Mars de Royat

Who they were

Martius, or Mars, was an abbot at Clermont in the Auvergne, known through St Gregory of Tours, whose father had been cured of a fever by him as a boy. As a young man Mars became a hermit, cutting a cell and a stone bed out of the hillside; disciples gathered and formed a community that prayed and turned the barren ground into a garden.

Gregory tells how Mars, knowing that a thief was trapped in the monastery garden at night, sent his prior to let him go gently with what he had taken. Mars lived to about ninety, and his tomb became a place of miracles.

The miracles

There was never a formal cause: he has been honoured as a saint since before the Church's formal processes began.

Why that counted as sanctity

A sixth-century hermit abbot in the Auvergne remembered by Gregory of Tours.

Connected on this site

• Gregory of Tours Saint
  “Martius, or Mars, was an abbot at Clermont in the Auvergne, known through St Gregory of Tours, whose father had been cured of a fever by him as a boy.” — this site's research