Saint Martin of Nantes

Saint Felix Saint Félix Bishop of Nantes who ordained Martin as a deacon. , his bishop, after ordaining him deacon, did not fear to entrust him with a significant part of his administration. The natural eloquence that God had bestowed upon our young cleric, supported by serious and assiduous studies, had contributed not a little to earning him these honors. It was also to acquire for him more solid merits for the conquest of souls. He was charged with preaching, and we have reason to believe that his first attempts led him toward the archipelago formed by that multitude of small islands which then served as a refuge for Saxon pirates, who remained in these theaters of their maritime depredations after the expulsion that the Franks had carried out against their fathers, and who continued their wild life there all the better because no one dared to pursue them there anymore. Despite these formidable customs, despite the presence of two hermits who served God in these deserted rocks, and whose teachings these hordes would hardly have listened to, they were not at all hostile to Christianity, and the successes that Martin had there at first persuaded people that one could expect from him fruits of conversion even in favor of the infidels.

Half-savage peoples lived on the western borders of Brittany, and occupied the first marches of Poitou between the Loire and the Ocean. Among the cities that had formed there, one especially, given over entirely to pagan superstitions, was for that very reason a theater of disorders too authorized by the fabulous examples of Jupiter, provided with the first place in the midst of these pretended gods, who, under different names, patronized all brutalities and all infamies. This city was Herba uge (Her Herbauge Pagan city swallowed after the saint's visit. badilla, Herbadiculum, Herbadiliacum, Herbadiliem), built at the southern tip of the current Lake of Grandlieu, and whose importance had caused its name to be given to the territory that surrounded it. Whether Saint Felix founded hopes for this conversion on the zeal and talent of Martin, or whether the latter himself conceived the desire to enter this harvest whose seed had already succeeded so poorly, by common agreement these two souls came to an understanding, and the enterprise was resolved: the preacher had to march to the conquest of these poor pagans.

The holy preacher, at the master's word, received his blessing, and threw himself into the indicated path. But he was no more successful there than his predecessors, and found only rebellious spirits and hardened souls. It is that unfortunately the human heart, at whatever epoch of the world one examines it, always appears just as carried away toward the evil passions of which the original fall is the principle. Once in vice, it makes of it an obstacle too often insurmountable to the truths of the religion that condemns them; or else, if it is plunged into impiety, asleep in indifference, blinded by the sophisms of incredulous philosophy, virtue becomes impossible for it, and it finds in its incredulity a pretext for all excesses. Such was the deplorable population that Martin approached. As soon as he appeared, they showed themselves so hostile toward him that he could only find hospitality with poor people, a man and a woman having only one son named Pierre, and who consented to shelter him under the roof of their indigence. From this sad dwelling he soon emerged to attempt preachings which at first, as always, became an object of curiosity, but did not delay in exciting aggressive sentiments. The Saint, in the presence of these statues of false gods that adorned the temples or public squares, reproached his listeners for this barbaric stupidity which caused them to render to these insensible images the worship due only to the God who had created and redeemed them. He opposed to this Diana, whose turpitudes were so well known, the chastity of the august Mother of Jesus Christ; to this Mercury who favored thieves, the holy poverty of the God made man; and thus, condemning their voluntary blindness, he strove to awaken in them the sentiment of their own unrecognized dignity, and the esteem of the sacred mysteries of the Christian faith. But the consequences of these great principles did not reach an audience so debased, and sarcasm at first, then soon invectives, and finally violence, taught the worthy pastor what kind of sheep he was dealing with. This opposition soon changed into a furious hatred, which went so far as to refuse all communication with him and to force him to move away from the city.

The Saint knew only how to groan in his heart at this monstrous opposition. He was consoled for an instant only to end with a new attempt a mission that so much resistance rendered useless to this unfortunate population. In the absence of these great proud ones, these coarse merchants, and this insolent populace who had only insults for his charity, he addressed himself to souls that he had been able to study more closely, and whose devoted simplicity had received and assisted him. They were his hosts whom God, anticipating them with His grace, had disposed to the truths of salvation, at the same time that He opened their souls to a fraternal compassion that humanity all alone would not have known how to inspire in pagans. Romain, his wife, and his son received from their conversations with the pious archdeacon the light of Christianity, the notions of the adorable Trinity, the promise of a life to come, and finally accepted the baptism that he offered them and of which they understood the happy necessity. This was a fertile germ for the city rebellious to the voice of God, if the persistence of the Saint, who could not decide to leave it, could have been appreciated and understood. But the longer he prolonged his stay there, the more he found against the evangelical law of contempt and contradictions. In the face of this course of iniquities that nothing suppressed, and the daily vexations with which they paid for his zeal, he saw well that there was no more to hope for from these lost souls than formerly from Sodom, whose infamous perversities dishonored them... He fell into a deep sorrow, his heart felt overwhelmed, and, with regret, but forced by the uselessness of his cares, he thought of fleeing this shore unworthy of divine mercies. So many other souls called him elsewhere where he would not fail to find more docile ones, that he took this determination as an inspiration from God and his conscience. Had not the divine Master said: "When you are persecuted in one city, flee to another"? It was therefore there that he had to "shake the dust from his shoes." But the Saints have presentiments that warn them from on high, and, whether God sent to His misunderstood apostle a sudden inspiration, or whether by a rarer miracle, but which He often holds at the disposal of His servants, He had made him hear an external and sensible voice that warned him to flee an imminent peril, Martin, warning his hosts of this danger, determined them to follow him, and left in haste a place marked with the seal of eternal reprobation.

