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Saint Maurice
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Saint Maurice (also Moritz, Morris, or Mauritius) was the leader of the legendary Roman Theban Legion in the 3rd century, and one of the favorite and most widely venerated saints of that group. He was the patron saint of several professions, locales, and kingdoms. He was also a highly revered saint in the Coptic Orthodox Church as Maurice was a black christian from Meroe and not an Egyptian (his fill-size statue, enirely black can be found at the Cathedral of Magdeburg, Germany).
rding to the hagiographical material, the legion, entirely composed of Christians, had been called from Thebes in Egypt to Gaul to assist Maximian to defeat a revolt by the bagaudae.
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Saint Maurice (also Moritz, Morris, or Mauritius) was the leader of the legendary Roman Theban Legion in the 3rd century, and one of the favorite and most widely venerated saints of that group. He was the patron saint of several professions, locales, and kingdoms. He was also a highly revered saint in the Coptic Orthodox Church as Maurice was a black christian from Meroe and not an Egyptian (his fill-size statue, enirely black can be found at the Cathedral of Magdeburg, Germany).
Biography
According to the hagiographical material, the legion, entirely composed of Christians, had been called from Thebes in Egypt to Gaul to assist Maximian to defeat a revolt by the bagaudae. However, when Maximian ordered them to harass some local Christians, they refused and Maximian ordered the unit punished. Every tenth soldier was killed, a military punishment known as decimation. More orders followed, they still refused, partly because of Maurice's encouragement, and a second decimation was ordered. In response to their refusal to use violence against fellow Christians, Maximian ordered all the remaining members of the 6,600 unit executed. The place in Switzerland where this occurred, known as Agaunum, is now Saint Maurice-en-Valais, site of the Abbey of Saint Maurice-en-Valais.
So reads the earliest account of their martyrdom, contained in the public letter Eucherius, bishop of Lyon (c. 434–450), addressed to his fellow bishop Salvius. Alternate versions have the legion refusing Maximian's orders only after discovering a town they had just destroyed had been inhabited by innocent Christians, or that the emperor had them executed when they refused to sacrifice to the Roman gods.
Bertran de la Farge asserted in La Croix occitane (2000) that the original Occitan cross, located somewhere in the marquisate of Provence, probably Venasque, could be a mixture of the Constantinople cross and the Coptic cross, which was brought to Provence by monks and maybe also through the influence of a historical Saint Maurice.
Historicity
Details of this story rest on slender historical grounds: for example, decimation had not been used to discipline a Roman legion for centuries: the previous documented execution of this sentence was in the reign of Galba, who ordered this done to a formation of marines that Nero had formed into a legion, and who demanded an eagle and standards. Further, Christians commonly refused to serve in the military, and the military staunchly followed Isis or Mithras (Sol Invictus), until Constantine's time at the earliest, making it unlikely they filled an entire legion.
Some historians suggest that this was a pious fabrication by Theodore, bishop of Octodurum, sometime between 388 and 394, whom Eucherius, bishop of Lyon, cites as his source for this story, to encourage his contemporary Christians serving in the Roman army to ignore the orders of their pagan superiors and instead side with the Christians. This view is not accepted by traditional Church historians, who assert the authenticity of this lost account. If it was a later fabrication, by Eucherius himself, its dissemination was certainly successful in drawing pilgrims to the abbey at Agaunum. That institution was created ex nihilo from 515 onwards by Sigismund, the first Catholic king of the Burgundians. The abbey was unique in its time as the creation of a king working in concord with bishops, rather than an organic development that occurred round the central figure of a holy monk. The new abbey was without doubt in need of a strong founding legend.
Veneration
Saint Maurice became a patron saint of the Holy Roman Emperors. In 926, Henry I (919–936), even ceded the present Swiss canton of Aargau to the abbey, in return for Maurice's lance, sword and spurs. The sword and spurs of Saint Maurice were part of the regalia used at coronations of the Austro-Hungarian Emperors until 1916, and among the most important insignia of the imperial throne. In addition, some of the emperors were anointed before the Altar of Saint Maurice at St. Peter's Basilica. In 929 Henry I the Fowler held a royal court gathering (Reichsversammlung) at Magdeburg. At the same time the Mauritius Kloster in honor of Maurice was founded. In 961, Otto I was building and enriching the cathedral at Magdeburg, which he intended for his own tomb. To that end,
- in the year 961 of the Incarnation and in the twenty-fifth year of his reign, in the presence of all of the nobility, on the vigil of Christmas, the body of St. Maurice was conveyed to him at Regensburg along with the bodies of some of the saint's companions and portions of other saints. Having been sent to Magdeburg, these relics were received with great honour by a gathering of the entire populace of the city and of their fellow countrymen. They are still venerated there, to the salvation of the homeland.
