Ernest‑Charles Babut’s Saint Martin de Tours: The Fourth Century in the Third Republic

This article examines the work of the French historian and war hero Ernest-Charles Babut (1875–1916), and in particular his scholarship on fourth-century Christianity, especially that on the figure of St Martin of Tours. It is suggested that much of his discussion of the period, notably that of church/state relations and the question of compulsory military service, may profitably be read as commentary on the issues in French public life in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.