Saint Anthony of Lisbon or Padua

Anthony of Padua, St (1195-1231), Franciscan monk, born in Lisbon. He became an Augustinian monk at the age of 15 and ten years later joined the Franciscan order, becoming a provincial, or administrator of a group of monasteries, for that order in 1227. He taught theology in Italian and French cities and preached in those areas, especially in the vicinity of Padua. In 1230 he resigned his provincialship to devote more time to preaching. The year after his death he was canonized by Pope Gregory IX; in 1946 he was named Doctor of the Church. Anthony is the patron saint of Padua and of Portugal, and the saint invoked for the finding of lost articles. His feast day is June 13.

The presence of this saint is constant along the coast.  In the district of Coimbra, where the saint spent his youth, he rivals the "Holy Queen" (Isabel of Coimbra) for a place on the walls near the doors of the houses.  He is shown in tile, a typical Portuguese artistic expression.  This saint is not so much the protector of the houses--because there is no evidence that he protects houses--but the prototype of the family ideal.  He is always referred to in the diminutive, "inho", a particularity of the Portuguese language.  The diminutive fits the saint well since he is never shown as a common man but as a feminine figure, a perfect example of androgyny that appears as an ideal in Portuguese religion--perhaps a reflection of deeper desires:  to look like one's mother.  Santo Antonio, who is shown leaning over the Baby Jesus, hugging the Baby Jesus, is not a father figure like the saints we have seen in the Beira region.  He is instead a model of a father in urban society, one who is variable and able to substitute the mother, or simultaneously the father and the mother who are depicted fighting for the favours of the child.  This appropriation of Santo Antonio as a model of a father is, nevertheless, recent and exclusively urban.

Santo Antonio, as celebrated in Portugal, has no connection to the theologian, missionary and doctor of the Church called Santo Antonio of Lisbon or of Padua, canonized ten years after his death.  It is a name and an image that joined several ancestral traditions connected to Adonis.  In the Beiras he is confused with Santo Antão (Saint Anthony) of the Desert, founder of Christian monasticism and popular protector of cattle, whose Latin name (Antonius) he shares.  Because of the heterogeneity of these elements, the saint is associated with contradictory prerogatives.  One pope called him “Saint of all the World,” which is true since the “little saint of the Alfama” lends himself to all interpretations.  

The myths of Santo Antonio and his supposed miracles correspond to the myths and to the curriculum of Hermes.  Like Hermes, Santo Antonio is at the same time protector of shopkeepers and of thieves.  He appears in commercial establishments in the Minho and in the markets of Coimbra, like Hermes, whose title meant buyer and seller (at the same time).  The popular legends show him as a victim of the tricks played by the child Jesus, just as Hermes was with Apollo.  He searches, like Hermes, for lost things, and he has the power of ubiquity.  The Lisbon saint is a genius in theology; he was able to convince the most stubborn doubters.  Young girls worship him just as the goddesses admired Hermes.  He is a marrying saint like Hermes.  If we dressed certain statues of Hermes as a Franciscan, people from Lisbon would think they were part of the Cathedral’s collection.  There are Greek coins with the effigy of the god in which he is wearing a kind of cap on his head, which looks very much like the friar’s tonsure.  

Other religious traits came from Adonis, the erudite and urban version of Thamuz, and whose festivals were celebrated in June, perhaps from the twelfth to the twenty-fourth.  The very name Antonio is connected to Adoni, the Phoenician title.  Adoni was without doubt connected to festivals in Lisbon.  

Besides being a case of perfect syncretism of several cults, Santo Antonio is an example of androgyny.  He is a hermaphrodite (Hermes and Aphrodite).  We can see this mixed up in his images:  two figures, masculine and feminine.  He is Magna Mater, with the young boy, Adonis, and the young Adonis who narcistically looks at himself in the mirror, who is the young boy in his arms.  When he is shown as a person with a long dress, effeminate, with a rosy face and with a boy in his arms, he is Magna Mater with the young Adonis.  As a young man he is shown with short hair, tonsured, a boy’s characteristics.  Here he is the character of the young Adonis, effeminate and emasculated.  The main figure and the boy in his arms are the same personage but with different ages.  

Very different is Santo Antonio of the Beirões.  His job is to protect cattle.  Although he is shown like the saint from Lisbon, he is not the same one, but instead Santo Antão of the Desert, (for this saint, who is probably Saint Anthony the Abbot, founder of Christian monasticism, see For all the Saints ) venerated in the hills as the protector of cattle.  He is worshipped in chapels far from the villages, ancient places of pastoral religion, like São Mamede.  Near Mangualde he is feted with a ritual that reminds us of the “sheep-shearing festivals” of the Semites in Biblical times.  There are no people in the place except for the protagonists of the ritual, and there is no music or exterior sign of a festival.  On the saint’s day dozens of cattle raisers from the nearby villages paint their sheep with drawings and letters, decorate the horns with flowers and pompons, and hang garlands and enormous five-kilo-tin cans from the animals’ necks. (“The more the weight, the healthier the animal”.)  Then they go, individually and very early, to a beautiful isolated chapel on Monte dos Cabaços.  When each flock arrives, the shepherd makes the sheep run madly around the chapel “which is made round just for this.”  Running in front of them, the shepherd shouts, gesticulates and does antics for the animals, making it appear that they are obeying his command.  The rite consists only of this run, which is at the same time an indicator of the animals’ health as it is a hope for a better future (“This year the animals didn’t run as well as last year”).  

Links to Saint Anthony