Aninas the Wonderworker

Ascetic Life

Aninas pursued an unusually severe discipline. The accounts relate that during the forty days of Great Lent he ate nothing, and that he ordinarily took food only once every several days, withdrawing for extended retreats of twenty to thirty days into the inner desert. The sources present these austerities as feats of self-denial sustained by what they call spiritual nourishment.

A recurring detail is his daily carrying of drinking water from the Euphrates, described as a distance of several miles, both for himself and for his community. When Bishop Patrick of Neocaesarea, learning of this labor, twice provided him with donkeys to ease the burden, Aninas gave the animals away to the poor and continued to carry the water himself; one account adds that he eventually accepted the bishop's provision of a barrel with servants.

Miracles & Traditions

Historically Documented: The surviving record of Aninas is drawn from synaxaria and the lives of the saints rather than from independent documentary evidence; the concrete details of his life and wonders come to us only through these hagiographical accounts.

Traditional Accounts: The tradition attributes numerous wonders to him. He is said to have filled an empty well or pit with water through prayer when a visiting crowd had exhausted the supply, and on another occasion to have produced water in a vessel by his own hands during a shortage. The synaxarion relates that an angel once filled his water pitchers, so that he returned earlier than usual.

He is also remembered for taming wild beasts: a lion (in some accounts two lions) is said to have become his companion and servant after he removed a thorn from its foot. By tradition he used the lion to carry a letter to a distant stylite named Pionius, who had been beaten by robbers and intended to come down from his pillar to seek legal redress; Aninas, perceiving this by clairvoyance, counseled him to forgive his attackers and remain at his asceticism. Another account tells of a barbarian who attempted to harm a sick woman and whose weapon was found rooted in the ground, after which he was converted, baptized, and became a monk in Aninas's community.