The life of Andrew Stratelates and Companions
Envious men denounced him afterward as a Christian who had turned his soldiers from the old gods; Andrew was tried, tortured, and imprisoned along with his men, and the case was referred to the emperor himself. Wary of provoking the army that loved him, the emperor ordered him released, secretly intending to have him killed on another pretext.
Learning of the plot, Andrew withdrew with his soldiers to Tarsus in Cilicia, where the local bishop baptized them all, and then further into the passes of Mount Taurus. There imperial troops overtook the company and put them to the sword, 2,593 in number, none of them resisting. Where their blood was shed, tradition holds that a healing spring broke from the ground; local bishops recovered and buried the martyrs' bodies in secret, and the spring became a place of pilgrimage for generations after.
