Our Venerable Fathers Michael and Arsenius, Founders of the Georgian Monastery on Mount Olympus
Life
Michael and Arsenius were ninth-century Georgian monastics remembered as the founders of Georgian monasticism on Mount Olympus (Ulompo) in Bithynia, in Asia Minor. Their full biographies have not been preserved, and what is known of them survives only in scattered notices and in the commemorative records of Georgian monastic communities abroad. They are commemorated together on May 3.
The pair are associated with the wider movement of Georgian ascetics who, in the eighth and ninth centuries, established and joined monastic communities beyond the Georgian lands, in Palestine and in the monastic centers of the Byzantine world. The synodicon of the Holy Cross Monastery in Jerusalem preserves their memory under the title "Our Holy Fathers Michael and Arsenius, founders of Olympus."
Contributions & Legacy
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Historical Background
According to the surviving tradition, Arsenius moved from the monastery of Khandzta to Palestine, where he labored alongside a monk named Macarius of Leteti. He afterward established a Georgian monastery on Mount Olympus in Asia Minor. Both Michael and Arsenius are reported to have been contemporaries of Patriarch Sergius of Jerusalem, whose tenure is dated to 843-859, which places their activity in the middle of the ninth century.
Several figures are linked to them in the tradition. Saint Grigol (Gregory) of Khandzta is named as a possible teacher of Arsenius, and Saint Ephraim, bishop of Atsquri, is described as a relative. The Venerable Ilarion the Georgian is said to have arrived at Mount Olympus about twenty years after them and to have found three Georgian monks there, likely the disciples of Michael and Arsenius.
Mount Olympus as a Monastic Center
Mount Olympus in Bithynia, the mountain known in Turkish as Uludag in the region of Bursa, was one of the principal monastic centers of the Byzantine world. The sources record that it held a large number of monasteries and hermitages and that it flourished particularly from the eighth through the tenth and eleventh centuries.
The prestige of the mountain in this period is associated with the resistance of its monks to the iconoclast policy of the Byzantine emperors, which made it a refuge for iconophile monks during the Iconoclastic Controversy of the eighth and ninth centuries. It was within this setting that the Georgian community attributed to Michael and Arsenius was established.
