Hierarch Saint Eutychius, Patriarch of Constantinople

Saint Eutychius, Patriarch of Constantinople (512–582), was born in Phrygia. He became a monk and later abbot of a monastery at Amasea in Pontus. In 552, by order of Emperor Justinian the Great, he was elevated to the see of Constantinople and presided over the Fifth Ecumenical Council (553), which condemned Origenism and the "Three Chapters."

He firmly opposed the Aphthartodocetist heresy (the teaching that Christ's body was incorruptible before the Resurrection), for which Emperor Justin II deposed and exiled him for 12 years. He returned to the patriarchal throne in 577.

Late in life he entered a theological dispute with the papal apocrisiarius (the future Pope Gregory the Dialogist) over the nature of risen bodies; on his deathbed, however, he recanted this error, confessing bodily resurrection after the pattern of Christ. He died on 5/6 April 582.