The life of St John Mavropous of Euchaita
Chief among his pupils was the boy who would grow into Michael Psellos, the philosopher and court historian, and it was this former student's own standing at the imperial palace that eventually opened a door for his old tutor into the circle surrounding Emperor Constantine IX. By the middle of the eleventh century John had exchanged the schoolroom for a bishop's throne, taking up the metropolitan seat of Euchaita in Asia Minor, and monastic vows followed still later in his life.
His pen never rested: something like a hundred fifty canons survive under his name, addressed across the calendar to the Mother of God, to Christ, to the Baptist, to the chief Apostles, and to teachers of the Church such as Chrysostom and John of Damascus. Of everything he wrote, one gift outlasted the rest: the joint feast of the Three Hierarchs kept every January 30, whose synaxarion and hymns he composed himself, a single day's celebration the Church still keeps because of him. His own commemoration is dated variously in different traditions, some naming June, others September or October.
