ABSTRACT
The Martyrdom itself is a sort of sandwich. The meat consists of a detailed and circumstantial account of the course of the persecution as it impinged on one village in Gothia. The pagan villagers try to protect Sabas, but he repeatedly frustrates their sense of solidarity by his pious efforts to get himself martyred. The account has a ring of authenticity and has been convincingly used in reconstructions of Gothic society in the years preceding entry into the Empire. One wonders what texts Sabas sang and what liturgy Sansalas used. By the time of the martyrdom Ulfila had been active on any chronology for over thirty years. The existence of Arian martyrs does not of course imply the non-existence of Catholic ones. The evidence adduced for the existence of non-Arian Catholic or orthodox Christianity among fourth-century Goths is tenuous in extreme.
