Martin of Tours

Martin made holiness visible in the West after the age of persecution. A Roman soldier turned monk, he became famous for sharing his cloak with a beggar and later became bishop of Tours against his preference for monastic life. He founded monastic communities, evangelised rural Gaul, and became one of the first great non-martyr saints of the Latin church. Sulpicius Severus's Life of Martin then gave the medieval West a template for what a saint's life could look like when the saint died in bed rather than in the arena.