Schedules of Saint Anthony Church
- CHURCH
Monday to Friday: 8am to 7pm.
Saturday and Sunday: 8am to 8pm.
- Mass
Monday to Friday: 11am and 5pm.
Saturday and Sunday: 11am / 5pm and 7pm.
Online broadcast every day at 11am and 5pm
- Prices of the Saint Anthony Church : Free.
What to visit in Alfama, Lisbon
Address: Largo de Santo António da Sé. 1100-401 Lisbon.
Saint Anthony of Lisbon history
June 13th is a public holiday in honour of Saint Anthony, when people take the opportunity to eat caldo verde and grilled sardines, preferably near the Cathedral and watch the popular parades. Children no longer ask for a few coins to decorate the Saint’s throne and single girls probably no longer ask him for a boyfriend. So much popularity, more than eight hundred years after his birth, leads us to remember aspects of this saint’s life, spent between Lisbon, Coimbra and Padua. Lisbon was a newly Christian city when the boy Fernando Martins de Bulhões (future Saint Anthony) was baptised in its cathedral. He was the son of the noblewoman Dona Teresa Tavera, a descendant of Fruela, King of Asturias and her husband Martinho or Martins de Bulhões. They lived in the neighborhood of the Lisbon Cathedral when he was born, in 1190 or 1191. Fernando attended the school of the Lisbon Cathedral, and until he was 15 years old he lived with his parents and his sister Maria. At the age of 20 he professed himself in the Canons Regular of Saint Augustine in Lisbon, in the Monastery of São Vicente de Fora. He continued his studies in this monastic order.
He traveled to Coimbra to the Monastery of Santa Cruz, where he had access to the library. At that time, the abbey of Cluny, in France, had one of the largest libraries in Europe, with a total of 570 handwritten volumes, because the printing press had not yet been invented. Here in Coimbra, already a priest, he took the Franciscan habit in 1220.
In 1209, Francis of Assis (Saint Francis) left the comfort and luxury of his father’s house to retreat to a small community with other companions, giving rise to a new reflection on the experience of the Gospel. It was a return to nature, to a simple life and to the rediscovery of the dignity of poverty advocated by the first Christians. Echoes of this new mysticism also reached Portugal.
In January 1220, five Friars Minor (Franciscans) were beheaded in Morocco. Clare of Assisi (Saint Clare), practically the same age as Saint Anthony (born in 1193 or 1194), wanted to leave for Morocco to convert the Saracens, but Francis of Assisi, his childhood friend and spiritual guide, did not allow it.
However, the future Saint Anthony, already ordained a priest, decided to switch to the religious Order of the Franciscans.
It was on this occasion that he changed his baptismal name from Fernando to António and went to live with other friars in the hermitage of Santo Antão dos Olivais, in Coimbra.
In mid-1220, the relics of the martyrs of Morocco arrived at the convent of Santa Cruz in Coimbra, and this event would be decisive in the life of Saint Anthony. He set off for Morocco, feeling that he was called to participate in the conversion of the so-called infidels. However, he fell seriously ill and had to return to Lisbon. However, the boat was caught in a storm and the Saint ended up docking in Sicily, during a period of great armed conflict between Pope Gregory IX and the King of Sicily, Frederick II. In May 1221, the Franciscans met in the so-called General Chapter of the Order, where Saint Anthony was present. At the end, the friars returned to their communities in Montepaolo, near Bologna, where, in addition to their contemplative life and prayer, they also had to take care of the domestic tasks of the convent. Here the other friars noticed the great modesty of this foreigner (Saint Anthony) and never suspected his profound theological knowledge. After this period of reflection, the Franciscan friars were called to the city of Forlì to be ordained and Saint Anthony was chosen to give the spiritual conference. And he began to speak. No one until then had realized to what extent he knew the Scriptures and how unusual his faith and oratory gifts were.
As far as we know, when he began to speak, he immediately captivated the other friars and from that day on his life would be as a preacher of the word of Christ. He would travel through various regions of present-day Italy between 1223 and 1225. At the suggestion of Saint Francis himself, he would become a master of theology in Bologna, Montpelier and Toulouse.
When Saint Francis died in 1226, Saint Anthony went to live in Padua. Here he would begin by giving Sunday sermons, but his words, so full of allegories, were so accessible to the more or less religious people that they spread the word and more and more people gathered in the churches to listen to him. This was a rare case of popularity. The crowd followed him and he became famous for performing miracles. The young men of Padua even had to act as the Portuguese Saint’s bodyguards, such was the crowd around him. The women tried to get close to him so they could cut off a corner of his friar’s habit as a relic. The Bishop of Ostia, who later became Pope Alexander IV, asked him to write sermons for the main religious feast days, which were numerous at the time. This Pope would later canonize him. These written documents are extremely important today, because Saint Anthony wrote very little as a preacher.
Feeling ill, he asked to be taken to Padua, where he wanted to die, but it was in a small convent of Poor Clares in Arcela that Saint Anthony died. It was on June 13, 1231. His tomb, made of green marble, was in Padua, in the church of Saint Anthony.
He was canonized in 1232, less than a year after his death.
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