Martin’s Heavenly Visitors

“But in what I am about to tell now, Sulpitius, I have you as a fellow witness.” Here he looked at me. “One day Sulpitius there and I were keeping watch outside Martin’s door, and we had already sat in silence for several hours. We did it with deep reverence and awe, as if we were keeping a watch assigned to us before the tent of an angel. All the while, since the door of his cell was closed, he did not know we were there. Meanwhile we heard the sound of people talking, and soon we were filled with a kind of awe and amazement, for we could not help sensing that something divine was going on. After nearly two hours Martin came out to us. Then our friend Sulpitius (for no one used to speak to him more freely) began to beg him to tell us, since we were asking out of devotion, what that sort of divine awe meant, which we both admitted we had felt, and with whom he had been talking in his cell. We added that, as we stood outside the door, we had certainly heard a faint sound of people talking, but had hardly understood it. Then, after a long delay (but there was really nothing Sulpitius could not draw out of him, even against his will; I am about to tell things that are rather hard to believe, but, as Christ is my witness, I am not lying, unless anyone is so impious as to think that Martin himself lied), he said: ‘I will tell you, but I beg you not to speak of it to anyone else. Agnes, Thecla, and Mary were there with me.’ [a]

“He went on to describe to us the face and general appearance of each of them. And he admitted that they visited him not only on that day but often. Nor did he deny that the apostles Peter and Paul were also seen by him quite often. Moreover, he used to rebuke the demons by their own names as each one came to him. He found Mercury especially troublesome, while he said that Jupiter was stupid and dull-witted. I know that these things seemed unbelievable even to many who lived in the same monastery, and much less can I expect all who merely hear of them to believe them. For if Martin had not lived such a priceless life and shown such virtue, he would by no means be held among us to have been endowed with such great glory. And yet it is not at all surprising that human weakness has doubted Martin’s works, when we see that many people today do not even believe the Gospels.

“But we ourselves have known by personal experience that angels often appeared to Martin and spoke with him as friends. In this connection I will tell a matter of small importance indeed, but I will tell it all the same. A synod of bishops was held at Nîmes. He had refused to attend it, but he still wanted to know what was done there. It so happened that our friend Sulpitius was on board a ship with him at the time, but Martin, as was his custom, kept to himself in a quiet part of the vessel, away from the rest. There an angel told him what had taken place at the synod. Afterward we carefully looked into the date on which the council was held, and we found beyond all doubt that it was that very day, and that the bishops had decreed there the very things the angel had told Martin.