Eutychius

Saint Eutychius, Patriarch of Constantinople, was born in 512 at Theium, a village in Phrygia in Asia Minor, then part of the Eastern Roman Empire. His father, Alexander, served as an officer under the general Belisarius. In childhood Eutychius was tonsured as a reader. He later studied at Constantinople and thereafter entered the monastic life at Amasea in Pontus. The metropolitan of Amasea ordained him to the priesthood and appointed him archimandrite of a monastery there, in which office he became known for learning and austerity of life.

In 552, while Eutychius was in Constantinople on ecclesiastical business for his metropolitan, Patriarch Menas died. Emperor Justinian I, with the concurrence of a synod and of the representatives of Pope Vigilius who were then in the capital, selected Eutychius as the new Patriarch of Constantinople, and he was consecrated that year. In 553 he took a leading part in the Second Council of Constantinople, the Fifth Ecumenical Council, which condemned the writings known as the Three Chapters. The council sat in a strained relationship with Pope Vigilius, who was then in Constantinople and at first declined to sit with the assembly; Vigilius later confirmed its decrees. Through these controversies Eutychius remained in communion with Rome.

Toward the end of Justinian’s reign the emperor adopted the aphthartodocetic teaching that the body of Christ was incorruptible from the moment of the Incarnation, and he sought to impose this doctrine by edict. Eutychius refused to accept it. In January 565 he was arrested while celebrating the liturgy, deposed from his see, and sent into exile, ultimately to his former monastery at Amasea. John Scholasticus was installed in his place. Justinian died later in 565, but Eutychius remained in exile throughout the following years. Only after the death of John Scholasticus in 577 was he restored to the patriarchate, after more than twelve years of banishment.

In his second tenure as patriarch, Eutychius became involved in a theological dispute concerning the resurrection of the body. He maintained that the risen body would be of a more subtle and impalpable nature than the present earthly body. This view was opposed by Gregory, then papal apocrisiarius at Constantinople and later Pope Gregory I, who insisted on the identity and palpability of the resurrected flesh. According to Gregory’s later account, Eutychius recanted this opinion before his death. He died at Constantinople on 5 April 582, which fell on Easter Day that year.

Eutychius was commemorated as a saint from an early date. His feast is observed on 6 April in the Byzantine liturgical tradition and in the Roman Martyrology. A Life of the patriarch was composed by his chaplain, the priest Eustratius, which remains the principal narrative source for his career.