Gerasimus of Cephalonia
Our Venerable and God-bearing Father Gerasimus the New Ascetic of Cephalonia
Venerable · Wonderworker · b. c. 1509 — d. 1579
Commemorated 16 August — Repose (kept August 16, his repose falling on the Dormition, August 15), 20 October — Uncovering of his incorrupt relics (1581)
Gerasimus of Cephalonia (c. 1509–1579) is the great saint and heavenly patron of the Ionian island of Cephalonia (Kefalonia). Born to the noble Notaras family of the Peloponnese, he became a monk on Zakynthos and Mount Athos, made long pilgrimage to the Holy Land — where he served twelve years at the Sepulchre of the Lord and was ordained by the Patriarch of Jerusalem — and after years of extreme asceticism, including forty days in the desert of the Jordan, settled at last in a cave on Cephalonia. There he restored a ruined church at Omala and founded a women's monastery, the "New Jerusalem," which he governed for thirty years in ceaseless prayer and manual toil. Famed as a healer of the sick and above all of the demon-possessed, he reposed in 1579; his relics were found incorrupt two years later and remain so, venerated in his monastery to this day. His repose is kept on August 16 and the uncovering of his relics on October 20.
Origins and pilgrimage
Gerasimus was born about 1509 in the village of Trikala in the Corinthian country of the Peloponnese, to the distinguished family of the Notarades (Notaras) — the same lineage that would later give the Church the saint and martyr-patriarch's kin and, in the eighteenth century, Macarius of Corinth. As a young man he left the world and received the monastic tonsure on the island of Zakynthos, and thence went to the Holy Mountain of Athos, where he was clothed in the great schema and trained under its ascetics. With the blessing of the elders he set out on pilgrimage: to Jerusalem, to venerate the life-giving Tomb of the Saviour, and onward to the great centres of Eastern monasticism and Christian antiquity — Mount Sinai, Antioch, Damascus, Alexandria and Egypt — before returning to the Holy City.
At Jerusalem he remained about twelve years, serving as kandelaptes — the lamp-lighter and sacristan — at the Holy Sepulchre itself, and was there ordained deacon and then priest by the Patriarch of Jerusalem, Germanus (1534–1579). His asceticism in these years was severe: with the Patriarch's blessing he withdrew to the wilderness of the Jordan, where the tradition says he passed forty days without respite, in imitation of the Lord's fast.
Ascetic struggle on Zakynthos and Cephalonia
Having received the Patriarch's blessing for the life of stillness (hesychia), Gerasimus returned to the West. He lived first in solitude on Zakynthos, sustaining himself on wild plants; then, after some five years, he was drawn to the neighbouring island of Cephalonia, where he took up his abode in a cave near the town. There he gave himself to prayer of extraordinary intensity — the tradition remembers him praying on his knees, stretched upon the bare ground for whole nights — and to unremitting manual labour.
He restored a dilapidated church in the fertile upland plain of Omala, and about it founded a monastery for women, which he named Nea Ierousalem, "the New Jerusalem," after the city he had loved. For some thirty years he governed this community, digging wells and planting with his own hands, tending the sisters as their spiritual father, and receiving the many who came to him from across the island. For his labours God granted him the gift of wonders: he healed the sick and, most famously, cast out unclean spirits, so that Cephalonia came to invoke him particularly against demonic affliction and mental torment — a patronage he keeps in the island's devotion to the present day.
Repose and incorrupt relics
Foreseeing his end, Gerasimus gave his blessing to the nuns of his monastery and reposed in peace on August 15, 1579, at the age of about seventy. Because that day is the great feast of the Dormition of the Theotokos, his repose is liturgically kept on the following day, August 16. Two years later, in 1581, his grave was opened and his body was found whole and incorrupt, fragrant, and working cures; this uncovering of the relics is the commemoration kept on October 20. His incorrupt relics remain enshrined in the monastery he founded at Omala, where they are carried in solemn procession on his feasts and are the centre of one of the most fervent pilgrim cults of the Greek islands. He was formally proclaimed by the Ecumenical Patriarchate among the recognised saints, and is honoured as the protector of the whole of Cephalonia.
Feast and commemoration
Gerasimus is commemorated twice. His principal feast is his repose, kept on August 16 (the repose itself falling on August 15, the Dormition). The uncovering of his incorrupt relics in 1581 is kept on October 20 — the commemoration on which he is honoured together with the great-martyr Artemius, and the day on which he first appears in the fixed calendar. Both feasts are kept in Greek use with full solemnity, and in Cephalonia they are the chief festivals of the island; the OCA and Slavic calendars list him on both days as a Greek saint.
He is not to be confused with the great desert father Gerasimus of the Jordan (†475, March 4), the fifth-century anchorite of the lion; this Gerasimus is the sixteenth-century "New Ascetic" and patron of Cephalonia. Nor is he to be confused with the new venerable-martyr Gerasimus of Karpenisi (†1812, July 3), who is also styled "the New" and whose epithet is rendered in some English lists as "of Carpenision" — a young Athonite monk beheaded at Constantinople, of another century and another country, with whom this saint has nothing in common but the name and the epithet.
Hymns
Apolytikion — Tone 1
O faithful, let us praise the divine Gerasimus, protector of the Orthodox and angel in the body, the wonderworker and God-bearer newly shown forth to us; for worthily hath he received from God the ever-flowing grace of healings: he strengtheneth the sick and healeth those vexed by demons. Wherefore he poureth forth cures upon those who honour him.
Iconography
Gerasimus is depicted as an elderly hieromonk in the great schema: a long white beard, the monastic koukoulion and analavos, blessing with his right hand and holding a scroll or a cross. Because his relics are incorrupt and displayed, a distinctive local iconography also shows the saint reclining as in sleep, or standing over the possessed whom he heals; vita-icons surround the central figure with scenes of his pilgrimage and miracles. The stored image is an eighteenth-century icon of the saint from the Antivouniotissa Museum (Byzantine Museum) of Corfu, of the Ionian (Heptanese) school — the schema-clad elder blessing, with scroll.