and from it within two or three years he gathered much. And when from these he had already amassed more than two hundred pounds of wax, a rumour of enemy invasion arose. And he, lest he should see his vow perish, covered the wax with earth in a pit. When peace was restored, he summoned our deacon to fetch it. There was then with him a boy who was suffering a most grievous pain of the kidneys. He, coming to the man and learning from his own mouth what had taken place, ordered the wax that lay hidden in the earth to be uncovered. But the boy who was suffering the pain we mentioned, having taken a hoe to dig the earth, said:
'If you are favourable, Saint Martin, to looking upon this gift of this man, may your power touch my kidneys, and may there be health for me when I have uncovered this wax.' And when he had struck the earth with the hoe, the little bone of his kidney sounded, and immediately all the pain was taken away; and thus, unharmed, he was presented with this wax to the blessed basilica. CHAPTER XVI. Concerning the release of a prisoner. A certain man of the city of Tours became guilty before the judge, who ordered him, bound in chains, to be kept in custody. But when the holy days of the Lord's resurrection drew near, the judge ordered him to be thrust into another prison on the farther bank of the river Loire. He was therefore led not only bound fast with chains, but also with his hands tied behind his back;
and when they had reached the bank of the said river, and were awaiting the boat by which they were to cross over, and he was incessantly imploring the help of Saint Martin, it suddenly seemed to the guards as though they had been struck on the head by someone. And at once they fell to the ground, and the chains that held the bound man were broken, and the loosened thongs were unbound from his hands. He, feeling himself free, while the men still lay prostrate, withdrew from them and entered the threshold of the holy church, and thus he was released by the judge. For some reported that in those days at the city of Poitiers also prisoners had been loosed from the dungeon of the gaol.
And it cannot be doubted that the power of one Confessor was able to illumine both cities with sacred miracles. CHAPTER XVII. Concerning the blind boy. A little boy named Leudovaldus, the slave of a certain Baudeleifus, from a village of Angers to which antiquity gave the name Crovium; after he had been reborn of water and the Holy Spirit, while playing in the street with the other infants—as that age allows—and running here and there, suddenly a wind, stirred up with violence and raising dust, filled the eyes of the child. And when he, struck with blindness, was tormented with pains, a certain man appeared to his grandmother in a dream, instructing her thus: 'Go,' he said, 'to the basilica of Saint Martin, and that boy will recover his sight.'
Without delay the woman, full of faith, came to the festival of the blessed Man, and received her grandson enlightened by the power of the Bishop. CHAPTER XVIII. Concerning the blind girl. A girl of the territory of this same city, named Viliogundis, was blinded by a like circumstance. For while she was running about, playing with the other little girls through the streets of the village, the violence of the wind raised up dust and filled her eyes. She, at once vexed with pains, begged her parents to lead her to the basilica of Saint Martin. When this was done, immediately as they poured out prayer for her, she was enlightened.
As we too were coming out from the holy solemnities of the Mass, the aforesaid boy and girl met us together, saying that at that very hour they had received light by the power of the blessed Bishop. This afforded us, who believed, great joy, that the power of the blessed Confessor had deigned to visit us. CHAPTER XIX. Concerning the cripple and blind man. A certain Litoveus, disabled in his limbs from his infancy, was blinded when a fever came upon him; but coming to an earlier festival, with his limbs set straight, he departed, his sight however still taken away. But when he had returned again to this solemnity, the darkness being removed, a clear light arose for him. CHAPTER XX. Likewise concerning another blind man.
At this same festival also Leudardus, the slave of Emnerius, deacon of the city of Nantes, when for six years he had been bound with the chain of blindness, coming to the basilica, was enlightened by the power of the blessed Confessor. For he had been admonished through the vision of a dream to implore the help of this holy Bishop. CHAPTER XXI. Concerning the blessed offerings which Motharius, a citizen of Tours, took away. A certain one of the citizens of Tours, while he was hastening to meet the king, deposited a vessel with wine and a single loaf of bread at the tomb, to remain there one night, namely so that, set upon his journey, he might have this safeguard of salvation. Having then taken these up, he began to make his way. But it happened that, seeking lodging, he entered the dwelling of a certain man, having set down...
