17 January: St Anthony the Great

Today is the feast day of Saint Anthony the Great. 10 things you might not know about him:

1. Anthony was born in Koma in Lower Egypt. His parents were wealthy. They died when he was about 20, leaving him all their property and responsibility for taking care of his sister.

2. Soon after that, he felt a call to put into practice 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 away land to his neighbours and sold everything else, giving the proceeds to charity. He placed his sister in a nunnery and went off to live an ascetic life.

3. He is sometimes said to be the first person to live an ascetic life in the wilderness, but there were others before him. In fact, for the first few years he was the disciple of another hermit.

4. He’s also considered the father of monastic living. Although he isolated himself and refused to see the pilgrims who came to visit him, he had followers who set up camp near the old Roman fort Anthony lived in, and formed a community of sorts. Eventually he gave in to their requests for guidance and spent a few years teaching them. He wrote one of the first rule books for monasteries.

5. It’s said he ate nothing but Bread, Salt and Water, usually just once a day after sunset, and sometimes fasted for days at a time. When he emerged from his solitary home, however, he didn’t look emaciated but was a picture of health.

6. There are numerous legends about how the Devil tempted Anthony. He’s said to have battled, not only with boredom and laziness but with Devil sent hallucinations of women, and actual demons appearing as wild animals which would attack and nearly kill him.

7. His fame spread so far that Emperor Constantine once wrote to him and asked him to pray for himself and his family.

8. Saint Anthony is the patron of Animals, farmers, butchers, the poor, basket makers, brushmakers, gravediggers, and the Pontifical Ecclesiastical Academy in Rome.

9. He is often invoked against infectious skin diseases such as ergotism, erysipelas, and shingles, which were sometimes referred to as Saint Anthony's fire.

10. He lived to the grand old age of 105. When he sensed he would soon die, he left a will with his disciples regarding who should inherit his possessions: a staff and two sheepskin cloaks. He asked to be buried in a grave next to his cell.

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