Sabinus of Catania
Our Venerable Father Sabinus, Bishop of Catania
Venerable · Bishop · Wonderworker · d. c. 760
Commemorated 15 October
Sabinus (†c. 760) was a bishop of Catania in Sicily who laid down his see for the wilderness: consecrated against his inclination, he soon withdrew into solitude, where his strict ascetic life was crowned with the gifts of wonderworking and discernment. The Byzantine synaxarion honours him among the venerable rather than simply among the hierarchs — "having lived well a life equal to the angels," its verses say, "in death he was joined to the choir of the angels" — and his memory is kept on October 15, in the Greek East as in the Latin West.
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Sabinus belongs to Sicily in the eighth century, when the island stood under Byzantine rule and its church within the Greek order. The received account, brief in all its witnesses, runs thus: ardently desiring to serve God in stillness, Sabinus was nonetheless raised to the episcopal throne of Catania, under Etna on the island's eastern shore; but the burden of the see could not hold a heart formed for the desert, and he withdrew — the Western tradition says to a hermitage, after voluntarily resigning the bishopric — to lead a life of severe asceticism. There God glorified him with the gifts of working wonders and of discernment of hearts, and there he died, about the year 760. The Latin church of Sicily has venerated him on the same October day as the Greek East, one of the saints held in common from the centuries when Sicily belonged to both worlds at once.
Feast and commemoration
October 15 (church date; Old Calendar civil October 28), listed in the Greek synaxarion of the day (as "Sabinus the Bishop," among the venerable) and in the Slavic and OCA calendars ("Sabinus, Bishop of Catania"); the Western martyrologies keep Sabinus of Catania on the same date. No proper service is appointed; the common of a hierarch serves where his memory is kept liturgically.
Hymns
Troparion — Tone 4 (from the common of a hierarch)
A rule of faith and an image of meekness, a teacher of temperance did thy deeds show thee forth to thy flock; therefore didst thou acquire by humility the things on high, by poverty the things that are rich: O Father and Hierarch Sabinus, intercede with Christ God that our souls may be saved.
Original translation from the Greek
Iconography
Sabinus is depicted as a Byzantine hierarch: grey-bearded, in phelonion and omophorion, holding the Gospel. The stored image is the miniature for October 15 from the Menologion of Basil II (Constantinople, c. 985; Vatican, Vat. gr. 1613): the bishop stands alone with the Gospel book before a walled complex under a gold sky — the peaceable image the Menologion reserves for hierarchs who died in peace. The reproduction carries a faint diagonal source-watermark at its right edge; a cleaner scan would be preferred if one surfaces.
Disputed questions
- The see. The Byzantine synaxarion notice styles him simply "our venerable father Sabinus the bishop," without naming a city; the identification with Catania is that of the received tradition — the Slavic calendars and the OCA, agreeing with the Latin commemoration of Sabinus of Catania (†c. 760) on the same day — and is followed here.