Antonians of Vienna

ANTONIANS OF VIENNA. - This Order is connected with the epidemics of "holy fire," so frequent in the Middle Ages. The "holy fire" or "St. Anthony's fire," a disease today known by the name "ergotism gangrenosum," was a poisoning due to the use of bread made with flour infected by ergot of rye, and which manifested itself with gangrene of the extremities, producing lethal mutilations. Toward the end of the 10th century and at the beginning of the 11th a tremendous epidemic of this malady broke out in France. Certain sick persons, who prayed to St. Anthony Abbot, are said to have been miraculously cured; whence the saint came to acquire a particular thaumaturgic protection over this malady. A certain Gaston, lord of Vienne, whose son had been cured through the intercession of the Saint, founded a hospital near the priory of La Motte-Saint-Didier, for the care of the sick of this kind. There then arose a first congregation of seven laymen (1905), which was later transformed by Boniface VIII into a religious Order with the rule of St. Augustine. The Order, now extinct, was called that of the Regular Canons of St. Anthony of the Viennois, but more commonly that of the "A." They had a black habit and a blue "T" on the mantle and on the left side of the habit. The hospitals of the A. soon grew in number and in power, spreading throughout the whole world.

To the Order of the A. was also entrusted the mobile hospital of the Roman Curia. It had to follow it in its various movements and also served those who were attracted to the place by the presence of the Pontiff. In Rome this hospital had its seat in front of the Lateran Patriarchate, but later it moved near the Liberian Basilica on the Esquiline where a hospital already existed, called that of St. Andrew "de Piscina," which changed its title to that of St. Anthony. A. hospitals were also in Salerno, together with the Benedictine ones.

Adalberto Pazzini