07 — The Cult in Gaul
After his death at Candes on 8 November 397 and his burial at Tours on 11 November, Martin became the object of the greatest saint’s cult in Merovingian Gaul. This section follows the cult from the tomb itself — the basilica raised over it by Bishop Perpetuus and the floods of pilgrims and reported miracles documented two centuries later by Gregory of Tours — to its political dimension, in which Martin’s cloak-relic, the cappa, made him the patron of the Frankish monarchy and lent its name, by the standard etymology, to the words chapel and chaplain.
Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (pre-Schism West; father of Western monasticism)
Of all the saints of the Latin West before the great Schism, none was venerated more widely or more politically than Martin of Tours. The grave at Tours, attested by Sulpicius Severus and Gregory of Tours, grew within a century into one of the principal pilgrimage centers of Gaul, and the basilica built over it by Bishop Perpetuus around 470 became a stage on which a whole society — bishops, kings, the sick, and the powerful — acted out its expectations of the holy. Peter Brown made Tours one of the central cases of his classic study of the cult of the saints, and Raymond Van Dam has shown how the patrocinium of Martin organized the life and politics of the late-antique and early-medieval city (Brown 1981; Van Dam 1985, 1993).
This section treats the cult in two movements. The first is the shrine itself: Martin’s death and burial, the building of the basilica, and the flourishing later cult as Gregory of Tours documents it in his four books On the Miracles of St. Martin and in his History of the Franks — with the miracle-reports presented throughout as Gregory’s own testimony, in the manner the methodology requires (METHODOLOGY §3.5). The second is the political cult: Martin as the quasi-national patron of Frankish Gaul, his cloak-relic the cappa carried by Merovingian and Carolingian kings, and the much-cited derivation of cappella (chapel) and cappellanus (chaplain) from the shrine that housed that cloak — a derivation set out soberly, distinguishing what is well attested from what is reconstructed or legendary.
Files in This Section
| File | Description |
|---|---|
| the-shrine-at-tours.md | Martin’s death at Candes (8 Nov 397) and burial at Tours (11 Nov); the tomb as cult center; the basilica of Bishop Perpetuus (c. 470); Tours as a great pilgrimage center; and the flourishing later cult as documented by Gregory of Tours in De virtutibus sancti Martini and the Historia Francorum, with the healing-miracles reported as Gregory’s testimony (§3.5). |
| martin-and-the-frankish-kings.md | Martin as patron of the Frankish monarchy; the cappa (cloak-relic) carried into battle and kept by guardians; the standard etymology of cappella (chapel) and cappellanus (chaplain) from the cloak-shrine; Clovis and Frankish devotion; the oath on the cappa; Marmoutier and St-Martin of Tours under royal patronage, with attested and legendary elements distinguished. |
See Also
- Marmoutier and Ligugé — the monasteries Martin founded, later great houses under Frankish royal patronage
- The Dialogues and Letters — Sulpicius’s Epistula 3, the earliest account of Martin’s death and burial
- Raising the Dead and Healing — the living-saint miracles that the tomb-cult of Gregory’s day continued
- Pre-Schism Church — the undivided Church of the Latin West to which Martin’s cult belongs
- The Church Fathers — Sulpicius and Gregory among the Latin patristic witnesses
References
- Sulpicius Severus. Vita Martini and Epistulae. Trans. Alexander Roberts, A Select Library of Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, 2nd ser., Vol. 11. Oxford and New York, 1894.
- Gregory of Tours. Libri de virtutibus sancti Martini episcopi (The Miracles of the Bishop St. Martin). Trans. Raymond Van Dam, in Saints and Their Miracles in Late Antique Gaul. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993.
- Gregory of Tours. The History of the Franks (Decem Libri Historiarum). Trans. Lewis Thorpe. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1974.
- Brown, Peter. The Cult of the Saints: Its Rise and Function in Latin Christianity. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981.
- Van Dam, Raymond. Leadership and Community in Late Antique Gaul. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985.
- Van Dam, Raymond. Saints and Their Miracles in Late Antique Gaul. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993.