Victor of Solothurn

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Saint Victor. Altar wing. Oil on panel with a gold background, 15th century. Origin: Canton of Solothurn. Historisches Museum Blumenstein , Solothurn

Victor von Solothurn , also known in Geneva as Saint-Victor de Genève , (* unknown; † in Solothurn ) is a martyr from the Thebaic Legion who has been venerated in Solothurn since the early 5th century at the latest and in Geneva between 500 and the Reformation . In addition to Ursus, he is a church patron of St. Ursus Cathedral in Solothurn.

Legend

Tradition of the 5th century

Victor is mentioned for the first time together with Ursus in the Passio Acaunensium Martyrum , written by Bishop Eucherius of Lyon around 445 , which describes the martyrdom of the Thebaic Legion in Acaunus, today's Saint-Maurice . Eucherius only dedicated two sentences to Ursus and Victor:

“Ex hac eadem legione fuisse dicuntur etiam illi martyres Ursus et Victor, quos Salodurum passos fama confirmat; Salodurum vero castrum est supra Arulam flumen neque longe a Rheno positum. "

in literal translation:

“It is said that those martyrs Ursus and Victor were from this same legion, of whom a rumor assures that they perished in Solothurn; But Solothurn is a fortress above the Aare and not far from the Rhine. "

The vague formulation of Eucherius is striking. He leaves the affiliation of Ursus and Victor to the Thebaic Legion open and does not seem to trust the reports of their martyrdom. This is astonishing, since Eucherius was noticeably uncritical of the information given orally by Bishop Isaac of Geneva about the alleged martyrdom in Acaunus. The very brief and imprecise description of Solothurn suggests that Eucherius only knew the castrum and the local cult around Ursus and Victor from hearsay. Despite all the uncertainty about the nature of this cult, its mention by Eucherius can be taken as evidence of a Christian community in Castrum Solothurn in the early 5th century.

Tradition of the 7th century

Codex 569 of the St. Gallen Abbey Library contains a copy of a passion story by Victor, which was probably written shortly after 602. For the first time we learn more about the martyrdom in Solothurn : A judge named Hyrtacus calls on the two legionaries Victor and Ursus to sacrifice to the pagan gods and to fight against Christians. When they refuse, they are tortured, with two miracles taking place: The torturers are thrown to the ground by a light from the sky and their shackles are loosened. A downpour then prevents them from being burned on a stake, which is why they are finally beheaded. After the martyrdom, the corpses of Christians are honored not far from Castrum Solothurn. In the second part of the tradition, the translation of the bones of Victor von Solothurn to Geneva around the year 500 is described. At the instigation of Theudesinde, a princess from the relatives of the Burgundian kings Godegisel and Gundobad von Solothurn, the Geneva bishop Domitian had transferred them to a church built especially for Victor at the gates of Geneva. In the following hundred years, the place where the bones were kept was apparently forgotten. Thanks to a dream, Bishop Hiconius von Maurienne , he and the Bishops Rusticus von Martigny and Patricius von Tarentaise who accompanied him succeeded in finding the bones inside the Geneva Victor Church in 602.

The Fredegar Chronicle , written around the year 659, repeats this description, albeit in a somewhat less detailed manner. In place of Theudesinde, Princess Sedeleuba is named as the client for the transfer of Victor's remains from Solothurn to Geneva.

Both sources from the 7th century clearly refer to Geneva: In contrast to Eucherius, Victor Ursus is consistently placed in front and neither his fate nor the situation in Solothurn are examined in more detail.

Tradition of the 9th century

Another Passion story has been preserved in the same Codex 569 from St. Gallen, this time from Solothurn's point of view. Ursus is mentioned again before Victor and they are introduced as brothers who are hiding in Solothurn. The henchmen who are supposed to kill them go blind and cannot find them. But Ursus now asks his brother Victor to volunteer. The judge in Solothurn is now called Ezeas and asks her to sacrifice Mercury and Jupiter. When they refuse, he has them tortured with the help of boiling pots and other devices. Eventually the two are beheaded. They then grab their heads from the floods of the Aare and carry them to the area east of the castrum, where there is a church. The author of this version of the martyrdom used the Zurich Passion story by Felix and Regula as a template. Hardly speaking Latin, he put the text together from only slightly changed passages from the Zurich legend, which is impressively demonstrated by a direct comparison of the two texts.

