EUDO DE STELLA (ÉON, EUON DE L'ÉTOILE): Founder of a heretical sect in France; d. after 1148. He came from a noble family of Brittany and rose into prominence there about 1146 as a vehement opposer of the hierarchy and an exponent of apocalyptic views. He appears to have applied to himself the liturgical formula [Otto of Freising De Gestia Friderici, 1, chap. 54] "by him (Lat. eum, which he connected with his own name Éon) who is to come to judge the quick and the dead," gave himself out to be the Son of God, and by prophecies and feigned miracles gathered some following. Though a layman and unable to read, he celebrated mass, elected "angels" and "apostles" from among his adherents, and bestowed on them high sounding names like "Judgment" and "Wisdom," together with the rank of bishops and archbishops. They undertook devastating raids for the plunder of churches and cloisters, and spent their pillaged treasures, so the narrative runs, in riotous orgies. In 1148 Eudo was captured, with a number of his followers. When led for trial before the Synod of Reims, he vaingloriously appealed to his "divine mission." He died not long afterward in the prison of Archbishop Samson of Reims. Some of his adherents, who would seem to have spread as far as Languedoc, were burned at the stake. Hereafter the sect disappears from history. About the same period as Eudo's time certain heresies of a Manichean character were prevalent in Brittany, but it is an erroneous deduction from this fact to suppose that Eudo should be included among the Cathari. In reality he was a mystic fanatic, who went his own way.
Bibliography: C. U. Hahn, Geschichte der Ketzer im Mittelalter, i. 483, Stuttgart, 1845; C. Schmidt, Histoire et doctrine de la secte du Cathares, i. 48, Paris, 1849; H. C. Lea, History of the Inquisition, i. 66, New York, 1906; J. J. I. von Döllinger, Beiträge zur Sektengeschichte, i. 101, Munich, 1890; K. Müller, Kirchengeschichte, i. 495, Freiburg, 1892; C. Molinier, in Revue historique, liv (1894), 158-161; P. Alphandéry, Les Idées morales chez Ies hétérodoxes Latins au début du 13e. siècle, pp. 102 sqq., Paris, 1904; Hefele, Conciliengeschichte, v. 516-517; KL, iv. 662; Schaff, v, I, pp. 482, 483.
EUDOCIA, yu-dō'shi-a, ÆLIA: Empress of Byzantium and wife of Theodosius II. (408-450); b. at Athens 394; d. at Jerusalem c. 460. Her original name was Athenais, and she was the daughter of the pagan rhetorician Leontius, she herself attaining wide celebrity as a scholarly defender of the ancient faith. After the death of her father, she is said to have gone to Constantinople to protest to Pulcheria, the sister of the empress, against the provisions of the will of Leontius, but Pulcheria, charmed by her beauty and culture, converted her to Christianity and presented her to her brother as a bride. The marriage is dated in 421, and she bore Theodosius a daughter Eudoxia, who became the wife of the Western emperor Valentinian III. In 438 Eudocia went to Jerusalem and brought back relics which included the two chains of St. Peter, depositing one at Constantinople and presenting the other to her daughter at Rome, where it gave its name to the church of St. Peter ad Vincula. Two statutes were erected at Antioch in gratitude for Eudocia's eulogy of the city. Before
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Bibliography: he fragments of her Carmine were edited by A. Ludwiah, Leipsic, 1897. The chief source for a life are the Chronicle of John MahVae (bested. by L. Dindorf, Bonn, 1831), though that source is romance rather than history, and Nioephorua Callietue. Hist. eccl., av. 23. Consult: W. Wiegaad, Eudoxia, Worms, 1871; F. Gregorovius. AtJbenaia. Leipsic, 1882; Gibbon, Decline and Fall, iii. 387-390.
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