Mallosus

Mallosus (also Mallasus , Malusius or Marusius ) is a martyr and saint of the Catholic Church who, according to tradition, suffered martyrdom as a member of the Theban Legion around the year 300. His feast day is October 10th .

Lore

Little is known about Mallosus belonging to the Theban Legion and thus also about the veneration of Mallosus as a martyr, although he was counted among the martyrs of the respective cities in Bonn as well as in Xanten . The most important mention of Mallosus in the traditions of the Theban Legion comes from Gregory of Tours , who also reported on Mallosus' martyrdom in his book " Liber in gloria Martyrum " around 590 . Mallosus was executed near Bertuna , mostly interpreted as today's Birten , where the Vetera legionary camp once stood. A cella memoria was built there in his honor , but his remains were not initially recovered. The bishop of Cologne, Eberigisil, had this cella memoria expanded into a church at the end of the 5th century, whereupon the bones of Mallosus were revealed to a deacon and were saved. Gregor also reported that St. Viktor was also buried near Birten, but that his bones could still not be found.

Neither for Birten, where a cella memoria is archaeologically verifiable today, nor for the nearby Xanten, where the construction of several cellae memoriae in the 4th century under today's Xanten Cathedral , a martyrdom of Mallosus has been handed down. From 863 at the latest, however, a veneration of St. Viktor von Xanten has been handed down, whose bones, according to archaeological excavations under the Xanten Cathedral, were recovered before 752 and whose veneration completely supplanted those of Mallosus. In the middle of the 11th century when the church was rebuilt in Bonn, three stone coffins were discovered, two of which were attributed to Cassius and Florentius , but the third to Mallosus, now one of the Bonn martyrs. But even in Bonn, the veneration of Mallosus was forgotten at the latest when Cassius and Florentius were elevated to city patrons in 1643.

An alternative interpretation of the place "Bertuna" mentioned by Gregory of Tours leads to the former Verdun in what is now France, where the local saint Saint Maur is venerated, whose name could have developed through Mallusius and Marusius to today's Maur .

literature

• Hans-Peter Richter: Hunt for Gereon. History and migration of a legend. Styria, Graz et al. 1967, pp. 92-101.
• Clive Bridger, Frank Siegmund : The Xantener Stiftsimmunität. Excavation history and considerations on the topography of the settlement. In: Gerhard Bauchhenß (Ed.): Contributions to the archeology of the Rhineland. (= Rhenish excavations, vol. 27). Rheinland-Verlag et al., Cologne et al. 1987, ISBN 3-7927-0931-7 , pp. 63-133
• Clive Bridger: To the so-called martyrs grave under the Xanten Cathedral. In: Xanten lectures on the history of the Lower Rhine . Annual volume 1996/1998, pp. 217–243.
• Ingo Runde: A legendary Xanten. Heroes and saints in medieval sagas and legends: St. Mallosus, St. Viktor, Siegfried "von Xanten" and Hagen von Tronje. In: Xantener lectures on the history of the Lower Rhine annual volume 2004, pp. 91–119.

Web links

Wikisource: Stephan Beissel: The Martyrdom of St. Victor and his comrades, 1889.  - Sources and full texts