Saint Sabas the Goth

The leaders among the Goths and their magistrates were pagans: they undertook to destroy the Christian religion in Gothia. The persecution began by forcing the faithful to eat meats offered to idols. Some Gentiles, who had Christian relatives, wishing to save them, had the ministers of the false gods whom they had bribed present them with common meats that had not been immolated. Sabas, having learned of this, not only refused to touch the offered meats, but, appearing in public, he protested loudly that if any Christian ate these supposed meats, he was no longer a Christian. And by this means, he prevented several Christians from imprudently falling into the traps of the devil. This did not please those who had invented this deception, which they believed to be innocent; they found Sabas too severe and too scrupulous; they drove him from the village where he lived, but some time later they recalled him.

The persecution having begun again and a commissioner of the king having come to the village of Sabas to conduct a search for Christians, some inhabitants offered to swear upon the victims that in the whole village there was not a single Christian. But Sabas, showing himself a second time, and approaching those who wanted to take this oath, said: "Let no one swear for me, for I am a Christian." Athanaric's commissioner nonetheless ordered that the oath be taken. Whereupon the prin cipal inhabitants, havi commissaire d'Athanaric King or judge of the Goths, persecutor of Christians. ng hidden their relatives who professed Christianity, swore that in the whole village there was only one Christian. The commissioner ordered that this Christian appear, and Sabas presented himself boldly. The commissioner asked those around him what this man might possess in terms of wealth; they replied that he owned nothing other than the garment he was wearing: upon hearing this, the commissioner did not think much of him, saying that a man of this sort was of no importance, and that he could do no harm. He let him go without saying anything else to him.

The persecution having reignited for the third time around the feast of Easter, Sabas pondered how and in what place he could celebrate this holy day. It came to his mind to go find a priest of his acquaintance, named Guttica, who lived in another town. But having set out on his way, he met a man of extraordinary height and venerable appearance, who stopped him and said: "Return from whence you came, and celebrate the feast with the priest Sansalas." Sabas replied: "The priest of whom you speak is not in the village where he usually resides." It is true that Sansalas had left it and had taken refuge in Romania to shelter himself from the persecution; but he had since returned because of the Easter feast; and this was what Sabas did not know. Thus, without wishing to defer to the advice of this stranger, he was preparing to continue his journey, when suddenly such a great quantity of snow fell on the side where he wanted to go, although the air had no disposition for it, that the earth was covered to such a height that it was impossible for Sabas to pass further. This prodigy opened his eyes and made him know that it was the will of God that he should return home and celebrate Easter there with the priest Sansalas. He returned at once on his steps, giving thanks to God. And having come full of joy to find Sansalas, he told him, and several other faithful, what had just happened to him. They all celebrated the great feast of Easter together. But three days after the feast, Atharidus, son of Rotheste, who had a small sovereignty in those qu Atharide Local Gothic ruler who ordered the martyrdom of Sabas. arters, entered unexpectedly with a troop of brigands into the village where Saint Sabas lived. They went first to the dwelling of the priest Sansalas, surprised him as he was sleeping without suspecting anything, and having bound him, they threw him into a chariot. As for Sabas, having dragged him from his bed, they dragged him naked among thorns, where they had set fire, striking him incessantly, and bruising his whole body with lashes and sticks, so great was the rage with which these merciless men were animated against the servants of God. But it exercised the faith and patience of Sabas in an extraordinary manner: for the day having dawned, and the Saint wishing to glorify God, spoke in this way to his persecutors: "Have you not made me walk barefoot through places all covered with brambles and all sown with thorns: see if my feet have the slightest scratch; come, touch my body, do you find a single contusion there, after all the blows you have given me?" They, not perceiving in fact on his flesh any mark of their cruelty, far from being touched by such an evident miracle, were only the more embittered against our Saint. They placed one of the axles of the chariot on his shoulders; they attached his two hands to it. They then took the other axle, where they bound his feet, spreading them with violence and pulling them with all their strength to make them reach the ends of the axle. In this state they pushed him roughly, and knocked him down on the ground, where they tormented him for part of the night.

