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Icon nb 112
Size : 40 x 30 cm.
Linden board
Gilded haloes. Egg tempera.
Saint Damian and his brother Saint Cosmas were born in Cilicia and practiced medicine in the Roman province of Syria. They accepted no payment for their services, which earned them the nickname anargyroi, that is to say without money, and attracted a large number of people to the Christian faith.
During the persecutions of Diocletian, Cosmas and Damian were arrested on the orders of the Prefect of Cilicia, a certain Lysias. He ordered them to recant under torture. They remained faithful to their faith despite a series of terrible tortures to which they remained insensitive; finally they were beheaded. Their younger brothers Antime, Leonce and Euprepius, who followed them everywhere, shared their martyrdom. The most famous of their miraculous cures : the transplant of a Moor's leg to replace the necrotic leg of a patient, was the subject of numerous paintings and miniatures
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Saint Lawrence (died 258) was one of the most venerated Roman martyrs, celebrated for his Christian valour. Lawrence was among the seven deacons of the Roman church serving Pope Sixtus II, whose martyrdom preceded Lawrence’s by a few days: they were executed during the persecution under the Roman emperor Valerian. Saint Ambrose of Milan among others, recorded that he was roasted to death on a gridiron, remarking to his torturers at one point, “I am cooked on that side; turn me over, and eat.” Many conversions to Christianity throughout Rome reportedly followed Lawrence’s death. He is named in the canon of the Roman mass.
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