URSUS OF SOLOTHURN, SAINT, fourth-century Egyptian who was a
member of the THEBAN LEGION martyred in Switzerland under the
emperors Maximian and DIOCLETIAN (feast day: 30 September).
Foremost among sources specifically naming Ursus are the records
left by Saint Eucherius, the fifth-century bishop of Lyons,
Passio Agaunensium martyrum and an anonymous Passio sancti
Mauritii et sociorum ejus . . . (Codex 256, in the Monastery of
Einsiedeln). The early chronicle of Fredegar (c. 600) furnishes
further confirmation of the events of the martyrdom at
Solothurn. Relatively later descriptions are in Codex 569 in the
Library of the Convent of Saint Gall and in the Codex
Signacensis, originally from the Monastery of Signy, in Rheims.
Though both codices are dated in the ninth century, it is quite
clear that they are copies of much earlier sources. The
martyrdom of Saint Ursus is also mentioned in the ninth-century
Martyrology of Ado, by the archbishop of Vienne (c. 800-875),
and in the Vitae sanctorum by the sixteenth-c