I chose Saint Anthony of Padua because the church for the community of Les Cabannes, where I live, is named Saint-Antoine in honor of this man. This church is a good example of the small parish churches in this region, and seemingly more in keeping with the nature of the saint than the grand basilica in Padua, Italy where his relics rest. It turns out that Anthony of Padua has quite a cult following, which the website of the basilica is happy to encourage. There, you will find a jackpot of stories about body parts and relic thefts, and more on that below. Anthony is the patron saint of lost and forgotten things, including husbands; of orphans, of sailors and of the shipwrecked, of the hungry, of certain Native Americans, of prisoners and of the poor.
He was born Fernando Martins de Bullhöes in 1195 in Lisbon, Portugal to a noble military family. In 1210 he joined the Augustinian Order of monks. The Rules of the Augustinian Order are the earliest in the West, being established c. 390. It was Augustine of Hippo (354-430) who established the “Hours” (prayers said at regular intervals throughout the day), and based his Rules on prayer, song, and work. Benedict of Nursia (c. 480-550) built his Rules and Order on this foundation. You could think of these two guys as setting up the skeleton for all future monastic bodies to build on. Fernando had been an Augustinian for ten years when he happened to see the remains, brought back to Portugal, of some Franciscans who had been martyred in Morocco. This convinced him to join the Franciscan Order, at which time he took the name Anthony. The Franciscans were founded by Francis of Assisi (1181-126), who, but for fortune, may have been classified as a reforming heretic just like the unfortunate Cathars that his brethren ended up preaching against. Francis, like the Cathars, sought to promote a religion that did not depend on buildings or props to make an impression. He wanted to engage with the urban poor, wandering from city to city, and finding his lodging and nourishment where he could, and his testament directed his survivors to bury him in a rubbish heap. For these reasons his order was one of those called a “mendicant,” or “begging” order. For all of this humility, Francis was not a timid man, and brought eleven companions to meet with Pope Innocent III c. 1209 to have their initial rules confirmed. A successful venture, thanks to the intervention of a certain cardinal. About thirty years previous a similar bid for rules of reform made by the leader of the Waldensians was squashed point blank, and the Waldensians, like the Cathars, became the heretic enemy. Later, in 1220 and the years following, the Franciscan Order adopted more rules and swore fealty to the Papacy, as did the Dominicans, established in the same period. In this way the Pope governed a two-pronged effort to eradicate heresy; he directed the Dominicans to serve as his militant arm; as inquisitors and persecutors, and the Franciscans to work within the urban areas to preach and offer aid to the poor in competition with the heretical groups who were doing the same thing. This is a sensitive point for me, as my research touched on southern France (or Languedoc) during this period, and on what I saw as a vital, diverse community that tolerated several approaches to religion before the Albigensian Crusade came crashing down on it. I’m not sure I could write impartially about a Dominican…
But this is about Anthony, who was Franciscan, and although he may have preached against heresy, there’s no evidence he did anything worse, so on we go. Now a newly minted Franciscan, c. 1220, our man set out for Morocco for his next job, but became ill during the sea passage. He decided to turn around, and was on his way home when his boat was shoved east to Sicily by a storm. This became a turning point in his life, as he met Francis of Assisi and became recognized as someone with uncommon speaking powers. From 1222 to 1227 he traveled back and forth between Italy and southern France exercising those powers, in 1229 he moved to Padua, and then died nearby in Arcella in 1231, only 36 years old.
His body was moved to a little church in Padua called Santa Maria Mater Domini, which was incorporated into the Basilica of Saint Anthony, a project started in 1238 and finished c. 1310. In the plan, you find what’s left of Santa Maria as an oval projection from the north side of the building. In 1263 Anthony’s coffin was opened in order to prepare him for his new stone sarcophagus, more fitting for the basilica, and voilà the first miracle: his tongue was found to be in perfect condition! At this point the monks realized they had a gold mine in relics, and poor Anthony was dis-assembled to provide whatever corporal parts seemed most likely to generate income. His jawbone, teeth, and especially his tongue were prime property, all being parts associated with his skill at preaching, and about 1350 a cardinal from Bologna who had been spared from the Black Plague gave a gift to the basilica of an elaborate reliquary to hold these things. Anthony’s habit, his scalp, arms, hands and fingers proved useful as well, and all of these items are found in the Relic Chapel, the circular space at the eastern end of the building. Anthony’s larger bones are kept in a crystal container, protected by an oak box which is kept locked inside his tomb in the chapel that is part of the original church of Santa Maria. Twice during the past 40 years this container has been brought out for display, attracting as many as 650,000 visitors. And in the case of Anthony, relic thefts are not limited to the Middle Ages. In 1991, three men in black baklavas entered the basilica and made a bee-line for the Relic Chapel, where they held up a monk at gunpoint to make off with Anthony’s jaw and tongue. A few months later the cops found the reliquary in a field near Fiumicino airport in Rome (about 500 kilometers south of Padua), and the crime was traced to a northern Mafia boss who wanted to make a point. What point? Sorry, for the details you might have to listen to Brother Mario Conte in his video on The Theft, part 9 of a series of 13 videos related to a two-week novena honoring the saint. I’ve included Conte’s Introduction to give you a taste of the series and you can take it from there.
