December 8
December 8
Feast
Thin entry · the 1897 book gives only 0 words. We have not filled the gap with invented detail.
Keep their day. Remember them on December 8 with a short prayer, and ask for their help.
Eutychianus [followers of Eutyches, who said Christ had only a divine nature; condemned at Chalcedon in 451], Saint, Pope. He succeeded Pope Felix I a few days after the latter's death, and governed the Church from January, 275, until December 7, 283. We know no details of his pontificate. The rite for blessing the produce of the fields, ascribed to him by the "Liber Pontificalis", undoubtedly belongs to a later period. The statement also that he promulgated rules for the burial of martyrs and buried many of them with his own hands, has but slight claim to acceptance, since after the death of Aurelian [Roman emperor 270–275] (275) the Church enjoyed a long respite from persecution. It is highly probable that Eutychianus did not die a martyr. The fourth-century Roman Calendar mentions him (December 8) in the "Depositio Episcoporum", but not in its list of martyrs. His remains were placed in the papal chapel in the Catacomb of Callistus. When this famous crypt was discovered the fragments of the epitaph of Eutychianus were found, i.e. his name (in Greek letters): EUTYCHIANOS EPIS (KOPOS). His feast is celebrated on December 8.
Duchesne (ed.), Liber Pontificalis, I, 159; De Rossi, Roma sotterranea, II (Rome, 1867), 70-72.
Feast: December 8
One short email a day for nine days. The day's prayer, a line from St. Eutychianus's story, and a nudge to keep going.
Image: Sarzana-cattedrale-facciata3.jpg · Davide Papalini · CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
From Sabine Baring-Gould, The Lives of the Saints, new edition in 16 vols. (London: John C. Nimmo, 1897–98); text from the Internet Archive scan (OCR, lightly cleaned; errors possible). Public domain.
Image: Davide Papalini, Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)
From “Catholic Encyclopedia (1913)/Pope St. Eutychianus,” The Catholic Encyclopedia (New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1907–1914), via Wikisource. Public domain. Matched by name and feast date; text unedited except for our bracketed notes in grey.
From Sabine Baring-Gould, The Lives of the Saints, new edition in 16 vols. (London: John C. Nimmo, 1897–98); text from the Internet Archive scan (OCR, lightly cleaned; errors possible). Public domain in the United States. Reproduced unedited, except for short bracketed notes in grey that we added to explain names and terms (“S.” is the old abbreviation for Saint). Some history and judgments reflect 19th-century scholarship.