Dialogues

Contents

Translation in progress.

Reading pages: 1.1–1.15 · 1.16–2.3 · 2.4–3.3 · 3.4–3.18

1. 1.1Postumianus returns from the East after three years, prompted by a dream, and joins Sulpicius and Gallus, a disciple of Martin, for a private conversation.
2. 1.2Sulpicius asks Postumianus to describe the faith and the monks of the East; asked about the Gallic clergy, Sulpicius complains of their hostility and of a friend who turned against him.
3. 1.3Postumianus sails to Africa, prays at Cyprian’s tomb in Carthage, is driven toward the Syrtis, and finds a hut in the desert coast of Cyrenaica.
4. 1.4The old man in the hut welcomes the travelers, prays with them, and feeds five men on half a barley loaf and herbs; Gallus jokes about Gallic appetites.
5. 1.5The old host turns out to be a presbyter of a humble brushwood church; his people neither buy nor sell, and he refuses gold for the church.
6. 1.6At Alexandria bishops and monks are in conflict over the condemnation of Origen’s books; Postumianus finds much to admire in Origen and some real errors.
7. 1.7A passage of Origen on the redemption of the devil provokes a riot; the prefect expels the monks; Postumianus notes Jerome’s change of mind and leaves Alexandria.
8. 1.8Postumianus goes to Bethlehem and praises Jerome’s learning; Gallus complains of Jerome’s satire on monks but admits it portrays real vices.
9. 1.9Gallus notes Jerome’s attack on virgins’ familiarities with clergy; Postumianus defends Jerome’s orthodoxy, leaves his household with him, and goes to the Upper Thebaid.
10. 1.10In the monasteries of the Thebaid the monks live under strict obedience; two boys carry a captured asp back in triumph and the abbot punishes them for boasting.
11. 1.11The hermit refuses food after the boys’ punishment, and after eight days the abbot finds warm heavenly bread hanging at his door.
12. 1.12Two old monks were never seen eating or angry; Gallus applies this to an irascible acquaintance and to a deserting freedman; Postumianus promises more stories.
13. 1.13A hermit with a well, an ox, and a garden feeds the travelers; vegetables cook in the sun; at the palm tree he feeds dates to a lion.
14. 1.14A she-wolf that ate at a hermit’s door stole a loaf, stayed away in shame, and returned penitent; Postumianus praises Christ’s power over beasts.
15. 1.15A lioness brings an anchorite to her blind cubs, he heals them, and she later brings him a skin as a gift.
16. 1.16An anchorite near Syene, poisoned by desert roots, learns from an ibex which plants are safe; Postumianus spent about nineteen months in the desert.
17. 1.17Postumianus visits Antony’s monasteries, the place of Paul the first hermit, the Red Sea, and Sinai, where a naked hermit avoided men to be visited by angels; along the Nile thousands of monks live under obedience.
18. 1.18A newcomer who promised to obey even if ordered into fire walked into a burning oven at the abbot’s command and was unharmed.
19. 1.19A novice ordered to water a dry stick carried water from the Nile for three years until it blossomed; Postumianus saw the tree.
20. 1.20A famous exorcist, tempted by vanity, prayed to be possessed by a demon for five months and was thereby cured of pride.
21. 1.21Postumianus contrasts this humility with clerics in the West who grow proud of small honors and live in luxury; Gallus asks for the lesson on false righteousness.
22. 1.22A former tribune turned hermit, persuaded by the devil to return to save his family, was possessed until he returned to the desert; Postumianus now asks Sulpicius to speak of Martin.
23. 1.23Postumianus says the Life of Martin is read everywhere, from Rome and Carthage to the Egyptian desert, and asks for the stories left out of it.
24. 1.24Sulpicius argues that Martin equaled or surpassed the desert saints, for he worked amid hostile clergy and bishops, and he alone raised the dead.
25. 1.25Martin matched each desert saint’s miracles and also resisted vanity, refusing even to host the prefect Vincentius at his monastery.
26. 1.26Postumianus agrees that Martin is known everywhere except among the envious clergy of Gaul, who deny his miracles; Sulpicius hands the narration to Gallus, Martin’s disciple.
27. 1.27Gallus agrees to speak, apologizing for his rustic Gallic speech; he will tell only what he saw himself and not repeat the Life.
28. 2.1Martin secretly gives his own tunic to a poor man whom the archdeacon neglected, then celebrates in a cheap garment the archdeacon angrily buys.
29. 2.2A globe of fire is seen above Martin at the altar; he heals Gallus’s uncle Evanthius from a distance and draws snake venom out of a boy through his finger.
30. 2.3Soldiers whose wagon team shied at Martin beat him savagely; their mules then refuse to move until the soldiers find Martin and beg his pardon.
