Details on the story of the Forty Martyrs, who died near Sebaste in 320.

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.

From Fr. Alban Butler's Lives of the Saints.

A two-part homily delivered on successive days by St. Gregory of Nyssa, in praise of the Forty Martyrs of Sebaste.