The legend of Ursus and Victor. Engraving, 18th century. Origin: Canton of Solothurn. Historisches Museum Blumenstein , Solothurn

Papal Bull of 1473

On July 20, 1473, Pope Alexander VI. In his bull Alma Mater, Solothurn summarized a desire to recognize 37 skeletons uncovered in the immediate vicinity of the St. Peters Chapel as companions of Ursus and Victor and thus as martyrs. The Pope also described the then current Solothurn version of the passion story of Ursus and Victor: The judge in Solothurn was now called Hirtacus again, and the dialogues had become more lively. New was Aarebrücke of Solothurn known as a place of execution. Solothurn was convinced that not two but 66 Thebes had suffered martyrdom in Solothurn. Queen Berta of Alemannia had already discovered 17 of these companions and transferred them to St. Ursenkirche . The Translatio Victors to Geneva almost 1000 years ago and the fact that the two martyrs have meanwhile received a considerable number of fellow sufferers, left Victor a mere supporting role in this and the following Solothurn versions of the legend.

Adoration

In genf

The cult of the martyr, who was transferred from Solothurn to Geneva at the instigation of a Burgundian princess , was promoted by the Burgundian royal court at the latest since King Sigismund took office in 501. After Bishop 'Hiconius found the relics of Victor in 602, the Frankish King Theuderich II furnished the Victor Church at the gates of Geneva with extensive goods. Bishop Hugo of Geneva discovered the relics again around the year 1000, after which Saint-Victor was upgraded to a priory of Cluny . The monastery possessions allowed ten to twelve monks to make a living. The community got into financial difficulties in the 14th century. Towards the end of the 15th century the monastery was dilapidated and shortly before the Reformation under Prior François Bonivard it became the plaything of the diverging interests of Geneva, Savoy and Bern . In 1531 the city council of Geneva decided to partially demolish the monastery due to military considerations. The buildings in the immediate vicinity of the city walls should not be able to serve as cover for attackers. In 1534 the monastery was completely razed to the ground. With the Reformation in 1536, interest in Victor himself finally ended in Geneva.

In Solothurn

Victor was worshiped in Solothurn as early as the early 5th century, possibly in a memoria on the site of today's St. Peters Chapel . Since the translation of the saint, his cult in Solothurn seems to have been abandoned. In any case, there are no known medieval sculptures by Victor from Solothurn, in contrast to Ursus . It seems that it was only the discovery of the relics of Ursus together with an unidentifiable second corpse in 1519 that aroused interest in Victor in Solothurn. The thought that 1000 years ago Bishop Domitian might have been given a "wrong" Victor was too tempting. With the Reformation in 1536, consideration for Geneva's claims to Victor ceased to exist. Together with Ursus , he advanced to become state saints during the Counter-Reformation , whose sculptures or pictures were placed in most of the churches and chapels of the Catholic bailiffs of the Republic of Solothurn .

Relics

Saint Victor. Reliquary by Hans Jacob Bayr from 1644. Foundation by Schultheiss Johann Schwaller. Treasury of St. Ursus Cathedral in Solothurn

It is not known whether Bishop Domitian transferred the whole body of Victor from Solothurn to Geneva around 500 or only parts of it. Since only depictions of Ursus have survived from Solothurn until the early modern period , the translation of the whole body seems likely. In addition, the late antique memoria on the burial ground under St. Peter's Chapel was expanded by a choir in the 6th century . It seems conceivable that in this way the orphaned martyr's grave of Victor was converted into a church dedicated to the Apostle Peter . The Geneva clergy discovered the relics of the saint in the Victor Church in 602 and again around the year 1000. It has not been researched whether the Cluniac monastery of Saint-Victor, founded shortly thereafter, distributed relics, and if so, where. The fate of the relics after the monastery was demolished in 1534 is also not illuminated in the accessible literature. In Solothurn, after the discovery of the Ursus relics, which were found in 1519 together with a second body in an ancient sarcophagus below the choir altar, the cult of Victor was revived. It is unclear where the Victor relics, which are kept in the St. Ursenkathedrale in Solothurn today, come from.

