medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Our chief source for the life of the Corfiot bishop and hagiographer Arsenius (d. ca. 953) is an apparently credible synaxary notice (BHG 2044; there's a translation into Latin in BAV, ms. Barb. lat. 2663, fols. 414r-419r). According to this account he was born at Bethany in Palestine in the reign of Basil I (867-86), entered religion at age twelve, completed his studies at Seleucia in Syria (Seleucia Pieria), was ordained priest, made a pilgrimage to the Holy Places in Palestine, and then became an associate in Constantinople of the future patriarch Tryphon (928-31). In 933 Tryphon's successor Theophylact made Arsenius metropolitan of Corfu.
We are poorly informed about Arsenius' episcopate. During this time he wrote his surviving encomia on St. Andrew the Protoclete, on St. Barbara, and on the Epirot martyr St. Therinus and, if it is his, the poem on Palm Sunday that has been attributed to him. Shortly after his arrival in Corfu he played a major role in the defence of the city against a Muslim attack. A witty epigram in Arsenius' honor by the earlier thirteenth-century western imperial notary, diplomat, and poet John of Otranto (Joannes Grassus), an Italo-Greek subject of Frederick II, praises the immaterial virtues through which Arsenius participated in the Holy Spirit and implies that it was thanks to these that he eluded Ethiopian (i.e. Muslim) pirates who sought to waylay him at sea. It is not clear when or where the incident referred to took place or -- given that the epigram is some three centuries later -- was believed to have taken place. John's information is very likely to have come from another metropolitan of Corfu, his friend and fellow scholar George Bardanes.
Arsenius died near Corinth whilst returning from a mission to the emperor Constantine VII on behalf of the island's notables. His body was taken to Corfu, where it was laid to rest in the then cathedral church of Sts. Peter and Paul. Arsenius' glorification is thought to have occurred not long afterward. For the remainder of the Middle Ages he was the city's patron saint and even after the translation of St. Spyridon the Wonderworker to Corfu in perhaps 1456 he remains one of the island's major saints. In 1943 the island's Franciscans transferred a relic of Arsenius to the metropolitan of Corfu; this is now preserved in the latter's cathedral church of the Panagia Spiliotissa.
Arsenius of Corfu as depicted in a restored fresco, variously dated to the eleventh century or to the twelfth, in the narthex of the church of Sts. Jason and Sosipater in Anemomilos / Anemomylos, a suburb of Corfu (city) on Corfu:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/7549203@N04/4632661611
While we're here, a few exterior views of that church:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/monudet/5316780914/
https://www.flickr.com/photos/monudet/5317190840/
https://www.flickr.com/photos/monudet/5317162324/
Best,
John Dillon
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