St Antony was born at Lisbon, in 1195 (according to the traditional dating). His family house was probably on the site of the present S. António da Sé church, just west of the Cathedral where he was baptised with the name Fernando. An early source calls his father a ‘miles’, that is, probably, a cavaleiro vilão, possibly the son of one of the crusader-knights settled near Lisbon after its conquest some half a century earlier, with a farm in the country and a house in the town His early education was at the Cathedral school, where he would have learned the elements of grammar and rhetoric and the other liberal arts. The simple yet elegant Latin style of his Sermones is good evidence of a sound foundation. Around 1210 he entered the Augustinian monastery of São Vicente da Fora, just outside the city to the east. Here he would have been instructed in the Rule of St Augustine, his teachers probably using the ‘De institutione novitiorum’ of Hugh of St Victor, and at least some Biblical and theological studies. He would also have been trained in the Liturgy, singing the Office daily with the canons. Possibly now, or later at Coimbra, he first heard and sang some of the Sequences of Adam of St Victor, which he later cited, and almost certainly it was here that he first came across the poems of Ovid which he was to quote in his sermons. After two years, finding that he was too accessible to his family and friends, Fernando (whom from now on I will refer to as Antony) asked to be transferred to the monastery of Santa Cruz at Coimbra. It may be, too, that he considered this a better place for the academic life to which he was evidently suited.

The School at Coimbra had some eminent Masters and, apparently, a voluminous library. The monastery had been founded in 1132. Da Gama Caeiro has shown that during the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries several religious had attended the Paris Schools and obtained the licentia docendi. Which schools these were is not known, but as the statutes of Santa Cruz (1162) required members of the community to stay in houses of the Order when away from Coimbra, it is likely that at Paris they resided at the abbey of St Victor. If any went in the first days of Santa Cruz, they could have heard the lectures of some of the most famous Victorines (though Hugh died in 1141), such as Andrew of St Victor (before he became Abbot of Wigmore), Achard (before he became Bishop of Avranches in 1161), and Richard of St Victor. Masters of that generation would not have taught Antony, but they might well have established a Victorine tradition at Santa Cruz. Antony’s teachers would have been in Paris around 1200. In 1190 Sancho I had given money to pay for the education of canons in the Paris schools. Prior João and Canon Raimondo are two known names, and they were still active in 1228. At Paris, they could have been contemporaries of Thomas Gallus, of whose association with Antony more will be said below. Of Antony at this period the earliest biography says:

We can deduce the authors that Antony studied from his later Sermones, and confirmation is given by the known contents of the Coimbra library: The Glossa Ordinaria et Interlinearea, the Historia Scholastica, St Gregory’s Moralia in Job and Homiliae super Ezechiele, the Sermons of St Augustine, were all available, along with some Bede, and various scientific works, and the Benjamin Minor of Richard of St Victor. The strong Cistercian influence in Portugal explains his familiarity with the writings of St Bernard, who had been dead for little more than half a century.

How great, and of what kind, was the Victorine influence upon Antony? The question has been discussed by, for instance, J. Châtillon and A. Pompei, who have been inclined to see such influence in terms of the content of Victorine teaching. However, explicit references to Victorine authors in Antony’s writings are relatively few, and he does not seem to pursue the well-known Victorine interest in the literal sense of the Scriptures . Perhaps we should look for Victorine influence in a less explicit way. Mary Carruthers has noted both the general importance of memory-training in the Middle Ages, and the particular role of Hugh of St Victor in this regard. It is reasonable to suppose that the Coimbran masters who had studied in Paris brought back and employed the teaching and learning techniques they had met there, and that this Victorine methodology helped to shape the school of Coimbra. If Antony was already naturally endowed with a powerful memory, the mnemonic techniques of the Victorine School will have sharpened that aptitude. When we come to examine Antony’s own methodology in the Sermones, we should bear this background in mind.

