With an enthusiasm influenced by the Franciscan spring, Anthony exalts the importance of poverty in spiritual life. He aims, above all, at absolute poverty, lived with great personal impulse by the first sons of the Poor One from Assisi. The vocation of a life according to the Gospel, which began with the renunciation of all worldly goods, also implied for Francis the vocation of a life of absolute poverty.

In any case, as much as Francis truly loved this poverty and adhered to it with all his heart, it was not, for him, an end unto itself, but an essential element in the life of a true disciple of Christ. Through poverty he intended to literally walk in the footprints of Christ. Poverty is the only path to Christ, a way of participating in his kingdom.

Poverty has a saving value for man. It is the path to salvation. Moreover, it is the path that leads to participation in the redeeming work of Christ himself.

This collocation of poverty in the history of salvation, developed in the Sacrum commercium in all of its aspects, loses its deep meaning if poverty itself becomes the bride whom Francis wants to marry. The story of the mystical wedding of Saint Francis with the Madonna Poverty, which began to be told (first in the Order and then beyond, above all as a subject for painters and poets) in the middle of the 13th century, ended up suffocating and falsifying the genuine biblical concept of Franciscan poverty." If a life of poverty becomes an end in itself, even if it preserves its ascetic value, it is no longer that proposed by Francis which was decidedly inspired by the word of the Lord, "Blessed are the poor in spirit, because theirs is the kingdom of heaven." (Mt 5,3)

In the definitive rule, Francis explains to his monks, very clearly and unmistakably, his concept of poverty, what it is based upon and what its saving values are, "The monks make nothing theirs, not a house, nor a place, nor any thing. And like pilgrims and foreigners, serving, in this way, God in poverty and humility, they survive on charity with confidence. They should not be ashamed, because the Lord, for love of us, was poor in this world. This is the sublime peak of that high poverty, which has made you, dear brothers, inheritors and king of the kingdom of heaven, and by making you poor in substance, he has enriched you in virtue. This shall be your portion which leads you in the world of the living. And by being totally united to this, dearest brothers, you will never have to try to posses anything else under the sky, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.".

This is the poverty that captured the imagination and attracted the heart of Anthony ever since he saw the sons of Francis of Assisi ask for charity at the door of the monastery at Coimbra, where he then lived as an Augustinian canon. Their living for the day of work and charity, their lack of possessions, neither individual nor as a community, was without a doubt completely different from the discipline of the ancient monastic Orders and it represented a higher step on the ladder of moral perfection. That was enough to intrigue the saint.

On many pages of the Sermones, a strong attraction to the Madonna Poverty is evident. Anthony attributed her with a radiant uplifting and sanctifying fertility. Poverty is the true wealth, it keeps and generates humility, it is the source of spiritual joy; poverty frees one from the desires that tie men to things. And liberation by liberation, poverty leads man to the glory of heaven, where he is absorbed by the ineffable mystery of the divinity.

The saint contemplates the ideal of absolute poverty as realised in the life of Jesus himself. Therefore, he cannot not love it and do it himself.

Anthony was faithful to his love for poverty until his death. He spent his last days in Camposampiero, a guest of Count Tiso, the feudal lord of the area, not, however, in a room of the rich castle, but in the solitude of a hanging cell built onto a centuries old walnut tree which reminded him of the miserable shack of the hermitage at Montepaolo.

Before dying, intent on the draft of his Sermones festivi, the saint let escape a lament on the repugnance that many show for the ideal of absolute poverty, "How many people are there today," he wrote, "who would in a good way and for a long time, live in strict poverty, if they knew with certainty that one day they would have the kingdom of France or Spain in exchange! And yet, no one today wants to live in the true poverty of Christ, to earn the kingdom of heaven."

The adjectives "strict" and "true", applied here to poverty, seem to imply that this lament was provoked by the behaviour of certain monks. The words are perhaps a reflection of the controversy that had risen up in the Franciscan Order around the interpretation of the rule. Anthony had returned, just a few months earlier, from the 1230 Chapter of Assisi and from the Roman delegation sent to the same Chapter by Pope Gregory IX. Anthony had been sent in the hopes that his authority would put an end to the crisis that the Order was in the grips of, due to the difficult interpretation of the rule, above all regarding poverty. The topic was to decide whether the Order should continue, or not, in the strict observation of poverty, according to the thought expressed by Saint Francis in his will.

On one side there were those who wanted to remain rigidly faithful to the example and precepts of Francis; but, that fidelity was somehow indiscreet and seditious, and risked crystallising itself in bitterness and protest, far from reality which is in constant change. On the other side, equally generous souls were oriented toward a more flexible and realistic interpretation of the Franciscan message, convinced that no institution can be fecund if it does not remain up-to-date, if it does not adapt wisely to the circumstances.

Gregory IX, in the bull Quo elongati of September 28, 1230, tempered the primitive observance and declared that it was not obligatory, but optional, to conform to the will of their founder.

Saint Anthony, who for both temperament and training most certainly did not lean toward the slippery compromises of an easy life, chose to remain personally faithful to the strictest ideal of poverty. He is proudly for fidelity to the principles of Saint Francis, but, in his spirituality, he is able to overcome the austerity typical of the exalted.

The proof is in that sense of balance that always accompanied even his most resolute behaviour, imposed on him by his strong nature. He never, for example, applied the criteria of absolute detachment from any property to the members of the ancient Benedictine and Augustinian Orders, even though he had enthusiastically embraced this concept upon entering the Minor Monks. Speaking to the monks, he did not exclude the possibility that they could have possessions in common. He only stigmatised the fact that some possessed individually, thinking that they could reconcile monastic life with secular life. The religious state, he said, is anguished path, and the profession of poverty is like a short cape that is only enough for one person; two people can not fit under it, the possessor and the poor by choice. But, the saint was also a defender of the goods of the monasteries against certain money-lenders who impoverished the religious communities with usury.

Wisely, therefore, Brother Anthony distinguished various levels in the virtue of poverty. He held himself at the highest and most difficult level and let others do what the Lord had called them to do.