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Translated by Cardinal Newman.
St Athanasius the Great Resources Online and in Print
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75 Pages
Page 12
But if Athanasius wrote the Vita, it does not follow that all its less edifying details are true, nor that its portraiture is free from subjectivity [982] . At the same time, to the present writer at least, the lineaments of a genuine man, homoiopathous hemin, stand out from the story. Doubtless there is idealisation, panegyric, an absence of sinfulness (Gwatkin, Studies, p. 100). But the moderate value set on miracles (38, 56), the absence of the element of fear from his religion (42, &c.), his serene courtesy (73) and uniform cheerfulness (67, 70), the caution against being tempted to excess in ascetic exercises (25), the ready half-humorous good sense (73, 85) of the man, are human touches which belong to flesh and blood, not to hagiographic imagination. But here the question is one of individual taste. At any rate the Vita embodies the best spirit of early monasticism. It was the pure desire to serve God and fulfil the spirit of the Gospel that led Anthony to part with all that might make the world precious to him, and to betake himself to his long voluntary martyrdom of solitude, privation, and prayer. We see nothing but tenderness and love of men in his character, nothing of the fierce bloodthirsty fanaticism which in persons like Senuti made fifth-century monasticism a reproach to the Christian name. Had Anthony lived in our time, he might have felt that the solitary life was a renunciation of the highest vocation of which man is capable, the ministry to the material and spiritual needs of others. But it is not given to man to see all aspects of truth at once and to our bustling, comfort-loving age, even the life of Anthony has its lesson.
The Vita has undoubtedly exercised a powerful and wide-spread influence. Upon it Jerome modelled his highly idealised tales of Paul and Hilarion; at Rome and all over the West it kindled the flame of monastic aspirations; it awoke in Augustine (Conf. viii. ubi supra) the resolution to renounce the world and give himself wholly to God. The ingens numerus of Latin manuscripts, and the imitation of its details in countless monastic biographies, testify to its popularity in the middle ages. Like monasticism itself, its good influence was not without alloy; but on the whole we may claim for it that it tended to stimulate the nobler of the impulses which underlie the monastic life.
[982] The life of Senuti (or 'Schnoudi'), by his disciple Visa, may be consulted in illustration of this point. See edition by Amelineau in vol. 4 of the Memoires de la Mission archeologique Franc,aise au Caire, 1888.
Reference address : https://www.elpenor.org/athanasius/anthony-life.asp?pg=12
