How Far the Book About Martin Had Traveled

I replied: “What? Is there not enough about my friend Martin in that book of mine about his life and virtues, which you know I published?” [a]

Postumianus said: “I admit it. That book of yours is never far from my right hand. Look, if you recognize it”—and as he said this he showed us the book, which he had kept hidden in his clothes—“here it is. This book,” he added, “is my companion on land and sea. It has been my friend and comforter in all my wanderings. But I will tell you what places that book has reached, and how there is hardly a spot on earth where the story of so happy a life is not already known to everyone. [b]

“Paulinus, a man who has the warmest regard for you, was the first to bring it to the city of Rome. Then, as the whole city seized on it eagerly, I saw the booksellers rejoicing over it, since nothing brought them greater profit: nothing sold faster or fetched a higher price. This same book had got far ahead of me on my travels, and when I came to Africa it was already being read all over Carthage. Only that presbyter of Cyrene I mentioned did not have it; but he wrote down its contents as I described them to him. And why should I speak of Alexandria? There almost everyone knows it better than you do yourself. It has passed through Egypt, Nitria, the Thebaid, and all the regions of Memphis. I found a certain old man in the desert reading it.

“When I told him that I was your close friend, he and many other brothers gave me this commission: that if I ever came back to this country and found you well, I should press you to supply the details about the virtues of that holy man which you said in your book you had passed over. Come then. I do not want you to repeat to me what is already well enough known from what you have written. But at my request, and at the request of many others, set out in full those other things which you passed over when you were writing, to spare your readers, I believe, from any weariness.”