The miracles of Saint Anthony of Padua

As with all saints, the miracles performed by St Anthony of Padua attest to the truth of the Gospel message he preached. We will look at several of them in this article: the sermon to the fishes, the bilocation during Holy Week, and finally the miracle of the mule. One last miracle alone sums up today's reasons to believe: the tongue of Saint Anthony, who died in 1231, is intact. It is preserved in the chapel of relics in the Basilica of Padua. The saint's tongue, the organ through which he preached so much about the love of God, bears miraculous witness to the truth of Saint Anthony's message, both to the crowds who attended his sermons and to the people of today who can still read them.

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Reasons to believe:

Contemporary accounts of events are of vital importance when studying the life of a historical figure. This is even more true when the figure is a saint, as the miracles that surround his life are often called into question. Jean Rigaud, a Friar Minor who became Bishop of Tréguier (France) in 1317, wrote a biographical study on Saint Anthony of Padua at the end of the 13th century, some fifty years after the saint's death.

The most abundant source of Jean Rigaud's study are the testimonies of the friars who lived with and knew Saint Anthony. Rigaud collected these testimonies after ascertaining the competence and reliability of their authors: "During his stay in the Custody of Limousin, he [Saint Anthony of Padua], through the Lord's mercy, performed certain miracles, which several brothers of proven virtue told me with certainty as soon as I entered the Order [...]. Indeed, if they were not collected, it was to be feared that they would fall into oblivion as their memory was fading from the minds of the brothers."

Rigaud also drew on earlier biographies and documents, in particular the Life written by Julian of Speyer (probably between 1232 and 1240) and the collection of miracles written in 1293 by Brother Pierre Raymond of Saint-Romain, reader in Padua and provincial minister. Rigaud's Life of Blessed Anthony is therefore remarkable from the point of view of scientific criticism.

Unlike most of the hagiographers of the Middle Ages, Rigaud takes care to specify the setting of the events he reports. He notes the regions and towns, and sometimes even the districts, where Saint Anthony's actions took place. Rigaud's work is therefore also exceptional in terms of precision.

Whereas many of the edifying writings of the Middle Ages were often content to collate the miracles of a saint, Jean Rigaud presents his readers with a genuine biography of Saint Anthony. He covers the whole of the saint's life, not just his youth, as in the earlier Lives, but also his death and burial. It follows a rational and methodical plan, describing both the saint's work and his private character. It describes his actions, but also endeavours to give an account of his virtues, because these are the soul and cause of his external actions. For all these reasons, Jean Rigaud's Life of Saint Anthony is a trustworthy work on the miracles of the saint from Padua.

Summary:

Christ's miracles attested, for those who witnessed them, to the truthfulness of his words and overall message. The link between the miraculous action, which wins over the hearts of its witnesses, and the resulting trust in the author of the miracle, and therefore also in his words, is clear from the first miracle that Christ performed. The Gospel reports: "This was the first of Jesus' miracles at Cana in Galilee. He manifested his glory, and his disciples believed in him" (Jn 2:11). Christ's disciples are not the only ones to make this implicit reasoning: "A great crowd followed him, because they saw the miracles he performed on the sick" (Jn 6:2).

For the evangelist, the faith that the disciples placed in Christ stemmed from the fact that he performed acts that no man could do on his own. If the source of this power came from God, logically his words came from God too. As a man, Christ is the channel of the divine power and the herald (i.e. the transmitter of the message) of the good news that God wants to announce to mankind.

The same applies to the saints. They too live out the words of the prophet Isaiah: "Who has believed what has been announced to us? Who has recognised the arm of the Lord?" (Is 53:1). Saint Anthony of Padua was no exception: the miracles he performed attest to the veracity of the evangelical message he preached. Three of them speak for themselves: the sermon with the fish, which is like putting into practice what had been said before, the bilocation on the evening of Holy Thursday, and finally the miracle of the mule.

The sermon to the fish

Once Anthony had travelled to the city of Rimini because it was a hotbed of heresy. The city leaders had ordered everyone to ignore him, so no one turned up for his homilies. Wherever Anthony went, he was greeted by silence.

