EUDOCIMUS OF CAPPADOCIA

In Orthodox hagiography, that is, the field of theology and piety devoted to the lives and veneration of saints, those saints are called righteous who, by the power of grace, became such not in martyrdom, but in a pious life, and, at the same time, were not monks. Due to certain circumstances of the emergence and formation of the Orthodox liturgical calendar, such saints are very few in number.

But there are other saints whom the Church calls righteous not by virtue of belonging to this “face of holiness,” but calls them such as a special addition to their name. Such are Joseph the Righteous, Jacob the Righteous Brother of the Lord, the Righteous Simeon and Anna the Prophetess from the Gospel. There are extremely few such saints. Among them is Saint Eudocimus of Cappadocia. His memory is celebrated on the last day of July according to the Julian orthodox menologion, namely on the day of the Forefeast of the Procession of the Venerable Wood of the Life-Giving Cross, which corresponds to August 13 in the secular calendar.

It is known about the saint that during the reign of the Byzantine emperor Theophilus (829-841), he served as an officer in the Roman army. For the impeccable performance of his duties, he received a promotion, and was eventually appointed ruler of Eastern Cappadocia. In this position he earned the love of his fellow citizens. In everything he was guided by the gospel commandments. In his personal piety he maintained his virginity.

He died at 33 for no apparent reason. And although the very authoritative early Church Father Irenaeus of Lyons (130-202) argued that the Lord lived through all ages in His earthly life, subsequent tradition believed that Jesus lived on earth for only about thirty-three years. The sudden death of Saint Eudoсimus at this age obviously “christologically shocked” his contemporaries.

His body, laid in a tomb at the church, was subsequently discovered incorrupt. Signs and miracles of healing began to take place at the relics. So that even the earth from his resting place, by the power of grace, served to get rid of illnesses. Eudocimus’ parents erected a church in Constantinople in memory of their son, which later became a place of special veneration for him as a saint. In this touching belated parental gesture there was something that made Eudocimus related to the great saint of Christian antiquity—Alexius the Man of God (+ c. 411).

“God does not look on personalities, but in every nation he who fears Him and practices righteousness is acceptable to Him,” said the Apostle Peter about the conversion of the Roman centurion (Acts 10:34-35). The image of Saint Eudocimus the Righteous, who “shone bright” at a time when iconoclast rulers stood at the head of the Empire, living in holiness in an incredibly high secular position, serves as an amazing example of the truth for all times of these words of the Apostle. But not only that.

This in the language of hagiography denotes a saint who, in his lifestyle and holiness, was very similar to one of the saints of Christian antiquity of the same name. However, we simply do not know any saint Eudocimus, a layman and righteous man who lived in holiness in previous centuries.

This gives us reason to assume that, seeing Saint Eudocimus, and knowing about his paradoxically righteous life in “glorious and prosperous” circumstances, his contemporaries believed that his sincere righteousness did not simply “repeat” the deeds of any of the previous saints of the same name, but literally, unexpectedly and incredibly, it reproduced the holiness of Joseph, Simeon, Nicodemus and other People of the Gospel in what then seemed to be the Last Times.