In the south of France ecclesiastical architecture remained essentially classic until the Renaissance. This was largely due to one great sixth century bishop, Patiens de Lyons, who repaired the old temples and rebuilt anew on their lines so successfully that the people proudly said they could not tell the new from the old; but in the north of Gaul, where Martin of Tours and his followers had made a clean sweep of the pagan temples and their old influence, architectural and spiritual, an absolutely new style of church building developed. It is there that to this day we turn for the purest Gothic. Of this Martin we have some little history, hazy though it be. He was a rude barbarian of the Roman legion, under the Emperor Julian, who embraced Christianity and brought the glad tidings to Tours. With a soldier’s idea of conquest he demolished the temples of false gods, like other superstitious converts; but he contended that to make the victory complete, at least an altar to the true God should mark the very spot; and he is credited with six religious foundations, one having been a church for the laity in the town of Tours. The present age might canonize Martin for a deed overlooked by his most ardent, early eulogists. He and Saint Ambrose protested against the “new heresy” of two Spanish bishops who put a gnostic to death for his heretical opinions. Hagiology, however, abounds in records of Saint Martin, for he became the best beloved saint of old Gaul. It is natural that those who read the Roman Catholic breviary literally should doubt it somewhat. They fail to realize that the history of a saint lies entirely between the lines of the account. The sacred lesson taught by this life reëchoes in his antiphones, responses, versicles and lessons, until he stands before his followers as a type of certain virtues. Thus Saint Sebastian stands for Christian courage; though his body is pierced with arrows and his hands are tied, he is always represented looking bravely up to Heaven: torture is immaterial to him: he is sustained by faith. Saint Gregory, gentlest of pastors, greatest of popes, is represented with the emblem of the Holy Ghost, the dove, perched upon his shoulder; Saint Jerome, who translated the Scriptures, with the Book in his hand; he generally has an angel near-by him. Two little pictures stand out in Saint Martin’s iconography. In one, Saint Martin cuts his cloak in half with his sword to divide it with a beggar and beholds the Savior abundantly clad in half of it; and in the other, Saint Martin evokes the spectre of a pretended martyr worshiped in Tours, who comes to life and admits that he was hanged for crime, wherefore Saint Martin demolishes his shrine.