Saint Maurice - Egyptian Maurice

Egyptian Maurice

St. Maurice was an Egyptian from Thebes in Upper Egypt. His Egyptian origin is stressed by the Coptic Greek name "Maurikios", which appears in the papyri, and is identical with the later Roman name "Mauritius", according to G. Heuser in his Personennamen der Kopten.

In fact, the name is found in epitaphs of the Ptolemaic Egypt and Egyptian Christian periods, and is still used as a personal name in Egypt's Coptic community.

"The oldest surviving" image that depicts Saint Maurice as a Black African was carved in the 1240s for the Cathedral of Magdeburg, a strikingly accurate depiction of a contemporary armed knight; there it is displayed next to the grave of Otto I, Holy Roman Emperor. Jean Devisse, The Image of the Black in Western Art, laid out the documentary sources for the saint's popularity and documented it with illustrative examples. The Cathedral of Magdeburg is the first and oldest standing temple honoring the life of St. Maurice. When the new cathedral was built under Archbishop Albert II of Käfernberg (served 1205-32), the relic said to be the head of Maurice was procured from the Holy Land.

The image of Saint Maurice has been examined in detail by Gude Suckale-Redlefsen, who demonstrated that this image of Maurice has existed since Maurice's first depiction in Germany between the Weser and the Elbe, and spread to Bohemia, where it became associated with the imperial ambitions of the House of Luxembourg. According to Suckale-Redlefsen, the image of Maurice reached its apogee during the years 1490 to 1530. Images of the saint died out in the mid-sixteenth century, undermined, Suckale-Redlefsen suggests, by the developing African slave trade. "Once again, as in the early Middle Ages, the color black had become associated with spiritual darkness and cultural 'otherness'".

There is an oil on wood painting of Saint Maurice by Lucas Cranach the Elder(1472–1553) in the New York Metropolitain Museum of Art.