The Demons Tremble Before Martin

“Believe me, I am angry at heart, and in my vexation I feel as if I am losing my mind. Do Christian men not believe in the miraculous powers of Martin, which the demons themselves acknowledged?

“The blessed man’s monastery was two miles from the city. Yet whenever he was about to come to the church, if he had only set foot outside the threshold of his cell, you could hear the possessed roaring all through the church, and see the bands of the guilty trembling as if their judge were coming. So the groaning of the demons told the clergy that the bishop was coming before they knew of it. I saw a certain man snatched up into the air as Martin approached, and held there with his hands stretched upward, so that his feet could in no way touch the ground. But whenever Martin took up the task of driving out demons, he touched no one with his hands and rebuked no one with words, as the clergy generally pour out a flood of words. Instead, when the possessed were brought to him, he ordered everyone else to leave. With the doors bolted, dressed in sackcloth and sprinkled with ashes, he lay stretched on the ground in the middle of the church and gave himself to prayer. Then indeed you could see the wretched beings tormented in various ways. Some hung as if from a cloud with their feet turned upward, and yet their clothes did not fall down over their faces, so that the uncovered part of the body would not cause shame. In another part of the church you could see them tormented without any question being put to them, and confessing their crimes. They gave their names, too, of their own accord: one admitted that he was Jupiter, and another that he was Mercury. In short, you could see all the servants of the devil suffering agony along with their master, so that we could not help admitting that in Martin was fulfilled what is written, that ‘the saints will judge angels.’ [a]