Venerable Antony the Roman, Wonderworker of Novgorod (+1147)

The Venerable Antony the Roman was born in Rome in 1067. His rich and God-fearing parents brought him up in piety. The young man was seventeen when his father and mother died. Orphaned, Antony took up the study of the works of the fathers in Greek; then he distributed part of his property to the poor, put part into a barrel and gave it to the sea, and himself became a monk in a desert skete, where he laboured for twenty years. The persecution of the Orthodox by the Latins forced the brotherhood to scatter. The Venerable Antony moved from place to place. At last, on a deserted seashore, he found a large rock and laboured on it for more than a year. On 5 September 1105 a terrible storm and high waves that arose suddenly carried the rock out to sea. On the feast of the Nativity of the Most Holy Mother of God, Saint Antony, miraculously saved, found himself three versts from Novgorod, on the bank of the river Volkhov, by the village of Volkhovskoye. On this spot, with the blessing of the holy hierarch Nikita the Recluse (+1109), the Venerable Antony founded a monastery of the Nativity of the Mother of God. Once fishermen drew up from the sea in their net the barrel with the holy father’s inheritance. The blessed Antony named what he had put into it many years before, took the treasure, and bought lands for the monastery. In 1131 the hierarch Niphon appointed the Venerable Antony abbot of the monastery. The labour-laden ascetic died on 3 August 1147.