Guercino, Sant’Antonio with the child, 1656, private collection
He is one of the most loved and revered saints of Christianity. The Basilica of Padua, where its mortal remains are located, is the goal of millions of pilgrims from all over the world every year. In 1946 Pius XII proclaimed him Doctor of the Church.
He is patron of poor and hungry. His emblem is the white lily with which he is depicted. His miracles in life and after death they inspired many artists including Titianwhich painted the cycle of Miracles of Sant’Antonio da Padova in the School of the Saint in Padua, e Donatello. Antonio was canonized the following year his death by Pope Gregory IX.
The great basilica dedicated to him stands near the convent of Santa Maria Mater Domini. Thirty -two years after his death, during the translation of his remains, San Bonaventura da Bagnoregio He found the language of the saint uncorrupted, and is kept in the treasure chapel at the Basilica of the Venetian city of which he is patron. Sant’Antonio is also the patron of the Portugalof Brazilfrom the Custody of the Holy Land And of numerous cities in Italy, Spain and the United States.
The origins and entry into the Augustinian order
Fernando di Buglione was born in Lisbon on August 15, 1195 From a noble Portuguese family descending from the cruciate Goffredo di Buglione. At fifteen he was novice in the Monastery of San Vincenzo in Lisbon, then moved to the monastery of Santa Croce di Coimbra, the largest cultural center of Portugal belonging to the order of the regular canons of Sant’Agostino, where he studied science and theology with excellent masters, preparing for the priestly ordination he will receive in 1219, at 24 years old.
When they seemed to have to travel the career of the theologian and the philosopher, He decides to leave the order of the regular canons of Sant’Agostino because he was able to bear the political handling between the regular Augustinian canons and King Alfonso II, by anegoning to a religiously more severe life.
The choice of the Franciscans and the mission in Morocco
His desire is realized when, in 1220, they come to Coimbra The bodies of five Franciscan friars beheaded in Morocco, where they had gone to preach by order of Francesco d’Assisi. When the friars of the convent of Monte Olivares arrive to welcome the remains of the martyrs, Fernando confides them to be his aspiration to live in the spirit of the Gospel.
Obtained permission from the Franciscan provincial road and the Augustinian priorFernando enters the Romitorio of minors and immediately makes a religious profession, changing the name in Antonio in honor of the abbot, Egyptian hermit.
By anegoning the martyrdom, he immediately asks and gets missionary to leave in Morocco. It is towards the end of 1220 that he embarks on a sailing ship directed to Africa, but during the journey he is hit by malarial fever and forced to bed. The disease lasted and in spring his companions convince him to return to his homeland to cure themselves. According to other versions, Antonio never stopped in Morocco: he ill who had just left Lisbon, the ship was driven by a storm directly in Messina, Sicily. Curated by the Franciscans of the city, in two months heals.
San Francesco d’Assisi and Sant’Antonio di Padova in a fresco by Simone Martini
The meeting with San Francesco
In Pentecost it is invited to General chapter of Assisi, He arrives with other Franciscans in Santa Maria degli Angeli where he has the opportunity to listen to Francesco, but not to know him personally. The Provincial Minister of the Order for Northern Italy offers him to move to Montepaolo, near Forlì, Where you need a priest who tells the mass for the six friars residing in the hermitage composed of a church, some cell and a vegetable garden.
For about a year and a half lives in contemplation and penance, carrying out the most humble tasks by personal desire, until he has to go down with the confreres in the city, to assist in the church of San Mercuriale to the ordination of new priests of the order and where he preaches in the presence of a vast audience also composed of notable notable.
Preacher against heresies
Antonio is assigned the role of preacher and teacher by Francesco himself, who writes a letter to him by recommending him, however, not to lose the spirit of prayer. He begins to preach in Romagna, he continues in northern Italy, he uses his word to fight heresy (the hammer of the heretics is also called), a catara in Italy and Albigese in France, where he will arrive in 1225.
Between 1223 and this last date it lays the foundations of the Franciscan theological school, teaching in the Bolognese convent of Santa Maria della Pugliola. When he is in France, between 1225 and 1227, he takes on a government position as a custodian of Limoges.
While visiting Arles, he told him Francesco who had just received the stigmata. As a custodian he participated in 1227 in the General Chapter of Assisi where the new Minister of the Order, Francesco in the meantime is dead, is Giovanni Parenti, That provincial of Spain who welcomed him years earlier among the minors and who appoints him provincial of northern Italy.
Proponent of the “reform” for insolvent debtors
Antonio opens new houses, visits the convents to personally get to know all the friars, check the Clarisse and the third order, goes to Florence, until he sets the residence in Padua and in two months he writes the Sunday sermons.
In Padua he gets the Reform of the republican statutory code Thanks to which an insolvent but without fault debtor, after giving up all the assets it cannot also be imprisoned.
Not only that, he keeps his head in Ezzelino da Romano, who was nicknamed the ferocious and who in a single day had the massacre Padovani massacre that were hostile to him, because they are free the imprisoned Guelphs. Meanwhile, he writes the sermons for the feasts of the saints, his favorite themes are the precepts of faith, moral and virtue, the love of God and pity towards the poor, prayer and humility, mortification And he lashes out against pride and lust, the avarice and wear of which he is bitter enemy.
papal preacher and mystical visions
Convinced assertor of the dogma of the hiring of the Virgin, at the request of Pope Gregory IX In 1228 he held the sermons of the week of Lent and from this Pope he is called “Ark of the Testament”. It is said that the sermons were held in front of a cosmopolitan crowd and that everyone heard him speak in his own language.
For three years he travels without savings, he is tired, suffers from asthma and is swollen for hydropysoia, he returns to Padua and his sermons are memorable for Lent of 1231.
To rest, he retires to Camposampieronear Padua, where Count Tiso, who had given a hermitage to the friars, makes him set up a room among the branches of a large walnut tree. From here Antonio I preach, but also goes down to confess and in the evening he returns to his cell. A night that had come to check how Antonio himself, Count Tiso is attracted by a great light that comes out of his refuge and witnesses the visit that the Child Jesus makes to the Saint.
Death and dispute of the remains
At noon on June 13, it was a Friday, Antonio feels missing and prays the confreres to take him to Padua, where he wants to die. Loaded on a chariot drawn by Buoi, on the outskirts of the city his condition aggravated to the point that he decides to hospitalize him in the nearby Convent of the Arcella where he dies in the evening.
It is said that while he was about to spite he had the vision of the Lord and that at the time of his death, in the city of Padua, heners of children took to run and to shout that the saint had died. In the following days his death, “intestine wars” are unleashed between the convent where he had died who wanted to keep the remains and that of Santa Maria Mater Domini, his convent, where he would have liked to die.
During the dispute, even popular disorders occur, finally the provincial father decides that the body is brought to Mater Domini. As soon as the body reaches the destination, the miracles begin, some documented by witnesses.
Tiziano, miracle of the newborn, 1511, school of the saint, Padua
The miracles operated alive
Even in life Antonio had worked miracles such as exorcisms, prophecies, healings, Including the reattach one leg, or a foot, cut, made the heart of an avaro find in a treasure chest, to a woman he raised her hair that her jealous husband had torn her, made harmful poisoned foods, preached to the fish, forced a mule to kneel in front of the host, was seen in several places at the same time, by someone even with the child in the arms.
