medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Arsenius of Corfu (d. ca. 953). Our chief source for the life of the Corfiote bishop and hagiographer Arsenius is an apparently credible synaxary account (BHG 2044; there's said to be a translation into Latin in Cittą del Vaticano, BAV, ms. Barberinianus latinus 2663, fols. 41r-46r). According to this he was born at Bethany in Palestine in the reign of Basil I (867-886), entered religion at the age of 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 (928-931). In 933 Tryphon's successor Theophylact made Arsenius bishop of Corfu.
We are poorly informed about Arsenius' episcopate. During this time he wrote his surviving sermons on Sts. Andrew the Protoclete, Barbara, and Terinus (a Corfiote martyr) and, if it is his, the poem on Palm Sunday that has been attributed to him. 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.
Arsenius is said to have died near Corinth while 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 buried in a church of Sts. Peter and Paul. In 1943 the island's Franciscans presented what is believed to be a relic of Arsenius to the metropolitan of Corfu; it is now preserved in the latter's cathedral church of the Panagia Spiliotissa.
Arsenius of Corfu as depicted in a twelfth-century fresco in the church of Sts. Jason and Sosipater in Anemomilos / Anemomylos, a suburb of Corfu (city) on Corfu:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/7549203@N04/4632661611/
Best,
John Dillon
(an older post revised)
**********************************************************************
To join the list, send the message: subscribe medieval-religion YOUR NAME
to: [log in to unmask]
To send a message to the list, address it to:
[log in to unmask]
To leave the list, send the message: unsubscribe medieval-religion
to: [log in to unmask]
In order to report problems or to contact the list's owners, write to:
[log in to unmask]
For further information, visit our web site:
http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/medieval-religion
|