Venerable Anthony the Great

Venerable Anthony the Great (c. 251–356) was born in the village of Coma in Upper Egypt to devout Christian parents. Orphaned in his late teens, he heard the Gospel words "if you would be perfect, go, sell what you possess..." read in church, distributed his inheritance to the poor, and withdrew to a life of ascetic solitude. For roughly twenty years he lived enclosed in an abandoned fort at Pispir on the Nile, wrestling with demonic temptations, before retreating further into the "inner desert" near the Red Sea, at Mount Qolzim. Disciples gathered around him seeking guidance, giving rise to the eremitic form of monastic life — for which he is honored as the father of monasticism. He twice left his solitude: during the persecution of Maximinus (311) to support confessors in Alexandria, and in 338, at the request of St. Athanasius, to refute Arianism. He died in 356 at age 105. His Life, written by St. Athanasius of Alexandria, profoundly shaped monastic tradition in East and West.