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.