Saint Anthony of the Desert, a father of monasticism

Celebrated on 17 January, Saint Anthony of the Desert, or Saint Anthony the Great, is famous for his ascetic life in the wilderness, his great holiness, and the terrible temptations he endured from the devil. Many people came to him for advice and to listen to his spiritual teachings, and some of them, following his example, chose a solitary life of penance and prayer. For this reason, his followers are called anchorites, unlike the cenobites who choose to live in monastic communities (e.g. the Benedictines). Saint Anthony is first and foremost a model and an example for anyone who wants to follow in the footsteps of Christ: his life teaches lessons in humility, prudence, trust in God, perseverance in spiritual battles, and the love of God above all else.

Jérôme Bosch, The Temptation of Saint Anthony, 1495-1515, Lisbon / © CC0, wikimedia.

Reasons to believe:

During his lifetime, Saint Anthony's reputation reached the ears of the emperor himself: "The emperors Constantine the Great, and Constantine and Constans, his children, heard of his deeds. They wrote to him as they would to a father, and asked him to answer them." (Saint Athanasius, Life of Saint Anthony, ch. 28, translation by R. d'Andilly, in Les Vies des saints Pères, Paris, 1733). We can't imagine that these princes and emperors, who were so well informed, could have been deceived about Anthony's character and holiness.

With the end of the persecution of Christians ratified by the Edict of Galerius in 311 and the "Edict of Milan" in 313, martyrdom as a way of following Christ was replaced by penance, another way of "dying to the world". Saint Anthony's choice to live as a hermit, eat only bread and water, and deprive himself of means of comfort, was not a masochistic move, or a kind of antisocial behavior, or a form of egoism. This choice was motivated only by his love of God, the object of all desires.

The eremitic life of Saint Anthony of the Desert and his disciples was famous even in their own time. Although Anthony's life was better known and imitated in the East, it was also emulated in the West.

In his Confessions, Saint Augustine recounts how Saint Anthony's example inspired the young men of his time. Accompanied by his friends who, like him, wanted to give meaning to their lives, Augustine recounts a discussion he had with an officer of the imperial palace, called Pontitianus, who "told us about Anthony, the recluse from Egypt [...]. We were stunned with admiration at the account of these irrefragable marvels of such recent memory, almost contemporaneous, performed in the true faith, in the Catholic Church..." (Confessions, VIII, VI, translation by L. Moreau, Flammarion, p. 198). Pontitianus' words about Anthony's retreat from the world, his poverty, chastity and prayer life profoundly moved Augustine, because they were the true hallmark of a life conformed to Christ, and of faith.

Men were not the only ones to voluntarily embrace the way of life inaugurated by Anthony for the love of Christ: women also adopted monastic rules. The religious way of life is very convincing, because it really and effectively leads to the goal for which it was chosen, which is union with Christ. Saint Jerome refers to it in a letter of 412 regarding Marcella, a Roman woman who "was not ashamed to profess a life she had learned to please Christ" (Saint Jerome, Letters, letter 127, § 5).

Saint Athanasius writes of Anthony's character: he "was extremely prudent; and what is admirable, although he was not literate, he had an unparalleled quickness of mind and intelligence" (ibid., ch. 25) Saint Anthony therefore was mentally balance, and relied on God's power rather than the opinion of men.

Many of Saint Anthony the Great's thoughts are preserved in the Apophtegmas of the Desert Fathers, a collection of precepts, anecdotes and sayings attributed to the anchorite monks who populated the Egyptian deserts in the 4th century. These writings illustrate the principles of the ascetic and spiritual life of the Desert Fathers. They were first transmitted orally in Coptic and then put down in writing in the 4th and 5th centuries. These collections were immensely successful: they were translated into almost all the languages of the ancient and medieval Church and nourished the monastic spirituality of medieval Eastern and Western Christianity. This success can only be explained by the remarkable character of the thought and life of the men who, like Saint Anthony, are presented in them.

Although he withdrew to the deserts of Thebaid, in Middle Egypt, from 312 onwards, Anthony had many visitors. With charity and cheerful patience, the anchorite gave wise advice to those who came to see him. He always invited them to pray, and many miracles were obtained through him when those who asked him began to pray, even though the hermit never left his monastery.

Pagans also came to him to challenge his Christian belief in the Incarnation of the Divine Word and the ignominy of Jesus' death on the Cross - shocking and incongruous things, they argued. Anthony showed them that the Christian faith is reasonable, even though it so great that reason cannot contain it, whereas the polytheistic beliefs of the time were truly absurd: "What is more reasonable? To say that the Word of God, who is not subject to change but is always the same, took on a human body for the salvation and honour of mankind, so that, by the divine nature communicating with the divine nature, he might make men sharers in the divine nature? Or to want a divinity to be like animals, and for this reason to adore brute beasts, snakes, and human figures?" (ibid., ch. 26). Today's materialistic society can easily be seen as an idolatrous variation, with its positivist dogmas, caricatures of science, and its moral imperatives to conform to contemporary mores, urging us to serve money, pleasure and power as we should serve God.

