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Aninas of the Euphrates

Our Venerable Father Aninas the Wonderworker, Hermit of the Euphrates

Venerable · Wonderworker · b. at Chalcedon, in a Christian family — d. 5th century (traditionally aged 110), by the Euphrates

Commemorated 18 March — Repose by the Euphrates; commemorated in some Greek notices on March 13 and 16

Aninas the Wonderworker (fifth century) was a hermit of the Syrian frontier, venerated for a life of extreme asceticism and an abundance of miracles. Born at Chalcedon into a Christian family, he withdrew at the age of fifteen into a monastery and afterwards into the deep solitude of the desert by the Euphrates, the river that there divides Syria from Mesopotamia, where he lived in a small cell beside a well he had dug. The tradition surrounds him with wonders — a wild lion that came to serve him and to carry water for his guests, healings and deliverances from demons, and a gift of foreknowledge — and tells that he reposed at the great age of a hundred and ten, an angel or, some say, the Prophet Elijah having forewarned him of his end. He is kept on March 18; some Greek notices mark him also on March 13 and 16.

Origins and withdrawal

Aninas (Anin) was born at Chalcedon, the city on the Asian shore of the Bosphorus opposite Constantinople, of Christian parents, and from childhood was drawn to the ascetic life. At the age of fifteen he left the world and entered a monastery; but longing for a stricter solitude, he went out into the wilderness of the Roman East and settled at last in the desert along the Euphrates, on the border of Syria and Mesopotamia. There he made himself a poor cell, dug a well for water in the waterless place, and gave himself to prayer, fasting, and vigil, eating only what the desert yielded and wearing the one coarse garment of a hermit.

The ascetic and the wonderworker

Word of the holy man drew others — monks seeking his counsel, and travellers and the sick from the villages of the frontier — and with them came the miracles for which the tradition remembers him. The most famous is the tale of the lion: a wild beast of the desert, tamed by the hermit's holiness, is said to have come and served him, fetching water from the river for the many who visited him and guarding the way against robbers, so that the ferocity of the wilderness itself was made the servant of a man of God — a wonder of the same kind the desert fathers tell of Gerasimos of the Jordan and his lion. Aninas healed the sick and cast out demons, and was granted a gift of foreknowledge, discerning the secrets of those who came to him and foretelling things to come. The tradition links him with a bishop, Patricius, of the region, who honoured the hermit and is said to have wished to ordain him; and it tells of his intercession, in the boldness of the poor, for those oppressed by the powerful.

Repose

Aninas lived to a very great age — the tradition says a hundred and ten years — grown grey in the desert he had never left. Warned of his approaching end (an angel, or in some accounts the Prophet Elijah, appearing to him), he gave his last counsels to his disciples and reposed in peace by the Euphrates, and was buried in the place of his labours. The Church keeps his memory as that of a wonderworker, one of the great company of Syrian and Mesopotamian ascetics whose holiness made the desert a city.

A note for the Antiochian tradition

Aninas belongs to the ascetic world of the Euphrates frontier of Syria, the borderland of the Patriarchate of Antioch, and stands in the same tradition of the Syrian solitaries — the stylites, the grazers, the hermits of the desert marches — whose lives fill the Religious History of Theodoret of Cyrrhus. His commemoration was deferred to this day from March 13, where several Greek notices also name him; his principal feast and his authored entry are kept here on March 18, with which the Slavic calendars and the OCA agree.

Feast and commemoration

Aninas is commemorated on March 18 (church date; Old Calendar civil March 31), within Great Lent, and his office is sung with the Lenten services. The Greek synaxaria are not wholly uniform on his day: some notices place him on March 13 or March 16, and the variance is one of calendar transmission, not of two saints. No fixed date is securely attached to his life; the fifth century is the traditional reckoning.

Iconography

Aninas is depicted in the manner of a desert hermit and ascetic: an aged man, long-bearded and thin with fasting, in the tunic and analavos (or a simple mantle) of a monk, his hand raised in blessing or holding a scroll. Where his distinctive legend is shown, he appears with the lion that served him — the beast at his side or bearing a vessel of water — the sign by which the tradition knows him, as Gerasimos is known by his lion and the Syrian ascetics by the tamed creatures of the wild.

No public-domain image identified as Aninas has been located; the entry carries an iconographic description only, and an icon is wanting.

Sources

  1. The Greek Synaxaristes and the Menaion notices for March 18 (with the variant days March 13 and 16) — the life of the hermit of the Euphrates, the lion, the healings and foreknowledge, and the repose at a great age.
  2. Orthodox Church in America, Lives of the Saints, March 18 (consulted live) — the birth at Chalcedon, the withdrawal at fifteen, the desert of the Euphrates, and the wonders; and azbyka.ru for the Old-Calendar civil March 31 and the Slavic notice of "Anin of Chalcedon."
  3. The wider witness of Syrian ascetic literature (Theodoret of Cyrrhus, Religious History) for the type of the Euphrates solitary among whom Aninas is remembered.