...his baggage, a woman who had an unclean spirit began with immense cries to announce the coming of blessed Martin, and to say: 'Why do you persecute us, Holy One? Why do you torment us, servant of God?' Then that guest who had come, taking a cup and drawing a little wine from that vessel, placed in it a broken fragment of the blessed bread. And when that woman who was raging took it, soon, with the demon cast out along with blood, she was saved. Another woman in the same place, who had long been sick from the cold of fevers, having received a little of this blessing, as soon as she took it, was healed. CHAPTER XXII. Concerning a cripple set straight.
Silluvius, an inhabitant of Bayeux, while set in the countryside he was at some work, when a wind arose, struck with terror, began to tremble and to be deprived of all his limbs, and even to cry out and to testify that death was threatening him. Meanwhile, as the neighbours ran together to such a spectacle, he himself, amid cries and howlings, with his sinews contracted, was wholly disabled; and not only was the use of his ears denied him, but he also lost the very light of his eyes. After fifteen years, however, while he lived in this misfortune, coming to the festival of Saint Martin, with his limbs made whole and his eyes recovered, he departed. CHAPTER XXIII. Concerning a blind and disabled woman healed.
With no unlike power, the woman Ermegundis, a citizen of Angers, an inhabitant of the village of Crovium, crippled and blind, was at this festival set straight and enlightened, and departed. But also Charimundus, coming disabled from Bricilonnum, was restored by the power of the blessed Bishop. CHAPTER XXIV. Concerning very many blind and possessed persons healed. On the day of this solemnity too, several perceived his power, with the grace of Christ co-operating. For Leodemundus the blind man, coming to the basilica of the aforesaid Bishop after seven years, recovered his sight. And three other blind men besides at this festival recovered their sight through the help of the blessed Bishop, and very many possessed persons were cleansed. CHAPTER XXV. Concerning a girl healed of a fever.
The home-born slave-girl of Leo our presbyter, when she had withdrawn, carried in the arms of her parents, to a little estate near the city, was oppressed by the force of a fever, and being violently shaken day and night was seen to be in the peril of death. The presbyter, seeing her sinking under the violence of the disease, by night mounting his horse went to the basilica of the holy Confessor, and knocking at the door of the little cell in which the sacristan was resting, was unable to rouse the man. And when he could not enter the holy basilica, he poured out a prayer before the apse of the tomb, and gathered a little of the earthen dust, which he carried away with him, full of faith, and having dissolved it, offered it to the little girl to drink; immediately the fever departed. CHAPTER XXVI. Concerning prisoners released.
We had a certain matter requiring us to come to the presence of King Childebert. As we journeyed, we undertook a route through the district of Reims, and we found a certain man who told us, by his own account, that the prison of this city—in which among other prisoners a kinsman of his was held—had been opened by the power of Martin; and he related that the prisoners had been freed from the dungeon and had departed free. For the prison was of this kind: that over a pile of beams strong planks were laid down as a platform, and above, that they might press down upon the same, huge stones had been placed. None the less, the door of the prison too was fortified with an iron bar, secured with a bolt by means of a thrust key.
But the power of the Bishop, as the narrator himself asserted, moved aside the stones, threw apart the platform, broke the chains, and opened the beam which confined the feet of the prisoners; and without the door being unbolted, it raised the men up through the air and, the roof lying open above, led them outside, saying: 'I am Martin, the soldier of Christ, your liberator. Depart in peace, and go in safety.' But when, on coming to the king, we made known abroad the miracle of this power, the king affirmed that some of those who had been freed had come to him, and that the composition owed to the treasury, which they call the fredum, had been remitted by him to the guilty. Now this took place four days before the festival, in the sixteenth year of the said king's reign. CHAPTER XXVII.
