Forty Martyrs of Sebaste

The Saints replied to him: "If we have fought so valiantly, as you say, for the emperor of the earth, what do you think we will do now that it is a question of serving the Emperor of heaven? Believe that we will behave as brave men, that we will never leave the good side, and that we will win the victory there." Agricola's first proposals were followed by new threats; he told the martyrs that if they were not more submissive, he would have them shamefully broken and deprived of the honor they had of bearing arms: but that he was giving them time to think about it at their leisure. Then, he sent them back to prison; and there, these generous soldiers made this prayer to God: "As we have formerly received from you, Lord, the grace to be delivered from dangers, and to triumph in the battles fought for passing things, so now that we enter the battlefield for your glory, do not refuse us the help we need." They spent the night singing Psalm 90: "He who dwells in the secret place of the Most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty, etc.," and hymns to the praise of their sovereign Lord. Jesus Christ appeared to them and said: "You have begun: try to finish well; continue to the end, the crown is given only to those who persevere." The next day, the governor had them called before his tribunal, and in the presence of several soldiers, their friends, after having praised their fine deeds and their valor, he exhorted them to condescend to his request, so that he might have the means to do them good, to procure them some offices and to increase their salaries; but seeing them unshakable, and as insensitive to his promises as to his threats, he had them taken back to prison. And one of them, named Quirion, exhorted them with these words: "My brothers, it has pleased God to unite us in the same society of faith and mi litia; Quirion One of the Forty Martyrs, spokesperson for the group. let us not separate either in life or in death; and as we have served the emperor, who is a mortal man, exposing ourselves to a thousand hazards in various enterprises, let us now serve the King of heaven, and sacrifice our lives for his love: he will reward us with eternal life, which Licinius could not give us. How many times, when we were in the hands of the enemies, have we asked God for help? And he gave it to us. What! Would you think that he would now want to refuse it to us in this glorious war? Let us have recourse to prayer, let us implore the favor of heaven; God is faithful, he is the support of those who suffer for his glory." Six or seven days later, Lysias, their general, having arrived, they were led before him; Quirion said to them on the way: "We have three enemies: Satan, the governor, and our general; or, to speak better, we have only one invisible one, who uses the ministry of these to make war on us. But what! Will one alone be able to defeat forty soldiers of Jesus Christ? That is not possible, our cowardice alone can make him triumph over us."

Their general wasted much time and many words to lead them to leave their faith and change their belief; but when he saw them so firm and so resolute, he condemned them to have their teeth broken with stones. The executioners immediately set about performing this execution; but, by a permission of God, instead of striking them, they wounded themselves; so that blood came out of their mouths, while the soldiers of Jesus Christ remained filled with the consolations of heaven. Lysias, attributing this miracle to magic and sorcery, took a stone and in anger threw it himself at one of the holy martyrs; but this stone, guided by another more powerful hand, far from touching the martyr, went to strike the governor in the mouth, who remained gravely wounded. The generous Martyrs were led back to prison, until some new torture could be invented to torment them. They changed this place of horror into a temple of glory through continuous prayers; they sang in particular the psalm: "I have lifted up my eyes to you, Lord, who dwell in the heavens"; and, in the midst of their prayer, Jesus Christ appeared to them and they heard a voice that said: "He who believes in me, though he were dead, shall live. Have confidence, and do not fear the torments, which last but a little while; fight valiantly to be crowned."

This visit from the Savior strengthened them immensely; so much so that they spent the whole night in prayer with inconceivable satisfaction. The next morning, they were led before the governor to hear the death sentence he was to pronounce against them. This judge condemned them to be thrown into a pond near the city of Sebaste, so that their bodies would be torn to pieces when the water froze due to the severity of the season, which was extremely harsh. Others say that this pond, located at the gates of the city, was so frozen that the ice held everywhere: a fine stage to display the glory of their triumph! Be that as it may, the judge ordered that the forty soldiers be exposed naked on this pond, so as to lose their lives there from the cold. But he had a bath of warm water prepared near this same lake, so that if any of them, overcome by the severity of the cold, wished to deny Jesus Christ, he would find something to relieve himself. It was a great temptation for them to have such a remedy for their pains thus before their eyes and within reach. Finally, guards were placed all night around the lake, for fear that the execution of the decree might be delayed or prevented. Our brave confessors were well consoled to hear the decree that condemned them to death; having arrived at the edge of the lake, they promptly stripped themselves of all their clothes, exhorting one another and saying: "The soldiers stripped Jesus Christ of his garments and cast lots for them, and he endured this torment for our sins; let us strip ourselves now for his love, in order to make satisfaction for our offenses." Then, raising their minds and hearts toward their sovereign Lord, they offered themselves to him as victims who were to be consumed in water and not in fire. They threw themselves into the lake and did not cease to pray to Jesus Christ that, as they had entered the combat forty in number, they might also emerge forty victorious, without a single one missing from this sacred number. But the cold seemed so bitter to one of them that, overcome by pain, he slipped out of the lake into one of those vats of warm water to warm himself, and died shortly after, leaving the thirty-nine others truly heartbroken with grief for the irreparable loss of their unfortunate companion, but more resolved than ever to die a thousand times rather than renounce their faith. They were conversing in these sentiments when, at the third hour of the night, a great light appeared over the place where they were; it melted the ice and warmed the water with its heat, and angels descended from heaven with thirty-nine crowns, which they placed upon the heads of the thirty-nine confessors of Jesus Christ who had remained in the lake. One of the guards charged with watching the martyrs was keeping watch while warming himself near the bath: he saw the wonder; in counting the crowns, he noticed only thirty-nine, instead of forty. This made him open his eyes and embrace the faith of Jesus Christ, with the resolution to take the place of the deserter. He quickly woke his companions, and stripping off his clothes, he threw himself naked into the same lake, among the holy martyrs, crying out that he was a Christian. Thus was answered the prayer by which the Saints had asked that, being forty in the combat, forty also might obtain the victory.