The city of Herbauge, so flourishing, so proud of its riches, so attached to its idols, so tenacious in making between itself and the Christians from outside a kind of sanitary cordon that would preserve it from their examples and from the invasion of the evangelical doctrine, disappeared, swallowed under the waters of its lake, without leaving any trace of its existence, and losing even its name, which no geographer has preserved, which no map designates anymore, all while leaving around its untraceable ruins an entire country that still bears it and that testifies to the terrible truth. Thus the punishment was accomplished, supreme justice struck the crime, and once more a great lesson was given to the race of cynics and persecutors. The Saint could not refuse his tears to this fatal and too-deserved fate: it is the sentiment that dominates in the just, to pity and regret the wicked carried away in these fatal outcomes that the hand of God prepares for them sooner or later. Our pious deacon therefore found in his heart a mourning proportionate to this immense loss, and, no doubt to seek to compensate for it by more assured triumphs over the world of souls, he resolved to devote himself to a life of a missionary.

After being invested with the priestly character, Martin moved away from that Brittany where his first labors had been mingled with consolations and bitterness, around the year 554. He began his new apostolate in Neustria, bordering the country he was leaving, to which the Norman race would only give its name three centuries later, and whose vast and harsh countryside, still covered with deep forests and devoid of the opulent cities that were founded there later, nourished little more than poor and ignorant populations, already largely Christian, but still mixed with many pagans, and upon whom the action of the divine word could be exercised with fruit. From there he passed into Italy, pushing his pilgrimage as far as Rome, where he vivified his faith at the tombs of our greatest Apostles; after which he returned to Brittany, passed into England, on his return from which he stopped in Normandy, and finally returned to his dear Brittany, where new labors were to leave such deep marks of his fervent charity. According to the customs of those early times, he preached everywhere and always. After his days thus devoted to the salvation of souls, after the abundant harvests that his sweat brought to the granaries of God, evening arrived, and, without asking for hospitality from anyone other than God himself, he retired into some cave, far from the noise, in the presence of his Creator alone; he gave himself there to prayer and works of penance, to fasts and studious vigils, and after a short rest he resumed his conversations with a new audience, always more numerous and more attentive.

He visited the monasteries already built in the countries he traveled through, observed their customs, compared their various Rules, studied their application, and found for himself in these holy houses such inducements toward religious life that he did not doubt that it was the end to which God had called him through his contradictions and labors. He therefore resolved to strive henceforth toward this goal. Rich with the spiritual profits and holy experience acquired in these sanctified journeys, Martin left Italy and returned to Brittany, around 565, resolved to practice the eremitic life there and to seek his perfection in the imitation of the fervent models he had encountered everywhere. A mysterious attraction, inspired by a secret impulse of Providence, undoubtedly made him choose the place where he was to stop. Not far from Nantes was a forest of great extent, frequented formerly by the druids, where the remains of the superstitious cult of the Gauls were still perpetuated in a gathering of those mysterious stones named by archaeologists peulés or menhirs. This forest, taking its name from this circumstance, was called Du-Men, from two Breton words meaning black stones. There he made hims elf a Du-Men Site of Martin's eremitic retreat. hut of branches and prepared to brave the winters. His life there was entirely one of mortification and penance. A few wild fruits, a few vegetables cultivated with his own hands, and, when the season refused these frugal harvests, dried roots which he had laid in as provisions, were all the food he allowed himself. Only one thing was lacking at first: a clear stream flowing in his solitude. It is said that God heard him, by causing a spring to rise under his steps which, providing for the need of his thirst, replaced for him the exquisite wines to which he had renounced.

