, about the year 815. This account of him
is given us by Krantzius, (l. 1, Metrop. c. 22 & 29.) Lesley, l. 5,
Hist. Wion, l. 3, Ligni Vitae.

FEBRUARY XVII.

ST. FLAVIAN, M.

ARCHBISHOP OF CONSTANTINOPLE.

From the councils, and historians Cedrenus, Evagrius, Theophanes, &c.
See Baronius, Henschenius. t. 3, Feb. p. 71. Fleury, l. 27, 28. Quesnel,
in his edition of the works of St. Leo, t. 2, diss. 1, and F. Cacciari,
t. 3, Exercit. in opera St. Leonis, Romae, an. 1755. Dissert. 4, de
Eutychiana Haer. l. 1, c. 2, p. 322; c. 8, p. 383; c. 9, p. 393, c. 11,
p. 432.

A.D. 449

ST. FLAVIAN was a priest of distinguished merit, and treasurer of the
church of Constantinople, when he succeeded St. Proclus in the
archiepiscopal dignity in 447. The eunuch Chrysaphius, chamberlain to
the emperor Theodosius the Younger, and a particular favorite, suggested
to his master, a weak prince, to require of him a present, out of
gratitude to the emperor for his promotion. The holy bishop sent him
some blessed bread, according to the custom of the church at that time,
as a benediction and symbol of communion. Chrysaphius let him know that
it was a present of a very different kind that was expected from him.
St. Flavian, an enemy to simony, answered resolutely, than the revenues
and treasure of the church were designed for other uses, namely, the
honor of God and the relief of his poor. The eunuch, highly provoked at
the bishop's refusal, from that moment {423} resolved to contrive his
ruin. Wherefore, with a view to his expulsion, he persuaded the emperor,
by the means of his wife Eudoxia, to order the bishop to make Pulcheria,
sister to Theodosius, a deaconess of his church. The saint's refusal was
a second offence in the eyes of the sycophants of the court. The next
year Chrysaphius was still more grievously offended with our saint for
his condemning the errors of his kinsman Eutyches, abbot of a monastery
of three hundred monks, near the city, who had acquired a reputation for
virtue, but in effect was no better than an ignorant, proud, and
obstinate man. His intemperate zeal against Nestorius, for asserting two
distinct persons in Christ, threw him into the opposite error, that of
denying two distinct natures after the incarnation.

In a council, held by St. Flavian in 448, Eutyches was accused of this
error by Eusebius of Dorylaeum, his former friend, and it was there
condemned as heretical, and the author was cited to appear t