Now, what of Saint-Antoine in Les Cabannes? Alas I have not had the time to research it as much as I would like, but I hope to continue on this project as part of my general goal to inform myself about local churches in my area. In the course of my research that brought me to this corner of the world, I read about certain twelfth or thirteenth-century churches around Cordes, but Saint-Antoine was not one of them. Its listing as a historic monument (recorded in 1974) describes it as having been built in the fifteenth or sixteenth century, but there may have been a chapel already in place, linked to the château and mill of Cajarc. Let me just stop there, short of leading you dangerously astray, and simply give you a brief personal description that hopefully will not be without its charm.
As you can see from the plan comparisons at the same scale (a few paragraphs above), Saint-Antoine could easily fit into one of the nave bays of the basilica in Padua. But never mind, because for most of its life it was probably the perfect size for its congregation, and nowadays it is the perfect size for the intimate concerts that take place there. Inside, most of the stone has been covered with an enduit, or a plaster/stucco finish which accommodates mural painting, and there are traces of paint on parts of the walls. All the structural supports, however, meaning the engaged columns and the one isolated compound pier, are stone—mostly local limestone but also some granite—showing their joints and also showing “off” some beautiful touches from the mason’s hammer. Without it being a conscious decision on the part of those responsible for the interior decoration, this little building can proudly join the ranks of buildings like the Panthéon in Paris or Mie’s Barcelona Pavilion, buildings where architects were making a conscious decision to separate the structure from the “dressing.” I’m being a little disingenuous; the primary supports here are in the meter-plus-thick exterior bearing walls, but there is a structural logic to the engaged columns; each interior bay is capped with a rib vault that finds its respond in a stone support below. It’s a neat arrangement. There are narrow slits of windows high in the walls (not shown on plan), and several little niches in the walls that are beautifully framed.
The exterior, no matter how modest and awkward, (and I would argue that it is no less awkward than the platypus that is Saint Anthony of Padua) is marked by a clocher-mur, or a “bell-wall.” These clochers-murs act in southern France as church spires do elsewhere; they are visible from a distance and ensure a solid support for the bell and a sufficient height for its sound to carry across the fields. This one is the simplest of forms, but you will find them in endless variety. From an urban point of view, the clocher-mur of Saint-Antoine is perfectly aligned with the Rue des Tanneries, the principal (and only) route north of the D600 that runs E-W through town, and because of the higher elevation, the church is seen to be looking over the cabanes, or cabins, of Les Cabannes. Les Cabannes was always a village of workers and of the industrial sites that depended on water (in this case the Cérou River), such as tanneries, brick factories, and mills. In the post card from the early-twentieth century the church is even more prominent sitting on its hilltop—the numerous trees that we see today are missing because they were too valuable as fuel to be left standing.
I’m guessing that Saint Anthony, if he had a choice for a posthumous expression of his life-work, would have preferred a simple structure like Saint-Antoine to the grand basilica that has capitalized on his tongue. But then, he would have remained relatively unknown, and now hundreds of thousands of people can find solace in their homage to his relics.
I am going to find solace in a less rigorous publishing schedule. Starting next month I’ll publish only once a month, at the beginning of the month. I have my saintly line-up through the rest of the year, and I also have some other writing projects to attend to, and I bet you have enough other material to read in the meantime. Reading! Who’s going to read when we can travel again and visit with long-unseen friends and relatives?!
Onward!
References for Weeks 24 & 25: Anthony
Websites:
Basilica of Saint Anthony of Padua: https://www.santantonio.org/en
Books and articles
Please note that sources listed here may be available in more recent editions.
Braunfels, Wolfgang. Monasteries of Western Europe: The Architecture of the Orders. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1972.
Lucchini, Francesco. “The Making of a Legend: The Reliquary of the Tongue and the Representation of Saint Anthony as a Preacher,” in Franciscans and Preaching: Every Miracle from the Beginning of the World Came about through Words. Timothy Johnson, Ed, Leiden: Brill, 2012.