Tomorrow is Martinmas, the Feast Day of St. Martin of Tours. Three years ago I posted about him being the patron saint of reformed alcoholics. I am updating that post with reasonable speculation on why such a patronage is attributed to him.
St. Martin of Tours was a Roman soldier who renounced military service and became a monk whose act of charity, that of cutting his cloak in two to clothe a freezing beggar, became one of the most recognizable scenes associated with him.
In my research of the post of three years ago, I saw his patronage of reformed alcoholics mentioned in multiple Catholic sources, but none really explained why. There are no stories of St. Martin struggling with alcohol, nor any recorded miracles specifically involving alcoholics.
Catholics often have an odd manner by which they attribute patronages to saints. For example, St. Gerard Majella is the patron saint of pregnant women due to a miracle where he gave a young woman a handkerchief, telling her to keep it for future use. Years later, she was in a life-threatening childbirth, but when she pressed the handkerchief to her stomach, the danger passed, and she gave birth to a healthy baby. This and other stories of his intercession for mothers and the unborn led to this patronage. You might think that this patronage should belong to a woman, perhaps a medieval midwife known for piety and miracles. But no. It’s a man. St. Cecilia is the patroness of musicians, despite there being no record of her being one. (Miraculous angelic music was heard being sung at her wedding.) St. Catherine of Siena is the patroness of fire prevention, supposedly due to a quote of hers: “Be who God meant you to be and you will set the world on fire.” St. Lawrence is the patron of cooks, because he was barbecued to death. St. Clare of Assisi is the patroness of television, because she had a vision of a faraway Mass. There are others, but you get the idea. So, why might St. Martin of Tours follow this pattern of being attributed to something he was never associated with, or because of some odd connection?
St. Martin is the patron of vintners and wine-makers. When he became bishop of Tours (located in a wine-rich region of Gaul, modern-day France) vineyards were flourishing. Wine was important to the economy, so he was adopted as a saintly benefactor by the winemaking industry. It would be natural, then, that when the product of this industry is abused, that he would be invoked to intercede for those doing the abusing.
It isn’t all that surprising that his feast day became a major celebration of the wine harvest in many regions of Europe, especially given the coincidental falling of that date soon after the harvest. The new wine was sampled, there was much feasting and… there was much drinking. So, like I said three years ago:
(November 11th) is like a Carnival (Shrove Tuesday, or the day before Ash Wednesday and the start of traditional Lent in February or March) and people celebrated like crazies and did all sorts of naughty things before settling down to a rigorous, penitential fast to atone for that.
People, perhaps because of exhortations by the clergy, were inclined to atone for the excesses committed on November 11th. Those who overindulged on Martinmas entered into a season of restraint, penance, and prayer; and given that Christmas was coming up in over a month, this may have also joined with preparation for commemorating the Nativity of Christ. Forty is a penitential number in Christianity (it rained 40 days and 40 nights after Noah built the ark; the Hebrews wandered for 40 years before finding the Promised Land; Jesus was lead into the desert for 40 days to endure temptation…) and so a 40 day period of fasting and penitence was prescribed and gradually spread throughout European Christianity. This is known as “St. Martin’s Lent,” and eventually evolved into the liturgical season of Advent.
Therefore, he was gradually over time accorded the title of “patron of reformed alcoholics.” He himself never abused alcohol (no record of anyone charging him with that;) nor any record of him exhorting people to abhor drink (there is no scriptural basis for avoiding alcohol, except passages about taking all things in moderation.) So, although I could not find anything specific, like a homily about him, or some biographer suggesting it, one could make a logical leap and connect him to reformed alcoholics in a manner similar to the above examples of a saint being given patronage over something they might not have had anything to do with during their temporal sojourn on Earth.
St. Martin of Tours is also the patron saint of soldiers (easy to see where that came from,) of the poor (he was known for acts of charity, like giving a beggar half of his cloak,) and of …. tailors! See, there’s another example like the Sts. Cecilia, Gerard Majella, and Clare. His patronage of tailors comes from his act of cutting his cloak in half!
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