31. 2.4As bishop Martin raised a dead boy in a pagan village near Chartres, and the whole crowd became catechumens on the spot.
32. 2.5Valentinian I, influenced by his Arian wife, refused to see Martin; after fasting and prayer Martin entered the palace, and fire under the throne forced the emperor to rise and grant his requests.
33. 2.6The wife of the emperor Maximus served Martin at table with her own hands; Gallus compares her to the queen of Sheba.
34. 2.7Gallus answers that the circumstances excused the queen’s service, which happened once only; any who cite it must keep to every condition.
35. 2.8Postumianus doubts that Gallic clergy will heed Martin’s example; Sulpicius complains of the hostility his rebukes earned him; Gallus tells how straw from Martin’s bed healed a possessed man at Claudiomagus.
36. 2.9Martin calms a demon-possessed cow, and stops hounds chasing a hare; the fire story is referred to Sulpicius’s letter to Eusebius.
37. 2.10Martin’s sayings: a shorn sheep fulfills the gospel; a swineherd recalls the old Adam; a meadow partly grazed, partly rooted, partly untouched pictures marriage, fornication, and virginity.
38. 2.11A soldier turned monk wants his wife, now a nun, to live with him; Martin answers that no woman stands in the battle line, and that a woman’s victory is not to be seen.
39. 2.12Martin praised a virgin who refused even to let him see her, and accepted her gift; Gallus contrasts her with virgins who seek out priests and banquets.
40. 2.13Gallus and Sulpicius heard voices in Martin’s cell; Martin admitted that Agnes, Thecla, and Mary visited him, and Peter and Paul; he named demons as Jupiter and Mercury; an angel told him the decisions of the synod of Nîmes.
41. 2.14Martin foretold that Nero would return in the West and Antichrist, already born, would rule from Jerusalem; the conversation breaks off at the arrival of the presbyter Refrigerius.
42. 3.1On the second morning many monks and clergy gather to hear Gallus, and two officials are admitted; the rest of the lay crowd is turned away.
43. 3.2At Chartres Martin heals a girl mute from birth with blessed oil, in the presence of the bishops Valentinus and Victricius.
44. 3.3Oil blessed by Martin overflows its flask; a flask of his oil falls without breaking; a dog is silenced in Martin’s name.
45. 3.4Martin lay at the door of the cruel count Avitianus at night until an angel forced the count to come out, release his prisoners, and leave Tours.
46. 3.5Gallus names living witnesses for his stories because some doubt them, and declares that the dialogue form conceals a truthful history.
47. 3.6Demons in the possessed cried out whenever Martin set out for the church; he exorcised by prayer in sackcloth and ashes, and the demons confessed their names.
48. 3.7Martin’s prayer freed a district near Sens from hail for twenty years; the storms returned in the year of his death.
49. 3.8Martin drives a demon from Avitianus’s back, after which the count is gentler; at Amboise a storm overthrows a pagan temple after Martin’s night of prayer.
50. 3.9A column from heaven shatters an idol; a woman with a flow of blood is healed by touching Martin’s garment; a snake turns back at his command.
51. 3.10At Martin’s word the deacon Cato catches a huge pike at Easter; Arborius sees Martin’s hand shine as with gems at the eucharist.
52. 3.11After the execution of Priscillian, Martin goes to Trier to plead for the condemned and against sending armed tribunes to Spain; Maximus delays him.
53. 3.12The bishops press Maximus against Martin; the emperor tries persuasion and, failing, sends executioners against those Martin had pleaded for.
54. 3.13To save the condemned and stop the tribunes, Martin takes communion once with the Ithacian bishops at Felix’s ordination, refuses to sign, is consoled and warned by an angel, and never attends a synod again.
55. 3.14Martin’s power returns: a possessed man is healed at the gate; a pagan merchant saved at sea by calling on Martin’s God; a household plague ended after seven days of prayer; a monk’s indecency perceived from afar.
56. 3.15Incited by demons, Martin’s presbyter Brictio insults him after being rebuked for buying horses and slaves; he repents, and Martin refuses ever to depose him: “If Christ endured Judas, why should I not endure Brictio?”
57. 3.16Postumianus applies the example to an unnamed neighboring bishop, quarrelsome for three years, who should imitate Martin’s patience.
58. 3.17Sulpicius ends the day and charges Postumianus to spread Martin’s fame: to Paulinus in Campania, to Carthage, Greece, and Egypt.
59. 3.18Sulpicius asks Postumianus to visit the grave at Ptolemais of Pomponius, who died at sea after following another leader rather than Martin; the friends part in tears.