Which texts inspired Saint Anthony?

As has already been mentioned, the main source for the Saint's Sermones is the holy Scripture and the second the doctrine of the Fathers. Other minor sources are pagan sayings, the natural, historical and philological sciences.

Saint Anthony, like the Fathers, found various meanings in the holy Scripture and he followed them in his interpretation. In the holy Scripture, as is known, two basic meanings can be found: the literal, or historical one, and the spiritual one, which, as Saint Thomas says, is always based on the literal meaning and emanates from it. The spiritual meaning can, in its turn, be allegorical, which leads to faith; moral, which guides one to correct behaviour; and mystical, which lifts one up to contemplation of heaven.

In his Sermones, Saint Anthony touches all of these meanings. After having briefly explained the literal meaning, he spends some time on the allegorical meaning, but he dedicates himself above all and in depth to the moral meaning, with which he then develops his whole sermon. He rarely explores the mystical meaning.

Saint Anthony usually cites the holy Scripture in an explicit and direct way, stating with precision the name of the book or author and the text. He sometimes mentions the citation with less precision. He often mentions the number of the chapter along with the name of the book of Scripture.

The text that Saint Anthony cites is the Volgata, or the translation done by Saint Jerome and approved by Pope Damaso I (4th century), but there are numerous variations. The Saint often changes single words, adding or omitting them. This could depend on the differences in the text of the Volgata that he used, and we do not know which one it was, or it could be because he often cited from memory, or perhaps because he introduced small variations himself to better adapt the text to the topic of the sermon.

The Fathers he used as sources most frequently are Ambrose, Jerome, Augustine, Gregory, Isidor, Bernard, Beda, John Damasceno, Origen and a few others.

In addition he often turns to both the ordinary and the interlinear versions of the Gloss, even without citing them. The Gloss were the comments made to the holy Scripture, and also to other texts, in the margins or between the lines of ancient manuscripts..

Anthony also had access to collections, or anthologies, of sentences from Scripture and sayings of the Fathers and ecclesiastic writers, but we do not know which ones they were.

Saint Anthony also cites maxims or sentences of philosophers or pagan writers, and poetic verses, with a certain frequency. Among the philosophers are Aristotle, Cicero (who he cites with the name of Tullius), Seneca, Publius Sirus and Cato. The poets include Horace, Ovid, Juvenal and Persius.

There are also a few medieval rhymes, popular sayings and proverbs of the time in the Sermones.

As for the natural sciences, the Saint often spends time on tales and descriptions of things and animals. He speaks of anatomy, physiology, zoology, botany and mineralogy. His sources include Aristotle, Solinus, and Isidor (especially for the etymologies.)

Along with the biblical exegesis, there is often an "exegesis of nature." The Saint seems to put them on the same level. Both contain revelation and the word of God. Both lead to the teaching of the truth. In both one finds good and evil, that which comes from God and that which can be attributed to man.

The Saint does not pose as a scientist nor a man of letters. His task is only that of teaching behaviour according to the Gospel, of persuading his listeners to live a Christian life and to tend towards perfection. When he chooses, among the many he knows, those long descriptions of animals and their behaviour, of fantastic monsters, of men, of women, of the organs and the senses of the body, he intends to awaken the divine design, to describe in its stages a divine-human operation, which takes place in the spiritual faculties of man.

When he refers to the descriptions of Aristotle, Pliny, Solinus, Isidor, of medieval "beasts", he does not worry whether, and up to what point, the information he took from those works was true and proven. It is not the tale in itself that interests him, but its meaning. He delights and, above all, teaches. The Saint uses those descriptions not to create science or literature, but only because they met his needs, and he transcribed them from works which were considered scientific at the time, even though to us today they seem like no more than pleasant fables.

Surely, not even Anthony could have believed that four animals could be so strange and singular as to live only on water (the sardine), only on air (the chameleon), only on fire (the salamander) and only on earth (the mole). And yet, he spent a good deal of time describing their fantastic and incredible habits. But his motive is immediately clear when he claims to see in the little fish the humble penitent who lives on tears, in the chameleon a contemplative type who lives in the sky of contemplation, in the salamander the charitable and merciful who live in the fire of charity, and in the mole the man who is despised and solitary because he realises that he is only earth.

Etymologies are very frequent in the Sermones. Etymology is the science that studies the origin of words. Anthony counted etymologies among those "elegant and affected words" that the listeners of his day were greedy for. Etymologies were part of the explanation of the theme of the discourse, or rather, they were the first means of explaining the theme. They gave the definition or the explanation, the "original" meaning of the names, and key terms.

Anthony never lost an occasion to explain an etymology, to speak of a plant, where it is found, how it is used, what is said about it, to keep his audience awake, to inculcate the truth through images, habits, customs, etc. Saint Anthony's etymologies could, therefore, be called "literary artifices" which were frequently clever. Anthony uses words as mnemonic devices to better imprint his teachings in the minds of his listeners.