Passio Agaunensium Martyrum

The Passion of the Agaunensian Martyrs. We set forth in writing the passion of the holy martyrs who illuminate Agaunum with their glorious blood, for the honor of their deeds, with that same fidelity with which the account of the martyrdom has come down to us. For through the report of those who followed, the memory of the deed has not yet been overtaken by oblivion, even though for individual martyrs there are individual places which possess them, or individual cities are considered notable, and not undeservedly, because the saints give back their precious souls for the highest God. With how great reverence must that sacred place of the Agaunensians be cultivated, in which so many thousands of martyrs are reported to have been cut down by the sword for Christ? Now let us speak of the very cause of the most blessed passion. Under Maximian, who held the empire of the Roman republic together with Diocletian as colleague, peoples of martyrs were butchered or killed throughout nearly all the provinces. For the same Maximian, just as he raged, obsessed with avarice, lust, cruelty, and other vices, so also, devoted to the abominable rites of the pagans and profane toward the God of heaven, he had armed his impiety for the extinction of the name of Christianity. If anyone at that time dared to profess the worship of the true God, they were seized by troops of soldiers scattered everywhere, either for torture or for death, and as if a license for wandering had been given to barbarian peoples, he had stirred up arms utterly against religion. At that same time, there was in the army a legion of soldiers who were called the Thebaeans. A legion was then called that which had six thousand six hundred men under arms.

They had been summoned from the eastern regions to the aid of Maximian, men vigorous in military affairs and noble in valor, but more noble in faith; they vied with the emperor in courage, with Christ in devotion. Mindful even in their youth of the precept of the Gospel, they rendered to God what was God’s, and to Caesar what was Caesar’s. And so when they, like the rest of the soldiers, were assigned to drag off the multitude of Christians, they alone dared to refuse the ministry of cruelty and declared that they would not obey commands of this sort. Maximian was not far off; for he was staying, weary from the journey, near Octodorum, where, when it was reported to him by messengers that this legion had halted in the Agaunensian defiles, rebellious against the imperial commands, he blazed up in a fury of indignation. But before I relate the rest, the location of the place seems to me to be inserted into the account.

Agaunum is about sixty miles from the city of Geneva, and fourteen miles from the head of Lake Geneva, into which the Rhone flows. The place itself is situated in a valley among the Alpine ridges, and for those traveling to it, a difficult, rough, and narrow path opens up. For the hostile Rhone, at the roots of a rocky mountain, has left barely a passable path for travelers. Once the jaws of the defile are overcome and passed, a field, not small, suddenly opens up among the mountain crags. In this place the holy legion had encamped. Therefore, as we said above, when Maximian learned of the response of the Thebans, burning with hasty anger because of their neglected commands, he orders every tenth man from that same legion to be struck down by the sword, so that the rest, terrified by fear, might more easily yield to the imperial commands; and, with the orders renewed, he proclaims that the remainder be compelled to persecute Christians. But when the announcement reached the Thebans a second time, and they understood that they were again being ordered to profane executions, a clamor and uproar arose throughout the camp, with them declaring that they would never yield to such sacrilegious services, that they had always detested the profane idols, that they were imbued with Christian teaching, instructed in the worship of the sacred and divine religion, that they worshipped the one eternal God; and that it was better to suffer the extreme than to act against the Christian faith. When these things were then discovered, Maximian, more savage than any beast...

The more cruel tyrant, returning again to the savagery of his nature, commands that a tenth of them be given over to death once more and that the rest be compelled none the less to those things which they would spurn. When these orders were again brought to the camp, the one who had fallen to the lot as the tenth was separated and struck down; the remaining multitude of soldiers, however, urged each other on in mutual conversation to persist in so glorious a work. Yet the greatest encouragement to the faith at that time was with the holy Maurice, then the primicerius, as it is handed down, of that legion, who, together with Exuperius—called, as in the army, the campi doctor—and Candidus, the senator of the soldiers, inflamed them by exhorting and admonishing each one, and by presenting the examples of faithful fellow soldiers and even martyrs; he urged that all should die, if necessity demanded it, for the sacrament of Christ, for the divine laws, and that they should follow those comrades and tent-mates who had already gone before into heaven; for already at that time the glorious ardor of martyrdom blazed in those most blessed men. Thus animated by these leaders and authors, they send to Maximian, still raging with madness, mandates which are reported to have been both pious and brave, in this manner:

We are soldiers, Emperor, yours, but yet servants, as we freely confess, of God. To you we owe military service, to Him innocence. From you we have received the wages of our labor, from Him we have taken the beginning of our life. We cannot follow the Emperor in this at all, that we should deny God our author, certainly our author, God the author, whether you wish it or not, of you as well. If we are not compelled into so deadly a course that we offend Him, we will still obey you, as we have done thus far; but if otherwise, we will obey Him rather than you. We offer our hands against any enemy, hands which we consider it impious to stain with the blood of the innocent. These right hands know how to fight against the impious and enemies; they do not know how to tear apart the pious and fellow citizens. We remember that we took up arms for fellow citizens rather than against fellow citizens. We have always fought for justice, for piety, for the safety of the innocent; these have been, until now, the rewards of our dangers. We have fought for faith. By what compact will we preserve it for you, if we do not show it to our God? We swore first to the divine sacraments; we swore then to the royal sacraments; you must not believe that the second oaths are binding on us, if we break the first. You order that Christians be sought out by us for punishment. Already you need not seek others for this from us; you have us here, confessing God the Father, author of all things, and we believe His Son Jesus Christ to be God.