There is another point in his life when Antony may have felt Victorine influence. At some time (either before his mission in France, or after his return) Antony was in contact with Thomas Gallus, Abbot of Vercelli. Thomas was an Augustinian canon, trained in Paris among the Victorines, and in all probability a contemporary there of some of Antony’s Coimbra masters; he may even have overlapped with Innocent III. He was invited, around 1218, by Cardinal Bicchieri to found a new Augustinian monastery in Italy, at Vercelli. He was author of a Commentary on Isaiah, in his latter life had a particular interest in the writings of the pseudo-Dionysius. The precise date and circumstances of Antony’s contact with Thomas are controverted; however, some years later, in one of his writings on the ‘Areopagite’, completed in 1244, Thomas refers to Antony in the context of the holiness and learning suitable for bishops and others who treat of divine mysteries:

This would seem to show that Antony did not cease to study when he became an itinerant preacher. He continued to stock his memory with new information as opportunity offered. The words ‘familiariter expertus sum’ imply a reasonably close acquaintance. Antony was not particularly versed in secular learning (at least by Paris standards) but was quick to understand and tenacious in remembering sacred doctrine. In communicating what he had learnt, he was eminent in both charity and clarity, a ‘burning and shining lamp’ like John the Baptist. What Thomas meant exactly by ‘mistica theologia’ we are not sure. There are no signs in Antony’s works that he shared Thomas’s interest in Dionysius. However, Théry has pointed to another of Thomas’s ‘heroes’, Richard of St Victor, and Châtillon has pointed out that while Antony quotes some quite long passages from Richard (though not by name), these are not from works found in the inventories of the S. Vicente and Santa Cruz libraries. Also, Antony’s citations from Richard are more numerous and longer in the Festival sermons than in the Sunday Sermons. He therefore concludes (reasonably, as it seems to me) that somewhere between the composition of the two sets Antony had access to a library containing works by Richard. He suggests that Thomas Gallus’ eulogy of Antony was prompted by the latter’s ready interest in an author he had just been introduced to.

The long and eventful Papacy of Innocent III formed the background to Antony’s early life. Antony’s later use of his Sermons- he quotes them more often than the works of any other of his contemporaries, once even by name- suggests admiration for the great Pope and a willingness to follow his lead in Church reform. It is said that some of his masters accompanied the bishop of Coimbra to the Fourth Lateran Council. Antony would have been well aware of the need for Church reform and the lines along which it was being promoted by the Papacy. An important part of Innocent’s strategy was the encouragement of preaching, and the parallel foundation of the Franciscan and Dominican Orders served to promote this aim. In 1209, Francis of Assisi had received verbal approval of his way of life from Pope Innocent. By 1217 there were Franciscans in Portugal, including a small community at Coimbra, at S. António dos Olivais, on the hill north of the city. The friars would seek alms from the monastery of Santa Cruz, and ‘Although they were not learned men, they taught the substance of the Scriptures with their actions.’

Part of Francis’s (and Innocent’s) vision was the mission to Islam. After Innocent’s death, Francis sent friars westwards to Morocco, and travelled himself to Egypt and Palestine. Although he himself was well received, being recognised as a holy man, Jacques de Vitry (bishop of Acre) noted that the preaching of the friars was sometimes confrontational:

This was the fate of those sent to the West; they passed through Portugal to reach Muslim territory, but on arrival in Africa were quickly put to death (Jan 16th, 1220). Their bodies were retrieved, and by royal decree were given burial at Santa Cruz. It may be that Antony was already disillusioned with the political and factional division in the community, and that he compared it unfavourably with the simple life of the friars, but it was certainly this experience that finally inspired him to seek permission to become a friar, and to go and preach the Gospel to the Muslims. Early biographies stress his desire for martyrdom; but one may wonder whether another motive was also present in one brought up in Lisbon, where Christians, Jews and Muslims had lived together for centuries, and where Moorish merchants were still a familiar sight, even after the liberation of the city. Perhaps Antony felt that he had a better chance of converting the Moors, rather than antagonising them, than did the zealous but uneducated friars who had given their lives. It is likely that by this time he was already a priest, perhaps with the licentia docendi.

