medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Today (17. January) is the feast day of:
Anthony of Egypt (d. 356). The desert father A. (also Anthony abbot and, of course, Antony [with the same modifiers]) is probably well known to everyone on this list through his Athanasian Bios, either directly or through one or more translations. Apart from one letter in Greek and seven (perhaps not authentic) surviving in Latin translation, his sayings in the _Apophthegmata Patrum_, and some details in a Bios of Pachomius, this is really our only source for A. in his lifetime. A great model for imitation, influential (in Latin translation) in St. Augustine's own conversion, and called by Gregory of Nazianzus "a rule for the monastic life in the form of a narrative", this account presents A. as an unlettered man of great wisdom who gave away his goods and retired to the desert. Here he fought with demons and attracted disciples, whom (the disciples, not the demons) he in time organized into a monastic community before retreating again into near solitude.
A.'s reputation was already impressive in his lifetime. His cult, which will have been virtually immediate, is attested in the East from the fifth century. In the West, A. is listed for today in the (pseudo-)Hieronymian Martyrology and in the historical martyrologies from Bede onward. In the eleventh century his purported relics were brought to a church in the Dauphiné near Vienne. Here, at today's Saint-Antoine l'Abbaye (Isère), a larger church dedicated to A. was consecrated by Calixtus II in 1119. An adjoining hospice, said to have been founded in the late eleventh century, became the Benedictine hospital of St. Anthony at Vienne. In the thirteenth century this was the headquarters of a new order, the Hospitallers of St. Anthony (of Vienne). An exterior view of the abbey church (now a _paroissiale_) is here:
http://tinyurl.com/yypxra
And an interior one is here:
http://blog.ritacuzzupi.com/images/abbaye.jpg
A brief, French-language history of the church:
http://tinyurl.com/yeolv5
Here's an illustration from an early fifteenth-century Life of A. created for this house and now in the National Library of Malta:
http://tinyurl.com/2y839p
An English-language account of the manuscript:
http://tinyurl.com/yr2uwk
Some views of a few churches dedicated to A.:
His originally very late eleventh- or early twelfth-century church at Aidone (EN) in Sicily:
http://tinyurl.com/34mzfz
http://tinyurl.com/39zya7
The later thirteenth-century portal of his church at Rome:
http://www.romeartlover.it/Vasi126.htm#S.%20Antonio%20Abate
His fourteenth-/fifteenth-century church, with late fifteenth-/early sisteenth-century frescoes, at San Daniele del Friuli (UD), Friuli-Venzia Giulia:
http://www.comune.sandanieledelfriuli.ud.it/territorio/chi_sa_ab.asp
The late fifteenth-century portal of his church at Tossiccia (TE) in Abruzzo:
http://tinyurl.com/298hcw
A.'s originally late fifteenth-century church (consecrated, 1488; rebuilt in the nineteenth century) at Pravisdomini (PN), Friuli-Venezia Giulia:
http://tinyurl.com/yp8nl2
http://tinyurl.com/2ec5kr
http://tinyurl.com/23ugk9
http://tinyurl.com/yozx9s
Finally, A. in the foreground of an early sixteenth-century depiction of Pavia in that city's Basilica di San Teodoro:
http://tinyurl.com/33xs2c
Many more Anthonys are here:
http://tinyurl.com/3x36hj
Best,
John Dillon
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