Martin and the Emperor Maximus

And now, to insert some smaller matters among such great ones (although our times are such that everything has fallen into decay and corruption, so that it is almost an outstanding virtue for a priest’s firmness not to have given way to royal flattery): a number of bishops from various regions had gathered at the court of the emperor Maximus. He was a man of fierce character, and at that time he was elated by the victory he had won in the civil wars. The shameful flattery of everyone around the emperor was widely noticed, and the dignity of the priesthood, with degenerate submissiveness, had taken second place to the royal retinue. In Martin alone apostolic authority still held its ground. Even when he had to ask the sovereign for something, he commanded rather than pleaded. And though he was often invited, he stayed away from the emperor’s banquets, saying that he could not take a place at the table of a man who, of two emperors, had robbed one of his kingdom and the other of his life. At last Maximus insisted that he had not taken the throne of his own accord. He had simply defended by arms what the needs of the realm required, a charge the soldiers had laid on him by God’s appointment; the favor of God, he said, did not seem to be lacking to one who had won the victory by an outcome so beyond belief. He added that none of his opponents had been killed except in open battle. In the end Martin, won over either by his reasoning or by his pleading, came to the royal banquet, and the king was wonderfully pleased to have gained this point. [a]

The guests had been invited as if to a festival: men of the highest and most distinguished rank. There was the prefect, who was also consul, named Evodius, one of the most righteous men who ever lived, and two courtiers of the greatest power, the king’s brother and his uncle. Between these two Martin’s presbyter had taken his place, while Martin himself had a seat set close beside the king. About the middle of the banquet a servant, as was the custom, offered a goblet to the king. He ordered it to be given instead to the most holy bishop, expecting and hoping to receive the cup from Martin’s right hand. But when Martin had drunk, he handed the goblet to his own presbyter, thinking no one more worthy to drink next after himself, and holding that it would not be right for him to put either the king himself or those next to the king ahead of the presbyter. The emperor and everyone else present admired this so much that the very act by which they had been slighted gave them pleasure. Word then ran through the whole palace that at the king’s dinner Martin had done what no bishop had dared to do at the banquets of the lowest magistrates.

Long before, Martin had also foretold to this same Maximus that if he went into Italy, as he then wanted to do, to make war on the emperor Valentinian, he would win in the first attack but would perish a short time afterward. And we have seen that this did in fact happen. For at Maximus’s first arrival Valentinian had to flee; but about a year later, when Valentinian had regained his strength, Maximus was captured and killed by him within the walls of Aquileia.