After the canonical formalities had been completed, but apparently without a new noviciate (Honorius III only made this compulsory in September 1220), Fernando became a friar, taking the name Antony after the patron saint of the community, and soon received permission to go to Africa; but on reaching Morocco he fell ill, and returning by sea was driven by storms as far as Sicily, from where he made his way to Assisi in time for the Chapter of Pentecost, 1221. This would seem to have been the famous ‘Chapter of the Mats’. According to the custom of the Order, all the friars who were able were supposed to assemble at the Church of St Mary of the Angels (the ‘Porziuncola’) near Assisi at Pentecost. On this occasion the numbers present were estimated to be between three and five thousand. When Francis had returned from the East in 1219, he had found controversy among the friars regarding the Rule- that is, the simple form of life approved by Pope Innocent. He had therefore been working on a longer and more detailed Rule, to be presented at this Chapter.

Francis was a sick man. He had already resigned his office in favour of Peter di Catanio, a trusted friend, but Peter had died untimely and instead Francis had chosen Elias of Cortona as his Vicar General, a man of very different stamp. The Rule of 1221 was criticized by leading friars, especially in relation to the observance of poverty, and in the event never received Papal approbation. It was replaced by the Rule of 1223, approved by the Bull ‘Solet Annuere’.

This, then, was Antony’s first experience of being among so many friars at once, and his first (and possibly only) sight of the founder. At the close of the Chapter, when all the other friars were assigned to Provinces, Antony found himself unassigned. He approached the Minister Provincial of upper Italy, Brother Graziano, and sought leave to accompany him. He did not reveal his knowledge of theology, only that he was a priest, and was sent to the hermitage of Montepaolo so that the brethren might have someone to celebrate Mass for them. Here he lived for nearly a year in obscurity, until in 1222, attending an ordination at Forlì, he was commanded to preach extempore, and his gifts and learning were manifested. The account of Antony’s first sermon as a Franciscan is as follows:

We note that ‘the superior had heard him speak Latin’; that is, presumably, not just when saying Mass or Office, but in actual conversation when there was no common vernacular. It was the local superior who was present; the ‘minister’ was informed shortly afterwards, leading to Antony’s first period of public preaching. From then on, he was constantly preaching in northern Italy.

To understand what happened next, it is necessary to go back a few years. Some members of the great Law School at Bologna had already been attracted by the Franciscan way of life, and we are told that one Doctor of Law, Giovanni da Sciacca, joined the friars while continuing to teach. The minister Provincial wished to establish a house of studies similar to that of the Dominicans; but when Francis visited Bologna and found that a certain building was called ‘the house of the friars’, he ordered all the friars out of it, including the sick. Only when Cardinal Ugolino, who was nearby, declared that the building belonged to him, were the friars allowed to return. Francis was in a dilemma. We have a vivid description of his own preaching in Bologna in 1222, but he must have realised that learned friars could hardly forget their learning, nor would the Church permit to preach those unfit to do so. Even in 1223, the Rule would prescribe that friars should preach only ‘of vice and virtue, punishment and glory’, but already the campaign against heresy required preachers who could match learned heretics on their own terms. It seems that it was Ugolino who persuaded Francis (how willingly we do not know) to allow the re-opening of the Studium at Bologna, and to permit those friars capable of it to receive proper theological training. One is bound to ask, was it Ugolino who brought Antony to Francis’ attention as a suitable Lector for the Studium? Ugolino had certainly been travelling in northern Italy during the time Antony was first gaining his reputation as a preacher, and it is therefore possible that they had met. Ugolino was a kinsman of Innocent III, and might well have found a rapport with the young friar who admired the great Pope: indeed, it may have been Ugolino who introduced Antony to Innocent’s Sermons. At all events, Francis commissioned Antony to teach theology to the brothers, the accepted text of his letter being

How did Antony fulfil the task laid upon him? Despite the claims of some, there seems little evidence that he undertook a course of lectures at Bologna or anywhere else. It is true that the Benignitas says:

The Vita Raimundina says:

and much later Bartholomew of Pisa, writing between 1385 and 1390 says:

However, it seems likely that these authors imagined Antony as occupying a position similar to that of lectors in their own times, when studies in the Order were more systematic. Antony’s own teaching ministry was probably much less formal. Not until 1230 was the official prohibition on doctrinal and scriptural preaching by the friars rescinded by Ugolino (by then Pope Gregory IX). We must bear this prohibition in mind when assessing the reason for the very practical and moral thrust of Antony’s teaching as revealed by his Sermones. Though qualified to treat Scriptural matters himself (and perhaps this is all that is implied by calling him the first ‘lector’ in the order), he had to prepare friars for a more limited range of preaching, at least for the moment, while equipping them for a possibly wider apostolate if and when this should be permitted. His first response to Francis’ commission, it seems, was to undertake an itinerant ministry that took him from northern Italy to central France. Was he finding out what sort of training was available in different places? Or was he merely widening and deepening his own experience of preaching, especially in regions affected by heresy? It is hard to say, especially in view of the difficulty of establishing an accurate chronology of his life between 1222 and 1226. The Assidua is silent, and later sources are fragmentary and anecdotal. The following outline has some plausibility, but cannot be regarded as established. In Lent, 1224, Antony seems to have preached at Vercelli, and the following September he seems to have set out for Provence. By Michaelmas he had reached Arles, in time to preach at the Provincial Chapter. This is well-attested, in fact it is recorded in Celano’s first ‘Life’ of St Francis, published in 1229 when Antony was still alive, and yet already able to be alluded to in the expectation that he would be well-known to all.

He went on to Montpelier, then subject to the King of Aragon, but did not remain long there, although later tradition speaks of him as the first lector of theology there. The Benignitas speaks of ‘tempore quo vir sanctus in Montepessulano legebat,’ and a fourteenth century preacher says, ‘fuit enim lector in Montepessulano, ut dicitur, primus’’ He moved on to Toulouse, the centre of Catharism and capital of Occitania, and remained there for perhaps three months, and in September 1225 he was appointed Guardian of the Friary at Puy-en-Valay, in the Auvergne. In November he attended the Synod at Bourges, which was attended by Papal Legates and resulted in the excommunication of Count Raymond VII (28th Jan, 1226); but all that is recorded of Antony’s address to the Synod is a rebuke to the Archbishop, Simon of Sully (‘tibi loquar, cornute- I’m talking to you in the mitre!’). He was elected Custos of Limoges, which entailed overseeing several friaries which he visited conscientiously. He founded a hermitage at Brive, where the friars might retreat after the example of Francis. Towards the end of 1226 news was received from Brother Elias that Francis had died, and a successor must be chosen the following Pentecost.

Our primary source of information about Antony’s time in France is the Vita written by the Franciscan bishop, Jean Rigauld. He bases himself largely on earlier lives, but includes some fourteen incidents not previously attested. He gives as his authority ‘brothers of proven virtue’ whom he had known personally when he first entered the Order. Rigauld was also familiar with Antony’s own writings, which he quotes directly at one point, linking Antony’s oral preaching with his written work:

Although Antony’s period in France is shrouded in uncertainty, it must have provided much of the experience of preaching which he was to distil in his Sermones. His position as Custos would have given him the opportunity to give theological teaching to the friars, and the same would be true when he became a Minister Provincial in Italy. Nevertheless, the commission ‘to teach theology to the friars’ was to be fulfilled not by formal lectures, but by what he and Rigauld call the Opus Dominicale.

