Theodore of Kythera
Our Venerable Father Theodore, who struggled in asceticism on the island of Kythera
Venerable · Deacon · b. c. 870–890, at Koroni in the Peloponnese — d. May 12, 922, on Kythera
Commemorated 12 May — Repose in the church of Saints Sergius and Bacchus on Kythera
Theodore (c. 870/890 – 922) is the patron saint of the island of Kythera (Cerigo), off the southern tip of the Peloponnese. Born at Koroni in Messenia of a mother long barren, reared in the clergy as a reader, married and the father of two children, and ordained deacon by the Archbishop of Argos, he left family and city for the ascetic life: first in a cell beside the church of the Theotokos at Monemvasia, then, about 921, on Kythera, which the Saracen raids had emptied of its inhabitants. There, alone in the ruined church of Saints Sergius and Bacchus, he lived out a single hard year and died on May 12, 922. Sailors putting in at the deserted island found his body incorrupt; in 925 men of Monemvasia buried it with honour, the church was rebuilt under his name, and it became the monastery of Saint Theodore, the mother-shrine of Kythera's Christianity. The island keeps his memory as its first citizen and protector.
Koroni, Nauplion, Argos
Theodore was born at Koroni on the Messenian coast of the Peloponnese, in the last decades of the ninth century — the dating rests on the year of his death and the length of life implied by his Life, and is usually put between about 870 and 890. His mother had been childless for years; when a son was granted her she named him Theodore, "the gift of God," and in thanksgiving the parents gave the boy to the Bishop of Koroni, who enrolled him among the clergy and made him a reader.
His parents died while he was still young, and he was taken into the household of a priest of Nauplion, a friend of the family, who brought him up. Grown to manhood he married and had two children — a detail the Life does not disguise and which sets him among those saints whose ascetic vocation came after a life in the world. The Archbishop of Argos, recognising his piety and learning, ordained him deacon.
Monemvasia and the flight to Kythera
The desire for the monastic life grew on him. He went first as a pilgrim to Rome, to venerate the tombs of the martyrs — a journey a Greek deacon of the early tenth century could still make — and on his return settled at Monemvasia, the great rock-fortress of the Laconian coast, in a cell attached to the church of the Theotokos "of the Diakonia." There he lived in fasting, vigil and prayer, and there his family found him and begged him to come home. He would not.
Judging even Monemvasia too full of men, about the year 921 he crossed to Kythera. The island at that period lay deserted: the Arab corsairs of Crete had swept it of inhabitants, and what remained were ruined settlements and empty churches. Theodore took up his abode in the ancient church of the martyrs Sergius and Bacchus, in the interior of the island — the Life has him brought there by companions who afterwards left him — and remained alone. His food was what the abandoned fields yielded and what he could gather; his labour was prayer. The solitude he had sought in Laconia he found in full measure here, and it lasted about a year.
Repose and the finding of the relics
He died in his church on May 12, 922, alone, and no one buried him. Some while afterwards sailors driven to the island — Kythera lay on the sea-road between the Peloponnese and Crete — came upon the body in the church, whole and undecayed and giving off fragrance, and carried word back to the mainland. In 925 men of Monemvasia came over, identified the ascetic they had known, and buried the relics honourably in the same church.
From that burial the island's revival is traditionally dated. The old church of Sergius and Bacchus was rebuilt and rededicated to Saint Theodore; a monastery grew round it, endowed with lands worked by its clergy and monks, and it became the ecclesiastical centre of Kythera and for centuries the seat of the island's church life — the Monastery of Hagios Theodoros at Logothetianika, whose katholikon still stands and still keeps the relics. Under Venetian rule (the island was Venetian Cerigo from the thirteenth century) his cult continued unbroken, and he remains the patron of Kythera and of Antikythera, invoked by the islanders and by seafarers.
Feast and commemoration
May 12 (church date; New Calendar civil May 12, Old Calendar civil May 25), his day of repose. The Greek synaxaria list him among the commemorations of May 12 as Ὅσιος Θεόδωρος ὁ ἐν Κυθήροις ἀσκήσας, together with Epiphanius of Cyprus and Germanus of Constantinople. His observance is local in character: on Kythera it is the island's principal feast, kept at the monastery that bears his name with a vigil and the veneration of the relics, and the Metropolis of Kythera and Antikythera has a proper service for him. Elsewhere in the Greek world he is a line in the synaxarion; he does not appear on the Antiochian or Slavic calendars, which is why the entry is marked as a Greek jurisdictional commemoration.
Hymns
Apolytikion — Tone 8 (common of a venerable ascetic)
In you, O Father, the image of God was preserved unblemished, for taking up the Cross you followed after Christ; and by your deeds you taught us to look past the flesh, which passes, and to care for the soul, a thing immortal. Therefore, O venerable Theodore, your spirit rejoices with the angels.
Iconography
Theodore is painted as a venerable ascetic: an emaciated figure in the monastic schema or in a plain dark tunic and mantle, with a long pointed beard, holding a scroll with a word of ascetic counsel or a hand-cross, and often the deacon's orarion is indicated to mark his ordination. In Kytheran images he is shown with the island and the sea behind him, or standing before the domed church of Sergius and Bacchus that became his shrine; the island's own icons frequently place him full-length beside a view of the monastery, with a ship at sea below — the sailors who found his body. In some compositions the two soldier-martyrs Sergius and Bacchus appear above, in their character as the patrons of the church where he died. No pre-1900 icon of him has been located for this collection; the surviving painted images at the monastery are of the later Venetian and modern periods and are not accessible under a usable licence.
Disputed questions
- Dates. His repose in 922 and the burial of the relics in 925 are the fixed points; the year of his birth is inferred and is variously given between c. 870 and c. 890.
- Rank in orders. The Life makes him reader at Koroni and deacon by ordination at Argos; some later notices call him a priest, which the primary account does not support.
- The journey to Rome. Reported by the Life; it has no independent corroboration, and some writers have doubted it, though nothing in it is impossible for a Peloponnesian cleric of the period.
- Not to be confused with the many other saints named Theodore — Theodore the Recruit, Theodore Stratelates, Theodore the Studite, Theodore the Sanctified. The "San Teodoro di Cerigo" of Venetian documents is this same saint under his Latinised island style.