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.