> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.loganmartinisaac.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # MTS-04: Smith on Severus - URL: https://www.loganmartinisaac.com/smith-mts-04/ - Published: 2012-10-25T05:21:00.000Z - Updated: 2026-07-17T17:36:27.000Z - Author: Logan Martin Isaac - Tags: coursework, MTS, Warren Smith, Narrative Challenge *Discussed on October 24, 2012, with Warren Smith as part of my* [*MTS Thesis Proposal*](https://www.loganmartinisaac.com/tag/narrative-challenge/)*.* **Source:** Sulpicius Severus, *Vita Martini* (trans. Robert Alexander) ## Discussion Prompt Sulpitius Severus by all accounts lived during the same time as that of the subject of his biography, Martin, the Bishop of Tours from 370 until his death in 396\. Severus is a first hand witness to some of what he relays in his many writings on the bishop, including not just the biography *The Life of Saint Martin*, but his *Dialogues*, *Letters*, and *Sacred History*. The two came to know one another only after Martin had gained some notoriety in the countryside of modern France, and Severus mentions his military service almost embarrassingly. In fact, the life of a soldier was one worthy of denigration, as evidenced by his friend Brictio suggesting such a life was "tarnished."\[1\] If such was the prevailing sentiment in the church, it might explain Severus' reducing what otherwise must have been a twenty or more year difference between his baptism and his declaration to Julian. However, Severus goes out of his way to sing the praises of Martin, and the glowing light in which the saint is viewed might have prevented his biographer from giving a more critical account. To compensate for what Severus sees as a "disgraceful" concealment of "the excellences of so great a man," he makes it his "endeavor that he should not remain unknown who was a man worthy of imitation."\[2\] Here one might ask the question of whether there was any sense of trepidation for Severus that, had he not recorded such a life, that it would be lost to time and therefore fail to form a model for the church. In contrast to a number of patristic writers, Severus, and perhaps Martin as well, thinks less of contemplation than he does of imitation. Severus has a low view of "philosophizing," calling it "vain," and he might fit within contemporary ethics of virtue, in which embodied habits are passed along narratively in order to create moral communities and individuals. It may be unfair to pit philosophy against virtue, but the latter seems clearly to be Severus' interest. His second undoubted Letter, to Aurelius, brings elucidates more on the virtues of Martin in light of the saint's death. In particular, Severus claims that Martin was "joined especially to those who washed their robes in the blood of the lamb," the martyrs, for "by vow and virtues he was alike able and willing to be a martyr."\[3\] Severus here reveals perhaps more than anywhere else a subtle flavor of works-righteousness that borders on heresy. From earlier discussions, it has become clear that martyrdom is a gift from God, and that saints join their ranks only by divine election. Therefore Martin could not "attain\] to the honor of martyrdom without shedding his blood." Severus seems unsatisfied calling Martin a confessor, the name for Christians who persevered persecutions without recanting. However, it would be important to turn briefly to the tension between the Greek *martus* discussed in prior sessions and the Latin *exemplum* that Severus almost certainly uses in its place. Whereas Severus could not rightly use the word "martyr" to describe Martin, he does repeatedly call him an "example." Upon the lips of Martin he places; "I leave you another example,"\[4\] the Latin root of which is *exemplum*, from which we derive exemplar. The Latin word also gives us "sample," which evokes a Eucharistic not far removed from that of the martyr, who makes Christ present by their witness to death. While we might behold a witness, we also sample Christ's body by placing the host on our tongue and consuming him. I suspect I will explore this distinction more fully in my final thesis. Returning to the work itself, were Severus the honest ecclesiastical historian that some claim him to have been, he would have had a keener eye to detailing Martin's faults along with his strengths. His description of Martin's military career is telling in this regard. If, for example, it were true that Martin "act\[ed\] the part of the soldier, for nearly two years after he received baptism,"\[5\] and that it was under Julian at Worms that he refused to fight, Severus fails to recall events that occurred during his own lifetime; Julian's battle at Worms occurred in 355 or 356 CE, and if Martin was born in 316 CE and conscripted at 15 in 331, he served a total not of seven years, but of 24 or 25 years. Perhaps his miscalculation (or amnesia) is explained by his desiring to present only the most pure and stoic picture of the bishop. Martin serves almost as a lynchpin for his *Sacred History*, which ends abruptly upon the bishop's frustration over the Prisillian affair in 385 and death in 397. However selective Severus' ecclesiastical and Martian histories might be, it is clear that for