died 826
A widow who lived ascetically in male disguise under the name Euthymianus, together with her son John, remembered for hidden holiness.
Our Venerable Mother Anna of Constantinople
Righteous Anna of Constantinople was a ninth-century widow remembered for living ascetically in male disguise under the name Euthymianus, together with her son John. She is venerated as a model of hidden holiness.
The daughter of a deacon of the Blachernae church in Constantinople, Anna entered monastic life after the death of her husband, disguising herself in men's clothing. She and John pursued asceticism in a monastery of Bithynia near Mount Olympus before her death in Constantinople.
By a flood of tears you made the desert fertile,
and your longing for God brought forth fruits in abundance.
By the radiance of miracles you illumined the whole universe!
O our holy mother Anna, pray to Christ our God to save our souls!
Text used with permission of the Orthodox Church in America (oca.org).
Anna was the daughter of a deacon who served at the Blachernae church in Constantinople. After she was widowed, she adopted men's clothing and took the name Euthymianus, concealing her identity in order to live the monastic life.
Together with her son John, Anna withdrew to one of the monasteries of Bithynia near Mount Olympus, where the two lived in asceticism. She afterward returned to Constantinople, where she died in 826.
The Blachernae church, where Anna's father served as a deacon, was a major Marian shrine in the northwestern suburb of Constantinople. Built by the Empress Pulcheria around 450 and later expanded and renovated by successive emperors, it ranked as the second-most important church in the city after Hagia Sophia and retained its prominence into the early ninth century, the period of Anna's life.
Bithynian Olympus, the mountain region to which Anna and John withdrew, was among the foremost monastic centers of the Byzantine world during the eighth to eleventh centuries. Its prestige in this era was bound up with the resistance of its monks to the iconoclast emperors, and its communities embraced eremitic and hesychast forms of monastic life, counting figures such as Saint Joannicius the Great among their number.
Anna pursued the monastic life together with her son, and the two are jointly commemorated.
Browse other saints who share her calling and place.