Eustratius the Wonderworker

Monastic Life

The synaxarion relates that Eustratius came from the city of Tarsus and, at twenty years of age, secretly departed his parents' home to take up the monastic life. He settled at the Abgar monastery on Mount Olympus in Asia Minor.

There he is said to have lived a strict ascetic life, eating only bread and water and devoting his nights to prayer. He is remembered as an abbot of the region of Tarsus to whom the gift of wonderworking was granted, an epithet preserved in his commemoration.

Family

The Venerable Basil and Gregory, themselves remembered as wonderworkers of the ninth century, are identified in liturgical sources as uncles of Saint Eustratius. Tradition notes that Gregory was a monk at the Monastery of Avgaron (Auguron), situating the family's monastic life on or near Mount Olympus in Asia Minor.

Commemoration

Eustratius is commemorated on January 9, on which day he is listed among the saints of the feast alongside the Martyr Polyeuctus of Melitene, Saint Philip of Moscow, the Prophet Shemaiah, and Saint Peter of Sebaste.

Beyond these commemorative facts, little biographical detail survives. He is a genuinely obscure ninth-century Byzantine monastic, and the surviving record of his life is correspondingly brief.