Saint Martin, or where the word “chapel” comes from

A soldier at the gate of Amiens

Martin was born at Sabaria, in Pannonia — today Szombathely, in Hungary —, the son of a military tribune, and grew up in Pavia. Sulpicius Severus, who wrote his life while he was still alive, gives no date; it is Gregory of Tours, two centuries later, who has him die “in the eighty-first year of his age”, which places his birth around 316, while other calculations, based on the same Sulpicius, move it as late as 336. At ten, he had himself enrolled among the catechumens against his parents' wishes; at fifteen, his father had him forcibly enlisted, as a veteran's son, in the cavalry of the guard.