The main source on Saint Anthony of the Desert is the Life of Saint Anthony, written in 356 by the Patriarch of Alexandria, Saint Athanasius, less than a year after Antholny's death. The bishop and the monk were contemporaries and met each other. The patriarch also met several of Anthony's disciples. Athanasius personally relied on the example of holiness of Anthony and his anchorites - a holiness demonstrated by their practice of the ascetic life - to fight against the Arian heresy, which was widespread in Egypt at the time and denied that Jesus Christ was God. Saint Anthony and his brothers firmly believed in the divinity of Christ and attributed their perseverance in his service to his grace.

Summary:

Anthony was born in lower Egypt, in Herakleopolis Magna (an ancient city located in the south of the present-day governorate of Fayoum, near the Bahr Youssouf, the branch of the Nile river near Asyut), to wealthy landowner Christian parents. Orphaned at the age of eighteen or twenty, he had to bring up a younger sister and look after the cultivation of the extensive farmland he had inherited from his parents. But beyond these material concerns, the question of his salvation tormented him. In the Acts of the Apostles, he had read about the first Christian community, where everything was held in common. One day in church, he heard the Gospel of the rich young man (Mt 19:21), and recognising himself in the ambivalent young man, he felt that the Saviour's advice ("leave, sell everything and follow me") was addressed to him. The Saviour's injunction "Do not worry about tomorrow" (Mt 6:34) helped explain how to follow Christ in this radical way. So, after placing his sister in accordance with her wishes in a community of Christian virgins (Saint Athanasius, Life of Saint Anthony, ch. 2), he distributed his fortune to the poorest and withdrew to a secluded spot near one of his former fields.

Dressed in a simple horsehair tunic, he divided his time between prayer and work, near the hut of an old ascetic monk who taught him the eremitical life. By training with him in the gentle Christian virtues, he imitated the prudence of bees that work alone, but gather in the hive to produce their honey. Then, desirous to live in greater solitude, he left to live for thirteen years in the Nitrian desert (now the governorate of Beheira), founding the kellia community (from the Greek το κελλίον, "cell") with his disciple Ammonas, who had previously settled there. They all lived in huts, caves or small hermitages and prayed as a community once a week. Anthony slept on a mat of woven rushes, and sometimes on the ground itself. Sometimes he would keep vigil the whole night to pray.

The influx of many disciples disturbed his solitude, so in 285 he went further into the desert and lived at Pispir (now Dayr al-Maymūn, in the governorate of Giseh), in an abandoned Roman fort on the road to the Red Sea, imitating the many anchorites who lived in poverty and chastity in the outskirts of towns, far from one another. There, in the manner of Christ, he underwent the temptations of the devil for over twenty years: various demons, taking the appearance of ferocious and sensual beasts, tried to break his virtue and his faith by dangling false goods before his senses; they also struck him several times, leaving him nearly dead. These were the famous temptations of Saint Anthony, which he resisted by confidently repeating these words: "Though an army besiege me, I will not fear" (Ps 27:3) because "What will separate us from the love of Christ?" (Rom 8:35).

One day when he was about 35 years old, during the course of a night he was subjected to the usual assaults by demons, when they suddenly ceased. The Lord appeared to him in a great light. Anthony cried out in anguish: "Where were you, my Lord and Master? And why did you not come from the beginning, to ease my pain?"Then he heard a voice answering him: "Anthony, I was here, but I wanted to watch your battle; and now I see that you have bravely resisted without yielding to the efforts of your enemies. I will always assist you and make your name famous throughout the world." Having heard these words, he rose to pray, and felt so much strength in himself that he knew God had restored to him much more strength than he had before" (Saint Athanasius, ibid., ch. 5).

Little by little, men began to gather around Anthony, following his teachings and striving to lead a perfect life. He organised a monastic and eremitical life for them. This is why he is considered the "father of monks". Living nearby in caves, his disciples listened to him preach and joined him in prayer. Anthony often told them, speaking from experience, that they should not fear the devil, because God was more powerful than he (Saint Athanasius develops this point at length in chapters 9 to 14 of his Life). Over the years, as their numbers grew, the solitary monks formed small communities to the west and east of the Nile, each electing an elder to lead it. But they all chose Anthony as their spiritual guide.

The desert had become the gateway to the heavenly Jerusalem, in other words the preparatory stage for the eternal vision of God: all knew that the sufferings of this life, because they eventually cease, are but a small thing compared with the beatitude with God, which will come after death and will never pass away (Romans 8:18). On the other hand, the moments in common that the anchorites shared were sweet because they were infused with charity: faith in Jesus Christ, the God-man saviour of men, the emulation to grow in virtue, and spiritual joy were their common lot. These men and women were mentally sound and not self-seeking: their aim was God, not themselves.

