Saint Anthony of Padua

He was born at Lisbon in 1195 AD to noble parents who lived near the cathedral. He learned the Scriptures at the cathedral school of St Mary, a short walk from the house.

At fifteen, in September 1210 AD, he entered the Canons Regular of St Augustine outside the walls. Two years later he asked to be sent a hundred miles away to Coimbra, because relatives and friends kept visiting him. Eight years there went to the Scriptures and the Fathers, and he was ordained priest about 1218 AD.

On January 16, 1220 AD five Friars Minor were put to death in Morocco for preaching the faith. The Infante Don Pedro brought their bodies back, and they were received into the church of the Holy Cross at Coimbra. Seeing them, the young canon resolved to become a Friar Minor and preach to the Saracens.

Friars from the poor house at Olivares came to the monastery to beg alms, and he asked them to receive him. He took their habit that year and asked to be called after St. Anthony, the saint of their convent. Jean Rigauld records that he wanted an unknown name to spare him his old visitors.

In December 1220 AD St. Anthony sailed for Morocco, hoping to be killed there for the faith. A severe illness held him down the whole winter, and he preached nothing. Rigauld records that he understood God had decided otherwise.

In the spring his ship home was driven by a violent storm onto the coast of Sicily. He reached the general chapter at Assisi on May 30, 1221 AD and met St. Francis of Assisi there. Butler records that no superior would take him, so sickly was his aspect, and that he offered himself only for the kitchen.

Friar Gratian sent him to the hermitage of Montepaolo to say Mass for the lay brothers. He hid his learning so completely that the friars thought him fit only to read the Missal and recite the Breviary.

At an ordination at Forlì in 1222 AD no preacher had been appointed, and every friar asked declined for want of preparation. Ordered under obedience to speak, he opened the Scriptures with a depth of learning that astounded the room. He was sent out to preach across the Romagna, and at Rimini he brought back a heresiarch of thirty years' standing.

St. Francis wrote to him with leave to teach the friars theology. In 1223 AD he opened a school of theology at Bologna and became the first lector of the Franciscan Order. He taught afterwards at Toulouse and Montpellier, in the Order's own convent schools rather than the universities.

At the provincial chapter of Arles in 1224 AD, as he preached on the title over the Cross, St. Francis appeared at the chapter-room door with his arms outstretched, blessing the friars. The Bollandist Van Ortroy concluded that St. Anthony wrote his Sunday Sermons at Limoges, most probably in 1226 AD.

At the general chapter of Assisi on May 30, 1230 AD he resigned the office of provincial to give his time to preaching. He spent the winter at Padua revising his sermons for the Order's preachers and teachers.

In Lent 1231 AD the crowds ran to thirty thousand and more, and no church would hold them, so he preached in the fields. Shopkeepers shut their shops and would sell nothing until the sermon was over. On March 15, 1231 AD the municipality passed a law in favour of debtors who could not pay, and a copy of it survives in the city museum.

When Lent ended he withdrew to Camposampiero, where the knight Tiso built cells in the branches of a great tree for him and his two companions. John Peckham records that two weeks before his death he stood on a hill above Padua and blessed the city.

On June 13, 1231 AD his strength failed at table, and he asked to be taken to the convent of Saint Mary at Padua. A friar met the cart near the city and turned it aside to Arcella, where friars served the Poor Clares. There he made his confession, received Viaticum, and died in the friars' arms about half an hour later.

The friars meant to keep the death quiet, and the children of Padua ran through the streets crying it instead. The city armed itself over the body for four days, until the bishop decreed for the friars' church and the funeral went through on June 17, 1231 AD.

Pope Gregory IX canonised him at Spoleto on May 30, 1232 AD, eleven months after the death. In 1242 AD the Franciscans adopted an Office by Friar Julian of Speyer, who first urged the faithful to invoke St. Anthony for things lost. On April 8, 1263 AD St. Bonaventure opened the coffin after thirty-two years and found the bones bare and the tongue whole.