19 July 455 A.D. Arsenius, an Anchorite, in the Ignorant Egyptian Desert With Other Fevered Delusionists
Vuibert,
Arsenius. "St. Arsenius." The Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 1. New
York: Robert Appleton Company, 1907. http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/01754b.htm. Accessed 11 May 2014.
Anchorite; born 354, at Rome; died
450, at Troe, in Egypt. Theodosius the Great
having requested the Emperor Gratian and Pope Damasus to find him in the West a
tutor for his son Arcadius, they made choice of Arsenius, a man well read in
Greek literature, member of a noble Roman family, and
said to have been a deacon of
the Roman Church. He
reached Constantinople in 383, and continued as tutor in the imperial family for
eleven years, during the last three of which he also had charge of his pupil's
brother Honorius. Coming one day to see his children at their studies, Theodosius found
them sitting while Arsenius talked to them standing. This he would not
tolerate, and caused the teacher to sit and the pupils to stand. On his arrival
at court Arsenius had been given a splendid establishment, and probably because
the Emperor so desired, he lived in great pomp, but all the time felt a growing
inclination to renounce the world. After praying long
to be enlightened as to what he should do, he heard a voice saying
"Arsenius, flee the company of men, and thou shalt be saved."
Thereupon he embarked secretly for Alexandria, and hastening to the desert of
Scetis, asked to be admitted among the solitaries who dwelt there. St. John the
Dwarf, to whose cell he was conducted, though previously warned of the quality
of his visitor, took no notice of him and left him standing by himself while he
invited the rest to sit down at table. When the repast was half finished he
threw down some bread before him, bidding him with an air of indifference eat
if he would. Arsenius meekly picked up the bread and ate, sitting on the ground.
Satisfied with this proof of humility, St.
John kept him under his direction. The new solitary was from the first most
exemplary yet unwittingly retained certain of his old habits, such as sitting
cross-legged or laying one foot over the other. Noticing this, the abbot
requested some one to imitate Arsenius's posture at the next gathering of the
brethren, and upon his doing so, forthwith rebuked him publicly. Arsenius took
the hint and corrected himself. During the fifty-five years of his solitary
life he was always the most meanly clad of all, thus punishing himself for his
former seeming vanity in the world. In like manner, to atone for having used
perfumes at court, he never changed the water in which he moistened the palm
leaves of which he made mats, but only poured in fresh water upon it as it
wasted, thus letting it become stenchy in the extreme. Even while engaged in
manual labour he never relaxed in his application to prayer. At
all times copious tears of devotion fell from his eyes. But what distinguished
him most was his disinclination to all that might interrupt his union with God.
When, after long search, his place of retreat was discovered, he not only
refused to return to court and act as adviser to his former pupil the Emperor
Arcadius, but he would not even be his almoner to the poor and the monasteries of
the neighbourhood. He invariably denied himself to visitors, no matter what
their rank and condition and left to his disciples the care of entertaining
them. His contemporaries so admired him as to surname him "the
Great".
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