However, on the night they ought to receive their freedom, they are dispatched on a final and possibly suicidal mission by Bishop Germanus ( Ivano Marescotti ) in the freezing winter to rescue the important Roman family of Marius Honorius ( Ken Stott ) from impending capture by the invading Saxons, led by their chief Cerdic ( Stellan Skarsgård ) and his son Cynric ( Til Schweiger ).

According to one authority ( a legend on the 1489 map of Henricus Martellus Germanus ), Cão died off Cape Cross ; but João de Barros and others wrote of his return to the Congo, and subsequent taking of a native envoy to Portugal.

* In Valerio Massimo Manfredi's novel The Last Legion, Germanus dies in Britain after his arrival on the island when trying to lead the Romans and Britons against the barbarian Picts.

He lived in Rome between 418 – 429, and appears to be the " Deacon Palladius " responsible for urging Pope Celestine I to send the bishop Germanus to Britain, where he guided " the Britons back to the Catholic faith.

In 726, despite the protests of St. Germanus, Patriarch of Constantinople, Emperor Leo III issued his first edict against the veneration of images and their exhibition in public places.

The political aspects of Germanus ' battle against Pelagianism have been much discussed.

When the Lombards applied to the Byzantine Emperor Justinian I for help against the Gepids, he sent an army under the command of Justinus and Justinianus, the sons of Germanus ; Aratius and Suartuas ( a former ruler of the Heruli ); and Amalafrid.

St. Germanus gives it a mystical meaning about the gates of the soul, but James of Edessa gives the real origin, the guarding of the mysteries against the heathen.

Vortigern had meanwhile incurred the wrath of Germanus of Auxerre and gone into hiding at the advice of his counsel.

Germanus then prayed for three days and nights at Vortigern's castle and fire fell from heaven and engulfed the castle.

Germanus and Lupus confronted the British clergy at a public meeting before a huge crowd in Britain.

Surviving letters Germanus wrote at the time say little of theology.

The window depicts St Michael at the top and nine Cornish saints, Piran, Petroc, Pinnock, Germanus, Julian, Cyriacus, Constantine, Nonna and Geraint in tiers below.

The Chapel of Saint Germanus ( Chapelle Saint-Germain ) with its trefoil floorplan incorporates elements of one of the earliest surviving places of Christian worship in the Cotentin Peninsula-perhaps second only to the Gallo-Roman baptistry at Port-Bail.

Unfortunately, most of his work ( including two maps ) is lost, but a copy has been preserved through the German cartographers Donnus Nicholas Germanus and Henricus Martellus Germanus, and in the nineteenth century more texts were rediscovered in the imperial library at Vienna.

* Saint Germanus of Montfort, born in Montfort in France, became a monk at the monastery of Savigny, reposed as a hermit ( c. 906-1000 )

Germanus was recalled by Emperor Justinian in 539, and sent to Antioch in 540 at the outbreak of the Lazic War with Sassanid Persia.

His stature at court was such that a plot was hatched by the disaffected general Artabanes and his kinsman Arsaces to assassinate Emperor Justinian and replace him with Germanus.

The Letters of St. Germanus of Paris were printed by Martène ( De Antiquis Ecclesiae Ritibus Bassano, 1788 ) from an MS. at Autun, and are given also in Vol.

The chief authorities for the Gallican Mass are the letters of St. Germanus of Paris ( 555-576 ); and by a comparison of these with the extant Sacramentaries, not only of Gaul but of the Celtic Rite, with the Irish tracts on the Mass, with the books of the still existing Mozarabic Rite, and with the descriptions of the Hispanic Mass given by St. Isidore, one may arrive at a fairly clear general idea of the service, though there exists no Gallican Ordinary of the Mass and no Antiphoner.

As a young adult he and an older friend, Germanus, traveled to Palestine, where they entered a hermitage near Bethlehem.

In virtue of the power which has come down to us from St. Peter, the Prince of the Apostles, we might inflict a punishment upon you, but since you have invoked one on yourself, have that, you and the counsellors you have chosen ... though you have so excellent a high priest, our brother Germanus, whom you ought to have taken into your counsels as father and teacher.

There are also chapters relating events about Saint Germanus of Auxerre that claim to be excerpts from a ( now lost ) biography about this saint, a unique collection of traditions about Saint Patrick, as well as a section describing events in the North of England in the sixth and seventh centuries which begins with a paragraph about the beginnings of Welsh literature ( ch.

Constantius was a friend of Bishop Lupus of Troyes, who accompanied Germanus to Britain, which provided him with a link to Germanus.

In addition, this marriage, which was endorsed by Emperor Justinian himself, marked Germanus out as the heir to both the East Roman and the Gothic realms.

