Martyr Priscus of Sebastia

Saint Priscus of Sebastia is venerated as one of the Forty Martyrs of Sebaste, a group of Roman soldiers martyred around 320 in the city of Sebastia (Armenia) during the persecution of Christians under co-emperor Licinius. Priscus served under the military commander Agricolaus. When the garrison was ordered to offer sacrifice to the pagan gods, forty Christian soldiers of Cappadocian origin — Priscus among them — refused to renounce their faith.

They were imprisoned and, in the depth of winter, stripped and forced onto the ice of a frozen lake outside the city through the night, while a heated bathhouse stood nearby to tempt any who wished to recant. One soldier broke and ran for the warmth, dying on the threshold. A prison guard, Aglaeus, who saw crowns of glory appear over the heads of the thirty-nine faithful martyrs, declared himself a Christian, stripped, and took the fallen man's place, preserving the number forty.

At dawn the martyrs' legs were broken and their bodies burned. Priscus is commemorated with the group as a soldier-martyr who held fast to Christ under torment.