Such was the life that our holy anchorite led in this desert for a space of ten years. It was, moreover, seconded by favors from heaven that are only granted to souls thus detached from themselves. It is in such high virtues that man rises to the faculties of a continuous and fervent contemplation; it is through them that he arrives at a more complete detachment from created things, and to the merciful revelations that illuminate his path in the progress of the interior life, or toward the unexpected ways that it pleases God to open to him. Martin became a new example of this truth, and, when the Lord saw him sufficiently prepared by these hidden virtues, He disposed him for a mission which, while bringing him back to his active life, was at the same time to make him more useful to a numerous family of the elect, and to prove that the misfortunes he had deplored at Herbauge were not to be attributed to him so much as to the wickedness and ingratitude of its inhabitants.

One night, therefore, after having spent the long hours he always devoted to it in meditation, he was warned in his sleep that he must return among men; that a great number of them were in need of that spirit of penance of which he could henceforth give them more perfect examples; that he would convert many sinners enlightened by his instructions, and that their scandals would be succeeded, by his devotion to this great work, by a life of edification and peace. "The Saints," says Saint Ambrose, "do not hesitate at the voice of God; they do not dispute with the grace of the Holy Spirit." Ours, who tasted such profound sweetness in this existence favored by God, did not hesitate at all to leave everything for the One whose warning he believed he heard, and abandoned without further delay his pious retreat and its sweet tranquility. He therefore headed, upon leaving Du-Men, toward a still isolated place, whose primitive name Vertaw, translated as Vertawum in Latin, and which was later Gallicized as Vertou, was a Vertou Site of Martin's principal monastic foundation. Breton expression indicating its position on the course of a river; indeed, the Sèvre flowed there under deep shade and in a solitude even more tranquil. It was, moreover, only a portion of the same forest of Du-Men, but closer to Nantes, this city being located beyond the Loire, two leagues to the northwest.

The presence of the new hermit was soon the object of public attention. People first spoke of his holy life and the fruit he bore through his preaching, then some visitors arrived at his cell, where they always found him occupied with prayer or manual labor, as Pachomius, Paul, and Hilarion had practiced in the Thebaid. This love of isolation and his spirit of silence, which he only broke to speak of God, caused him to be called Martin the Only, or the Solitary, a name by which he was henceforth known in the region. At whatever hour one approached him, the amenity of his welcome, the sweetness of his conversations all imbued with the perfumes of heaven, the serenity of his life, though so austere in itself, spoke to hearts much more deeply even than his exhortations: and soon the crowd increased with those who wanted to hear him and commend themselves to his prayers. Thus, the good odor of his holiness spread throughout the region along with the admiration for his doctrine and his examples. But, following these salutary impressions, the spirit of God always arranges for the marvelous effects of His grace. Of those whom either respectful curiosity or religious admiration had attracted to Martin, many solicited his counsel and attached themselves to his direction. Our solitary recognized in these signs a path toward the execution of the divine promises: thus he took great care not to refuse this pious eagerness. With no other asylum than his narrow hut, he could offer no other shelter to so many disciples than those they were able to build for themselves by the same means. Everyone therefore set to work with ardor, and finished their edifice all the sooner because nature provided all the costs and luxury was strictly confined to those rules of art sufficient to guarantee protection from the inconveniences of rain and sun. In this way, this desert was populated, and these first inhabitants were as many flowers blooming in this new garden of the Church, which thus extended its domain, taking possession of souls, purifying them of their past, and giving them in advance, in a peace they had never tasted, an anticipated participation in the eternal fruits of their labors and virtues.

The group of faithful formed around his cell was not long in convincing itself, as he did, that this position, inconvenient for a community, should be constituted into an establishment where the regularity of habits became more possible for everyone. Hence the idea of a true convent, such as Brittany and Poitou already had in such flourishing numbers. This thought was that of all the new brothers, eager to be henceforth but a single family. All set to work with ardor to build a vast monastery that could provide for the needs of the poor as well as those of a numerous community. The forest, cleared of its great oaks, soon revealed a wide space, where a brisk and healthy air circulated freely; the sky appeared there in the open like the final destination toward which the solitary's journey advanced each day. Raised to the highest point of the hill, the monastery seemed to hover above the agitations of the world; the main church, dominating all the rest of the vast edifice, and surmounted by a tower where the bell for the liturgical offices already rang, was dedicated to Saint John the Baptist, the first of the solitaries and the most perfect of the children of men.

After the completion of the monastery, the edification that one was sure to find there attracted an ever more active concourse of strangers to this holy dwelling. Some wanted to commit themselves and flee the world, whose dangers they felt better in the face of such great self-denial; others came there to offer their children for the service of God, or at least to draw from the holy examples of so many valiant athletes the habit of goodness and strength against future passions. So that soon Saint Martin found himself at the head of three hundred religious; he was the soul and the motive force of all the good works that multiplied each day: these were the frequent returns of the psalmody, which even the night did not interrupt; the repeated fasts; the austere practices of bodily penance joined to the spirit of humility; a continual silence, which ceased only for spiritual conferences; and, outside of so many exercises already so harsh for the body, manual labor varied according to the aptitudes of each.

