HISTORIOGRAPHY IN THE MIDDLE AGES - Julian Emperor

138 THOMAS J. HEFFERNANresignation, his choice of monasticism, his election as bishop, thefounding of Marmoutier (chapters 2–10), the fourteen chapters onhis miracles (11–24), and the last three chapters that report his inabilityto portray accurately the majesty of the man and his inner spirituality.In his Dialogues, Sulpicius reports how inspiring he found thetales of the great Christian ascetics depicted in Jerome’s Life of St.Hilarion, Evagrius’s translation of Athanasius’s Life of St. Anthony, andPontius’s Life of St. Cyprian. All influenced his Life of St. Martin. Yetfor all the literary influences on his Life of St. Martin, Sulpicius’sMartin remains a very personal document written while the saintwas alive, and during the time that their friendship was formed “Iburned with the fire to write his life/iam ardebat animus uitam illiusscribere”. 56Sulpicius’s Martin is crucial in the history of Christian biographybecause it does something not done before this time; namely, it presentsthree disjunctive and competing ideologies in the Church inthe figure of one man, thereby legitimating models of alternate routesfor later biographers to exploit. Sulpicius’s first ten chapters depictthe chronology of Martin’s life, recounting in turn each of its threevocational stages, as a soldier, ascetic/thaumaturge, and bishop. WhileSulpicius’s Martin is among the earliest of the vitae episcoporum, Sulpicius,unlike his near contemporary, Possidius, author of the earliest Lifeof St. Augustine of Hippo (ca. 430), or Paulinus of Milan’s Life of St.Ambrose (ca. 417?), does not concentrate on Martin’s episcopal career.The latter two Christian biographies present their subjects principallyas defenders of the Church against schismatics and the corruptionof the state. Indeed in Possidius’s Life of St. Augustine thesaint—true to his intellectual leaning—is depicted as being ambivalentabout miracles, telling the sick man who sought a cure “He[Augustine] replied that if he had any powers of that kind he wouldsurely have used them on himself first”. 57Although the charismatic ascetic, whether eremitic or coenobitic,was the dominant icon of sanctity at the end of the fourth centuryand dear to Sulpicius’s heart, Martin’s life legitimated other vocationsas routes to sanctity: bishop, warrior, abbot, ascetic, thau-56Sulpicius Severus, Vie de saint Martin, 1:310.57Possidius, Life of Augustine, in Soldiers of Christ: Saints and Saints’ Lives from LateAntiquity and the Early Middle Ages, ed. and trans. T. F. X. Noble and T. Head(University Park, Penn., 1995), 63.