[3] Like his father, Apostolius was reduced to poverty after the Fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Turks (1453), and he earned his living by copying manuscripts: about fifty are attributed to him, of which only three are dated, the oldest being from 31 March 1489.
A contract signed in Crete in April 1492 shows him collaborating with Janus Lascaris in his quest for Greek manuscripts for the library of Lorenzo de' Medici, being then deacon.
In 1506 the Roman Curia appointed Arsenius as Eastern Rite bishop of Monemvasia, at that time part of the regions subjected to the Venetian Republic.
In 1521 he was the head of a Greek college then founded in Florence, but was no more here in February 1525 when an edition of Aristophanes by Antonio Franchini came out by the Giunti's Florentine print.
Many, then, simply attributed the collection to him (Christian Waltz reproduced it in Stuttgart in 1832 under the title Ἀρσενίου Ἰωνιά / Arsenii Violetum).