Q: Can you shed light on the factual story of the legend of St. Maurice? Thanks.
– Tokunboh Jiboque via our Facebook group
A: The legend states that Mauritius (now known as Maurice), a 3rd century officer of high rank in the Roman army, was martyred along with his entire regiment for refusing to obey orders to persecute Christians. Maurice and his men were originally from the city of Thebes in Egypt and were also Christian converts themselves. The first known version of the story comes from a letter written by Eucherius, the archbishop of Lyons to Salvius, bishop of another territory in modern France. Most historians agree that the legend of Maurice was a fictitious story that was created by church leaders in order to promote the spread of Christianity in foreign lands.
The Story
Legend has it that in 287 CE, Maurice was given orders by the Roman emperor Maximian Hereculeus (ca. 250 CE – ca. 310 CE), who reigned with Diocletian (c. 244 CE to 311 CE), to persecute Christians near Agaunum (also called Acaunus), an outpost located in the Swiss Alps. He refused.
As a result, he and his men – as much as 6,666 in total – were executed.
The Martyrdom of Saint Maurice and the Theban Legion
1402
Bohemia (Prague)
(Source: The Image of the Black in Western Art Research Project and Photo Archive, W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research, Harvard University via MedievalPoc on Tumblr)
At first, the emperor had every tenth man in the legion beheaded. When the remaining soldiers resolved again to resist his orders, he had every tenth man beheaded once more.
This only encouraged the legion to resist the emperor even more.
Maurice and his officers wrote a message to the emperor on behalf of themselves and the entire legion which went something like this:
We are your soldiers, O emperor, but God’s servants, nevertheless, a fact that we freely confess. We owe military service to you, but just living to Him; from you we have received the pay for our toil, but from Him we have received the origin of life.
No way can we follow an emperor in this, a command for us to deny God our Father, especially since our Father is your God and Father, whether you like it or not.
Unless we are being forced on a path so destructive that we give offence in this manner, we will still obey you as we have done hitherto; otherwise, we will obey Him rather than you.
We offer our hands, which we think wrong to sully with the blood of innocents, against any enemy. Those right hands know how to fight against wicked enemies, not how to torture pious citizens. We remember to take arms for citizens rather than against citizens.
We have always fought for justice, piety, and the welfare of the innocent. These have been the prices of our dangers hitherto. We have fought for faith; what faith will we keep with you at all, if we do not exhibit faith to our God? We swore oaths to God first, oaths to the king second; there is no need for you to trust us concerning the second, if we break the first. You order us to seek out Christians for punishment. You do not now have to seek out others on this charge, since you have us here confessing: “We believe in God the Father maker of all and God his Son Jesus Christ.”
We have seen the allies of our toils and dangers being butchered with iron, and yet we neither wept nor grieved at the deaths of our most holy fellow soldiers and the murder of our brothers, but we praised and rejoiced in them rather, since they had been deemed worthy to suffer for the Lord their God. And this final necessity of life does not now force us into rebellion. That despair which is at its bravest amidst dangers has not even armed us against you, O emperor. Behold! We hold arms and do not resist, because we well prefer to die rather than to live, and choose to perish as innocents rather than to live as criminals.
If you ordain any further measure against us, give any further command, or direct any other measure, we are prepared to endure fire, torture, and steel.
We confess that we are Christians and cannot persecute Christians.
Upon receiving this message, the emperor ordered the indiscriminate slaughter of the entire legion by military units in the surrounding area.
Members of the legion offered themselves freely for execution until all that was left was a field of bodies.
The Martyrdom of St Maurice
c. 1510
Germany
(Source: The Royal Library of Belgium via MedievalPOC on Tumblr)
Historian Esther Schreuder describes this work on her blog here.
They did not cry out even or fight back, but laid aside their arms and offered their necks to their persecutors, presenting their throat, or intact body even, to their executioners. Nor were they inspired by their number, or by the protection of their weapons, to attempt to assert the cause of justice by the sword; but remembering this alone, that they were confessing Him who was led to his death without a cry and, like a lamb, did not open his mouth, they, the Lord’s flock of sheep so to speak, also allowed themselves to be torn by the onrushing wolves as it were.
The earth there was covered by the bodies of the pious as they fell forward into death; rivers of precious blood flowed.
The emperor himself later suffered a gruesome death in equal proportion to the wickedness he inflicted on others while he was alive.
Martyrdom of Saint Maurice and the Theban Legion
c. 1500
Catholic parish church of St. Margaretha, Brühl, Germany
(Source: The Image of the Black in Western Art Research Project and Photo Archive, W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research, Harvard University via MedievalPoc on Tumblr)
The full story, as translated from Latin into English, is available here.
