Martyr and Archdeacon Euplus of Catania

Ministry and the Gospel Book

The defining feature of Euplus's life as it is remembered is his devotion to the Gospel book. The sources relate that he carried the Scriptures with him constantly and preached openly to the pagans of Catania, reading and explaining the text to crowds in public. It was during one such public reading that he was seized and brought to trial.

The Gospel book remains central to the account of his death: the tradition holds that it was hung about his neck as he was led to execution, and that he continued to read and expound it on the way, so that his witness was bound up to the end with the book he had carried in life.

The Acts of Euplus

Euplus's martyrdom is preserved in a Greek Passion, probably written in the fourth century and presumably at Catania, which recounts his arrest, interrogation before Calvisianus, and execution. Scholars regard the text as significant because it probably contains elements of the original trial acts. By the Greek version the interrogation is dated to the twenty-ninth of April in the year 304, when Euplus presented himself at the government house holding the Gospels before the corrector Calvisianus.

Relics and Veneration

Euplus is venerated as a martyr in both the Eastern and Western traditions. In the Orthodox tradition he is commemorated on August 11 and honored as a martyr archdeacon; the Latin Rite keeps his feast on August 12.

Accounts of his relics vary. Orthodox sources record that his holy relics rest in a village near Naples (variously given as Vico della Batonia). Western sources state that his remains rest in the Cathedral of the Assumption of Trevico, having likely been relocated before the Arab conquest of Sicily; in 1654 the Bishop of Trevico, Donato Pascasio, authorized the translation of a bone of the saint to the diocese of Catania. He is honored as a co-patron of Catania together with Saint Agatha, as a patron of Trevico, and as patron of Francavilla di Sicilia.