Aglaius of Sebaste

Saint Aglaius of Sebaste was the guard who joined the Forty Martyrs of Sebaste and kept their crowns complete. He is commemorated on 9 March by the old calendar (22 March by the new), on the great day of the commemoration of the forty. Aglaius was the jailer who guarded the martyrs, and the Church counts him among the forty, in place of the one who lost his crown.

The forty Christian soldiers from Cappadocia were brought, in the winter of about the year 320, by order of the commander Agricolaus, onto a frozen lake near Sebaste in Armenia, to freeze there overnight. A bathhouse had been heated on the shore. Whoever told the jailer that he renounced Christ could go in to the warmth. One of the soldiers could not endure and, as he crossed the threshold of the bath, fell dead.

Aglaius was the only guard who was not asleep. Looking toward the lake, he saw above the head of each martyr a shining crown. He counted thirty-⁠nine and understood that the soldier who had fled had lost his crown. He woke his companions, threw off his clothes and said: "I too am a Christian." Standing in the water, he prayed: "Lord God, I believe in You, in whom these soldiers believe. Join me to them too, that I may be counted worthy to suffer with Your servants."

In the morning the tormentors saw with astonishment that the martyrs were alive and that their own jailer was glorifying Christ with them. They were taken out of the water, their shins were smashed, and they were burned, and the bones thrown into the river. After three days the martyrs appeared to Peter, bishop of Sebaste, who gathered their remains and buried them with honour.