The sources of our information about Antony the Great are the reports of church historians of Socrates, Sozomen, Rufin, Blessed Jerome and others, but the most important of them is the most ancient Greek hagiographic work. The life of Antony, written about 365 by one of the most prominent Greek writers of the 4th century, the Church Father St Athanasius of Alexandria . This creation of St. Athanasius is considered one of his best writings, a masterpiece of ascetic and hagiographic literature. St. John Chrysostom says that this life should be read to all Christians.

This narrative is not very significant in comparison with the Anthony's virtues, "St. Athanasius writes," but from this also conclude what God's man Antony was. From a young age and up to such a age, he maintained equal zeal for asceticism, not for old age, being seduced by expensive food, or because of his body's weakness did not change the look of his clothes, but in no way did he suffer harm. His eyes were healthy and unharmed he saw well. Not a single tooth fell out of him, but only they weakened in the gums from the old man's old age. He was healthy with his arms and legs. And that everywhere they talked about him, everyone was surprised at him, and even those who did not see him loved him - this is a proof of his virtue and the love of God.

Saint Anthony the Great, who initiated the secluded desolate ascetic life, represents his own ideal of this kind of God-worship, and together the path by which every soul, if it chooses, must go to the perfection that Christianity offers for us on earth.

Creations of Antony the Great "father of monasticism". Although it is very difficult to talk about the accuracy of the attribution of these creations, they constitute one of the most important parts of Tradition.

"Superficial reading does not notice anything special in these messages: from long circulation these phrases, these quotes, this dictionary may sound familiar to an erased rhetoric." However, Antonia's words contain amazing things that in later tradition may never have been remembered with such a force.

One of them is his constant thought about knowing himself as the cognition of the divine in himself, the immortal beginning; From this, he repeats many times, spiritual life begins. He who has known himself, has known God. And so he who loves himself, loves everyone. In the future, the knowledge of self or attention to oneself was thought primarily as a recognition and denunciation of sinful movements in oneself. Anthony also speaks of this, the spirit of discrimination and the need to see his own shame (for he who knows his own shame, he again strives for his high honor, and who knows his own death, knows his eternal life) - but begins with another : with the recognition of the original clever essence, beginning without end, with the need to know that every sin and wine is alien to the nature of our intelligent essence. The one who did not recognize her (did not recognize himself), and can assert heretical things (he says in connection with Ariem) and do evil deeds.

Another amazing thought [...] Anthony is his history of the church, which he begins with the Old Testament, with Abraham: the story of all those who are attracted to God by the law invested in our hearts. It looks like a story of a person's healing, a history of liberation (the word of freedom) and universal connection: from our neighbor is our destruction, and our life too from the neighbor. It continues to act and live, and those who died: those who reap, along with those who sow.

Complete collection of creations. Anthony the Great