Brandon over at Siris has a post upon on a saint story that I had not heard before (which isn't saying much, there's a huge number of saints and I don't claim to be the world's most well read about them):
It won't get celebrated in any liturgies today, since it is Sunday, but today is the memorial for the Theban Legion. The Theban Legion, as its name implies, was originally garrisoned in Thebes, Egypt; but, it is said, they were sent by the Emperor Maximian to Gaul to try to keep things in order there. This is very plausible historically, although not all details of the Theban Legion legend are. The commander of the Legion was Mauritius, usually known as St. Maurice, and a lot of the officers, at least, were Christians -- here, too, it was not an uncommon thing for soldiers in this period to be members of an eastern religion like Christianity, particularly on the borders of the empire. The Theban Legion, according to legend, was given the order to sacrifice to the emperor, and St. Maurice and his officers refused. Given the close connection between legions and their officers, it is perhaps not surprising that the entire legion followed their lead. In response the legion was decimated -- every tenth man killed -- as punishment; and when the legion still refused to sacrifice, it was repeatedly decimated until all were dead.
The plausibilities and implausibilities are interesting here -- it's implausible that there was an entire legion that was Christian to a man, but soldiers sticking with their captains is not implausible, and the Gaul campaign is perfectly historical, although our information about it is somewhat sketchy. Our earliest definite reference to the Theban Legion is about a century and a half afterwards, which leaves time for embroidery, and some historians have concluded, on the basis of what other information we have about that campaign (how many soldiers seem to have been involved, etc.), that if it occurred, it was probably a cohort, not an entire legion, that was martyred, or to put it another way, probably several hundred men rather than several thousand. That's a plausible way in which legends form around historical events.
There are various works of art showing St. Maurice and the martyrdom of the Theban legion.
Apparently some medieval artists assumed that since the legion was from Egypt, St. Maurice must have been black (this wouldn't necessarily be the case, obviously), as shown in this statue from the Cathedral of Magdeburg:
4 comments:
There are several groups of saints made up of Roman soldiers. I remember the soldiers who were martyred by being made to walk naked on a frozen lake, in view of the bonfire waiting for them if they would recant their Christianity, every time I get into our shower in winter.
Stories like this are also one of my favorite proofs that the early Christian Church was not universally pacifist - the soldiers were martyred because they refused to sacrifice to the emperor, not because they refused to fight.
Mrs. Darwin, you are thinking of the 40 Martyrs of Sebaste. Two of the forty gave up and went back, but two of the soldiers near the fire went and took their place on the ice.
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C.T.
C.T., thank you! I invoke them often, particularly on the winter mornings when I find ice in the tub (rare, but it has happened).
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