Lost and Found: The Life of St Anthony
St Anthony preaching to the Fishes By Garcia Fernandes
Every Catholic knows to invoke St Anthony to find lost items. This is the life of one of our most beloved saints.
St Anthony at a glance
Name at birth: Fernando Martins de Bulhões
Born: August 15, 1195, in Lisbon, Portugal
Died: June 13, 1231 (aged 35), in Padua, Italy
Canonised: 1232
Feast: June 13
Patronages: Lost items and people; Franciscan Custody of the Holy Land; travellers; mariners; fishermen; shipwrecks; amputees; oppressed people; poor people; horses; animals; infertility; pregnant women; elderly people; harvests; starvation; mail; Portugal
On June 13, we mark the feast of St Anthony of Padua. Although he is popularly invoked today by those who have trouble finding lost objects, he was known in his own day as the “Hammer of Heretics”, due to the powerful witness of his life and preaching.
The saint known to the Church as Anthony of Padua was not born in the northern Italian city of Padua, nor was he originally named Anthony. He was born as Fernando in Lisbon, Portugal, on August 15, 1195, the son of an army officer named Martin and a virtuous woman named Mary. Educated by priests, Fernando decided to enter religious life at age 15.
He initially lived in a monastery of the Augustinian order outside Lisbon. But he disliked the distraction of constant visits from his friends, and moved to the order’s motherhouse in Coimbra. There he studied theology and Latin, concentrating on reading the Bible and the Church Fathers, while living a life of asceticism and devotion to God.
Eight years later, in 1220, Fernando learned the news about five Franciscan friars who had recently died for their faith in Morocco. When their bodies were brought to Portugal for veneration, Fernando developed a passionate desire to imitate their commitment to the Gospel. When a group of Franciscans visited his monastery, Fernando told them he wanted to adopt their poor and humble way of life.
Some of the Augustinian monks criticised and even mocked Fernando’s interest in the Franciscans, which had been established only recently, in 1209. But prayer confirmed his desire to follow the example of St Francis of Assisi, who was still alive at the time. Fernando eventually obtained permission to leave the Augustinians in 1221, and joined the Franciscan hermitage in Olivais, near Coimbra. He adopted the name Anthony after the chapel located there, dedicated to the 4th-century desert monk St Anthony of Egypt.
Anthony wanted to imitate the Franciscan martyrs who had died trying to convert the Muslims of Morocco. He travelled by ship to Africa for this purpose, but on the journey he became seriously ill. The ship that was supposed to take him to Spain for treatment was blown off course, and ended up in Sicily.
Through this series of mishaps, Anthony ended up near Assisi, where Francis was holding a major meeting for the members of his order. Despite his poor health, Anthony resolved to stay in Italy in order to be closer to Francis himself. Knowing the founder’s strong distrust of the place of theological studies in the life of his community, Anthony deliberately concealed his deep knowledge of theology and Scripture, and offered to serve in the kitchen among the friars.
Top left: Relics of St Anthony in the Lisbon church that marks his birthplace. Top right: St Anthony of Padua in St Sulpice church, Paris. (Photo: Sarah Meyssonnier/Reuters/CNS). Bottom left: Pilgrims pray at the tomb of St Anthony in the 13th-century basilica named after him in Padua. Bottom right: The cathedral of St Anthony in Padua, Italy, which holds his tomb. (Photos: Günther Simmermacher)
The golden tongue
At the time, no one realised that the future “Hammer of Heretics” was anything other than a kitchen assistant and obedient Franciscan priest at the hermitage of San Paolo near Forlì. Around 1222, however, Anthony was forced to deliver an improvised homily before an assembly of Dominicans and Franciscans, none of whom had prepared one due to a misunderstanding. His eloquence and the content of his preaching stunned the crowd. Soon Francis himself learned what kind of man the dishwashing friar really was. In 1224 he gave Anthony permission to teach theology in the Franciscan order.
Anthony taught theology in several French and Italian cities, while strictly following his Franciscan vows and preaching regularly to the people. Later, he dedicated himself entirely to the work of preaching as a missionary in France, Italy and Spain, teaching an authentic love for God to many people — whether peasants or princes — who had fallen away from the Catholic faith and morality. After his time in southern France, where he taught at the universities of Montpellier and Toulouse, Anthony was appointed provincial superior of northern Italy, and settled in the city of Padua.
The practice of praying for St Anthony’s help in finding lost or stolen things goes back to an incident in Bologna when a young man who was leaving the novitiate stole his invaluable psalter (or book of psalms). When Anthony realised his psalter was missing, he prayed it would be found or returned. Soon after, the thief not only brought the book back to Anthony but also returned to the order. That psalter is kept today in the Franciscan friary in Bologna.
Miracles and legends
His famous disputes with heretics created a number of legends. His biographers mention a miracle involving a meal poisoned by heretics. After making the sign of the cross over it, Anthony ate it without suffering any harm.
A story of Anthony “preaching to the fish” is located at Rimini. When heretics there treated him with contempt, Anthony went to the shore of the Adriatic and preached at the water’s edge until a great crowd of fish gathered before him. The people of the town flocked to see this spectacle, at which Anthony berated them that the fish were more open to his message than the heretics.
In Toulouse, Anthony was challenged by a heretic to prove the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist. The man brought out a half-starved mule and showed it fresh fodder in one hand, and the sacramental host in the other. The mule ignored the fodder and instead bowed before the sacrament.
Death at 36
After Lent in 1231, Anthony’s health was in decline. Following the example of his patron — the earlier St Anthony, who had lived as a hermit — the friar retreated to a remote location, taking two companions to help him. When his worsening health forced him to be carried back to the Franciscan monastery in Padua, crowds of people converged on the group in the hope of paying their homage to the holy priest. The commotion surrounding his transport forced his attendants to stop short of their destination. After receiving the last rites, Anthony prayed the Church’s seven traditional penitential psalms, sung a Marian hymn, and died on Friday, June 13 at the age of 35.
St Anthony’s well-established holiness, combined with the many miracles he had worked during his lifetime, moved Pope Gregory IX — who knew the saint personally — to canonise him less than a year after his death, on May 30, 1232, in Spoleto.
In 1946, Pope Pius XII proclaimed him a Doctor of the Church.
Published in the June 2022 issue of The Southern Cross
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