Part 2 (1/2)
The deacon objecting that no apparel of that profane nature is under his hand, St. Martin, with his customary serenity, takes off his own episcopal stole, or whatsoever flowing stateliness it might be, throws it on the dest.i.tute shoulders, and pa.s.ses on to perform indecorous public service in his waistcoat, or such mediaeval nether attire as remained to him.
But, as he stood at the altar, a globe of light appeared above his head; and when he raised his bare arms with the Host--the angels were seen round him, hanging golden chains upon them, and jewels, not of the earth.
Incredible to you in the nature of things, wise reader, and too palpably a gloss of monkish folly on the older story?
Be it so: yet in this fable of monkish folly, understood with the heart, would have been the chastis.e.m.e.nt and check of every form of the church's pride and sensuality, which in our day have literally sunk the service of G.o.d and His poor into the service of the clergyman and his rich; and changed what was once the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness, into the spangling of Pantaloons in an ecclesiastical Masquerade.
But one more legend,--and we have enough to show us the roots of this saint's strange and universal power over Christendom.
”What peculiarly distinguished St. Martin was his sweet, serious, unfailing serenity; no one had ever seen him angry, or sad, or, gay; there was nothing in his heart but piety to G.o.d and pity for men. The Devil, who was particularly envious of his virtues, detested above all his exceeding charity, because it was the most inimical to his own power, and one day reproached him mockingly that he so soon received into favour the fallen and the repentant. But St. Martin answered him sorrowfully, saying, 'Oh most miserable that thou art! if _thou_ also couldst cease to persecute and seduce wretched men, if thou also couldst repent, thou also shouldst find mercy and forgiveness through Jesus Christ.'”[7]
[Footnote 7: Mrs. Jameson, Vol. II., p. 722.]
In this gentleness was his strength; and the issue of it is best to be estimated by comparing its scope with that of the work of St. Firmin. The impatient missionary riots and rants about Amiens'
streets--insults, exhorts, persuades, baptizes,--turns everything, as aforesaid, upside down for forty days: then gets his head cut off, and is never more named, _out_ of Amiens. St. Martin teazes n.o.body, spends not a breath in unpleasant exhortation, understands, by Christ's first lesson to himself, that undipped people may be as good as dipped if their hearts are clean; helps, forgives, and cheers, (companionable even to the loving-cup,) as readily the clown as the king; he is the patron of honest drinking; the stuffing of your Martinmas goose is fragrant in his nostrils, and sacred to him the last kindly rays of departing summer. And somehow--the idols totter before him far and near--the Pagan G.o.ds fade, _his_ Christ becomes all men's Christ--his name is named over new shrines innumerable in all lands; high on the Roman hills, lowly in English fields;--St. Augustine baptized his first English converts in St. Martin's church at Canterbury; and the Charing Cross station itself has not yet effaced wholly from London minds his memory or his name.
That story of the Episcopal Robe is the last of St. Martin respecting which I venture to tell you that it is wiser to suppose it literally true, than a _mere_ myth; myth, however, of the deepest value and beauty it remains a.s.suredly: and this really last story I have to tell, which I admit you will be wiser in thinking a fable than exactly true, nevertheless had a.s.suredly at its root some grain of fact (sprouting a hundred-fold) cast on good ground by a visible and unforgettable piece of St. Martin's actual behaviour in high company; while, as a myth, it is every whit and for ever valuable and comprehensive.
St. Martin, then, as the tale will have it, was dining one day at the highest of tables in the terrestrial globe--namely, with the Emperor and Empress of Germany! You need not inquire what Emperor, or which of the Emperor's wives! The Emperor of Germany is, in all early myths, the expression for the highest sacred power of the State, as the Pope is the highest sacred power of the Church. St. Martin was dining then, as aforesaid, with the Emperor, of course sitting next him on his left--Empress opposite on his right: everything orthodox. St. Martin much enjoying his dinner, and making himself generally agreeable to the company: not in the least a John Baptist sort of a saint. You are aware also that in Royal feasts in those days persons of much inferior rank in society were allowed in the hall: got behind people's chairs, and saw and heard what was going on, while they un.o.btrusively picked up crumbs, and licked trenchers.
