Saint Mauritius in Roskilde

Today, September 22, is the feast of Saint Mauritius of the Theban legion. According to legend, he was the commander of an Egyptian contingent of the Roman army who were stationed in the Alps during the reign of Diocletian (284-306). These soldiers were Christian, and when they refused to recant their faith, they were all martyred. While the exact number of these martyrs differs from version to version, they are usually counted in the thousands, and this has spawned several offshoots of the cult, where individual members of the troop are said to have survived for a bit longer and become martyrs elsewhere. The large majority of these saints are anonymous. 

The cult of the martyrs of the Theban legion is particularly pronounced in the Alps, and cult centres dedicated to them can be found in all the Alpine countries, as seen in the case of St. Moritz in Switzerland.  Beyond the Alpine region, however, I do not know how well-known was the cult prior to the mid-thirteenth century. It is likely, however, that the inclusion of the legend of Mauritius and his companions in Legenda Aurea by Jacobus de Vorgaine made Saint Mauritius into a saint known throughout all of Latin Christendom. 

One of the Scandinavian witnesses to his cult can be found in the cathedral of Roskilde, which was decorated with extensive wall-painting programmes towards the end of the fifteenth century. In the chapel of the three kings, Saint Mauritius can be see on the wall behind one of the statues of the grave of King Frederik II (d.1588) and Queen Sophie of Mecklenburg (d.1631). Already in the thirteenth century, if not earlier, Mauritius was often portrayed as a black man, pointing to him being from Africa, and his iconography is one of our best sources to how Africans were depicted in Latin Christendom.