Arsacius of Tarsus

Arsacius of Tarsus was archbishop of Constantinople in 404-405, after the second exile of Saint John Chrysostom. He was born before 324 at Tarsus in Cilicia and died on 11 November 405. He was the brother of Patriarch Nectarius, and when raised to the throne he was over eighty.

His election aroused the opposition of John Chrysostom's supporters, and historians judge him differently. John Chrysostom called him a “wolf in sheep's clothing”, and Palladius, bishop of Helenopolis, thought him a “man more silent than a fish and more idle than a frog”. The historians Sozomen and Socrates Scholasticus, however, describe him as gentle and mild, and seem to show that he did not start the persecution of Chrysostom's followers. Even so, a decree of 404 forbade entry into the church to those who did not take communion with the bishops Arsacius, Theophilus of Alexandria and Porphyry of Antioch.

The Greek synaxarion commemorates him on 11 October (new style), with the patriarchs Nectarius, Atticus and Sisinnius. The Typikon of the Great Church of the ninth and tenth centuries and Constantinopolitan synaxaria preserve his name, and veneration appears in the oldest Russian calendars, those in the Ostromir (1056-1057) and Arkhangelsk (1092) Gospels. Only a verse synaxarion survives, without a proper service.