Collective Memories of the Christian Faith through Saint Martin of Tours in Current European Places and Actions

Abstract

                                                                         Hee Sook Lee Niinioja

Saint Martin of Tours (316-397) is one of the most venerated Christian saints since the fourth century. Through his endless travels around Europe, he left Christians an imprint of tangible places and collective memories in actions, testified along the pilgrimage roads. Born in Pannonia to pagan parents, he enrolled in the army at 15. His dividing his cloak in Amiens in 337 for a dying man of cold converted him to be a Christian. The early Cluny abbots promoted Martin’s cult as a model for religious life; the reading of Saint Martin’s vita at Vezelay aimed for a monastic audience. 

To venerate his legacy and to represent his value of sharing, European Cultural Route of Saint Martin of Tours connects the three routes across the continent and rediscovers cultural, social, sustainable heritage and tourism. Questions arise on Saint Martin’s Cultural Route, related to tangible and intangible cultural heritage, particularly in the collective memory whose term is named ‘societal remembrance’ referring to how people remember things through a social lens. Three theories appeared: Jung’s collective unconscious (1912), Durkheim’s social memory (1912), and Halbwachs’ collective memory (1925) enhanced by history, buildings or symbols. Moreover, collective memory is related to a specific place, which generates the spirit with the qualities of an ambience and character (Relph 2009).

My paper investigates the collective memory of Saint Martin, transmitted through generations to European Christians. Its theory traces his life, historical, tangible places and living, intangible actions. The 21st-century’s Saint Martin Cultural Route manifests further explanations.