Eustathios
On this day we celebrate the memory of Eustathios,
archbishop of Antioch the Great.
Eustathios lived during the reign of the first among the kings
of the Christians: Constantine the great in 324. Eustathios came
from Side-in-Pamphylia, as Jeronymos says in his book about the
ecclesiastical writers. But Nicetas says that Eustathios came
from Philip's Macedonia. Eustathios was a teacher, and he was
present at the first ecumenical Council which was held at Nicea
in 325. He made firm the dogma of piety and orthodoxy by criticizing
and refuting the Arians, who introduced a cut and a division to
the one nature of the holy Trinity.
So, because of his outspokenness and his zeal for the orthodox
faith, he was envied by Eusebios of Nicomedia, Theognis of Nicea,
Eusebios of Caesaria and all the others who communed with Arianism.
Pretending that they were going to Jerusalem, they came to Antioch
where they convened and defrocked Eustathios. In order to appear
as if they had a good reason for doing this, they came up with
the following scheme: They gave great gifts to a prostitute who
had a newly-born child and convinced her to lie against the saint
saying that she had conceived the child from Eustathios. So, the
prostitute together with her child came to their convention and
spoke slander against Eustathios saying that the child was his.
The bishops immediately defrocked Eustathios. Moreover, they also
convinced the king (i.e. Constantine the great) to banish him.
So, Eustathios was sent to Philippi through Thrace and there ended
his life.
A hundred years later, in the days of king Zeno, in 477 Eustathios'
relics were removed and sent to Antioch. Then all the people poured
out of the city and received them piously with hymns, lights and
incense. Eustathios was praised with a eulogy by St. John the
Chrysostom. Also, the woman who spoke slander against Eustathios,
suffered from a horrible disease, so, she confessed that she had
wrongly accused Eustathios and she also disclosed the names of
the Arian bishops who had convinced her with money to speak against
him. She also said that she had conceived that newborn child from
a coppersmith who was called Eustathios.