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The Revival of the Cult of Martin of Tours in the Third Republic

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

Brian Brennan
Brian Brennan
Affiliation:
Mr. Brennan is an honorary associate in the school of history, Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia.
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Extract

Statuary groups, countless illustrations, and colorful stained glass all preserve for us the most famous medieval image of the charitable soldier-saint, Martin of Tours (336–397). The young Martin is depicted seated on his horse dividing his soldier's cape to share it with Christ disguised as a freezing beggar at the gate of Amiens. After abandoning the Roman army, Martin became a monk, an ascetic “soldier of Christ,” and was chosen by the people of Tours as their bishop. Renowned in his lifetime as a wonderworker, Martin's tomb remained for centuries an important pilgrimage center. The later Carolingian kings carried a fragment of Martin's cape into battle as a victory-giving talisman, and French monarchs invoked the saint as their patron. Because of its royalist associations, Saint Martin's basilica at Tours was almost completely destroyed in the French Revolution, and subsequently houses and new municipal streets encroached on the sacred space.

Type
Research Article
Information
Church History , Volume 66 , Issue 3 , September 1997 , pp. 489 - 501
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Church History 1997

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