Gerasimus of Kefalonia

Gerasimus of Kefalonia, known in Greek as Agios Gerasimos and by his family name Notaras, was born in 1506 in the village of Trikala in Corinthia, in the northern Peloponnese. He belonged to the Notaras family, a distinguished Byzantine aristocratic house; later tradition links him with the lineage of Loukas Notaras, the last megas doux of Constantinople, whose relatives had taken refuge in the Morea after 1453. Raised in a pious household of some means, he received an education in letters and in the sacred scriptures before leaving home to seek the monastic life.

As a young man he spent a period on Zakynthos and then went to Mount Athos, where he received the monastic tonsure and was ordained a priest, becoming a hieromonk. From the Holy Mountain he travelled to Palestine. Orthodox hagiography holds that he remained in the Holy Land for many years, commonly numbered as about twelve, serving at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem and living under the austere rule of the Lavra of Saint Sabbas in the Judaean desert. That long sojourn shaped his later practice of fasting, night vigils, and hesychastic prayer.

After leaving Palestine he passed through Crete and returned to the Ionian Islands. He lived again as a hermit on Zakynthos for several years before crossing to neighbouring Kefalonia, then a Venetian possession, around the mid-1550s. He first occupied a cave in the area of Lassi near Argostoli, where a chapel and well associated with him are still shown. After some years of solitary life he moved inland to the valley of Omala. There he restored a ruined church dedicated to the Dormition of the Theotokos and gathered disciples, founding a monastery that he named New Jerusalem and organising it along Athonite and Palestinian lines. He dug wells, planted trees, and became a spiritual father to monks and lay islanders alike.

He was famed in his lifetime for ascetic severity, spiritual counsel, and miracles of healing, above all the deliverance of those regarded as possessed by unclean spirits. He died at his monastery on 15 August 1579, the feast of the Dormition. Because that day is already a Great Feast, his principal commemoration was fixed on 16 August. About two years after burial the tomb was opened and his body was found incorrupt and fragrant, an event remembered on 20 October. His relics remain in a reliquary at the monastery in Omala and are carried in procession at his feasts. He is honoured in the Orthodox Church as the patron saint of Kefalonia.