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Part II - St Anthony the Abbot, Thaumaturge of the Burning Disease, and the Order of the Hospital Brothers of St Anthony

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 November 2020

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Summary

Abstract The disease that ‘burnt bodies’ was associated with the Egyptian-born St Anthony the Abbot from the twelfth century onwards. This coincided with the spread of the Order of the Hospital Brothers of Saint Anthony, founded in the South of France where the remains of the saint were said to have been translated from Constantinople. The author illustrates the legends explaining the presence of three bodies of the same saint in three separate French locations. By translating and analysing documents relating to the hospital at the Order's mother house, she also reveals which patients were admitted there. These were not technically ergotism sufferers but those affected with gangrene of any aetiology who needed to have the affected limb amputated and required permanent accommodation to avoid swelling the ranks of beggars.

Keywords: St Anthony's relics; Order of Hospital Brother of St Anthony; medieval hospitals; miracles; Saint-Antoine-en-Viennois

A Brief Preface on the Antonine Order

The term Saint Anthony's Fire derives from the thaumaturgical cult that developed around the presumed remains of St Anthony the Abbot, or the Great, an Egyptian saint from the third or fourth century, originating in the south of present-day France in around the eleventh century. Anthony was portrayed as the father of monasticism by all the medieval Churches following the circulation of the first biography about him, Life of Anthony, written in Greek by Athanasius (295c-373), Bishop of Alexandria. The author explains that on his deathbed the saint asked to be buried in a secret place, with the burial arranged by two of his closest and most loyal disciples who would not reveal the exact location to anyone else. Nevertheless, in the early Middle Ages various chronicles and most martyrologies in the West started to suggest that the saint's body had been transferred from an unknown location in the Egyptian desert to the Basilica of St John the Baptist in Alexandria at the time of Justinian (sixth century). This probably led to the creation of subsequent legends about the inventio and translatio (‘discovery’ and ‘translation’) of his body, firstly to Constantinople and then to the Dauphiné in the South of France. Being one of the most important Christian saints and given the value always attributed to saintly relics, it is no surprise that his remains were highly coveted.

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Publisher: Amsterdam University Press
Print publication year: 2019

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