CONCERNING SAINT EVAGRIUS, CONFESSOR, BISHOP OF CONSTANTINOPLE.
AT THE END OF THE FOURTH CENTURY
CommentaryEvagrius, Confessor, Bishop of Constantinople (Saint)
The tables of the Roman Martyrology extol this saint with this eulogy: "At Constantinople, of Saint Evagrius the Bishop, who, elected Bishop by the Catholics in the time of Valens, was sent into exile by the same Emperor and migrated to the Lord." Baronius notes that the Greeks likewise treat of him; not, however, in any of their Menaea or Menologia Saint Evagrius that we have thus far seen. He is designated the thirtieth Bishop of Constantinople by Bishop Nicephorus in the Chronicle in these words: "Evagrius, made by the laying on of hands by Eustathius of Antioch, and immediately banished by Valens." Thirtieth Bishop, Socrates narrates the matter more fully in book 4 of the Ecclesiastical History, chapter 13: "The Emperor Valens," he says, "hastening once more to go to Antioch, departed from Constantinople. When he had come to Nicomedia in Bithynia, he tarried there for a time for this reason. Eudoxius, Bishop of the Arian Church, immediately after the Emperor's departure, having occupied the See of the Church of Constantinople for nineteen years, departed this life, when Valentinian and Valens were consuls for the third time" (this is the year of Christ 370). "Wherefore the Arians appointed Demophilus in his place; Elected in the year 370, but those who favored the consubstantial faith, thinking they had found an opportune time, designated a certain Evagrius, a supporter of their own faith. And Eustathius -- the one who had formerly been at Antioch, who had already long ago been recalled from exile by Jovian and happened then to be at Constantinople for the purpose of confirming those who favored the consubstantial faith, and was there hiding in secret -- created him Bishop. When this was done, the Arians, seizing upon another occasion, The Arians rioting, began to persecute those people bitterly once more, and this matter very swiftly reached the ears of the Emperor. He therefore, greatly fearing lest a sedition arising from the contention of the people should undermine the city, sent military forces from Nicomedia to Constantinople and ordered that both the one who had consecrated and the one who had been consecrated be relegated each to a different place. Accordingly, Eustathius was banished to Bizya, a city of Thrace; He is driven into exile. Evagrius was carried off elsewhere. When these matters had been thus concluded, the Arians began to take on greater boldness, and to harass most grievously those who belonged to the Church by beating, insulting, casting into prison, punishing with fines, and in short by imposing upon them every kind of hardship that was utterly intolerable." So much from Socrates, in whose account Baronius contends at the year 370, number 29, that some things are obscure, ambiguous, or false -- especially in that he supposes Eustathius did not live so long, which must be discussed on July 16, the day of his feast. How long Saint Evagrius lived in exile, no one has reported.