Martin of Tours

Martin of Tours cut his military cloak in half for a beggar at the gate of Amiens, and the half he kept became the most venerated relic in Frankish Christianity. He was born in Pannonia, in what is now Hungary, the son of a tribune, and was conscripted into the Roman cavalry as the law required of officers' sons. The episode of the cloak belongs to that period; the story is that Christ appeared to him that night wearing it. He asked to leave the army before a battle near Worms, saying he was a soldier of Christ and could not fight, was accused of cowardice, and offered to stand unarmed in the front line. He became a disciple of Hilary of Poitiers, founded at Ligugé what is usually called the first monastery in Gaul, and was made bishop of Tours in 371 by a population that had to trick him into the city, since he did not want the office. As bishop he lived in a cell outside the walls that grew into the monastery of Marmoutier, travelled his diocese destroying rural shrines, and intervened at Trier to oppose the execution of the heretic Priscillian - one of the earliest arguments on record that the church should not use the state to kill. His shrine at Tours became the wealthiest in Gaul and the destination of the raid Charles Martel stopped in 732. The Merovingians carried his cloak, the cappella, into battle; the priest who kept it was the capellanus, and both chapel and chaplain descend from that word. His feast day, 11 November, marked the start of a forty-day fast before Christmas and was the hinge of the rural year across Europe. Sulpicius Severus wrote his life within his lifetime, and it became the model for medieval hagiography. Over four thousand French parishes are dedicated to him.

• Lived: 316 CE – 397 CE
• Nationality: Roman
• Roles: other