Felix and Regula were siblings, and members of the
Theban legion which was based in Egypt under
Saint Maurice and stationed in
Agaunum in the
Valais,
Switzerland. When the legion refused to sacrifice to Emperor
Maximian, the order was given to execute them. The siblings fled, reaching Zürich (then called
Turicum) via
Glarus before they were caught, tried and executed in 286. According to legend, after
decapitation, they miraculously stood to their feet,
picked up their own heads, walked forty paces uphill, and prayed before lying down in death. They were buried on the spot where they lay down, on the hilltop which would become the site of the
Grossmünster. church, burial place of Saints Felix and Regula, at the river
Limmat the
Wasserkirche (Water Church), their execution site, and on the left side of the Limmat the
Fraumünster Abbey, where important
relics of the saints used to be on display to the public. This story was revealed in a dream to a monk called Florentius in the 8th century. It largely contributed to the massive conversion of the inhabitants of these regions to Christianity and had such an impact on Zurich that these three saints still appear on the seal of Zurich today. In the 9th century, there was a small monastery at the location, outside the settlement of Zürich which was situated on the left side of the
Limmat. The
Grossmünster was built on their graves from ca. 1100, and the
Wasserkirche was built at the site of their execution. From the 13th century, images of the saints were used in official seals of the city and on coins. On the saints' feast day, their relics were carried in procession between the Grossmünster and the
Fraumünster, and the two monasteries vied for possession of the relics, which attracted enough pilgrims to make Zürich the most important pilgrimage site in the bishopric of
Konstanz. With the dissolution of the monasteries by
Huldrych Zwingli in 1524, their possessions were confiscated and the graves of the martyrs were opened. There are conflicting versions of what happened then.
Heinrich Bullinger, a
Protestant theologian, claimed that the graves were empty save for a few bone fragments, which were piously buried in the common graveyard outside the church. The Catholics, on the other hand, claimed that the reformers were planning to throw the relics of the saints into the river, and that a courageous man of
Uri (who happened to be exiled from Uri, and by his action earned
amnesty) stole the relics from the church. He carried them to
Andermatt, where the two skulls of Felix and Regula can be seen to this day, while the remaining relics were returned to Zürich in 1950, to the newly built
St. Felix und Regula Catholic church. The skulls have been
Carbon 14 dated, and while one dates to the Middle Ages, the other is in fact composed of fragments of two separate skulls, of which one is medieval, and the other could indeed date to Roman times. Zurich's
Knabenschiessen competition, which started in 1889, originated with the feast day of the saints on 11 September, which came to be the "national holiday" of the early modern
Republic of Zürich. ==Historicity==