St. Gregory the Great
Dialogues
The Third Book › Chapter Twenty-seven: Of Forty Country Husbandmen That Were Slain by the Lombards, Because They Would Not Eat Flesh Sacrificed to Idols.
Chapter Twenty-seven: of forty country husbandmen that were slain by the Lombards, because they would not eat flesh sacrificed to idols.[3:30]
For about fifteen years since, as they report who might very well have been present, forty husbandmen of the country were taken prisoners by the Lombards, whom they would needs have enforced to eat of that which was sacrificed to idols: but when they utterly refused so to do, or so much as once to touch that wicked meat, then they threatened to kill them, unless they would eat it: but they, loving more eternal than transitory life, continued constant, and so they were all slain. What then were these men? what else but true martyrs, that made choice rather to die than, by eating of that which was unlawful, to offend their Creator?
Edition notes (Gardner / P.W.)
[3:30] Chapters XXVII. and XXVIII. pp. 150-151. Dr. Hodgkin (VI. p. 97) conjectures that these atrocities were not committed by the Lombards properly so called, who were Arians, but by their barbarian auxiliaries, Bulgarians, Sarmatians, and Gepidae, who had come with them into Italy, and who were idolaters.
Source: Dialogues (Tertullian.org)