we have seen the comrades of our labors and perils, also spattered with their blood, butchered by the sword, and yet we have not wept for the deaths of our most holy fellow soldiers and the funerals of our brothers, nor grieved, but rather have praised and followed them with joy, because they were deemed worthy to suffer for the sake of their Lord God. And now neither this ultimate necessity of life has driven us into rebellion, nor has even despair, which is strongest in dangers, armed us against you, Emperor. Behold, we hold weapons and do not resist, because we much prefer to die than to kill, and we choose to perish innocent rather than to live guilty. If you decree anything further against us, if you order anything more, if you bring forward anything—fires, tortures, the sword—we are ready to undergo them. We confess that we are Christians; we cannot persecute Christians. When Maximianus had heard such things and perceived the minds of the men to be obstinate in the faith of Christ, despairing that their glorious constancy could be recalled, he decreed by a single sentence that all be killed and ordered the matter to be accomplished by surrounding columns of soldiers. When they came to the most blessed legion, they draw the impious sword against the saints, who do not refuse to die out of love of life. And so they were being slain everywhere by swords, not even crying out or resisting, but laying down their arms, offering their necks to the persecutors and their throats or uncovered bodies to the executioners.

nor were they puffed up by their own great number or by the protection of arms, so as to attempt with the sword to assert the cause of justice; but remembering only this, that they confessed Him who was led to slaughter without crying out and, like a lamb, did not open his mouth, they themselves, like the Lord’s flock of sheep, suffered themselves to be torn apart as if by raging wolves. The ground there was covered with the bodies of the pious lying prostrate in death, and rivers of precious blood flowed. What madness, apart from war, has ever caused such a slaughter of human bodies? What savagery has ever, by its own decree, ordered so many to perish at once, even if they were guilty? That the just might not be punished, the multitude did not prevail, although it is customary that what a multitude does goes unpunished. Thus, by this most inhuman cruelty of the tyrant, that people of saints was finished off, who scorned present things for the hope of future ones. Thus was that truly angelic legion slain, which, as we believe, already joins with those legions of angels in forever praising the Lord God Sabaoth in heaven.

Victor the martyr, however, was neither a soldier of that same legion nor a common soldier, but a veteran of completed military service. When he happened upon those who were feasting here and there, rejoicing over the spoils of the martyrs, and was invited by them to join the banquet, he learned the cause of the matter as it was related in order by the exultant ones. Detesting both the guests and the feast, he fled, and when those who pursued him asked whether he too was perhaps a Christian, he replied that he was a Christian and would always be one, and was immediately killed by those who rushed upon him. He was joined to the other martyrs in the same place, both in death and in honor. These are the names that have come to our knowledge from that number of martyrs: that is, of the most blessed Maurice, Exuperius, Candidus, and Victor; the rest, however, are unknown to us, but are written in the book of life. From this same legion are also said to have been those martyrs Ursus and Victor, whom fame confirms suffered at Salodorum. Salodorum is a fort situated above the river Arula, not far from the Rhine.

It is worthwhile also to indicate what outcome subsequently befell the savage tyrant Maximian. When, through laid plots, he was contriving death for his son-in-law Constantine, then holding the throne, his treachery was detected, he was captured at Massilia, and not long after, strangled and subjected to this most foul punishment, he ended his impious life with a fitting death. As for the bodies of the most blessed martyrs of Agaunum, they are reported to have been revealed many years after their passion to Saint Theodorus, bishop of that same place. In whose honor, when a basilica was being built which now, attached to a vast rock, lies leaning on only one side, I thought what miracle then appeared should by no means be left unmentioned. It happened that, among the other craftsmen who seemed to have been invited and gathered for that work, a certain smith was present who was known to be still a pagan. When, on the Lord's day, the others had departed to observe the festivities of that day, he alone had remained in the building. In that secluded place, with the saints suddenly manifesting themselves in a clear light, this same smith is seized and stretched out for punishment or torments, and, visibly beholding the throng of martyrs, he is also beaten and rebuked, both because he alone was absent from church on the Lord's day and because, a pagan, he dared to undertake that holy work of the building. That this was done so mercifully by the saints became evident, in that the smith, dismayed and terrified, asked for the saving name for himself and was immediately made a Christian.

Nor shall I omit that which is equally renowned and known to all among the miracles of the saints. A matron, the wife of Quintus, a distinguished and honored man, when she had been so bound by paralysis that even the use of her feet was denied her, demanded of her husband that she be carried to Agaunum over a great distance of the journey. When she had arrived there, brought into the basilica of the holy martyrs by the hands of attendants, she returned to her lodging on foot, and, restored to health from her deadened limbs, she now herself carries her miracle about. These two miracles only I have believed should be inserted into the passion of the saints. For the rest, there are quite many things which the power of the Lord daily works there through his saints, either in the purging of demons or in other healings. To the holy and most blessed lord Salvius, bishop, Eucherius. I have sent to your blessedness the written passion of our martyrs. For I feared that through neglect the memory of time might abolish such glorious deeds of martyrdom. Moreover, I sought the truth of the matter itself from suitable authorities, from those, indeed, who affirmed that they had learned from the holy Isaac, bishop of Geneva, this order of the passion which I have presented, who, I believe, in turn received these things from the most blessed bishop Theodore, a man of an earlier time.

Therefore, while others from various places and provinces offer gifts of gold, silver, and diverse items in honor and service of the saints, we, with your support, graciously offer these writings of ours, beseeching through them intercession for all offenses and perpetual protection in the future from my ever-present patrons. Remember us also in the sight of the Lord, as you ever cleave to the offices of the saints, holy and most blessed brother.