ABSTRACT
Sulpicius Severus's late fourth-century writings about Saint Martin include a one-sentence story about a vision. In an inscription in Saint Martin's church at Tours attributed to Paulinus of Périgueux, the addressee - who is said to be prostrating himself and praying, presumably at the saint's tomb - is told to look at the mural pictures of Saint Martin's miracles. Fortunatus seems to associate the saint's status to that of the emperor, an implicit idea in Sulpicius's presentation of the saint in general, to which Raymond van Dam has pointed. Gregory the Great, who had spent eight years as a papal emissary at Constantinople, refers to Pseudo-Dionysius by name and exhibits certain parallels with the latter's ideas. In the sixth century, Fortunatus wrote his complicated verse for a jewel-wearing Gallo-Frankish aristocracy that was anxious to imitate and emulate Rome's imperial and cultural tradition in every way.
