great miseries which God's Saints suffered on their account; and as if all the streets spoke likewise, because of the holy bones which were thrown upon them, and lay all about the city ; yea, as if the city-walls quaked and trembled as though they would fall, on account of the holy bodies which hung upon them, on all sides, throughout the city. Behold! what can weeping or sorrow be, if that was not the greatest of both, or what can lamentation or bewailing be, if that was not the fullness of both, when afterwards they thus seized and bound the. Saints, and scourged and burnt them and cut them up like stuck swine, and tormented them with every misery? And kinsmen beheld how their kinsmen suffered and hung on the town- walls for a spectacle; and the brother beheld his sister in torment, and the sister beheld her brother in misery; the father forsook his child, and the child forsook the father, and at last every friend forsook the other, by reason of the great horrors which they saw there ; and the tortures were specially intended for themselves, unless they straightway ran and sacrificed to the idol and denied the Lord. Then none of the men could any longer conceal himself, but every one in due time had to proclaim and openly testify by his deeds to which of the two lordships he would bow, whether to that of our eternal Lord, or of the accursed devil; whether it were more desirable for him to escape the tortures, or to bear them for God's name.
There were there denounced seven holy men, faithful to God, whose names we wrote in the opening words of their holy Passion ; they were steadfast in the faith of the Son of the Living God, and they faithfully bare in their bodies the sign of His Holy Cross. When they saw the manifold woes which Christ's chosen daily suffered and endured for His name, then they, the Seven, lamented and wept; and their countenances were all made lean through that great sorrow, and the bright fairness of their youth faded and waned; and they in every way, in watchings, and in fastings, and in holy prayers, lay lamenting; and they did all this on the emperor's account, because they had been formerly his nearest fol-