In 307, Saint Hilarion of Gaza sought the advice of Saint Anthony to set up a monastery in what is now the Gaza region. This foundation is considered to be one of the first monasteries in Christendom.

In 312, increasingly attracted by the radical solitary life, Anthony went further away to live in complete solitude. He went to the Thebaid, on Mount Qulzum, about 155 kilometres south-east of present-day Cairo. The monastery of St Anthony (Deir Mar Antonios), built in the 4th century by the hermit's disciples, still stands there today. Along with the monastery of St Paul the Hermit, it is considered to be the oldest Christian monastery. The devil still appeared to Anthony from time to time, but no longer tormented him as he once did.

Although withdrawn from the world, Saint Anthony remained attentive to the problems facing the Church of his time, because he was a member of this Church, like all Christians. So he went to Alexandria, moved by the desire to confess Christ through martyrdom, but the judge rejected him and the other anchorites in his communities. Anthony at least assisted a large number of Christians condemned to the mines or imprisoned, and supported them until they were put to death. For the same reason, he also went to Alexandria at the request of Patriarch Athanasius to support the controversies against the pagans and Arian heretics. His moral support was of considerable help. The life of solitude that he chose, guided by the Gospel, was not for him the expression of a selfish, self-centred way of life, but a means of making himself more available to the needs of all when God asked him to do so.

The "father of monasticism" died at the age of 105. As he breathed his last, he gave his brothers this advice: "Always live as if you were going to die that very day" (ibid., ch. 37). Why is that? Because God is the goal of every person's life, and the death of the body is the door through which we can see him forever. This perspective helps us not to lose sight of him.

Fr. Vincent-Marie Thomas, Ph. D in Philosophy

Beyond reasons to believe:

The life of Saint Anthony the anchorite was a recurring and inspiring theme in the Middle Ages. The account of his life by the Dominican friar Jacques de Voragine, Archbishop of Genoa, in The Golden Legend proves this. It should be noted that the word "legend" here is not to be taken in its moden sense, but according to its Latin meaning: a "must read" narrative or story.

The life of Saint Anthony has also inspired many artists. Sassetta, a Sienese painter in the Italian Gothic style, depicted the meeting of Saint Anthony and Saint Paul of Thebes around 1460; Michelangelo, a Florentine, used the engraving The Temptation of Saint Anthony by Martin Schongauer (born around 1445 and died in 1491) to depict the scene of Saint Anthony's torment in 1487, when he was twelve or thirteen years old. Other examples of the numerous pictorial works depicting the Temptation of Saint Anthony include the altarpiece of the same nameby the Dutch painter Hieronymus Bosch, painted perhaps in 1501, and the paintings by the Brabant painters Pieter Brueghel the Elder (or at least a painter who followed in his footsteps, around 1550-1575) and his son Jan Brueghel the Elder in 1599.

The engravings of the Lorraine-born Jacques Callot, who produced an illustration of the "Temptation of Saint Anthony" in 1617 during his youth, before returning to the same subject in 1634 and again the following year, are also worthy of note. We should also mention the German artist Matthias Grünewald, who depicted Saint Anthony three times in the altarpiece he produced for the Antonine monks at Issenheim between 1512 and 1516 (the saintly anchorite is depicted from foot to cape, then in the scenes of his visit to Saint Paul of Thebes on the one hand, and his "temptation" on the other).

There are paintings by the Spaniards Diego Velasquez (Saint Anthony the Abbot and Saint Paul the First Hermit; Saint Anthony the Abbot) and Francisco de Zurbarán, who portrayed the saint with finesse and realism around 1640. More recently, the Spanish surrealist painter Salvador Dali, in 1946, and the German painter Max Ernst, in 1945, also chose the temptation of Saint Anthony as a subject for their paintings.

Among sculptors, Auguste Rodin drew inspiration for his 1889 sculpture in the round from Gustave Flaubert's three short stories entitled The Temptation of Saint Anthony (1849, 1856 and 1874).

If the figure of Saint Anthony of the Desert and at least two of the scenes from his life have had such an impact on artists, it is not only because the man and his actions are historically attested, but also because they touch the very core of every person's life and provide answers to the great questions of existence: does suffering have a meaning? What is the ultimate purpose of life?

Going further:

Life of Anthony by Athanasius, Beloved Publishing LLC (November 13, 2014)

More information:

The Desert Fathers: Saint Anthony and the Beginnings of Monasticism by Peter H. Gorg, ‎ Ignatius Press; First Edition (September 16, 2011)
Saint Anthony of the Desert by Henri Queffélec, Dutton; First Edition (January 1, 1954)
The Thirty Eight Sayings of Saint Antony the Great: Sayings of the Desert Fathers by Abba Anthony Curley, CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform (October 23, 2017)