FORTY YOUTHS, WHO CONFESSED CHRIST THEIR SAVIOR, THROWN INTO A COLD POOL, AND BURNED ALIVE THE FOLLOWING DAY, AT ANTIOCH, A. D. 304.
When the east as well as the west was exceedingly disturbed on account of the violence of the persecution, there manifested themselves in the east, namely at Antioch, forty pious youths, as valiant champions of Jesus Christ, inasmuch as they openly and boldly confessed the Son of God, Jesus Christ, as their Savior. Thereupon, the Governor of that place, after they had been apprehended, strenuously exerted himself to move them from the faith; but when all his efforts proved unsuccessful, he had them stripped naked, in the coldest part of the winter, and cast into a very cold pool. But as they were still alive the next day, he caused them to be burned to powder.
One of them, who in consideration of his extreme youthfulness had, through compassion, been restored to his mother, was placed by the latter with her own hands upon the wagon in which the others lay, and exhorted, to finish this blessed course with his fellow brethren. This happened in the third year of the persecution, A. D. 304. Joh. Gys., fol. 23, col. 3, ex Bas. de 40 Martyr.
FOURTH YEAR OF THE PERSECUTION, COMMENCED A. D. 305.
Galerius Maximian, continuing in the persecution which had been begun, and carried into execution, with great bitterness, by Diocletian and Maximian, exercised much cruelty, through Peucetius, Quintinian, Theotecnus, and other Proconsuls, against the poor Christians; burning them alive; throwing them before the wild beasts, to be torn by them; nailing them to crosses; drowning multitudes of them in the sea; starving them to death in the prisons; beheading them; cutting off their hands and feet, and then giving them their life; but when they would make use of the favor granted them, spoiling them of all their goods, and driving them away into misery.
Touching those who were slain there, the following, among others, are mentioned by name.
SYLVANUS, JANUARIUS, SOSIUS, PROCULUS, PELAGIA, THEONAS, CYRENIA, AND JULIANA, ALL OF WHOM LAID DOWN THEIR LIVES FOR THE EVANGELICAL TRUTH, A. D. 305.
Sylvanus, Bishop of the church of Emissa, a city of Apamea, in Syria, was, with many others, thrown before the wild beasts, to be devoured by them.
Januarius, Bishop of the church of Beneventum; Sosius, a deacon of the church of Misenum; Proculus, deacon, at Pussolis, and others, were beheaded together.
Pelagia was suffocated in a redhot ox.