The 440 Martyrs

The 440 Martyrs were killed by the Lombards in Italy around the year 579. Saint Gregory the Dialogist writes about them: "In one place forty of them were cut down, and in another four hundred others, all because they would not eat of the idol sacrifice, and the four hundred also because they would not, in the manner of the pagan Lombards, dance around a goat's head offered in sacrifice to demons by the pagans." The Serbian Church commemorates them on 2 March by the old calendar (15 March by the new).