Arcadius of Cyprus
Our Venerable Father Arcadius of Cyprus
Venerable · d. c. 361
Commemorated 6 March
Arcadius (†c. 361) was a monastic ascetic of the island of Cyprus in the age of Constantine the Great and Constantius, remembered above all as the spiritual father and teacher of the holy martyrs Julian the Physician and Eubulos, who suffered on the island under Julian the Apostate. From his youth he gave himself to the ascetic life, and by his teaching and example he formed disciples in the faith for which they went to their death. He is kept on March 6. The record of his life is thin — a synaxarion memory rather than a full biography — but the Church honours him among the venerable fathers of Cyprus, and distinguishes him carefully from the later Arcadius who was archbishop of the island.
Of Arcadius the surviving record preserves only the barest outline, and the entry does not inflate it. He was a native of Cyprus, and from his youth, the synaxarion says, he embraced the monastic and ascetic life, giving himself to prayer, fasting, and the labours of virtue. He lived in the fourth century, in the generation of Constantine the Great and his sons, when the Church had newly come into peace and monasticism was spreading through the Christian East; on Cyprus, as in Egypt and Syria, men withdrew to the solitary life, and Arcadius was among the fathers who set that pattern on the island.
His chief claim on the Church's memory is as a teacher of martyrs. The tradition makes him the spiritual father of Julian the Physician (Julian the iatros) and Eubulos, two Cypriots who were seized and put to death for the confession of Christ during the brief pagan reaction under the emperor Julian the Apostate (361–363). By this reckoning Arcadius himself belonged to the generation just before them, forming his disciples in a faith they would seal with their blood; and the honour of their martyrdom reflects back upon the master who had taught them. Beyond this the sources are silent as to the manner and place of his own repose, which the tradition holds to have been in peace, about the year 361.
Feast and commemoration
Arcadius is commemorated on March 6 (church date; New Calendar civil March 6, Old Calendar civil March 19), together with the Forty-Two Martyrs of Amorion, who lead the day, and the other saints of March 6. His disciples Julian the Physician and Eubulos have their own commemoration in the calendar (kept February 13). Because March 6 falls almost always within the Great Fast, no proper Liturgy of the saint is ordinarily served on the day (see the note on readings under the martyrs of Amorion).
Hymns
Troparion — Tone 8
With the streams of thy tears thou didst cultivate the barrenness of the desert, and by thy sighings from the depths thou didst bear fruit a hundredfold in labours; and thou becamest a luminary, shining upon the world by thy wonders, O Arcadius our righteous father. Intercede with Christ our God that our souls may be saved.
Original translation from the Greek
Iconography
Arcadius is depicted in the settled type of the venerable ascetic father — an aged monk in the dark monastic habit and koukoulion or analavos, his hair and beard grey, a hand raised in blessing or holding a scroll of ascetic counsel. No distinctive attribute marks him apart from the general company of the desert fathers, and no early identified image of him is known; as a minor saint kept in March, he falls outside the range of the great illustrated menologion of the first half of the year. No storable icon of certain identity has been found.
Disputed questions
- Not to be confused with Arcadius, Archbishop of Cyprus. A distinct and later saint, Arcadius I, archbishop of Cyprus (early seventh century, a correspondent of the age of the emperor Heraclius), bears the same name and the same island; he is a different person of a different age and office. The Arcadius of March 6 is the fourth-century venerable ascetic and teacher of Julian and Eubulos, not the hierarch.
- Nor with Arkadios of Arsinoe (August 29), the wonderworking bishop of Arsinoe in Cyprus, son of Michael and Anna, successor of Nikon on that throne and brother of Theosebios of Arsinoe. He too is a Cypriot Arcadius assigned to roughly the same era, and popular listings conflate him with the ascetic of March 6; the calendars keep the two on different days and in different states of life.
- The dating. Arcadius is placed in the fourth century by his connection with the martyrs Julian and Eubulos, who suffered under Julian the Apostate (361–363); the year of his own repose (c. 361) is approximate, and no precise chronology is transmitted.