him, Martin is the embodiment of holiness and Christian virtue. Martin's own interest in concealing his holiness has been transmitted to Severus' own writing, which agonizes between vain embellishments and humble reservation, an agony the saint himself seemed never to struggle with, sure as he was in his reluctance in the very things at which he excelled; first at military service, and then at seemingly menial tasks as first an exorcist, then as priest, bishop, and finally, saint. ### Epilogue Even in writing these reflections, I realize I have forced myself to focus on the author instead of the subject, which is precisely what Severus hopes to avoid. In Severus' defense, he does try to point readers (and listeners, as his *Dialogues of/with/for The Gaul* suggest a live audience) beyond himself and to Martin. He repeatedly goes against Martin's own desire for secrecy in order to preserve the life of a saint left to us almost exclusively by Severus' efforts. I am unquestionably grateful for his dedication, though he succeeds in ensuring my gratitude is ultimately for the "example" he continuously points toward. Though I am reading Severus in my above critique, he instead asks me to read Martin himself, as we shall. ### Questions If all three of the saints that Martin converses with in Dialogue II, Chapter XIII (p.45) are women (Agnes, Thecla, and Mary), how might their prominence in this story speak to issues of gender, authority, and virtue? Under what category of virtue does Martin's sincere interest in secrecy and reservation fall, and how does this reflect Christ's own repeated insistence that the apostles and others remain in confidence? ### Footnotes \[1\] Severus, Sulpitius. Dialogue III, Ch. XV, p. 53 \[2\] Life, Preface \[3\] Life, Ch. 1 \[4\] Letter II, p.20 (emphasis added) \[5\] Letter III, p.23 ## Discussion ### Discussion transcript **Logan:** ...it happens, I don't know what the life of faith is about per se, but we can't — and Stanley was— **Warren Smith:** Yeah, yeah, here becomes sort of the tricky thing. Let's start with the distinction. **Logan:** Okay. **Smith:** If martyrdom is something you're elected for, it's a very specific vocation — such that God is working within you to be a sign to other people, to, as you said, the martyr themselves, the church, and the world. **Logan:** Mm-hmm. **Smith:** But we are all called to live a life which is an example to the world and to one another of the life of faith. So *exemplum* has a broader vocational sense. And while the virtues of the person who is the example are ultimately derivative from God and reflect a participation in God, that's very different from being one who is, to the world, an image of the crucified by their own death. **Logan:** Okay — see, this is where it gets tricky. **Smith:** Okay. **Logan:** Because Martin and Severus, to his credit, continuously want to keep it secret. **Smith:** What's "it"? What do they want to keep secret? **Logan:** Heroic activities. It's really hard to tell — Severus will frequently say, "Now, I know I'm not supposed to say this, and I've sworn to such-and-such, and I won't mention whose name, but they're also a witness, and they're here with us." This was actually my second question: under what category of virtue does Martin's sincere interest in secrecy and reservation fall, and how does this reflect Christ's own repeated insistence that the apostles and others remain in confidence? **Smith:** Right, right, right. So you get sort of a repeated messianic secret. **Logan:** Yeah. So if martyr, or example, or whatever — if we're supposed to be for the world, for the church — how does that translate? I probably have an idea of an answer in my head, but I agree with Severus and Martin about a certain kind of humility. How do we reconcile the fact that we're all probably called to be examples, and yet Martin and Severus continually remind us of this weird sense of concealment? **Smith:** Yeah. One way I see it popping up — at the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says, "You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill can't be hidden, nor does anyone light a lamp and put it under a bushel... let your good works be seen by men, that they may give glory to your Father in heaven." But then in chapter six he says, "Do not practice your righteousness before men... in order to be seen by men." So it's the difference between wanting to be seen and praised for taking the praise yourself, versus being seen so that God may be praised. I think that's the basic contrast. But there's even an element of secrecy — that being private in one's deeds makes the act a sacrifice to God, in which it's God's praise alone that one desires. By doing it in secret, you cut out the possibility that other people will know about it. **Logan:** And yet we find out, curiously. I also thought of Peter Maurin — a lot of people associate the Catholic Worker with Dorothy Day, but Dorothy Day points to Peter Maurin. That's where I had in the back of my mind — Severus, not derogatorily, doesn't use the same language of philosophizing that, say, Denyssen does, or Augustine does — who I've had my sights on, though I don't know if that's necessarily fair. Augustine strikes me as someone wrestling with