‘St Martin of Tours: the holiness of the gift’, by José Miguel Sardica

Martin of Tours was born in Pannonia, a peripheral province of the Roman Empire (now Hungary) in 316 AD. His father was a tribune and commander of the Roman legions and he was initiated into military life at the very young age of 15.

But the Christian call was already motivating the child - and even before he was baptised, Martin strengthened his faith through a miracle. In Amiens, on a cloudy, windy and rainy morning in the autumn of 337, he came across a beggar who was shivering with cold. Having no alms to give him, he took off his cloak, cut it in half with his sword and gave half to the poor man. According to legend, this kind gesture was rewarded: the dark clouds disappeared from the sky, the sun came out and the weather remained mild for three days. The following night, Jesus Christ appeared to him in a vision, carrying this half of the cloak on his shoulders and announcing to the angels around him: ‘It was Martin who clothed me in this cloak’.

Baptised in Amiens in 339, Martin left military life to become a ‘soldier of Christ’. Saint Hilary, the bishop of Poitiers, ordained him deacon and priest, before sending him back to the land of his fathers in 355 to evangelise the pagans. He returned to Gaul in around 361 to found the monastery of Ligugé, which soon became one of the centres that energised monasticism in Western Europe. He was elevated to bishop of Tours in 371, during which time he built another monastery, Marmoutier, on the banks of the River Loire, where he trained countless missionaries to help him in his evangelisation work. He multiplied his apostolic journeys, founded rural parishes, churches, monasteries and schools, in a vast body of work that earned him the name ‘Apostle of Gaul’ or ‘Father of Gaul’ - and popular devotion made him the ‘patron saint of beggars’. He died at the age of 81, on 8 November 397, and was buried three days later, on 11 November, the date of his liturgical feast day. His biography, written by Sulpicius Severus, made him known throughout the Roman Empire, soon turning the city of Tours into a pilgrimage centre where people from all over the world came to venerate his memory.

Martin of Tours became the first non-martyr saint recognised by the Church and one of the most popular in the centuries of medieval Europe. The day of his funeral has come to be celebrated as St Martin's Day, not only in France but all over the world, with rites that vary from country to country. In Portugal, it is traditional to celebrate the date with a ‘magusto’, where chestnuts are roasted and agua-pé or jeropiga is drunk, or with the opening of new wine in village wineries after harvest time. According to Portuguese anthropologists, the ‘magusto’ was born as a ritual to commemorate All Saints' Day, when a meal of chestnuts and liquor was placed on the table so that the dead of each family could be fed. Perhaps this practice even predated the life and example of Saint Martin; in any case, it has been perpetuated to this day, Christianised by the cult of Saint Martin on 11 November and the three days that, around the date of his death, revive the miracle of a short summer in the autumn calendar.

In 2007, in his Angelus address on St Martin's Day, Pope Benedict XVI explained the importance of remembering the venerable saint from Gaul in the present day: his ‘charitable gesture’, sharing what he had ‘out of love for his neighbour’, was the same as Christ ‘multiplying the loaves for the hungry crowds’. And ‘clothing the naked’ continues to be one of the fourteen works of Mercy that should punctuate the life of every Christian.