Sabbas the Goth

Saint Sabbas the Goth, also known as Sabas, Sava, or Savva, was a fourth-century Christian martyr from among the Tervingi Goths. He lived in a village in the valley of the River Musaeus, identified with the Buzău in Wallachia, in the lands north of the Danube that had once formed part of Roman Dacia and in his time constituted Gothic territory. The principal source for his life is the Passion of Saint Saba the Goth, a near-contemporary narrative associated with a letter of the Gothic church that accompanied his relics to Cappadocia. That account states that he was in his thirty-eighth year when he was killed. His martyrdom is dated to 12 April 372, so he is generally held to have been born about 334. He was a Christian from youth and served his community as a lector, reading the scriptures in the liturgy.

Gothic Christianity in the mid-fourth century owed much to the missionary bishop Ulfilas, who had translated the Bible into Gothic. After the war between the Gothic judge Athanaric and the Roman emperor Valens ended in 369, Athanaric promoted a persecution of Christians in Gothic territory, seeking to restore ancestral pagan practice and to limit Roman religious influence. Local chieftains enforced the eating of meat offered to the gods as a test of loyalty. In Sabbas's village, some Christians and even pagan neighbors tried to shield him, at one point swearing that he was not a Christian or offering him unsacrificed meat so that he might appear to conform. Sabbas rejected these stratagems, insisted on confessing his faith openly, and was driven from the village. He later returned and continued to live as a Christian.

A Gothic leader named Atharidus, son of the chieftain Rothesteus, pursued the persecution more harshly. Sabbas was arrested, beaten, and dragged naked through thorn bushes. On a subsequent occasion he was seized together with a priest named Sansala. The captors unbound Sansala so that he might sleep but left Sabbas tightly bound; according to the Passion, his bonds were loosened in a manner his guards took as miraculous. Atharidus then condemned Sabbas to death. Soldiers took him to the River Musaeus, fastened a wooden beam or yoke to his neck, and threw him into the water, drowning him on 12 April 372. The Passion emphasizes his calm confession and his refusal to recant.

Christians recovered the body from the river. Junius Soranus, dux of Scythia Minor and a kinsman of the Cappadocian church, arranged for the relics to be carried across the Danube and sent to Caesarea in Cappadocia, together with a letter from the church in Gothia describing the martyrdom. Saint Basil the Great of Caesarea received the relics and referred to Sabbas as a martyr whose memory should be honored. The cult thus passed from the Gothic lands into Asia Minor and the wider Church. Sabbas is venerated as a saint in both the Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic traditions. In the Roman Martyrology his feast is 12 April; in many Eastern calendars he is remembered on 15 April. His Passion remains an important historical document for Christianity among the fourth-century Goths and for the persecution under Athanaric.