[log in to unmask]" class="iwcQuote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(0, 0, 255); padding-left: 13px; margin-left: 0pt;" type="cite">7. January is also the feast day of:
Eustratius the Thaumaturge (d. earlier 9th cent.). We know about this victim of Byzantine second iconoclasm chiefly from his Bios (BHG 645) and from one of the latter's primary sources, the Bios of St. Joannicius the Great by the monk Sabas (BHG 935). A native of the Tarsia in Bithynia, at the age of twenty he entered the monastery of the Agauroi on the Bithynian Mt. Olympus. There he became a close friend of Joannicius and later succeeded his own uncle Gregory as the community's hegumen. In the reign of Leo V the monastery was purged of iconophiles and Eustratius was forced to leave. He returned after the emperor's assassination in 820 but not, apparently, as hegumen. By the time he died a little short of the age of one hundred he was credited with miracles; his cult was immediate.