Anthony

Anthony the Roman (Antoniy Rimlyanin) was a twelfth-century monk and abbot who founded the Antoniev Monastery in Novgorod, one of the important monastic houses of medieval Novgorod Land. He is venerated as a saint in the Eastern Orthodox Church. Contemporary Novgorod chronicles confirm his historical existence as the founder of a monastery dedicated to the Nativity of the Theotokos, whose stone katholikon was begun in 1117 and completed in 1119, making it among the earliest masonry churches in the region. Beyond these chronicle notices, almost all details of his biography derive from a Life composed in the sixteenth century, a text that mixes possible memory of a foreign-born monk with clearly legendary motifs.

According to that later hagiography, Anthony was born in Rome to wealthy parents who adhered to the Orthodox faith. After their death he distributed his property, received the monastic tonsure, and lived as a hermit on a coastal rock. In the early twelfth century a storm is said to have broken the rock from the shore, carrying him across the sea until he came ashore on the Volkhov River near Novgorod on the eve of the Nativity of the Theotokos. There he was received by Bishop Nikita of Novgorod. A barrel containing the remainder of his gold supposedly floated after him from Rome, enabling him to purchase land from local people and to begin construction of a monastery. Historians treat the Roman origin, the floating rock, and the miraculous barrel as legendary; the epithet “the Roman” may indicate some genuine Western or Latin connection, or it may be a later invention. No independent eleventh- or twelfth-century source confirms a Roman birth or a precise year of birth.

As abbot, Anthony governed the new community, was ordained to the priesthood, and established a cenobitic life. The monastery he founded became a significant spiritual and cultural center of Novgorod, later known for its scriptorium and for the distinctive architecture of its early twelfth-century cathedral, which still stands. The Life states that he died on 3 August 1147 after designating a successor named Andrew, and that he was buried in the monastery church. His relics were reported uncovered and found incorrupt in the late sixteenth century (commonly dated 1597), after which his cult spread more widely in the Russian Church. He is commemorated on 3 August (the day of his repose) and on 17 January (the uncovering of his relics).

Little can be said with certainty about Anthony’s inner life, theological views, or precise origins. He belongs to the generation of monastic founders who, in the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries, established houses on the northern periphery of Rus’. The combination of a historically attested building campaign with a richly embroidered later vita is typical of Novgorodian saints of this period. Modern scholarship therefore accepts Anthony as a real abbot and ktetor of the early twelfth century while remaining agnostic about the Italian birth and the miraculous voyage that gave him his familiar epithet.