Words Cannot Describe Martin’s Excellence

But now my book must come to an end and my account be finished. This is not because everything worth saying about Martin has been exhausted, but because, like lazy poets who grow careless toward the end of their work, I give up, overwhelmed by the vastness of the subject. For although his outward deeds could in some way be set out in words, no language, I honestly admit, could ever describe his inner life, his daily conduct, and his mind always fixed on the things of heaven. No one could fully describe his perseverance and self-mastery in abstaining and fasting, or his strength in keeping vigil and praying, through nights as well as days, without a moment taken from the service of God either for taking his ease or for business. In fact, he did not indulge in food or sleep except as far as the needs of nature required. I freely admit that if, as the saying goes, Homer himself were to come up from the world of the dead, he could not do justice to this subject in words, so far did every excellence in Martin go beyond what language can express. Never did a single hour or moment pass in which he was not actually praying; or if he happened to be busy with something else, he still never let his mind slip loose from prayer. Just as blacksmiths are accustomed, in the middle of their work, to strike their own anvil as a kind of relief from the labor, so Martin, even when he seemed to be doing something else, was still praying. [a]

O truly blessed man, in whom there was no deceit, judging no one, condemning no one, repaying no one evil for evil! He showed such wonderful patience in bearing wrongs that even when he was chief priest he let himself be wronged with impunity by the lowest of the clergy. He did not remove them from their office for such conduct, nor, as far as it lay with him, shut them out from a place in his affection.