The life of St Martin of Tours
Sulpicius Severus, a younger contemporary who wrote his life soon after meeting him, tells that during his military years, stationed at Amiens in Gaul, Martin cut his soldier's cloak in two on a bitterly cold day and gave half to a freezing beggar, a story that became the most cherished image of his charity, whatever its precise origin. Not long after, he was baptized, and once free of military service he sought out the bishop Hilary of Poitiers as his teacher, eventually founding one of the earliest monastic communities in the West at a hermitage near Poitiers.
Made bishop of Tours around 371, reluctantly and by the people's insistence rather than his own wish, he continued to live simply and founded a further monastery at Marmoutier, from which he worked to bring the Christian faith to the countryside, closing pagan shrines and preaching in rural districts still given to the old religion. In his later years he pleaded, without full success, against the execution of a condemned heretic named Priscillian. He died at Candes in the year 397.
