Eulalius the Hierarch
Our Father among the Saints Eulalius the Bishop
Bishop
Commemorated 30 August — Commemoration of the bishop, who reposed in peace
Eulalius is a bishop of whom the Greek synaxarion transmits nothing but his name, his order and the manner of his end: he reposed in peace. Nikodemos the Hagiorite prints for him only the elegiac couplet that the synaxaristes gives each saint of the day, playing on his name — eulalos, "sweet-spoken" — and he is tentatively assigned to Cyprus. He is an honest example of the great class of synaxarion entries in which the Church has kept a name without a story, and this reference declines to supply one.
Nothing is transmitted. The Greek synaxaristes, following Nikodemos, gives the distich —
Ōn Eulalios eulalos tettix mala, / cheimōnos hōra tou telous sigēn agei —
"Eulalius, being a most sweet-voiced cicada, keeps silence at the winter hour of his end" — and adds only that he perhaps came from Cyprus and that he died in peace. The qualification is Nikodemos's own, not an assertion.
The couplet is worth a word, because it is nearly all we have. The cicada that sings through the summer and falls silent at the coming of winter is a commonplace of Greek epigram, and the hymnographer has fastened it to the bishop's name: he was eulalos, well-spoken, a preacher; death stopped the voice. Whether that reflects any memory of the man, or is simply what a learned versifier could make of a name, cannot now be told.
Feast and commemoration
August 30 (church date; Old Calendar civil September 12), in Greek usage only. He is named at the synaxarion reading of the day; the office belongs to the three patriarchs of Constantinople. The Slavonic calendars and the OCA do not carry him.
Hymns
Apolytikion — Tone 4 (common of a hierarch)
The truth of things revealed thee to thy flock as a rule of faith, a model of meekness and a teacher of temperance; therefore thou hast achieved the heights by humility, riches by poverty. O Father and Hierarch Eulalius, intercede with Christ our God that our souls may be saved.
Iconography
He has no individual type, and there is no attribute to give him. He would be painted as any hierarch is: standing or bust-length, in phelonion and crossed omophorion, the right hand blessing and the left holding the jewelled Gospel, with a full beard and the name inscribed beside the halo — the inscription being, in his case, the whole of the identification. He does not appear in the surviving illustrated menologia. No image of him has been located for this repository, and none is likely to exist.
Disputed questions
- Cyprus? The Cypriot attribution rests on the synaxaristes' "perhaps," and Cypriot local calendars do not securely claim him. It is recorded here as the only geographical indication in the tradition, and not as a fact.
- When? No century is transmitted. He is indexed accordingly under the saints of unknown date.
- Not to be confused with the several Western saints named Eulalius (the bishop of Nevers, or the Antiochene Eulalius of the fourth-century episcopal lists), nor with the virgin-martyrs Eulalia of Mérida and Barcelona, whose names differ by a letter.