Maurice (also Moritz, Morris, or Mauritius; Coptic: Ⲁⲃⲃⲁ Ⲙⲱⲣⲓⲥ) was an Egyptian military leader who headed the legendary Theban Legion of Rome in the 3rd century, and is one of the favourite and most widely venerated saints of that martyred group.

The legion, entirely composed of Christians, had been called from Thebes in Egypt to Gaul to assist Emperor Maximian in defeating a revolt by the bagaudae.

In 926, Henry the Fowler (919–936), even ceded the present Swiss canton of Aargau to the abbey, in return for Maurice's lance, sword and spurs.

The church was constructed in 1856, but was devastated by the winds and flood waters of Hurricane Katrina on 29 August 2005; the copper-plated steeple was blown off the building.

[6][8] On 19 July 1941, Pope Pius XII declared Maurice to be the patron saint of the Italian Army's Alpini (mountain infantry corps).

He appeared in an antique episcopal vestment and told Benoîte Rencurel that he was the one to whom the nearby chapel was dedicated, that he would fetch her some water (before drawing some water out of a well she had not seen), that she should go down to a certain valley to escape the local guard and see the Blessed Virgin Mary, mother of Jesus, and that Mary was both in Heaven and could appear on Earth.

[13] Maurice is the patron saint of the Duchy of Savoy (France) and of the Valais (Switzerland) as well as of soldiers, swordsmiths, armies, and infantrymen.

In 1591 Charles Emmanuel I, Duke of Savoy arranged the triumphant return of part of the relics of Saint Maurice from the monastery of Agaune in Valais.

Maurice is also the patron saint of the Brotherhood of Blackheads, a historical military society of unmarried merchants in present-day Estonia and Latvia.

[18] The oldest surviving image that depicts Saint Maurice as a dark-skinned man in knight's armour[19] was sculpted in the mid-13th century for Magdeburg Cathedral; there it is displayed next to the grave of Otto I, Holy Roman Emperor.

Jean Devisse, author of the book The Image of the Black in Western Art, laid out the documentary sources for the saint's popularity and documented it with illustrative examples.

[22][23] As a military saint, Maurice played an important role for the Holy Roman Empire during the Crusades, most of which had been failing at the time.

[22] Paul Kaplan, agreeing with Devisse's thesis, additionally argues that Frederick II also wanted to propagandistically emphasize how "All races are equal before God, and... the Christian mission is universal",[22][24] and also that one of his goals was to "advance his claims to global rule by promoting the visibility of his most strikingly “different” subjects".

[25] Gude Suckale-Redlefsen gives another view on the subject, arguing instead that it wasn't Frederick who transformed Maurice into a "black man," but rather archbishop Alfred I of Käfernburg, after 1220, or his half-brother Wilbrand later on.

As such, according to her, Alfred took cognizance of this new idea of the saint as a dark-skinned Moor and commissioned a "black St. Maurice" in the context of a new building program after a fire devastated the old cathedral in 1207.

[19][22] Devisse had also raised this idea because it "would be negative psychological reactions on the part of the populace to the sudden arrival of a [black] saint substituting for the old Maurice at an inopportune moment, and also because of the financial costs involved".

[30] Denis Van Berchem, of the University of Geneva, proposed that Eucherius' presentation of the legend of the Theban legion was a literary production, not based on a local tradition.

[35] Thierry Ruinart, Paul Allard, and the editors of the "Analecta Bollandiana" were of opinion that "the martyrdom of the legion, attested, as it is by ancient and reliable evidence, cannot be called in question by any honest mind.