Theban Legion

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Saint Gereon of the Theban Legion and soldier companions, Stefan Lochner, c. 1440
Saint Gereon of the Theban Legion and soldier companions, Stefan Lochner, c. 1440

The Theban Legion (also known as the Martyrs of Augunum) figures in Christian hagiography[1] as an entire Roman legion — of "six thousand six hundred and sixty-six men"[2] — who had converted en masse to Christianity and were martyred together, in 286, according to the hagiographies of Saint Maurice, the chief among the Legion's saints. Their feast day is held on September 22.

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[edit] The account

According to the legend related ca. 443-450 by Eucherius of Lyon,[3] the garrison of the Legion was the city of Thebes, Egypt. There the Legion were quartered in the east until the emperor Maximian ordered them to march to Gaul, to assist him against the rebels of Burgundy. The Theban Legion[4] was commanded in its march by Maurice (Mauritius), Candidus, Innocent, and Exupernis (Exuperius), all of whom are venerated as saints. At the Swiss town of Saint Maurice-en-Valais, then called Agaunum, so it was said, the bloody orders were given— since the Legion had refused to a man, to sacrifice to the Emperor— to "decimate" it by putting to death a tenth of its men. This act was repeated until none were left.

Bodies identified as the martyrs of Agaunum were discovered and identified by Theodore, Bishop of Octudurum, who was in office at 350[citation needed]. The basilica he built in their honor attracted the pilgrim trade; its remains can still be seen, part of the abbey begun in the early sixth century on land donated by King Sigismund of Burgundy.

The earliest surviving document describing "the holy Martyrs who have made Aguanum illustrious with their blood" is a letter from Eucherius, bishop of Lyon written about 450, which describes the succession of witnesses from the martyrdom to his time, a span of about 150 years. The bishop had journeyed to Agaunum, and his report of his visit multiplied a thousandfold the standard formula of the martyrologies:

"We often hear, do we not, a particular locality or city is held in high honour because of one single martyr who died there, and quite rightly, because in each case the saint gave his precious soul to the most high God. How much more should this sacred place, Aguanum, be reverenced, where so many thousands of martyrs have been slain, with the sword, for the sake of Christ."

As with many hagiographies, Eucherius' letter to Bishop Salvius reinforced an existing pilgrimage site. Many were coming from diverse provinces of the empire, according to Eucherius, devoutly to honor these saints, and (important for the abbey of Aguanum) to offer presents of gold, silver and other things. He mentions many miracles, such as casting out of devils and other kinds of healing "which the power of the Lord works there every day through the intercession of his saints."

In the late sixth century Gregory of Tours was convinced of the miraculous powers of the Theban Legion, though he transferred the event to Cologne, where there was an early cult devoted to Maurice and the Theban Legion:

"At Cologne there is a church in which the fifty men from the holy Theban Legion are said to have consummated their martyrdom for the name of Christ. And because the church, with its wonderful construction and mosaics, shines as if somehow gilded, the inhabitants prefer to call it the "Church of the Golden Saints". Once Eberigisilus, who was at the time bishop of Cologne, was racked with severe pains in half his head. He was then in a villa near a village. Eberigisilus sent his deacon to the church of the saints. Since there was said to be in the middle of the church a pit into which the saints were thrown together after their martyrdom, the deacon collected some dust there and brought it to the bishop. As soon as the dust touched Eberigisilus' head, immediately all pain was gone."[5]

The tale was embroidered in later retellings and figured in the Golden Legend of Jacobus de Voragine and was included among the persecution of Christians detailed in Foxe's Book of Martyrs, an early Protestant stand-by.

The strength of the legend is based on the historical reputation for the fanatical eremites and other hermit saints of the Egyptian desert, the most famous of whom was Saint Anthony and the almost fanatical Christian following they inspired during the first two centuries. The first monks in the Christian tradition are known as the "Desert Fathers."

Accounts of the moral inculcated by the exemplum of the Theban Legion resonate with the immediate culture of the teller. The miraculous whole-hearted unanimity of the Legion, to the last individual, was downplayed by Hugo Grotius, for whom the moral of the Theban Legion was employed to condemn atrocities committed under military orders.[6] For Donald O'Reilly, an apologist for the legend's historicity in 1978, it was "the moral issue of organized violence".

[edit] Opposition to the account

Thebaei shield pattern, redrawn from a medieval manuscript of Notitia dignitatum
Thebaei shield pattern, redrawn from a medieval manuscript of Notitia dignitatum

It should be noted at the outset that Thebaei is the proper name of one particular military unit: The existence of Legio I Maximiana, also known as Maximiana Thebaeorum is recorded in the Notitia Dignitatum.[7]

Denis Van Bercham, of the University of Geneva, asserted that Eucherius' presentation of the legend of the Theban legion was a literary production, not based on a local tradition, by isolating its hagiographic conventions from the anachronisms of local narrative elements;[8] he believed that Eucherius derived his formulas from Lactantius and Orosius and that the decimation was an anachronism: the practice of decimation had not been practiced for at least a century (see Ammianus Marcellinus for Julian's misinterpretation of decimation) and that service by Christians in the legions before Emperor Constantine I was relatively rare. David Woods, Professor of Classics at the University College Cork, alleges that the model of Maurice and the Theban Legion based on Eucherius of Lyon's letter was a complete fiction.[9] Many Christian scholars question the accuracy of said allegation.

[edit] Saints associated with the Theban legion

[edit] References

  1. ^ Attempts to demonstrate its historical possibility, such as Donald F. O'Reilly, "The Theban Legion of St. Maurice" Vigiliae Christianae 32.3 (September 1978), pp. 195-207, reveal its continued vitality as an element of Christian legend rather than Christian mythology.
  2. ^ 6666 is not the normal number of soldiers in a Roman Legion, and its appearance in this context is interesting for its similarity to 666, which has a diametically opposite association as the well-known Number of the Beast in the Book of Revelation.
  3. ^ Codex Parisiensis, Bibliothèque National, 9550, reproduced in Louis Dupraz, Les passions de st Maurice d'Agaune: Essai sur l'historicité de la tradition et contribution à l'étude de l'armée pré-Dioclétienne (260-286) et des canonisations tardives de la fin du IVe siècle (Fribourg 1961), Appendix I. Dupraz writes to confirm the historicity of the Theban Legion.
  4. ^ "legio militum, qui Thebaei appellabantur" in Eucherius' letter.
  5. ^ Van Dam, R. ed., Gregory of Tours: Glory of the Martyrs, Liverpool, 1988, ch. 85.
  6. ^ Grotius, De jure belli I.2.14-16, noted by O'Reilly 1978:195.
  7. ^ Notitia Dignitatum, VII.
  8. ^ Van Bercham, Denis, The Martyrdom of the Theban Legion, Basel, 1956.
  9. ^ Woods, David, "The Origin of the Legend of Maurice and the Theban Legion", Journal of Ecclesiastical History 45 (1994), pp. 385-95.

[edit] External links