his own pride, and Martin doesn't. Martin seems very confident that this is the life he's called to lead. He keeps getting drawn into these other places very reluctantly, and yet he never refuses. **Smith:** Right, right. **Logan:** He keeps audience with the emperor. There's this really interesting story about the queen coming to him for counsel — it seems weirdly gendered, I don't know. So this is where, in my mind, there's also a connection to philosophy as abstraction. I'm not accusing anyone of this — Augustine or whoever — but the underwriting thesis I want to stick to is narrative theology and just war, and how just war has become so abstracted that it seems to have very little relevance to people on the ground. **Smith:** Mm-hmm. **Logan:** I wrote in my notes, as I was going through this: what stories constitute just war? It seemed almost nonsensical, because just war isn't a story — it's a list of criteria. But what I'm trying to say, in a broader sense, is there should be stories that constitute just war. Martin should be one of them. I'm rambling. **Smith:** No — there's an example of that. I'm thinking of the way Ambrose narrates virtue, using the biblical narrative — he re-narrates or redefines by re-narration. One of his examples is the issue of war: he makes the point that David did not go to war except with serious reflection and — what does he say — not quite "as a last resort," but that's the sense of it. So it's a way of reading an event of war through narrative. Another example — Ambrose is troubled by stratagems of deception. **Logan:** Mm-hmm — Ambrose is troubled by that? **Smith:** Yeah — that this is somehow unjust, less honorable than meeting people in the open field of battle. I guess the way stories of military exploits function is more inductive. It would be interesting to find more examples along that line. **Logan:** Well, one of the sound bites I always have in the back of my head is: if we talk about war and immediately think of proportionality, last resort, and so on, our imagination's already been co-opted. We should be thinking about dismembered bodies and what's normal. But I don't want to — I suspect what I'm beginning here is going to constitute some kind of academic career, and I don't want to assume the only way we can get to what I ultimately want to say is through war. **Smith:** Right. **Logan:** That's why virtue ethics has been so helpful, and narrative theology, and post-liberal theology — I think that's really helpful. I'm trying not to pigeonhole myself, and yet I think it's a very keen example, particularly with Martin. **Smith:** You just said something — oh, golly, what was I going to say... It was something about your comment that just war shouldn't — oh, it's the issue of moral psychology. Here's what I'm thinking about: in *De Clementia*, Seneca's work on mercy, he makes a distinction between *clementia*, mercy, and *misericordia*, compassion. **Logan:** This was — Cicero? **Smith:** Seneca. **Logan:** Seneca. **Smith:** He favors *clementia* over *misericordia*, because *clementia* is an act of reason ordered according to justice — I show you mercy because of compelling reasons. Whereas *misericordia* is the emotion of pity, and you don't want pity in play, because it distorts your judgment. In effect he'd say: *clementia* gives you mercy, but mercy understood by reason, whereas *misericordia* might seek the same outcome — that we not put you to death — but it does so out of an emotional connection with you, out of pity. However, Ambrose and Augustine don't abandon the language of *misericordia* — they want to preserve the idea that empathy, the emotional connection, has to accompany the moral judgment, or at least can't be separated from it. So what does *misericordia* really give you that the criteria of justice alone wouldn't, in terms of consequence? I think Augustine, more than Ambrose, wants to say: we need that emotional connection, partly because we're connected to one another and therefore can't be wholly detached. It's not that pity itself determines the judgment — you're more pitiable than this other person, so I'll be lenient to you but not them — but that compassion lets me make an appropriate connection and see myself in relationship to you. I think that's part of the moral psychology that gets at your point — that you don't simply want to talk about criteria for just war in the abstract, especially if that loses sight of the widows and orphans who, even in the best case, are going to be the result of war. **Logan:** Mm-hmm. **Smith:** So I think you're right that narrative theology lets you make the emotional connection necessary not only for appropriate moral judgment in a particular case, but for seeing ourselves in relationship to others. **Logan:** Can you spell *misericordia*? **Smith:** M-I-S-E-R-I-C-O-R-D-I-A. **Logan:** Does that relate to misery? **Smith:** I think it's misery and *cordia*, heart — the misery of the heart. **Logan:** Ah, okay — the misery of the heart. **Smith:** Yeah, hence compassion. **Logan:** Gotcha — that's really helpful for the broader picture. **Smith:** I'd be interested in hearing more about how you're thinking about the value of narrative theology — for your own project, or your larger