Anthony the Great

Anthony the Great (died 17 January 356) was an Egyptian Christian monk who has been venerated as a saint since his death. To distinguish him from other saints named Anthony, he is known by several titles: Anthony of Egypt, Anthony the Abbot, Anthony of the Desert, Anthony the Anchorite, Anthony the Hermit, and Anthony of Thebes. Because of his significance among the Desert Fathers and his influence on all later Christian monasticism, he is also called the Father of All Monks. His feast day falls on 17 January in the Eastern Orthodox and Catholic churches, and on Tobi 22 in the Coptic calendar.

The biography of Anthony written by Athanasius of Alexandria helped spread the idea of Christian monasticism, especially in Western Europe through its Latin translations. Although he is often mistakenly thought to be the first Christian monk, his biography and other sources show that many ascetics came before him. However, Anthony was among the first known to venture into the wilderness, around AD 270, which likely added to his fame. Stories of him enduring supernatural temptations while living in Egypt’s Eastern Desert inspired artistic and literary depictions of his temptations. He is invoked against infectious diseases, particularly skin conditions; in the past, ailments like ergotism, erysipelas, and shingles were called Saint Anthony’s fire.

Most details about Anthony come from the *Life of Anthony*, written in Greek by Athanasius of Alexandria. This work portrays Anthony as an illiterate holy man whose existence in a primal landscape gave him a direct connection to divine truth, always in harmony with Athanasius’s own views. A continuation of the secular Greek biography tradition, it became Athanasius’s most widely read work. Translated into Latin by Evagrius of Antioch before 374, the Latin version helped the *Life* become one of the best-known works in the Christian world, a status it kept through the Middle Ages. Translated into many languages, it was a sort of bestseller in its time and played a key role in spreading the ascetic ideal in both Eastern and Western Christianity. It later inspired Christian monastics in both regions and helped popularize Christian monasticism, especially in Western Europe through its Latin translations. Many stories about Anthony also appear in the *Sayings of the Desert Fathers*.

Anthony likely spoke only his native Coptic, but his sayings were spread in Greek translation. He himself dictated letters in Coptic, seven of which survive.

**Life**

Anthony was born in Koma in Lower Egypt to wealthy landowner parents. Around age 20, his parents died, leaving him responsible for his unmarried sister. Soon after, he decided to follow the gospel command in Matthew 19:21: “If you want to be perfect, go, sell what you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasures in heaven.” He gave some of his family’s lands to neighbors, sold the rest, and donated the money to the poor. He then left to live an ascetic life, placing his sister with a group of Christian virgins.

For the next fifteen years, Anthony stayed in the area, spending his first years as a disciple of another local hermit. Various legends say he worked as a swineherd during this time. He kept a very strict diet, eating only bread, salt, and water, never meat or wine. He ate at most once a day and sometimes fasted for two or four days. According to Athanasius, the devil fought Anthony by afflicting him with boredom, laziness, and phantoms of women, which he overcame through prayer—a theme later used in Christian art. He then moved to a tomb near his village, where the *Life* records strange conflicts with demons in the shape of wild beasts that beat him and sometimes left him nearly dead.

After fifteen years, at age thirty-five, Anthony decided to withdraw from human habitation entirely. He went into the desert to a mountain by the Nile called Pispir (now Der-el-Memun), opposite Arsinoë. There he lived strictly enclosed in an old abandoned Roman fort for about twenty years. Food was thrown over the wall to him. Pilgrims sometimes visited, but he refused to see them. Gradually, would-be disciples settled in caves and huts around the mountain, forming a colony of ascetics. They begged Anthony to come out and guide them. Around 305, he yielded and emerged, appearing healthy in mind and body, to everyone’s surprise. For five or six years he instructed and organized the large group of monks that had gathered around him, but then he withdrew again into the inner desert between the Nile and the Red Sea. He settled on a mountain near the shore (Mount Colzim), where the monastery bearing his name, Deir Mar Antonios, still stands. He spent the last forty-five years of his life there in a less strict seclusion than at Pispir, freely seeing visitors and crossing the desert to Pispir frequently. During the Diocletianic Persecutions, around 311, he went to Alexandria and was conspicuous visiting those imprisoned.

Anthony was not the first ascetic or hermit, but he made a lasting impact on Christian monasticism.