St. Eusebius of Vercelli

St. Eusebius of Vercelli was born around the year 283 on the island of Sardinia and died on 1 August 371 at Vercelli in northern Italy. Raised in Rome, he served in the clergy there before being chosen, around 345, as the first bishop of Vercelli in Piedmont. He is remembered as a pioneer who brought his cathedral clergy together to live a common life of prayer and discipline under one roof, uniting the monastic and clerical ways of life in the Western Church and setting a pattern later taken up by St. Augustine and others.

A fearless champion of the Nicene faith against the Arian heresy, he stood with St. Athanasius when the Emperor Constantius II pressed the bishops to condemn him at the Council of Milan in 355. For his refusal Eusebius was sent into a harsh exile that carried him through Palestine, Cappadocia, and Egypt, where he suffered greatly at the hands of the Arians. Restored to his see after the emperor's death, he spent his final years rebuilding the faith of his people, and the Church honors him as a confessor on 2 August.