Sabbas the Goth
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Saint Sabbas the Goth (341-372) is a saint of the Eastern Orthodox Church calendar. His Feast Day is April 14
Born of the Goths, Sabbas lived in Wallachia in what is now Romania, and was a church reader there, though how he gained his interest in Christianity and was eventually converted is not known. In the year 372, a Gothic ruler began a pogrom of his Christian subjects. When he came to the village where Sabbas lived and asked if there were any Christians about, Sabbas stepped forward and said, “'Let no-one swear an oath on my behalf. I am a Christian.” The leader dismissed him, saying, “This one can do us neither good nor harm.” The next year, a priest came to the village and celebrated Easter with Sabbas. The pagans of the village reported this, and the leader returned a second time to arrest Sabbas. They dragged Sabbas naked through thorn bushes, bound him and the priest to trees and forced them to eat food that had been sacrificed to idols. Both men refused to touch the unclean meat. The Gothic prince sentenced Sabbas to death, and he went off with the soldiers praising God the whole way, denouncing the pagan and idolatrous ways of his captors and scorning them. The commander ordered Sabbas to be thrown in a river, tying a rock around his neck and his body to a wooden pole.
During a war with the Goths under the Emperor Valens, a Greek commander, Ionnios Soranos, found Sabbas’ body and took it to Cappadocia to be buried.
