ON ST. EUSCHEMON, CONFESSOR, BISHOP OF LAMPSACUS IN THE HELLESPONT.
CommentaryEuschemon, Bishop and Confessor, at Lampsacus in the Hellespont (S.)
UNDER THE ICONOCLASTS.
The persecution stirred up by Leo the Isaurian against the orthodox venerators of images was received with intrepid spirit by many of the faithful from every order: but upon the Bishops, admonished by the example and precepts of Christ to lay down their lives for the flock of the Lord and their sheep, Leo the Isaurian persecuting the orthodox, the more bitter tempest of tyrannical fury fell; so that with the shepherds either put to flight or struck down, or (what is worse) turned into wolves, the unguarded folds might be more easily laid waste, when all were freely permitted by Imperial edict to rush upon them. Then, says the Most Illustrious Cardinal Baronius at the year 735, the twentieth of Leo, the glorious title of confession was bestowed upon St. Eudaemon, Bishop of Lampsacus, who after many combats was sent into exile, Baronius has St. Eudaemon banished, and dying there received the crown of life: whose memory is observed by the Greeks annually on March 14. Which Philip Ferrarius rightly supposed him to have received from the Greek records; when in his new Catalogue of Saints he had written from the testimony of the same at this day: At Lampsacus, of St. Eudaemon, Bishop, proscribed for the cult of the holy images. He acknowledges, however, that the Greeks do not have him in their Anthologion.
Unknown to the Greeks for Euschemon: But neither in any other Greek calendars is any Saint of that name found throughout the whole course of the year: the Menaea printed at Venice, and from the Menaea Maximus, Bishop of Cythera, mention Euschemon with these words: On the same day, of our Holy Father and Confessor Euschemon, Bishop of Lampsacus: with an allusion to the etymology of the name, signifying an honorable man or one of honorable appearance or habit, and to the words of the Apostle Paul addressing the Romans: let us walk honestly as in the day: which allusion the Menaea have expressed in these verses. Rom. 13:13
Before death, as the honorable Paul said, Euschemon walked honestly as in the day.
Moreover, how honorably Euschemon fulfilled the measure of his name, how great was the estimation of his virtues with reference to the most certain standard of all honor, his encomium from the Greek Menaea, namely the divine reason, we learn from the grace of miracles, with which this Saint was adorned, as the encomium appended to the memory of his name teaches, in the summer part of the Menologion composed by command of the Emperor Basil, which exists in the monastery of Grottaferrata, ten miles from Rome: which, having been seen and translated into Latin by Baronius, we give it without any mark of date, as also the other, of which there is a most precious copy in the Vatican Library, we have hitherto been unable to suspect: but now, when in the Menologion printed by Canisius, which, translated into Latin by Sirletus, Baronius makes great use of, he reads nothing similar, and does not even indicate that he heard anything about the Menaea printed in the year 1595: we cannot divine from what source he obtained either the name or the encomium of his confession: much less from what source he drew those things which pertain to the time of the faith defended by the same Saint: for no mark of this matter is found in the encomium, which we have also found in the double Synaxarion of the Mazarin Library in Paris in these words, and have translated into Latin:
Our Holy Father and Confessor of Christ Euschemon, from his earliest years having been well and honorably educated, became a friend of God; and having grown into a perfect man, was a sanctuary of the most Holy Spirit. Then, having embraced the angelic life, he zealously followed the orthodox faith; but not without miracles. and at last, having been raised to the summit of hierarchical honor, he was filled with spiritual grace and, burning with divine zeal, suppressed and broke the heresy of the Iconoclasts. He also worked many and great miracles: and among other things, he restored to life a dead infant presented to him by his weeping mother, having poured forth prayer to God: terribly dominating wild animals, he drove them from the fields to which they were causing harm by the sole command of his voice. Finally, handed over to custody by him who then held the empire, that heretical Emperor, as a devout adorer of sacred images, he made his very guards become venerators of the same images, persuaded by his outstanding teaching. Wherefore, at last cast into exile, he completed his labors with a glorious death, patiently endured for the defense of the faith.