While contemplating global despair, dullness of feeling, and how we must learn austerity to adapt and survive, I thought of how the austerity required to make art with meaning deeper than its surface is much like the perseverance of saints. I looked for writings on Christian asceticism and found those who cast themselves into the desert to face their concerns. I fell in love with the original holy monk, St. Antony, and the art his life inspired. Above is The Tribulations of St. Antony, an oil painting by Belgian painter James Ensor, made in 1887.
St. Antony of Egypt is also known as St. Antony the Great, the Father of All Monks, and by a number of other names. St. Athanasius of Alexandria wrote the Life of St. Antony shortly after his death in 356, and it became a bestseller. I read a translation with a foreword by contemporary poet Scott Cairns. To introduce us to the saint and his work, Cairns writes:
“[Antony] understood his calling—and that of every human person—to be an invitation to what the Orthodox call theosis — human participation in the inexhaustible enormity of divine life……His attention to others — noting in one of love of prayer, in another joyful humility, and yet in another a compassion availed for him a conviction…..that salvation could be tasted in the flesh. Saint Anthony was a man for whom salvation was not a future condition, but a present gift offered to be tasted and seen, and now.”
The above captures what Antony learned in his formation and what he conveyed to others—it does not mention how Antony’s formation occurred during decades of solitude in the desert, much of the time battling demons.
For early Christians, demons were a fact of life, and the desert wilderness was their primary abode. A search for ”Temptations of St. Antony” brings forth a multitude of torturous images. Most feature a seductive woman, that particular demonic apparition being easier to depict than others that made themselves known to Antony by noise or by beatings.
As a teenager I frequented MOMA and studied the painting above, and I have long been a fan of James Ensor, who made self-portraits with demons tormenting him. I don’t encourage fascination with evil, but like Antony and Ensor, I do encourage facing torments head-on with the help of Christ.
Therefore I was delighted to find an online catalogue from the Chicago Art Institute on Ensor’s drawing, The Temptations of St. Antony, which shows how it is made with 51 separate pages mounted on canvas. The entire work is like the praying St. Antony did over decades in the desert, addressing every imaginable demon and temptation. At the rate of one drawing a week, this work might easily represent a year of prayer in the life of the artist.
Ensor’s drawing includes the scope of his own concerns, including fried sausages in the lower left and scientific theory in the upper right. A variety of women are present, as are ancient idols. Christ is at the top above Antony’s sight, ready to illumine him as the saint struggles to focus his prayer above the rumpus.
The humor in this drawing is typical of Ensor, but perhaps also inspired by the Life of Antony. Seriously religious and creative people learn to temper themselves with humor (hopefully), often after multiple thrashings by the demons of scrupulosity and perfectionism.
Anthanasius’ biography of Antony is serious. But it is earthy too, maybe funny at times. Anthanasius’ own life—his battles with Arian heresy, his intermittent episcopacy and frequent exiles which gave him the name Athanasius Contra Mundum, “Anthanasius Against the World,” vibrate in his tone.
Athanasius begins the story close to Antony’s converting experience. As a young man, Antony was orphaned, along with a younger sister. Upon hearing the gospel story about the rich young man, Antony gave up his wealth except what he needed to care for her. Upon hearing Jesus’ command, Do not be anxious for tomorrow, Antony gave up the rest of his money and placed his sister in a convent so that he might live the life of an ascetic.
Monks were not in the desert yet, but holy people lived on the edges of towns. If Antony heard of a “zealous person anywhere, he searched him out like the wise bee.” He marked the particular perseverance with which one fasted or another slept on the ground and strove to “manifest in himself what was best from all,” and so became loved by all.
The devil undertook Antony’s undoing, besieging the youth with boredom and with missing his sister. When this did not work, he tried to inspire lustful thoughts, taking the form of a woman and then of a boy who identified himself as the “Spirit of Fornication.”
“This was Antony’s first contest against the devil,” Athanasius reports, and then carefully adds, “or rather this was in Antony the success of the Savior, who condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the just requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.” (Romans 8:4)
Antony continued to excel in ascetic practices, eating only bread and salt once daily, refusing oil for his skin, and never washing. He went to live in the tombs beyond the village, instructing a friend to bring his bread. Upon finding him almost beaten to death by demons sent in fear that Antony would “fill the desert with discipline,” his friend brought him to town where other friends and family kept vigil over him. When they feel asleep, Antony begged his friend to return him to the tombs.
The demons returned to terrify him. Lying on the floor and unable to stand, Antony yelled out, “Here I am—Antony!” and sang Psalm 27. The forms of leopards, bulls, serpents, bears, asps, scorpions and wolves began to fill the place. The roof opened, “as it seemed,” and light beamed. The Lord took away Antony’s pain and spoke, promising to help him and make him famous “everywhere.”
Antony found an abandoned fortress full of reptiles which left as if chased out, and sealed himself in, planning to retrieve bread delivered to the roof once every six months. People came to receive his wisdom through cracks and to check if he were alive or dead. Some, while spending nights outside, heard a mob within. As they approached the door, Antony urged them to sign themselves and go, leaving the demons to “mock themselves” because, he explained, cowardice only encourages demonic apparitions.
After almost twenty years in the fortress, those seeking to emulate Antony tore down the door. “Anthony came forth as if from some shrine, having been led into divine mysteries and inspired by God.” He was unchanged from when he had entered twenty years earlier, and was “not annoyed any more than he was elated by being embraced by so many people. He maintained utter equilibrium, like one guided by reason and steadfast in that which accords with nature.”
Antony consoled and healed, and urged all to prefer nothing above the love of Christ. He encouraged so many to the solitary life that “the desert was made a city by monks.” Quoting much scripture, Antony instructed his followers on many points. When the Greeks came to argue with Antony, none could refute his wisdom.
When he was old and worn out by his followers, Antony retired to the inner mountain, where he grew a patch of wheat for bread, delighting to not be a burden to anyone. But Antony returned to the outer mountain to heal and to teach. At the end of a list of Anthony’s healings, Athanasius tells us to not be amazed at Antony—after all, Jesus promised we would do great things with faith the size of a mustard seed.
The details of Antony’s temptations are good material for art, but his long life after his formation is less picturesque. The discourses of Antony as told by Athanasius are better read rather than excerpted here. But it seems important to say that Antony, who stayed up all night with those plagued with the most repulsive diseases and behaviors—praying until he or she was healed—must have been the most tender of men.
What ascetic practices Antony believed he must keep to remain that tender man in love with Christ! Never in all his adulthood did he wash his feet. He only washed his shirt once—before he went to court in hope of being martyred. Perhaps joking that we should believe this next proof of Antony’s influence unless it were saved for the end of the book, Athanasius writes,
“And how many young women who had men hoping to marry them, on simply seeing Antony at a distance, remained virgins for Christ!”
It is also near the end of the biography where we find how the work of Antony was a model for the work of St. Ignatius of Loyola through his Spiritual Exercises, developed about thirteen-hundred years later:
“Possessing the gift of discerning spirits….., [Antony] recognized their movements, and he knew that for which each one of them had a desire and appetite….., offering encouragement to those who were distressed in their thoughts.”
Eschewing fandom even in death, Antony died where two would bury him in an unmarked grave so he would not be mummified and displayed, as was still the Egyptian custom with honored dead. Below are Fayum mummy portraits, called such after the Fayum basin in Egypt. The woman was painted close to Antony’s time, in the 4th century, and the man is from Jesus’ 1st century.
Antony of the Desert is still a willing friend for those who seek him. His desert continues to be fertile ground for the creative life of the Church, and he is still able to speak in the desert within ourselves.
