What are the Sermones about?

The Sermones, in general, deal with faith and good habits.

The Saint teaches the pastoral to the preachers: how they must teach the faithful the doctrine of the Gospel, how they must administer the sacraments, above all the penitence and the Eucharist.

In doing this he uses commands, persuasion, teaching and even bitter reproach. He often unites teaching with reproach. First he teaches what the habits of priests and prelates should be, then he tells what their habits are in reality.

Saint Anthony often touched on problems of both civil and ecclesiastic society. In civil society, he distinguishes the different classes of people: there are the emperor, the king, the military men, the middle class or citizens; there are the majors and the minors, the powerful rich and the poor, the peasants, or the countrymen; there are merchants, and the lawyers.

In the Church one finds the prelates and their subjects, or the bishops and their followers; the just, or the practising faithful, the heretics and the schismatics; the false Christians and the simoniacs. Next to the faithful, one finds the Saracens and the Jews. The faithful, depending on their chosen path are: hermits, cloistered, penitents, or clerics, friars or laity. The faithful, as penitents, because of their choice of life are: contemplative, preachers or living an active life ....

Saint Anthony formulates judgements on the habits of both of these societies, civil and ecclesiastic, and his judgement of the situation at the time was of severe condemnation. "Their habits are depraved!" As much among the majors as among the minors in the civil society, as much among the clerics as among the laity, in the Church; among the prelates as among the clerics, as much among the clerics as the friars, basically in the whole ecclesiastic society. The lust for power, or pride or vainglory; the lust for money, or avarice and jealousy; the lust for meat, or indulgence and luxury, rule everywhere.

The explanation of duties is always followed by a reproach of vice. It is not known whether the Saint, in his general condemnation, refers to specific facts or people, but his words, which are so severe and precise lead one to believe this.

Anyone looking for the original ingenuous Franciscan way of speaking will be disappointed and irritated. And yet, the Franciscan essence is present, translated in biblical-patristic terms, in varied and refined Latin, in a laconic, passionate and very imaginative way of expression.

The passion for "penitence", or the conversion from a fatuous and evil way of life to an evangelic existence, throbs here. Here we discover a preference for the humble, the poor, the simple, the excluded, those for whom Anthony gave everything to see saved. There is ardour for the incessant radical reform of the Church and its pastors, expressed in tones varying from vehement, indignant, sometimes scorching, to other times desolate and dismayed. There is a tenderness towards Jesus, both as a babe and when crucified; a tendency warmly devoted to the Virgin, both poor and glorious; there are themes of the piety of the 13th century, destined to put down deep roots in the popular religiousness.

Here we can notice the yearning for Christian perfection, the detachment from the deceptive ephemeral earthly things, the love for Madonna Poverty, and nostalgia for heaven. The form is in great debt to the churchly cultural tradition, while the contents are vitally full of Franciscan sensibility, that spiritual spring of which Anthony was one of the main characters.