Arsenius of Armo

Saint Arsenius of Armo was a Basilian monk of Calabria, born probably at Reggio Calabria around 810 and dead at Armo in 904. His life is known from the Life of Saint Elias the Speleote, his disciple and companion until death. He is venerated by both the Catholic and the Orthodox Churches.

There is no certain news of his origin. The only certain fact is that he spent the last part of his life at Armo. The hagiography says that at fifteen he gave himself to a strict struggle according to the rules of the Greek ascetics of Calabria and became a monk. What distinguished him from the other Byzantine monks of the time, almost all lay hermits, was that he was also a priest. He devoted himself to both prayer and manual labor, which he practiced in complete solitude. A young man named Elias, also of Reggio, feeling the monastic call, was sent to him by a Roman monk, Ignatius. Arsenius himself cut his hair, put on him the habit of penitence and treated him more as a son than as a fellow monk. Settled at the church of Saint Lucy of Mindino (today Pindino), near Condera, they had to bear the overbearing behavior of a priest of the metropolis, who had usurped the field from which they fed themselves. They appealed to the tribunal of the strategos who governed the region, Niketas Boterites. He, bribed by the priest, instead of doing justice rejected their requests and even had Elias, who reminded him of his duty, beaten until he bled. Arsenius, faced with this wrong, called on divine justice: "Holy martyr of Christ, we are beaten unjustly. Lord, judge with justice." The same night the strategos was struck by a violent illness; when the saint was called to remedy the injustice done, he instead foretold the imminent death, which came three days later.

Because of these events the two monks moved inland, to a fertile valley near the little church of Saint Eustratius, close to the village called Armo. There they spent their time in complete solitude, in unceasing prayer and contemplation, in exhausting mortification and fasts that sometimes lasted a whole week. Arsenius was soon enriched with the gift of discerning spirits: during the Holy Liturgy, when he completed the consecration, he saw the faces of some of the faithful brighten. He is honored as a saint of the undivided Church.