Anthusa of Mantinea
Our Venerable Mother Anthusa the Confessor, Abbess of Mantineon, and her ninety sisters
Venerable · Confessor · Virgin · d. 759
Commemorated 27 July — Repose in her cell at Mantineon, with her ninety sisters
Anthusa the Confessor (†759) was abbess of the convent of Mantineon in Paphlagonia and, with the ninety nuns of her community, one of the women's monastic confessors of the first iconoclast persecution. Born of pious parents, Stratēgios and Phebronia, and heiress to their estate, she refused every offer of marriage, gave the inheritance away, and lived alone in the mountains before being tonsured by the hieromonk Sisinnios and set over a community that grew to ninety. When Constantine V Copronymus demanded that she renounce the veneration of the holy icons she refused; she and her sisters were flogged, burning icons were laid on her head, her feet were burnt with red-hot coals, and she was sent into exile. She is said to have foretold to the empress the birth of twins, a son and a daughter — the daughter, named Anthusa after her, is the confessor kept on April 12 — after which she was allowed to return to Mantineon, where she died at a great age and was buried in her own cell.
Origins and the refusal of marriage
Anthusa was born at Mantineon in Paphlagonia, on the Black Sea coast of Asia Minor, in the first decades of the eighth century. Her parents, Stratēgios and Phebronia, are named in the synaxarion and described as people of substance and of conspicuous piety, who brought their daughter up in the same way.
She was much sought in marriage and refused; and when her parents died and left her their whole estate — the moment at which such a refusal usually collapses — she did not change her mind, but converted the inheritance into alms and church building and left the world while still young. Her first ascesis was solitary, in the mountains above the town, in complete withdrawal.
Abbess of Mantineon
She was found there and tonsured by the hieromonk Sisinnios, and thereafter the solitude gave way to a community. Women came to her; the notices say the house grew to ninety nuns, and that they were remarkable for their obedience to their abbess and for the severity of their rule. Anthusa built two monasteries: the convent of Mantineon itself, with a church dedicated to St Anna, and a second house in honour of the Holy Apostles.
The iconoclast persecution
The reign of Constantine V (741–775) — called Copronymus by his enemies — brought the sharpest phase of the first iconoclasm, and it fell hardest on the monasteries, which were the strongholds of the icons. Mantineon under Anthusa became one of the most obstinate centres of resistance in Asia Minor.
The emperor sent an agent with an offer: let the abbess simply stop venerating the images and she and her house would be left in peace. She refused. She and her nuns were seized, bound and flogged; then, in a piece of theatre typical of the persecution, icons were set alight and laid upon her head, and her feet were burnt with red-hot coals — the images she would not give up made into the instrument of her torture. She was finally sent into exile.
The prophecy and the return
Among those present at her interrogation, the tradition says, was the empress, who was ill and childless and afraid of dying. Anthusa told her that she would live, and that she would bear twins, a son and a daughter. The prophecy was fulfilled; the empress became Anthusa's protector, supported the monastery of Mantineon in every way, and had the daughter named Anthusa for her. That daughter — the sister of Constantine VI and the confessor of the icons under her own father — is commemorated on April 12, and the two Anthusas are constantly and understandably confused.
The abbess was permitted to return to her convent, where she governed to the end and reposed at an advanced age. She was buried, as she had asked, in her own cell. The year is usually given as 759, though the notices offer 775 and 794 as alternatives; the ninety sisters who suffered with her are commemorated with her, and are not named.
Feast and commemoration
July 27 (church date; New Calendar civil July 27, Old Calendar civil August 9), kept with her ninety sisters. The Greek, Slavonic and OCA calendars all carry her; she is the only woman on a day otherwise given over to Panteleimon, whose office fills it, so that her memory is in practice a synaxarion notice rather than a served feast. Russian books style her Anfisa the Confessor, abbess, and the ninety sisters are commemorated in the same line.
Hymns
Apolytikion — Tone 8 (common of a venerable woman)
In thee, O mother, was that which is according to the image preserved unbroken; for taking up the Cross thou didst follow Christ, and by thy deeds thou hast taught us to overlook the flesh, which passes away, and to attend to the soul, which is a thing immortal. Wherefore, O venerable Anthusa, thy spirit rejoices together with the angels.
Iconography
Anthusa is painted as an abbess: in the black monastic habit and koukoulion, with the mantle, an elderly face, and in the right hand either a cross — the confessor's — or an abbatial staff, and in the left a scroll. Because she suffered for the images, the natural attribute is an icon held against the breast, and where iconophile confessors are gathered into a single composition she is shown holding one. The ninety sisters, when they appear, are ranged behind her in a crowd of identical black-habited figures, in the manner in which the martyred companies are painted.
No pre-1900 image of her has been located for this collection, and none is expected: she has no independent cult outside the synaxarion, and images labelled simply "St Anthusa" are far more likely to belong to the April 12 saint or to the mother of St John Chrysostom.
Disputed questions
- The date of her repose. The synaxaria give 759, 775 and 794 without deciding, and the three cannot be harmonised: 759 falls in the middle of Constantine V's persecution, 775 at his death, 794 well into the restoration of the icons under Irene. If the prophecy to the empress concerns the birth of Constantine V's children by his third wife, a date late in his reign is required, and 759 is difficult.
- Which empress? The notices do not name her. If the twins are the future Constantine VI's aunt and uncle — that is, the children of Constantine V and Eudokia — then Anthusa the younger's April 12 dossier fits; other reconstructions have been proposed and none is secure.
- Not to be confused with the other saints of the name: Anthusa the daughter of Constantine Copronymus, her namesake and godchild, kept on April 12; Anthusa the mother of John Chrysostom, the widow of Antioch, who is not a monastic at all; Anthusa of Seleucia, the third-century virgin baptised by Athanasius of Tarsus and kept on August 22; and the Anthusa martyred at Rome, listed on December 8. English calendars for July 27 sometimes silently print the April 12 Anthusa's dossier under this day.