Saint Anthony of Padua

Life and historical context

Anthony of Padua was born in Lisbon, Portugal in 1195 and given the baptismal name Fernando Martins de Bulhões. His family was prominent in the city and had ecclesiastical and aristocratic connections. As a young man, around the age of fifteen, Fernando entered the Augustinian Canons Regular at the abbey of Saint Vincent in Lisbon, and shortly afterward transferred to the great abbey of Santa Cruz in Coimbra, where he received a thorough patristic and scriptural formation that would later distinguish his preaching.¹

The decisive turn in his life came in 1220, when the bodies of five Franciscan friars who had been martyred in Morocco were brought to Coimbra for burial. Fernando was so moved by the witness of the Franciscan martyrs that he sought permission to leave the Augustinian canons and join the Order of Friars Minor recently founded by Saint Francis of Assisi. He was received into the Franciscans at the small Lisbon friary dedicated to Saint Anthony of Egypt, and according to the constant Franciscan tradition he took the name Anthony at that time.²

Anthony's first Franciscan assignment was a missionary expedition to Morocco, which he undertook with the intent of preaching to the Muslim population and following his martyred predecessors. The mission was cut short when Anthony fell seriously ill on arrival in North Africa and was forced to return. Storms drove the ship carrying him back to Europe off course, and he made landfall in Sicily rather than Portugal. Recovering at Messina, he learned of the general chapter of the Franciscan Order to be held at Assisi in 1221, where he met Saint Francis and the original Franciscan brotherhood.

Anthony was assigned to the hermitage of Monte Paolo in northern Italy, where his theological learning was discovered almost by accident when he was asked at short notice to preach at a clerical ordination in Forlì. The quality of his preaching brought him to the attention of the Franciscan leadership, and from that point until his death he served as a preacher and theological teacher, traveling extensively across northern Italy and southern France. He preached against the Cathar and Albigensian heresies in Languedoc and across Lombardy, and his preaching was credited with widespread popular returns to Catholic faith.³

In 1226 Anthony returned to Italy and settled in Padua, where he undertook the most fruitful period of his ministry. He preached to crowds in the public squares, reformed the city's lending and debt laws on behalf of the poor, and dictated his theological commentaries. He died at the small Franciscan house at Arcella outside Padua on 13 June 1231 at the age of thirty-six. The popular cry at his death, traditionally rendered as "È morto il santo" ("the saint is dead"), was raised by the children of Padua before any official announcement, a detail preserved in the early Franciscan chronicles.⁴

Theological and spiritual significance

Anthony's canonization process was the fastest in the recorded history of the Catholic Church. He died on 13 June 1231; Pope Gregory IX promulgated his canonization on 30 May 1232, less than a year later. The speed of the canonization reflects both the intensity of the popular cult that arose immediately after his death and the documented number of miracles attributed to his intercession in Padua and across Europe in the months following his burial.⁵

Anthony's theological writings are gathered in the Sermones Dominicales et Festivi, his sermon notes for Sundays and feast days across the liturgical year. The sermons combine patristic learning, allegorical scriptural interpretation in the medieval style, and pastoral application. Pope Pius XII declared Saint Anthony of Padua a Doctor of the Church on 16 January 1946, with the title Doctor Evangelicus (Evangelical Doctor) in recognition of his profound knowledge of and fidelity to the Gospels. The declaration placed Anthony in the small company of saints whose teaching is held by the Church to be of universal reference for the faithful.⁶

The popular Catholic devotion to Anthony as patron of lost things developed from a specific incident preserved in his hagiographic record. While Anthony was at Bologna, a novice friar departed the order taking with him Anthony's own book of psalms (an object of considerable value before printing). Anthony prayed for the book's return; the novice was so struck with remorse that he returned the book and re-entered the friary. The story circulated widely in the Franciscan world, and the patronage of lost objects, then of lost souls and of those who have lost their way, settled on Anthony by popular acclaim and was eventually formalized by liturgical practice.⁷

The attribute of the infant Jesus in Anthony's iconography commemorates a vision attested in his hagiography, in which the Christ Child appeared to him while he was reading and embraced him as he prayed. The image of Anthony holding the Child Jesus is among the most widely reproduced in Catholic art from the seventeenth century onward and is the standard representation in modern Catholic devotional imagery.

