01 — Foundations

The origins of St. Arsenios of Cappadocia: the Greek-speaking Christian world of Farasa in Ottoman Cappadocia, the orphaned childhood of Theodoros, and his formation into the priest-monk Arsenios through schooling, monastic tonsure near Caesarea, and ordination.

Tradition: Greek Orthodox (Cappadocian)

This section establishes the world St. Arsenios came from and the path that made him a priest. Because no documentary archive survives from Ottoman Farasa, the facts of his origin — the birth year c. 1840, his family name, the exact village — are traditional and contested, and are flagged as such; what is firm is the shape of the origin: a Greek Orthodox child of a marginal, ancient, and soon-to-vanish Anatolian Christianity, orphaned early and turned toward the Church, who chose after his education to return and serve the poorest field of all — his native Farasa.

Contents

  • theodoros-of-farasa.md — Cappadocia and the Christians of Farasa; the birth c. 1840 and the baptismal name Theodoros; orphanhood and upbringing with a brother; the vanishing world into which he was born. Contested name, year, and village flagged.
  • formation-and-monastic-tonsure.md — schooling at Niğde and Smyrna; the tonsure as Arsenios at the Monastery of the Forerunner near Caesarea; ordination and the archimandritate under the Metropolitan of Caesarea; the decisive return to serve Farasa as teacher and priest.

See Also