EUSTAZIANI. — This was the name given to those heretics who, taking their inspiration from Eustazio, bishop of Sebaste, exaggerated his ascetic teachings, reviving the encratite tendencies of the preceding age; they were therefore condemned at the Council of Gangre in Pafagonia (340?).
They condemned marriage, maintaining that it was impossible to serve God in such a state; they therefore separated spouses, thereby causing disorders, held separate conventicles, introducing strange customs in dress, and maintained that the rich could not be saved unless they abandoned what they possessed; they observed their own customs with regard to fasting.
BIBL.: Hefele-Leclercq, I, p. 1020 ff.; F. Loofs, Eustathus van Sebaste und die Chronologie der Basilius-Briefe, Halle 1898; F. Sacchetti, Il Sinodo di Gangre e uno scritto pseudo-atomistiano, in Ricerche religiose, 1 [1925], p. 248; S. Salville, Eustathe de Sebaste, s. V. in DThC, V, cols. 1565–71. Giuliano Gennaro