EUCHERIUS OF LYON. - Born into a distinguished family, he held important public offices, but around 410 he renounced the secular life and, followed by his wife Galla and his sons Salonius and Veranus, sought refuge in the monastery founded by Honoratus on the island of Lérins (today St-Honorat) in southern France, later moving with his wife to the nearby island of Lero (today Ste-Marguerite). Around 434 he was elected bishop of Lyon, and as such took part in the first Council of Orange. He died between 450 and 455 (cf. Gennadius, De viris ill., 63).
Great was the authority he must have enjoyed, as attested by the fact that Cassian dedicated to him and to Honoratus the second part of his Collationes, and by the correspondence exchanged by E. with Sidonius Apollinaris, Hilary, Rusticus, Paulinus of Nola and Salvian. For Claudianus Mamertus (De statu animae, II, 9), E. was «by far the greatest of the great pontiffs of his age».
E.'s literary output comprises, besides two ascetic writings (De laude heremi ad Hilarium Livinarum presbyterum epistula; Epistula paraenotica ad Valerianum cognatum de contempta mundi et saecularis philosophiae), also two exegetical writings, fairly well known in the Middle Ages: 1) Formulae spiritualis intellegentiae dedicated to his son Veranus, in which he gives numerous examples of allegorical interpretation of Scripture; 2) Instructiones, in two books, dedicated to his son Salonius and containing respectively clarifications of difficult passages of Scripture and explanation of Greek and Hebrew names.
Of an abridgment of his from Cassian's Collationes only fragments remain in a Greek version (cf. Gennadius, loc. cit.; Photius, Biblioth., 197). To E. is probably due a Passio Agamnesium martyrum.
Contested, on the other hand, is the attribution to him of other writings (some homiliae; Commentarii in Genesim and In libros Regum; De situ Hierosolymitanae urbis atque ipsius Iudae epistola ad Faustum presbyterum).