The Life of Saint Martin · Chapter VIII
Lupicinus’s young slave saved from death
A short time later, as he was passing through the estates of Lupicinus, a very important man of high standing in society, Martin heard in the distance the cries and desperate weeping of a crowd. Concerned, he went up to the house to ask what had happened, and was told that a young slave of the estate had just taken his own life by hanging.
As soon as he learned of it, Martin went into the little room where they had laid the body, asked everyone to leave, stretched himself out on the young man and remained praying for some time. Shortly afterwards, the colour began to return to the young man’s cheeks, and his eyes, already dulled, recovered their brightness and fixed themselves on Martin’s face. Making a slow effort to raise himself, the young man grasped Martin’s right hand, got to his feet and walked out on his own two feet, hand in hand with him, as far as the entrance courtyard, before the disbelieving eyes of all those people.
Lupicinus was what the Romans called a vir honoratus — a great landowner of the senatorial aristocracy, master of a huge agricultural estate (villa) where dozens or hundreds of slaves worked (the familia, in the Roman sense of the word).
What makes this short chapter so touching is Martin’s reaction to the suicide of a poor slave (servulus). Whereas in the following centuries the laws of the Church would come to condemn suicide with enormous severity, going so far as to forbid Christian burial, Martin preaches no sermon and is not afraid to touch a young man who has ended his life in despair: he goes into his room, prays over his body and leads the young man by the hand out to the courtyard, in front of the master and all the servants of the house.