Entirely devoted to the development of his community, Martin also had to multiply his fatigues and worries more and more. These daily preoccupations were far from hindering his own efforts and preventing the progress of his personal perfection. A model of renunciation, of assiduity in common exercises, he was seen everywhere that effort was required, giving the example of holy vigils, of more rigorous abstinence, of a piety always sustained; and those who became witnesses to it wondered how this poor body, exhausted by penance, could still suffice for so many cares and labors. Fortunately, in return for this generosity which disconcerted the demands of nature in him, God favored him with extraordinary graces. He tasted pure and incomparable delights in prayer, and the Master whom he served so faithfully lavished upon him without interruption the joys of His holy presence, which the pious solitary never lost.

Soon, however, the monastery became too small for so many disciples. It was necessary to disseminate them, and several other monasteries, which were dependencies and like priories of Vertou, were established in Brittany through the care of Martin. This was not a work of minor importance, nor one that could be accomplished without pain or difficulty. The superior of Vertou had to redouble his activity and zeal, his supervision and counsel. Frequent journeys, even distant travels, became necessary for these enterprises, for they created for the common father numerous relationships with these very diverse souls, the greatest number of whom perhaps, all pressed as they had been by the grace of their vocation, had not, however, abdicated all at once their former inclinations, more or less barbaric, nor stripped off that old man who so often does the evil he would not, without yet doing the good he would. It was necessary to lack neither strength nor courage to maintain in exact discipline a flock whose sheep multiplied up to three hundred in these different houses, where the charity of the pastor watched over each of them. This man, having become by the dispositions of Providence the motive force of such a great work, had to be endowed by it with as much firmness as moderation. This double quality did not fail Martin. But this influence of every moment and this practical supervision so continuous had to end by making the task impossible for a single man, and the wise founder had to make for himself coadjutors whose experience and apostolic spirit could make up for his limitations. He therefore chose from among his religious delegates whom he appointed to the conduct of these different houses, and reserved for himself the government of Vertou, not, however, without keeping in principle that of these branches, upon which it was always necessary to act, for the maintenance of unity, by the same regime. He therefore visited each of them from time to time, bringing them the word of God, occupying himself with the maintenance of the Rule, preventing abuses, watching over relations with the world, which he wanted to be of the rarest; supporting the weak with his encouragement, forming them in humility, giving to everything, in a word, the blessed impulse of his own dispositions, and striving to form according to his heart those for whom he felt he would have to answer before God. When superiors understand their task in this way, when they think of fulfilling it like faithful stewards to whom the Master will one day demand an account of their administration, souls flourish under their guidance, the peace of God consoles them even in their struggles, and the charity of the Master, passing into the disciples, spreads around them and into all the details of monastic life the sweet serenity that edifies the world.

The reputation of our Saint and that of the fervent regularity of his foundations had no difficulty in penetrating into the neighboring provinces. Maine and Neustria especially resounded with it, and the holy dwellings that already flourished there at that time called from time to time for the illustrious servant of God to hear his word and be edified by his holiness. It was, moreover, a pious consolation for himself to find himself thus almost everywhere in the midst of elite souls whose vocation his doctrine and examples had been able to determine. From there, no doubt, and during one of these visits always animated by the Spirit of God, the rumor of his miracles, having passed as far as England, became the occasion for a great reward from on high upon the faith of one of his faithful children.

There was in that country a prince whose name history has not preserved, and who, in this island of Saints, converted a few years later by the apostolate of Saint Augustine, but still almost entirely idolatrous, can be considered as one of the most memorable first fruits of Christianity. This prince had a young daughter who was a Christian like him, and whose importunate virtues excited the rage of the enemy of salvation. A legion of demons imposed atrocious torments upon her every day since her childhood; horrible convulsions manifested their presence; when they abandoned her, it was only to soon redouble their tireless vexations, and the more the prince sought to relieve his daughter, the more the resistance of her enemies multiplied. One day when they were obsessing her, one of them let these words be heard through the mouth of the poor patient, which were to put an end to her torments: "Soon we shall be driven from here by the prayers of Martin. Let us redouble our strength against her, and avenge our defeat in advance." At these words, the young girl was agitated by as many new convulsions as she had bitter persecutors. For his part, the unhappy father, deeply affected, did not know what to do. This Martin was unknown to him; he did not know how to discover him. In his anxiety, he dispatched emissaries in all directions who, having searched for him for a long time without success in England, finally decided to cross the sea, landed on the coasts of France, were then informed with more success about the holy man whom everyone there honored, and, having reached the abbey of Vertou, they explained to him, with great marks of respect and lively insistence, the subject of their journey and the desires of their master.

