Aeon of the Star (Euno, Eudo of the Star)

AEON OF THE STAR (Euno, Eudo of the Star). - Heretic, b. in Brittany, condemned to perpetual imprisonment by the Council of Reims of 1148; d. shortly thereafter.

Uneducated and a maniac, he believed himself designated in the passage of the liturgical prayer for eum (Eon) qui conturus est indicare vivos et mortuos per ignem, as the son of God and judge of the world. He inflamed the religious sentiment of the popular masses of Brittany and Gascony, abused by the undisturbed arrogance of the feudal lords, presenting himself as a social redeemer. He preached the communism of goods, including those of the churches and monasteries, which were plundered, procuring for the troops of his followers the easy well-being of booty; he divided his community into a celestial and apostolic hierarchy, in opposition to the ecclesiastical one. E. does not present a body of particular doctrines, nor is there sufficient evidence to consider him a neo-Manichaean. His followers distinguished themselves above all by a brigandage with a religious-social background and the majority ended up at the stake for murders, plunderings, arsons. It is an incongruity to hold that the clear apologetic exposition of Catholic doctrine by the archbishop of Rouen, Hugh of Amiens or of Reading: Contra haereticos sui temporis (PL 192, 1255-98), which E. C. Lea (Storia della inquisizione, Turin 1910, p. 72) judges with bias as «a tedious polemic», is directed against the Eonists, rather than in general against the various contemporary heresies.

(from E. Langlois, Griechische Vasselbilder, Heidelberg 1915, pl. 21)
Eos - E. supports the body of Memnon. Red-figure vase, work of Duris (end of the 6th century B.C.) - Paris, Louvre Museum.

BIBL.: sources

F. Vernet, Rue de l'Etoile, in DTNC, V. coll. 134-37; Hefele-Leclercq, V. 1, pp. 828-49; J. Guiraud, Histoire de l'inquisition au moyen-âge, I, Paris 1935, pp. 14-16. Marino da Milano

@incollection{ec5_eone_della_stella_euno_eudo_de,
  author    = {Ilarino da Milano},
  title     = {Eone Della Stella (Euno, eudo de stella)},
  booktitle = {Enciclopedia Cattolica},
  volume    = {V},
  pages     = {401--404},
  note      = {Cited by column},
  publisher = {Ente per l’Enciclopedia Cattolica e per il Libro Cattolico},
  address   = {Città del Vaticano},
  year      = {1950},
  url       = {https://azioneromana.com/article/eone-della-stella-euno-eudo-de-stella}
}