Because Antony’s preaching and writing were conditioned, at least in part, by the need to combat error, something at least needs to be said at this point about contemporary issues. Religious dissent was not uncommon, because the official Church was enmeshed in the established social order, and was badly placed to remedy injustice and abuse. In effect, it was in a similar position to the religious establishment of Judaism at the time of Christ. Those who took the Gospel seriously could not but protest, and such protest came not only from the poor and dispossessed, but even from churchmen and theologians. It was often spread by wandering preachers of an ‘evangelical’ type, who varied from orthodox, through the merely eccentric, to definitely unorthodox. There were also ‘poverty movements’ reacting against the wealth and worldliness of the Church. Cistercianism itself had shared this ideal, as did the Franciscan movement later on. As an example of a movement on the fringes of heresy, we may take that instigated in Lyons by Valdès. Though he fell foul of the local episcopate, he met with some sympathy in Rome, and by the end of the century the ‘Poor Men of Lyons’ or ‘Waldenses’, together with the similar ‘Humiliati’ were numerous in southern France and northern Italy. Valdès’ own influence was in favour of moderation and reconciliation with the official Church; and Innocent III showed subtlety and understanding in dealing with the phenomenon, seeking to re-integrate it and bring it within the ambit of Canon Law. He allowed those who sought reconciliation to continue a corporate identity akin to a religious order; he permitted them to preach, even lay and married people, as long as they confined themselves to simple moral exhortation, and kept off theology and scriptural interpretation. In Italy at least this policy had a certain success, at least for a time, at the beginning of the thirteenth century . In the Midi and Lombardy Waldenses and Humiliati proved effective preachers against Catharism. Thus there were many who were only (I would say) ‘accidentally’ heretics, in that their zeal outstripped their education; and it was not only wise ecclesiastics such as Innocent who saw this, but even simple laymen such as Francis, who accordingly demanded of their followers a submissive loyalty to the Holy See. Francis was by no means alone- Italian hermits such as Giovanni Bruno and Pietro di Morrone also stressed the need for doctrinal authority.

Antony was entirely in sympathy with the contemporary movement for the reform of abuses in the Church. Time and again in his Sermones he is outspoken against corrupt prelates and religious, in a way that can seem astonishing to us. For instance, he follows Jacques de Vitry, Innocent III and others in quoting Isaiah 56.9ff:

and continues:

Comparing ‘soft-living prelates’ with bears, he says:

Monks and canons do not escape his sharp eye and pen:

There are many such passages, often with quite amusing analogies (the bad prelate is like ‘an ape on the roof’), and word-pictures of the behaviour of both clerics and worldly rulers. Thus, as I have said, Antony was a part of the ‘protest movement’ of his time.

Catharism was another matter, a threat to the Church of a very different kind than that posed by the failings of its own members. Whatever its origins, and the circumstances of its arrival in the West, it managed to root itself effectively in Occitania, and especially in the Toulouse region. A detailed survey of its doctrines would take us too far afield, but some summary is necessary. Madaulesees its theoretical origin in the Problem of Evil: if God is good, he cannot be responsible for evil, which must therefore derive from some other being. Catharism did not always follow a full-blooded Dualism of two equal and opposite Principles; often, the material world was regarded as the work of a Demiurge, or Sathanas, inferior to God. Souls are created by God (sometimes they are thought to be fallen angels), but they are imprisoned in material bodies from which they need deliverance. This is brought about by Christ, but a Christ very different from that of Catholicism. The Cathar Christ did not come to atone for sin by his sacrificial death; indeed he was not truly incarnate at all, but an Angel with the appearance of a body (so too was the Virgin Mary), who taught how we might be freed from the world of matter. Catharism rejected most of the Old Testament, whose God was the Demiurge, although it esteemed the Prophets who had a more spiritual teaching. Because of this, we shall see Antony stressing more than once the identity of the God of the Old and the God of the New Testament; for instance, he says:

Again, in reference to Christ’s words, ‘It is my Father that glorifieth me, of whom you say he is your God’ [Jn 6.54], he comments:

Cathar salvation was through knowledge; not a secret or esoteric knowledge, but knowledge of the Gospel and its moral teaching. The Lord’s prayer was used as a kind of ‘mantra’, and one sacrament, the ‘consolamentum’, administered by laying on of hands, was the key ritual. Those who received it were set apart as ‘perfect’, and obliged to abstain from meat and marriage. Only they could say the Lord’s Prayer and call God ‘Father’. Most ‘Believers’ (the ordinary faithful) put off this step until close to death; Raymund VI is said to have kept two ‘Perfect’ always at hand for this contingency. The ‘consolamentum’ resembled Catholic ordination as well as Baptism, requiring long preparation before, and conferring a quasi-clerical status afterwards. The ‘perfect’ always travelled in twos, and wore long black robes. The higher officers had the title ‘bishop’, and their sees were at Toulouse, Carcassonne, Albi and some other places. Though only the ‘perfect’ were obliged to continence, and though Catholic marriage was rejected, we should treat accusations of moral depravity among the believers with caution. They were supposed, in addition, to reject violence. It is not easy to disentangle the teachings of the Cathars, dependent as we are for the most part on the reports of those opposed to them, who were over-inclined to base themselves on what Augustine had written about the fourth century Manichees. The Cathar rejection of the material creation and much of the Scriptures made a common basis for discussion hard to find, and one feels that there was as little meeting of minds between Catholic and Cathar as there is nowadays between orthodox Christian and Jehovah’s Witness.