The man of God, welcoming them with his usual gentleness, consoled them greatly by telling them that the Lord was all-powerful and that one could hope from His goodness for the deliverance of their young princess; then, acceding to their request, he took one of his brothers with him and set out to follow them. A happy navigation soon brought him to the States of the prince, who, warned of his arrival, went to meet him, testifying by his joy what he hoped for from him, and, throwing himself at the feet of the Saint, he thanked him for having been willing to consent to this arduous journey. The latter was in a hurry, however, to do his work, and, while he was heading toward the palace, guided by his host, suddenly a crowd of voices was heard announcing the presence of Martin. It was the impious legion of hell which, unable to bear entering into a struggle with him, after having exercised its frightful contortions on its victim one last time, escaped into the air, still invisible, but as turbulent as it was confused. Scarcely introduced into the prince's dwelling, the holy man found the poor child still overturned and barely recovered from her terrible agitation. He raised her up, and, after making the sign of the cross on her forehead, he presented her to her father happy and entirely delivered. The gratitude of the young person was immediately manifested by a generous sacrifice of herself to the Lord, and, at her request, her august liberator gave her the veil and consecrated her to the life of virgins. For his part, the prince did not know how to acknowledge such great benefits. He had considerable sums of gold and silver brought to him, which he begged him to accept. Martin did not even deign to cast a glance at them, and prayed that they be distributed to the poor. He added to the fruit of his mission by remaining a few days with the prince, where his instructions strengthened the faith of his servants, spreading blessings there that were lasting.

Returning from overseas, Martin landed on the coast of Normandy which was closest to England, at the place where the Ocean bathes the diocese of Bayeux. Among those he loved in this country was a lord who was at that very moment experiencing a cruel family misfortune. Martin, upon arriving at his home to visit him, found his house in mourning: everyone there was shedding tears over the death of two young twin brothers who had just been taken from their father before having received the benefit of baptism. Touched by their misfortune, the Saint exhorted the father and his friends to seek their consolation in the heart of God, made them pray with him, and obtained from the Lord that the two brothers be restored to life. After baptizing them, he consecrated them to God at the request of their parents, and it was on this occasion that he founded the monastery known since that time by the name of Les Deux-Jumeaux.

Among the monasteries that Saint Martin established around his main foundation, one must especially note those whose memories remain attached to the small town of Saint -Georges de Montaigu, in Saint-Georges de Montaigu Place of the saint's death and monastic foundation. Poitou, and to another locality that has become, like it, less important today, but whose fame was once great in the diocese of Bayeux. We shall recount what concerns each of them. Six or eight leagues to the southeast of Vertou, on the ground represented today by an uneven plain covered at short distances by a few populous villages, pleasant clusters of woods separate these centers of human action, and here and there one sees hamlets or solitudes watered by streams that provide them with habitual freshness. There had once been a city there, formerly flourishing and considerable, but reduced at the time of which we speak to a shadow of itself by the misfortunes it had suffered. It was Durinum, a name Latinized after the Roman invasion of the country, but whose origin, well before this catastrophe, must have dated back to some Celtic appellation. Famous among the stations spaced out along the public roads, vast debris of its ancient splendor littered the ground over a fairly wide perimeter. The confluence of the two Maines, near which it had been situated, favored its commerce, carrying its boats to the Loire via the Sèvre-Nantaise, into which their combined waters first flow. This commerce was famous in the 4th century, when Durinum was overthrown by the invasion of the Armoricans. A population, which was claimed to have been twenty thousand souls, remained small after the destruction of the city, and there were hardly more than poor and scattered dwellings. These habitations were spread out, amidst moors and barely cultivated lands, up to a hill that would later become Mont-Aigu, and on the plateau of which one saw only rare huts sheltering under large woods against the breath of the north wind. In the center of the village, almost on the current site of the calvary that rises at the foot of one of the two still-inhabited hills, Martin placed his two monasteries of virgins and apostles: the first, on the very site where the Grand-Logis still exists; the second, at the very place occupied by the current schoolhouse, which still bears the name of priory.