The Story Behind The Story
We know about this story because of a text by French bishop Eucherius, the title of which is translated The Passion of the Martyrs of Agaunum. In this text, written between 433 and 450 CE, Eucherius describes learning from Isaac, bishop of Geneva about another Swiss bishop named Theodore who claimed to have discovered the bodies of St. Maurice and his men in Acaunum. Octodurum, where Theodore presided as bishop in northern Italy, was just ten miles from the scene of the massacre. A later account dated between 475 and 500 CE differs from the story of Eucherius by stating that the Theban legion was executed for their refusal to participate in sacrifices to the Roman gods of Emperor Maximianus and to kill fellow soldiers who refused to do so. It is not known who authored this second account.
The Evidence Against The Legend
Citing the “social and religious” climate of the time, in which many random corpses were being identified with Christian saints, David Woods, in a 2009 article for the Journal of Ecclesiastical History titled “The Origin of the Legend of Maurice and the Theban Legion,” rebukes the version of the story related by Eucherius as a complete fabrication like other scholars have before him. Woods’ theory is that Theodore made up the story after some human bodies happened to be discovered in the area and did so because he wanted to use the story to incite Egyptian soldiers where he was working to abandon or rebel against the newly-crowned western emperor Eugenius (?-394), who was preparing to encroach on his mission field in 392 CE. Although Eugenius was Christian, his administration was supported by pagans (commonly referred to then as barbarians) and openly sought to undermine the church’s influence. Meanwhile, the eastern emperor Theodosius I (347-395) was deeply committed to Christianity as was his administration.
Woods relates from other sources that there were Egyptian reinforcements who had been recruited into the Roman army under Emperor Theodosius after about 380 CE and at times they were sent to Egypt in order to quell mutinies among the barbarian mercenaries who were stationed there. At least two Theban units were known to have served under the co-emperors Maximianus and Diocletian which could have diverged into smaller detachments. While there was an actual Theban Legion in Italy on record called the Thebaei during the time the legend is purported to have occurred and evidence of an actual officer in the Roman army named Mauricius who commanded Theban soldiers in Egypt around 367-375, Woods believes that the name of Maurice was borrowed from that Mauricius and the events described by Theodore were just part of a false narrative that was being used to promote a political agenda. Based on the way that the tale was written, if the Thebaei aligned with Eugenius, they would be joining in a war against fellow citizens and led by a usurper who was being lobbied by foreign interests. They would also be choosing a strange religion over one that was already familiar to them. Such a decision could only end in ruin for all who were concerned. Woods further compares the legend of Maurice to two other fictional accounts of military men martyred in Egypt: Varus and Typasius. Each of these stories, he argues, were created to motivate the masses into one act of war or another. After all, the legend of the Theban Legion ends with the soldiers of Maurice choosing not to fight and submitting themselves to a bloodbath instead – quite unusual based on the advantage of their numbers alone.
Theodore’s tragic story may have achieved its desired effect. Woods writes that Theodosius clashed with Eugenius in 394 and was successful in defeating him. That cautionary tale may have weakened support for Eugenius as it had been reported that members of his army defected to the side of the enemy at a key moment in the war. A Greek chronicler wrote that the army of Eugenius had Theodosius cornered. But the soldiers of Eugenius pledged their loyalty to Theodosius as long as he agreed to grant them honorable positions in his army. The Roman record shows that the Thebaei and a few other military units gained promotions during this period and Woods suggests that these promotions were probably granted as a token of appreciation for services rendered to Theodosius during the war.
Denis van Berchem, a scholar specializing in the history of the Roman army, was equally skeptical of the saint’s story. Writing in 1956, Van Berchem saw the legend of Saint Maurice as a retelling of another 3rd century story about a Maurice the Tribune who was martyred with 70 of his fellow soldiers while serving under the same emperor or his successor in Syria. In the Coptic version of that story, Diocletian ordered the officers to worship his favorite idols in gratitude for the success of their campaign against the Persians. A number of them refused. They had already been accommodating towards the teaching of Christianity to the soldiers in their ranks. To make matters worse for the emperor, hundreds of these soldiers baptized themselves in response and one of the Persian generals who had been taken hostage was baptized as well. In the midst of the protests, a Persian prince who was being held under their watch was allowed to escape. A treaty was made to mark the end of the campaign, but those who were stationed in the immediate area refused to evacuate in accordance with the treaty, fearing for the safety of the Christians they would be leaving behind. The repercussions were severe. The emperor retired the soldiers who were in rebellion and had them killed in secret.
