Saint Martin of Tours: The Soldier Who Clothed Christ

Adapted from an article published by America Needs Fatima

On a winter’s night in the fourth century, at the gate of the city of Amiens in northern Gaul, a young Roman soldier met a beggar who had nothing to wear. It was, his biographer Sulpicius Severus wrote, “a winter which had shown itself more severe than ordinary, so that the extreme cold was proving fatal to many.”

The soldier had nothing with him except his arms and his simple military dress. He drew his sword, cut his cloak into two equal parts and gave one half to the beggar. Some of the bystanders laughed at the sight of him in what was left, while others, Sulpicius writes, “groaned deeply because they themselves had done nothing similar.”

That night, Sulpicius tells us, the soldier saw in his sleep Christ wearing the half of the cloak he had given away, and heard Him say to the angels standing around Him:

“Martin, who is still but a catechumen, clothed me with this robe.”

The soldier was Martin, who became the Bishop of Tours. His feast falls on the 11th of November, the day the guns fell silent at the end of the First World War, and he is the patron saint of France and of soldiers.

A soldier’s son

Martin was born around 316 at Sabaria in Pannonia, today Szombathely in Hungary. His father was a military tribune, and the family moved to Pavia, in Italy, while Martin was still a boy.

His parents were pagans. Even so, at the age of ten Martin went to the church against their wishes and asked to become a catechumen, one of those preparing for baptism.

At fifteen, under the law of the time, he was made to take the military oath, and the boy who wanted to belong to God became a soldier of Rome. It was as a young soldier stationed in Gaul that he came to the gate of Amiens.

Why did Martin leave the army?

Soon after the night at Amiens, Martin was baptised, and for a time he stayed in the army. Then Julian Caesar gathered an army at Worms, on the Rhine, to meet the barbarians, and began to hand out a bonus to his soldiers before the battle.

When it was Martin’s turn, he would not take it. He told Julian:

“Hitherto I have served you as a soldier: allow me now to become a soldier to God: let the man who is to serve you receive your donative: I am the soldier of Christ: it is not lawful for me to fight.”

Unarmed before the line of battle

Julian accused him of refusing “from fear of the battle, which was to take place on the morrow, and not from any religious feeling.” Martin answered with an offer:

“I will take my stand unarmed before the line of battle tomorrow … protected by the sign of the cross, and not by shield or helmet.”

The battle never came. The next day, Sulpicius records, “the enemy sent ambassadors to treat about peace and surrendered both themselves and all their possessions.” Soon afterwards Martin was released from the army, at Worms.

The first monastery in Gaul

Martin went to Poitiers, to its bishop, Saint Hilary, who was defending the Faith against the Arians, the heretics who denied that Christ is truly God. After years of hardship in Italy at the hands of the Arians, he came back to Hilary and settled as a hermit at Ligugé, near Poitiers. Disciples gathered around him, and Ligugé became the first monastery in Gaul.

Sulpicius tells how a catechumen who had joined Martin’s community fell ill and died there before he could be baptised. Martin stretched himself out on the dead man’s body and prayed, and when the brethren came back in, they “beheld the man alive whom they had formerly left dead.” He was baptised soon after.

How did a hermit become a bishop?

In 371 the people of Tours wanted Martin for their bishop, but he “could not easily be drawn forth from his monastery.” So a citizen named Ruricius came to him pretending that his wife was ill, and brought him to the city.

A great crowd had gathered there to give their votes, and, as Sulpicius writes, “There was but one wish among all”: that Martin was “most worthy of the episcopate.” He was made bishop against his will.

As bishop he went on living as a monk. Across the Loire from the city he founded the monastery of Marmoutier, where he withdrew whenever he could, and from there he went out to preach to the pagans of the countryside.

Who came to visit Martin?

In his Dialogues, Sulpicius Severus records Martin telling his companions one day: “Agnes, Thecla, and Mary were there with me.” Martin then went on, the account continues, “to describe to us the face and general aspect of each.”

Agnes was a virgin martyr of Rome, and Thecla a follower of Saint Paul. The Cult of Saints database at the University of Oxford says the Mary of this account was “almost certainly the mother of Jesus.”

How did Martin die?

Martin was about eighty-one when he went to Candes, one of the parishes he had founded in his diocese, because its clergy had fallen out with one another and he wanted to make peace among them. While he was there, he fell ill.

