The Holy Fathers Slain at the Monastery of St. Sabbas

On March 20 the Orthodox Church commemorates the forty-four monks of the Great Lavra of St. Sabbas in the Judaean wilderness who were slain by a band of Saracen raiders in the year 614 — a year of catastrophe for Palestinian monasticism in which the Persian invasion under Khosrau II swept through the region and the Saracen raiders followed in its wake.

The raid on the Lavra came on the night of March 20. The brothers had been warned of the approach of the raiders and could have fled into the surrounding wilderness, but the elders of the community elected to remain — preferring to share the deaths of any who could not escape rather than abandon their cells. When the raiders broke into the monastery they demanded the church's gold and silver vessels; on the brothers' refusal, they began to slaughter the monks one by one. Some were burned in their cells; others were driven into a cave called the "Cave of Penance" where their bones were left in heaps.

When the raiders left, the surviving brothers gathered the bodies and remains of their slain companions and laid them in a common shrine within the lavra. Their relics remain at Mar Saba to this day. The total count of forty-four is preserved in the early traditions of the lavra. Their joint feast falls on March 20.