There is also the matter of the relics of Saint Maurice.
Analyses of a pair of swords which are often connected to the legend reveal that both were made at least 700 years after the time that the martyrdom of Saint Maurice was supposed to have taken place. Therefore, they could not possibly have been wielded by Maurice or used to cut him down as believers have held for over 900 years.
A gold coin from medieval France bearing the likeness of Saint Maurice, ca. 585-675
The Latin inscription above the head reads ‘MAVRICIO M.’ which translates as Mauricio Monetarius
(Source: Coin Cabinet of the State Museums in Berlin)
The Evidence For The Legend
For many centuries after the legend of Maurice in Acaunum was first told, Maurice gained a cult following with images of the saint appearing as far as Austria, Hungary, Poland, Slovenia, Luxembourg, and the Czech Republic. The most recent archaeological studies at Acaunum reveal that this cult existed as early as the 4th century, several decades before the written account of Eucherius and around the time when the first church was built there.
A church called the Abbey of Saint Maurice, still stands in that area today.
Here is how the church’s leaders describe its historical origins:
Around 380, Théodule, the first known bishop of Valais [that region of Switzerland], transported the remains of the martyrs under the cliff and built a first basilica there in their honor.
The archaeological findings appear to confirm what was recorded by church leaders.
In a 1978 article for the journal Vigiliae Christianae titled “The Theban Legion of St. Maurice,” Donald F. O’Reilly presented four additional pieces of evidence in defense of the legend of Saint Maurice.
- A military document requesting a legion from Southern Egypt.
- Coins from Alexandria at the time of the document which were typically minted when a troop of soldiers was scheduled to leave that port.
- An official list of Roman army units called the Notitia Dignitatum which includes four or five Theban legions, including the Thebaei, as Woods also noted.
- A passage in the account of the martyr Maximilian that details the organization of a Theban Legion.
O’Reilly noted that native Egyptians were ‘strictly forbidden’ from serving in a legion and were also denied Roman citizenship in Egypt if it was discovered that they had done so illegally. However, they could serve as auxiliary troops first and enter a legion later.
The most controversial aspect of the legend was the fact that the entire legion was massacred. Some question the likelihood that the Roman authorities would have approved of such a wholesale slaughter of soldiers. O’Reilly noted that there were several stories of soldiers who traveled to Europe after the time of the alleged massacre and were martyred for their Christian beliefs. What is also interesting is that many of them were identified as Moors. But O’Reilly believed that the Theban Legion might have been reorganized and only a third of them slaughtered.
Reorganizations became increasingly common as the army shifted into smaller unit sizes of 1,000 members under Emperor Diocletian’s orders as opposed to the older arrangements of 5,000 or 6,000 men. III Augusta, the only Roman legion known to have been organized in Africa, was reorganized into six separate units.
Maximilian of Tebessa was martyred in present day Algeria because he was in disagreement with an order of conscription after the reorganization of his unit in 295 CE. According to the record, Maximilian declared that he was acting on his conscience as a Christian. During the court proceedings, he cast off his military seal and proclaimed that the seal of God was enough for him. It is possible that Maurice and his Theban Legion were also killed as a result of their refusal to join reorganized units.
The Significance of Saint Maurice
From the 9th century onwards, the saint’s tomb in what is now the city of St. Maurice en Valais, Switzerland was visited by pilgrims from all over the Christian world.
Thietmar, Prince-Bishop of Merseburg in Saxony (part of modern Germany), noted that Germanic king Otto I had great respect for St. Maurice. He considered Maurice his personal patron. In 961, the body of Saint Maurice was shown to the king at the town of Regensburg in southern Germany along with the bodies of the knight’s companions. Otto then had them brought to th city of Magdeburg and interred during a public ceremony in the cathedral there. Soon after Otto was declared the Holy Roman Emperor in 962, he designated Maurice as the patron saint of the Holy Roman Empire and protector of the city of Magdeburg.
All of this had taken place at a time when Otto had lost his mother, a son, and a number of the leading men of his realm. But his faith was strong. The ultimate establishment of Magdeburg as a center of political influence in 968 and its dedication to Saint Maurice was the fulfillment of a promise he had made to God over a decade prior to expand “His Earthly kingdom.” In the presence of the saints, Otto renewed his oath. Their sacrifices would not be in vain.
In the 13th century, the stone sarcophagus of Maurice, purported to contain his remains, and other relics were returned to the Swiss shrine that bears his name.
But the swords of Saint Maurice continued to be instrumental in the coronation of successive rulers in the Holy Roman Empire and in the memory of his sacrifice.
