EUTROPIUS THE PRESBYTER. - Theologian, who lived in the 4th-5th centuries, of whom Gennadius speaks (De vir. ill., 49). He was probably Spanish and carried on his activity in the north of Spain.
Only recently has his literary personality been fully identified and appreciated. He wrote three "letters," treatises of an ascetic-theological character against the Manichaeans: De contemnendo haereditate; De vera circumcisione; De similitudine carnis peccati. The last of these had been falsely attributed to Pacian of Barcelona by Dom Morin.
Bibliography4 works
BIBL.: The first two letters edited in PL 30, 45-50; 188, 210. The last in G. Morin, Études, textes et découvertes, Paris 1913, pp. 107-50; J. Madoz, Heracicia literaria del presbitero E., in Études eclésiastiques, 16 (1912), pp. 27-54; F. Cavallera, L'héritage littéraire et spirituel du prêtre E., in Bull. de littér. ecclésiastique, 49 (1948), pp. 60-71.
Giuseppe Madoz