With the help of work as active as that of the monks, the task advanced rapidly, and the two families were soon installed. It was from Durinum that there departed, from then on, as from a new center, the rays that illuminated the region, and this part of Poitou owed to Martin himself, and to the religious who assisted him, the happiness of rising again and tasting an unexpected prosperity. While these men of faith and labor returned to work for this abandoned vineyard, the women, who were not then subject to strict enclosure, but no less faithful to their holy mission, visited the poor and brought joy and the spirit of God to the hearth of every family; and from a half-barbarous land one soon saw the excellent fruits germinate, the flavor of which has been perpetuated to our days by gentler customs and a firmer energy of Christian sentiment.

Our two new monastic families having received from their blessed founder the same rule that his other houses followed, everything still had to proceed through him, and everything became for him an increase in vigilance and fatigue. For, after having procured for each of these two dependencies superiors whose capacity was known to him, and whom he always chose from among those whose age, intelligence, and instruction were as many guarantees of their experience and wisdom, he did not abandon there, any more than elsewhere, his right and duty to visit them from time to time, and to bring to them, along with his touching examples of humility and zeal, his advice and encouragement. Often he would come to take two or three companions from the men's monastery whom he associated with himself for evangelical journeys, by means of which he renewed in the surrounding villages the spirit of faith, which had to be increased there if one did not want it to weaken. Thus accompanied, he undertook longer or shorter journeys on foot, during which their pious conversations were often interrupted by the difficulties of the paths they had to clear for themselves to shorten their journey, or to find, through rocks and brush, isolated hamlets about which they were no less concerned than the most opulent cities. It is in this way that the localities already important, known today under the more modern names of Les Herbiers, Les Essarts, Mouchamps, La Roche-Servière, and Clisson, were evangelized, according to the traditions still preserved in the country. Tiffauges, Vendrenne, and Aigrefeuille did not escape the priestly ardor of the Saint any more than did Beaupreaux, Chemillé, and Vihiers, which were not the extreme limits of his laborious apostolate; for, besides Anjou, where his memory is still venerated in several churches of his name, and Brittany, where he remains honored with the same cult, one must not forget that from lower Poitou he could not fail to return often toward the upper parts of the province. Ansion, whose path he also guided, at least during his last twenty years, imposed frequent journeys upon him. One saw him constantly either in the great centers of civil administration, or in the countryside, where many idolaters still were and converted at his voice to form Christian villages, or finally in the less important places sown in their enclaves, which, being more populous, soon welcomed and loved the apostles so ardent in pouring out to them the treasures of the holy word. After these missions, he returned to Vertou, which was his most habitual residence, and there resumed his exercises as a solitary and his daily paternal solicitude for all.

In the midst of these labors, a new warning was given to him of the account he would soon have to render of his administration to the supreme chief of pastors. It was in 596. One day, having left Vertou to go to Saint-Georges, he was resting a little after a tiring walk, and sleep overcame him. While he was surrendering to it, an angel appeared to him and, ordering him to return to his cloister, warned him that his death was not far off and that he must prepare for it. Awakened immediately, he retraced his steps, and when he was still three-quarters of a league from the abbey, the bells began to ring of their own accord, and gave a much clearer sound than usual. The brothers, astonished, suspected the return of the holy abbot whom they did not expect so soon, and, full of joy, went to meet him singing psalms and canticles. Soon they arrived at the church, where he entered in their wake, and there, in fervent prayer, he commended this flock to the supreme Pastor. After which, rising, he went into the cloister, where he had all his religious gather around him; then, fixing in the ground, in their midst, the pastoral staff that his pious hands had not left for a long time, and which, by divine goodness, had caused numerous fountains to spring forth when needed: "Here," he said to them, "I leave you the sign of my jurisdiction over you. You will look upon it as proof that I have loved with a preference the place where I once gathered you under the protection of Jesus Christ. May it remind you of my presence, for it will be in the centuries to come of great help to many. I do not have long to remain with you; my end approaches in this world; prepare yourselves for this separation, and follow me by the path I have traced for you, so as not to lose the share that has fallen to you of my crown. I leave you, with the peace of Jesus Christ, all the affection of my heart; I commend you to this God whom you have followed, and I conjure him to bring you all, by his grace, to the happiness of his eternal kingdom." After these words, he gave them all the kiss of peace, and, so as not to fail for a single instant in his paternal task, he set out again for the planned visit to the monastery of Saint-Georges.

