Baring-Gould’s sources: The account of their martyrdom was written by Theosterictus, a confessor in the same Iconoclastic persecution.

In the horrible persecution of the orthodox by Constantine Copronymus, on the subject of the images, concerning which more shall be said elsewhere, the blessed martyr Stephen the younger, Archimandrite of Auxentia, was in prison, when a monk, Theosterictus by name, [43] was admitted to him, with his nose cut off, and his cheeks burnt with pitch; he came from the monastery of Peleceta, and related to the abbot how, on the Wednesday in Holy Week, as the unbloody Sacrifice was being offered in the monastery church, a band of soldiers, by command of the heretical Emperor, broke into the sacred building and interrupted the mysteries. Thirty-eight monks were chained, the rest were mutilated, their noses cut off, and their beards steeped in tar, and then fired. Then the soldiers set the whole convent in flames. The thirty-eight were carried off to the borders of Ephesus, and thrust into the furnace of an old bath; the openings were then closed, and they were suffocated therein.

FOOTNOTES:

[39] Socrates, Eccl. Hist., lib. vi. c. 18.

[40] Monk-Wearmouth on the north bank of the river.

[41] Bede [English monk and historian (d. 735)]: Vitæ Abbt. in Wiramuth, c. 6.

[42] This is Bede, who describes, further on, how the abbot and that little boy celebrated alone, and in great sadness, the whole psalms of the monastic service, with no little labour, until new monks arrived.

[43] Not to be confused with Theosterictus, disciple of the abbot S. Nicetas, who writes this account.