But his executioners having fallen asleep, a woman arrived, who untied him; he did not think of saving himself; but, remaining in the same place, he helped this woman to prepare breakfast for some servants.

The cruel Atharidus, having awakened at daybreak, had his hands tied behind his back, and ordered him to be suspended in this way from a beam of the dwelling. He had been there for a short time, when people of Atharidus arrived, carrying meats that had been sacrificed to idols. "Here," they said to Saint Sabas and the priest, "is what the great Atharidus sends you, so that you may eat of it, and that by this you may keep your life safe." The priest replied: "We will not eat of these meats; that is not permitted to us. You can therefore tell Atharidus that he can have us attached to a cross, or have us die by whatever other kind of torture he wishes." The blessed Sabas added: "Who is the one who sends us these meats?" These men replied: "It is the lord Atharidus." — "There is only God," replied Sabas, "who should be properly called Lord, for He is of heaven and earth. As for these meats that you present to us, they are impure and profane like the one who sends them to us." This speech of Sabas made one of the slaves of Atharidus so angry that he immediately thrust the point of his javelin into his body. All those who were there believed that the blow had pierced through and through; but the Saint, overcoming by his virtue the pain that his wound should have caused him, addressing the one who had inflicted it: "You believed," he said to him, "that you had killed me; I assure you that I did not feel more pain than if you had thrown a flake of wool against my chest." And it is likely that he was not exaggerating, since in fact he did not cry out when he was struck, and, what is more marvelous, it did not appear that his body had been cut in any place, the javelin, although thrown with stiffness, not having even grazed his skin.

Atharidus learned of this miracle without being moved by it; on the contrary, he resolved to dispose of the Saint without further delay. He sent back the priest Sansalas and had Sabas led to the bank of the Musaeus River to be thrown in. The Martyr, not seeing Sansalas and remembering the Lord's precept that we should love our neighbor as ourselves, asked the soldiers where the priest was. And what sin has he committed, he added, that he should not die with me? They replied: "That is not your concern." Then he cried out in a holy transport: "Blessed be You, O Lord, and blessed be the name of Your Son, Jesus Christ, forever and ever. Amen. — You permit, O my God, that the unfortunate Atharidus condemns himself to eternal death, while he procures for me a life that will never end. It is thus, O Lord, that it pleases You to deal with Your servants." Meanwhile, the soldiers who were leading him said to one another: — "Shall we put this man to death? He is innocent; let us let him go: Atharidus will know nothing of it." — But the blessed Sabas said to them: "What is the use o f all this banter? D le bienheureux Sabas Christian martyr of Gothic origin drowned in 372. o what you have been ordered to do. You do not see what I see: Behold those who are to receive my soul and lead it to the abode of glory, who await for this only the moment it shall depart from my body." The soldiers then took him and cast him into the river. When he was at the bottom, they drove into his stomach the axle they had tied to his neck. Thus, dying by water and by wood, he expressed, through this double form of torture, the true symbol of the salvation of men, the Cross and Baptism. He was only 38 years old. His martyrdom occurred on the fifth day of the first week after Easter, and the day before the Ides of April, under the reign of Valentinian and Valens Valens Roman emperor and protector of Arianism who exiled Eusebius. , and the consulship of Modestus and Arintheus (April 12, 372).

The body was removed from the water and left on the shore without burial, yet the beasts dared not approach it, the brothers guarding it night and day, until the illustrious Junius Soranus, Duke of Scythia and great servant of God, had it taken by faithful persons whom he sent expressly to the site to bring it to him in Romania. Later, wishing to gratify his country with such a precious gift, he sent it to the church of Cappad ocia, with the consent of that o l'envoya à l'église de Cappadoce Region of Asia Minor where the relics of Sabas were sent. f Romania, and by a particular disposition of the providence of God, who pours out his graces and benefits upon those who fear him and hope in him. "Do not fail, therefore, our dearest brothers, to offer the divine sacrifice for him on the day the holy Martyr was crowned; make it known to the other faithful, so that all those who compose the Catholic and Apostolic Church, rejoicing holily in the Lord, may unite their voices to praise and bless him. Greet all the Saints for us. Those who suffer with us for the faith greet you. Glory, honor, power, majesty be to him who, by his goodness and the help of his grace, can crown us in heaven, where he reigns with his only Son and the Holy Spirit, for ever and ever. Amen."

