The Lives of the Saints, Volume 02 (of 16): FebruaryBaring-Gould, S. (Sabine)
Religion
The Lives of the Saints, Volume 02 (of 16): February
Baring-Gould, S. (Sabine)
Christian saints
Totila, king of the Goths, the seventh of that race who had governed
Italy, swept Campania and Samnium with his barbarian army, occupied
Naples, and in the midst of his victorious course, visited S. Benedict
on his rock of Cassino. The incident of the meeting between the
barbarian king and the ascetic patriarch shall be recorded in the life
of S. Benedict. S. Gregory relates in his Dialogues, (lib. iii. c. 5),
that Totila, hearing of S. Sabine of Canosi, now blind with age, that
he was endued with the spirit of prophecy, visited him and invited him
to dinner, and to prove the old bishop, when the page brought wine
round, the king took the goblet from the boy's hand, and himself
offered it to the prelate. Then Sabine, taking the goblet, and turning
his darkened eyes on the royal bearer, said, "May that hand that
offers live long!" And the king blushed, joyous at receiving this part
blessing, part prophecy. S. Gregory relates another story of this
saint. The Archdeacon of Canosi, a man full of ambition and pride,
desiring the episcopate, and impatient of the long life of Sabine,
bribed his butler to poison him. The deadly cup was offered him, and
the aged prelate drank it off, but instantly the Archdeacon was seized
with all the symptoms of having been poisoned, and died in agony,
whereas the bishop remained unhurt.
It is unfortunate, that owing to the carelessness of the historian,
who wrote two hundred years after the death of S. Sabine I., the
records of the two bishops of that name should have been so run
together as to render it almost impossible to dissever them.
There seems also to have been a third S. Sabine of Canosi, bishop of
Lesina, a ruined and deserted city, on the lagoon of the same name in
the Capitanta. Lesina, in the 10th century, was the seat of a bishop.
No records of this saint exist, but in November, 1597, the cathedral
and second church of Lesina being thoroughly ruinous, officials were
deputed to remove from the deserted churches such relics as could be
found, and works of value that remained. They found the roof of the
cathedral fallen in, doors and windows broken and open, and grass
growing on the sacred floor. The crypt was in better preservation, and
there they found altars standing, containing sacred relics. In one of
these they found a marble sarcophagus, on which was inscribed, S.
Sabinus Canusinus, "S. Sabine of Canosi." Within was a leaden coffin,
on which was engraved, S. Sabinus Canusianus, pontifex Lesinensis. "S.
Sabine of Canosi, bishop of Lesina." The skeleton in this was perfect.
This body, together with others there discovered, was removed to
Naples, where it now reposes in the church of the Annunciata.
SS. VICTOR, M., AND SUSANNA, V. C.
(DATE UNKNOWN.)
[Of local celebrity at Mouzon, on the Meuse, above Sedan. The names
occur, however, in some Martyrologies of minor importance.
Authority:--A MS. life published by Bollandus.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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