Devotion and liturgical observance

The feast of Saint Anthony of Padua is celebrated on 13 June in the General Roman Calendar with the rank of memorial. In Portugal, where Anthony is the principal national saint and patron of Lisbon, his feast carries the rank of solemnity and is observed as a major civic and religious celebration. The Festival of Saint Anthony in Lisbon includes the famous Casamentos de Santo António (Saint Anthony's Weddings), a long-standing tradition in which couples are married in mass ceremonies on or around 13 June. In Padua, the Tredicina di Sant'Antonio (Thirteen Tuesdays devotion) culminates on the feast day with processions and the public veneration of the saint's relics, particularly the incorrupt tongue preserved in the Basilica of Saint Anthony.⁸

The Basilica of Saint Anthony in Padua, begun in 1232 immediately after the saint's canonization, is one of the major pilgrimage destinations of the Catholic world. Several million pilgrims visit annually, particularly in the period leading up to the feast and on the Tuesdays of the Thirteen Tuesdays devotion. The basilica houses the saint's tomb and his preserved relics.

A widespread popular practice associated with the saint is the Tuesday devotion to Saint Anthony. The custom dates to a thirteenth-century tradition that Anthony's funeral and burial occurred on a Tuesday, and that miracles particularly multiplied on Tuesdays in the period after his death. Many parishes hold Saint Anthony Masses or processions on Tuesdays, especially during the Tredicina, the thirteen Tuesdays of preparation for the 13 June feast.

The traditional iconography of Anthony shows him as a young man in the brown Franciscan habit, holding the Christ Child on a book of Scripture, often with a lily indicating his purity. He is sometimes depicted with a fish, recalling the tradition of the fish that came to listen to his preaching at Rimini, and sometimes with a mule kneeling before the Eucharist, recalling another miracle attested in his hagiography. His liturgical color on the feast is white, though local Portuguese practice may use red.

Prayers and novenas associated with Saint Anthony

The principal devotion to Saint Anthony in current Catholic practice is the Saint Anthony Novena, a nine-day prayer recited for intercession in cases of lost objects, lost souls, or specific intentions involving the poor and travelers. The novena is most commonly prayed in the nine days leading up to 13 June, but it is also widely prayed throughout the year and in conjunction with the Tuesday devotion.

A traditional brief prayer in popular Catholic culture is the rhymed petition:

Saint Anthony, Saint Anthony, please come around. Something is lost and cannot be found.

The petition is folkloric rather than liturgical and has no official Church promotion, but it remains one of the most widely known short prayers in English-speaking Catholic devotion. More formally, Catholics pair Saint Anthony devotions with the Our Father, the Hail Mary, and the Memorare. The Glory Be is traditionally added at the conclusion of any prayer to the saint.

For broader theological context, see the Communion of Saints for the doctrinal grounding of intercessory prayer through the canonized, Doctor of the Church for the theological status that places Anthony among the Church's universal teachers, and the Joyful Mysteries of the Rosary, where the Christ Child Anthony is said to have received in vision is the same Child whose Nativity the Rosary commemorates.

Sources

Footnotes

1. Catholic Encyclopedia (1907), "Anthony of Padua," available at newadvent.org. Butler's Lives of the Saints, June 13 entry (1894 edition, public domain), on the early biographical record. ↩

2. Butler's Lives of the Saints, June 13 entry. The motivation of the Moroccan martyrs is treated also in the Vita Prima of Saint Anthony, an early Franciscan biography composed within decades of the saint's death. ↩

3. Catholic Encyclopedia (1907), "Anthony of Padua," on Anthony's preaching against the Albigensian and Cathar heresies in Languedoc and Lombardy. Butler's Lives, June 13 entry, on his theological lectures at Bologna and Montpellier. ↩

4. Vita Prima Sancti Antonii (anonymous, c. 1232), preserved in the Acta Sanctorum under June 13. The popular cry at his death is recorded in the early Franciscan chronicles. ↩

5. Pope Gregory IX, Cum Dicat Dominus (canonization bull, 30 May 1232). The interval between Anthony's death on 13 June 1231 and his canonization on 30 May 1232 is the shortest in the recorded history of the canonization process. Available in summary in the Bullarium Franciscanum. ↩

6. Pope Pius XII, Exulta Lusitania (apostolic letter, 16 January 1946), declaring Saint Anthony of Padua a Doctor of the Church with the title Doctor Evangelicus. Available at vatican.va. ↩

7. Acta Sanctorum, June 13 entry, on the recovery of the lost psalter at Bologna and the development of the patronage of lost things. The narrative is preserved in multiple early Franciscan sources. ↩

8. General Roman Calendar, current edition. The Portuguese liturgical calendar elevates the feast of Saint Anthony to solemnity. The Tredicina tradition is treated in the Atti della Basilica del Santo, the historical archives of the Basilica of Saint Anthony in Padua. ↩