The soldier who sliced his cloak in half at a city gate — and, without meaning to, gave the world the word 'chapel.'

The Facts

Martin was real, and his paperwork is unusually good. He was born about 316 in Pannonia, in modern Hungary, the son of a Roman army tribune, and named after Mars, the war god — which makes his later life a fine plot twist. Conscripted at fifteen, he served as a cavalryman in Gaul. He was baptized, eventually left the army, and became a disciple of Hilary of Poitiers. About 360 he founded Ligugé, the first monastery in Gaul, and in 371 he was made Bishop of Tours. Our main source is Sulpicius Severus, a man who actually knew him — but be fair about the source: he wrote the Life of Martin as a saint's life, to inspire, not to file a police report. Martin died on November 8, 397 — this very date — at Candes, and was buried at Tours on November 11, which is why his feast is the 11th. His most famous relic was his cloak: the half he kept. Frankish kings carried it into battle, and the little shrine built to house it was called the cappella, after the cloak — cappella gave us 'chapel,' and the priests who guarded it, the cappellani, gave us 'chaplains.'

The Story

The scene that made him: a freezing night at the gate of Amiens, a beggar shivering in rags, and the young soldier takes his sword to his own military cloak — cuts it clean in two — and hands half away. Later, the story goes, he dreamed of Christ wearing that half-cloak. It comes from Sulpicius, who knew him, so it sits close to the record, told by an admirer. The goose is later and pure legend: it says Martin hid in a flock of geese to escape being made bishop, and the birds' honking gave him away — which is why, to this day, goose is the Martinmas dinner.

The Following

Martinmas, November 11, was once one of Europe's great feasts — new wine opened, animals slaughtered for winter, accounts settled, children still carrying lanterns through German and Dutch streets at dusk. It is the true hinge of the year: harvest over, winter begun, charity expected.

The Rituals & Customs

Martinmas night is the most lantern-lit night in Europe. Across Germany, Austria, and the Netherlands, children make paper lanterns and process through the dark singing songs of St. Martin — the Laternelaufen — often behind a rider in a red cloak playing the saint himself, and the walk ends at a bonfire, the Martinsfeuer. In Dutch and Flemish towns the children go door to door with their lanterns and sing for sweets, a gentle kind of winter trick-or-treat. On the table sits the Martinsgans, the roast goose: legend says a flock of geese cackled and gave away his hiding place when he fled the crowds coming to make him bishop, and geese have been served ever since. Bakeries sell Weckmann, sweet bread men with raisin eyes, and the first of the new wine is tasted. Underneath every custom sits the oldest one, his own: give half of what you have to somebody cold.

Reach for him when: someone at your gate is cold, literally or

otherwise — and when you need the nerve to give away half of what covers you.