Antony, ST, surnamed THE GREAT, or ANTONY OF THEBES, the father of monachism, was born about the year 251 A.D., at Koma, near Heraklea, in Upper Egypt. His parents were both wealthy and pious, and bestowed on him a religious education. Having sold his possessions, and distributed the proceeds among the poor, he withdrew into the wilderness, where he disciplined himself in all those austerities which have hallowed his memory in the Catholic Church, and made him the model of monastic life. When 30 years of age, he penetrated farther into the desert, and took up his abode in an old ruin on the top of a hill, where he spent twenty years in the most rigorous seclusion; but, in 305 he was persuaded to leave this retreat by the prayers of numerous anchorites, who wished to live under his direction. He now founded a monastery, at first only a group of separate and scattered cells near Memphis and Arsinoë; but which, nevertheless, may be considered the origin of cenobite life. After a visit to Alexandria in 311, he returned to his lonely ruin. In 355 the venerable hermit, then over a hundred years old, made a journey to Alexandria to dispute with the Arians; but feeling his end approaching, he retired to his desert home, where he died, 356 A.D. Athanasius wrote his Life. His festival is kept on the 17th January.
ST ANTONY'S FIRE was the name given to a pestilential epidemic, also called the sacred fire, which in 1089 swept off great numbers, especially in France; it being held that many sufferers had been cured through the intercession of St Antony, especially by prayer before his relics. The disease was commonly supposed to be erysipelas, which usurped the name of St Antony's Fire; but possibly it was a form of Raphania (q.v.), caused by eating ergot of wheat or rye. See works quoted at EPIDEMICS; Häser's work (Jena, 1867); and Creighton's History of Epidemics in Britain (1891).