Repose on Corfu, 1924

The death of St. Arsenios on Corfu (Kerkyra) on 10 November 1924, forty days after reaching Greece as he had foretold — his pastoral task complete, his flock delivered — and his burial among the refugees on the island. The account follows St. Paisios’ Life, with the contested details of the arrival flagged.

Tradition: Greek Orthodox (Cappadocian)

The Last Weeks

Having led the Farasiots out of Cappadocia and across to Greece in the autumn of 1924 (see The Uprooting of 1924), St. Arsenios came, with a portion of the refugees, to the island of Corfu (Kerkyra) in the Ionian Sea — one of the reception points for the incoming Anatolian Christians (Elder Paisios, Saint Arsenios the Cappadocian, Souroti, on his arrival on Corfu). He was by then a very old man, in his eighties, worn by the ordeal of the exodus; and, according to the tradition, he neither expected nor sought to begin a new life in Greece. He had said he would live only forty days after arriving (see The Prophecy of Forty Days), and the last weeks of his life were spent, in the tradition’s telling, in the calm expectation of a death he had foreseen.

The Repose

St. Arsenios reposed on 10 November 1924 (Elder Paisios, Saint Arsenios the Cappadocian, Souroti, on the date of his repose; the date is confirmed by the feast subsequently fixed on 10 November, see Glorification 1986). By the reckoning of the tradition this was forty days after his arrival — the exact fulfilment of his prophecy — and it fell, providentially in the tradition’s eyes, upon the man who had brought his people to safety and had nothing left to do (see The Prophecy of Forty Days). He died a refugee among refugees, in a strange land, at the end of a long journey; but the tradition remembers the death as peaceful and expected, the completion rather than the frustration of his life.

[Disputed: the details of the arrival and the final interval. The received tradition, following St. Paisios, gives the repose on 10 November 1924, forty days after reaching Greece. Encyclopedic and synaxarial notices vary in describing the interval — some speaking of only about two weeks spent in the Castle (Old Fortress) area of Corfu, others of some months between the arrival in Greece and the death — reflecting differences in what is counted as the “arrival” (in Greece, or on Corfu specifically). The collection reports the traditional date of 10 November 1924 and the “forty days” as the core of the account, while flagging that the precise chronology of his last weeks is not documentarily fixed (Elder Paisios, Saint Arsenios the Cappadocian, Souroti; cf. divergent notices).]

The Refugee Burial

St. Arsenios was buried on Corfu, among the community he had led there (Elder Paisios, Saint Arsenios the Cappadocian, Souroti, on his burial on the island). It was a refugee’s burial in a place of exile — not the tomb of a famous man, but the grave of an old priest laid to rest by the people he had saved, far from the Cappadocian earth he had served for half a century. There his body would remain for more than three decades, until his godson, the monk who bore his name, came to recover it (see The Translation of the Relics).

The obscurity of that first burial is part of the story’s meaning. St. Arsenios died as he had lived — hidden, poor, unregarded by the world, known only to his own community — and had it not been for St. Paisios he might have remained in an unmarked refugee grave on Corfu, his memory fading with the generation that knew him. That he did not is entirely owing to the bond forged at the font in 1924 (see The Two Arsenioi). The old priest who wished to leave a monk behind him was, in the end, brought out of obscurity by that very monk.

A Death That Completes a Life

The collection reports the repose, like the prophecy, under the §3.5 discipline: the date of 10 November 1924 is secure and is confirmed by the later feast; the exact interval and the circumstances of the last weeks are traditional and somewhat variable, and are flagged accordingly. What is not in question is the shape the tradition gives the death — a completion. St. Arsenios delivered his flock and died; and the Church, in fixing his feast on the day of his repose, ratified the tradition’s reading that this death was the crown of a holy life rather than merely its end (see Glorification 1986). The long afterlife of that life — the recovery of the relics, the cult at Souroti, and the glorification — begins with the recovery of the body from Corfu, the subject of the next file.

See Also

References

  • Elder Paisios the Athonite (Hieromonk Paisios). Saint Arsenios the Cappadocian. Souroti, Thessaloniki: Holy Hesychasterion “Evangelist John the Theologian,” Greek 1st ed. 1975; English translation, Souroti. (His arrival on Corfu; his repose on 10 November 1924, forty days after arrival; his burial among the refugees on the island.)