Forty Martyrs of Sebaste (Subscribe)
Links
Two Homilies Concerning the Forty Martyrs
http://www.sage.edu/faculty/salomd/nyssa/martyrs.html
A two-part homily delivered on successive days by St. Gregory of Nyssa, in praise of the Forty Martyrs of Sebaste.
The Forty Martyrs of Sebaste
http://www.ewtn.com/library/MARY/40MAR.htm
From Fr. Alban Butler's Lives of the Saints.
Forty Martyrs
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/06153a.htm
Article in the Catholic Encyclopedia about this group of soldiers who, for professing Christianity, were ordered by the prefect to lie naked on a frozen lake. One of these threw himself into a warm bath which had been set up for defectors, but one of the guards was so impressed with the others that he declared himself a Christian and died with them. Early fourth century.