Anthimus (Anthimos) the Athonite was a hieromonk of Mount Athos commemorated as a fool-for-Christ on December 9. The Orthodox Church in America lists his name, feast, and liturgical hymns but supplies no biographical detail, describing him only as an Athonite hieromonk who took up foolishness for Christ. A fuller life is preserved in later Athonite ascetical literature, on which the account below depends.
According to that tradition, Anthimus came from Sofia, in Bulgaria, where he had served as a married parish priest. After the repose of his wife he went to Mount Athos in 1841 and was tonsured a monk at the Monastery of Simonopetra. He withdrew to the desert places of the Holy Mountain, living in caves and in hollow trees, and adopted the manner of a fool-for-Christ in order to conceal his inner life from the notice of others.
He became known for an extreme simplicity of dress: after wearing an old cassock for the first years of his hermitage, he replaced it with a sack pierced by three holes for his head and arms, so that he was nicknamed 'Sacky.' Many regarded him as merely simple-minded, but a few recognized in him the gift of foresight and a capacity for prolonged fasting. The same tradition relates that, trapped by snow in a hollow tree for many days during one winter, he survived and afterward attributed his deliverance to an appearance of Saint John the Baptist.
In his last years Anthimus settled in a lower part of Athos near the Bulgarian Monastery of Zographou and assisted with building work there, while maintaining ties to the Russian Monastery of Saint Panteleimon. The tradition relates that in August 1867 he visited Saint Panteleimon's a final time and told a confidant that he would soon die. That November he fell ill in the infirmary of Zographou, and twelve days later, on December 9, 1867, he reposed.
