Saint Maurice, martyr
Chasse de l’abbé Nantelme, 1225
What kind of name is St. Maurice?
My family is named after a man who is said to have died near Agaunum (now Saint Maurice), Switzerland, c.290 A. D. According to legend, the Theban legion of which Maurice was the leader, composed entirely of Christians, had supposedly been called from Africa to suppress a revolt of the Bagandæ in Gaul. The soldiers were allegedly ordered to sacrifice to the gods in thanksgiving but refused. Every tenth was reportedly then killed. Another order to sacrifice and another refusal is said to have caused a second decimation and then a general massacre. St. Maurice is represented as a knight in full armor (sometimes as a Moor), bearing a standard and a palm; in Italian paintings with a red cross on his breast, which is the badge of the Sardinian Order of St. Maurice. Many places in Switzerland, Piedmont, France, and Germany have chosen him as patron, as have also the dyers, cloth makers, soldiers, sword smiths, and others. He is invoked against gout, cramps etc. Relics are at Magdeburg. Feast day is on 22 September.
Source: Catholic Encyclopedia (1913)
My ancestors migrated from Quèbec to Massachusetts in the 1890s.
