4th-5th century
One of the desert elders who survived the destruction of Scetis by raiders, remembered in the Sayings of the Desert Fathers.
Our Venerable Father Anoub of Scetis
Anoub was a monastic of Scetis in Lower Egypt (modern Wadi El Natrun) remembered among the Desert Fathers whose words are preserved in the Sayings of the Desert Fathers (Apophthegmata Patrum). He is counted among the seven brothers of Abba Poemen; though Poemen served as their spiritual elder, Anoub was the eldest by age.
When a barbarian raid scattered the monks of Scetis, Anoub and his brothers withdrew together to the town of Terenuthis, where he led a small community. He reposed peacefully in the second half of the fifth century. His feast is kept on June 5.
Anoub belonged to a family group of seven brothers who lived the monastic life together, among them Abba Poemen and Abba Paesius. Poemen was regarded as their spiritual elder, while Anoub was the eldest by years. After the dispersal of Scetis the brothers kept their common life at Terenuthis, where accounts describe them devoting themselves to prayer and manual labor and allowing only about four hours of sleep a night.
Anoub is remembered chiefly through the Sayings of the Desert Fathers. A well-known account relates that in the temple the brothers had taken as a dwelling, Anoub each morning would throw stones at a statue and each evening say to it, 'Forgive me.' Asked by Poemen what this meant, he explained that the statue neither grew angry when struck nor was moved when addressed; so, he taught, the monk should remain unshaken by either insult or praise. Another saying attributed to him declares, in his own paraphrase, that from the day the name of Christ was invoked upon him no lie had passed his lips.
The Apophthegmata Patrum, in which Anoub's words survive, is a collection of stories and sayings attributed to the Desert Fathers of Egypt, gathered from roughly the fifth century. Passed down first by oral tradition in Coptic and then written in Greek, the sayings are typically framed as exchanges between younger monks and their spiritual fathers and record figures such as Anthony the Great, Arsenius, Macarius of Egypt, and Poemen alongside Anoub.
5th century.