Saints
“The Soldier of a Hundred and Ten Years”
Soldier of the Roman armies · Martyr under Julian
A soldier who served sixty years in the Roman armies, who said he had seen the Cross in the sky over Constantine's camp with his own eyes, and who retired to Antioch and lived to a hundred and ten. When Julian the Apostate came through the city and began restoring the sacrifices, this very old man told him to his face what his own uncle had seen, and was beheaded for it.
His life
He was born about the year 252 and spent sixty years under arms, serving under Constantius Chlorus and then under Constantine. The tradition has him among the soldiers who saw the sign of the Cross in the sky before the battle at the Milvian Bridge, and this is the whole point of the story that follows: by the reign of Julian he was the last man alive who could say he had been there.
He retired to Antioch, where he was born, and lived in prayer and almsgiving into extreme old age. In 362 the Emperor Julian, who had been raised a Christian and had renounced it, came to Antioch to prepare his Persian campaign and to restore the old sacrifices.
Eusignius, then a hundred and ten years old, was brought before him, or came before him, and told him about Constantine: the vision, the victory, the empire given to a man who had confessed Christ, and the folly of the nephew who was now trying to undo it. Julian had him beheaded on the fifth of August, 362. Julian himself was dead within the year, in Persia.
Holy St. Eusignius of Antioch, pray to God for us.