EUSTATHIUS OF THESSALONICA : Greek metropolitan; b. at Constantinople, early in the twelfth century; d. at Thessalonica between 1192 and 1194. He seems to have been originally a monk in the cloister of St. Florus in Constantinople, as well as deacon of St. Sophia and teacher of rhetoric, and he likewise held the court position of Master of Petitions. In 1175 he was appointed bishop of Myra in Lycia, but before his consecration the emperor made him the successor of Constantius as metropolitan of Thessalonica, a position which he held for the remainder of his life. About 1180 the emperor Manuel protested formally against the formula of abjuration in which the God of Mohammed was anathematized as a "wholly hammered God " (theos holosphuros, i.e., the massive, compact, not begetting and not begotten God), considering it blasphemous and offensive to converts from Islam. Eustathius, however, boldly opposed him at a synod and justified the anathema, though without losing favor at court. During the siege and sack of Thessalonica by the Normans under William II. of Sicily (1185), the metropolitan remained at his post, protecting his flock and checking the fury of the conquerors, as he himself recounts in his De Thessalonica urbe a Normannis capta. Despite this, he met with much opposition, and he may even have been driven from his see for a time, thus accounting for the fact that some of his works were written elsewhere than in Thessalonica. As monk, bishop, theologian, and author, Eustathius rose superior to his contemporaries, and he opposed with all his might the formalism which threatened the welfare of his Church, writing in this spirit his treatise "On Hypocrisy" as well as his still more important "Consideration of Monastic Life." He was the author of many other works, including a famous commentary on the Homeric poems.

(PHILIPP MEYER.)