The Forty Martyrs of Sebaste

Around 320, during the persecution of Emperor Licinius, forty Christian soldiers of the Roman army stationed at Sebaste in Lesser Armenia (today Sivas, Turkey) refused to offer sacrifice to the gods. Their commander ordered them stripped and left overnight on a frozen lake, while a warm bath was prepared on the shore for anyone who would deny his faith.

The soldiers prayed that all forty would receive the crown of victory. During the night one of them gave up and ran to the bath, but he died soon after. A guard who had seen a vision of crowns descending upon the martyrs then declared himself a Christian and took his place on the ice, so the number of forty was kept. At dawn the frozen bodies were burned. Saint Basil the Great and Saint Gregory of Nyssa preached about them, and their story spread throughout East and West.

In Romania and Moldova families bake mucenici, sweet pastries shaped like the figure eight, often forty of them, in honor of the martyrs. Eastern Catholic and Orthodox churches keep the feast as a Lenten call to perseverance.