According to John Morris's textual analysis of the Historia, this tale derived from a north Welsh narrative which was mainly about Emrys ( Ambrosius Aurelianus ), which the compiler of the Historia incorporated into a framework drawn from a Kentish chronicle, together with details from a Life of Saint Germanus.

It contains eleven Masses of purely Gallican type, one of which is in honour of St. Germanus of Auxerre, but the others do not specify any festival.

Only a fragment, it begins with a Mass for the feast of St. Germanus of Auxerre ( 9 Oct .), after which come prayers for the Blessing of Virgins and Widows, two Advent Masses, the Christmas Eve Mass, the Expositio and Traditio Symboli, and other ceremonies preparatory to Baptism ; The Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and Easter Sunday ceremonies and the baptismal service, Masses for the Sundays after Easter up to the Rogation Mass, where the MS. breaks off.

# The Dismissal of the Catechumens .-- This is mentioned by St. Germanus as an ancient rite of which the form was still observed.

St. Germanus mentions three veils, the " palla linostima " is defined by St. Isidore ( Orig., 19, 22 ) as a material woven of flax and wool " corporalis palla " of pure linen, " super quam oblatio ponitur ", and a veil of silk adorned with gold and gems with which the oblation was covered.

St. Germanus gives a form which was said by priests " Pax, fides et caritas et communicatio corporis et sanguinis Domini sit semper vobiscum.

The authorities for the Gallican Baptismal Service are the Gothicum and Gallicanum, both of which are incomplete, and a few details in the second Letter of St. Germanus of Paris.

This Cadell is known from the Historia Brittonum, which says that he had been a servant who was converted by Vortigern's enemy Saint Germanus of Auxerre, and thereafter became a king whose descendants ruled Powys through the centuries.

In Wales, Germanus is remembered as an early influence on the Celtic Church.

However other sources suggest that the college and monastery were founded in the time of St Germanus, who visited Wales in the second quarter of the fifth century, with Dyfrig as its first abbot succeeded by Cadoc when Dyfrig was appointed bishop.

A letter by the patriarch Germanus written before 726 to two Iconoclast bishops says that " now whole towns and multitudes of people are in considerable agitation over this matter " but there is little written evidence of the debate.

* August 11 – Germanus is translated from the bishopric of Cyzicus to the Patriarch of Constantinople.

These excerpts describe Saint Germanus ' incident with one Benlli, an inhospitable host seemingly unrelated to Vortigern, who comes to an untimely end, but his servant, who provides hospitality, is made the progenitor of kings of Powys ; Vortigern's son by his own daughter, whom Germanus in the end raises ; and Vortigern's own end caused by fire brought from heaven by Germanus ' prayers.

Germanus may have made a second visit to Britain in the mid 430s or mid 440s, though this is contested by some scholars who suggest it may be a ' doublet ' or variant version of the visit that has been mistaken as describing a different visit and erroneously included as such by Constantius, according to whom Germanus was joined by Severus, Bishop of Trier and met Elafius, described by Bede as ' a chief of that region '.

Germanus is said to have cured Elafius ' enfeebled son by a miracle that served to persuade the population that Gaulish Catholicism rather than Pelagianism was the true faith.

His cult is clearly distinguished from that of the homonymous Saint Germanus of Paris.

In the 2004 edition of the Roman Martyrology, Germanus is listed under 31 July.

Germanus is traditionally credited with the establishment of the Diocese of Sodor and Man on the Isle of Man, though this may have been a different man of a similar name.

* Germanus figures in the 2004 movie King Arthur, although his second and final mission to Britain took place twenty years before the year the movie is set in.

However the Catholic Encyclopedia is dubious that the work is actually by Germanus.

It is believed that he is the same Palladius that is earlier described as the deacon of Saint Germanus of Auxerre.

Struck by Rome leaving its subjects to the mercy of the Saxons, Arthur is further disillusioned when he learns that Bishop Pelagius, whose teachings about the equality of all men inspired the brotherhood of his Round Table, has been executed as a heretic by order of Bishop Germanus himself.

Germanus is venerated as a saint by the Catholic Church and, although portrayed in the film as a cruel and pompous aristocrat, historically he " extended his hospitality to all sorts of persons, washed the feet of the poor and served them with his own hands, while he himself fasted.

The church is dedicated to St Germanus and soon after construction it became the cathedral for Cornwall in 926 AD, when King Athelstan appointed Conan as the bishop of Cornwall.

Elafius is mentioned as being regionis illius primus or ' leader of that region ' in chapters 26 and 27 of Constantius of Lyon's hagiography of Germanus and also in Chapter XXI of Bede's Ecclesiastical History of England.