When the dinner was a little forward, and time for wine came, the Emperor fills his own cup--fills the Empress's--fills St.
Martin's,--affectionately hobn.o.bs with St. Martin. The equally loving, and yet more truly believing, Empress, looks across the table, humbly, but also royally, expecting St. Martin, of course, next to hobn.o.b with _her_. St. Martin looks round, first, deliberately; becomes aware of a tatterdemalion and thirsty-looking soul of a beggar at his chair side, who has managed to get _his_ cup filled somehow, also--by a charitable lacquey.
St. Martin turns his back on the Empress, and hobn.o.bs with _him_!
For which charity--mythic if you like, but evermore exemplary--he remains, as aforesaid, the patron of good-Christian topers to this hour.
As gathering years told upon him, he seems to have felt that he had carried weight of crozier long enough--that busy Tours must now find a busier Bishop--that, for himself, he might innocently henceforward take his pleasure and his rest where the vine grew and the lark sang. For his episcopal palace, he takes a little cave in the chalk cliffs of the up-country river: arranges all matters therein, for bed and board, at small cost. Night by night the stream murmurs to him, day by day the vine-leaves give their shade; and, daily by the horizon's breadth so much nearer Heaven, the fore-running sun goes down for him beyond the glowing water;--there, where now the peasant woman trots homewards between her panniers, and the saw rests in the half-cleft wood, and the village spire rises grey against the farthest light, in Turner's 'Loireside.'[8]
[Footnote 8: Modern Painters, Plate 73.]
All which things, though not themselves without profit, my special reason for telling you now, has been that you might understand the significance of what chanced first on Clovis' march south against the Visigoths.
”Having pa.s.sed the Loire at Tours, he traversed the lands of the abbey of St. Martin, which he declared inviolate, and refused permission to his soldiers to touch anything, save water and gra.s.s for their horses.
So rigid were his orders, and the obedience he exacted in this respect, that a Frankish soldier having taken, without the consent of the owner, some hay, which belonged to a poor man, saying in raillery ”that it was but gra.s.s,” he caused the aggressor to be put to death, exclaiming that ”Victory could not be expected, if St. Martin should be offended.”
Now, mark you well, this pa.s.sage of the Loire at Tours is virtually the fulfilment of the proper bounds of the French kingdom, and the sign of its approved and securely set power is ”Honour to the poor!”
Even a little gra.s.s is not to be stolen from a poor man, on pain of Death. So wills the Christian knight of Roman armies; throned now high with G.o.d. So wills the first Christian king of far victorious Franks;--here baptized to G.o.d in Jordan of his goodly land, as he goes over to possess it.
How long?
Until that same Sign should be read backwards from a degenerate throne;--until, message being brought that the poor of the French people had no bread to eat, answer should be returned to them ”They may eat gra.s.s.” Whereupon--by St. Martin's faubourg, and St. Martin's gate--there go forth commands from the Poor Man's Knight against the King--which end _his_ Feasting.
And be this much remembered by you, of the power over French souls, past and to come, of St. Martin of Tours.
NOTES TO CHAPTER I.
The reader will please observe that notes immediately necessary to the understanding of the text will be given, with _numbered_ references, under the text itself; while questions of disputing authorities, or quotations of supporting doc.u.ments will have _lettered_ references, and be thrown together at the end of each chapter.[9] One good of this method will be that, after the numbered notes are all right, if I see need of farther explanation, as I revise the press, I can insert a letter referring to a _final_ note without confusion of the standing types. There will be some use also in the final notes, in summing the chapters, or saying what is to be more carefully remembered of them.