; leader of the Theban Legion. According to
Eucherius of Lyon, c. 443–450, the Legion was garrisoned at
Thebes in Egypt. The Legion was 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 was commanded by Maurice (Mauritius),
Candidus, Innocent, and
Exuperius, all of whom are
venerated as
saints. At
Saint-Maurice, Switzerland, then called
Agaunum, the orders were given—since the Legion had refused to perform sacrifice according to the
imperial cult —to
decimate it by putting to death a tenth of its men. This act was repeated twice before the entire legion was put to death. According to a letter written about 450 by
Eucherius, Bishop of Lyon, bodies identified as the martyrs of Agaunum were discovered by Theodore (Theodulus), the first historically identified
Bishop of Octudurum, who was present at the
Council of Aquileia, 381 and died in 391. 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 Agaunum illustrious with their blood" is the letter of Eucherius, which describes the succession of witnesses from the martyrdom to his time, a span of about 150 years. The bishop had made the journey to Agaunum himself, 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, Agaunum, 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 of the faithful were coming from diverse provinces of the empire, according to Eucherius, devoutly to honor these saints, and (important for the
abbey of Agaunum) to offer presents of gold, silver and other things. In the late 6th 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. The tale of steadfast conduct and faith 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
John Foxe's 1583
Actes and Monuments, an early Protestant stand-by. Accounts of the moral inculcated by the
exemplum of the Theban Legion resonate with the immediate culture of each 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. For Donald O'Reilly, an apologist for the historicity of the account in 1978, it was "the moral issue of organized violence". ==Interpretations==