It is not lawful

Pugnare mihi non licet , St Martin is supposed to have said. Not everyone buys is. J. Fontaine, who edited the text of the life of Martin, says that such a declaration in Martin’s time is unbelievable: “an aggressive proclamation of conscientious objection, forty-two years after the Council of Arles, forty-three years after the victory of Milvian Bridge, when the chrismatory was stamped on the imperial flag and when the safety of the Christian empire tended to become identical with that of the Church.” Plus, the declaration comes from “an old legionary who was perhaps even an officer, and who had reached the time of honorable discharge.” A Christian declaration of conscientious objection after Constantine does seem unlikely.

Fontaine argues that the stirring words are put in Martin’s mouth to smooth the way, to “dress Martin up” as a potential bishop of tours. As Jean-Michel Hornus ( It Is Not Lawful for Me to Fight: Early Christian Attitudes Toward War, Violence, and the State (Christian Peace Shelf) ) summarizes Fontain’s argument, “the fact that he had been a solider . . . was shocking for good society in Gaul, which knew only too well the exactions of the army . . . . Therefore, in order expressly to ensure that St. Martin might be accepted as a bishop of Tours, his biographer felt compelled drastically to contract the period of time during which his hero had done military service [from 20 to 2 years] and to imagine that at the end of his service he had displayed an attitude of radical condemnation of the army.”

As Hornus’s title suggests, he does not agree with Fontaine’s interpretation.

He admits that it is possible that Martin’s views might well have changed, but notes that “fundamental change is central to conversion.” He also notes that even if Fontaine is correct, his argument demonstrates that anti-military attitudes were widespread among the Christians of Gaul.

Hornus’s last point is a good one, but the notion that Martin experienced a fundamental conversion after twenty years in the military is harder to swallow. Martin was forcibly put into service by his father, a military tribune, was baptized at 18, and according to the consensus chronology, served another two decades in the army as a baptized Christians. He might certainly have come suddenly or gradually to the conviction that military service was incompatible with Christian faith. But for a considerable time he considered military service in the Christianizing Roman army to be compatible with his baptism.

I think Fontaine’s interpretation is plausible, but more importantly Martin’s story illustrates the complexities and ambiguities of early Christian attitudes toward military service.