Antony the Great

What is told here of Antony comes from the Life that Athanasius wrote soon after his death. It says that he was an Egyptian of a well-to-do Christian family, that he could not bear schooling, and that at about eighteen or twenty, after his parents died, he heard the Gospel read in church and gave his land and goods away (Athanasius, Life of Antony 1–3). He lived for nearly twenty years shut in a deserted fort across the river, by tradition at Pispir, and came out to find himself the teacher of others (Athanasius, Life of Antony 12–14). During the persecution under Maximinus he went to Alexandria to serve the confessors (Athanasius, Life of Antony 46). He then withdrew to the “inner mountain”, three days’ journey into the desert, which tradition identifies with Mount Colzim (Athanasius, Life of Antony 49–51).

Athanasius says that he died there at the age of a hundred and five (Athanasius, Life of Antony 89–92). Jerome’s Chronicle puts his death in 356 (Jerome, Chronicle AD 356), which gives a birth about 251.