His disciples begged him not to leave them: “Why, dear father, will you leave us? Or to whom can you commit us in our desolation?” Martin answered with a prayer:

“O Lord, if I am still necessary to thy people, I do not shrink from toil: thy will be done.”

He lay on ashes to the end. “It is not fitting that a Christian should die except among ashes,” he told them, and he died “with his hands and eyes steadfastly directed towards heaven.” It was the year 397.

The cloak that gave us the chapel

The half of the cloak Martin kept became one of the great relics of France, guarded in the oratory of the Frankish kings.

According to the Online Etymology Dictionary, the word “chapel” comes by tradition from the shrine where it was kept, from the Latin cappa, a cape. The priests who guarded it were its cappellani, its custodians, and from them we have the word “chaplain”, the name still given to the priests who go to war with soldiers.

At Fatima, on the 13th of October 1917, Our Lady asked for a chapel of her own: “I wish to tell you that I want a chapel built here in my honour.” You can read about that day in The Sixth Apparition of Fatima: The Last Thing She Asked.

The guns fell silent on his feast

As the Australian War Memorial records, at 11 o’clock on the morning of the 11th of November 1918, Saint Martin’s feast, “the guns on the Western Front fell silent after more than four years of continuous warfare.”

A year later, on the first anniversary of the Armistice, two minutes’ silence was kept for the first time. Today Australians keep one minute’s silence at 11 o’clock every Remembrance Day, to remember “those who died or suffered for Australia’s cause in all wars and armed conflicts.”

Remembrance Day falls in November, the month the Church gives to praying for the holy souls, and on the feast of a saint who was himself a soldier.

What you can do

Here are some ways to keep Saint Martin’s feast this Remembrance Day.

At 11 o’clock, during the minute’s silence, pray for all who have died in war: “Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon them. May they rest in peace. Amen.”

If someone in your family served in war and has died, have a Mass offered for them this month.

Give something to someone in need this week, as Martin did at Amiens, and remember Our Lord’s words: “Amen I say to you, as long as you did it to one of these my least brethren, you did it to me” (Matthew 25:40).

Ask Saint Martin to pray for those who serve in the armed forces today, and for the chaplains who serve with them.

A prayer for the feast of Saint Martin

This is the collect of his feast in the traditional Roman Missal:

O God, Who knowest that we exist by no power of our own: mercifully grant that, by the intercession of blessed Martin, Thy Confessor and Bishop, we be strengthened against all adversities. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, Thy Son, Who lives and reigns with Thee in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, forever and ever. Amen.

Saint Martin of Tours, pray for us.

References

[1] Saint Martin of Tours - America Needs Fatima. For Martin’s family, his release from the army at Worms, Ligugé, Marmoutier, the relic of his cloak and his death at Candes.

[2] Saint Martin and the Beggar, Wilfred Thompson (image) - Wikimedia Commons. For the article’s image.

[3] Life of St. Martin - Sulpicius Severus, New Advent. For his birth and childhood (chapter 2), the night at Amiens and Christ’s words (chapter 3), the scene at Worms (chapter 4), the catechumen raised to life (chapter 7) and his election at Tours (chapter 9), in the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers translation.

[4] Dialogues, Dialogue II, chapter 13 - Christian Classics Ethereal Library. For Martin’s visitors.

[5] Letter III, to Bassula - Sulpicius Severus. For Martin’s last days and death.

[6] St. Martin of Tours - Britannica. For his birth at Sabaria, Ligugé as the first monastery in Gaul, his election in 371, Marmoutier, his death in 397 and his patronage of France.

[7] St. Martin of Tours: Patron of Veterans and Soldiers - TFP. For Martin as the patron of soldiers.

[8] E00257: Sulpicius Severus mentions a vision of Thekla, Agnes and Mary - The Cult of Saints in Late Antiquity, University of Oxford. For Agnes, Thecla and Mary.

[9] chapel - Online Etymology Dictionary and chaplain - Online Etymology Dictionary. For the words that come from Martin’s cloak.

[10] Origins of Remembrance Day - Australian War Memorial. For the 11th of November 1918 and the minute’s silence.

[11] Saint Martin, Bishop and Confessor, Propers - extraordinaryform.org. For the collect of the feast.

Last updated: 9 November 2026 08:20