The Martyrdom of St. Maurice and the Theban Legion

Brandon over at Siris has a post upon on a saint story that I had not heard before (which isn't saying much, there's a huge number of saints and I don't claim to be the world's most well read about them):

It won't get celebrated in any liturgies today, since it is Sunday, but today is the memorial for the Theban Legion. The Theban Legion, as its name implies, was originally garrisoned in Thebes, Egypt; but, it is said, they were sent by the Emperor Maximian to Gaul to try to keep things in order there. This is very plausible historically, although not all details of the Theban Legion legend are. The commander of the Legion was Mauritius, usually known as St. Maurice, and a lot of the officers, at least, were Christians -- here, too, it was not an uncommon thing for soldiers in this period to be members of an eastern religion like Christianity, particularly on the borders of the empire. The Theban Legion, according to legend, was given the order to sacrifice to the emperor, and St. Maurice and his officers refused. Given the close connection between legions and their officers, it is perhaps not surprising that the entire legion followed their lead. In response the legion was decimated -- every tenth man killed -- as punishment; and when the legion still refused to sacrifice, it was repeatedly decimated until all were dead.

The plausibilities and implausibilities are interesting here -- it's implausible that there was an entire legion that was Christian to a man, but soldiers sticking with their captains is not implausible, and the Gaul campaign is perfectly historical, although our information about it is somewhat sketchy. Our earliest definite reference to the Theban Legion is about a century and a half afterwards, which leaves time for embroidery, and some historians have concluded, on the basis of what other information we have about that campaign (how many soldiers seem to have been involved, etc.), that if it occurred, it was probably a cohort, not an entire legion, that was martyred, or to put it another way, probably several hundred men rather than several thousand. That's a plausible way in which legends form around historical events.

There are various works of art showing St. Maurice and the martyrdom of the Theban legion.

Apparently some medieval artists assumed that since the legion was from Egypt, St. Maurice must have been black (this wouldn't necessarily be the case, obviously), as shown in this statue from the Cathedral of Magdeburg:

A Saint For Your Friday

Bearing has a really great post up about the life of Saint Francesca Romana (or Francis of Rome for us English speakers) a saint I'd never heard of before. A saint, wife, mother and (for reasons passing understanding) the patron saint of traffic.

The North American Martyrs

Today is the feast of St. Isaac Jogues and the North American Martyrs. These brave gentleman have been an inspiration to me for years, so today I'm reaching back into the archives to pull out some posts in which they featured, however peripherally.

Oct. 20, 2010: I keep reminding myself that statistically, I'm one of the most fortunate people in the world, in history. Most of my daily inconveniences are of the petty variety. I prayed that I could realize that there were worse fates than having one's son spill lemonade all over himself and the floor right before a road trip, and lo and behold, it turned out to be the feast day of St. Isaac Jogues.

 Sept. 22, 2008: I knew labor was coming the night before, and I was scared. I prepared for birth by reading the lives (or more accurately, the deaths) of the North American martyrs. Contractions, I reasoned, could hardly be as bad as having your thumb bitten off. And given that a week and a half later, I'm not in pain and still have my thumb, I think that assessment was correct.

The baby boy in the latter post is now a bouncing three-year-old who sleeps in a dino suit -- definitely worth the pains.

Your humble correspondent

Lookit me, posting on my own blog!

Believe me when I say I've missed you. I have composed numerous rants and half-posts in my fertile little brain, only to find that my current internet connection doesn't always deign to let me log in and post. And time is of the essence --I'm not exactly living the single mother lifestyle, since I have my dad and brother to help me out in the house during the week when Darwin is in Columbus, but there are many duties that now fall to my lot which consume a great deal of time and energy. Blah, blah, blah --who isn't overwhelmed? I keep reminding myself that statistically, I'm one of the most fortunate people in the world, in history. Most of my daily inconveniences are of the petty variety. I prayed that I could realize that there were worse fates than having one's son spill lemonade all over himself and the floor right before a road trip, and lo and behold, it turned out to be the feast day of St. Issac Jogues.

