Anthony the Great (Ancient Greek: Ἀντώνιος ὁ Μέγας Antónios ho̅ Me̅́gas; Arabic: القديس أنطونيوس الكبير; Latin: Antonius; Coptic: Ⲁⲃⲃⲁ Ⲁⲛⲧⲱⲛⲓ; c. 12 January 251 – 17 January 356) was a Christian monk from Egypt, revered since his death as a saint.

His feast day is celebrated on 17 January among the Eastern Orthodox and Catholic churches and on Tobi 22 in the Coptic calendar.

The biography of Anthony's life by Athanasius of Alexandria helped to spread the concept of Christian monasticism, particularly in Western Europe via its Latin translations.

In the past, many such afflictions, including ergotism, erysipelas, and shingles, were referred to as Saint Anthony's fire.

The Latin translation helped the Life become one of the best-known works of literature in the Christian world, a status it would hold through the Middle Ages.

[9] Translated into several languages, it became something of a "best seller" in its day and played an important role in the spreading of the ascetic ideal in Eastern and Western Christianity.

Shortly thereafter, he decided to follow the gospel exhortation in Matthew 19: 21, "If you want to be perfect, go, sell what you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasures in heaven."

Anthony gave away some of his family's lands to his neighbors, sold the remaining property, and donated the funds to the poor.

There were already ascetic hermits (the Therapeutae), and loosely organized cenobitic communities were described by the Jewish philosopher Philo of Alexandria in the 1st century AD as long established in the harsh environment of Lake Mareotis and in other less accessible regions.

Philo opined that "this class of persons may be met with in many places, for both Greece and barbarian countries want to enjoy whatever is perfectly good.

[19][20] According to Athanasius, the devil fought Anthony by afflicting him with boredom, laziness, and the phantoms of women, which he overcame by the power of prayer, providing a theme for Christian art.

There it was that the Life records those strange conflicts with demons in the shape of wild beasts, who inflicted blows upon him, and sometimes left him nearly dead.

After fifteen years of this life, at the age of thirty-five, Anthony determined to withdraw from the habitations of men and retire in absolute solitude.

He was at times visited by pilgrims, whom he refused to see; but gradually a number of would-be disciples established themselves in caves and in huts around the mountain.

[21]For five or six years he devoted himself to the instruction and organization of the great body of monks that had grown up around him; but then he once again withdrew into the inner desert that lay between the Nile and the Red Sea, near the shore of which he fixed his abode on a mountain (Mount Colzim) where still stands the monastery that bears his name, Der Mar Antonios.

Anthony is said to have spoken to those of a spiritual disposition, leaving the task of addressing the more worldly visitors to Macarius.

[4] Some of the stories included in Anthony's biography are perpetuated now mostly in paintings, where they give an opportunity for artists to depict their more lurid or bizarre interpretations.

Many artists, including Martin Schongauer, Hieronymus Bosch, Joos van Craesbeeck, Dorothea Tanning, Max Ernst, Leonora Carrington and Salvador Dalí, have depicted these incidents from the life of Anthony; in prose, the tale was retold and embellished by Gustave Flaubert in The Temptation of Saint Anthony.

[29] While traveling through the desert, Anthony first found the centaur, a "creature of mingled shape, half horse half-man", whom he asked about directions.

The creature tried to speak in an unintelligible language, but ultimately pointed with his hand the way desired, and then ran away and vanished from sight.

[30] Anthony found next the satyr, "a manikin with hooked snout, horned forehead, and extremities like goats's feet."

We pray you in our behalf to entreat the favor of your Lord and ours, who, we have learnt, came once to save the world, and 'whose sound has gone forth into all the earth.'"

[4] During the Middle Ages, Anthony, along with Quirinus of Neuss, Cornelius and Hubertus, was venerated as one of the Four Holy Marshals in the Rhineland.

[36][37][38] Though Anthony himself did not organize or create a monastery, a community grew around him based on his example of living an ascetic and isolated life.

The sanctuary of San Antonio Abad is one of the oldest temples in the Canary Islands, founded shortly after the completion of the conquest of the archipelago.