Anna of Leukadion
Our Venerable Mother Anna, who lived in ascesis at Leukadion
Venerable · b. 840, at Constantinople — d. mid-10th century, at Constantinople
Commemorated 23 July — Repose at Constantinople
Anna, called also Susanna, was a noblewoman of Constantinople born in 840, in the last years of the iconoclast emperor Theophilus. Orphaned young and left a great estate, she spent it on the poor; and when a wealthy Hagarene of the capital sought her in marriage and obtained the emperor's own consent to the match, she refused him, endured his persecution, and prayed to be delivered — a deliverance that came, the account says, when her suitor was struck down and died. She then withdrew to a church of the Mother of God in the quarter called Leukadion (or Leukate), and lived there some fifty years in fasting, vigil and prayer until a light illness took her to God. Her relics were later found whole and fragrant, and healings were worked at them. The Greek Menaion keeps her memory on July 23.
A Constantinopolitan childhood
Anna was born in the imperial City in 840, under Theophilus (829–842), the last of the iconoclast emperors — so that her infancy fell in the years just before the Triumph of Orthodoxy of 843, and the whole of her long life was lived in the restored Church. Her family was wealthy and of consequence, and the notice takes care to say that her gifts of body and mind were matched by an upbringing "in the discipline and admonition of the Lord."
Her parents died while she was still young, and the paternal estate came to her. What she did with it is the first thing remembered of her: she shared it out among the poor. The notice does not describe a renunciation of everything at once, but a life of open-handed almsgiving carried on from her own house — the classic pattern of the pious Byzantine laywoman before she becomes an ascetic.
The suitor, and the refusal
Her beauty and her fortune drew a suitor: a Hagarene — a Muslim, so styled in the Byzantine idiom as a descendant of Hagar — resident in Constantinople, evidently a man of standing, since he was able to obtain from the emperor Basil I the Macedonian (867–886) his consent to the marriage. Anna refused.
The refusal is the centre of her life, and it is worth seeing what it cost. She was a private woman set against a man with the emperor's word behind him. He did not accept the answer: he harassed and tormented her and swore openly that he would have her whether she would or not. She had no protector but prayer, and she prayed with tears to be delivered from the trial. The notice reports the deliverance flatly and without embarrassment: the man was struck down for his presumption by the judgement of God, and died.
Leukadion: fifty years of stillness
Freed, Anna made no return to the world. She went — the notice puts it about the year 896 — to a church of the Mother of God in Constantinople, in the place called Leukadion or Leukate, and settled there in the manner of the many Byzantine solitaries who attached themselves to a shrine rather than to a community: fasting, vigil and unceasing prayer. She kept that life, the account says, for fifty years, "in an angelic way," and it is from that quarter of the City that the calendars name her.
The end was quiet. A slight illness came on her, and in it she gave up her soul to God. The record of her outward life ends there; the Synaxaristes of Nikodemos, who preserves the notice, says plainly that nothing further of her is known.
The relics
Years after her burial her body was taken up and found whole, incorrupt, and giving off a sweet fragrance — the sign by which Byzantium recognised a saint. At the relics, the notice says, demons were driven out, the blind received their sight, and the lame walked; and it closes with the maxim that God glorifies those who glorify Him. Nothing is transmitted about where the relics afterwards went.
Feast and commemoration
July 23 (church date; Old Calendar civil August 5). The Greek Menaion's synaxarion for the day names her immediately after the hieromartyr Phocas — "the memory of our venerable Mother Anna, in the Leukadion or Leukate" — and the printed books insert her name at the sixth ode of the canon at Matins; she is given no service of her own. The Slavonic calendars of July 23 do not carry her. The OCA lists her for the day with the fuller life drawn from Nikodemos.
Hymns
Troparion — Tone 8
In thee, O Mother, was preserved unimpaired that which is according to the image; for taking up the cross thou didst follow Christ, and by thy deeds thou hast taught us to despise the flesh, which passes away, and to care for the soul, a thing immortal. Therefore, O venerable Anna, thy spirit rejoices with the angels.
Original translation from the Greek
Iconography
Anna is painted as a venerable woman of the Byzantine ascetic type: standing in a dark monastic mantle with the head and shoulders wholly veiled in the maphorion, one hand raised in prayer or holding a scroll, the face lined and severe. Nothing in the notice has given her a distinguishing attribute — no instrument, no vessel, no companion — so that she is told apart from the many venerable women of the calendar only by her inscription, ἡ ὉCΙΑ ΑΝΝΑ. No pre-1900 image of her has been identified for this collection; the Menologion of Basil II, which would ordinarily be the first place to look for a minor Byzantine saint, covers only September to February and cannot serve for a July memory.
Disputed questions
- The chronology will not add up. Born in 840; sought in marriage under Basil I (867–886); withdrawing to Leukadion about 896; living there fifty years — this would put her repose in the middle of the 940s, at an age of about a hundred and six. Byzantine synaxarial notices are often assembled from a date of birth, a reign, and a round number of years of ascesis, any of which may be conventional; the "fifty years" in particular has the look of a round figure. The corpus records the transmitted data and this difficulty together, gives century: 10 for the repose because that is where the transmitted numbers land, and does not attempt to correct the notice.
- Anna or Susanna? The two names are given for the same woman, with Susanna offered as an alternative — most probably a monastic name taken at her withdrawal, or a second baptismal name; the calendars head the notice with Anna. She is not the Anna who took the name Euphemianos and lived as a man in a monastery (Oct 29), nor Anna the prophetess, nor the mother of the Theotokos.
- Leukadion, not Leucadia. The Greek reads "ἐν τῷ Λευκαδίῳ ἢ Λευκάτῃ" — in the Leukadion or Leukate — which is a place in or hard by Constantinople, not the Ionian island of Leucas (Lefkada). English lists that render her "Anna of Leucadia" invite the confusion; her whole life, on every witness, is spent in the capital.
- The claim of the Menologion of Basil II. The English notice states that she is listed in the Menologion of Basil II. That claim cannot be verified here: the surviving Vatican volume of that menologion (Vat. gr. 1613) covers only September to February, and so contains no July commemorations at all. The reliable witnesses to her memory are the Greek Menaion, which names her at the sixth ode of the canon at Matins on July 23 without giving her a synaxarion notice, and the Synaxaristes of Nikodemos the Hagiorite, which carries her life.