FORTY MARTYRS OF SEBASTE. - They are commemorated in the Greek and Latin Martyrologies on 9 March; their cult spread rapidly in the Church and their relics were venerated in many places.
Their martyrdom is attested by several documents of differing historical value, sufficiently trustworthy to allow a true reconstruction of the glorious episode. These consist of discourses by St. Basil, St. Gregory of Nyssa, St. Ephrem, of an ancient Passio certainly not contemporary, which was already translated into several languages, and of the Testament that the martyrs themselves wrote in prison shortly before being led to execution. All these documents, while substantially in agreement, present differences of detail, not however such as to warrant rejecting their authority. The discourses, while echoing written and oral traditions that may go back to the time of the martyrdom of the Forty, bear the mark of the oratorical style of their authors; the Passio moreover has all the defects common to that genre of writings; only the Testament is certainly genuine and beyond all suspicion.
During the persecution of Licinius, forty Christian soldiers, probably belonging to the XII Legion Fulminata, were arrested at Sebastia and placed before the alternative of apostatizing or suffering capital punishment. Since all remained firm in the faith, they were condemned to be exposed naked, during a terrible night of cold, in the courtyard of a gymnasium. One alone gave way under the trial, asking to be plunged into the hot bath of the nearby baths, but his place was immediately taken by the guard, who was suddenly converted. The following morning the frozen bodies were burned and the ashes scattered in the nearby river; on the site of the martyrdom a church was later built. At Rome too an extremely ancient oratory was dedicated to the Forty in the Forum, near S. Maria Antiqua, brought to light during the excavations of 1901. This oratory, founded in an ancient building of the 2nd or 3rd century, was decorated between the 7th and 8th centuries with paintings referring to the martyrs of Sebastia: most beautiful is the apsidal one with the great scene of the martyrs. - See plate XI.
Bibliography2 works
1902, pp. 166-81; C. Huelsen, Le Chiese di Roma nel Medio Evo, Florence 1927, p. 426; P. Franchi de Cavalieri, I santi Q. m. di S., in Note agiografiche, VII (Studi e testi, 49), Rome 1928, pp. 155-84 (in which he retracts the judgment expressed in Note agiogr., III, Rome 1900, pp. 64-70); M. Armellini, Le Chiese di Roma dal sec. IV al XIX, 3rd ed., I, Rome 1942, p. 182; II, pp. 1422-23; Martyr. Hieronymianum, p. 134; H. Delchaye, Les origines du culte des martyrs, Brussels 1933, pp. 61, 85, 177; Martyr. Romanum, p. 91.