Martin of Tours
🗓️ Nov 11th
Martin was born to a veteran at a time that made his own military service compulsory. He entered at 15 and within a year or two had the experience he is most known for; splitting his praetorian cape in half to clothe a freezing beggar. It would be several years before he found himself on the battlefield for the first time, telling the emperor “I am a soldier of Christ, I must not fight.”
After a dishonorable discharge, he became an itinerant deacon in the French countryside with friends in high places. He catechized another emperor’s wife and was recruited against his will to the cathedral in Tours, where he was the first bishop to keep monastic habits.
Mandatory Fun:
Start with his Wikipedia page.
God is a Grunt, chapter 9
Day 10, “10 Saints, 10 Days” series (2014)
For God & Country [in that order], page 87
Hospitallers of Saint Martin have a lot of great resources.
Butler’s Lives of the Saints, Vol. XI
Vita Sancti Martini by Sulpicius Severus (translated by Robert Alexander)
