The Life of Saint Martin · Chapter XXV
The Author’s visit to Saint Martin: The bishop who washed his biographer’s feet
Indeed, I had long been hearing about Martin’s faith, his way of life and his inner strength, and I carried within me an immense wish to meet him in person; so I took to the road with enormous joy, on a journey made expressly to visit him. And since I was already nursing the desire to write his biography, I took the opportunity to ask him directly about some of these things — as far as his modesty would let me ask — and gathered the rest from those who had witnessed the episodes or knew of them at first hand.
You would hardly believe the humility and affection with which he received me on that occasion! He was sincerely moved and full of joy in the Lord to see that we held him in such esteem that we had set out on purpose just to see him. Poor sinner that I am — I am almost ashamed to tell it! — after doing us the honour of inviting us to eat at his table, it was he himself who poured water over my hands before the meal; and, as evening fell, he himself knelt down to wash our feet! I did not even have the courage to refuse or to stop him: such great moral authority made itself felt in him that to disobey him seemed to me almost a grave fault.
In all the conversations he had with us, he spoke to us of one thing only: how necessary it was to let go of the illusions of the world and the burdens of this life in order to follow the Lord Jesus with free hands and a light heart. And he held up to us again and again, as the best living example of our days, the great Paulinus — of whom I spoke a little while ago — who had sold endless estates to follow Christ and had been almost the only man of our generation to carry out to the letter everything the Gospel asks. It was to him that we should look, Martin insisted, it was his path that we should follow! He said that our age was enormously fortunate to have a living proof of such faith and courage: by selling everything to give to the poor as Jesus had asked, an immensely rich man like Paulinus had shown in practice that it was possible to do what everyone thought impossible.
And what firmness, what nobility there was in Martin’s words and conversation! What impressive lucidity, what quickness and what clarity he had in explaining the most difficult passages of the Bible! Since I know that many people are sceptical about this — I myself have seen people turn up their noses even when I was the one telling them — I swear before Jesus and the faith we share that never in my life have I heard from anyone’s lips so much wisdom, so much intelligence or speech so clear and so pure. It is true that, beside Martin’s moral greatness, praising the way he spoke seems a small thing; but it is astonishing all the same that a man who never attended the great schools should not have lacked even that gift.
In this chapter, Sulpicius Severus himself enters the story in the first person! Between 394 and 396 AD, Sulpicius — at the time a young widower from a very rich family of Aquitaine, trained in Law and Oratory at Bordeaux — travelled to Tours to meet the old bishop Martin (who would by then have been about 60 or 80 years old).
For a Roman aristocrat, to arrive from a journey and see the master of the house — a venerated bishop at that — kneel on the floor to wipe the dust from his sandals and wash his feet (a service reserved for the humblest slaves!) was an inner upheaval that changed his life for ever: back home, Sulpicius too left his public career to found a religious community on his estate at Primuliacum.
Notice, too, Sulpicius’s passionate defence of Martin’s intelligence: the elitist bishops of Gaul looked down on him for being a homo illiteratus — an “unlettered man”, that is, a former soldier raised in the barracks who had not studied classical rhetoric in the great Roman schools. Sulpicius, who was one of the most brilliant writers of his time, makes a point of swearing to his readers that he had never heard anyone express himself with such clarity, purity of language and depth as that old soldier!