The First Letter, to Eusebius: Against Martin’s Envious Critics

Yesterday a number of monks came to see me, and amid endless tales and much tiresome talk, mention happened to be made of the little book I published about the life of that holy man Martin. I was very glad to hear that crowds of people were reading it eagerly and carefully. Meanwhile, however, I was told that a certain person, under the influence of an evil spirit, had asked why Martin, who was said to have raised the dead and rescued houses from fire, had himself recently fallen into the power of fire and so been exposed to dangerous suffering. Wretched man, whoever it was that spoke like this! We recognize his treacherous talk in the words of the Jews of old, who mocked the Lord as he hung on the cross in these terms: “He saved others; he cannot save himself.” Clearly, whoever this person is, if he had lived in those times he would have been quite ready to speak against the Lord in the same words, since he blasphemes a saint of the Lord in the same way. So how does the case stand, I ask you, whoever you are? Was Martin really without power, and without a share in holiness, because he was exposed to danger from fire? [a]

O blessed man, like the apostles in all things, even in the insults heaped on you this way! Surely those Gentiles are said to have had the same sort of thought about Paul too, when the viper had bitten him. For they said, “This man must be a murderer; though he has been saved from the sea, the fates do not allow him to live.” But he shook the viper off into the fire and suffered no harm. They thought he would suddenly fall down and quickly die, but when they saw that nothing bad happened to him, they changed their minds and said that he was a god. But you, most miserable of men, should have been convinced of your error by that very example. If it was a stumbling block to you that Martin seemed to be touched by the flames, you should instead have credited his merits and his power for the fact that he was only touched, since, though surrounded by flames, he did not perish. Recognize, you miserable man, recognize what you seem not to know: that almost all the saints have been more remarkable for the dangers they faced than even for the powers they displayed. I see Peter, indeed, strong in faith, walking on the waves of the sea against the nature of things and pressing the unstable waters with his footsteps. Yet that does not make the preacher to the Gentiles seem a lesser man to me. The waves swallowed him up, and after three days and three nights the water gave him back as he came up out of the deep. In fact, I am almost inclined to think it was a greater thing to have lived in the deep than to have walked over the deep sea.

But, foolish man, you had not read these things, I suppose, or if you had read them, you had not understood them. For the blessed evangelist, under divine guidance, would not have recorded an incident of that kind in holy Scripture except so that from such cases the human mind might be taught about the dangers of shipwrecks and serpents. And, as the apostle who gloried in his nakedness and hunger and dangers from robbers tells us, all these things are to be endured in common by holy men. But it has always been the chief excellence of the righteous to endure and overcome such things: amid all their trials, patient and ever unconquered, they overcame them the more bravely the heavier the burden they had to bear. So this event, which is put down to Martin’s weakness, is in reality full of dignity and glory, since, tested by a most dangerous disaster, he came out a conqueror. But let no one be surprised that I left this incident out of the book I wrote about his life, since in that very work I openly admitted that I had not included all his deeds; and for good reason, since if I had set out to tell them all, I would have had to present my readers with an enormous volume. His achievements were not so few that they could all be contained in one book. Still, I will not leave this incident, about which a question has been raised, in obscurity. I will tell the whole affair just as it happened, so that I may not seem to have deliberately passed over something that could be put forward to slander the holy man.

About the middle of winter Martin came to a certain parish, as it was the usual custom for bishops to visit the churches of their diocese. The clergy had prepared a lodging for him in the private part of the church and had lit a large fire under the floor, which was decayed and very thin. They also set up a bed for him made of a great heap of straw. But when Martin went to rest, he was bothered by the softness of the too luxurious bed, since he was used to lying on the bare ground with only a piece of sackcloth spread over him. So, moved as if by an injury done to him, he threw aside all the straw. Now it happened that part of the straw he had thrown aside fell on the stove. Meanwhile he rested, as was his habit, on the bare ground, tired out by his long journey. About midnight the fire broke up through the stove, which, as I have said, was far from sound, and caught the dry straw. Martin was woken from sleep by this unexpected event. Hindered by the pressing danger, but chiefly, as he later told it, by the snares and pressure of the devil, he was slower than he should have been to turn to the help of prayer. For in his eagerness to get outside he struggled long and hard with the bolt with which he had fastened the door. Before long he saw that he was surrounded by a terrible blaze, and the fire had even caught the garment he was wearing. At last he recovered his usual conviction that his safety lay not in flight but in the Lord. Taking up the shield of faith and prayer and committing himself entirely to the Lord, he lay down in the middle of the flames. Then, as the fire was driven back by God’s intervention, he went on praying in a circle of flames that did him no harm. But the monks outside the door, hearing the crackling and roaring of the fire, broke open the barred door, put out the fire, and brought Martin out from the middle of the flames, thinking all the while that by then he must have been burned to ashes by a fire that had lasted so long. [g]

As the Lord is my witness, he himself told me, and confessed not without groans, that in this matter he had been deceived by the devil’s tricks, in that, when he was roused from sleep, he did not take the wise course of driving off the danger by faith and prayer. He added that the flames raged around him the whole time that, with a troubled mind, he was struggling to open the door. But he declared that as soon as he again sought help from the cross and took up the weapons of prayer, the flames in the middle gave way, and he then felt them shedding a dewy coolness over him, after he had just experienced how cruelly they burned. Let everyone who reads this letter weigh all this and understand that Martin was indeed tested by that danger, but came through it truly approved.