Let us admire here the just and incomprehensible judgments of God, who lets him who falters fall, so that everyone may distrust himself and not be too confident for having begun well: all our trust must be in his goodness and his ineffable mercy.

When the day came, Agricola was transported with rage upon learning what had happened; he had the martyrs removed from the lake when they were seen to be dead or dying, and had their legs broken with clubs to finish them off. However, these generous confessors of the truth sang these words of a psalm: "Our soul, like a sparrow, has been delivered from the snare of the fowler. The snare is broken, and we have been delivered, because the name of the Lord is our help." Their bodies were loaded onto a cart to be thrown into the fire, with the exception of the youngest, Meliton, who was still full of Méliton The youngest of the Forty Martyrs. life. The executioners left him in the hope that he might perhaps change his resolution. But his mother was present; she took him in her arms and placed him with the others in the cart, saying to him: "My dear son, the child of my womb, how happy I shall be if you sacrifice, for Jesus Christ, the little life that remains to you! How blessed will then be the womb that carried you for nine months, and the breasts that nursed you! Take courage, O light of my eyes, strive to enjoy that eternal light, which will dispel the darkness of my affliction. The angel who brought you the crown of heaven awaits you to put you in possession of glory; the ice has happily led you to the gates of heaven, and the fire will make you enter into the possession of your Lord. Suffer, my son, for the one instant that remains to you, to win the palm of martyrdom, and thus make me the happiest and most content of all mothers; for, as you were given to me by God through His grace, it is just that I return you to Him for His love." Raised by grace and by her courage above nature, this heroic woman spoke thus without shedding a tear, and accompanied the cart to the pyre, with a face full of joy.

Agricola was not content with having burned the bodies of these glorious soldiers; but, for fear that they might be honored by the Christians, he had their ashes thrown to the wind and their bones into the river. Thus, as Saint Basil says in the oration he gave in their praise, these illustrious martyrs were first exercised on the earth, then in the air, and having passed through fire, they were submerged in water, so that the four elements might contribute to the glory of their martyrdom. Nevertheless, God preserved their bones in the midst of the waves; so that they were neither broken nor dispersed, but remained whole and were gathered by the faithful.

Since then, these holy relics were dispersed in all directions, and a multitude of churches were built in their ho nor. Saint Gregory of N Saint Grégoire de Nysse Church Father cited as a source. yssa recounts that there were few countries in the Christian universe that did not possess some. Basil and Emmelia, father and mother of Saint Basil the Great and of the same Saint Gregory, both natives of the city of Sebaste, transported relics of the forty martyrs to one of their estates near the Iris; Emmelia had a church built there in their honor, then, seven or eight stades away, a monastery for nuns, of which Saint Macrina, their daughter, was the first abbess; and one for men, which their son Peter, later Bishop of Sebaste, directed. Basil and Emmelia were buried in the church raised by them to the forty martyrs; Macrina also chose her burial place there.

The cult of these Saints became hereditary in this family. Saint Basil gave some of their relics to two of his nieces, who governed nuns in the city of Caesarea. Saint Gaudentius, Bishop of Brescia, in Italy, having passed through Caesarea on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, saw the nieces of Saint Basil, received from them relics of the forty martyrs, and, upon returning to Brescia, raised a church there in their honor and established their cult, which soon spread throughout the West. In France, the cities of Paris, Lyon, Reims, Bourges, Vienne, and many others venerate the relics of the Martyrs of Sebaste. A large portion was also taken to Constantinople and hidden underground in a way that is too long to recount. A church was even raised over them in honor of Saint Thyrsus. This Saint appeared three times to the Empress Pulcheria (between 440 and 453, the year is unk nown), an Pulchérie Byzantine empress, wife of Marcian. d, declaring to her the place where the relics of the forty Martyrs lay without honor, ordered her to have them transferred with honor to be near his body. The forty Martyrs also appeared to her, dressed in white robes. After long excavations, this precious deposit was finally discovered. It was raised with great pomp, and the cult of the holy Martyrs grew from that time on.

The forty Martyrs of Sebaste are represented with a crown in their hand to recall their triumph. Or else one sees in the air forty angels bearing crowns; as one of the condemned had abandoned his generous companions, the guard went to take his place to receive the fortieth crown. — The glacier upon which these heroic martyrs were laid naked for three days and three nights naturally plays a role in the paintings that have been made about them.

Metaphrastes described the martyrdom of these forty soldiers. Saint Gregory of Nyssa, before him, composed two homilies in their praise; Saint Basil the Great, his brother, also made an excellent pa saint Basile le Grand Brother of Macrina, Doctor of the Church influenced by his sister. negyric of them, as we have noted. Their death occurred in the year 320, on March 9; but, because of the feast of Saint Frances, the Church no longer celebrates the memory of their martyrdom until the 10th. Cardinal Baronius remarks, in his Annals, on the same year, that Nicephorus Callistus was mistaken when he said that our forty Martyrs were married to the forty Virgins who also suffered martyrdom under the same Licinius, with the deacon Ammon, of whom the Roman Martyrology makes mention on September 1st.