Martinmas

Once again Martinmas has rolled around. It means that a new year is waiting in the wings, ready to get underway. As the signal-day for the old six-week version of Advent, we’re reminded to locate our Year 2 Office materials and to find some decent selections for our Advent hymnody. Yes, some suggestions may even be forth-coming in the next few days as I start casting about myself…

St. Martin is one of the great heroes of Gallican monasticism so this is a good time to recall some of the other monuments from that source and to point you to the famous Life of Martin: these can be conveniently found together in this volume (which happens to be one of my favorites in the whole set…). In addition to the importance of Gallican monasticism, the Life of Martin became a template of sorts that, in conjunction with Athanasius’s Life of Antony, set a pattern for Western hagiography that blossomed in the centuries that followed.

I said a while ago that I would take a break from documenting our ongoing inter-Anglican feud until today. The time off has been good for me. While I may comment on such matters, I don’t see them occupying a whole lot of space here—I’d rather use it for something edifying instead…

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