The Many Miracles of St. Martin de Porres

Fr. Scott Haynes

St. Martin de Porres was a prodigious miracle worker, yet nothing about him was sensational. His life was marked by obscurity, routine labor, and deliberate self-effacement. He did not seek marvels, nor did he speak of them when they occurred. Still, the miracles multiplied, quietly and persistently, until they could no longer be ignored. Like light leaking through cracks in a door, they revealed the holiness he tried so carefully to conceal.

Among the many wonders attributed to Martin were bilocation and levitation during prayer. These signs point unmistakably to a soul drawn upward toward God. Yet the miracles that most endear him to the faithful are those that unfolded close to the ground, among the ordinary creatures of Lima. Dogs and cats, bulls and rats, mules and mice. Whether tame or feral, injured or threatening, all found in Martin a gentleness that disarmed fear and restored order. Wherever Martin extended charity without calculation, God responded by suspending the usual limits of nature.

A striking pattern emerges in the testimonies of those who witnessed these events. Again and again, observers remark that Martin’s presence seemed to elevate the animals themselves. They behaved, witnesses insist, in ways that suggested reason, obedience, even courtesy. It was as though, in the atmosphere of sanctity, creation briefly remembered something it had forgotten.

The episode of the bulls illustrates this vividly. Some of the younger brothers, indulging in youthful mischief, brought two bulls into the convent courtyard for a mock bullfight. What began as sport quickly turned dangerous when the animals became enraged and began to charge. Chaos threatened to overtake the quiet enclosure. Martin intervened, not with weapons or raised voice, but with calm authority. He addressed the bulls as one would address rational beings. He reasoned with them. And astonishingly, they listened.

After restoring peace, Martin brought food and gave a further instruction. The elder bull, he said, should allow the younger to eat first, following the custom observed among the brothers in the convent. The animal obeyed at once. Then, we are told, it gently nudged Martin’s habit, a gesture described by witnesses as something like a kiss. Power yielded to humility, and ferocity gave way to trust.

In another well-attested incident, Martin confronted a far less noble adversary. Mice had invaded the convent in great numbers, gnawing through supplies and causing serious damage. The brothers were at a loss. One day they saw Martin gathering the rodents and leading them out in an orderly procession into the garden. There he addressed them directly. If they would remain outside, he promised to feed them once each day. The mice complied, and the destruction ceased. Order was restored, not by extermination, but by mercy.

Stories like these can easily sound like the embroidery of pious imagination. Did they really happen? The number and consistency of eyewitness accounts argue strongly that they did. But even more important than the question of historical fact is the question of meaning. Why would God grant such signs, and why through this particular saint?

Martin’s authority over animals points simultaneously backward and forward. It recalls humanity’s original vocation and foreshadows humanity’s final destiny. In the opening chapters of Genesis, man is created in the image of God and entrusted with dominion over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, and every living thing that moves upon the earth (Gen 1:26–28). This dominion was not domination in the modern sense. It was a form of participation in God’s own governance of creation. Man was to rule as God rules, with wisdom, restraint, and love. As St. John Chrysostom observes, this authority reveals “the extent of the esteem and the Lord’s magnanimity toward man,” a mark of divine favor beyond all telling.

Original sin shattered this harmony. Creation became resistant, and man’s own interior life fell into disarray. The beasts no longer recognized their steward, and the steward no longer governed himself. Yet in the saints, God sometimes permits a partial restoration of what was lost. In Martin’s holiness, we glimpse a reflection of that original authority. His miracles suggest that creation still responds to sanctity, even if only briefly and by grace.

But these signs do not merely look back to Eden. They also look ahead. Sacred Scripture promises that creation itself will be renewed, transformed into the “new heavens and a new earth” (2 Pet 3:13; Rev 21:1). What Christ redeemed by His Passion, the Holy Spirit will one day bring to perfection. The fractures introduced by sin will be healed, not only in the human soul, but in the cosmos itself. As Erasmo Leiva-Merikakis writes, “We shall all together constitute one variegated creation, one cosmos, one exultant choir, plunged into the splendor of God’s glory.” In a small and anticipatory way, Martin’s miracles allow us to glimpse that future harmony, when God will be all in all.

St. Martin could command the beasts without because he had first subdued the beasts within. Like all the saints, his authority over creation flowed from interior mastery. Charity reigned where passion might have ruled. We are called to the same discipline. Yet how often we leave the soul’s doors unguarded. The bulls of anger burst in with their brute force. The mice of vanity multiply unnoticed until they consume what was meant for God. The hogs of sloth collapse in the center of the heart and refuse to move.

There is only one remedy. We must invite Another in. When the Lamb enters, disorder yields to peace. When He takes His place, even the stable becomes a sanctuary.