Sabbas the Goth
The Holy Martyr Sabbas the Goth, drowned in the river Mousaios
Martyr · d. 372
Commemorated 12 April — Martyrdom by drowning in the river Mousaios
Sabbas was a Gothic Christian, a reader and singer of the church among his people north of the Danube, who was drowned in the river Mousaios (Buzău, in what is now Romania) about the year 372, in the persecution of the Gothic king Athanaric. His Passion, sent from the Goths to the church of Cappadocia at the request of St Basil the Great, is one of the earliest and most vivid documents of Christianity among the Goths, and Sabbas stands among the first martyrs of the lands of the lower Danube.
A Christian among the Goths
Sabbas belonged to the Goths settled beyond the Danube, in the region of the river Mousaios (the modern Buzău in Wallachia/Romania). Converted to Christ, he lived a life of strict piety — the Passion describes him as gentle, straightforward, zealous for the truth, a reader and psalm-singer in the little Christian community, unmarried, given to fasting and prayer, and utterly fearless in confessing the faith openly before the pagan Goths. He would not eat food that had been offered to idols, even when kinsmen, to save their Christian neighbours from the authorities, swore falsely that there were no Christians among them; Sabbas stood forth and declared himself a Christian, that no lie might be told in his defence.
The persecution of Athanaric
When the Gothic ruler Athanaric raised a persecution against the Christians (about 370–372), Sabbas was twice driven from his village and twice returned. On the great feast of Pascha, unable to find a priest, he was going to another village to keep the feast when he was seized by the soldiers of a chieftain named Atharidus. They tortured him through the night — stretched him on a rack, laid him bound upon thorns, tried to force upon him meat from the idol-sacrifices — but he cast the polluted food away and confessed Christ, mocking the powerlessness of their gods. Marvelling at his endurance, and unable to move him, his captors led him at last to the river Mousaios and drowned him, tying a beam to his neck and thrusting him beneath the water, about the year 372. He was some thirty-eight years old.
The Passion of Sabbas
The Christians drew his body from the river. Junius Soranus, the Roman dux of Scythia and himself of Gothic Christian stock, had the relics carried into the empire, to Cappadocia; and the church of the Goths sent with them a letter — the Passion of St Sabbas the Goth — recounting his martyrdom. This document, addressed to the church of Cappadocia (and associated with the correspondence of St Basil the Great, who received the relics), is prized as one of the very earliest witnesses to the life and sufferings of the Christian Goths, and a precious source for the Church of the lower Danube.
Feast and commemoration
April 12 (church date; Old Calendar civil April 25), within Great Lent. Sabbas is honoured as a proto-martyr of the Danubian lands and is held in especial honour in Romania, on whose soil he suffered.
Hymns
Troparion — Tone 4 (common of a martyr)
Thy martyr Sabbas, O Lord, in his contest received an incorruptible crown from Thee, our God; for possessing Thy strength, he cast down the tyrants and shattered the feeble insolence of the demons. By his intercessions save our souls.
Original translation from the Greek
Iconography
Sabbas is shown as a young layman-martyr, beardless or lightly bearded, in the tunic and mantle and holding the cross; the scene of his drowning in the river, the beam bound to his neck, may be shown beside him. No pre-1900 icon of him alone has been identified for this repository.
Disputed questions
- Not to be confused with Sabbas Stratelates, "the General," commemorated April 24 (†272) — the confusion most likely to occur, since the two saints share the name Sabbas, Gothic origin, martyrdom by drowning in a river, and feasts twelve days apart in the same month. They are certainly distinct: this Sabbas was a layman, reader and psalm-singer of a Christian village beyond the Danube, put to death in the river Mousaios in 372 under the Gothic king Athanaric, and his passion survives in a letter of the Gothic church itself; Sabbas Stratelates was a Roman general of Gothic stock, martyred inside the empire under the emperor Aurelian about 272, and had seventy of his own soldiers martyred with him. Russian icon-captioning has occasionally called the two "twins," which describes the resemblance and not an identity.
- Not to be confused, further, with the monastic Sabbases — Sabbas the Sanctified (December 5), Sabbas of Serbia (January 14), Sabbas of Storozhevsk (December 3).