The life of Menas, Victor and Vincent
Years later he came forward at a pagan festival to confess Christ openly, was tortured at length, and was beheaded, traditionally dated to around the year 304.
Victor, a soldier under an earlier persecution, endured torture without apparent harm and was eventually beheaded at Damascus; a young woman named Stephanida, wife of one of his torturers, was so moved by what she witnessed that she too confessed Christ and was put to a cruel death.
Vincent was a deacon of Saragossa in Spain, raised from childhood under his bishop Valerian and entrusted with preaching in his place. Arrested alongside his bishop under Diocletian, he was tortured at length, by most accounts ending on a heated grate, and was buried with reverence by fellow Christians.
Later liturgical tradition drew their three memories together under a single feast, and the hymns for the day address them as one chorus of martyrs, though their lives touch only in the Church's calendar rather than in history.
