St. Martin Of Tours Coloring Page

This St. Martin of Tours coloring page is provided for your personal use. Coloring is fun and finding online printables makes it all the better. 

St. Martin set out on a mission in which he was both the preacher who spread the Word of God, but also the warrior who destroyed the idols and the temples dedicated to the false gods.

Fr. Prosper Gueranger, O.S.B. summarizes St. Martin's life:

"St. Martin’s mission was to complete the destruction of paganism...all of Gaul heard from him. In all its provinces he overthrew the idols one after another, reduced the statues to powder, burnt or demolished all the temples, destroyed the sacred groves and all the haunts of idolatry. Martin, consumed with zeal for the House of God, was obeying none but the Spirit of God. 

Where he found scarcely a Christian on his arrival, he left scarcely an infidel at his departure. The temples of the idols were immediately replaced by temples of the true God. For...as soon as he had destroyed the houses of superstition, he built churches and monasteries. It is thus that all Europe is covered with sanctuaries bearing the name of St. Martin." 

Professor Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira makes a very interesting remark on the life of this saint that I found very inspiring for the creation of this coloring page. He writes:

"If you look at the normal biographies of St. Martin, you will see that they generally don’t present this aspect shown by Dom Guéranger. They recount the famous case of St. Martin on horseback, stopping before a poor, cold beggar, and then tearing his mantle in half to share it with him. For a sentimental Catholic this episode summarizes the entire life of St. Martin.

I agree that it was good and noble to do that, but to take this as his whole life is to present a reality different from what actually happened. If it only demanded this kind of charity toward the poor to be a saint, we could leave aside every other concern and concentrate only on dividing mantles to give to the poor. It would be very easy.

But this is not all that sanctity calls for. To present it as such is to distort the picture for persons and close them to the full reality of the lives of the saints. It is a poison, a kind of idolatry of sentimentality where there is no place for Catholic militancy.

St. Martin, who was so saintly and had so many merits, including a great hatred for the pagan idols, certainly would likewise abhor this modern idol of sentimentality."

I read into the life of St. Martin to try to find a symbol with which I could show the warrior side of him. I soon found some information about the hammer of St. Martin. In a museum in Utrecht, Netherlands, there is a relic which is called "the hammer of St. Martin of Tours". This hammer's grip contains a Latin text translated as "the pagan statues fall down, hit by St. Martin's axe. Let nobody believe that those are gods, who so easily fall down". Legend says that the hammer belonged to St. Martin, and was used to destroy the heathen temples and statues. It was thus that a hammer found it's way onto the coloring page you see above.

His feast day is November 11th. It is also interesting to note that St. Martin's feast day is also Veteran's day.

To read more about St. Martin and Professor de Oliveira's comments, visit Traditioninaction.org