EUSEPI, CECILIA. — A pious virgin, born at Monteromano (Viterbo) on 17 February 1910, died at Nepi on 1 October 1928. At the age of thirteen she entered as a postulant in the probandate of the Mantellate of Pietola, but left in 1926 because of continual illnesses, which eventually developed into tuberculosis, and withdrew to her family at the Massa estate near Nepi, edifying everyone by her purity, love of the Eucharist, devotion to Our Lady of Sorrows, and patience in suffering and trials. The process of beatification has begun.
EUSTACHIO and companions, saints, martyrs. — No reliable historical information has been preserved concerning Εὐανάθως Πλασιλάς (Eustathius, Placidus, Eustasius), Theopista, his wife, Theopistus and Agapius, his sons. They cannot be localized in any way; if their historicity is accepted, they should be regarded as martyrs of Eastern origin. The claim that the scene of the miraculous conversion of E. took place on the high crag (1,200 m) where the shrine of S. Maria in Vulturella, and Mentorella, stands above Ceciliano (Tivoli), is a late-medieval legend that does not merit credence.
(Id. Gen. fot. ...)
EUSTACHIO and companions, saints, martyrs. — The stag with Christ between its antlers appeared, according to the legend, to St. E. Wooden altarpiece panel. Work of Magister Guilielmus (12th–13th century) — Tivoli, shrine of S. Maria in Vulturella.
which he experienced during a hunt: he sees between the antlers of a stag, which has taken refuge on a high rock, a luminous cross bearing the image of Christ, who speaks to him through the animal. At Baptism he takes the name Eustathius, later E. The second recounts the ruin of his fortune and family and the adventurous events endured by its individual members, who eventually find one another again, while E., having meanwhile been sought by the Emperor, was conducting a campaign against the barbarians. The third is devoted to the martyrdom of E. and his family. E. refuses to follow the Emperor Hadrian, who intends to offer a sacrifice to Apollo as a sign of thanksgiving for the victory. The Emperor has E. and his family shut inside a red-hot bronze bull.
CULT. — The veneration of E. became widespread in the late Middle Ages under the influence of the legend. Its earliest attestation is the church erected in her honour, at the beginning of the 8th century, on the ruins of the Alexandrian Neronian Baths, called the diaconia S. Eustatii, basilica besti Eustatii Martyris (Lib. Pont., II, pp. 11, 75), to which the designation was later added: in platana or iuxta templum Agrippae (cf. Ch. Huelsen, Le chiese di Roma nel medioevo, 1 June 1927, p. 251; R. Krautheimer, Corpus basilicarum Christianorum Romae, I, fasc. III, Città del Vaticano 1940, p. 216; V. DIACONIA). In the ancient liturgical books, she appears on 20 September only in the evangelists of the purely Roman type (Σ) from the middle of the 8th century (cf. Th. Klauser, Dus römischen Capitulare Evangeliorum, Münster in W. 1935, p. 124; cf. also pp. 85, 181), while she remains unknown to the various types of Sacramentaries and to the Hieronymian Martyrology (with the exception of the Corbie manuscript of the 11th century, on 1 November). The name of E. and of the members of her family appears in a private litany contained in the Psalter of the monastery of Our Lady of Soissons, from the end of the 8th century (cf. M. Coens, Anciennes litanies des Saints, in Andrieia Bollandiana, 62 [1944], pp. 133, 139). In the Martyrology of Usuard, she is recorded on 2 November (cf. ed. by J.-B. Du Sollier, in Acra SS. Juni, VII, Venezia 1756, pp. 644–45), the date on which she is commemorated in the majority of the missals (from the 11th century) and breviaries (from the 12th century) described by V. Leroquais (cf. Les sacramentaires et uniscès mss. des bibl. publ. de France, III, Parigi 1924, p. 563 [index]; Les breviaires mss. des bibl. publ. de France, V, ibid. 1934 [index], on 20 September [8 breviaries], others on 3, 4, 5, and 9 November, some on 20 May, one on 16 September; cf. also A. Ebner, Iter Italicum, Friburgo in Br. 1896 [index]). In the Synaxaria, the feast of E. and her companions is placed on 20 September, and at Constantinople the synaxis took place in their church by vō Δευτέρα (Synos. Constantinop., col. 61); on the same date she is commemorated in the Marble Calendar of Naples (cf. ed. D. Mallardo, Roma 1947, p. 155) and in the current Roman liturgical books, in which the date of 20 September prevailed only from the 16th century. She is numbered among the Holy Helpers (v.); in Paris there is a magnificent 16th-century church, already known in the 13th century; she is the patroness of hunters and gamekeepers.