Anthony walked along praying and reflecting upon what had happened. As he walked outside of the town, he came to the mouth of the Marecchia River where it flows into the Adriatic. In a dramatic voice he said: "Because you show yourself unworthy of the word of God, I am going to speak to the fish in order to confound your unbelief more clearly".

He called out, “You, fish of the river and sea, listen to the Word of God because the heretics do not wish to hear it.” Suddenly there were thousands of fish neatly arranged in rows, all pushing their heads through the surface of the water as if they were straining to listen to every one of Anthony’s words.

Saint Anthony, in fact, " inflamed with a holy zeal, he began... to tell them of the benefits God had bestowed on them: how he had created them, how he had granted them clear and transparent water, what great freedom he had given them, how he fed them without any work on their part " (Jean Rigaud, Vie de saint Antoine, p. 89).

Bilocation on Holy Thursday

During the time when Saint Anthony was in charge of his brothers, in the Custody of Limousin, and by order of the general of his congregation, he often performed the office of preaching. On Holy Thursday, after the singing of the liturgical office of Matins, the saint climbed into the pulpit of the church of Saint-Pierre-du-Queyroix, in Limoges, to explain the mysteries of those days to the crowd. At the same time, in their convent, the Friars Minor were singing Matins, and the Custos, i.e. Saint Anthony, had been appointed lector for a lesson in the Divine Office. When they reached this point in the reading, Anthony - who was then preaching in a remote church - appeared in the middle of the choir, began the lesson and sang it to the end (Id., ibid., pp. 45-47).

The miracle of the mule

One day, Anthony argued with a heretic about the presence of Jesus in the Eucharist. The latter challenged him to prove, by a miracle, that the true body of Christ was present in the consecrated host, and promised that if he succeeded, he would convert to the Catholic faith.

The heretic said to him: "For two days I will deprive my horse of all food, and on the third day I will bring it to the public square; then I will present him with a peck of oats and you, on your side, will hold the host which, according to you, contains the body of the Saviour. If the hungry animal leaves the oats to prostrate itself before the body of Christ, I will recognise, with my mouth and my heart, the reality of the sacrament". (Ibid., p. 91).

On the appointed day, the horse was taken to the public square and left free to wander. It was presented with oats on one side. Not far away stood Saint Anthony, holding the ciborium containing the Blessed Sacrament. The animal then moved towards the body of Christ, bent its knees and did not stand up again until it had been given permission to do so. Its owner recognised the truth of Christ's substantial presence in the Eucharist and confessed it henceforth.

Saint Anthony's intact tongue

A final miracle, which in itself sums up today's reasons to believe, is that Saint Anthony's tongue is intact. It is preserved in a beautiful reliquary by the goldsmith Giuliano da Firenze (1436), in the chapel of relics in the Basilica of Padua. The tongue of the saint, the organ through which he preached so much about love for Jesus Christ, bears miraculous witness to the absolute truth of Saint Anthony's message to the crowds who listened to him and can still read his sermons today. Divine providence wished to preserve Saint Anthony's tongue to this day in order to show that the doctrine of the saint is faithful to the Gospel, and that God spoke through him.

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

Going further:

The website of the convent of the Friars Minor of Padua presents the life and miracles of Saint Anthony.

More information:

Life of Saint Anthony by Jean Rigaud, friar minor and bishop of Tréguier, published for the first time (Latin text and translation) in 1899
St. Anthony: The Wonder-Worker of Padua by Charles Warren Stoddard, TAN Books; 2nd edition (January 1, 2009)
The Life and Prayers of Saint Anthony of Padua by Wyatt North, CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform; First Edition (August 25, 2012)
Saint Anthony of Padua: His Life, Legends, and Devotions by Jack Wintz O.F.M., Franciscan Media; No Additional Printings Listed edition (April 4, 2012)
The article 1 000 raisons de croire (1,000 reasons to believe) presents an overview of the life of Saint Anthony of Padua: " Le saint que tout le monde aime" (The saint everyone loves).