The Holy Confessors Barlaam and Josaphat.

For the sake of Christ, they had a thirst for martyrdom suffering for the faith and heartily desired to obtain eternal salvation through it. Without fear and without ceasing, they preached the healing name of God with great constancy, having nothing other than Christ in their mouths. They despised and disregarded the fleeting, perishable, and destructive nature of these temporal things, but publicly showed everyone the steadfast and indestructible goods of the future life. They modeled this by their example and cast out the good seed in their preaching, so that they might win these people for God, make them friends of God, and make them worthy of the life hidden in Christ. Thereupon, only a portion took up such sweet teaching and left the bitter darkness, seduction, and deceit of this world to commit themselves to the clear light of truth, so that even some of the nobility and the king's council put away the world's pleasure and vanity, left them behind, and became monks. When such things were made known and came to the king's ears, he was filled with great anger and ignited in fury. He immediately issued a public command and edict official decree that all Christians should be forced to renounce the Christian faith and sacrifice to the idols. Those who refused were to be executed and killed with the newly invented pains and tortures he had devised against the Christians. He sent such written edicts and commands against the Christians into all his subject provinces, in which he commanded all his princes and captains with high earnestness to undertake all kinds of pain, punishment, and deadly torture against the God-fearing.

Colossians 3.