Nicholas of Sebaste

Holy Martyr Nicholas of Sebaste is one of the forty soldier martyrs of Sebaste in Armenia, who froze for Christ in a lake, around the year 320.

Among the forty are named Cyrion, Candidus, Domnus, Hesychius, Heraclius, Smaragdus, Eunoicus, Valens, Vivianus, Claudius, Priscus, Theodulus, Eutychius, John, Xanthias, Helianus, 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 Azbyka page holds their common life.

In the year 313 the emperor Constantine the Great signed the law of freedom of faith. Licinius, the co-⁠emperor, signed it too, but in his lands the persecution of Christians continued. About 320, in the city of Sebaste in Armenia, the Roman army was stationed, and in it forty Christian soldiers, natives of Cappadocia. The commander Agricolaus compelled them to sacrifice to idols, but they refused. They were bound and led to a lake near the city. It was winter and evening. The soldiers were set naked in the frozen lake. The terrible frost numbed their limbs and they began to freeze. The torment was the harder because on the shore a warm bath had been set as a temptation: whoever wished to save his life had to tell the jailer that he had renounced Christ, and then could enter the warm bath. All night the soldiers bore the frost with courage, encouraging one another and singing hymns to God.

Early in the morning one of them could no longer endure; he left the lake and ran to the bath, but when the warm air touched his body, he fell dead. Soon after, the guard, Aglaius, saw an ineffable light shining over the martyrs who remained in the lake. Astonished, he confessed that he was a Christian, threw off his clothes and joined the thirty-⁠nine. The executioners, coming a little later, saw that the soldiers had not only not frozen but even seemed to have warmed. Then they broke their shins with hammers and threw them into the fire, and then threw the burnt bones into the river. The mother of the youngest of them, Meliton, urged him not to fear and to endure to the end; when she saw that he still breathed, she took him on her shoulders and carried him after the cart, and when he died she laid him beside the others. After three days the martyrs appeared to Bishop Peter of Sebaste and told him to bury them; the bishop gathered their relics at night and buried them with honour.

The commemoration of the forty martyrs is one of the most honoured feasts and is kept on 9 March in the old style, that is on 22 March in the new style; on this day the fast is relaxed, and the Liturgy is that of the Presanctified Gifts.