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 EUSTOCHIUM

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EUTHALIUS

By this time Eustathius had taken up the cause of the people who denied the consubstantial nature of the Holy Ghost (Socrates, Hist. Eccl., II, xlv, 6; Basil, Ep. ceiii, 3). We hear of him last about 377; he was then a very old man (Basil, Ep. cciv, 4; cciii, 3). Be- sides his activity as a founder of monasticism in Roman Armenia, Pontus, and Paphlagonia (Sozomen, III, xiv, 36), Eustathius had merit as an organizer of works of charity, builder of almshouses, hospitals, refuges, etc. (Epiphanius, Haer., Ixxv, 1 ; Sozomen, III, xiv, 36).

Socrates, Hist. Eccl., II. IV; Sozomen, Hisl. Eccl.. III. Be- sides references in tlie letters of Saint Basil in P. G., XXXII, 219-1110, see also those in his De Spiritu Sanclo. Loofs, Eus- tathius von Sebaste und die Chronologic der Basilius-Brefe (Halle, 1898): Braun, Die Abhaltung der Synode von Gangra in Hist. Jahrbuch der Gurresgesellschaft, XVI (189.5), p. 586 sq.; GwATKiN, Studies in Arianism (Cambridge. 1900); Venables in Diet, of Christ. Diog., s. v. ADRIAN FORTESCDE.

Eustochium Julia, Saint, virgin, b. at Rome c. 368; d. at Bethlehem, 28 Sept., 419 or 420. She was the third of four daughters of the Roman Senator Toxotius and his wife St. Paula (q. v.), the former be- longing to the noble Julian race, the latter tracing her ancestry through the Scipios and the Gracchi (Jerome, Ep. cxviii). After the death of her husband (c. 380) Paula and her daughter Eustochium lived in Rome as austere a life as the Fathers of the desert. When St. Jerome came to Rome from Palestine in 382, they put themselves under his spiritual guidance. Hyniettius, an uncle of Eustochium, and his wife Pra?textata tried to persuade the youthful Eustochium to give up her austere life and enjoy the pleasures of the world, but all their attempts were futile. About the year 384 she made the vow of perpetual virginity, on which occasion St. Jerome addressed to her his celebrated letter "De custodia virginitatis" (Ep. xxii in P. L., XXII, 394-425). A year later St. Jerome returned to Palestine and soon after was followed to the Orient by Paula and Eustochium. In 386 they accompanied St. Jerome on his journey to Egypt, where they visited the hermits of the Nitrian Desert in order to study and afterwards imitate their mode of life. In the fall of the same year they returned to Palestine and settled permanently at Bethlehem. Paula and Eustochium at once began to erect four monasteries and a hospice near the spot where Christ was born. While the erec- tion of the monasteries was in process (386-9) they lived in a small building in the neighbourhood. One of the monasteries was occupied by monks and put under the direction of St. Jerome. The three other monas- teries were taken by Paula and Eustochium and the numerous virgins that flocked around them. The three nunneries, which were under the supervision of Paula, had only one oratory, where all the nuns met several times daily for prayer and the chanting of psalms. St. Jerome testifies (Ep. .308) that Eustochium and Paula performed the most menial .services. Much of their time they spent in the study of Holy Scripture under the direction of .St. Jerome.

Eustochium spoke Latin and Greek with equal ease and was able to read the Holy Scriptures in the He- brew text. Many of St. Jerome's Biblical commen- taries owe their existence to her influence and to her he dedicated his commentaries on the prophets Isaias and Ezechiel. The letters which St. Jerome wrote for her instruction and spiritual advancement are, accord- ing to his own testimony (De viris illustribus, cap. cxxxv), very numerous. After the death of Paula in 404, Eustochium assumed the direction of the nun- neries. Her task was a difficult one on account ^f the impoverished condition of the temporal affairs which was brought about by the lavish almsgiving of Paula. St. Jerome was of great assistance to her by his en- couragement and prudent advice. In 417 a great misfortune overtook the monasteries at Bethlehem. A crowd of '■uffians attacked and pillaged them, destroyed one of them by fire, besides killing and

maltreating some of the inmates. The wicked deed was probably instigated by John, the Patriarch of Jerusalem, and the Pelagians against whom St. Jer- ome had written some sharp polemics. Both St. Jerome and St. Eustochium informed Pope Innocent I by letter of the occurrence, who severely reproved the pa- triarch for having permitted the outrage. Eustochium died shortly after and was succeeded in the supervision of the nunneries by her niece, the younger Paula. The Church celebrates her feast on 28 September.

Butler. Lives of the Saints, 28 Sept.; Baring-Gould, Lives of the Saints, 28 Sept.; Fremantle in Diet. Christ. Biogr. s. v.; Ada SS., September, VII. 589-603; St. Jerome. Epistks, especially xlvi. liv, cvii, cviii in P. L., XXII; Hausle in Kirchen- ler. s. V. Eustochium, or St. Jerome's Letter, in Catholic World XLIII. 181 (New Yok. 1886); Thierry, in Rev. des Deux Mondcs, LXII, 465 (Paris, 1886).

Michael Ott.

Euthalius (EiflaXfos), a deacon of Alexandria and later Bishop of Sulca. He lived towards the middle of the fifth century, and is chiefly known through his work on the New Testament in particular as the author of the " Euthalian Sections ' '. It is well known that the divisions into chapters and verses with which we are familiar were entirely wanting in the original and early copies of the New-Testament writings ; there was even no perceptible space between words. To obviate the manifest inconveniences arising from this condition of the text, Ammonius of Alexandria, in the third century, conceived the idea of dividing the Four Gospels into sections varying in size according to the substance of the narrative embodied in them, and Euthalius, following up the same idea, extended a similar system of division to the other books of the New Testament with the exception of the Apocalj'pse. So obvious were the advantages of the scheme that it was soon adopted throughout the Greek Church. As divisions of the text these sections have no longer any intrinsic value. But as they were at a given period adopted in nearly all the Churches, and noted by the copyists, they are viiluable as chronological indications, their presence or absence being an important circum- stance in determining the antiquity of a manuscript.

Other labours of Euthalius in connexion with the text of the New Testament refer to the larger sections or lessons to be read in the liturgical services, and to the more minute divisions of the text called arlxot, or verses. The custom of reading portions of the New Testament in the public liturgical services was already ancient in the Church, but with regard to the choice and delimitation of the passages there was little or no uniformity, the Churches having, for the most part, each its own series of selections. Euthalius elaborated a .scheme of divisions which was soon universally adopted. Neither the Gospels nor the Apocalypse enter into this series, but the other portions of the New Testament are divided into 57 sections of varying length, 53 of which are assigned to the Sundays of the year, while the remaining four refer probably to Christmas, the Epiphany, Good Friday, and Easter.

The idea of dividing the Scriptures into arlxoi, or verses, did not originate with Euthalius. It had al- ready been applied to portions of the Old Testament, especially to the poetical parts, and even to some parts of the New. Here, as with regard to the other divisions, Euthalius only carried out systematically and completed a scheme which had been but partially and imperfectly realized by others, and his work marks a stage of that progress which led finally to punctua- tion of the text. These arixoi were of unequal length, either containing a few words forming a complete sen.se, or as many as could be conveniently uttered with one breath. Thus, for instance, the Epistle to the Romans contained 920 of these verses; Galatians, 293; Hebrews, 703; Philemon, 37, and so on.

Besides the.se textual labours Euthalius framed a catalogue of the quotations trom the Old Testament and from profane authors which are found in the New-