Sacerdon of Sebaste

Holy Martyr Sacerdon of Sebaste is one of the forty martyrs of Sebaste, Christian soldiers from Cappadocia, who died in the year 320 in a frozen lake, because they refused to sacrifice to the gods.

Among the forty soldiers, all Christians and all from Cappadocia, was Sacerdon. When the commander Agricolaus forced them to sacrifice to the idols, they refused, were imprisoned, then tried by the official Lysias. The saints answered that he could take from them their military rank and their lives, since nothing was dearer than Christ. By his order they were stripped and set on the ice of the lake near the city, on a freezing winter night; on the shore a bath had been heated for anyone who would renounce. One of them fled to the bath and died there; in his place the guard Aglaius confessed Christ and joined the martyrs, who again were forty. In the morning their shins were broken, and their bodies were burned and the bones thrown into the water. After three days the martyrs appeared to Bishop Peter of Sebaste, who gathered the remains and buried them with honour.

He is commemorated on 22 March, in the new style; the common feast of the forty martyrs is kept on 9 March in the old style (22 March in the new style), when the severity of Great Lent is relaxed and the Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts is served.