project of being a theologian. **Logan:** Well, it springs from my own lived experience. When I applied to be a CO, I felt like I was teaching myself. I'd already applied and basically gotten run through the motions before I began discovering some of the soldier saints. I find this incredible connection — when I was going through RCIA at a Jesuit parish in South Durham— **Smith:** Is that confirmation? **Logan:** Yeah. **Smith:** Okay. **Logan:** And you're not supposed to take Catholic communion if you're not confirmed, so I wouldn't take it — but every Veterans Day, for two years now, I'd go somewhere else and take communion there, because I felt more in communion with that community than I often did with the larger church. I find virtue ethics somewhat translatable to what's already been instilled in me by the military — formation, repetition, habits. There's also this whole segment I haven't explored yet, about the irony of church history for me. Stanley and Sean Larson are apparently doing a class next semester on irony, and I told them about this book I'm working on about soldier saints — it's very ironic. In America we seem to have certain assumptions and predetermined language that carry those assumptions, and I think it's ironic that the patron saint of soldiers is a conscientious objector — and not just a CO, but one who isn't an isolationist. By my count he served a full military term — he could have retired, though I think at that time it was for a set term rather than for life, but I could be wrong. So it violates the pacifist assumption Severus himself seems to have — Martin was baptized, and there was this event, and he only stayed another two years, and Severus seems almost embarrassed by that. But it also challenges the more nationalistic assumption that our soldiers are all straightforwardly great. I probably don't need to explain that. **Smith:** Right, right. **Logan:** So there seems to be this really— **Smith:** Yeah, I— **Logan:** —prophetic, I don't know. **Smith:** Yeah — after last year, I don't know if I sent him the card, but a good friend of mine, we play war games together, he's had at least five tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. I was telling him about the conference and the icon, and I said Martin is the patron saint of both the soldier and the conscientious objector. And he said, "That's impossible — it's got to be one or the other." So I wrote back and appealed to Augustine: every just-war soldier is implicitly, potentially, a conscientious objector. He came back with, "Well, Augustine has a lot of good things to say." It was interesting that he'd see those two as immediately oppositional. The nearest I can make of it is the sense that a soldier is a person of duty — serves their country, does what they're told without a lot of question-asking. And yet I know this guy — he'd be the first to say what members of the SS did was wrong. I can't see him saying that's fine. He'd say there's a line — we're obedient a lot of the time, but at some point— **Logan:** Yeah, there are too many rabbit holes for me to dig my head out of. We haven't even talked much about selective objection — the Second Amendment to the Constitution originally protected conscientious objectors, used the phrase "religiously scrupulous persons" — Pennsylvania, William Penn, the Quakers. There's this cognitive shock that happens when you step back from your ideologies and really reflect on these questions. I say I'm a pacifist, but at the same time — I heard this from Stanley today at lunch — we're both pacifists, but we're still arguing for just war as at least some kind of middle ground. The more I talk about it, the more I find myself thinking I could see myself committing violence if it were really and truly something I believed could be justified. That's why all this is so important to me. **Smith:** Well, that's why I've enjoyed my conversations with Stanley over the years — he takes just war seriously, he knows a lot about it. What gets me is people who don't have any knowledge of military history or what life on the ground is like, and end up pontificating from one side or the other. Let's ground this conversation in some familiarity with what's actually going on. **Logan:** There's that too. One thing I need to keep in mind — we read Yoder, and one of the first things he does in *Christian Witness to the State* is make a case against Niebuhr: Christians are actually very much part of the conversation, and what Niebuhr's trying to do is dismiss pacifists into a kind of prophetic irrelevancy. Part of what he accuses Niebuhr of doing is essentially what's proverbially on the lips of veterans: "You don't know, because you weren't there." **Smith:** Right, right, right, right. **Logan:** And there's some credit to that — I don't quite know what to do with it. I told Stanley I have to be careful not to do that to Augustine, or Aquinas, or Ramsey, or Yoder. But there's still something — not necessarily better, but very enriching — about turning to the actual embodied, lived human experience of war to extrapolate some kind of epistemology. I don't know if I'll get this into the thesis, but what would something like "epistopraxiology" look like, where we don't privilege an