Armistice day is not the only thing commemorated on 11 November in Germany. In many regions the more prominent event is the anniversary of the funeral of St Martin of Tours; and so, after dark, one may well encounter clusters of small children carrying handmade lanterns in memory of the funeral procession and singing ‘Sankt Martin ritt durch Schnee und Wind’. The song tells the story of Martin cutting his cloak in half in order to clothe a naked beggar at the city gate of Amiens, as narrated in Chapter 3 of Sulpicius Severus’ biography of the saint. As recipient of a continuing cult, Martin thus ranks alongside St Nicholas (who fills cleaned boots with gifts on the night before 6 December) among the most recognisable ancient Christian saints in German popular culture.
The text that first made Martin famous, Sulpicius Severus’ Vita Martini, has now been afforded a new edition with introduction, translation and commentary by B., in a welcome contribution to an ongoing surge of interest in late-antique literary texts among English-language scholars. The text narrates Martin's life chronologically: born in Pannonia, probably in the second quarter of the fourth century ce, he served in the imperial household cavalry. After his baptism at the age of eighteen, he left the army two years later and became a monk. Between 370 and 372 he was consecrated Bishop of Tours. The narrative is interspersed with episodes of miracles worked by Martin, which increasingly usurp the chronological progression; and as soon as Sulpicius enters the narrative as a character who meets Martin, the tale ends fairly abruptly with a summary of Martin's virtues. His death, plausibly dated to c. 397, is presupposed (or perhaps anticipated) by the tenses used in the last two chapters, but it is not narrated in the Vita itself. B.’s volume, which is grounded in his teaching of the text to undergraduate students, ought to stimulate its inclusion in Latin courses everywhere. It constitutes a thorough introduction to late-antique prose narrative, while also providing valuable insights for scholars with more experience in the field.
The introduction contextualises the work with a biographical note on Sulpicius, his position in the networks around Paulinus of Nola and his writings, including the letters and the Dialogues that also deal with Martin. The accuracy of Sulpicius’ testimonies is subjected to a critical review: the fact that Martin, unlike some other protagonists of late-fourth century hagiography (such as Jerome's Paul and Malchus), was a real historical person means that the text's chronological and topographical inconsistencies cannot be dismissed as fictional licence. Instead, they have given rise to charges that Sulpicius is untrustworthy, even fraudulent. B. argues that these problems have sometimes been exaggerated by prioritising elements that Sulpicius’ technique of composition would have made him subordinate. This is backed up by reference to specifically Christian types of texts that influenced the Vita’s construction, including martyrologies and monastic biographies; but overall the significance of hagiography as a ‘genre’ that determines the author's choices is downplayed, in order to leave space for a wide range of generic and allusive influences selected specifically by the author. More emphasis is placed on the use of typology for generating meaning by interpreting events or characters of the past as prefiguring more recent ones. The importance of this point is underlined by the fact that two rather short sections, ‘Typology in the New Testament’ and ‘Typology in the Vita Martini’ each have their own heading, rather than being subsumed as subheadings under ‘Typology’. A clear outline of the notions involved and a helpful table indicating points of comparison being made between Elijah, Elisha, John the Baptist, Jesus and Martin himself make this an excellent introduction to the subject.
The rest of the introduction is taken up by an extensive discussion of style. This prominence is warranted by the attention that Sulpicius himself draws to the text's style in the introductory ‘Letter to Desiderius’. It abounds in valuable points about ‘Christian’ vocabulary, about specifically Sulpician lexical, syntactic and ornamental preferences, and particularly about the text's prose rhythm. Here the discussion sometimes becomes technical, but B.’s clear and precise language ensures that it remains comprehensible to the non-specialist. In addition, the insights and methods displayed here can often usefully be transferred to analysing other works of the period. A highlight is B.’s illustration of the affinities between the Vita and the rhythm of epic: with a deceptively light touch he transforms portions of Sulpicius’ prose into closely corresponding hexameters (pp. 74–5, also in the commentary on p. 216), while pointing out that the later versifiers of the Vita, Paulinus of Périgueux and Venantius Fortunatus, preferred more far-fetched paraphrases.
The text printed is based on that of Jacques Fontaine in the Sources Chrétiennes edition (1967–9), with a small number of modifications justified in a discussion of twenty loci uexati (pp. 83–9). The English translation is generally stylish, with a preference for archaism to represent Sulpicius’ own artificial idiom (e.g. ‘the king was wondrous glad’, translating mirum in modum gaudente rege at 20.5). In several places the colloquial phrase ‘seeing as’ (to indicate a character's implicit reasoning) introduces a lower note. But this slight anomaly does not compromise the translation's readable and accurate character, which saves the commentary a lot of work.
The commentary itself is therefore on the slender side, but its contents are substantial. Each judicious note assists markedly with the text's comprehension or with the appreciation of its style, occasionally reinforcing but rarely repeating material covered in the introduction. The historical background and underlying theological debates – including the ‘Arian’, ‘Priscillian’ and ‘Origenist’ controversies – are admirably elucidated throughout. A fine example is the long note on missio (discharge from the Roman army) on pp. 165–8, which investigates whether Martin would have been able, as the Vita has it, to demand an honourable discharge, and what reasons could plausibly be given for such a request. I was fascinated to see the notion of ‘conscientious objection’ being considered (cautiously) as a ‘de facto possibility’. B. displays an intimate knowledge of the principal literary frames of reference that he posits for the Vita: Classical Latin works on the one hand, in particular of Sallust and Virgil, and on the other the Bible, where B.’s expertise as the author of The Old Latin Gospels (2000) allows him to cite authoritatively traditions that precede the Vulgate version. In addition, pertinent parallels are adduced from further afield, spanning from Homer to Byzantine chronographers and even to Shakespeare.
The book is to be commended for its accessibility: besides the facing translation of the Vita Martini itself, almost all Latin is translated. Both the introduction and the commentary avoid jargon; in particular, all references to ancient works are spelled out. At the start of the volume, two detailed maps taken from C. Stancliffe, St Martin and his Hagiographer (1983) help with conceptualising Martin's (and Sulpicius’) journeys. The number of typographical errors and other infelicities is small, but they can sometimes distract: on. p. 133 there is a rogue ‘Lucretius’ wedged between a reference to Cicero's In Catilinam and one to ‘his De Natura Deorum’. On p. 153, commenting on 2.2, sacra illustris pueri spirauit infantia, the ‘elaborate word order’ is analysed as ‘Adjective1–Adjective2–Noun2–Verb–Noun2 (sic)’; the same phrase is analysed correctly on p. 76. Finally, Martin's saintly protégé Clarus has his name sullied momentarily on p. 159 through confusion with his opponent, the devil's disciple Anatolius. The generous bibliography might be usefully supplemented by S. Mratschek, Der Briefwechsel des Paulinus von Nola: Kommunikation und soziale Kontakte zwischen christlichen Intellektuellen (2002).
Such small defects are, however, negligible. B.’s Vita Martini deserves a wide audience of scholars, teachers and students, whether their interest is in late-antique social history, the development of Latin prose style, intertextuality or, indeed, in the sources of contemporary rituals. Hopefully a paperback edition will soon make this expectation more realistic.
