St. Martin of Tours was a bishop of Tours whose shrine became a famous stopping-point for pilgrims on the road to Santiago de Compostela. Around his name much legendary material accrued and he has become one of the most familiar and recognizable Roman Catholic saints. Some of the accounts of his travels may have been interpolated in his vita to give credence to early sites of his cult. His life was recorded by contemporary, the hagiographer Sulpicius Severus. He is a patron saint of France and of soldiers.
Martin was named after Mars, god of war, which Sulpicius Severus interpreted as “brave, the courageous”. He was born at Savaria, Pannonia (modern Szombathely, Hungary). His father was a senior officer (tribune) in the Imperial Horse Guard, a unit of the Roman army, and was later stationed at Ticinum, Cisalpine Gaul (modern Pavia, Italy), where Martin grew up.
At age ten, he went to the church against the wishes of his parents and became a catechumen or candidate of baptism. At this time, Christianity had been made a legal religion (in 316), but it was by no means the dominant religion of the Roman Empire. It had many more adherents in the Eastern Empire, whence it had sprung, and was concentrated in cities, brought along the trade routes by converted Jews and Greeks (the term ‘pagan’ literally means ‘country-dweller’). Christianity was still far from accepted amongst the higher echelons of society, and in the army the cult of Mithras would have been stronger.
While Martin was still a soldier at Amiens, he experienced the vision that became the most-repeated story about his life. He was at the gates of the city of Amiens with his soldiers when he met a scantily dressed beggar. He impulsively cut his military cloak in half and shared it with the beggar. That night he dreamed of Jesus wearing the half-cloak Martin had given away. He heard Jesus say to the angels: “Here is Martin, the Roman soldier who is not baptized: he has clad me.”
The dream confirmed Martin his piety and he was baptized at the age of 18. He served in the military for another two years until, just before a battle with the Gauls at Worms in 336. Martin determined that his faith prohibited him from fighting, saying, “I am a soldier of Christ. I cannot fight.” He was charged with cowardice and jailed, but in response to the charge, he volunteered to go unarmed to the front of the troops. His superiors planned to take him up on the offer, but before they could, the invaders sued for peace, the battle never occurred, and Martin was released from military service.
Martin declared his vocation and made his way to the city of Tours, where he became a disciple of Hilary of Poitiers, a chief proponent of Trinitarian Christianity, opposing the Arianism of Visigothic nobility. When Hilary was forced to exile from poitiers, Martin returned to Italy, converting an Alpine brigand on the way, according to his biographer Sulpicius Severus, and confronting the Devil himself. Returning from Illyria, he was confronted by the Arian archbishop of Milan Auxentius, who expelled him from the city. According to early sources, he decided to seek shelter on the island then call Gallinaria, now Isola d’Albenga, in the Tyrrhenian Sea, where he lived the solitary life of a hermit.