presentation

The earliest surviving depiction of Victor can be found on a seal of the Saint-Victor monastery in Geneva on a document from 1274. It shows Victor holding his severed head in his hands. Paintings and sculptures by Victor have been preserved mainly in the area of ​​influence of the city of Solothurn . The oldest depiction of Victor from the Solothurn area dates from the 15th century. As is customary with Thebes , Victor is portrayed as a Roman legionnaire , whereby his armament, equipment, clothing and haircut are strongly based on models from the time the sculptures were created. Victor wears a shield or a banner with a white clover-leaf cross on a red background to distinguish it from other Thebes . In many depictions he also wears a martyr's palm .

meaning

Together with Ursus , Mauritius , Candidus and Exuperius, who were also mentioned for the first time in Eucherius, Victor forms the group of the earliest saints from what is now Switzerland . The discovery of the martyrs in Acaunus by Bishop Theodor von Martigny around the year 390, a few years after Bishop Ambrosius of Milan first raised the relics of the martyrs , is now considered an attempt that is not yet sufficiently established in the polytheistic , Gallo-Roman environment north of the Alps Bringing Christianity to a breakthrough.

literature

  • Catherine Santschi: Saint-Victor de Genève. In: The Cluniacens in Switzerland. Helvetia Sacra, Department 3, Volume 2. Helbling and Lichtenhahn, Basel 1991, ISBN 3-7190-1141-0 , pp. 239–338.
  • Hans Rudolf Sennhauser: St. Ursen - St. Stephan - St. Peter. The churches of Solothurn in the Middle Ages. Contributions to the knowledge of early church building in Switzerland. In: Benno Schubiger (Red.): Solothurn. Contributions to the development of the city in the Middle Ages. Colloquium from 13./14. November 1987 in Solothurn. Verlag der Fachvereine, Zurich 1990, ISBN 3-7281-1613-0 , pp. 83-219 ( publications by the Institute for the Preservation of Monuments at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich 9).
  • Berthe Widmer : The Ursus and Victory cult in Solothurn. In: Benno Schubiger (Red.): Solothurn. Contributions to the development of the city in the Middle Ages. Colloquium from 13./14. November 1987 in Solothurn. Verlag der Fachvereine, Zurich 1990, ISBN 3-7281-1613-0 , pp. 33-81 ( publications by the Institute for Monument Preservation at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich 9).
  • Otto Wermelinger (Ed.): Mauritius and the Thebaic Legion. = Saint Maurice et la légion thébaine. Files from the international colloquium in Freiburg, Saint-Maurice, Martigny, 17. – 20. September 2003. Academic Press, Friborg 2005, ISBN 3-7278-1527-2 ( Paradosis 49).
  • Eduard Haefliger: Urs and Viktor and the Thebaic Legion . In: Yearbook for Solothurn History . tape 29 , 1956, pp. 212-221 , doi : 10.5169 / seals-323983 .

Web links

Commons : Victor von Solothurn  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Wermelinger 2005: p. 9ff.
  2. ↑ Widmer 1990: p. 42f.
  3. ↑ Widmer 1990: pp. 44-45, 75
  4. ↑ Widmer 1990: pp. 42-43, 75-76
  5. ↑ Widmer 1990: pp. 41-44
  6. ↑ Widmer 1990: pp. 44-45
  7. ↑ Widmer 1990: pp. 78-80
  8. ↑ Widmer 1990: pp. 60-61
  9. ↑ Santschi 1991: p. 240
  10. ↑ Santschi 1991: p. 241.
  11. ↑ Santschi 1991: p. 248f.
  12. ↑ Santschi 1991: p. 264f.
  13. ↑ Sennhauser 1990: p. 184ff.
  14. ↑ Widmer 1990: p. 68
  15. ↑ Sennhauser 1990: p. 185
  16. ↑ Santschi 1991: p. 240f.
  17. ↑ Widmer 1990: p. 67f.
  18. ↑ Santschi 1991: p. 242
  19. ↑ Widmer 1990: p. 95ff.
personal data
SURNAME Victor of Solothurn
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Viktor von Solothurn
BRIEF DESCRIPTION martyr
DATE OF BIRTH 3rd century
DATE OF DEATH at 303
Place of death Solothurn