Arsenius Autoreianus

Who is Arsenius Autoreianus?

Arsenios Autoreianos, Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, lived about the middle of the 13th century.

Born in Constantinople ca. 1200, Arsenios received his education in Nicaea at a monastery of which he later became the abbot, though not in orders. Subsequently he gave himself up to a life of solitary asceticism in a Bithynian monastery, and is said, probably wrongly, to have remained some time in a monastery on Mount Athos.

From this seclusion he was called by the Byzantine Emperor Theodore II Lascaris to the position of patriarch at Nicaea in 1255. Upon the emperor's death Arsenios may have shared guardianship of his son John IV Lascaris with George Muzalon: while the later historians Nikephoros Gregoras and Makarios Melissenos say the Patriarch was so named, the contemporary historians Pachymeres and Acropolites name only Mouzalon. Nevertheless, a few days after Theodore's death George Muzalon was murdered by Michael Palaiologos, and who, at an assembly of the aristocracy presided over by Patriarch Arsenios, was appointed regent for the boy.