Resurrection of Jesus). There is a pious custom of baking “skylarks” (pastries shaped like skylarks) on this day, because people believed that birds sing at this time to announce the arrival of spring. A prayer mentioning the Forty Holy Martyrs of Sebaste is also placed in the Orthodox Wedding Service (referred to as a "crowning") to remind the bride and groom that spiritual crowns await them in Heaven also if they remain as faithful to Christ as these saints of long ago. In Orthodox art Byzantine artists were fascinated with the subject that allowed them to graphically show human despair. The Martyrs were typically represented at the point when they were about to freeze to death, "shivering from the cold, hugging themselves for warmth, or clasping hands to their faces or wrists in pain and despair". This is particularly evident in the large 10th-century ivory plaque from the Bode Museum and the Palaiologan portable mosaic set in wax, from Dumbarton Oaks. The subject remains popular among Orthodox iconographers. In the West Special devotion to the Forty Martyrs of Sebaste was introduced at an early date into the West. Bishop Gaudentius of Brescia (d. about 410 or 427) received particles of the ashes of martyrs during a voyage in the East, and placed them with other relics in the altar of the basilica which he had erected, at the consecration of which he delivered a discourse, still extant. The Church of Santa Maria Antiqua in the Roman Forum, built in the fifth century, contains a chapel, built like the church itself on an ancient site, and consecrated to the Forty Martyrs. A sixth or seventh-century mural there depicts their martyrdom. The names of the confessors, as we find them also in later sources, were formerly inscribed on this fresco. Acts of these martyrs, written subsequently, in Greek, Syriac and Latin, are yet extant, also a "Testament" of the Forty Martyrs. See also 20,000 Martyrs of Nicomedia 42 Martyrs of Amorium Forty Martyrs of England and Wales Further reading Of the Forty Soldiers (Mar. 9) in "Ælfric's Lives of Saints", by Ælfric of Eynsham London, Pub. for the Early English text society, by N. Trübner & co. (1881). References External links 40 Holy Martyrs of Sebaste - Eastern Orthodox icon and synaxarion 320 deaths Groups of Christian martyrs of the Roman era 4th-century Christian martyrs 4th-century Romans Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity