Martin Stops the Hail

“There was a certain village in the country of the Senones that was struck by hail every year. The people living there, driven by extreme suffering, sought help from Martin. A very respectable delegation was sent to him by Auspicius, a man of the rank of prefect, whose fields the storm used to strike harder than those of others. Martin prayed there, and so completely freed the whole district from the plague that had prevailed, that for the twenty years he lived on afterward in the body, no one in those places suffered from hail. And so that this may not be thought an accident rather than Martin’s doing, the storm came back and fell on the district once again in the year he died. So deeply did the world feel the departure of a man of faith that, just as it had rightly rejoiced in his life, it also mourned his death. [a]

“But if any listener weak in faith also demands witnesses to prove what we have said, I will bring forward not one man but many thousands, and I will even call the whole region of the Senones to bear witness to the power they experienced. But to say nothing of that, you remember, I believe, presbyter Refrigerius, that we recently talked about this matter with Romulus, the son of the Auspicius I mentioned, an honored and devout man. He told us the facts as if we had not known them before. And because he feared constant losses in future harvests, he lamented greatly, as you yourself saw, that Martin had not been kept alive until now.