The Queen Who Served Martin

“And since we have once and for all entered the palace, I will string together the events that took place there, though they happened at different times. Indeed, it does not seem right to me to leave unmentioned the example of admiration for Martin shown by a faithful queen. Maximus was then ruling the state, a man worthy of praise in his whole life, if only he had been allowed to refuse a crown thrust on him by the soldiers in an unlawful uprising, or had been able to keep out of civil war. But the fact is that a great empire can neither be refused without danger nor kept without war. [a]

“He often sent for Martin, received him in the palace, and treated him with honor. All his conversation with him was about things present and things to come, the glory of the faithful and the immortality of the saints. Meanwhile the queen hung on Martin’s lips, and, not inferior to the woman mentioned in the Gospel, she washed the holy man’s feet with her tears and wiped them with the hair of her head. Martin, though no woman had ever touched him before, could not escape her constant attentions, or rather her servile waiting on him. She gave no thought to the wealth of the kingdom, the dignity of the empire, the crown, or the purple. Only, lying stretched on the ground, she could not be torn away from Martin’s feet.

“At last she begged her husband, saying that they should both press Martin to agree, that all other attendants be removed from the holy man and that she alone should wait on him at meals. Nor could the blessed man refuse too stubbornly. His modest meal is prepared by the queen’s own hands. She herself arranges his seat for him, sets his table, brings him water for his hands, and serves the food she had cooked herself. While he was eating, she stood motionless at a distance, her eyes fixed on the ground, in the manner of servants, showing in every way the modesty and humility of a serving woman. She herself mixed his drink and handed it to him. When the meal was over, she gathered up the fragments and crumbs of the bread he had eaten, prizing these leftovers, with true faith, above imperial banquets.

“Blessed woman! By the display of so great a devotion she is worthy to be compared with the queen who came from the ends of the earth to hear Solomon, if we look only at the plain letter of the history. But let the faith of the two queens be compared (and let me be allowed to say this, setting aside the majesty of the hidden meaning): the one gained her desire to hear a wise man; the other was counted worthy not only to hear a wise man but to wait on him.”