St. Martin of Tours (November 11th)
Nov. 10th -- Saint Leo the Great, Pope and Doctor of the Church
Nov. 11th -- Saint Martin of Tours, Bishop
Nov. 12th -- Saint Josaphat, Bishop and Martyr
Nov. 13th -- Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini, Virgin / Religious
Nov. 15th -- Saint Albert the Great, Bishop and Doctor of the Church
Nov. 16th -- Saint Margaret of Scotland; Saint Gertrude, Virgin
I am choosing to write about St. Martin of Tours.
As a soldier, a cavalryman, during the late Roman Empire (he was born either in 316 or 336 in Pannonia, present day Hungary), the future St. Martin of Tours had a conversion experience when he served in Gaul (present day France):
Approaching the gates of the city of Amiens, he saw a beggar in need of clothes. Instinctively he cut his cloak in half and gave it to the beggar. A few nights later, in a dream he had a vision of Jesus who declared “Martin who is but a catechumen, clothed me with his robe.” When he woke up, he found the robe restored – the robe became a prized relic during the subsequent centuries and apparently remains kept in the oratory of the Marmoutier Abbey outside of Tours – and yes, though by his biographer/hagiographer Supulcius the future St. Martin had flirted with becoming a Christian since his youth, he soon became baptized and subsequently left the military.
He made that decision outside of the city of Tours (then known as Caesarodunum) where he then received spiritual direction from the future St. Hillary of Poitiers the first bishop of Tours. Years later, the future St. Martin became the third bishop of Tours.
St. Martin however became a fascinating figure from 4th century Christianity who lived basically the “borderland” region between the then declining Latinesque Roman Empire to the South and West and the more barbaric Germanic lands to the North and East.
Many of the traditions associated with St. Martin of Tours – and there are a lot of them – trace back to the time of Charlemagne (who lived in the late 700s-800s, or 400-500 years after St. Martin of Tours walked this earth). Charlemagne was both the King of the Franks and the Founder of the Holy Roman (largely Germanic) Empire, having been crowned Emperor at St. Peter’s Basilica on Christmas Day, 800 AD.
St. Martin became a bridge between cultures and epochs – between by Charlemagne’s time the ascendant Latinesque Christianity (Roman Catholicism) of the South and West of Europe (emerging in France and centered in Rome) and the declining Germanic and even Slavic paganism of the lands to the North and East.
Both France and (Catholic) Germany claimed him as their own, which became important as his Feast Day, Nov 11th, later became Armistice Day (in the U.S. Veterans’ Day) marking the end of World War I, which on the Western Front actually played out in the very lands between today’s France and Germany where St. Martin had spent most of his Christian life.
A telling legend associated with St. Martin of Tours was that when he ordered the cutting down of a pine tree sacred to the local Germanic pagans, the up until then pagan community accepted the edict but only if he would stand directly in the path of the falling tree. The felled tree “miraculously” missed hitting the future St. Martin, and the community then accepted Christianity.
By tradition, St. Martin died on Nov. 8th, 397 AD. His feast day has been celebrated on November 11th the day of his burial.
This date proved auspicious in the project of converting the Germanic (and later Slavic) peoples to Christianity. For St. Martin’s feast day falls at the time of both traditional harvest festivals and the traditional (pagan) marking the arrival of a six month period of relative darkness. As such many of the previous pagan traditions of this time of year were assimilated, rebranded and celebrated in the context of St. Martin’s Day.
Even the tradition in the United States of celebrating Thanksgiving, which we’ve been taught was instituted by the English Protestant Pilgrim settlers of Plymouth, Massachusetts in conjunction with the Native American communities who helped them survive their first year in the Americas, has obvious antecedents in the older Catholic celebration of St. Martin’s Day (which as we’ve seen itself borrowed from previous pagan both Roman and Germanic traditions).
Two necessary elements in a Central European celebration of St. Martin’s Day were – (1) blessing of Wine, the first vintage of the year as it were and with antecedent in pagan Roman celebrations of Bachus / Dionysus, the Greco-Roman Gods of Wine, and (2) the feasting on a large bird, in Central Europe … a goose.
Goose honestly is tastier than the more austere turkey of Anglo-Protestantism. And the Pilgrims of Plymouth Rock may also have frowned upon wine though the climate, be it in England / the Netherlands where the Massachusetts pilgrims came from or be it Massachusetts itself, may not have been the best locations for wine producing anyway.
The point here is that for more than 1000 years, since the time of Charlemagne, the traditional late-autumn harvest festival of previous pagan times was rebranded and celebrated with wine and goose as St. Martin’s Day.
Now a number of questions arise here that that invite reflection:
St. Martin, known for his charity, was also known in his time for knocking down temples and chopping down trees sacred to the still pagan populations of the region where he lived..
And many of the traditions that those pagan populations held dear, like the celebration of life with a good meal as the northern hemisphere approached its annual six month period of cold and darkness were appropriated (but also largely blessed) as part of the celebration of his feast day.
Can we both give thanks for his life, but also have a renewed appreciation of some of the good things that the pagan world gave to humanity and even to the emerging Christian Church?
These are not idle questions as the we all negotiate living in a world increasingly recognized in our time for its rich pluralism.
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