Sabinus of Egypt

Sabinus was a fourth-century nobleman of Hermopolis in upper Egypt under the persecution of Diocletian and his successors. He had given away the considerable wealth of his family to the poor and retired with several disciples to a small Christian community in the marshlands outside the city, where they lived in concealment through the worst years of the persecution.

When the imperial commissioner came to Hermopolis in 312 to enforce the renewal of the edict against the Christians, a beggar to whom Sabinus had given generous alms over many years betrayed him for the bounty offered. The soldiers found Sabinus and his disciples at their cell in the marshes and brought them all before the governor. Sabinus, refusing every inducement, was condemned with six others to be drowned in the Nile — a calculated method of execution intended to leave no body for veneration.

The synaxarion records that the bodies, contrary to imperial intent, washed ashore some distance downstream where Christians retrieved them and buried them with honor. The shrine at Hermopolis became a regional pilgrimage site. Sabinus's feast falls on March 16.