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After a time Anthony withdrew from Pispir to
seek solitude in the Eastern Desert. Even here
his fame attracted visitors, so leaving behind a
second community of anchorites he moved into a
cave in the mountains. Anthony is said to have
died at the ripe old age of 105, having sworn
two trusted monks to secrecy concerning the
whereabouts of his body. He did not want his
tomb to be venerated. Some say he was buried
under the floor of the cave. Another tradition
maintains that the body was moved in 561 A.D. to
the Church of St. John the Baptist in Alexandria
and then to St. Sophia in Constantinople.
Otherwise, the body is said to rest in various
locations in France. Whatever the truth, a
monastery was eventually set up in the fourth
century in the Wadi Araba in the Eastern Desert,
near the cave where Anthony lived for the last
years of his life. St. Anthony's Monastery is
the oldest and largest Coptic monastery in
Egypt. There is little to see of the original
monastery today, as it was rebuilt in later
centuries. It remained a great center of
scholarship where Coptic works were translated
into Arabic until 1483, when it was attacked by
the Bedouin and the monks killed or expelled. It
has now been reoccupied, and a self-supporting
community carries on it's tradition. |
