There could be no doubting, then, the sheer potency of Martin’s reputation; nor the prize that those who had abducted his corpse from his deathbed had won for Tours. The miracles which he was reported to have performed in life did not cease now that he was dead. In dreams, he would appear to the sick and the disadvantaged, straightening twisted limbs, giving voice to the mute. Yet if this inspired devotion, then so also – among the leading families of Tours – did it provoke unease. At Marmoutier, the monks put up signs indicating where he had prayed, and sat, and slept; but in Tours he tended to be remembered with less fondness. His successor as bishop, although he built a small shrine over Martin’s tomb, did not promote its fame. In the upper reaches of a church dominated by the urban elite, Martin was an embarrassment. His shabbiness; his lack of breeding; his demand that the gap between rich and poor be closed: none of it had been welcome. This, so Martin’s admirers charged, was because he had put other bishops to shame, by serving as a living reproach; but the bishops themselves, unsurprisingly, disagreed. They had a more elevated sense of their role: as the defenders of the natural order of things. How, if they were to give all their possessions to the poor, could they possibly be expected to maintain their authority? Why would God wish to see the very fabric of society fall apart? What, without the rich, would be the source of charity?
Here, in a world where the wealthy were becoming ever more Christian, were questions that would not go away.
Treasure in Heaven
Far beyond the horizons of a provincial town like Tours, in villas sweet-smelling with expensive perfumes, adorned with marble of every colour, and brilliant with gold and silver furnishings, there shimmered the dimension of the super-rich. The very wealthiest of families owned estates that reached back centuries, and spanned the Roman world. By virtue of their pedigree and their income, the men who headed them were enrolled in the empire’s most exclusive club. The Senate, an assembly that could trace its origins back to the very beginnings of Rome, constituted the apex of a rigidly stratified society. Its members – albeit in private – might even sneer at emperors as parvenus. There was no snob quite like a senatorial snob.
How, though, for Christian plutocrats, was all this to be squared with one of their Saviour’s most haunting warnings: that it was easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God? In 394, an answer to this question was proposed so radical that it sent shock-waves through the empire’s elite, thrilling some, appalling many others. Meropius Pontius Paulinus was the epitome of privilege. Fabulously well-connected, and the owner of a vast array of properties in Italy, Gaul and Spain, he had enjoyed every advantage that breeding could bring. He had talent as well. Both in the Curia, the venerable building in the heart of Rome where the Senate met, and as an administrator, Paulinus had won himself a brilliant reputation while still only young. Nevertheless, he was tormented by self-doubt. A keen admirer of Martin, who had miraculously healed him of an eye complaint, Paulinus had come to believe that the surest blindness was that caused by worldly goods. Encouraged by his wife, Therasia, he began to contemplate a spectacular gesture of renunciation. When, after many years of trying, the couple had a son, only to lose him eight days later, their minds were made up. Their plan was ‘to purchase heaven and Christ for the price of brittle riches’.20 All their property and possessions, Paulinus announced, would be sold, and the proceeds given to the poor. Just for good measure, he renounced his rank as a senator, and sexual relations with his wife. When together they left Therasia’s native Spain, and headed for Italy, it was as a couple pledged to poverty. ‘The deadly chains of flesh and blood were broken.’21
For the rest of his life, Paulinus would live in a simple hut inland from the bay of Naples, in the city of Nola. Here, where as a young man he had served a term as governor, he devoted himself to prayer, to vigils, and to giving alms. Gold that would once have been lavished on silks or spices was now spent on clothes and bread for the poor. When wealthy travellers came to gawp, ‘their swaying coaches gleaming, their horses richly caparisoned, the carriages of the women gilded’,22 Paulinus would present himself as a visual reproach to their extravagance. Pale from his sparse diet of beans, and with his hair roughly cropped like a slave’s, his appearance was calculated to shock. His body odour too. In an age when there existed no surer marker of wealth than to be freshly bathed and scented, Paulinus hailed the stench of the unwashed as ‘the smell of Christ’.23
And yet to stink was, for a billionaire, as much of a fashion choice as it was to be expensively fragrant. Decades after his declaration that he would dispose of all his property, and despite his undoubted commitment to doing so, the precise details of Paulinus’ affairs remained opaque. One thing, though, was evident: he never lacked for cash to spend on his chosen projects. The poor were not the only focus of his ambitions. In the showiest tradition of the Roman super-rich, he had a fondness for grands projets. That he sponsored churches rather than temples did nothing to diminish the spectacular extravagance of their fittings. Despite his pointed refusal of the dues that had been his as a senator, Paulinus remained, at heart, a recognisably patrician figure: a grandee dispensing largesse. Perhaps this was why, despite his renown as a camel who had passed through the eye of a needle, he himself rarely made allusion to the famous saying. Instead, he far preferred another passage from the gospels. The story had been told by Jesus of a rich man, Dives, who refused to feed a beggar at his gates named Lazarus. The two men died. Dives found himself in fire, while Lazarus stood far above him, by Abraham’s side. ‘Have pity on me,’ Dives called up to Abraham, ‘and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, because I am in agony in this fire.’ But Abraham refused. ‘Son, remember that in your lifetime you received your good things, while Lazarus received bad things, but now he is comforted here and you are in agony.’24 Such was the fate that haunted Paulinus – and that he was resolved at all costs to avoid. Every act of charity, every scattering of gold coin, promised a drop of cooling water on his tongue. Wealth, if diverted to the needy, might serve to extinguish the flames of the afterlife. Here was the comfort to which Paulinus clung. ‘It is not riches in themselves that are either offensive or acceptable to God, but only the uses to which they are put by men.’25
This, as a means for resolving the anxieties of wealthy Christians, was a proposition that seemed to offer something for everyone. The poor profited from the generosity of the rich; the rich stored up treasure for themselves in heaven by displaying charity to the poor. The more a man had to give, the greater would be his ultimate reward. In this way – unsettling reflections on camels and the eyes of needles notwithstanding – traditional proprieties could be preserved. Rank, even among Christians as literal in their interpretation of the gospels as Paulinus, might still count for something. Yet not all were so sure. The fixed order of things was tottering. Ancient certainties were literally under siege. In 410, a decade and a half after Paulinus had renounced his wealth, a far greater spectacle of abasement shocked the world. Rome herself, the ancient mistress of empire, was starved into submission by a barbarian people, the Goths, and stripped of her gold. Senators were bled white to pay their city’s ransom. The shock was felt across the entire Mediterranean. Yet there were some Christians, rather than sharing in the outrage, who saw in the sack of Rome merely the latest expression of a primordial lust for riches. ‘Pirates on the ocean waves, bandits on the roads, thieves in towns and villages, plunderers everywhere: all are motivated by greed.’26 True of the Gothic king, it was no less true of senators. Rare was the fortune that had not been raised on the backs of widows and orphans. The very existence of wealth was a conspiracy against the poor. Alms-giving, no matter what Christian plutocrats might hope, could not possibly serve to sanctify it. The fires were waiting. The rich would never make it to Abraham’s side.