Early Life and Renunciation
Anthony was born to landowning parents described as pious Christians of illustrious lineage, in the village of Koma (Coma) in Lower Egypt, near the Thebaid desert.
Around the age of twenty, following the deaths of his parents, he heard the Gospel passage in which Christ tells the rich young man to sell his possessions and give to the poor (Matthew 19:21). Taking the words as addressed to himself, he distributed the family lands to his neighbors, gave the remaining funds to the poor, and placed his unmarried sister in the care of a community of Christian virgins.
He first took up the ascetic life near his own village as the disciple of a local hermit, then withdrew progressively into greater solitude — by tradition living for a time in a tomb in a graveyard before moving into the deeper desert.
The Desert and Spiritual Combat
Anthony withdrew to the Nitrian Desert, roughly 95 kilometres west of Alexandria, where accounts relate that he spent years in solitary practice on an austere diet of bread, salt, and water, eating once a day or fasting for several days at a time.
He then crossed into deeper isolation at Pispir (Der-el-Memun) by the Nile, occupying an abandoned Roman fort for about twenty years, with food passed to him over the wall. The sources recount that he endured severe demonic temptations and physical assaults there before attaining spiritual peace.
After roughly two decades, would-be disciples settled in surrounding caves and huts and sought his guidance, and several monastic communities formed around his cell. He became known for casting out demons and healing through prayer.
Later he withdrew to the inner desert between the Nile and the Red Sea, settling at Mount Colzim, where the monastery bearing his name still stands. He is said to have spent his final decades there in a less strict seclusion, receiving visitors and traveling back to Pispir to guide the brethren.
Public Witness and Doctrine
Around 311, during the persecution under the emperor Maximian (the Diocletianic persecutions), Anthony left the desert for Alexandria to support and minister to imprisoned Christians.
He later returned to Alexandria to oppose heresy publicly, including the teachings of Arius and the Manichaeans. By one account preserved at OrthodoxWiki he is associated with the defense of the Orthodox doctrine concerning the person of Christ against Arianism.
By tradition Anthony also sought out Paul of Thebes, reputed to be an even earlier hermit; the account relates that on the way he encountered figures interpreted as demons before finding Paul.
Legacy
St. Athanasius of Alexandria composed Anthony's biography in Greek around 360, presenting him as an unlettered yet holy man wholly devoted to God. The work proved enormously influential and, through a Latin translation by Evagrius of Antioch made before 374, spread Christian monasticism across both East and West.
Anthony is honored as the Father of All Monks, and his example and the rules attributed to him served as foundational guidance for later monastic communities.
He is counted among the Desert Fathers — the monks who inhabited the Egyptian desert in the 3rd and 4th centuries — and is sometimes called Anthony of Egypt, Anthony of the Desert, or Anthony the Anchorite.
Relics & Shrines
By his own instruction Anthony was buried near his cell. The sources relate that he directed that his body be hidden in a secret, unmarked grave to prevent veneration of his remains, and that before his death he left his staff to Macarius of Egypt and his sheepskin cloaks to Athanasius of Alexandria and Serapion of Thmuis.
His relics were later reported discovered and transferred to Alexandria, then to Constantinople for safekeeping against invasion. Accounts of their further translation differ: by tradition they were eventually brought to France, where Saint-Antoine-l'Abbaye was established in 1297 as a major pilgrimage center.