Since my email isn't always doing it for me, I've tried to turn to more traditional forms of correspondence --to whit, the letter. However, I've, run into the singular problem that no one sells stationery in Ohio. I seem to recall that in Texas you could walk into Target or Staples or any store of that I'll and find yourself in the midst of plenty of lovely writing paper and fine writing implements, delightful to the senses. In Ohio I've found no stationery so far, but everyone wants to sell me journals, scads of them. From which I can only deduce that the good citizens of Ohio want to write, but only about themselves? I'm making another foray tomorrow, to a Barnes and Noble in an expensive part of Columbus. Eons ago, when I worked at a Barnes and Noble in L.A., we used to be heavily stocked with stationery. If I strike out there, I'll just resort to snitching my dad's printer paper, I guess.

I used to be a great letter writer back in the day. By "great" I mean "prolific", not "talented". Darwin and I used to send each other tomes of agonized love, rich with all the cliches of the genre. I believe I fancied myself a great stylist. Upon sorting out our closet preparatory to the move, I found a box (a shoe box!) full of this old correspondence. As I paged through his letters and mine, I felt a sensation akin to that of the unfortunates subjected to the Total Perspective Vortex. Passages that once seemed so eloquent and incendiary now paraded with all the grace of a herd of hormonal elephants . The most engaging bits were the parts I tossed off as stupid filler: minutiae about family life or the weather or work. The most fascinating letter of all was one Darwin sent me from Greece, simply describing the place and his travels there. And I burned with shame to recall that at the time I'd sulked because I thought he didn't write enough about ME.

I've got a long way to go before I can even compete in the humility stakes with the big dogs like St. Isaac Jogues, but I guess it's a consolation that at least I still have a whole hand to write with. As I keep telling myself, things could definitely be worse.

Reliquary

In which Christopher finds himself cataloging a treasure trove of relics:

A friend inherited his father's religious items when he passed a few years ago. Boxes and boxes and boxes full of things. He kept them in storage and little by little opened and inventoried each one. Mostly there were books, some quite valuable, but also a very large collection of relics. He finally found and unpacked the bulk of them earlier this year. So when he called to ask for my help in identifying and organizing what he had, I practically tripped over myself getting over there.

When I arrived, my preconceived idea of a little museum of grace was turned on its head. My friend had told me it was disorganized. How right he was. There was almost nothing I could do to help while sitting in his living room with the big pile of holy mess on the table before me. Documents were missing or damaged or undecipherable. Bits of cotton wrapped in tape. Letters, unidentified pieces of cloth. Broken bits of glass and bent metal. Some of the relics were simply nailed to a piece of fiber-board. Some were damaged. Some were empty. Etc. Etc. Etc.

I "selflessly" volunteered (you believe that, right?) to take the whole collection home with me and do it justice. My friend was very happy with the offer as he runs his own business and has a lot on his plate. As we carried the boxes out to my car, he told me that if I found myself drawn to anything in the collection, to take what I wanted... Yes, you read that right LOL So I spent about three weeks researching not only the lives of the saints whose bodies and posessions were destined to be cut up into little bits and placed in thecas and reliquaries and little hand-sewn purses, but also the science, terminology, and phenomenon of relics.

Read the rest.

Feast of St. Gabriel Possenti

Since we don't have Fidei Defensor around the blogspere anymore to cover these things for us, I guess it's up to me to get up the required post in honor of the feast day of St. Gabriel Possenti.

Gabriel was the eleventh of thirteen children, born in Assisi in 1838. During his youth, one of his formative influences was a Irishman who was a training instructor for the papal army. Major O'Reilly taught the young Gabriel how to shoot, and he became quite a marksman.

In 1860, as the wars that would eventually lead to a national Italian state were raging up and down Italy, a band of deserters from Garabaldi's army were ravaging the town of Isola where Gabriel was in seminary with the Passionists. Gabriel went out, unarmed, to confront them, and after wresting a pair of revolvers from two of the soldiers, ordered the band to leave town. St. Possenti demonstrated his marksmanship by shooting a lizard that was scurrying across the road. The soldiers hurriedly left town.

You can read about him at gunsaint.com and also from a CE article here. The Catholic Encyclopedia has a brief article on him, but fails to mention his marksmanship.