ANTONIANI di VIENNE. - This Order is connected with the epidemics of “holy fire,” so frequent in the Middle Ages. “Holy fire,” or “St. Anthony’s fire,” a disease now known as “gangrenous ergotism,” was an intoxication caused by the use of bread made from flour infected with ergot, and manifested itself in gangrene of the extremities, producing fatal mutilations. Towards the end of the 10th century and at the beginning of the 11th, a terrible epidemic of this disease broke out in France. Some sick persons who prayed to s. Antonio abate are said to have been miraculously healed; thus the saint came to acquire a particular thaumaturgic protection over this disease. A certain Gastone, lord of Vienne, whose son had been healed through the Saint’s intercession, founded a hospital near the priory of La Motte-Saint-Didier for the care of patients of this kind. There then arose a first congregation of seven laymen (1905), which was later transformed by Bonifacio VIII into a religious Order following the rule of s. Agostino. The Order, now extinct, was called that of the Canons Regular of s. Antonio del Viennois, but more commonly that of the “A.” They wore a black habit and a blue “T” on their mantle and on the left side of their garment. The hospitals of the A. soon increased in number and power, spreading throughout the world.
The mobile hospital of the Roman Curia was also entrusted to the Order of the A. It was to follow it in its various movements and also served those who were drawn to the place by the presence of the Pontiff. In Roma this hospital was situated in front of the Lateran Patriarchium, but it was later transferred near the Basilica Liberiana on the Esquilino, where there already existed a hospital called S. Andrea “de Piscina,” which changed its title to that of S. Antonio. Antonian hospitals were also found in Salerno, together with Benedictine ones.