Concerning the slave of Bishop Nonnichius healed of a disability. As the feast of blessed Martin drew near, Nonnichius, bishop of the people of Nantes, came to the basilica of the Saint, bringing with him a boy with paralysed limbs, named Baudegisillus. When the solemnities of the Saint had been celebrated, he led him back home unharmed, with his limbs restored. CHAPTER XXVIII. Concerning the fever of Claudius, a royal chancellor. While we too were staying with the king, a certain Claudius, one of the royal chancellors, was seized by a fever. And when, oppressed by an excessive fever, he had come to loathe food and drink, he complained to us of what he was suffering; and as he drank the dissolved dust, which we had taken up from the tomb of the holy and blessed one for his salvation, soon, the fever being suppressed, he was healed. CHAPTER XXIX.
Concerning that which Agnes, abbess of Poitiers, related about a certain boatman. The venerable Agnes, abbess of the holy women of Poitiers, related a wonder which had been told to her by the very one to whom it had happened, namely a merchant of Trier, that it had come to pass thus: 'When I had gone to Metz,' she said, 'a certain merchant asked me whence I came. I said: From Poitiers. He asked me whether I had ever come to the basilica of blessed Martin at Tours. I said that, just as I was travelling in Austria, so I had presented myself there. He told me what benefit of lord Martin he had experienced. For when he had been trading in salt at Metz, and had drawn up to the bridge of Metz, he said: Lord Martin, I commend to you both myself and the little boys I have, and my little boat.'
'Meanwhile, reclining in the boat, we all fell asleep. In the morning, rousing myself with the little boys whom I had with me, we found ourselves before the gate of Trier, not knowing how we had come, who still believed ourselves to be lying at Metz; by what means the voyage was made, or the flight—it was by the sole commendation to blessed Martin: we did not feel the river, and we avoided the wreck-bearing waves of the Moselle, then raging; and—what is wonderful enough—how we passed unharmed among the rocks in the night-time, with no boatman keeping watch, no wind blowing, no oar steering.' CHAPTER XXX. Concerning the powers of the monastery of Ligugé.
Some time afterwards, when we had come as far as the city of Poitiers, it pleased us, for the sake only of prayer, to visit the monastery of Ligugé, where the blessed Man had settled the gathered band of monks. For there he is read to have first raised a dead man, and it is written that from there he was led to the episcopate. So, seeking out the longed-for place, I prostrate myself before the rails of the corner in which it is said he recalled the spirit of the dead man. After tears poured out with prayer, and Masses solemnly celebrated, I inquire of the abbot whether the Lord had shown any miracle there. And he asserted, in the presence of the brethren who were there, that very often the blind were enlightened there, and the disabled restored.
'Yet what was lately done,' he said, 'I will unfold to you, lord, since you anxiously inquire. A certain woman, a neighbour of this place, struck by the humour of paralysis, had everywhere lost the function of all her limbs. She, placed on a cart, was carried by oxen drawing it, going around the houses of the rich, that she might supply the need of her poverty. So while, brought to this place, she is prostrated on the pavement, approaching with slow effort, she devoutly kisses the veil which covered the holy rail, saying: Here I believe you to be present, blessed Confessor; here I testify that you raised the dead.'
'I trust indeed that if you will, you can save me and restore me to health, just as once, when the jaws of hell were burst open, you led back the soul of a dead man. Having said these things, she bedewed her cheeks abundantly with tears; and immediately, when the prayer was complete, whatever was withered, whatever contracted, whatever loosened in the woman's body was restored by the power of the blessed Bishop. By a like lot another paralytic too, approaching this monastery, as he touched the veil of that same rail, with all disability removed, departed whole.' Now it is distant from the city of Poitiers about forty stades. CHAPTER XXXI. Concerning the spring which the Saint by prayer obtained that it might flow forth. Departing thence, we entered the territory of Saintes.