But a final token of his holiness remained at Vertou and did not take long to make the gift of prophecy that God had just granted to his servant admired there. Scarcely had he left when one saw this abbatial staff planted by him, and whose withered wood had for so long supported his s crosse abbatiale Staff planted by the saint that became a miraculous yew tree. teps, regain its lost sap, let buds appear, and thus begin to become that vigorous and magnificent yew tree whose leaves were from then on salutary to the sick, and cured of fever those who used them with confidence. This permanent miracle, which was perpetuated until the last days of the abbey, made this marvelous tree the object of respect for the whole region and for all the strangers who visited Vertou. When the princes of Brittany returned there, they only entered the church after having knelt before the venerated trunk. King Alain III, among others, never failed to do so, and prided himself on following in this the example of his a ncestors. No roi Alain III King of Brittany who venerated the yew tree of Vertou. one dared to touch its branches or its foliage except to obtain legitimate relief for some infirmity. Any other reason for claiming it was a profanation soon followed by a punishment. One cites in this regard that which was incurred by two Norman soldiers who, at the time of the invasion of these Barbarians, around 843, took it into their heads to climb it to choose from its branches enough to make a bow: one lost his eyes from a splinter of the wood he wanted to cut, the other fell from high up and broke his neck. A third, whom these sad events did not intimidate, tried to climb it, but his foot slipped, and in his fall he broke his leg. Decidedly the rest understood that they should no longer risk it and fled as quickly as possible. So many events, which could only be attributed to a celestial protection, had filled the good monks with veneration for their dear tree.

While the first efflorescences of our Saint's tree were casting such pure joy into the desolate hearts of his children of Vertou, he was acting at Durinum as if he knew nothing of his approaching death, occupied himself there with his neighbor and his brothers much more than with himself, and was nothing to his solicitude, his prayers, his mortifications. He redoubled on the contrary for each one the pious exhortations to do well, to walk toward the common goal and to refuse nothing to God of what he could demand of those whose whole life was a continual testimony of his predilection. In the midst of these cares and fatigues, he was seized one day by fever, the first symptom of a more worrying illness: pleurisy soon manifested itself, and its rapid progress left no more hope. It took no more than that for a seventy-four-year-old man to bring him closer to a certain death. He could not doubt that the angel's warning was about to be fulfilled; and, indeed, the solemn hour was about to strike. However weakened his bodily faculties were, those of the spirit remained intact. His heart remained united to Jesus Christ; he awaited, joyful and serene, the moment of departure and the final call of the merciful judge of his soul. Around his poor bed, religious and monks were kneeling, weeping and soliciting his last blessing. And as he was silent and recollected, praying for them as much as for himself, he suddenly perceived near him a troop made visible of furious demons, whose horrible cries terrified those present. Alone, the Saint was not moved by it. Remembering the great wonder-worker whose name he bore, and his words spoken in a very similar circumstance, he cried out with all his voice: "What are you doing there, spirits of darkness? Leave, Jesus has redeemed me, I cannot be lost with you." He was still speaking when the enemy had already disappeared. The last battle was fought, the last victory won. There was nothing left for the Saint to do or say; his body collapsed, and his soul, finally stripped of what remained in him of mortal, escaped toward those desirable dwellings where one finds only the holy joys of the Blessed, where it contemplates forever face to face the one it had only been able to grasp here below through the hopes of its faith. This blessed death occurred on October 24, 601. The Saint, as we have said, was in his seventy-fifth year; it had been twenty-seven years since he had laid the foundations of his first monastery of Vertou, and about twenty since the establishment of Saint-Georges.

He is represented kneeling in solitude and praying to God.

[APPENDIX: CULT AND RELICS.]

Upon the news of the Saint's death, the monks of Vertou went to the monastery of Saint-Georges in order to bring his body back to the great abbey. As the religious of Saint-Georges opposed this, those of Vertou secretly removed the body during the night, transported it immediately to Vertou, and placed it honorably in the church of Saint-Jean-Baptiste.

According to the custom of the time, his precious remains were deposited in a stone coffin which was embedded in the pavement of this church, and of which one could, until recently, see the lid, carefully preserved on the very site of his burial, the only remnant of this memorable monument to have escaped the ravages of the first invasions, and which Mabillon cited as still existing when he wrote his *Annals of the Order of Saint Benedict*. This stone continued at that time to attract public veneration.

The body of the Saint was exhumed in 813, at the approach of the Normans who had just stormed the city of Nantes, and placed in a golden reliquary, adorned with precious stones, which was immediately transported to a small town then called *Nousherin*, which is today generally recognized as the current village of Gennes, situated on the left bank of the Loire, four or five leagues above Saumur. A few hours after this rescue, the monastery of Vertou was invaded, sacked, burned, and destroyed from top to bottom. The two abbeys founded at Saint-Georges suffered the same fate; but immediately after the departure of the Normans, the monks hastened to return and raise them from their ashes.

From Gennes, the reliquary of Saint Martin was transported to t he abbey of Ans abbaye d'Ansion Abbey where the saint's relics were deposited. ion, otherwise known as Saint-Jouin-sur-Marne, and deposited next to the body of Saint Jouin, its first abbot, in the abbey church dedicated to Saint John the Baptist. Numerous miracles obtained through the intercession of Saint Martin made his name famous in the region and contributed singularly to renewing the religious sentiment of the populations in this region of upper Poitou.

