Eikon

Athanasius of Modon

Our Father among the Saints Athanasius, Bishop of Modon

Bishop · Wonderworker · b. 9th century, Catania (Sicily) — d. c. 885

Commemorated 31 January — Repose as bishop of Modon in the Peloponnese

Athanasius of Modon (9th century, †c. 885) was a hierarch of the Byzantine Peloponnese, remembered as a bishop of holy life and a worker of wonders. Born at Catania in Sicily and driven from his homeland by the Saracen conquest of the island, he took refuge in Greece, embraced the monastic life, and was raised to the see of Modon (ancient Methone, modern Methoni) in the south-western Peloponnese. He governed his church in piety and reposed in peace about the year 885. He is commemorated on January 31.

The saint was a native of Catania in Sicily, born in the ninth century, when Sicily — long a Byzantine province — was falling piece by piece to the Arab (Saracen) conquest that overran the island through that century. Athanasius, the tradition holds, was driven from his home by the invaders and crossed to the Greek mainland, where he gave himself to the monastic life in the tradition of the Italo-Greek (Basilian) monks who fled the Muslim advance in such numbers, carrying the Greek monasticism of Sicily and Calabria into the Peloponnese and beyond.

His holiness marked him out for the episcopate, and he was consecrated Bishop of Modon — the port-city of Methone on the south-western tip of the Peloponnese, an important Byzantine see. Of his episcopate the synaxarion preserves little in detail beyond the memory of a pastor of virtuous and ascetic life, adorned with the gift of wonders, who shepherded his flock faithfully and reposed in peace about the year 885. He belongs to the company of Sicilian and southern-Italian saints — refugees of the Saracen wars — whom the Byzantine Church received and honoured in their adopted homeland.

Feast and commemoration

Athanasius is kept on January 31 (church date; Old Calendar civil February 13). His veneration is Greek and local, centred on Modon/Methoni; the received Menaion gives him a synaxarion notice rather than a proper service, and the common office of a hierarch serves him where one is required.

Iconography

Athanasius is depicted, where he is painted at all, in the settled type of the bishop-saint: an older, bearded hierarch vested in phelonion or sakkos and omophorion, holding the Gospel-book and blessing. No identified public-domain or free-licensed icon proper to him has been found, and none is stored here. (Wanted: an identity-verified public-domain icon of Athanasius of Modon.)

Sources

  1. Synaxarion of Constantinople and the Greek Menaion, January 31 — the notice of Athanasius, bishop of Modon, the Sicilian refugee-hierarch.
  2. Orthodox Church in America, Lives of the Saints, January 31 ("Saint Athanasius the Bishop of Modon") — consulted live: the birth at Catania, the flight from the Saracen conquest of Sicily, the monastic life in Greece, the episcopate of Modon, and the repose c. 885.
  3. The hagiographical literature on the Italo-Greek monastic diaspora of the ninth century — for the historical setting of the Sicilian saints who fled to the Byzantine mainland.