Sant'Arsenio

Sant'Arsenio is the sequel to a flight. Between the eighth and ninth centuries Saracen raids emptied the Vallo di Diano, and it was the people of Teggiano, forced to move, who founded the village; its first nucleus was the borgo Serrone, so called because it is wedged tight between the mountains and one could hide there. With them came Basilian monks, driven inland from the coast by the same raids: on the Serrone they built a monastery dedicated to Saint Arsenius the Great, from whom the village takes its name, and around it the small laurae survive that served as hermit cells.

Those monks probably belonged to the congregation of San Scenute, which is why the people of Sant'Arsenio are still called Scenuddi. They also brought eastern cults now vanished but documented: Santa Sofia, San Cono the Thaumaturge, Sant'Apollonia, Saint Catherine of Alexandria. The first written record is from 1136, the deed by which Silvestro Guarna, count of Marsico, gave the hamlet to the abbey of the Santissima Trinità at Cava de' Tirreni: it is precious above all because it lists the churches and the place names exactly as they stood that year.