Eustratios of Constantinople
From Textus Receptus
Eustratios, Presbyter of Constantinople (590s) was a pupil of Patriarch Eutychius of Constantinople (d. 582) and writer.[1]
He is remembered as the author of a tract against belief in soul sleep entitled A Refutation of Those Who Say That the Souls of the Dead Are Not Active and Receive No Benefit from the Prayers and Sacrifices Made for Them to God.[2] A Latin translation of this work De statu animarum post mortem was reprinted 1841.[3]
Eustratios responds to arguments that the dead are "incapable of activity" (anenergetoi and apraktoi), by countering that the dead are even more active in death.[4]
Other Byzantine writers opposing Christian mortalism were John the Deacon, Niketas Stethatos, Philip Monotropos (Dioptra pp. 210, 220), and Michael Glykas.[5]
References
- 1. N. Constas, An Apology for the Cult of the Saints in Late Antiquity: Eustratius Presbyter of Constantinople (CPG 7522)
- 2. Leo Allatius, ed., De Utriusque Ecclesiae Occidentalis atque Orientalis Perpetua in Dogmate de Purgatorio Consensu (Rome, 1655), 336–580
- 3. by J.-P. Migne, Theologiae cursus completus, vol. 18 (Paris, 1841)
- 4. Gouillard
- 5. Nicholas Constas "To Sleep, Perchance to Dream": The Middle State of Souls in Patristic and Byzantine Literature". Dumbarton Oaks Papers 55: 92–124
