The appeal of the ascetic life of the desert saints spread quickly to Europe, in no small part thanks to the inspiration ignited by the Latin translation of Athanasius’s Life of Antony. Among his earliest emulators in the west was Martin of Tours (ca. 316/336–397). Originally from Pannonia (modern Hungary), Martin enlisted in the Roman army as a young man, but refused to fight because he was a “soldier of Christ.” He spent several years as a wandering hermit before settling in Poitiers (modern France), where he preached against pagan practices in the countryside. Elected bishop of Tours in 371, he established a monastic retreat in nearby Marmoutier, where he and his brethren lived in caves. Shortly before Martin’s death in 397, his friend Sulpicius Severus wrote down many of the miracles performed by the saint during his lifetime, including the resurrection of the dead. The exorcism of demons featured prominently in Sulpicius’s Life of Martin, both as a demonstration of his God-given power and as a tool to convert pagans to Christianity.
At the same period, the slave of a man called Taetradius, who was of proconsular rank, was possessed by a demon tormenting him to death with great pain. When Martin was asked to lay his hand on him, he ordered that the man should be brought to him. But it was utterly impossible for the evil spirit to be brought out from the cell where it was, so fiercely did it attack those who tried to enter with its rabid bites. Then Taetradius threw himself at the blessed man’s feet, begging him to come along to the house where the possessed man was being held. But Martin said that he was unable to enter a house that belonged to a pagan, an adherent of a false religion. For at that time Taetradius was still entangled in the error of paganism. So he promised that if the demon was driven out of the boy, he would become a Christian. Then Martin laid his hand on the boy and cast forth the unclean spirit from him. When he saw this, Taetradius believed in the Lord Jesus and was immediately made a catechumen; not long afterwards he was baptized and continued always to have an extraordinary affection for Martin as the person responsible for his salvation.
During this same period and in the same town, as Martin was entering a house belonging to the head of some family, he stopped on the very threshold, explaining that he could see a horrifying demon in the entrance hall to the house. When he ordered it to depart, the demon seized the owner’s cook, who was in the inner part of the building. The wretched thing began to tear him with its teeth and to maul anyone it came across. The house was thrown into confusion, the household members panicked, and the people turned and ran. Martin stood in the way of this raving creature and first ordered it to stop. But when it raged and showed its teeth and, with mouth wide open, threatened to bite him, Martin put his fingers in its mouth and said, “If you have any power, eat these.” But then, as if it had received white-hot metal in its jaws, it withdrew its teeth a long way, refusing to touch the holy man’s fingers. Forced by these punishments and torments to flee from the body of the man who was possessed, it was not allowed to leave through his mouth but was expelled in a flow of diarrhea, leaving behind it foul traces.
Then when a sudden rumour concerning barbarian movements and attacks had thrown the city into a panic, Martin gave the order that a man possessed of a demon should be brought before him. He commanded it to state publicly whether this news was true. It then confessed that it was accompanied by ten demons who had spread this rumour throughout the population so that this fear, if nothing else, might drive Martin from the town; it admitted that the barbarians were not planning an attack at all. And so, as soon as the unclean spirit had confessed these things in the middle of the church, the city was freed from the fear and confusion rife at that time.