The Council’s Letter About Bishop Eustathius

The divinely inspired Scripture says, “Do all things with advice.” So it is especially the duty of those to whom the priestly ministry has been given to examine with all care whatever business is to be done. For those who live this way, it comes about both that they are settled in an honest hope about what concerns them, and that they are carried along, as if by a favorable breeze, in the things they desire. So the saying of Scripture has good reason to commend it. But there are times when bitter and unbearable grief swoops down on the mind and cruelly clouds it, so that it is carried away from pursuing what is needed and persuaded to think useful what is by its very nature harmful. Something of this kind, we have seen, has been suffered by that most excellent and most religious bishop Eustathius. For it is clear that he was ordained according to the canons. But, as he declares, he was greatly troubled by certain people and met with circumstances he had not foreseen. And so, though he was fully able to drive off the slanders of those who persecuted him, through an extraordinary inexperience in affairs he declined to battle with the difficulties that pressed on him, and in some way unknown to us he put forward a formal resignation. Yet once the priestly care had been entrusted to him, he ought to have clung to it with spiritual energy, and, so to speak, to have stripped himself for the contest against his troubles and gladly endured the sweat he had bargained for. But since he proved lacking in practical ability, and met with this misfortune more through inexperience than through cowardice or laziness, your holiness was obliged to ordain our most excellent and most religious brother and fellow bishop Theodore as overseer of the church. For it was not reasonable that the church should remain widowed, and that the Savior’s sheep should pass their time without a shepherd. But when Eustathius came to us weeping, not contending with the most religious bishop Theodore, named above, for his see or his church, but asking in the meantime only for his rank and title as a bishop, we all grieved with the old man in his grief. Counting his tears as our own, we hurried to find out whether he had been subjected to a lawful deposition, or whether he had perhaps been convicted on any of the absurd charges brought by certain people who had poured out idle gossip against his good name. And indeed we learned that nothing of the kind had taken place; rather, his resignation had been counted against him in place of a regular indictment. So we did not in any way blame your holiness for having been compelled to ordain the most excellent bishop Theodore, named above, in his place. But since it was not fitting to contend much against the man’s lack of practical sense, and since it was rather necessary to have pity on the elder, who at so advanced an age was now so far from the city of his birth and the homes of his fathers, we have judicially pronounced and decreed, without any opposition, that he will have the name, the rank and the communion of a bishop. This is on one condition only: that he will not ordain, and that he will not take a church and minister in it on his own authority, but only if he is taken on as an assistant, or appointed, should it so happen, by a brother and fellow bishop, in keeping with the order and the love that is in Christ. If, however, you decide anything more favorable toward him, either now or later, this too will please the holy synod. [a]