St Anthony the Great

Biography

Anthony was born in Egypt around 251, gave away his inheritance at the Gospel's word, and withdrew by stages into the desert, where his warfare and his sweetness drew the multitude of disciples from whom monasticism descends. St Athanasius, who knew him, wrote his Life shortly after his death in 356, at the age of about one hundred and five.

The Life records two descents from the desert into the city: once during the persecution, to strengthen the martyrs, and once in his extreme old age, at the bishops' summons, to confound the Arians. He died in the inner mountain, having charged his disciples with his last breath to keep the faith of the Fathers and to have no fellowship with the schismatics or the heretics.

The controversy

• The Meletian schismatics of Egypt, who had divided the Church over the treatment of the lapsed, sought the prestige of his name; so did the Manichaean heretics; and the Arians finally spread the lie that his opinions were the same as theirs.
• Anthony answered the lie in person: he came down to Alexandria, denounced the Arian heresy publicly as the forerunner of Antichrist, and returned to the desert.

Position taken

• Total abstention from the communion of schismatics and heretics, joined to full obedience to the Church's lawful order: the Life records in one breath that he honoured the bishops and clergy, and that he never once communed with the separated.
• The refusal was not learned from books but from the discernment of the desert: he judged that intercourse with them was harmful and destructive to the soul, and he taught his monks the same to his last hour.