Venerable Anoub

Abba Anoub, also known as Anoub of Scetis, Anoub the Signbearer or Anoubius, was an Egyptian Christian Desert Father, ascetic and anchorite who lived during the 4th and 5th centuries in Scetis, Lower Egypt (modern day Wadi El Natrun). Abba Anoub is mentioned in the Sayings of the Desert Fathers, also called the Apophthegmata or the Gerontikon. Saint Nikolaj Velimirović, writing in the Prologue of Ohrid, describes him as "one of the great Egyptian monks." Verse: "Anoub performed signs and died gracefully, as one alive he hitherto shows forth to be living." Anoub was one of the seven blood-brothers of Poemen, along with Paësius. Poemen was their elder, although Anoub was the eldest by age. It is said that prior to his tonsure as a monk, Anoub was persecuted as a Christian. "He suffered much for the true Faith." After the first attack of Scetis by the Mazices barbarians from 407 to 408 AD which led to the diaspora of the monks, the seven brothers moved to the ancient city of Terenuthis (modern day Al-Tarrānah in the Western Delta), Lower Egypt, at which point Abba Anoub assumed leadership of the new monastic settlement. They created a cenobitic community in Terenuthis, where they temporarily occupied a former pagan temple. According to Sister Benedicta Ward: It was said that Abba Anoub and his brothers kept a strict ascesis in which they devoted all their time to either prayer or manual labor, leaving only four hours a night to sleep. Abba Anoub reposed peacefully in the second half of the fifth century. The following story was related about Abba Anoub. When the seven brothers had fled from the invasion of Scetis, they stayed temporarily in an abandoned pagan temple. Every morning, Abba Anoub would throw stones at a statue in the temple, and every evening he would say to the statue, "Forgive me!" When Abba Poemen asked him why he acted in such a way, he said, "I did this for your sake.