> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://theparnassian.com/en/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # The Life of Saint Martin, the Cloak Story and the Relic of the French Kings - URL: https://theparnassian.com/en/sviatoi-martin-i-nishchii/ - Published: 2024-11-13T05:31:02.000Z - Updated: 2026-10-02T18:40:20.000Z - Author: Alexandr Radayev - Tags: Faith, Art, Heritage, People Saint Martin and the Beggar. El Greco, 1597-1599. The episode of the cloak and the beggar is the best known in the life of Saint Martin. The Serbian bishop Nikolai Velimirovich gives the following version: > Martin was born to pagan parents in the Pannonian town of Sabaria in the year 316\. His father was a Roman officer, and the young Martin was put into military service against his will. By that time, however, he was already a catechumen of the Christian Church. From earliest childhood he had loved the Church with all his heart. > One winter, when he was already a soldier and was travelling to Amiens, he saw a beggar before the city gates, almost naked and shivering with cold. Martin felt pity for him, fell behind his comrades, took off his military cloak and cut it in two with his sword. Martin gave one half to the beggar, wrapped the other around himself and went on his way. > That night the Lord Jesus Christ appeared to him in a dream, wrapped in the other half of Martin's cloak, and said to His angels: “Martin is still only a catechumen, yet behold: he has clothed Me in his garment!” > Having left the army, Martin was baptised at once, and then baptised his mother. Afterwards he was tonsured a monk and led the humble life of a true ascetic, for which God granted him the gift of working miracles, so that he raised the dead and cast out evil spirits. > Martin was made Bishop of Tours against his will. After abundant labours in the Lord's vineyard and a hard struggle with pagans and Arian heretics, Saint Martin gave his holy soul into the hands of his Lord in the year 397. Naturally, there are different hagiographic variants. Sometimes we are told that on the following morning Jesus returned the cloak to Martin whole. Sometimes, that by the time he met the beggar Martin had already given away the rest of his clothing. This fact of his biography, at least, is presented as entirely documentary. Moreover, it is known that the cloak of Saint Martin was kept in the oratory of the Frankish Merovingian kings at the abbey of Marmoutier near Tours. In the Middle Ages the French kings took the wonder-working cloak of Saint Martin with them into battle and used it as a sacred relic on which oaths were sworn. The cloak first appears in the royal treasury in 679, when it was kept at the palace of Luzarches, a royal residence later handed over by Charlemagne to the monks of Saint-Denis. Should anyone wonder why Martin did not give away the whole cloak, there are several explanations. First, in the version in which he had already given away all his other clothing, this would have left him completely naked. Second, the cloak was a soldier's only property, and he divided equally what he himself had. Third, he could not put the beggar in the position of regretting the act of mercy already done by appearing before him without a cloak, which in winter would have meant death (Roman soldiers wore two types of cloak: the sagum and the paenula. Both were made of wool with a water-repellent finish. The cloak made it possible to sleep in the open air, and its length, greater than the human body (it was worn folded in half), made it possible to wrap oneself in it completely).