Later, his relics were carried to another church of the monastery of Saint-Jouin, built under the invocation of Saint Peter. There is reason to believe that it was then that certain considerable parts were granted to various churches. Mabillon affirms that in his time, the head of the Saint and some of his bones were venerated, enclosed in a reliquary at the abbey of Saint-Florent de Saumur.

Two notes, one of which, very old, was barely legible, and the other dated 1661, recorded two recognitions made at different times, which had not prevented another opening of this same reliquary from taking place in 1665 by Dom Joachim Le Contat, visitor of the abbey, which was further attested to by the sub-prior Pierre Le Duc. In 1692, the Fathers of Vertou, deprived of all their relics, as well as those of Saint-Jouin since the sacrilegious devastations of 1562, solicited from their brothers in Saumur some portion of what they had been able to hide from the unworthy profaners. Dom Hugues, then prior of Saint-Florent, proceeded on December 1st to a new inspection of the reliquary, where the same relics mentioned in 1661 were found. On the following March 16th, the abbey consented to a concession of high importance. It ceded to the priory of Vertou the entire head of Saint Martin, of which it reserved only the "two parietal bones and the two petrous bones," and this venerable head was received there on April 19th and handed over to the hands of the claustral prior Dom Jean Blussen.

This recovery amply compensated Vertou for the loss it had suffered in 1562. It is undoubtedly this ionic relic, and not that of one of the Saint's arms, that their church lost in 1701, during the violation by the constitutional regenerators. The report of another seizure made in 1793 records the removal of a bust of Saint Martin, another of Saint Benedict, an arm, and a hand, all in silver, as well as a censer; the whole was sent to the district mint, that is to say to Nantes, and weighed eighteen marcs and two ounces. Only a ciborium and a chalice of the same metal were forgotten. On the latter, which was part of the current treasure of the church of Vertou, which had become a parish church, the coat of arms of the priory is engraved.

At this unhappy time, the lid of the first stone coffin in which the mortal remains of the Saint had rested in 601, and which the entire population of the country had not ceased to frequent with confidence, thus disappeared. These pious treasures suffered the common law and were lost without return. We do not know of any other church that possesses them now.

Forty parishes of Poitou still have him as their patron and celebrate his feast, as at Saint-Georges, on October 25th, although he died on the 24th. Almost all have this title from their foundation and recall through it a mission of the Saint or a miracle performed by his intervention near God. Thus, the Lieu-d'Angers, Saint-Georges de Castel-Osico, and many others have consecrated by his patronage the evangelical light received from him in their early days. The Pont-Saint-Martin, on the Ognon river and at a short distance from the lake of Grand-Lieu where it is lost, is still one of these testimonies. We know of Saint-Martin-de-Broux, a commune in the Vendée, and the river of Saint-Martin, forming an island with the Auxances, and which discharges into the harbor of La Gachère. The latter is known under the name of *Vertona* in Latin acts, which is certainly linked to some memories of the first abbey founded by Saint Martin. Several parish churches also bear the name of our Saint in the diocese of Nantes. All these places recall in local traditions a direct influence of the holy abbot.

Immediately after his blessed death, one saw his brothers and his children raise an altar to him next to all those of Saint Jouin. The latter, for his part, also had his cult in Brittany, where we find, among others, under his title, the parish church of Moisdon-la-Rivière, two or three leagues south of Chateaubriand. But Ansion had given the example of the pious memories of one of its most illustrious Fathers: it was followed in all the priories; and the Benedictines, whether before or after the intromission of the congregation of Saint-Maur, have not ceased to regard Martin as one of their purest glories.

The cult of Saint Martin did not remain confined to Poitou: Maine, Anjou, and Brittany (at Nantes and at the abbey of Saint-Méen) also invoke him, either on October 24th, which is his main feast according to the Roman martyrology and that of Usnard, or on May 8th and December 9th according to that of Ado, but these last two dates probably refer to some of the translations of which we have spoken and whose history no longer specifies the day.

Among other places consecrated in honor of the holy abbot of Verton, one finds, at a very short distance from the town of Le Lude, in the diocese of Angers, a parish of Dissé, today united to that of Le Mans, and of which Saint Martin is the patron. It was formerly under the presentation of the chapter of Angers and the collation of the bishop.

Excerpt from the *History of Saint Martin, Abbot of Verton and Saint-Jouin-de-Marnes*, by Father Auber, canon of the Church of Poitiers and historiographer of the diocese.