The Transition From White to Black
One of the oldest depictions of a Black saint Maurice is that of his statue at the Cathedral of St. Catherine and St. Maurice in Magdeburg. The stone face of the statue is pitch black. It is believed, says U. K. historian Michael Ohajuru, that after a fire damaged most of the building, an unknown artist painted his face with that color and had him depicted with African features. The Jamaican historian Joel A. Rogers (1880-1966), a legend in his own right, seems to attribute the statue to a Walter Greischel in the first volume of his work Sex and Race (1940).
Side view of Magdeburg Cathedral
2019
(Credit: Flickr User Mar Yung)
St. Maurice statue at Magdeburg Cathedral
2019
(Credit: Flickr User Mar Yung)
Close-ups of the St. Maurice statue
2007; 2004
(Credit: Wikipedia Users Rabanus Flavus and Chris 73 – 1, 2)
The cathedral, was originally constructed as a monastery and dedicated to Saint Maurice by Otto I in 937 CE. The destruction by fire was in 1297. The reconstruction of the cathedral in Gothic style took place during the 1240s. Ohajuru notes that prior to this time, Maurice was usually depicted as a White man in Roman military attire.
Michael Ohajuru has traveled to the cathedral in the past and documented the various appearances of the saint within. Some pictures of the 29 Maurice statues that currently decorate the building along with a few original carvings are available on his blog here.
J. A. Rogers was thorough in his research on the Black presence in medieval Europe and expressed his own doubts as to the popular depictions of Maurice’s race.
In the second volume of his series on the World’s Great Men of Color (1946), Rogers wrote the following:
The original portrait of St. Maurice, like that of so many other Christian saints, may be apocryphal. It was executed by an unknown artist probably soon after his memory was revived by St. Eucherius in the fourth century.
Rogers again mentions the presence of an image of Saint Maurice by a Walter Greischel at the Magdeburg Cathedral so it is unlikely that this is the ‘original image’ he is referring to. Therefore, he might have been aware of an earlier image of Saint Maurice or another legend of its appearance which is unknown to us today.
In any case, the Maurice story itself does not actually describe the appearance of Maurice or the Theban Legion.
So why was Saint Maurice depicted as a Black African?
A 2015 publication by the Metropolitan Museum in New York offers an explanation. The reconstruction of Magdeburg cathedral happened at a time when the bishops of Magdeburg were seeking to expand their influence towards the east. A Black Maurice was the embodiment of that push to proselytize pagan peoples in foreign lands.
Hailing from a remote corner of the Roman Empire that was populated by Blacks and also representing the virtues of the perfect Christian warrior, Maurice was ideally suited to epitomize the contemporary ambitions to expand Christian rule. In the first half of the thirteenth century – at a time when the archbishops of Magdeburg strove to extend their territories eastward to the pagan Slavic lands across the Elbe-this symbolic potential may have led to a startling iconographic innovation: the appearance of a Black Saint Maurice.
It is remarkable that given only the fact of Maurice and his companions’ origin being in Egypt, medieval Europeans could have imagined Maurice and his companions as stereotypical Black Africans. They might as easily have entertained a similar possibility for any Egyptian who lived in the time of Ancient Rome.
It is also surprising to see a Black man given such a position of respect in Europe, considering how Western Europeans have been treating Black Africans in more recent centuries both in Africa and in the Americas. The image of a Black Saint Maurice is evidence that before they were seen as slaves and colonial subjects, African people were viewed quite differently in Europe and in other parts of the world.
Magdeburg was strategically positioned on the Elbe river and was used as a commercial center and customs checkpoint in the time of Holy Roman Emperor Charlemagne (748-814). The design of the new cathedral was in such a manner as to reinforce the might and authority of the regional bishops. It was built on new foundations and rotated in a new direction with architectural elements imported directly from Italy, the seat of papal power.
Professor Jeff Bowersox of the University College London believes that the shift in Maurice’s depicted color by the religious and political rulers of the time was due to the fact that they saw this depiction as an opportunity to convince the Arab and African settlers in Southern Europe about the multicultural heritage of Christianity. The spread of Islam under a people referred to as the Moors, who were originally from Arabia and Northern Africa, was seen as a threat to Christianity. As Islam came to dominate in places like Spain, Portugal, Corsica, Sardinia, and Sicily, adherents of the new religion became increasingly diverse. The rebranding of Maurice as a foreigner was therefore part of a larger program, which Christian imperialists were developing in order to counter the psychological strongholds of the Moors.
