Editing Martin of Tours (section)

=== Bishop ===
[[File:St.Martins.Skull.jpg|thumb|A part of St Martin's skull in the [[Basilica of Saint Martin, Tours]]]]

In 371, Martin succeeded Litorius, the second [[bishop of Tours]]. He impressed the city with his demeanour. He was enticed to Tours from Ligugé by a ruse — he was urged to come to minister to someone sick — and was brought to the church, where he reluctantly allowed himself to be consecrated bishop.<ref name=":0" /> According to one version, he was so unwilling to be made bishop that he hid in a barn full of geese, but their cackling at his intrusion gave him away to the crowd; that may account for complaints by a few that his appearance was too disheveled to be commensurate with a bishopric, but the critics were hugely outnumbered.

As bishop, Martin set to enthusiastically ordering the destruction of pagan temples, altars and sculptures:
{{blockquote|[W]hen in a certain village he had demolished a very ancient temple, and had set about cutting down a pine-tree, which stood close to the temple, the chief priest of that place, and a crowd of other heathens began to oppose him; and these people, though, under the influence of the Lord, they had been quiet while the temple was being overthrown, could not patiently allow the tree to be cut down.|source={{harvnb|Severus|1894|loc=ch. xiii}} }}

Sulpicius writes that Martin withdrew from the city to live in [[Marmoutier Abbey (Tours)|Marmoutier]] (''Majus Monasterium''), a rural [[monastery]] which he founded a short distance upstream from Tours on the opposite shore of the river [[Loire]]. Martin introduced a rudimentary [[parish]] system in his diocese. Once a year, the bishop visited each of his parishes, traveling on foot, or by donkey or boat. He continued to set up monastic communities, and extended the influence of his episcopate from Touraine to such distant points as Chartres, Paris, Autun, and Vienne.

In one instance, the pagans agreed to fell their sacred pine tree, if Martin would stand directly in its path. He did so, and it miraculously missed him. Sulpicius, a classically educated aristocrat, related this anecdote with dramatic details, as a set piece. Sulpicius could not have failed to know the incident the Roman poet [[Horace]] recalls in several ''Odes'' of his own narrow escape from a falling tree.<ref>''Odes'' ii.13 and .17 and iii.4 (''me truncus elapsus cerebro sustulerat nisi faunus ictum dextra levasset'')</ref>