MAURICE, St, commander of the Theban legion, was a Christian, as were also the officers and soldiers of that legion, amounting to six thousand six hundred men. This legion received its name from the city Thebes in Egypt, where it was raised. It was sent by Diocletian to check the Bagaudae, who had excited some disturbances in Gaul. Maurice having carried his troops over the Alps, the Emperor Maximinian commanded him to employ his utmost exertions to extirpate Christianity. This proposal was received with horror both by the commander and by the soldiers. The emperor, enraged at their opposition, commanded the legion to be decimated; and when they still declared that they would sooner die than do any thing prejudicial to the Christian faith, every tenth man of those who remained was put to death. Their perseverance excited the emperor to still greater cruelty; for when he saw that nothing could induce them to relinquish their religion, he commanded his troops to surround them and cut them in pieces. Maurice, the commander of these Christian heroes, and Exuperus and Candidus, officers of the legion, who had chiefly instigated the soldiers to this noble assistance, signalized themselves by their patience and their attachment to the doctrines of the Christian religion. They were massacred at Agaune in Chablais, on the 22d September 286. Notwithstanding many proofs in support of this transaction, Dubordier, Hottinger, Moyle, Arnet, and Mosheim, are disposed to deny the fact. But, the other hand, it is defended by Hicks, an English writer, and by Dom Joseph de Lisle, a Benedictine monk of the congregation of Saint Vannes, in a work entitled Défense de la Vérité du Martyre de la Légion Thébéenne, 1737. Defence of the same fact, the reader may consult Histoire de S. Mauricie, by Rossignole, a Jesuit, and the Acta Martyrum for the month of September. The martyrdom of this legion, written by St Eucherius, bishop of Lyons, VOL. XIV.
was transmitted to posterity in a very imperfect manner by Surius. Chifflet, a Jesuit, discovered and gave to the public an accurate copy of this work; and Don Ruinart maintains that it has every mark of authenticity. St Maurice is the patron of a celebrated order in the dominions of the king of Sardinia, created by Emanuel Philibert, duke of Savoy, to reward military merit, and approved by Gregory XIII. in 1572. But the commander of the Theban legion must not be confounded with another St Maurice, mentioned by Theodoret, who suffered martyrdom at Apamea in Syria.