Athanasius of Sebaste

Saint Athanasius of Sebaste was one of the Forty Martyrs of Sebaste, Christian soldiers from Cappadocia who died frozen in a lake in Armenia in the winter of about the year 320, during the persecution under Licinius. He is commemorated on 22 March, the great day of the memory of the forty, which by the old calendar is 9 March; on that day the rule of Great Lent is eased and the Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts is served.

Their commander Agricolaus forced them to sacrifice to idols, and they refused. They were led in the winter frost to a lake near the city and set naked on the ice, while a bathhouse was heated on the shore to tempt them. All night they encouraged one another and sang hymns to God. One soldier left and ran to the bathhouse, but fell dead. The guard Aglaius, seeing a heavenly light over those who remained, confessed the Christian faith and joined the saints, so that the number forty stayed whole.

The next morning the tormentors broke their shins with hammers and threw them into the fire, and the burnt bones into the river. After three days the martyrs appeared to Peter, bishop of Sebaste, who gathered their remains and buried them with honour. Their names have been kept, among them Athanasius.