Feast Day: September 22nd
It was 57 years until the birth of Christ when Julius Caesar sent his best commander, Servius Galba, to seize the St. Bernard Pass from the Gauls (of course, he had a different name for it, the “Poeninus” Pass, a name possibly derived from the erroneous assumption Hannibal had used this pass to invade Italy during the Punic wars. Livy, an ancient historian, instead thinks this name derived from a local god worshiped by the Gallic tribes who lived there.) In any case, this was one of the few ancient routes between (what is now) Italy, France, and Switzerland, and it remained one of the few passes through those mountains until a tunnel was bored in 1964! Napoleon – 18 centuries after Augustus successfully took the pass and established a garrison and temple to Jupiter on the heights – would use this same route to send 40,000 troops against the Austrians in 1800.
Our story happens during the reign of Maximiam, co-emperor with the infamous Diocletian, who two centuries after Julius and Augustus called up a Legion from Thebes, in Egypt, to assist him in putting down a rebellion in Burgandy. These crack troops endured the march to the top of the pass, 8000 feet above sea level, and then stopped. St. Eucherius, a successor of the famous St. Ireneaus, as Bishop of Lyon, sets the scene for us about a century and a half after the fact:
Acaunus is almost 60 miles from the city of Geneva, and is 14 miles distant from Lake Lemannus into which the Rhone flows. The place itself is situated in a valley among the Alpine peaks and those travelling there find the path narrow and dangerous and the crossing difficult; for the hostile Rhone has left in the foothills of the rocky mountain a ridge which travellers can barely pass. When the narrows of the passes have been conquered and left behind, a not inconsiderable plain is suddenly revealed among the mountain cliffs. It was in this place that the holy legion had halted.
The Theban Legionnaires were Christians, and they would not offer sacrifice in honor of Maximiam, nor attack their fellow Christians in Gaul. Bp. Eucherius had himself braved the pass, seen the jagged peaks, the ruins of pagan temples, the Roman road and milemarker XXIII to visit the shrine built by the local Bishop Theodore to the martyrs of the Theban Legion.
You see, the Christians of Thebes knew what it was to be persecuted for their faith. Their hometown was where the sensual god, Dionysus was born, as well as the demigod, Hercules, and the location of the legendary tale of Oedipus. Many of these men had endured previous persecutions, as had their fathers over the previous century. They would not worship the emperor, and they would not kill their fellow Christians. Maximian, Eucherius reports, commanded the legion to be decimated, one out of ten of the men executed for their disobedience, but they still would not budge. Eucherius imagines the response that these heroic soldiers, led by their commander, St. Maurice, sent back to Maximian:
… they sent to Maximianus as he still burned with madness a message as brave as it was pious, which is said to have run in the following vein: “We are your soldiers, O emperor, but God’s servants, nevertheless, a fact that we freely confess. We owe military service to you, but just living to Him; from you we have received the pay for our toil, but from Him we have received the origin of life. No way can we follow an emperor in this, a command for us to deny God our Father, especially since our Father is your God and Father, whether you like it or not. Unless we are being forced on a path so destructive that we give offence in this manner, we will still obey you as we have done hitherto; otherwise, we will obey Him rather than you. We offer our hands, which we think wrong to sully with the blood of innocents, against any enemy. Those right hands know how to fight against wicked enemies, not how to torture pious citizens. We remember to take arms for citizens rather than against citizens. We have always fought for justice, piety, and the welfare of the innocent. These have been the prices of our dangers hitherto. We have fought for faith; what faith will we keep with you at all, if we do not exhibit faith to our God?”
Maximian’s anger burned hotter and he ordered the execution of the entire cohort, sending other Roman armies to do the task. The Theban Christians laid down their swords and died by the hundreds. We still know dozens of their names – Alexander. Alverius. Candidus. Chiaffredo, Constantius… “Acts”, reports of their martyrdom, slowly trickled out to other Roman outposts by survivors. (It seems likely it was not the entire Legion that had refused the command, perhaps it was one cohort, one tenth of a legion, that had been detached, sent ahead, refused Maximian’s command, and were the ones executed. This also makes sense of Eucherius’ reference to the Legion being “decimated”, because that punishment had not been used for centuries, though if in fact one cohort was executed, that would be one-tenth of the entire Theban Legion.)
– Fr. Dominic holds in mind not only St. Eucherius’ thrilling record, nor just the image of all these men’s bones, but one other image: Nowadays, as this ancient road crests the mountains between Italy and Switzerland, between the fallen temples of Jupiter, and Mercury, and older gods … a cross now stands. On that cross is inscribed three simple words: “Deo Optimo Maximo”, “to the Best and Greatest God.” So lived the Theban Legion, so must we.