and we take the English from the same account;
but we will write no more but his own miracles.
Martin, the great bishop, was born in the fortified town
called Sabaria, in the province of Pannonia,
and was brought up in Ticinum (Pavia) in the Italian land.
He came of heathen parents, but nevertheless noble,
of honourable kindred in worldly things;
his father was first a soldier and afterward a captain of soldiers,
and Martin was accustomed to weapons from childhood,
and followed war amongst the soldiers in training;
first under Constantine the noble emperor,
and again under Julian the wicked apostate;
nevertheless, not of his own will, because that from childhood he was rather
instigated by God to divine service
than to worldly warfare, even as he afterward shewed.
When he was ten winters old, he was anointed with chrism (as a catechumen)
against the will of his parents, and in wondrous measure
he was at once wholly turned to God's service;
and when he was twelve winters he desired (to retire) to the desert,
and he would likewise have accomplished it, if he had been old enough.
His mind was, nevertheless, ever pondering about monasteries
or about churches and God's ordinances;
he meditated in childhood that which he afterwards performed.
Then was the emperor's command that the sons of the soldiers
who were superannuated should be nominated
to the same military service in which their fathers had been,
and Martin was thereupon denounced by his father,
