Eusignius of Antioch

Eusignius was a Roman soldier of Antioch in Syria who had served in the imperial army under Constantius Chlorus, Constantine the Great, and his sons — a span of more than sixty years of military service — by the time the Emperor Julian the Apostate came to the throne in 361 and began his short-lived restoration of paganism. Eusignius was by then a hundred and ten years old, retired and living quietly at Antioch.

He came forward during one of Julian's public audiences and rebuked the emperor for his apostasy, recounting from his long memory the vision of the cross that had appeared to Constantine before the battle of the Milvian Bridge and the conversion of the empire that had followed. Julian, enraged at being lectured by a centenarian veteran in front of his court, ordered Eusignius beheaded on the spot. He suffered around the year 362 — almost certainly the oldest martyr in the records of the Church.

His feast falls on August 5, on the eve of the Transfiguration.