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 Maximilian 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 anything 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 resistance, 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, Hurst, and Mosheim, are disposed to deny the fact. But, on 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 Legion Thébaine, 1737. Defence of the same fact, the reader may consult Histoire de S. Mauritius, by Rossignol, a Jesuit, and the Acta martirum for the month of September. The martyrdom of this legion, written by St Eucherius, bishop of Lyons, 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 Emmanuel 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.

St., a small city in Switzerland, in the canton of Valais. It is remarkable as a pass between lofty rocks through which the river Rhone has wrought a passage, and over which there is a bridge of one arch. It was deemed by the Romans an important pass, and was therefore strongly fortified by them; and many of their antiquities are now found there. The name is taken from the leader of the Theban legion, who, according to tradition, here destroyed the idols of the heathen inhabitants. It now contains 1250 inhabitants.