The life of St Sabbas the Goth
When the Gothic ruler Athanaric turned against the Christians in his lands, Sabbas would not hide his faith, going so far as to refuse meat that had been offered to the old gods even when his neighbors tried to shield him by secretly substituting ordinary food.
In the year 372, soldiers under a commander named Atharid came to arrest a local priest during the days after Pascha, and Sabbas was seized along with him. He was dragged through thorns, stretched on a wheel, and beaten, yet would not recant, telling his captors plainly that he wished to die for Christ rather than live in denial of Him. Atharid ordered him drowned in the river. As the soldiers led him to the water, Sabbas praised God the whole way and urged the reluctant men to carry out their orders, saying he could already see, on the far bank, those who had come to receive him. He was thirty eight years old. His relics were later carried to Cappadocia and received with honor by Basil the Great, who wrote of him as a true martyr for the truth.
