The life of St Mocius
He went further, breaking a statue of the god at its temple, and for this he was seized and brought to trial.
The governor had him tortured and then thrown into a red-hot furnace, but he came out unharmed, while the flames instead scorched the governor himself. Wild beasts set upon him in the arena would not touch him, some lying peacefully at his feet, and the crowd, seeing this, begged that he be freed. Instead he was sent under guard first to Perinthus and finally to Byzantium, where he was beheaded. Before his death he thanked God for the strength to endure to the end. He died around the end of the third century, and years later the emperor Constantine built a church over his relics in the city that would become Constantinople, a shrine that remained one of the most honored in the capital for centuries.
