Saint Eutychios, Patriarch of Constantinople
Celebration date: 06/04
Saint Eutychios was born in the year 512 AD. and lived during the time of the emperor Justinian I the Great. He came from the city of Theia Komi in Phrygia and was the son of Alexander, a scholar under the general Belissarios and Synesia. He was taught the Holy Gospel and was baptized a Christian by the priest Hesychios, who was his grandfather and officiated in the Church of Augustopolis. According to the Synaxari, Hesychios had the office of treasurer and because of the sanctity of his life he had received from God the gift of miracles.
The Saint was ordained a reader by the then Bishop of Amasias in the church of the Most Holy Theotokos of Urvikios. He was then ordained a deacon and elder and entered the monastery of Amaseia, which had been founded by the High Priests Meletius and Seleucus, of which he was later appointed abbot.
The years that followed were not peaceful for the Church, because of the heretical doctrines taught by young Origenists and crypto-monophysites. The disputes of the monks of Palestine about Origen constitute the third and last phase of the Origenist disputes. The prelude to these was in the year 507 AD. dissension of learned monks of the Great Lavra to its abbot, Saint Savvas the Sanctified, who left the Lavra and founded around 514 AD. Nea Lavra, which became the center of Origenism. The anti-Origenist monks appealed to the emperor Justinian to condemn Origen. This request was supported by Patriarch Minas.
Thus, in the year 543 AD, an Endemic Synod was convened in Constantinople, following the invitation of the Patriarch of Constantinople Minas, with the aim of pacifying the Church and condemning the heretics. By decree issued in the year 543 AD. Justinian turned against the heretics. He condemned the bad faith of Origen, he considered his writings bad and he condemned this face of Origen. By a third decree Justinian, in the year 544 AD, condemned the “Three Chapters”, i.e. a) Theodore Mopsuestias and his heretical writings, b) those against Saint Cyril of Alexandria and the Third Ecumenical Council and in favor of Nestorius writings of Theodoritos Kyros and c) the letter of Iva Edessis to Persis Mari.
When the year 552 AD Patriarch Minas fell asleep, Saint Eutychios came from Amasia to Vasilevousa and was elected Patriarch of Constantinople.
But the riots of the heretics continued and troubled the Church. The Fifth Ecumenical Council, which met in Constantinople, in the year 553 AD. under the presidency of Agios Eutychios, ratified the decision of the Native Synod and proceeded to condemn the “Three Capitals”. However, the purpose of condemning the “Three Heads” was not achieved, because the Monophysites persisted in their secession and heretical beliefs. Due to this, Justinian in the year 564 AD. issued a decree by which he imposed incorruptibility. This teaching had been formulated by the Monophysite Bishop Iulianos of Halicarnassus who fled to Egypt. In particular, Julian taught that the Body of Christ, already from His conception and birth, was exempt from decay and therefore from physical needs (hunger, thirst, hunger, sweat, tears, etc.) – the so-called “irrepressible passions” – and only “by economy” and “by grace” seemed subject to them. Saint Euthychios and the other Patriarchs of the East, to whom he addressed, did not accept the disrespectful decree. For this reason, the Saint, in the year 565 AD, was deposed from the patriarchal throne under a Synod in absentia, after he refused to appear and was initially exiled to the Prince. It is mentioned in his Synaxari that he then fled to a monastery in Amaseia where he lived as an ascetic and was claimed by God to perform miracles.
After twelve years of exile, the emperor Justin II, in the year 577 AD, after the death of the Patriarch of Constantinople John III, restored the Saint with honor and glory to the patriarchal throne. During his second patriarchate, the Saint with his prayer saved the people who were plagued by a deadly epidemic. His orthodox opinion and his struggle for the integrity of the faith brought him into conflict with the apocrisario of Rome, Gregory, the later Pope, because of his beliefs about the resurrection of the flesh.
Saint Eutychios slept in peace in the year 582 AD. His holy relic was deposited in the altar of the Holy Apostles, after the altar of the Holy Table, where the holy relics of Andrew, Timothy and Luke of the Apostles also rested. In 1246 AD the Relics and the Shroud of the Saint were transferred from the Church of the Holy Apostles of Constantinople to the Monastery of Saint George the Greater of Venice, under Abbot Petros Querini.