St. Martin's half cloak went to war with kings

AMIENS, Gaul, the middle of winter, in the 330s AD — Saint Martin was a young soldier in the Roman army. He cut his cloak in two with his sword and gave half of it away. He kept the other half and wore it. More than a hundred years after he died, the kings of the Franks were carrying that half into battle.

It was the middle of winter, and the cold was killing people. At the gate of the city of Amiens a man sat with no clothes on. He begged from everyone who came past. Every one of them went by.

St. Martin had already given his other clothes away. All he had left was the cloak on his back, a cappa (a soldier’s cloak). He drew the sword he wore at his side and cut the cloak into two equal halves. He handed one half to the man and wrapped the other round his own shoulders.

Some of the people watching laughed at him, because he was half dressed now and looked a mess. Others were ashamed. They had more than he did, and they had given nothing.

That night, asleep, he saw Christ wearing the half he had given away. Christ said to the angels standing round him: “Martin, who is still but a catechumen, clothed me with this robe.”

St. Martin had never chosen to be a soldier. A law said that the sons of old soldiers had to join the army too. His own father reported him to the recruiters. He was fifteen when they seized him, put him in chains and made him swear the army oath. Out of his pay he kept only what he needed to eat that day. The rest went to people who had nothing.

He was let out of the army in the end. Years later he was made bishop of Tours, in the country that is now France. He died there in 397 AD. The whole city came out for his funeral, and he was buried at Tours.

A tent with half a cloak inside it

More than a hundred years after he was buried, the kings of the Franks had the half cape. They called it St. Martin’s cloak, and they kept it in the prayer room of their palace.

When those kings went to war they took it with them. Out on the battlefield they pitched a tent over it, and army priests said Mass inside that tent.

The half St. Martin kept was not a whole cappa any more. It was a short cape, and the Latin for that is capella (a little cloak). The tent took the name of the cape inside it, so the tent was a capella as well.

That is where the word chapel comes from. Capella became chapelle in French and chapel in English. When the king was at home, the cape was kept in one room of his palace. That room took the name too. Then the word moved again, to any room anywhere that is set aside for Mass.

Charlemagne, king of the Franks, built the chapel at Aachen to keep St. Martin’s cape in. The priests who guarded it were the capellani (the cape’s keepers), and that word became chaplain.

In 1472 AD King Louis XI left money to St. Martin’s church at Tours. It was to feed and clothe one poor man there for ever. He set down exactly what the man was to wear: a cloak of two colours, part red and part white. It was to be worn in memory of the cloak that had been cut in two.