This is an icon button of St. Anthony the Great.

Size: 1 ¼"

St. Anthony the Great (c. 251–356) was a pivotal Egyptian ascetic revered as the "Father of Christian Monasticism". Born to wealthy Christian landowners in Coma, his life shifted radically around age twenty following his parents' deaths, when he heard a Gospel passage urging a rich young man to sell everything and follow Christ. Taking this mandate literally, he placed his sister in a house of Christian virgins, distributed his vast inheritance to the poor, and journeyed deep into the harsh Egyptian wilderness to pursue an unprecedented life of absolute isolation and prayer. For decades, he lived in abandoned Roman forts and desert caves, enduring intense spiritual warfare and vividly surviving terrifying psychological and physical onslaughts from demonic forces. Despite his strict reclusion, his profound spiritual discernment and radiant health drew thousands of pilgrims, forcing him to emerge from isolation to organize his disciples into loose communities of hermits. He occasionally ventured back to civilization to fortify Christian martyrs during Roman persecutions and openly combat the Arian heresy in Alexandria. Dying at the extraordinary age of 105, his intense ascetic lifestyle and heavenly wisdom were famously preserved by St. Athanasius the Great, popularizing the anchoritic model and fundamentally shaping the future of global Christian monastic development.