our people lack aid from us.”
Julian, the last non-Christian ruler of the Roman Empire, died in battle in 363, while Martin continued to travel and preach throughout western Gaul, drawing many from paganism to Christianity. The years went on, and as much as Martin resisted it (as one story goes, even going so far as hiding in a geese-shed), he was made bishop of Tours in 371 when he was thirty-five, because the citizens were so inspired by the way he lived. He was particularly devoted to sharing Christianity with the pagan people, spreading the Scriptures, and especially, caring for the poor, the sick, and the hungry. This is how he became known as St. Martin “the Merciful.”
As we follow in the footsteps of St. Martin, may we use these days of preparation not only in readying ourselves for the time of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving ahead, but by exerting ourselves in caring for the needs of those around us, so that all may feast and celebrate at the upcoming Nativity of our Lord.
*We will read one more story of St. Martin, about his battle between prayer and a pagan pine...
Optional Resources:
Snow on Martinmas (Heather Sleightholm) – Picture book [~6-10 years old]
Short video by Patristix on St. Martin
More of the life of St. Martin
Resources for Martinmas for children
Sources:
Wolff, Jetta S. Stories from the Lives of Saints and Martyrs of the Church. A.R. Mowbray & Co., 1903.
Julian the Apostate, letters (Translated by W. C. Wright, 1923) works vol. 3, 2-235.
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