Maurice is traditionally depicted in full armor, in Italy emblasoned with a red cross. In folk culture he has become connected with the legend of the Spear of Destiny, which he is supposed to have carried into battle; his name is engraved on the Holy Lance of Vienna, one of several relics claimed as the spear that pierced Jesus' side on the cross. Saint Maurice gives his name to the town St. Moritz as well as to numerous places called Saint-Maurice in French speaking countries. The Indian Ocean island state of Mauritius was named after Maurice of Nassau, a member of the House of Orange, and not directly after St. Mauritius himself.
Over 650 religious foundations dedicated to Saint Maurice can be found in France and other European countries. In Switzerland alone, seven churches or altars in Aargau, six in the Canton of Lucerne, 4fourin the Canton of Solothurn, and 1onein Appenzell Innerrhoden can be found. In fact, his feast day in a cantonal holiday in Appenzell Innerrhoden. Particularly notable among these are the Church and Abbey of Saint-Maurice-en-Valais, the Church of Saint Moritz in the Engadin, and the Monastery Chapel of Einsiedeln Abbey, where his name continues to be greatly revered. Several chivalric orders were established in his honor as well, including the Order of the Golden Fleece and the Order of Saint Maurice. Additionally, fifty-two towns and villages in France have been named in his honor.
Maurice is also the patron saint of a Roman Catholic parish and church in the Ninth Ward of New Orleans, and including part of the town of Arabi in St. Bernard parish.. The church was constructed in 1856, making it one of the oldest currently used churches in the area. The church was devastated by the winds and flood waters of Hurricane Katrina on August 29, 2005; the copper plated steeple was totally blown off the building. Masses resumed at the building in 2006. It is currently again an active church.
On July 19th 1941 Pope Pius XII declared Saint Maurice to be patron Saint of the Italian Army's Alpini Mountain Infantry Corps The Alpini Corps celebrates Saints Maurices feast every year since then.
Patronage
St Maurice is the patron saint of soldiers, swordsmiths, and armies. He is also inexplicably the patron saint of weavers, dyers and invoked against menstrual cramps. Manresa (Spain), Piedmont (Italy), Schiavi di Abruzzo (Italy), and Stadtsulza (Germany) have chosen St. Maurice as their patron saint as well.
In September of 2008, certain relics of St. Maurice were transferred to a new reliquary and rededicated in Schiavi di Abruzzo (Italy).
Black Maurice
St. Maurice is sometimes represented as a black Moor, which is actually the meaning of his name. The oldest available image depicting Saint Maurice as a Moor is that carved in the 1240s for the Cathedral of Magdeburg, a strikingly accurate depiction of a contemporary armed knight; there it is displayed next to the grave of Otto I, Holy Roman Emperor. Jean Devisse, The Image of the Black in Western Art, laid out the documentary sources for the saint's popularity and documented it with illustrative examples. The Cathedral of Magdeburg is the first and oldest standing temple honoring the life of St. Maurice. When the new cathedral was built under Archbishop Albert II of Käfernberg (served 1205-32), the relic said to be the head of Maurice was procured from the Holy Land.
The origin, success and eventual eclipse of images of the black Saint Maurice have been examined in detail by Gude Suckale-Redlefsen, who demonstrated that this image of Maurice as a Moor found its origins in Germany between the Weser and the Elbe, and that this iconic type spread to Bohemia, where it became associated with the imperial ambitions of the House of Luxembourg. According to Suckale-Redlefsen, the cultus of the Black Maurice reached its apogee during the years 1490 to 1530. Images of the black saint died out in the mid-sixteenth century, undermined, Suckale-Redlefsen suggests, by the developing African slave trade. "Once again, as in the early Middle Ages, the color black had become associated with spiritual darkness and cultural 'otherness'".
Egyptian Maurice
Maurice is depicted in modern times as possessing characteristics of both ethnic groups. His Egyptian origin, in Thebes, is stressed The Coptic Greek name "Maurikios" appears in the papyri and is identical with the later Roman name "Mauritius", according to G. Heuser in his Personennamen der Kopten.
In fact, the name is found in epitaphs of the Ptolemaic Egypt and Egyptian Christian periods, and is still used as a personal name in Egypt's Coptic community.
Gallery
See also
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