THESE seven martyrs were citizens of Corinth, and confessed their faith
before Tertius the proconsul, in their own country, in 249, in the
beginning of the reign of Decius. After their torments they passed into
Egypt, whether by compulsion or by voluntary banishment is not known,
and there finished their martyrdom at Diospolis, capital of Thebais, in
the reign of Numerian, in 284, under the governor Sabinus. After the
governor had tried the constancy of the martyrs by racks, scourges, and
various inventions of cruelty, he caused Victorinus to be thrown into a
great mortar, (the Greek Menology says, of marble.) The executioners
began by pounding his feet and legs, saying to him at every stroke:
"Spare yourself, wretch. It depends upon you to escape this death, if
you will only renounce your new God." The prefect grew furious at his
constancy, and at length commanded his head to be beat to pieces. The
sight of this mortar, so far from casting a damp on his companions,
seemed to inspire them with the greater ardor to be treated in the like
manner. So that when the tyrant threatened Victor with the same death,
he only desired him to hasten the execution; and, pointing to the
mortar, said: "In that is salvation and true felicity prepared for me!"
He was immediately cast into it and beaten to death. Nicephorus, the
third martyr, was impatient of delay, and leaped of his own accord into
the bloody mortar. The judge, enraged at his boldness, commanded not
one, but many executioners at once to pound him in the same manner. He
caused Claudian, the fourth, to be chopped in pieces, and his bleeding
joints to be thrown at the feet of those that were yet living. He
expired after his feet, hands, arms, legs, and thighs were cut off. The
tyrant, pointing to his mangled limbs and scattered bones, said to the
other three: "It concerns you to avoid this punishment; I do not compel
you to suffer." The martyrs answered with one voice: "On the contrary,
we rather pray that if you have any other more exquisite torment you
would inflict it on us. We are determined never to violate the fidelity
which we owe to God, or to deny Jesus Christ our Saviour, for he is our
God, from whom we have our being, and to whom alone we aspire." The
tyrant became almost distracted with fury, and commanded Diodorus to be
burned alive, Serapion to be beheaded, and Papias to be drowned. This
happened on the 25th of February; on which day the Roman and other
western Martyrologies name them; but the Greek Menaea, and the Menology
of the emperor Basil Porphyrogenitus, honor them on the 21st of January,
the day of their confession at Corinth.
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