[2] The hagiographic account on the life of Saint Anthony of Rome is only known since the second half of the 16th century.

It claims that Anthony was born in Rome in 1067 to a Greek Orthodox family, and became a monk there.

[1] After the persecution of Eastern Orthodox believers started, he left the city and made a home at the seashore, and according to his legend, a storm started which lifted the stone on which he was praying, which carried him to a shore near the Russian city of Novgorod.

[2] It has been reported that the monastery church was consecrated by Anthony not in 1119, but that he was made hegumen only in 1131–1132, immediately after Niphont was installed as the bishop of Novgorod.

This long delay is unclear; presumably it was related to some frictions between Novgorodian church hierarchs.