Saint Sabas is represented: 1st, suspended by a finger from a tree, for his acts state that his hands and feet were violently pulled; 2nd, holding a bundle of thorns in his hand to recall that he was dragged through brambles; 3rd, immersed in water. He is especially honored by the Catholics of Wallachia.

The Goths originated from Gothia or Gothland, in Sweden. They first moved into Pomerania and settled there, according to Tacitus; they then advanced toward the Palus Maeotis, where Caracalla defeated them in 215. This did not prevent them from spreading along the Danube, as well as into Thrace and Greece. After frequent incursions into Roman lands, they overthrew the Western Empire and raised upon its ruins the kingdoms of the Ostrogoths or Eastern Goths, and the Visigoths or Western Goths. The former were masters of Italy, and the latter of the southern part of France and Spain.

The Goths received the first rays of the evangelical light around the reign of Valerian (233-269): they were indebted for this to some priests and other Christians whom they had taken prisoner in Galatia and Cappadocia, and whom they had brought back with them. The healings they saw these missionaries perform on their sick fixed their attention on the new doctrine being preached to them, and many among them requested baptism. This is what we learn from Sozomen, bk. II, ch. 6, and Philostorgius, bk. II, ch. 5. Saint Basil, ep. 338, says that the seed of the Gospel was carried among the Goths from Cappadocia by the blessed Eutychius, a man of eminent virtue, who, with the power and gift of the Holy Spirit, had touched the hearts of these barbarians. Saint Cyril of Jerusalem counted, in 343, Cat. 46, no. 22, the Sarmatians and the Goths among the Christians who had bishops, priests, monks, virgins, and martyrs. One finds, in the subscriptions of the Council of Nicaea, that of Theophilus, Bishop of Gothia.

Soon after appeared U lphilas, Ulphilas Bishop of the Goths, translator of the Bible into the Gothic language. who for a moment held in his hands all the religious destinies of his people. Nothing is known of the beginnings of this extraordinary man, except that he was descended from a Christian family taken from the small town of Sadagolthina, in Cappadocia, by the Goths who sacked it in 266, and that this adopted son of the barbarians, the son of the she-wolf (Wulphilas), as they called him, was a compatriot and perhaps a relative of the illustrious Greek Philostorgius. He was evangelizing the Visigoths of Moesia, Dacia, and Thrace when he became their bishop around 348, and in this capacity he went to the council held in 360 at Constantinople by the Arians, who surprised his adherence, without, however, detaching him from orthodoxy. It was then that, struck by the majesty of the Caesars, he was able to conceive the design of giving his apostolate the dangerous support of their sword. Two parties divided the Visigoths. One obeyed Athanaric, the other Fritigern.

After an unequal struggle, Fritigern invoked the intervention of the empire; Ulphilas seems to have negotiated the conditions. The tribes, threatened, submitted to baptism, received aid, marched against Athanaric, and were victorious.

From that day on, nothing could resist the preaching of Ulphilas. He completed his w ork with the translation of the traduction des saintes Écritures Bishop of the Goths, translator of the Bible into the Gothic language. Holy Scriptures, a famous monument that has come down to us. It was to fix Christianity in the nation to fix it in the language. The bishop mastered it, and the power to obey Christian thought; he compelled this bloodthirsty speech to repeat the psalms of David, the evangelical parables, the theology of Saint Paul. But he did not translate the books of Kings, for fear that, the letter killing the spirit, the sacred narratives might only serve to awaken the warlike passions of these barbarians.

The runic alphabet, used among the Goths, had sufficed to trace omens on superstitious wands or inscriptions on tombs: it had to be completed for more scholarly use, and the number of letters was increased from sixteen to twenty-four.

The Gothic language, shaped in this way, took on a singular character of sweetness and majesty. It could be seen that the great qualities of the classical idioms would not perish with them; and the translation of the Bible, that eternal book, began the first of the modern literatures.

