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[Above: A horse kneels before the host, carried by Anthony from Baring Gould's Lives of the Saints, 1914. Public domain.]

FERNANDO MARTINS DE BULHÕES is one of the most popular Catholic saints, although not by that name. His popularity may be either because his life combined many Christian virtues and attributes, or because of the miracles attributed to him, or both. In him was humility, simplicity, zeal, generosity, kindness, and spiritual depth. 

Bulhões was born in Lisbon, Portugal, within a short distance of the city’s cathedral. His parents were well-to-do, god-fearing people, perhaps even nobility. At fifteen, Bulhões sought their permission to become an Augustinian monk. This was granted and he settled into life at the convent of St. Vincent just outside the city. There, for two years, he devoted himself to study, Scripture memorization, and prayer.

Finding that frequent visits by relatives interrupted his spiritual contemplation, he asked for a transfer to Coimbra. He was there eight years. The burial of several Franciscans martyrs inflamed him with a desire to follow in their steps. He pleaded for permission to transfer to the Franciscan Order and to become a missionary to Muslims. Once his transfer was approved, he took the name Anthony. Eager for martyrdom, he sailed to Morocco. Sickness grounded him all winter. Unable to carry out his mission, he sailed for home. A storm drove his ship to Sicily, where kindly Franciscan monks nurtured him back to health.

By May 1220, he had recovered enough strength to attend a general chapter (convention) of Franciscans. He met St. Francis who approved his resolution not to return to Portugal. Francis appealed for one of the Italian monasteries to accept Anthony. No one wanted the sickly friar until someone thought of setting him to care for six elderly lay brothers at Monte Paolo. In his spare time, he studied Scripture, prayed, and meditated.

In March of 1221, Anthony was present for the ordination of some friars at Forli. His superior, Father Gratian, came unprepared to preach the customary sermon. He ordered Anthony to take the pulpit and speak whatever came into his head, saying the Spirit would guide him. Gratian even assigned the text: “Christ became for us obedient unto death, even to the death of the cross.” Anthony began with a shaking voice, but soon his hours of study and prayer asserted themselves. He preached so powerfully that never again would the Franciscans allow him to labor in obscurity.

Leaders dispatched him to preach in many cities. Wherever he went, conversions followed. Next to Francis, he became the most famous Franciscan preacher. Miracles accompanied his sermons: listeners each heard in his or her own language; sick people rose from their beds; fish listened to him preach. Niccolo Dal-Gal, writing for the Catholic Encyclopedia, said, 

It may be true that some of the miracles attributed to St. Anthony are legendary, but others come to us on such high authority that it is impossible either to eliminate them or explain them away a priori without doing violence to the facts of history.

In the last years of his life, Anthony worked in and around Padua. It is as Anthony of Padua that we remember him. Never healthy, on this day, 13 June 1231, Anthony died in Arcella, Verona, Italy. He had been on his way back to Padua when illness had forced him to stop at a convent where sisters tended his dying needs. So great was his reputation for holiness and miracles that Pope Gregory IX declared him a saint about a year after his death.

—Dan Graves

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For another perspective on Anthony, read "Francis of Assisi: A Gallery of Five Who Knew a Saint" in Christian History #42, Francis of Assisi