Saint Maurice

Saint Maurice (died c. 286, Agaunum, near Geneva; feast day September 22) was a Christian soldier whose alleged martyrdom, with his comrades, inspired a cult still practiced today. Among those martyred with him were SS. Vitalis, Candidus, and Exuperius. He is the patron saint of the Vatican’s Swiss Guard.

Their story was recorded in the Passio martyrum Acaunensium (“The Passion of the Martyrs of Agaunum”), by the 5th-century French bishop St. Eucherius, who believed that the Theban Legion was a group of Egyptian Christians serving in the Roman army under the command of Maurice (Latin Mauritius). Ironically, they were sent by Maximian (later Roman emperor) to help quash a revolt of Christian peasants in Gaul. The legion met Maximian at Octodurum (now Martigny, Switz.), but they refused to fight against their brethren and withdrew in protest to Agaunum. There Maximian twice had one man in 10 executed, and finally the entire group was put to death.

Study of the legend was stimulated by excavations (1944–49) at Saint-Maurice-en-Valais. In 1956 an analysis of the Passio by D. van Berchem, a specialist in the history of the Roman army, appeared, claiming that the prime source for the author of the Passio was an oral account given by a 4th-century Oriental bishop, Theodore of Octodurum, who brought from the East the legend of one St. Maurice who suffered martyrdom with 70 soldiers under his command. Van Berchem claimed that the soldiers were neither Thebans nor an entire legion.

The cult of St. Maurice and the Theban Legion is found in Switzerland, along the Rhine, and in northern Italy. Around Theodore’s basilica, supposedly built by Theodore of Octodurum, was founded the Abbey of St. Maurice, presumably by c. 524. Prince St. Sigismund of Burgundy ordered that the laus perennis, or unbroken chant, be practiced there. Maurice’s relics are preserved at the Abbey of St. Maurice at Brzeg, Pol., and at Turin, Italy.