  Eustratios was a pupil of John Italos and became the Metropolitan of Nicaea at the beginning of the 12th century. Anna Komnene in the Alexiad presents him as an extremely erudite scholar both of religious and of secular literature as well as a master of dialectic. He was also asked by the emperor Alexios I to participate in various theological debates with the Latin Church, until he himself, just like his teacher Italos, was finally condemned for heresy in 1117. The reasons for his condemnation are a rather complicated matter involving both theological and political issues. In this connection, however, it is interesting to note that he was famous for his strong conviction of the propriety of using Aristotle’s syllogistic in theology; he even stated that Christ himself had argued with the help of Aristotelian syllogisms. What we have of his work as a commentator are his comments on the first and sixth book of the Nicomachean Ethics and his commentary on the second book of the Posterior Analytics. In interpreting Aristotle, Eustratios clearly followed the late antique Neoplatonic philosophers, though at certain places, like the issue concerning the knowledge of first principles, he advocated theses which seem closer in line with his Christian beliefs. For Eustratius, contrary to Plato and Aristotle, did not claim that the human soul regains pieces of knowledge that we possessed at some former time, nor that it has only potential knowledge which then becomes actual. He believed that the human soul, when created by God, is created perfect, that is, it has full knowledge of the principles and self-evident common concepts, but human beings lose sight of this knowledge and understanding, because they are susceptible to the impulses generated by their body.