The miracle of Saint Euphemia is commemorated by the Church on the eleventh day of July. Today we do not honor the suffering of the Holy Great Martyr Euphemia — that feast is kept on September 16 — but the miracle wrought through her precious relics in the year 451, during the Fourth Ecumenical Council at Chalcedon. This is one of the rare observances in the Church calendar on which the same saint is honored separately for a miracle performed after her martyrdom. This reveals the magnitude of the event: through a martyr who had suffered nearly a century and a half earlier, God strengthened the Church’s confession at an hour of grave turmoil, even though the historical struggle would continue after the council.
The Virgin of Chalcedon
Saint Euphemia was born in Chalcedon, a city of Bithynia on the eastern shore of the Bosporus, facing ancient Byzantium. She was raised in the fear of God by her Christian parents, Philophron and Theodosiana. During the persecution of Diocletian, when the governor Priscus ordered the whole city to sacrifice to the idols, the maiden hid with other Christians. She was discovered and brought to trial, endured the wheel, fire, and wild beasts, and the Angel of the Lord healed her wounds. She completed her martyrdom around the year 304, and a great and renowned church was built over her tomb in Chalcedon.
Healings flowed from the saint’s relics. Ancient Church historians — among them Evagrius Scholasticus — testify that at certain times fragrant blood issued from the martyr’s body. The clergy reverently collected it and distributed it among the faithful. Great crowds came to venerate her, especially from Constantinople, which lay just across the strait.
The Error of Eutyches and the Ecumenical Council
Nearly a century and a half after the saint’s suffering, the Church faced a trial of another kind. Archimandrite Eutyches of Constantinople would not confess clearly that, after the Incarnation, Christ is known in two natures, divine and human. His teaching endangered the fullness of the Lord’s human nature. At first sight, the error seemed to exalt His divinity; at its root, however, it undermined salvation itself. For, as Saint Gregory the Theologian wrote in his letter to Cledonius, that which Christ has not assumed has not been healed: if the Lord is not fully man, our nature has remained untouched by His healing.
The shepherds of the Church rose against this teaching, and the pious emperors Marcian and Pulcheria summoned an ecumenical council. The Fathers — six hundred and thirty in number according to the figure preserved in liturgical tradition, while contemporary sources give varying totals — gathered in the autumn of 451 in the Church of Saint Euphemia at Chalcedon, where the martyr’s relics rested. The council examined the faith it had received: the Creed of Nicaea and Constantinople, the letters of Saint Cyril of Alexandria, and the Tome of Saint Leo of Rome. It condemned the teaching that denied the two natures. Dioscorus of Alexandria, who had presided over the assembly at Ephesus in 449 and supported the rehabilitation of Eutyches, was tried and deposed for canonical violations and for refusing to answer the council’s summonses. The debates were long, and a common formulation was reached only with great difficulty.
The Miracle at the Saint’s Relics
The Fathers set the definition of faith down in writing. Concerning the way in which God confirmed it, the Church preserves two testimonies.
The first comes from those very days. In the letter sent to Saint Leo of Rome, the council testifies that Saint Euphemia received the Fathers’ definition as her own confession and sealed it, as one who was present and crowned the synod assembled in her church.
The second is the account celebrated by the Church on July 11 and preserved in the Synaxarion. Because those in error would not submit to the truth, Saint Anatolius, Patriarch of Constantinople, made a proposal that only faith could have conceived: each side was to write its confession in a book, and both sealed writings were to be placed in the tomb upon the saint’s breast. Then all were to pray and fast, asking God to reveal the right faith. The reliquary was sealed with the imperial seal and placed under guard, while the council spent three days in prayer and fasting. On the third day, with the emperor and the entire assembly present, the tomb was opened. The book of the heretics lay cast down at the saint’s feet, while the Orthodox confession was held in her right hand. The Synaxarion adds that the martyr, as though alive, stretched out her hand and gave the Patriarch the writing of the right faith.
The definition held by the saint confesses one and the same Christ, the Son of God, perfect in divinity and perfect in humanity, acknowledged in two natures without confusion, without change, without division, and without separation, in one Person and one Hypostasis. Upon this boundary — for the Fathers call it the boundary of faith — the Orthodox Church’s confession of her Lord stands to this day.
The Meaning of the Miracle
The miracle did not replace the council’s dogmatic work, nor is it the foundation of its definition. The Fathers examined the faith received from the Apostles and confessed it synodally. The Church’s liturgical consciousness sees in the sign given through Saint Euphemia a seal from above upon that confession. The truth of dogma is not the fruit of one side’s verbal victory over another, but the faith received, lived, and guarded by the whole Church, which God confirms at decisive moments, sometimes also through signs.
The fact that this seal came through holy relics is itself a teaching: the grace of God sanctifies the bodies of the saints and works through their precious remains. For this reason, in icons of the miracle Saint Euphemia is depicted holding the book of the confession in her right hand, as a remembrance of the sign at Chalcedon.
The Saint’s Relics and Her Appearance in Our Own Age
The saint’s relics were later transferred to Constantinople. According to tradition, the iconoclast crisis also struck at their veneration: the reliquary was cast into the sea, but God preserved it. It found refuge on the island of Lemnos and was brought back in glory to the city in the year 796. Today the relics rest in the Patriarchal Church of Saint George in the Phanar district of Constantinople, where pilgrims come without ceasing.
The saint continues to act in our own age. On February 27, 1974, according to the old calendar kept on the Holy Mountain, Saint Euphemia appeared bodily to Saint Paisios the Athonite at the Cell of the Holy Cross, belonging to Stavronikita Monastery, in the wilderness of Kapsala. She knocked at his door, worshiped the Holy Trinity together with him, and spoke to him about her sufferings. The elder marveled that so frail a body could have endured such torments. Saint Paisios reposed on July 12, 1994, one day after the commemoration of the saint’s miracle — a nearness in the calendar with profound spiritual resonance.
The same hand that held the definition of the right faith at Chalcedon knocks, in our own time, at the door of an Athonite cell. The saints are not dead. They guard the faith they sealed and visit those who guard it. Holy Great Martyr Euphemia, pray to God for us!