Saint Anthony was the first authorised teacher and the first great writer of the Franciscan Order. His writings, written in the form of sermons - the Sermones Dominicales with an appendix of Sermones Mariani and Sermones de Sanctis (these last never completed) - reflect the doctrinal phase of the first manifestation of Franciscan theology, elaborated while Saint Francis was still alive, not without some worry on his part that study favoured in this way might extinguish the spirit of holy oration.

The theological teaching of Anthony is basically a biblical teaching. For him, studying theology meant, as it did for all theologians of his day, studying the Holy Scripture. He worked to establish the literal and spiritual meanings (allegorical, moral and anagogical) of the revealed word of God, trying to exhaust, like a true son of Saint Augustine, the fullness of the word of God.

In effect, Anthony considers the allegorical, moral and anagogical meanings as something already present in the literal meaning of the Holy Scripture. He considered the triple spiritual meaning to be a growth process.

The literal meaning gives rise to the allegorical meaning, the allegorical to the moral and the moral to the anagogical.

• The allegorical "edifies faith,"

• the moral "teaches us to live honestly and gently pierces the soul and tenderly touches the mind of the listeners,"

• the anagogical "has to do with the fullness of bliss and heavenly beatitude."

Because of the audacious liberty with which Anthony treats the Holy Scripture, what one writer said about Saint Bernard can be said about him as well, "He does not explain the Scripture, he applies it; he does not illuminate it, he illuminates everything with it, first of all, the human heart." (H. DE LUBAC).

For the Saint, all of the Holy Scripture is basically the story of salvation. In a literal sense, it narrates those events that have saved humanity. In an allegorical sense the historical facts are not excluded, but are understood more fully. This gives the full truth and reality to history, which is centred on Christ. As the allegorical is based on the literal, so is the moral based on the allegorical.

Since morality is faith in action or the incarnation of faith in a Christian life, a Christian can not limit himself to believing a truth without expressing it in his life. The moral sense then leads to the anagogical, which serves an eschatological function in the history of salvation. Anagogy is, therefore, the final crowning, the true key to understanding the whole history of salvation.

While Giovanni Cassiano, in his spiritual comprehension of Scripture, places the moral meaning before the allegorical and the anagogical, and he places natural morality before revelation, Anthony believes that moral meaning depends on allegorical meaning.

Moral law regulates the development of the Christian life. This is stretched between a reality and a hope, between an "already" and a "not yet." With baptism, the natural man is "clothed in Christ" (cf. Gal 3, 27). Man is "already" in Christ, but he is not yet Christ. He has to transform himself into Jesus, he has to become Jesus Christ.

This is the hope, the "not yet" of Christian life, in continual tension towards a future life. From this point of view, the importance that the saint gives to morality in his preaching is understandable, since its aim is progress in a spiritual life. In fact, in the Sermones he does not take into consideration heresy, but rather the great moral decadence as the true evil of his time. All deviations in the field of faith are, in his opinion, a consequence of moral deviation. "The more moral preaching is appreciated, the more it grabs the spirit of the listener, since their customs are corrupt. For this reason, more care must be taken to preach the moral virtues than allegory which leads to knowledge of faith. Thanks to God, faith is already spread across the whole Earth."


In Anthony's work, the Holy Scripture has a fundamental role, in part because at that time Scripture was the main, and almost exclusive, source for theological teaching. The Holy Scripture was the principle subject of the lectio for the teachers in Paris, it was the supreme subject of all hermeneutic theology and the condensation of true science.

And so it was for Anthony who, in the classrooms at St. Cross of Coimbra, had learned to love and enjoy the Scripture. This is why the saint has such a high opinion of the word of God, such as to write, "in the Old and New Testaments is the realisation of all science, the only science one needs to know, the only science that creates wisdom;" "from the text of the holy pages emanates the intelligence of the Scripture; as gold is more precious than all other metals, so is the intelligence of the Scripture superior to all other sciences. He who does not know Scripture, knows absolutely nothing."

The knowledge he had of Scripture was so vast and profound that, according to legend, if all holy books were to be destroyed, the memory of the saint would be all that was needed to rewrite them.