Saint Eulogius of Alexandria

Giovanni Lucchesi, writing for santiebeati, says Eulogius is unusually well known for a sixth-century bishop: from what survives of his works, from Gregory's letters, from stories told by his contemporary John Moschus, who died in 619, and above all from the ninth-century Photius, who summarized his writings in his Bibliotheca. ²

He was a monk and priest at Antioch, Lucchesi says, where for a time he had charge of the church of the Most Holy Virgin called the Justiniana, and wrote there against the Theodosian heretics. ² He was elected patriarch of Alexandria, the forty-sixth in the list of Nicephorus's Chronographia, between 578 and 580; the 1909 Catholic Encyclopedia gives 580. ¹² Nicephorus gives him seventeen years in the see; the Acta Sanctorum corrected that to twenty-seven, and modern scholars, Lucchesi says, accept the correction and date his death to 607. ²

The friendship with Gregory began in Constantinople. Lucchesi reports from Moschus that Eulogius used to tell how, on a visit to the capital, he had lodged with Gregory, then the Roman Church's envoy there, which places their meeting between 579 and 585. ²

McNeal calls him "a successful combatant of the heretical errors then current in Egypt, notably the various phases of Monophysitism." ¹ He refuted the Novatians, some of whose communities still survived in his diocese, and defended the union of the two natures in Christ "against both Nestorius and Eutyches." ¹ McNeal says he left a commentary against several monophysite sects and eleven discourses in defense of Leo I and the Council of Chalcedon. ¹

Lucchesi gives a fuller list: a council at Alexandria in 589 that condemned two Samaritan factions, five books against the Novatians, eleven theological orations, works against Severus and Timothy in defense of Leo's letter to Flavian, and a treatise against the Agnoetae, who held that Christ in his human knowledge did not know certain things, such as the day of judgment. ² Both say that almost all of it is lost; McNeal names one sermon and a few fragments, and Lucchesi a sermon for Palm Sunday, seven chapters on the two natures and about a dozen passages. ¹²

Moschus also told, Lucchesi says, of a great basilica Eulogius built at Alexandria in honor of the martyr Julian, and of his devotion to Leo the Great, whose letter to Flavian he defended so stubbornly that a member of his household dreamed Leo came to thank him for it. ²

Gregory's letters to Eulogius are the best witness to the man. Lucchesi counts thirteen; the selection translated in the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers contains twelve with his name in the address, two of them written jointly to him and Anastasius of Antioch. ²⁴ Gregory wrote about the Church's doctrine and his worries, and sometimes simply about his health. ²

Gregory tied the two sees together through Saint Peter and Saint Mark. "The blessed evangelist Mark was sent by Saint Peter the apostle, his master, to Alexandria," he wrote, "so that I seem to preside over the see of the disciple because of the master, and you over the see of the master because of the disciple." ⁵ When Eulogius wrote warmly of the chair of Peter, Gregory answered that it was one see in three places, Rome, Alexandria and Antioch, "over which by Divine authority three bishops now preside." ⁶

Distance did not matter to him. "Since in Him who is everywhere we are one," he wrote, "we are not far from you." ⁴ Another letter puts it more simply: "we who are one are surely not far from each other." ⁵ The current Martyrology sums up the friendship with a line of the same kind. ³

Gregory had good news to share. He told Eulogius he had sent "a monk of my monastery" to the English, a nation "placed in a corner of the world," and that more than ten thousand had been baptized at Christmas. ⁸ He gave Eulogius part of the credit: "you may know what you are effecting among the people of Alexandria by speaking, and what in the ends of the world by praying." ⁸

The same letter scolds him. Gregory had asked the Eastern patriarchs not to use the title "universal," which the patriarch of Constantinople had taken. ⁴ Eulogius then addressed Gregory as "Universal Pope," and Gregory asked him "to do this no more": "my honour is the honour of the universal Church: my honour is the solid vigour of my brethren." ⁸ McNeal, citing Baronius, says Gregory praised his defense of the primacy of the Roman see. ¹

Gifts went back and forth. Eulogius sent the blessing of Saint Mark from Alexandria, and once Gregory asked instead for a particular drink, cognidium, which Rome's traders sold by name but not in fact. ⁵⁶ Gregory sent timber for ships, and kept apologizing that the vessels sent from Alexandria were too small to carry the long beams he had cut. ⁵⁷ When Eulogius offered to pay for larger pieces, Gregory refused: "Freely you have received, freely give." ⁷ Eulogius had asked him for the acts of the martyrs collected by Eusebius; Gregory had to admit that Rome had little beyond a volume of names, places and days. ⁷

When Gregory had been bedridden with gout for nearly two years, he read Eulogius's treatise against the Agnoetae and found in it the Latin Fathers he loved. ⁹¹⁰ He prayed that God would keep him long in this life, "that from the organ of God, which you are, the voice of truth may in this world sound more widely." ⁹ McNeal adds that Eulogius submitted the work to Gregory before publishing it and that Gregory authorized it unchanged. ¹

Gregory did not only praise him. Hearing that ordination could be bought at Alexandria, he wrote that he was amazed the tongue of a man who brought so many heretics back had not rooted out simony from his own church, and urged him to do it. ¹¹ When he heard that Eulogius had suffered from failing sight, and then that he had been cured, Gregory sent him a small cross containing a blessing from the chains of Peter and Paul, to be applied to his eyes. ¹²

Lucchesi says he was venerated as a saint immediately after his death. Moschus already calls him "the pope Eulogius, who is now among the saints," in Lucchesi's Italian, translated here. ²

None of the sources consulted names Saint Eulogius of Alexandria as the patron saint of anything, and this page does not supply one. ¹² He is remembered in the Martyrology for his learning and for Gregory's letters. ³

Saint Eulogius's feast day is June 13. ²³ The current Roman Martyrology, as the Italian bishops print it, remembers him that day at Alexandria in Egypt as a bishop "insigne per la sua dottrina," distinguished for his learning, to whom Pope Saint Gregory the Great sent many letters, writing of him: "Non è lontano da me, chi con me è una cosa sola," he who is one with me is not far from me. ³

Lucchesi says the Byzantine synaxaries celebrate him on February 13 and June 13, and that the Roman Martyrology, unlike the other Western martyrologies, venerated him on September 13. ² The current Martyrology, as the Italian bishops print it, has him on June 13. ³

Most of what he wrote is gone, and he is known chiefly through a friend. ¹² The friend's letters show two bishops at opposite ends of the Mediterranean who prayed for each other, argued doctrine, and sent each other gifts across the sea. ⁶⁷¹⁰

Gregory told him that his preaching worked where he was and his prayer worked where he was not, and credited him with a share in the baptism of the English. ⁸ Eulogius never went there. ⁸

The friendship was not all compliment. Gregory corrected his titles and told him to clean up simony in his own church, and went on calling him the organ of God. ⁸⁹¹¹