Eustathius

Eustathius of Antioch was a fourth-century bishop of the great Syrian see of Antioch, later counted among the saints of both Eastern and Western churches and remembered as one of the early public opponents of Arianism. Ancient notices describe him as a native of Side in Pamphylia, in southern Asia Minor. Before he was translated to Antioch he had already been bishop of Beroea (Aleppo) in Syria. He succeeded Philogonius at Antioch in the early 320s, on the eve of the Council of Nicaea, and thus became one of the principal hierarchs of the Greek-speaking East. Antioch was then a leading Christian city of the Roman Empire; its bishop ranked with the occupants of Rome, Alexandria, and, after 325, the new imperial capital, and later tradition naturally spoke of him as patriarch of that see.

At Nicaea in 325 Eustathius stood with Alexander of Alexandria and other Nicene leaders against Arius and those who denied that the Son was of one substance with the Father. He acquired a reputation for uncompromising anti-Arian theology and for a relatively literal, historical reading of Scripture, in contrast to the allegorical methods associated with Origen and some Alexandrian interpreters. A treatise against Origen’s interpretation of the witch of Endor (1 Samuel 28) survives under Eustathius’s name and illustrates that exegetical stance. Most of his other writings—including polemical works against the Arians, homilies, and biblical comments—are lost or remain only in fragments quoted by later authors. Nicene writers such as Athanasius continued to treat him as orthodox, even when opponents accused him of Sabellianism, that is, of so stressing the unity of God as to blur the distinction of Persons.

Within a few years of the council he was deposed by a synod sitting at Antioch, an episode usually placed in the late 320s or about 330–331. The published charges combined doctrinal accusation (Sabellianism) with allegations of personal immorality, including the claim that he had fathered a child; Nicene sources regarded the synod as the fruit of intrigue by the Eusebian party, especially Eusebius of Nicomedia, rather than as a fair trial. Emperor Constantine sent him into exile at Trajanopolis in Thrace. Whether he had ever been married, or whether the paternity charge had any basis, cannot be established from reliable evidence; later orthodox tradition treated the moral accusations as false. He was not Bishop of Rome, nor is he associated with a later religious order.

His removal split the church of Antioch for decades. A congregation that refused to accept the bishops appointed in his place persisted as the so-called Eustathians, while the official line of the see passed through a succession that Nicenes often regarded as compromised. That local schism became entangled with the wider fourth-century conflicts over Nicaea, with the later Meletian division at Antioch, and with the question of which Antiochene bishop Rome and Alexandria would recognize. Paulinus, consecrated in the 360s and acknowledged by some Western and Egyptian Nicenes, was closely associated with the old Eustathian community. The controversy thus outlived Eustathius himself and shaped the ecclesiastical map of Syria for the rest of the century.

The year and precise circumstances of his death are not securely known. He died in exile according to the usual account; some traditional notices place his death near 337, but the evidence is too thin for a firm date, and a few later references have been read as implying that he was still alive in the 350s. In the late fifth century, under Patriarch Calendion, his relics were translated to Antioch, an act that publicly restored his honor in the city from which he had been driven. He is commemorated as a saint, most commonly on 21 February in the East; some Western martyrologies have also listed him, at times on 16 July. His historical importance rests on his brief tenure at Antioch, his role at Nicaea, the fragments of his anti-Origenist and anti-Arian writing, and the long schism that followed his exile rather than on any later medieval cult of specialized patronages.