And when at a certain banquet we were conversing about the powers of blessed Martin, one of the citizens faithfully related this to me, the others affirming it to be true. Najogiata is a villa situated in this territory, to which, when Saint Martin while yet surviving in the body was coming, he met a man carrying water with a little vessel. For that well from which he was carrying it was situated in a valley about a thousand paces from the villa, and from it the inhabitants brought up water to drink. Then the Man of God said to the man carrying the water: 'I beg you, dearest one, stay your hand, and grant a little water to drink to this little donkey on which I sit.' He said: 'If you think it necessary to water your ass, go to the well, and drawing it you will give it to him.'
'For what I have carried with labour I will not provide;' and saying this he passed by. As he was departing, immediately a woman came, herself also carrying water in a pitcher; and the Man of God said the like to her. She at once said to him, just as Rebecca of old, hearing the messenger of God (Genesis 24): 'To you also I offer it,' she said, 'and to your donkey, drink; nor is it a labour for me to draw again. Only let your will be done, who, journeying on your way, suffer need.' And setting down the little vessel from her arms, she gave his donkey to drink. When this was done, having drawn water again and filled the little vessel, she was returning to her life. The Saint, following her, said: 'I will repay you with a benefit for your reward, because you watered the donkey of my Lord.'
And putting his knees on the ground, he prayed to the Lord that in that place He would show a vein of a spring. And immediately, when the prayer was completed, the earth being burst open, He laid bare an immense spring while the people marvelled. It bestows a benefit even to this day on the men dwelling in that field. For in the mouth of that spring there is a stone as a testimony, which retains the footprint of this little donkey on which the holy Bishop sat. CHAPTER XXXII. Concerning the fire of the city of Poitiers. Nor do I think that should be passed over in silence, which at that time, when Plato obtained the episcopate of the city of Poitiers, the power of the Saint was shown. A house adjoining the ecclesiastical house was being burned in a very great fire, and sparks with embers were falling upon the church house, the wind driving them.
But he, having with him some of the dust of the blessed tomb, raised up the chrismarium against the fire; a wind suddenly arising, contrary to that wind, defending the flames from the church roof, drove them into another quarter, and thus the church house was set free. CHAPTER XXXIII. Concerning a boy healed of a fever. But when his boy lay on his little bed, burning with a most bitter fever, and was now held to be as it were lifeless; when he offered the sick boy some of this dissolved dust, immediately, the fever put to flight, the boy recovered from his distress. But let us return to the basilica of the Saint. CHAPTER XXXIV. Concerning Leodulfus, mad and disabled.
When some years ago a great earthquake shook the earth, and all things were violently moved, as though about to fall in a single moment, a certain Leodulfus, violently shaken by it, was not only deprived of his senses, but was also rendered disabled in all his limbs. He, coming to the basilica of the Saint at Tours, and applying himself to prayer for a few days, was restored both his voice, his sense, and all his limbs, and as though brought back to life he was rendered safe and sound. CHAPTER XXXV. Concerning an innocent man accused through slander, and set free. Nor do I think that should be passed over, that a man innocently accused through the slanders of wicked men was being led to the city bound with a strap, that he might be thrust into prison. And when before the basilica of Saint Peter the apostle he had come into the public...
...causeway, his hands were loosed, and he said to the guards: 'In this it appears that I am free from the guilt of which you speak, since my hands have been loosed by divine power.' Then they, indignant, bound him more tightly, and moreover, with another strap added to the binding, they so to speak bound the very bonds. But it happened at that time that we were coming from the basilica of Saint Martin through the street. And when these men, coming to meet us, drew near, as soon as the bound man caught sight of the Saint's basilica, immediately his hands were loosed; and leaping down from the horse on which he sat, he seized our feet, setting forth that he was being unjustly condemned. And thus, while we conferred with the judge, he departed without molestation.
