Eusebius of Sinai

Holy Venerable Martyr Eusebius of Sinai is one of the venerable fathers slain at Sinai and Raithu: Isaiah, Sabbas, Moses, another Moses, Jeremiah, Paul, Adam, Sergius, Domnus, Proclus, Hypatius, Isaac, Macarius, Mark, Benjamin, Eusebius, Elijah and others. They struggled in the monasteries and caves of Mount Sinai, where God gave the ten commandments through Moses, and in the nearby desert of Raithu on the shore of the Red Sea.

They suffered at the hands of the Saracens and Blemmyes, nomadic Arab tribes. The first slaughter took place around 312 and was described by Ammonius, an Egyptian monk, a witness of the death of the forty fathers of Sinai. At that time the Arabs also killed thirty-⁠nine fathers at Raithu. The second slaughter came more than a hundred years later and was likewise described by a witness who escaped by a miracle, the Venerable Nilus the Faster, commemorated on 12 November.

The ascetics of Sinai and Raithu led an especially strict life. All week they stayed silent in their cells; on Saturday they gathered for an all-⁠night vigil, and on Sunday they received the Holy Mysteries. They ate only dates and water. Many of the hermits were known for the gift of working miracles, among them the elders Moses and Joseph. Eusebius is commemorated on 27 January (new style), that is 14 January by the old calendar, on 5 May, and in the Synaxis of the Venerable Fathers of Sinai, on a movable day.