Kyrion of Sebaste

Holy Martyr Kyrion of Sebaste was one of the forty martyrs of Sebaste in Armenia, Christian soldiers from Cappadocia who suffered for Christ around the year 320. The Azbyka page names him first in their list, and the long life shows him as the eldest of them.

Constantine the Great had issued the law of freedom of faith in 313, but his co-⁠emperor Licinius, still holding to paganism, persecuted the Christians in his part of the empire. While preparing for war with Constantine he wished to purge the army of Christians. At Sebaste in Armenia the commander Agricolaus had under him forty Cappadocians, brave soldiers and Christians. When they refused to sacrifice to idols, he tried first flattery and then put them in chains. Kyrion, the eldest, told him that the emperor had not given him the right to put them in chains, and Agricolaus, confused, ordered them taken to prison without chains.

It was winter and bitterly cold. The holy soldiers were stripped and set on the ice of a lake near the city, and on the shore a bath was heated as a temptation: whoever wished to save his life had only to say he had renounced Christ. All night the soldiers endured the frost, encouraging one another and singing hymns to God. One of them could bear it no longer, ran to the bath and fell dead. The jailer Aglaius saw a heavenly light over the martyrs, confessed himself a Christian and joined the thirty-⁠nine, so that the number forty remained whole.

In the morning their shins were broken with hammers and they were thrown into the fire, and the half-⁠burned bones were cast into the river. After three days the martyrs appeared to Peter, bishop of Sebaste, who gathered their bones and buried them with honour. The names of the forty have been preserved: Kyrion, Candidus, Domnus, Hesychius, Heraclius, Smaragdus, Eunoicus, Valens, Vivianus, Claudius, Priscus, Theodulus, Eutychius, John, Xanthias, Ilian, Sisinius, Angias, Aetius, Flavius, Acacius, Ecdicius, Lysimachus, Alexander, Elias, Gorgonius, Theophilus, Domitian, Gaius, Leontius, Athanasius, Cyril, Sacerdon, Nicholas, Valerius, Philoctimon, Severian, Chudion, Meliton and Aglaius.

The commemoration of the forty martyrs is one of the best loved in the Church. It falls on 9 March in the old style, which is 22 March in the new style, and on that day the strictness of Great Lent is eased and the Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts is served.