CHAPTER XXXVI. Concerning a woman struck dumb and healed. The wife of Serenatus, our man, when she was returning from the farm-work, her husband having gone on ahead, suddenly slipped from the hands of those accompanying her and fell to the ground, and with her tongue bound, unable to bring forth any word from her mouth, she became mute. Meanwhile soothsayers came, and saying that she was suffering the assault of the noonday demon, brought forth bindings of herbs and words of incantations; nor according to their custom could they confer any healing on her who was about to perish. And while the household was clamouring with mingled howling, her son came running breathless to Eustenia our niece, announcing that his mother had reached the end of her life.
She, coming to the sick woman and visiting her, with the bindings removed which the foolish ones had applied, poured oil from the blessed tomb into her mouth, and sealed it with wax. Soon, speech being restored and the wile of wickedness broken off, the sick woman recovered. CHAPTER XXXVII. Concerning those healed of shivering fevers. At the time when, after the death of the most glorious King Guntram, King Childebert came to the city of Orleans, one of the courtiers' boys was grievously shaken by a tertian ague, with the fevers coming and going, a trembling supervening. When this had been complained of to us, we offered him a drink from the dust of the holy tomb; drinking which, with the trembling suppressed, he recovered.
But on the following night, when that day on which he was wont to be broken with fever had come, he saw through a vision a most hideous person coming and saying to him: 'Behold, now the time of your trembling has come; why do you delay? Do what you are accustomed to do.' As this one was saying this, there came a certain man, splendid of countenance, snow-white of hair, fair of aspect, saying to him: 'Do not tremble, but make over your forehead the sign of the venerable cross, and you will at once be healed.' Awakened in this vision and fortified with this little sign which he had been commanded, he never again suffered what he was wont to suffer. A girl of the queen, wearied by this ague, having taken a drink of this holy medicine, was healed. CHAPTER XXXVIII. Concerning the blind, the possessed, and the paralytic.
Not many days afterwards, when the yearly day of the holy solemnity returned, we, having come back from the king, were present at his festival, in which four blind men returned having recovered their sight, two possessed men were cleansed, and two paralytics who had been crippled, their steps being restored, returned unharmed. CHAPTER XXXIX. Concerning prisoners released. After a few days, when the judge had, by his sentence, shut up certain guilty men of the city of Tours in the prison-dungeon, as the prisoners lamented, the power of the blessed Confessor appeared, which, having burst the bonds of the fettered, permitted them to go free into the basilica. And thus they too, released by the judge, withdrew to their own homes. CHAPTER XL. Concerning Mauranus the mute.
A certain man in the region of Cantabria, named Mauranus, rising in the morning from his bed, while he was going out of the house, it seemed to him as though he had been struck on the neck by someone. Falling at once to the ground, he became as it were dead, and living for three days by his breath alone, he was thought to be as good as dead. But on the fourth day, when his eyes were opened, he could say nothing. For the faculty of speech had been taken from him. But hearing of the miracles of blessed Martin, he offered one third of a coin to some boatmen, indicating with supplication that they should carry it to the temple of the blessed Bishop. When they had departed, he, returning to his house, saw before his feet gold in the likeness of a third-coin. Having taken this up and weighed it, it was found to weigh the weight of a single solidus.
Seeing this, he said within himself: 'The power of blessed Martin has repaid me a reward in return for the interest which I sent to his temple.' And, inflamed with desire, he wished to embark on one ship and another, but was held back by his kinsfolk. But a third ship being found, he could in no way be held back. Having boarded it, when, the wind driving them, they had entered the deep sea, the power of the holy Bishop unsealed his mouth. He, stretching out his hands to heaven, spoke, saying: 'I give thanks to you, almighty God, who commanded me to plough this voyage. For even before I behold the temple of your Saint, I am filled with his benefits.' And as they sailed, they put in at the city of Bordeaux.