When Ulphilas appeared, perhaps after a long retreat, radiant with holiness, bringing the Old and New Testaments to the people camped on the plains of Moesia, it was believed that he was descending from Sinai: the Greeks called him the Moses of his time, and it was the opinion of the barbarians "that the son of the she-wolf could do no wrong."

In 374, Saint Basil was still praising the faith of the Goths (Ep. 164); but in 376, the Huns, crossing the Maeotian marshes, had rushed upon the empire, driving before them the pressing waves of Germanic peoples. The Visigoths of Fritigern, who had experienced the power of the Eastern Empire, asked it for asylum. Ulphilas was their mediator, and, accompanied by their leaders, he went to Constantinople.

He found the Arians all-powerful there, and their bishop Eudoxius of Antioch governing the weak mind of Emperor Valens. Valens granted the Goth s a meager hosp empereur Valens Roman emperor and protector of Arianism who exiled Eusebius. itality on the Roman bank of the Danube on the condition that they surrender their weapons as a pledge of eternal peace, and their children to recruit the legions. Eudoxius proposed to add that they would embrace the communion of the emperor. The barbarian deputies replied that nothing would detach them from the faith they had received. But Ulphilas, circumvented by the Arians, touched by the sweetness of their words and the richness of their gifts, allowed himself to be persuaded that the quarrel, indifferent to dogma, concerned only the pride of the Latins and the Greeks. This great man yielded, and the Goths, who held his word as the law of God, passed into heresy.

Thus the Visigoths became Arians through the defection of their master in the faith. During forty years of devastation, the soldiers of Alaric and Athaulf dragged the error with them, and finally established it in the kingdom they founded at the foot of the Pyrenees. At the same time, they communicated it to the Ostrogoths, who had remained behind and were reserved for other conquests. The latter carried it into Italy, and to the very heart of Christendom, when they penetrated it in the wake of Theodoric.

There were, however, always many Catholics among the Goths, and the greatest number were attached to sound doctrine. Many even, as we have said, were martyred during the persecution of Athanaric, and th ey have always been hon persécution d'Athanaric King or judge of the Goths, persecutor of Christians. ored with public worship in the Greek Church and in the Latin Church. The acts of Saint Sabas, which are attributed to Saint Ascholius of Thessalonica, were sent to the churches of Cappadocia, of which Saint Basil was metr opolitan. No saint Basile Brother of Macrina, Doctor of the Church influenced by his sister. w, the holy Bishop of Thessalonica (a city then subject to the Goths) was intimately linked with Saint Athanasius, as we learn from Saint Basil, ep. 154. This Father, ep. 164, also praises Saint Ascholius for his zeal in defending the faith among the barbarian nations, at a time when Christian princes wanted to substitute Arianism for it. Finally, one cannot doubt the purity of the faith of the Goths, after the praise given to it by Saint Basil, loc. cit., Saint Ambrose, in e. 2 Lucæ, Theodoret, Hist., l. IV, c. 28, 30, 33. Saint Augustine, de Civ., l. XVIII, c. 52, says that the king of the Goths cruelly persecuted the Christians, when there were only Catholics in Gothia. We have believed these observations necessary to refute certain modern authors who have claimed that the Goths, in embracing Christianity, had, at the same time, received the impious doctrine of the Arians.

This letter from the church of the Goths is taken from a Greek manuscript of the Vatican. It was addressed to the church of Cappadocia of which Saint Basil was then the most brilliant light. There is every appearance, we have said, that this letter has as its author Saint Ascholius, bishop of Thessalonica: here are other considerations that lead to this conclusion.

Saint Basil, Saint Basile Brother of Macrina, Doctor of the Church influenced by his sister. in a letter that he wrote to Saint Ascholius, ep. 164, thanked him for having sent him the history of the persecution and the triumph of the Martyr who had perished by water and wood; he thanked him again, ep. 165, for having sent him the body of the Martyr. He had undoubtedly made this shipment in the name of Duke Soranus. Saint Basil, who was a relative of the latter, had written to him, ep. 155, p. 244, ed. Ben., to beg him to enrich his country with the relics of some of the Martyrs who had suffered during the persecution of the Goths.