Veneration in The East
The cult of the Forty Martyrs is widespread all over the East. The Churches of St. Sophia in Ohrid (modern-day Republic of Macedonia) and Kiev (Ukraine) contain their depictions, datable to the 11th and 12th centuries, respectively. A number of auxiliary chapels were dedicated to the Forty, and there are several instances when an entire temple (church building) is dedicated to them: for example Xiropotamou Monastery on Mount Athos and the 13th-century Holy Forty Martyrs Church, in Veliko Tarnovo, Bulgaria.
In Aleppo (Syria) the Armenian Cathedral is dedicated to the Forty Martyrs.
The feast day of the Forty Martyrs falls on March 9, and is intentionally placed that it will fall during Great Lent. There is an intentional play on the number forty being both the number of martyrs and the days in the fast. Their feast also falls during Great Lent so that the endurance of the martyrs will serve as an example to the faithful to persevere to the end (i.e., throughout the forty days of the fast) in order to attain heavenly reward (participation in Pascha, the Resurrection of Jesus).
A prayer mentioning the Forty Holy Martyrs of Sebaste is also placed in the Orthodox Wedding Service (referred to as a "crowning") to remind the bride and groom that spiritual crowns await them in Heaven also if they remain as faithful to Christ as these saints of long ago.
Read more about this topic: Forty Martyrs Of Sebaste
Famous quotes containing the words veneration and/or east:
“It is evident, from their method of propagation, that a couple of cats, in fifty years, would stock a whole kingdom; and if that religious veneration were still paid them, it would, in twenty more, not only be easier in Egypt to find a god than a man, which Petronius says was the case in some parts of Italy; but the gods must at last entirely starve the men, and leave themselves neither priests nor votaries remaining.”
—David Hume (1711–1776)
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—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)