The Catholic response to Catharism was much fiercer than that to the movements mentioned earlier. St Bernard preached in southern France in the mid-twelfth century, with little success. Catharism was rife. By the end of the century the campaign against the ‘Albigensians’ had been given the formal status of a Crusade, involving the mobilization of temporal rulers (in particular the French monarchy) and resulting in a blurring of the boundaries between religious and political issues. Madaule’s verdict is that in the long run Papal policy worked ‘less to the profit of the Church than to the profit of the French monarchy.’ However, Antony’s period in France seems to have been during a lull in the anti-Cathar campaign. The main military campaign, under Simon de Montfort, had taken place after the assassination of the Papal Legate Pierre de Castelnau in 1208, and gradually ended with the deaths of Innocent (1216), de Montfort (1218), Count Raymond VI (1222) and King Philip Augustus (1223). All this while, Antony was at Santa Cruz. The establishment of the Inquisition would come about only after he was dead. Though Antony is characterised as a ‘Hammer of the Heretics’, in fact the general histories of the period have virtually nothing to say about him. What his actual success as a preacher may have been, we have to glean from a judicious reading of stories and anecdotes (often embroidered) that are not recorded until some years later.

The death of Francis seems to have set in motion the train of events that led Antony to write the Sermones. As Custos of Limoges, Antony had a voice in the election of a new Minister General, so he left Limoges in February 1227, travelling down the Rhône to Marseilles, and so by sea to Rome. Arriving at the end of Lent, he found that Pope Honorius had just died, and Cardinal Ugolino, that staunch friend of Francis, had already been elected as Pope Gregory IX. The Pope received him with kindness and asked him to preach to the pilgrims in Holy Week. A few weeks later, in Assisi, the Chapter was held at which John Parenti was elected Minister General. Antony was chosen as Minister Provincial for northern Italy, the Province including Bologna and Rimini. Here he preached, and around this time seems to have composed his ‘Sermons for Sundays’- apparently at Padua, which he visited for the first time in 1229.

Antony was still in office, then, when he wrote the Sermones Dominicales. During the rest of the year he visited Ferrara and Bologna, and spent Advent in Florence, returning there the following Lent. He visited his Province, including Milan and Mantua, centres of Waldensianism. In May 1230 he returned to Assisi for the re-burial of St Francis (canonized in 1228) in the new Basilica built by Brother Elias. The Pope is supposed to have wished to make Antony a Cardinal, but Antony was already a sick man. (There are earlier reports of his illness in France, where he had to spend time in the infirmary of the Abbey of Solignac, in the Limousin.) In this final period he seems to have suffered from some kind of dropsy or oedema, resulting in a swelling or ‘bulkiness’ of the body. He visited Mount Alverna, site of Francis’ stigmatization, and probably Rome again. He returned to Padua in the Autumn, having asked to be relieved of the office of Provincial. At the instigation of Cardinal Conti, later Pope Alexander IV, he spent the winter ordering his ‘Sermons for Festivals’.

