Ananias

Ananias of Damascus is known principally from the New Testament Book of Acts as the disciple whom the risen Christ sent to restore the sight of Saul of Tarsus and to baptize him after Saul's conversion on the road to Damascus. In Acts chapter 9, the Lord appears to Ananias in a vision and directs him to go to the house of Judas on Straight Street, where Saul has been praying, blinded, for three days. Ananias at first objects, recalling Saul's reputation as a persecutor of the followers of Jesus in Jerusalem and his authority from the chief priests to bind Christians in Damascus. The Lord replies that Saul is a chosen instrument to carry the name of Christ before Gentiles, kings, and the people of Israel, and that Saul will suffer for that name. Ananias then goes, lays his hands on Saul, and addresses him as "Brother Saul," after which something like scales fall from Saul's eyes; Saul regains his sight, is baptized, and takes food.

Acts chapter 22, in Paul's later speech to the crowd in Jerusalem, adds that Ananias was "a devout man according to the law, well spoken of by all the Jews who lived there," and that Ananias told Saul that the God of their ancestors had appointed him to know his will, to see the Righteous One, and to hear his voice, and that Saul should arise, be baptized, and wash away his sins, calling on the name of the Lord. Beyond these two passages, the canonical New Testament does not narrate Ananias's later life, death, or family circumstances. No contemporary source records his year of birth or of death, his precise place of birth, or whether he was married or had children. He is presented simply as a disciple already living in Damascus in the mid-first century, within a few years of the crucifixion of Jesus, at a time when the Jesus movement still existed largely within Jewish communities of the eastern Roman Empire.

Later Christian tradition, especially in the Christian East, numbered Ananias among the Seventy (or Seventy-Two) disciples mentioned in the Gospel of Luke. Hagiographical accounts identify him as the first bishop of Damascus. The Roman Martyrology commemorates him on 25 January and states that after preaching the Gospel in Damascus, at Eleutheropolis, and elsewhere, he was scourged under a judge named Licinius, had his flesh torn, and was finally overwhelmed with stones and so completed his martyrdom. Eleutheropolis (Beth Gabra, later Beit Guvrin in Palestine) is thus associated in Latin martyrological tradition with his death, though this narrative cannot be confirmed from first-century historical documents and belongs to the later cult of the saint. Eastern Orthodox tradition commemorates the Apostle Ananias of the Seventy on 1 October and likewise regards him as a martyr. Variant accounts place his death in Damascus itself at the hands of opponents of the new faith.

Veneration of Ananias is therefore ancient and liturgical rather than the product of a medieval papal canonization process; no individual pope is recorded as having formally canonized or beatified him in the later juridical sense. He is remembered above all as the instrument of Saul's baptism and as a model of obedience despite fear. Churches and chapels have been dedicated to him in Damascus and elsewhere, including the traditional House of Ananias (Hanania) on Straight Street in Damascus, which has long been shown to pilgrims as the site associated with Paul's baptism. Specific, widely attested patronages of professions, illnesses, or civic communities are not firmly documented in the major martyrologies in the way they are for many later medieval saints. His historical footprint remains that of a first-century Jewish Christian of Damascus whose brief, decisive appearance in Acts made him a permanent figure in Christian memory and liturgy.