The Life of Saint Martin · Chapter XV
The neck bared before the sword in the land of the Aedui
I also want to tell what happened in the region of the Aedui. While Martin was having a local temple pulled down, an enraged band of pagan peasants hurled themselves at him. One of them, more hot-headed than the rest, drew his sword and went straight for Martin to kill him. Without falling back a step, Martin threw his cloak back from his shoulders and held out his bared neck to him. The man did not even hesitate to strike; but at the exact moment when he raised his arm high to bring the sword down, he lost his balance, fell flat on his back on the ground and, filled with an inexplicable terror, began begging for forgiveness.
Very similar to this was another case: a man tried to stab him with a large knife while he was breaking up some pagan statues, but at the instant he was about to drive in the blade, the iron flew out of his hands and vanished without trace.
Most of the time, however, when the rural populations tried to stop him demolishing their shrines, Martin spoke to them with such kindness and conviction that he disarmed their hearts — and, as he opened their eyes to the truth, it was the inhabitants themselves who ended up pulling down their temples.
The territory of the Aedui (pagus Aeduorum) lay in present-day Burgundy, around the city of Autun (ancient Augustodunum). The Aedui were one of the oldest and proudest Gallic peoples, famous since the time of Julius Caesar and with very deep druidic roots.
Look closely at the last sentence of this chapter, which often goes unnoticed: Sulpicius makes a point of clarifying that, in spite of these tense moments with swords and butcher’s knives (culter), “most of the time” (plerumque) Martin overcame the resistance of the villages not by force but by patient conversation and preaching, until the residents themselves took the old altars apart.