From the Prologue of Ochrid
Brothers by birth, Persians, of a pagan father and a Christian mother. Raised in the Christian spirit and baptized. As Christians they held high offices under King Alamundar. They were sent to Emperor Julian the Apostate to conduct negotiations and establish peace between the Persian and Greco-Roman empires. The Apostate emperor organized a certain feast for the idols in Chalcedon. At that feast the emperor with his nobles offered sacrifices to the idols. The Persian envoys absented themselves from that feast. The emperor summoned them and ordered them to take part in the feast and offer sacrifices to the gods. Then they declared that they were foreign subjects, that they had come as envoys of the Persian king for the purpose of establishing peace between the two empires and for nothing else; that they were Christians and considered it unworthy to bow before dead idols and offer sacrifices to them. The emperor grew furious and cast them into prison. The next day he brought them out again and began to debate with them about the faith, but the holy brothers were unconquerable and unshakable. Then they were tied naked to trees and beaten and scraped with iron brushes. Throughout the tortures they prayed to God with gratitude: "O sweet Jesus, these torments are sweet to us because of Thy love!" An angel of God appeared to them, consoled them, and took away all their pain. Contrary to all international norms, the wicked Emperor Julian finally pronounced the sentence that these three brothers be beheaded with the sword. When they were beheaded, there was a great earthquake; the earth split open and received the bodies of the holy martyrs into itself, so that the pagans might not burn them by order of the emperor. The bodies of the martyrs were later cast up by the earth, so that Christians could find them and honorably bury them. When the Persian king heard how inhumanly Julian had put his delegates to death, he prepared an army against him. And Julian marched against the Persian kingdom, confident of his victory. But he was utterly routed, and he himself perished in shame, to the joy and laughter of the whole world.
