The Translation of the Relics

The recovery of St. Arsenios’ relics from Corfu by his godson St. Paisios in 1958, and their eventual enshrinement at the Hesychasterion of St. John the Theologian at Souroti near Thessaloniki — the convent St. Paisios established, which became and remains the centre of St. Arsenios’ cult. The account is drawn from St. Paisios’ authorized biography, with the two-stage chronology flagged.

Tradition: Greek Orthodox (Cappadocian)

The Recovery from Corfu, 1958

For thirty-four years St. Arsenios’ body lay in his refugee grave on Corfu (see Repose on Corfu, 1924). In 1958 his godson — then the young monk who bore his name, later St. Paisios — undertook to recover the relics and to bring them out of that place of exile (Hieromonk Isaac, Elder Paisios of Mount Athos, Chalkidiki, 2012, on St. Paisios’ recovery of St. Arsenios’ relics from Corfu in 1958). By the biography’s account, the relics were translated from Kerkyra toward St. Paisios’ own world — to the Konitsa region of Epiros where the Farasiot refugees, the Eznepidis family among them, had been resettled — before their final resting place was established (Hieromonk Isaac, Elder Paisios of Mount Athos, 2012, on the translation from Corfu toward Konitsa; on the Konitsa resettlement see The Uprooting of 1924).

The act was one of piety toward a godfather and toward a community’s saint. St. Paisios had grown up hearing of St. Arsenios from the very people he had led out of Cappadocia; recovering his relics was the natural first labour of the reverence that would also produce the Life (see The Two Arsenioi and St. Paisios as Biographer). It is worth noting the year: 1958 is well before St. Arsenios’ formal glorification in 1986 (see Glorification 1986), so the recovery of the relics was an act of private veneration of one whom his community already regarded as holy, not yet of an officially glorified saint — the cult, as so often, preceding the canonization.

Enshrinement at Souroti

The relics’ eventual home became the Holy Hesychasterion of St. John the Theologian at Souroti, near Thessaloniki — the women’s monastic community that St. Paisios himself founded and guided, and which he made the custodian of his godfather’s memory (Hieromonk Isaac, Elder Paisios of Mount Athos, 2012, on the Souroti convent as the home of St. Arsenios’ relics and cult). It was at Souroti that St. Paisios’ Life of St. Arsenios was published (Elder Paisios, Saint Arsenios the Cappadocian, Souroti, 1975); at Souroti that the cult of St. Arsenios was fostered; and at Souroti that his relics are venerated to this day. The convent is doubly significant in the tradition, for it later became also the place of St. Paisios’ own repose and grave (1994) — so that the two Arsenioi, godfather and godson, are honoured together at the same holy place (on St. Paisios’ repose and grave at Souroti see St. Paisios of Mount Athos).

[Disputed: the precise date and stages of the enshrinement at Souroti. The recovery of the relics from Corfu is dated to 1958. The convent at Souroti, however, was founded by St. Paisios only later (in the 1960s), so the relics’ arrival at Souroti as their permanent home is necessarily later than, or subsequent to, the 1958 recovery — the 1958 date marking the translation from Corfu, and the enshrinement at Souroti following the convent’s establishment. Devotional summaries sometimes compress these stages into a single “1958” translation to Souroti; the collection distinguishes them, following the biography’s two-stage account (recovery from Corfu in 1958; enshrinement at Souroti thereafter) while noting that the exact date of the final enshrinement is not uniformly given in the sources (Hieromonk Isaac, Elder Paisios of Mount Athos, 2012).]

The Relics and the Cult

The enshrinement of the relics at Souroti gave St. Arsenios’ cult a fixed centre and a tangible focus, and it is around the relics that his veneration has chiefly grown. Pilgrims come to Souroti to venerate the relics of St. Arsenios (and, since 1994, to visit the grave of St. Paisios), and reports of his continuing intercession — the miracles attributed to his prayers after death — attach to the relics and the shrine (Hieromonk Isaac, Elder Paisios of Mount Athos, 2012, on the veneration of the relics and the continuing cult; on the logic of relic-veneration and continuing intercession see Glorification 1986). Per METHODOLOGY §3.5, these post-mortem miracle reports are noted as part of the living cult and reported as the tradition attests them, not certified; but the fact of the cult — the relics, the shrine, the pilgrimage, the ratified veneration — is the firm ground on which the 1986 glorification rested (cf. the treatment of cult and glorification in St. Xenia: The Xenia Case).

The translation of the relics thus stands as the pivot between the two halves of St. Arsenios’ story: the hidden Cappadocian priest who died in a refugee grave, and the glorified saint venerated at a Thessalonian shrine. The bridge between them is, once again, St. Paisios — the monk left behind, who brought his godfather home.

See Also

References

  • Hieromonk Isaac. Elder Paisios of Mount Athos. Greek original 2004; English trans., Holy Monastery of Saint Arsenios the Cappadocian, Chalkidiki, 2012. (St. Paisios’ recovery of St. Arsenios’ relics from Corfu in 1958; the translation toward Konitsa; the enshrinement at the Souroti convent he founded; the veneration of the relics and the continuing cult.)
  • 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. (The Life published at Souroti, the centre of the cult.)