Early in the fourth century, probably in 316, a boy named for Mars, the god of war, was born to a soldier and his wife in the village of Sabaria in modern-day Hungary. Only a few years before the birth of the boy, who would later be known as [Saint] Martin of Tours, Constantine freed the Christians from two centuries of secret meetings, persecution, and murder. By declaring the Edict of Milan, Constantine—the leader of the Roman Empire—had allowed Christians to practice their faith openly.
While his parents worshipped and offered sacrifices to the Roman gods and the emperor himself, Martin, even as a child, was drawn to Christianity, specifically to its followers who had so recently been killed by Constantine’s slaughterous predecessor Diocletian, and the ascetics -hermits who adopted a form of martyrdom by living a life of prayer, alone in the woods or the desert.
When Martin was fifteen years old, a decree was sent down from the emperor that required all sons of veterans to join the army, changing Martin’s plans of a solitary life for Christ. Instead, Martin found himself a member of the extravagantly uniformed imperial guard, one of five hundred cavalrymen protecting the, emperor himself during military campaigns.
The imperial guard stationed in Amiens, a city in Gaul near the Roman frontier. During a particularly cold Amiens winter, in 335, many of the city’s poor were freezing to death. One day, as Martin came through the city gates, he saw a beggar sitting on the ground, shivering. Martin had no money to give the man, so instead, he cut his cape in two with his sword and gave, one half to the beggar. The, white cape, lined with lambskin and fastened at the right shoulder with a broach, was distinct to the elite corps that protected the emperor.
The cape, or “chlamys”, gave the men their name—the, candidate—or men clothed in white. Those watching the scene between the soldier and the beggar laughed as Martin put the other half of the white. cape back around his own shoulders. That night Martin, who was still not baptized, dreamed that he saw Christ wearing the half of his cape he’d given to the beggar.
It was a scene straight out of the Gospels, when Matthew predicted that at the Second Coming, Christ will sav, “Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.”
Martin became a Christian, then a bishop, and he founded a monastery. After his death, he became France’s patron saint, and his cape became an object of veneration, preserved in the city of Tours. For centuries, French kings carried the cape into battle in a portable. shrine called the “capella”. The priest who cared for “the shrine was called the “capellini”, or “chapelains” in French. In English it became “chaplain.”
From: “Mission at Nuremberg: An American Army Chaplain and the Trial of the Nazis” by Tim Townsend, ((New York: Harper-Collins publishers) 2014, pp. 50-51.