abstracted epistemology — which is an indictment on some of the purer forms of philosophy, where it's just sitting in a study contemplating all day. What would it look like to privilege the kind of knowledge one gains through human experience, through habits, through discipleship? That may come later, but it's all tied together for me. **Smith:** Yeah, and I think rightly so. **Logan:** Anyway — Martin is just one of those figures. He really should have been martyred. The other one is Victricius of Rouen, same time period — marked for death, mysteriously escapes, and makes an appearance in the *Dialogues*. He may even have been in the crowd, I can't remember. And then there's George, patron of England — killed for refusing to confess Apollo as savior of all creation, and yet kingdoms have taken him as their patron, when it was actually a number of governors who killed him. What would happen if we incorporated the examples of their lives more fully into a theological framework — gave them theological credit, rather than merely praxeological credit, or whatever. **Smith:** Yeah, yeah. It's sort of as if we give credit to the people who have the theory, and then, oh, by the way, here's the person who embodies it. The example I've thought about — which would I rather do: write a beautiful piece of literature about virtue that people will read and admire, a great work — or actually be that virtuous individual, who may get fifteen minutes of fame, but that's it? Number one is a literary virtue — the ability to represent an ideal compellingly — versus actually living it. I think the problem is most of us in the academy would almost rather do the former — be able to articulate it rather than do it. In our better days we'd say, "Oh, both." But— **Logan:** Yeah — and the biggest punchline is that that's what constituted Christ's life. He never wrote a thing. It was up to the people who followed him to recreate his life from the stories passed down. **Smith:** Well — even First and Second Peter, probably not written by Peter — even there, it's not chiefly the narrative of Peter's life that's the issue. The author writing in Peter's name isn't talking about that; it's other issues. That's interesting. **Logan:** There was something I was going to say about — now I can't remember. Oh, well. **Smith:** No, tell me — though I do have to head off. **Logan:** Yeah, I know it's time. **Smith:** What are we up to for next time? Do we have one more, or two more? **Logan:** One more. **Smith:** One more. **Logan:** I read James McClendon's *Biography as Theology* with Stanley, next. And then you and I are reading — let me check, because I don't actually remember. I think with Stanley I'm reading Bell's *Just War as Christian Discipleship*, and with you I believe it's Bainton and Yoder's *Christian Attitudes*. **Smith:** Oh, okay. **Logan:** I wanted to keep the historical thread with you. Bell coming right after McClendon and Severus should be interesting — can this be done, you know? **Smith:** I've read Bainton's book, it's okay. I wonder about this new book by George Kalantzis — what's it called — it's on the issue of just war in early Christianity, just come out. **Logan:** We're only supposed to be reading the first couple of chapters of each. **Smith:** Right. **Logan:** And Yoder was meant to accompany Bainton — I've only skimmed Bainton so far. **Smith:** I've got an idea, hold on a second... Let me see if I can... **Logan:** Is Kalantzis's book out yet? **Smith:** Yeah, it just came out — maybe a couple of weeks ago. **Logan:** \[reading\] "Evangelicals in the early church... sovereignty of God debate..." — I'm not looking at the right thing. February 9th? I've heard it mentioned a couple of times but haven't seen it. **Smith:** Here we go — K-A-L-A-N-T-Z-I-S. *Caesar and the Lamb: Early Christian Attitudes on War and Military Service.* **Logan:** It's on Amazon, yeah. **Smith:** It is. I was hoping we could look inside it — I may get a copy this week when I'm up at Wheaton to see him. If I get a copy and it looks promising, I'll let you know — it'll be a more up-to-date treatment of the early Christian period than Bainton's going to give. **Logan:** Let me make sure I've got the readings right so I'm not misquoting you... Logistics, readings, okay — I have us scheduled for Augustine's letters to Boniface— **Smith:** Right, right, right, right, right. **Logan:** —and perhaps an M. Marcellus, or— **Smith:** Yeah, Marcellus. **Logan:** Marcellus? **Smith:** Uh-huh. **Logan:** I'll have to look that one up — but Boniface and Marcellus are both soldiers. And then Yoder, chapters one through eight, and Bainton, one through five. **Smith:** Yep, that sounds right. **Logan:** Okay. If I don't hear from you, I'll plan on definitely sticking with Augustine's letters. **Smith:** Sure — oh yeah, absolutely, they're definitely worth looking at. **Logan:** And then the question is whether we stick with Bainton then Yoder, or not. I'm reading *Just War as Christian Discipleship* and Ramsey's chapter — "Just War According to Augustine," and his *War and the Christian Conscience*. **Smith:** Oh. **Logan:** I want to incorporate a little bit of Augustine — but I'd be happy to consider Kalantzis's book as well. **Smith:** Okay.