Arkadios of Vatopedi

Arkadios of Vatopedi, a hierodeacon, with the secular name Asterios Theodorou, was born in 1865 in the village of Skoupia on Halki in the Princes' Islands. He came to Vatopedi in 1882 and the next year was tonsured a monk. In 1887 he was ordained deacon and in 1899 he became superior of the monastery. In the monastery lived his brother in the flesh, the hieromonk Germanos (d. 1932), and his nephews Panteleimon and Nikodimos. He graduated from the Rizarios Ecclesiastical School and the Theological School of Halki. During his studies at Rizarios he became spiritually attached to Saint Nectarios; for this reason the monastery supported the saint's publications and, at his suggestion, undertook the printing of his book Christoethia. The monastery keeps Arkadios's Rizarios diploma, signed in 1905 by Saint Nectarios as director.

For his learning he was often offered high church offices, but always declined, saying humbly: "I am not for the world, and if I go out into the world, not only shall I not help, but I shall lose my soul as well." When his sister urged him to stay in the world, regarding his life in the monastery as a loss and a live burial, he answered humbly: "I went to the monastery for this, to be humbled, for only so shall I be saved." He was teacher at the monastery school, ephor of the Athoniada School, representative in the Holy Community, a member of the committee that drew up the Charter of the Holy Mountain, and for about thirty years librarian and archivist of the monastery. Everywhere he was affable, sweet-⁠spoken, noble and humble. Although he had written several studies, mostly historical, he never published them under his own name, but gave them for publication to his friend Metropolitan Sophronios Eustratiades. The fathers and relatives wanted him to be ordained priest and archimandrite and lead the monastery; he preferred to die a simple hierodeacon, without honours or authority. He reposed in the Lord on 4 September 1934 and was buried in the monastery cemetery. In 1937, at the exhumation, according to the testimony of fathers and relatives, his bones were fragrant; unfortunately care was not taken to keep them apart and they were placed with the other bones. Perhaps in this way too the wish of the modest elder was fulfilled, that even after death he should live the obscurity and humility he loved. He is venerated by the faithful, without synodal canonization.