Having disembarked here from the ship, he approached the basilica of God's holy one and discharged his vow; and we have learned from his own mouth, related to us, the things we have written. CHAPTER 41. Concerning a crippled man and prisoners set free. When another festival came round, the one that is celebrated in winter, a certain Maurellus from the household of Pontion, a slave of Duke Agius, who in the month of March had through some sudden affliction lost the use of one knee and was unable to set his foot down, came supporting himself with a staff at the knee, as is the custom of the lame. When he had poured out prayer to the Lord for three days, on the fourth day, which was the morrow of the festival, he departed with his leg made straight and whole. But after a few days, men who were in prison...
...who were held in chains, being loosed by divine power, entered the basilica of the holy one, and through the judge were released free from any penalty. CHAPTER 42. Concerning another crippled man. A certain boy, contracted in his feet and hands, from the village of Themellum in the district of the city of Tours, near Amboise, came; and while among the other petitioners he was begging alms for his sustenance, he was visited by the power of the holy one, and departed made straight. CHAPTER 43. Concerning fevered boys who were healed.
Another little boy, the son of Euthymius our presbyter, when he had fallen into a violent fever and was thought to be at the point of expiring from it, the presbyter, taking some dust from the holy sepulchre and tearing off the fringes of the pall that lay upon it, brought them home with me; and he gave the dust to the boy to drink, and tied the fringes about his neck. Soon the fever was quenched and he was healed. In no different manner did the presbyter Ulfaricus, applying his diligence, come to the aid of another fevered boy, and that one too was at once freed from the fever and recovered through the power of the holy one. CHAPTER 44. Concerning Principius, who was out of his mind.
A certain Principius, a good man, a citizen of the city of Périgueux, was thought to have fallen into some kind of madness, and at times he was so gravely afflicted that he seemed to be out of his senses. When he had endured this for many months, he sought out the basilica of the blessed bishop; and there, as I judge, remaining four months, abstaining from the flesh of animals and from wine, aided by the protection of the blessed Confessor, he was restored unharmed to his own house. CHAPTER 45. Concerning Leodulf the blind, healed. And because the rusticity of men, while it follows the priestly preaching too little, prepares itself for offence against God, I will tell what lately came to pass.
A certain Leodulf, a man of the city of Bourges, when he had cut his hay and feared lest it be soaked by the coming rain and his labour be lost, on the Lord's Day in the morning yoked his oxen and set out for the meadow, and began to heap the hay upon the wagon; and at once one of his feet seemed to him as if on fire, and returning to his lodging he rested from his work. But after the solemnities of the Mass had been celebrated, again yoking his oxen he went on to complete the work he had begun; and when the wagon had been filled with hay, suddenly his eyes, as if pricked by certain goads, brought upon him the greatest pain. And once these were closed, he was never afterward able to open them.
And thus, remaining in blindness for a whole year, he came devoutly to the festival of the holy bishop; and on the third day thereafter he was restored to the benefit of the light he had lost. CHAPTER 46. Concerning two other crippled men. At that time another crippled man also came, and, made straight by the power of the holy one, returned on his own feet to his city. There had come a certain man from Brittany, named Paternianus, who through some contagion had been blind, mute, and deaf, and contracted in his hands; and with all his limbs wasted by the disease, his feet alone afforded the man any support.
This man sought out the basilica of the all-powerful Patron, poured out prayer, and with his eyes opened beheld the light he had lost, received his hands to their former use, and, marvelling that he had been saved by the power of the blessed bishop, proclaimed to the people the grace of his recovery. On account of the favour of this miracle he received gifts from many, and from these he has already redeemed not a few from the yoke of captivity. CHAPTER 47. Concerning a fire extinguished by his help. At the present time also, at the city of Bordeaux, one house caught fire and began violently to burn.