Eulogius of Edessa

Saint Eulogius (in Syriac Walagash) was bishop of Edessa between 379 and 387, a confessor of the right faith in the time of the Arian emperors, and died on Good Friday of the year 387, according to the Syriac Chronicle on 23 April. He is honoured by the Orthodox Church on 25 August (on the old calendar), with the confessors of Edessa, and by the Catholic Church on 5 May.

Exile

Of Eulogius speak the Church History of Theodoret and a Syriac chronicle of the sixth century. By order of the Arian emperor Valens, in place of Barses, exiled in 373, the Arian Lupus was set at Edessa. The citizens who were partisans of the faith of Nicaea, under the leadership of Eulogius, then a priest, began to gather for services outside the city. By order of the emperor, who came to Edessa in 375, an attempt was made to disperse those gathered, which ended in the arrest and exile of eighty people, among them Eulogius. A Serbian source says the emperor banished Eulogius, who was superior to all the others, and Protogenes, second after him, to the Theban city of Antinoe. In exile, Eulogius found a community of Nicene Christians, led by a bishop. According to Theodoret, "shutting himself in his cell, day and night he besought the God of all". In the city there were many pagans, and Protogenes, finding those who wished to be baptized, brought them to Eulogius and, knocking at the door, asked him to open and set on the caught one the seal of the Lord.

The bishop

After the death of Valens in the battle with the Goths at Adrianople, Theodosius I became emperor and in 379 Eulogius and Protogenes returned to Edessa. The bishop of Edessa, Barses, had died in exile in March 378, and Eulogius was elected in his place. The ordination was performed by Eusebius of Samosata. In 379 Eulogius took part in the local council of Antioch, and in 381 in the Second Ecumenical Council, at Constantinople. The English source says that in 379 or 380 he built the House of Mar Daniel, a church in Edessa. He died in 387, on Good Friday, which that year was on 23 April. He was succeeded at Edessa by Cyrus I.