half ; and the next night he saw Christ in a dream with the half cloak, and plainly heard him say to the angels : "Behold, Martin, who is yet only a catechumen, hath clothed me." ^ He was baptized in his eighteenth year ; converted his mother ; lived as a hermit in Italy ; afterward built a monas- tery in the vicinity of Poictiers (the first in France) ; destroyed many idol temples, and won great renown as a saint and a worker of miracles. About the year 370 he was unanimously elected by the people, against his wish, bishop of Tours on the Loire, but in his episcopal office maintained his strict monastic mode of life, and established a monastery beyond the Loire, where he was soon surrounded with eighty monks. He had little education, but a natural eloquence, much spiritual ex- ' De opera monach. c. 22. Still later, Salvian (De gubern. Dei, viii. 4) speaks of the hatred of the Africans for monasticism. ^ In his Vita Martini, and also in three letters respecting him, and in three very eloquently and elegantly written dialogues, the first of which relates to the oriental monks, the two others to the miracles of Martin .(translated, with some omissions, in RufFner's Fathers of the Desert, vol. ii. p. 68-1V8). He tells us (Dial. i. c. 23) that the book traders of Rome sold his Vita Martini more rapidly than any other book, and made great profit on it. The Acts of the Saints were read as romances in those days. ^ The biographer here refers, of course, to Matt. xxv. 40. 204r THLRD PERIOD. A.D. 311-590. perience, and unwearied zeal. Sulpitius Severus places him above all the Eastern monks of whom he knew, and declares his merit to be beyond all expression. " Not an hour passed," says he,' " in which Martin did not pray. . . . No one ever saw him angry, or gloomy, or merry. Ever the same, with a countenance full of heavenly serenity, he seemed to be raised above the infirmities of man. There was nothing in his mouth but Christ ; nothing in his heart but piety, peace, and sympa- thy. He used to weep for the sins of his enemies, who reviled him with poisoned tongues when he was absent and did them no harm. . . . Yet he had very few persecutors, except among the bishops." The biographer ascribes to him wondrous conflicts with the devil, whom he imagined he saw bodily and tangibly present in all possible shapes. He tells also of visions, miraculous cures, and even, what no oriental anchoret could boast, three instances of restoration of the dead to life, two be- fore and one after his accession to the bishopric ; ^ and he assures us that he has omitted the greater part of the miracles which had come to his ears, lest he should weary the reader ; but he several times intimates that