De heilige Eucherius van Lyon (ca. 380 449) was een Frans bisschop.
Biografie
Hij was afkomstig van een grote Lyonnese familie. Hij was ontwikkeld en doordrongen van de Latijnse cultuur en was senator. Hij huwde met Galla en kreeg twee dochters, Consortia en Tullia, en twee zoons, Salonius en Veranus, die hij voor hun opleiding naar Lérins stuurde bij Hilarius. Eucherius' zoons Salonius en Veranus werden respectievelijk bisschop van Genève en van Vence.
Hij nam echter ontslag als senator om zich terug te trekken in een grot nabij de Durance in Beaumont-de-Pertuis. Nadien gaat hij zijn zoons in Lérins bezoeken, terwijl zijn vrouw zich in een klooster terugtrok. Eucherius wordt heremiet op het eiland Lero, nu Sainte-Marguerite. Daar kwamen de gelovigen van Lyon, zoals de H. Martinus van Tours, hem in 435 vragen om hun bisschop te worden. Eucherius had een grote geestelijke uitstraling en er zijn vele brieven van hem bewaard gebleven. Zo correspondeerde hij met de H. Paulinus van Nola en met Cassianus. Hij nam ook deel aan het eerste concilie van Orange.
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Saint Eucherius, bishop of Lyon, (ca. 380 ca. 449) was a high-born and high-ranking ecclesiastic in the Christian Church of Gaul. He is remembered for his letters advocating extreme self-abnegation. Henry Wace ranked him "except perhaps St. Irenaeus the most distinguished occupant of that see".[1]
On the death of his wife Gallia (born ca. 390), as was a common 5th century practice, he withdrew for a time to the monastery of Lérins, founded by Saint Honoratus on the smaller of the two islands off Antibes, with his sons, Veranius and Salonius, to live a severely simple life of study and devote himself to the education of his sons. Soon afterward he withdrew further, to the neighbouring island of Lerona (now Sainte-Marguerite), where he devoted his time to study and mortification of the flesh. With the thought that he might join the anchorites in the deserts of the East, he consulted John Cassian, the famed hermit who had returned from the East to Marseille; Cassian dedicated the second set of his Collationes (Numbers 11-17) to Eucherius and Honoratus. These Conferences describe the daily lives of the hermits of the Egyptian Thebaid and discuss the important themes of grace, free will, and Scripture. It was at this time (ca 428) that Eucherius wrote his epistolary essay De laude Eremi ("In praise of the desert") addressed to Bishop Hilary of Arles.
Though imitating the ascetic lifestyle of the Egyptian hermits, Eucherius kept in touch with men renowned for learning and piety: Cassian, Hilary of Arles, Honoratus, later Bishop of Marseille, Claudianus Mamertus, Agroecius (who dedicated a book to him), Sidonius Apollinaris and his kinsman Valerian, to whom he wrote his Epistola paraenetica ad Valerianum cognatum, de contemptu mundi ("Epistle of exhortation to his kinsman Valerian, On the contempt of the world") an expression of the despair for the present and future of the world in its last throes shared by many educated men of Late Antiquity, with hope for a world to come: Erasmus thought so highly of its Latin style that he edited and published it at Basel (1520).
His Liber formularum spiritalis intelligentiae addressed to his son Veranius is a defence of the lawfulness of reading an allegorical sense in Scripture, bringing to bear the metaphors in Psalms and such phrases as "the hand of God" The term anagoge (??a????) is employed for the application of Scripture to the heavenly Jerusalem to come, and there are other examples of what would become classic Medieval hermeneutics.
The fame of Eucherius was soon so widespread in southeastern Gaul that he was chosen bishop of Lyon. This was probably in 434; it is certain, at least that he attended the First Council of Orange (441) as Metropolitan of Lyon, and that he retained this dignity until his death. He was succeeded in the bishopric by his son Veranius, while his other son, Salonius, became Bishop of Geneva.
Among Eucherius' other letters are his "Institutiones ad Salonium" addressed to his other son. Many homilies and other writings have been attributed to Eucherius.
He is married to Gallia.
They got married.Source 3
Child(ren):
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