THE FOUNDER of Protestantism and the director of Goodfellas might not have many things in common. But there is at least one apparent link between them. They were both born in mid-November, in times and places where the nearest saint’s feast day was the dominant influence on the choice of children’s forenames.
In their separate ways, Martin Luther and Martin Scorsese went on to live up to the name’s pre-Christian origins: derived from Mars, the Roman god of war. Luther was the mostly unwitting cause of a century-and-a-half of military conflict in Europe.
And although not implicated in any violence (that we know of), Scorsese became cinema's supreme master at depicting it: most recently in The Departed, his typically gory depiction of the Boston-Irish criminal underworld.
It’s just possible that Martin of Tours, whose feast day falls today, would have enjoyed Scorsese’s work. He was a Roman soldier, after all: hence his given name. And one of the most popular legends attributed to him involved an act of gratuitous violence, albeit to a goose. The story is that, after his conversion to Christianity, when the church wanted to make him bishop, he was so fearful of the promotion that he hid among a flock of geese. Unfortunately, one of the birds honked and gave him away. And although his elevation to the bishopric was thereby sealed, he got some of his own back by having the informer for dinner. At any rate, this was the excuse once popular among Christians for why Martinmas had to be celebrated by roasting a goose.
Another tradition associated with the saint, indirectly, was drinking. In keeping with the church practice of strategically deploying holy days, St Martin’s was superimposed on what used to be a Roman Bacchanalian festival. He thus became the patron saint of innkeepers and reformed alcoholics, among others. But that the phrase “Martin drunk” — in which the first word served as an adjective meaning “extremely” — survived into relatively modern times suggests the Christian reinvention of the date was not an immediate success.
Unsurprisingly, St Martin enjoyed his greatest influence in France. Most of the towns and villages named after him occur along the old Roman roads along which the new religion spread. And from this base, Martin became the most common French surname, more popular than rival saints like “Bernard” or “Thomas”, or than those names derived from physical descriptions: like “Petit” and “Legrand”.
As an agent of mid-November temperance, however, the saint faced special challenges in France. Martinmas used to be the release day of Beaujolais Nouveau, an event that has since migrated to November 15th and, more recently, to the third Thursday in November (which begins this year, coincidentally, a little over an hour after the end of the France-Ireland World Cup qualifier second leg in Paris).
Once a purely French affair, the opening of the new season’s Beaujolais became an international phenomenon from the 1980s onwards, thanks to shrewd marketing. Although wine snobs avoid this precocious drink even more carefully than reformed alcoholics do — one critic compared it to “eating cookie dough” — the event has persuaded millions of people around the world to consume large quantities of the stuff.
There is even a spa in Japan where you can take baths in it: which is the use that many wine writers would probably recommend.
Perhaps because of confusion between the old and new calendars, the traditions of November 11th around Europe have some of the same qualities as Halloween. In Italy, as Martin Scorsese might know, the feast of San Martino involves drinking, mask-wearing, and a certain amount of mischief: especially via the custom of revealing which men in the area have unfaithful wives.
This may involve merely drawing cuckold’s horns on the houses of victims. But in places, it used to be the custom to hollow out a pumpkin, put a candle inside and two horns on top and then place it outside the door of the man with the (allegedly) most wanton wife in town.
In Ireland, for reasons now obscure, travel was once considered unlucky on this day. As was anything that involved turning wheels, which also prevented women from spinning, millers from millers, etc.
Another tradition presumably related to the aforementioned goose. In this, the blood of the bird killed on Martinmas was sprinkled on the door posts, threshold, and hearth of a house, to ensure good luck during the coming year. A piece of cloth was sometimes dipped in the blood and then stored in the rafters, for added protection.
And, inevitably, there is a weather legend attached to the date. This derives from the story of the saint’s conversion, after he had taken pity on a beggar, freezing in the streets of Amiens in mid-winter. He cut his own cloak in two, giving half to the other man; and was rewarded, it is said, with a divine apparition and an outbreak of unseasonably warm temperatures.
Hence, a spell of fine weather around November 11th is still called “St Martin’s summer,“; although sad to relate, there’s no sign of any such miracle this year.