Dictionary of Christian Biography and Literature to the End of the Sixth Century/Sabas, a Gothic martyr

Sabas (2), a Gothic martyr under Athanaric, king of the Goths towards the end of 4th cent. His Acts seem genuine, and contain many interesting details of Gothic life in the lands bordering on the Danube. Thus village life, with its head men and communal responsibility, appears in c. ii. After various tortures he was drowned in the Musaeus, which flows into the Danube. The Acts are in the form of an epistle from the Gothic church to that of Cappadocia, whither Soranus, who was "dux Scythiae," had sent his relics (Ruinart. Acta Sincera, p. 670; AA. SS. Boll. Apr. ii. 88; Ceill. iv. 278; C. A. A. Scott, Ulfilas, Apostle of the Goths, 1885, p. 80). The topography of the region where he suffered is exhaustively treated in the Sitzungsberichte der Wiener Akad. 1881–1882, t. xcix. pp. 437–492, by Prof. Tomaschek, of Graz University.

[G.T.S.]