Saint Anthony of Egypt

St. Anthony was born about 251 AD at Coma, near Heracleopolis Magna in Middle Egypt. His parents were Christians of an illustrious family, with considerable wealth and slaves of their own. He clung to them, and ran on ahead of them when they walked to church.

Grown to boyhood, he would not learn letters and did not care to be with the other boys. He could not bear the rough behaviour of the boys at the school, and so he never learned to read or write. He neglected no season of the Church's year, in childhood or in early manhood.

His father and mother died, leaving him at about twenty with one small sister and the family estate. Not six months later he was walking to church, thinking of how the Apostles had left everything and followed the Saviour. He came in while the Gospel was being read, and took the words as spoken to him.

He gave the three hundred acres he had inherited to the people of his village. The rest he sold, and gave the money to the poor. His sister he placed with virgins he knew and trusted, giving them the means to bring her up.

St. Anthony left the edge of the village for the tombs, which lay some way off. He shut the door of one of them on himself, and an acquaintance brought him loaves at intervals. Demons came one night and beat him until he lay speechless from the torture.

The man found him next day as though dead, and carried him to the church in the village. About midnight he came to himself and asked to be carried back to the tombs that same night. A ray of light came down into the tomb, the demons vanished, and the pain of his body stopped.

At about thirty-five St. Anthony asked the old hermit of the next village to come into the desert with him, and went on alone when he refused. A large silver dish lay in the road, and it vanished like smoke when he spoke to it. Further on lay gold, and the gold was real, and he passed it by.

He crossed the Nile to a fort so long deserted that it was full of creeping things, blocked the entry, and stored loaves for six months. For nearly twenty years no one saw him, and the men who climbed up expecting to find him dead heard him singing inside. The Sayings of the Fathers tell that dejection rose in him in those years, and that an angel appeared to him working and praying by turns.

About 305 AD St. Anthony gave way to the men pressing him from outside and came out of the fort. He was not emaciated but vigorous in body and mind. Disciples settled around the ruins, and the monastic life grew in the places where he had lived.

Some twenty years after he shut himself into the fort by the Nile, he went with bedouin guides to the foot of Mount Qulzum, about twenty miles from the Red Sea. He lived there about forty years on the work of his hands and the produce of his garden. The Emperor Constantine wrote asking for his prayers, and the brethren pressed him until he wrote back.

In the persecution of 311 AD St. Anthony came down from the desert to Alexandria. He sought martyrdom for himself and served the Christians who were on trial. He was not put to death, and went back to the desert when the persecution ended.

The Arians put it about that he had come round to their faith. At the close of his life the bishops asked him to make the journey to Alexandria again, and he went. He preached aloud in the city that God the Son is not a creature but of the same substance with the Father.

St. Anthony came down to the brethren of the outer mountain one last time and told them he was near a hundred and five. He told them he did not expect to see them again in this life. He had reproved in public the Egyptian custom of keeping the bodies of the holy dead unburied in houses.

He died on the Inner Mountain on January 17, 356 AD, with two monks beside him. He had told them to bury his body in the ground and to let no one know the place. Amathas and St. Macarius buried him there, and the place of the grave was never disclosed.

St. Athanasius of Alexandria wrote the account of his life within a few years of the death. He wrote it for monks in foreign parts who had asked what manner of man St. Anthony was, and said he had served him and poured water on his hands. Two imperial officers at Trier read the book in a hermit's cabin and left the emperor's service.

St. Augustine heard both stories at Milan, and records in the Confessions that St. Anthony was converted on the spot by that reading of the Gospel. The most ancient Martyrologies name him on January 17, and the Greek empire kept the day soon after his death. Pope Benedict XVI called the book the bestseller of early Christian literature.