The martyrdom of Sabbas the Goth, AD 372

The Passion of St Sabbas the Goth

“The Church of God that sojourns in Gothia to the Church of God that sojourns in Cappadocia… Sabas, a Goth by race, orthodox in faith, reverent and ready in all obedience… was drowned in the river Mousaios, in his thirty-eighth year, on the third day after the feast of Pascha.” [The letter names **Sansalas** the presbyter, arrested with him; **Atharidus** son of Rothesteus, who ordered the death; **Gouttica**; and the persecution of **Athanaric**. Its most telling passage is the one no hagiographer would invent: **twice the villagers swore false oaths that there were no Christians among them, to shield their neighbours — and Sabbas refused the protection and declared himself.**]

**Held in this library.** Greek. Critical text: H. Delehaye, ‘Saints de Thrace et de Mésie’, *Analecta Bollandiana* 31 (1912), pp. 216–21. English: P. Heather and J. Matthews, *The Goths in the Fourth Century* (1991), pp. 109–17 — **in copyright**; the rendering below is the archive’s working translation. ⚠ Preserved inside Byzantine menologia from the tenth century onward. **The archive formerly held this one letter as two separate text records; they were merged on 20 August 2026.**

Letters 164–165, to Ascholius of Thessalonica; cf. Letter 155

“Thou hast honored the land that bore thee with a martyr lately crowned in the barbarian country beyond the Danube — like a grateful husbandman sending the firstfruits home to them that reared him.” [The receipt at the other end of the journey, and the reason the archive can date and route the relics: **the bones of a Gothic layman travelled from beyond the frontier to Cappadocia and were acknowledged in writing by the most eminent bishop in the East.** The martyr act and the thank-you letter are both on these shelves, and together they document the whole transaction.]

*The Letters of Basil* — held in this library. English: B. Jackson, NPNF 2nd ser. 8 (1895), public domain. Letters 164 and 165 are Basil’s reply on receiving the relics; the correspondence with the *dux* of Scythia who forwarded them is Letter 155.

The Gothic version, c. AD 350–383

[The same decade, the same people, the same language: **a church across the Danube that had the scriptures in Gothic.** Philostorgius reports that Ulfilas omitted the books of Kings, lest they inflame a war-loving nation. **The relevance to this event is what it shows about literacy and organisation** — the community that wrote a formal letter to Cappadocia was a community with a written Bible in its own tongue. ⚠ The confessional difference between Ulfilas’s Homoian church and Sabbas’s is stated, not smoothed.]

*The Gothic Bible of Ulfilas* — held in this library. ⚠ Cited here for the context, not for the martyrdom: Ulfilas was a Homoian Arian and Sabbas’s community is described as orthodox, so the two belong to the same people and not necessarily to the same communion. The archive states that rather than merging them.

Ecclesiastical History VI (the Gothic persecution and the crossing of the Danube)

[The imperial-side frame for the same years: **a persecution of Christians among the Goths under Athanaric**, and the crossing of the Danube that followed within a few years. **The archive uses Sozomen for the setting and the Gothic letter for the event** — and notes what the comparison shows: the fullest account of a Gothic martyrdom is not in the Greek historians at all. ⚠ Sozomen never mentions Sabbas.]

Sozomen, *Ecclesiastical History* — held in this library. English: C. D. Hartranft, NPNF 2nd ser. 2 (1890), public domain. ⚠ Written c. AD 443 and from inside the empire; his interest is in the Goths’ Arianism and their settlement, not in this martyrdom, which he does not narrate.