In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the powerful Hohenstaufen dynasty cultivated their connections to Magdeburg because they found in Maurice a champion to symbolize their expansionist aims. In their case they hoped to unite the German lands with Norman lands in southern Italy and Sicily and thereby to expand the reach of Christianity vis-à-vis Islam. It was in this context that St. Maurice became a black man where he had previously been depicted as light-skinned, first in two passages from a Regensburg chronicle (ca. 1160) that described him as the commander of a troop of “black moors” and then in this statue.
Bowersox writes that Maurice, whose story epitomized ‘Christian strength,’ was ‘a powerful propaganda tool’ for the Hohenstaufen emperor Frederick II (1194-1250). Research by other scholars has demonstrated that Frederick employed Black Africans in a number of capacities within his court: they served as musicians, soldiers, servants and even advisors.
The image of the Black African, says Bowersox, continued to be used by other rulers ‘to evoke cosmopolitanism and Christian universalism.’ This is a major reason why Black Africans can be found in the crests of powerful noble families across Germany and in different parts of Europe. Other Black saints have since appeared and the Black man endures as one of the three kings which are portrayed in scenes celebrating the birth of Christ. Perhaps the earliest instance of this imagery is a trio of coats of arms which were commissioned for the Archbishopric of Cologne and featured in a 14th century catalogue of German heraldry called the Gelre Armorial.
The Three Kings Altar (5 panels)
1506-1507
Artist: Hans Baldung
Germany
(Source: Picture Gallery of the State Museums in Berlin)
Eurocentric imaginings of Saint Maurice from the medieval era are still around today.
Maurice was referred to in the legend as a primicerius, meaning a commander or senior officer. He was also described as a campiductor, a veteran who was recalled to serve as a training officer.
When we look at some of the individual images associated with Maurice’s companions, we can see them depicted with more European features by – of course – Europeans.
Victor of Xanten was a member of the Theban Legion. He was one of three soldiers named Victor who were immortalized in the legend (the other two being Victor of Solothurn and Victor of Marseille). Apparently, this Victor was martyred with his unit some distance away from Acaunum in Xanten, Germany. His presumed bones are presently kept at a cathedral in that city, where the remains of two men who had suffered violent deaths were discovered together in 1933.
Here, we can see an early 15th century representation of Saint Victor from the treasury room of the Abbey of Saint Maurice in Switzerland.
Reliquary bust of Saint Victor
2019
Saint-Maurice District, Canton of Valais, Switzerland
(Credit: Wikipedia User Paebi)
Candidus served as a senator militum or staff officer of the Theban Legion.
As he wrote in his book 100 Amazing Facts About the Negro With Complete Proof (1934), J. A. Rogers believed that the ‘mask’ shown below had a ‘Negro aspect’ to it. He also identified it as an image of Saint Maurice. However, it is identified on the Abbey’s official website as a ‘Reliquary head of Saint Candide’ dating from around 1165.
Bust of Saint Candidus on display inside the treasury of the Abbey of Saint-Maurice
2017
Saint-Maurice District, Canton of Valais, Switzerland
(Credit: Wikipedia Users Whgler and Jean Housen – 1, 2, 3, 4)
Here are a few other images associated with Saint Candidus.
Romanesque bust of Saint Candidus on display at Saint Lambertus Church
2011
Düsseldorf-Altstadt, Germany
(Credit: Wikipedia User Historiograf)
Skeletal remains of the martyred Saint Candidus on display inside a 6th century reliquary
2013
Collegiate Church of San Giovanni, Fucecchio, Italy
(Credit: Wikipedia User Sailko – 1, 2)
Perhaps, a test of Officer Candidus’ remains might help us to settle the question of the true heritage of the Theban Legion once and for all.
Until then, Maurice will continue to be a subject of adoration for some and bewilderment for others.
So far, there has not been a consensus about the color of the saint and his companions.
According to Ohajuru, modern churches in Germany continue to depict Saint Maurice as Black.
In other places, like France, Italy and Switzerland, Maurice continues to appear as White.
Saint Stephen and Saint Mauritius
c. 1515
Artist: Francesco Zaganelli
Romagna, Italy
(Source: Picture Gallery of the State Museums in Berlin)
A White Maurice depicted in the 1480s by another Italian artist can be seen here.
– Omri Coke, Black Researchers United Admin Team
For more on the legend of Saint Maurice, check out the books Ottonian Germany: The Chronicon of Thietmar of Merseburg (2001) by David A. Warner and Poetry and Exegesis in Premodern Latin Christianity: The Encounter between Classical and Christian Strategies of Interpretation (2007) edited by Willemien Otten and Karla Pollmann.
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