Eubula

ON SAINT EUBULA, MOTHER OF ST. PANTALEON, AT NICOMEDIA.

THIRD CENTURY

Eubula, mother of St. Pantaleon at Nicomedia (St.)

The Greeks in the Great Menaia and in Maximus Bishop of Cythera read the following: On the same day, Saint Eubula, mother of St. Pantaleemon, rested in peace. In the Menaia is added this couplet: The veneration of St. Eubula among the Greeks:

In heaven she is present with her athlete son, Eubula, mother of athletes, blessed in her child.

With her holy son the Martyr, sacred Eubula, The pleasant mother, is present with the Martyr in heaven.

The same is celebrated in the manuscript Menaia which are preserved at Dijon at the home of Chifflet: He who is called Pantaleemon by the Greeks is Pantaleon to the Latins, an illustrious Doctor and Martyr, to whom the twenty-seventh of July is sacred. In his Greek Life published by Lipomanus, concerning St. Eubula his mother, eulogy in the Acts of St. Pantaleon: the following is found at the beginning. When the fog of idols had spread throughout the whole world, when Maximian held the scepter of the Roman Empire, then the admirable and great Pantaleemon was known among the Martyrs at Nicomedia. For from that city he drew the origin of his lineage. He was called Pantaleon; and he was the son of Eustorgius, distinguished indeed in wealth, but more illustrious in impiety. For he was devoted to the superstition of the Gentiles and was inflamed with ardent zeal for it. But his mother was a faithful woman, who in matters of religion fought diametrically against her husband: and Eubula (for that was her name) was well disposed toward the affairs of the Christians. Since therefore by such a mother and teacher the good son was being educated, he was deprived of both her bodily and spiritual nourishment, by the law of death and common nature, spending an incomplete and immature age, since he had, alas, little enjoyed that maternal care. But since St. Pantaleon, having now reached manhood, underwent martyrdom under Maximian; time of death: we gather that she finished her life in peace already long before his reign.

ON THE THIRTY-EIGHT HOLY MARTYRS IN CAPPADOCIA.

Thirty-eight Martyrs in Cappadocia (SS.)

[1] The manuscript Greek Menologion, written in the tenth century of Christ by order of the Emperor Basil Porphyrogenitus, presents to us these Martyrs under the thirtieth of March with this eulogy: Eulogy from the Menologion of the Emperor Basil: In the reign of the impious Diocletian, these thirty-eight holy Martyrs served as soldiers in the region of the Cappadocians: who, when they learned of the glorious battle of the forty Martyrs of Christ, how they had overcome the devil and were crowned for their illustrious struggle; they too, inflamed with zeal, casting their weapons before the Governor, confessed with a loud voice that Christ was the true God and that they were in truth his servants. They were therefore immediately seized, stripped of their clothes, and so flayed with various rods in their flesh that they scarcely appeared still to retain a human form: then, with no care taken of them, they were cast into prison: and not long afterwards, they were drawn out, with their hands bound behind their backs and their heads weighed down by attached iron collars, and brought before the Governor: and on March 31 in the manuscript Synaxarion: and because they generously adhered to their holy purpose and longed for a glorious death for Christ, by the command of the Governor they were beheaded. In the manuscript Synaxarion of Paris, of the Clermont College of the Society of Jesus, the struggle of these thirty-eight Martyrs is recorded under the thirty-first of March.

[2] We showed on the third of February, in the Life of St. Blaise, Bishop of Sebastia, and on the time and place of martyrdom:

the tenth of March we gave various Acts of the forty Martyrs, who completed their illustrious struggle for Christ in this city under Lysia the Commander and Agricolaus the Governor of the Emperor Licinius, by whom the persecution of Diocletian was continued. Hence we judge that in the same persecution, under the same Governor, these Martyrs were crowned: whose Acts we have not yet been able to obtain.