Eusebius the Martyr

ON ST. EUSEBIUS THE MARTYR,

IN PHŒNICIA.

From the Latin and Greek Martyrologies.

Eusebius, M., in Phœnicia (S.)

J. S.

St. Eusebius, first grievously tortured Galesinius and Baronius today announce from the calendars of the Greeks St. Eusebius, martyr of Phœnicia. Baronius' words are these: In Phœnicia, of St. Eusebius the martyr, who, of his own accord going to the prefect and declaring himself a Christian, was afflicted by him with many torments and beheaded. The Menology of the Greeks, which Sirleto turned into Latin, has this of the same: On the same day, the commemoration of the holy martyr Eusebius. He of his own accord went to the governor of Phœnicia, reproaching him for persecuting the flock of Christ. And so by the angry judge he was ordered to be hung up and beaten. And when he had long persisted in the confession of the Christian name, clothed in rough and torn rags with salt cast upon his stripes, while the governor himself hour by hour added more and greater torments, the holy Man exulted, just as if he were suffering in another's body. At last the governor ordered his head to be cut off, and so he ascended into heaven, proclaiming the glory of God. Nearly the same things are read in the printed Menæa, but there is some difference in the torments inflicted on the Martyr before the cutting off of his head. Wherefore I transfer that part of the eulogy hither in Greek: Ὁ δὲ ὀργιστεὶς προσέταξεν ἀναρτηθέντα τὸν ἅγιον ξέεσθαι. Επὶ πολὺ δὲ ξέσαντες, τριχίνοις ῥάκεσιν ἅλας ἐμβαλόντες καὶ προσδήσαντες, ἀνέξαινον τὰς σάρκας τοῦ ἁγίου. But he (namely the tyrant), angered, ordered the Saint to be hung up and scraped. And when they had scraped him long, placing salt on haircloth rags and binding them on, they tore the Saint's flesh. The sense, from the punctuation, which can be made in different ways, is somewhat ambiguous.

[2] is beheaded. For they may have scraped the Saint from the beginning with haircloth rags, and then have exasperated the wounds more by rubbing in salt. But I rather judge that they first used another instrument to scrape his sides, and then applied to the wounded body haircloth rags sprinkled with salt, and so added wounds to wounds: and that St. Eusebius was really tortured thus is read in the Constantinopolitan Synaxary which was Sirmond's; but there he is recorded at the XXIII of September. The rest in the Menæa is plainly consonant with what Sirleto gives in the Menology, where the other things too were probably the same in Greek. The Menæa add two little verses, which I subjoin in Greek and Latin:

Ευσέβιον κτείνουσι δυσσεβεῖς ξίφει, Τὸν εὐσεβῶς βιοῦντα, καὶ Χριστοῦ φίλον.

The impious slay with the sword Eusebius, who lived piously and was a friend of Christ.

In the manuscript Synaxary just praised the Saint is not said to have gone of his own accord to the prefect, but is asserted to have been seized by him. Yet both may be true: for he could have been seized while approaching of his own accord. More about St. Eusebius I do not find, nor is it expressed under what tyrant he suffered, nor in what city. Likewise I do not find the memory of this Eusebius in the Basilian Menology.

addente*