Venerable Anubius the Confessor and Anchorite of Egypt

Anubius, also recorded as Anoub or Anoubius, was an Egyptian ascetic of the late antique desert tradition who lived across the 4th and 5th centuries. He first came to notice as a confessor: during the persecutions of Christians in the 4th century he endured torture without renouncing his faith, and afterward bound himself to a rule of unbroken truthfulness, holding that one who had once confessed the truth should never again let a falsehood pass his lips.

Having survived the persecution, he withdrew into the wilderness and settled in Scetis in Lower Egypt, where he gathered a small community of brethren. He is remembered above all for the concord of that household and for his connection to Poemen the Great, with whom by some accounts he shared blood kinship. His sayings, preserved in the early monastic anthologies, made him a standing example of self-accusation and detachment from praise and blame.