The Christian attitude toward the death of martyrs is first exemplified in the New Testament, which records that after the beheading of St. John the Baptist, his disciples respectfully buried him. Stephen was likewise "given a Christian burial by his fellow-Christians after he had been stoned to death by a mob." Two of the Post-Nicene Fathers, Ephrem the Syrian, as well as John Chrysostom, both wrote about the importance of honoring the dead; the theologian Herman Heuser writes that in the early Church, the feast days of the martyrs were local observances, with churches being built on those sites where their blood was shed. Frances Stewart Mossier explains that this changed during the persecution of Christians in the Roman Empire, saying that: