Anthony of Padua

Anthony of Padua, known in his native Portugal as António de Lisboa, was born Fernando Martins de Bulhões in Lisbon in 1195. Traditional accounts describe his family as noble and well connected in the Portuguese capital. He received his first education at the cathedral school of Lisbon. While still a young man he entered the Augustinian Canons Regular, joining the house of São Vicente de Fora outside the city walls and later transferring to the monastery of Santa Cruz at Coimbra, then the principal intellectual center of the kingdom. At Santa Cruz he spent roughly eight to ten years in study of the Bible and of the Church Fathers and was ordained to the priesthood. The earliest surviving life, composed soon after his death and known as the Assidua, already presents him as a man of learning and of austere personal life.

In 1220 the bodies of five Franciscan friars who had been killed in Morocco were brought to Coimbra. Their example led Fernando to seek admission to the Order of Friars Minor. He received the Franciscan habit and the name Anthony, taken from the dedication of a small Franciscan hermitage. He obtained leave to go as a missionary to Morocco, but illness ended that journey almost at once. On the return voyage a storm carried his ship to Sicily. He then traveled north and is generally thought to have been present at a Franciscan chapter in the region of Assisi in 1221. Unrecognized as a scholar, he was sent to live in obscurity at the hermitage of Montepaolo near Forlì. In 1222, at an ordination ceremony in Forlì, the expected preacher failed to appear and Anthony was asked to speak; the sermon revealed his theological training and rhetorical power and changed the course of his life.

From that point the order employed him as a preacher and as a lector in theology. Saint Francis of Assisi, according to a letter preserved in Franciscan tradition, gave him permission to teach theology to the friars provided that the spirit of prayer not be extinguished. Anthony preached against Cathar and other heterodox movements in northern Italy and in Languedoc, earning in later memory the title Hammer of Heretics. He taught at houses in Bologna and elsewhere and became famous for sermons that wove Scripture, allegory, and moral exhortation in a style accessible to large urban crowds. Hagiographical tradition credits him with many miracles during his lifetime, including a sermon preached to fishes at Rimini when heretics would not listen, a mule that knelt before the consecrated Host, the recovery of a stolen book of psalms, and numerous healings. In 1230 and 1231 he was based at Padua. His Lenten preaching there in 1231 was remembered for its effect on public morals, usury, and the reconciliation of enemies. Worn out by work and by dropsy, he retired to a woodland cell at Camposampiero built for him by a local noble. When death approached he asked to be taken back to Padua, but he got only as far as the Poor Clares' convent at Arcella, where he died on 13 June 1231.

He was buried at the church of Santa Maria Mater Domini in Padua. Pope Gregory IX, who had known the Franciscan movement from its beginnings, canonized Anthony on 30 May 1232 at the cathedral of Spoleto, after an inquiry into miracles at the tomb. Construction of the great Basilica of Saint Anthony soon followed. His relics, including a tongue described as incorrupt, remain there and have made Padua one of the principal pilgrimage centers of Europe. Devotion to him as finder of lost articles and helper of the poor spread rapidly through the later Middle Ages and remains strong in Portugal, Brazil, Italy, and many other countries. In 1946 Pope Pius XII proclaimed him a Doctor of the Church with the title Doctor Evangelicus, in recognition of his sermons and of his biblical preaching.