Martyr
Martyr Candidus of Sebaste
† ок. 320
Martyr Candidus of Sebaste — a soldier of the XII Legion, one of the Forty Martyrs of Sebaste, tortured to death under Emperor Licinius (c. 320): for refusing to renounce Christ the soldiers were stripped and left overnight on the ice of a lake near Sebaste in Armenia, after which the survivors were finished off and their bodies burned.
Martyr Candidus was a soldier of the XII Legion (Fulminata), stationed in the city of Sebaste in Armenia, one of the 40 Christian soldiers of that legion brought before the governor Agricolaus under Emperor Licinius (c. 320) and who firmly refused to offer sacrifice to the pagan gods.
For confessing Christ, all forty were stripped naked and left overnight on the ice of a lake near the city in bitter frost, while a warm bathhouse was set up on the shore as a temptation. One soldier could not endure it and ran to the bathhouse, dying there at once; but the pagan guard Aglaius, seeing crowns descending from heaven over the heads of the sufferers, declared himself a Christian and joined the martyrs, restoring their number. In the morning the surviving martyrs had their legs broken and their bodies were burned.
His feast is kept on March 9/22, among the Forty Martyrs of Sebaste.
NOTE: the original stub was an unprocessed image caption from pravicon.com for a fresco by Theophanes the Cretan and Symeon (Church of St. Nicholas, Stavronikita Monastery, Mount Athos, 1546) — it has been reworked into a coherent life; the previously empty feast-date and life-dates fields have been filled in.