The statements of the Vita Prima, composed only a year after Antony’s death by a friar who had been associated with him in his Paduan ministry, seem clear enough. However, there has recently been some controversy regarding the time and place of the composition of the Sermones, which we must consider. R. Manselli has argued that Antony wrote them as a canon of Coimbra, for a Portuguese clerical audience. He retained them substantially unchanged, to be published in Italy. His main arguments are drawn from a supposed lack of Franciscan reference: there is no mention of Francis himself, nor any ‘rhapsodisation’ of Holy Poverty. Manselli’s view has found little acceptance, and has been replied to by, for instance, A. Rigon. Beryl Smalley has pointed out that:

Antony had had little personal acquaintance with Francis. He had been drawn to the Order by the example of the Coimbra friars, not by Francis himself in his first fervour. The first written ‘Life’ of Francis (Celano’s) was only available in 1229, after the Sermones Dominicales had been written. This seems quite sufficient to explain Antony’s failure to mention Francis. Regarding poverty, there are numerous passages praising it, and occasionally expressions (such as ‘mater paupercula’ for the Blessed Virgin) which have a thoroughly Franciscan ring to them.

R. Huber has suggested Limoges as the place of composition, around 1226, and says that the sermons were only ‘polished’ at Padua. It is true that Rigauld refers to the composition of the Sermones in these terms, after an explicit mention of the year 1230:

However, the words ‘diu ante’ are vague, and though ‘Padua’ refers grammatically only to the Sanctorales, he does not suggest any other place for the composition of the Dominicales. With his interest in and knowledge of the Limoges region, Rigauld would surely have been more explicit if he had known any tradition of a Limousin origin for Antony’s writings.

Nevertheless, the Opus Dominicale is a considerable work, and it is difficult to imagine it being entirely composed in the relatively short time available after Antony’s return to Italy. Even if the final redaction of the work was completed at Padua, it is not unreasonable to suppose that Antony had begun to compose it, at least in his mind, some time before. C. McCarron, following F. Costa, and basing his arguments on what is known of the liturgical calendars of the period, suggests the following dating:

1223: Sermons from Septuagesima to Easter;

1223/4: Easter Octave to Pentecost;

1224: 1st to 12th Sundays after Pentecost;

1226: 13th to 24th Sundays after Pentecost;

1227: Advent to Epiphany.

I do not think the evidence available is strong enough to sustain such a detailed scheme; and I shall argue in Chapter IV that the arrangement of the post-Pentecost sermons is ideal rather than reflecting any particular year or years. However, as we shall see in Chapter V, internal evidence does suggest some breaks in composition, between the pre-Easter and post-Easter sermons, and even more clearly between Pentecost and the post-Pentecost sermons. This may well reflect the disruption in Antony’s life following the death of Francis, and the return to Italy. Certainty is probably unattainable, but a plausible dating would be to place the sermons from Septuagesima to Pentecost prior to 1226, probably at Limoges; with the remaining sermons after 1226, probably at Padua.

There are occasional touches that hint at the contemporary background. For instance, it is known that at the very end of his life Antony went to intercede with Ezzelino, son-in-law of Frederick II, who was threatening the Padua region. The following passage cannot refer to this occasion, but it may well indicate some other time when Antony was called to act as a peacemaker. Comparing a tyrant to a ‘basilisk’, Antony writes:

Does this reflect an experience of his own, the tyrant’s associates hiding, and the rich people who have commissioned the friar to act as mediator saying, ‘You speak to him. We don’t dare to.’? Surely it can only have been as a friar, not a canon of Coimbra, that Antony could have met such a situation; and (to my mind) it sounds more like Italy under Frederick II than the relatively orderly France. At any rate, on the occasion we do know of, Antony confronted Ezzelino and gained a humble reply which, however, proved to be insincere. All the same, Antony received a hero’s welcome in Padua. >From February until Pentecost, he led another Mission in Padua, at the end of which he retired to a dwelling a few miles from the city. On Friday, June 13th, he was taken ill at the mid-day meal, and asked to be taken back to Padua. Too weak to walk, he was put in a cart, but just outside the city he was so ill that he had to be taken to the house of the Poor Clares, where he was anointed and died peacefully. An unseemly dispute arose regarding his burial, but his funeral took place in Padua itself on June 17th. Less than a year later, at Spoleto, the Pope canonized him. Legend says that as the bells of Spoleto rang out in Italy, those of Lisbon rang of their own accord, though the citizens knew not why until two months later.

Copyright in this Dissertation belongs to the author, S.R.P.Spilsbury