Marazion from Trenow by Jonathan Polkest

aroundperranuthnoe.blogspot.com St. Martin was above fourscore years old, when God was pleased to put a happy end to his labours. Long before his departure he had knowledge of his approaching death, which he clearly foretold to his disciples. Being informed that a scandalous difference had arisen amongst the clergy at Cande, a parish at the extremity of his diocess, at the confluence of the Loire and the Vienne in Touraine, upon the borders of Poitou and Anjou, he went thither to compose the disturbance, attended as usual by a great number of his disciples. Having remained there some time, and settled all things to his satisfaction, he was preparing for his return, when he was seized with his last sickness, and found, on a sudden, his strength fail him. As soon as he was taken ill, he called his religious brethren about him, and told them that the time of his departure was come. At this news they all with tears and with one voice said to him: “Father, why do you forsake us? or to whom do you recommend us? The ravening wolves will fall upon your flock. We know you desire to be with Jesus Christ; but your reward is secure; nor will be a whit diminished by being deferred a while. Have pity on our necessity, who are left amidst great dangers.” The servant of God, moved with their tears, wept also, and prayed thus: “Lord, if I am still necessary to thy people, I refuse no labour. Thy holy will be done.” As if he had said, says St. Sulpicius: My soul is uncouquered by old age, weakness, or fatigues, and ready to sustain new conflicts, if you call me to them. But if you spare my age, and take me to yourself, be the guardian and protector of those souls for which I fear. By these words he showed that he knew not which was clearest to him, either to remain on earth for Christ, or to leave the earth for Christ; and has taught us in prayer for temporal things, to submit ourselves with perfect resignation and indifference to the divine will, begging that God may direct all things in us and through us to his greater glory. The saint had a fever which lasted some days: notwithstanding which he spent the night in prayer, lying on ashes and hair cloth. His disciples earnestly entreated him that he would suffer them at least to put a little straw under him. But he replied: “It becomes not a Christian to die otherwise than upon ashes. I shall have sinned if I leave you any other example.” He continually held up his eyes and hands to heaven, never interrupting his prayer, so that the priests that stood about him, begged he would turn himself on one side, to afford his body a little rest. He answered: “Allow me, my brethren, to look rather towards heaven than upon the earth, that my soul may be directed to take its flight to the Lord to whom it is going.” Afterwards, seeing the devil near him, he said: “What dost thou here, cruel beast? Thou shall find nothing in me. Abraham’s bosom is open to receive me.” Saying these words, he expired on the 8th of November, probably in 397. 12 He died seven months after St. Ambrose, as St. Gregory of Tours assures us. They who were present wondered at the brightness of his face and whole body, which seemed to them as if it were already glorified. 13 The inhabitants of Poitiers warmly disputed the possession of his body; but the people of Tours carried it off. The whole city came out to meet it: all the country people and many from neighbouring cities flocked thither, with about two thousand monks, and a great company of virgins. They all melted into tears, though no one doubted of his glory. He was carried with hymns to the place of his interment, which was in a little grove at some distance from the monastery, where certain monks lived in separate cells. The place was then five hundred and thirty paces from the city, as St. Gregory of Tours informs us, though at present it is part of it, and the walls were carried so far as to encompass it in the beginning of the inroads of the Normans. St. Brice, St. Martin’s successor, built a chapel over his tomb, and St. Perpetuus, the sixth bishop of Tours, about the year 470, founded upon that spot the great church and monastery, the saint’s sumptuous tomb being placed behind the high altar. 14 These monks secularized themselves in the seventh century. Towards the close of the eighth, Pope Adrian I. at the request of Charlemagne, placed there regular canons, and Alcuin was shortly after appointed their abbot. 15 These canons were secularized in the reign of Charles the Bald, in 849, and have continued so ever since. The king of France, from the time of Hugh Capet, is the abbot and first canon; besides eleven dignitaries, and fifty-one canons, &c. here are ecclesiastical honorary canons, namely, the patriarch of Jerusalem, the archbishops of Mentz, Cologne, Compostella, Sens, and Bourges; the bishops of Liege, Strasbourg, Angers, Auxerre, and Quebec; and the abbots of Marmoutier, and St. Julian’s at Tours; and lay honorary canons, the dauphin, the dukes of Burgundy, Anjou, Brittany, Bourbon, Vendome, and Nevers: the counts of Flanders, Dunois, and Angouleme: also the earl of Douglas, in Scotland, before that family had changed its religion. The extraordinary devotion which the French and all Europe have expressed to St. Martin, and to this church for the sake of his precious tomb, would furnish matter for a large history. The Huguenots rifled the shrine and scattered the relics of this saint. But this church recovered a bone of his arm, and part of his skull. 16 Before this dispersion, certain churches had obtained small portions which they still preserve. The priory of St. Martin’s-in-the-Fields at Paris is possessed of a part: two of his teeth are shown in St. Martin’s, at Tournay. The cathedral at Tours was built by St. Martin in honour of St. Maurice: but since the year 1096, bears the title of St. Gatian’s. Its chapter is one of the most illustrious in France; the bishop of Tours was suffragan to Rouen till he was made a metropolitan. A vial of sacred oil is kept at St. Martin’s; with which Henry IV. was anointed king instead of that from Rheims. St. Sulpicius relates that St. Martin sometimes cured distempers by oil which he had blessed, 17 and that this oil was sometimes miraculously increased. 18

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