Martyr Gorgonius of Sebaste

The Martyr Gorgonius of Sebaste belongs to the Forty Martyrs of Sebaste — Christian soldiers of the XII Legion Fulminata who refused to renounce Christ under Emperor Licinius in 320. For confessing their faith they were stripped and left overnight on the ice of a lake near the city of Sebaste in Lesser Armenia in bitter cold; after one of them weakened and gave way without shaking the resolve of the rest, bone-breaking torture completed the execution. The name Gorgonius appears in the traditional roster of the Forty Martyrs. This entry's image (a late-15th-century miniature from the Iviron Monastery on Athos) does not by itself allow a definitive link specifically to the Sebaste tradition rather than another Gorgonius.

IMPORTANT CLARIFICATION: there is a DIFFERENT, separate Martyr Gorgonius — a chamberlain of Emperor Diocletian, who suffered together with the Hieromartyr Dorotheus at Nicomedia (feast Sept 3/16). The epithet "of Sebaste" in this entry's name specifically indicates membership in the Synaxis of the Forty Martyrs of Sebaste (feast March 9/22), not the Nicomedian namesake — these two saints named Gorgonius should not be confused.