Saint Sabinus Bishop of Catania

Episcopate and Withdrawal

On account of his many virtues, Sabinus was ordained Bishop of Catania, and sources remember him as one of the most esteemed and appreciated bishops to hold that see. Weighed down by the commotion and administrative responsibility that came with the office, he withdrew into the wilderness to be alone with God.

His retreat was a monastery at the foot of Mount Etna, where he gave himself to a strict ascetic life. Several of his disciples followed him into this manner of living. The exact site of the monastery is uncertain; some hagiographers place it in the territory now belonging to Zafferana Etnea, described as an ancient locality set within the forests of Etna.

Historically Documented

Sabinus appears in the episcopal succession of the Diocese of Catania, where he is dated to about 750, following James the Confessor (attested 730) and preceding Leo II the Wonderworker (765–789). Sources for the early bishops of Catania are sparse, and the traditional list and chronology may lack supporting evidence.

His episcopate falls within the reign of the Emperor Leo III the Isaurian (717–741), who removed all the dioceses of Sicily from papal control and made them suffragans of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople, an arrangement that persisted until the Norman conquest of 1071.

Traditional Accounts

The synaxarion relates that through his ascetic struggle Sabinus was made a vessel of grace and worked miracles: he healed sicknesses and diseases, banished demons from the possessed, and foretold the future. By his teaching many were persuaded to leave the world and their families to become monastics for the love of Christ.

Commemorative verses preserved for him read: "Sabinus lived a life equal to the Angels, in death he joined the chorus of Angels."

Iconography

An image of Saint Sabinus appears in the Menologion of Basil II, an eleventh-century Byzantine illuminated manuscript menologion, and a second icon image is also associated with him.