Martyr Eustathius of Vilnius

The Martyr Eustathius, pagan name Kruglets, is the third of the Martyrs of Vilnius who suffered in 1347 under Grand Duke Algirdas (Olgerd) of Lithuania. A member of the prince's retinue and a kinsman of the brothers Anthony and John, he was secretly baptized by the priest Nestor, confessor of Olgerd's Orthodox wife Maria Yaroslavna.

At a feast he refused to eat meat, declaring that he was a Christian keeping the Nativity Fast. He was beaten with iron rods, stripped and doused with icy water in the frost, his legs were broken, his hair torn off with the skin, and his nose and ears cut off. He was then hanged on the same oak on which Anthony and John had died earlier that year (14 December according to the Orthodox Encyclopedia, 13 December according to Pravoslavie.ru).

The three martyrs were canonized by Patriarch Philotheus of Constantinople in 1374; the Council of 1549 confirmed their veneration. Their relics have rested in the Holy Spirit Monastery in Vilnius since 1655; taken to Moscow in 1915 and placed in a museum in 1920, they were returned to Vilnius on 26 July 1946. They are commemorated together on 14 (27) April and in the Synaxis of the Saints of Belarus.