898 Euthymius the Younger, Abbot miraculous powers and the gift of prophecy (AC)

THIS holy monk was a Galatian, born at Opso, near Ancyra. He is called “the Thessalonian” because he was eventually buried at Salonika, or “the New” or “Younger“, apparently to distinguish him from St Euthymius the Great who lived four hundred years earlier. Euthymius at his baptism received the name of Nicetas. At an early age he married, and had a daughter Anastasia, but when he was still only eighteen, in the year 842, he left his wife and child (in circumstances that, as reported, look curiously like desertion) and entered a laura on Mount Olympus in Bithynia. For a time he put himself under the direction of St Joan­nicius, who was then a monk there, and afterwards of one John, who gave him the name of Euthymius. When he had trained him for a time, John sent him to lead the common life in the monastery of the Pissidion, where Euthymius advanced rapidly in the ways of holiness.

Some time after the death of Joseph St Euthymius was told in a vision that he had contended as a solitary long enough; he was to move once more, this time to a mountain called Peristera on the east of Salonika. There he would find the ruins of a monastery dedicated in honour of St Andrew, now used for folding sheep: he was to restore and re-people it. Taking with him two monks, Ignatius and Ephrem, he went straight to the place and found as it had been said. At once he set about rebuilding the church and dwellings were also made for the monks, who rapidly increased in number and fervour, and St Euthymius was their abbot for fourteen years. Then he paid a visit to his home at Opso and gained there a number of recruits, male and female, including some of his own family. Another monastery was built for the women; and when both houses were thoroughly established St Euthymius handed them over to the metropolitan of Salonika and went to pass the rest of his days in the solitude of Athos once more. When he knew that death was approaching he summoned his fellow-hermits to celebrate with him the feast of the translation of his patron St Euthymius the Great; then, having said farewell to them, he departed with the monk George to Holy Island, where five months later he died peacefully on October 15 in the year 898.

The life of St Euthymius was written by one of his monks at Peristera, Basil by name, who became metropolitan of Salonika. He narrates several miracles of his master, of some of which he was himself a witness and even a beneficiary, and as an example of the saint’s gift of prophecy he tells how, while he was in retreat after having been shorn a monk, Euthymius came to him and said, “Though I am utterly unworthy to receive enlightenment from on high, nevertheless, as I am responsible for your direction, God has shown me that love of learning will draw you from the monastery and you will be made an archbishop.”— “And later” , says Basil, “the call of ambition made me choose the noisy and troubled life of a town before the peace of solitude.”

The name of this St Euthymius does not seem to occur in the synaxaries and, except for a reference under October 15 in Martynov’s Annus ecciesiasticus graeco-slavicur, his existence was hardly known in the West until Louis Petit published the Greek text of the life in the Revue de l’Orient chrétien, vol. vi (1903), pp. 155—205 and 503—536. The life, with the Greek office for the feast, was also published separately in 1904. The reference to the “hollow tower” which he occupied at Salonika shows, as Delehaye points out (Les Saints Stylites, pp. cxxix—cxxx), that Euthymius was at one time a “stylite”. See also E. von Dobschutz in the Byzantinische Zeitschrift, vol. xviii (1909), pp. 715—716.