Anthony of Padua

Anthony of Padua is one of the most rapidly canonized saints in Christian history, declared a saint less than a year after his death in 1231, and one of the most widely invoked, chiefly through the folk practice of praying to him to recover what is lost. That popular role obscures the substance of the man. A Portuguese-born Augustinian who joined the Franciscans hoping for martyrdom in Morocco, he became instead the order's first influential theologian, a preacher of such force that Francis of Assisi himself authorized him to teach the friars. His command of scripture earned him the later title Doctor of the Church (Doctor Evangelicus), and his surviving sermon notes are dense with allegorical exegesis. The legends, preaching to fishes when a town refused to listen, the Christ-child appearing in his arms, gathered around a reputation for eloquence that was real. He is buried in the great basilica at Padua that bears his name, one of the busiest pilgrimage churches in Italy.

Anthony was born in Lisbon as Fernando and joined the Augustinian canons before transferring to the recently founded Franciscans, a decision that placed him at the center of the new order's early growth. His gift for preaching was reportedly discovered almost by accident when he was called on to speak at an ordination with no other speaker prepared, and Francis himself is said to have recognized and encouraged his teaching ability, one of the few individuals the founder is recorded praising in this way.

What is unusual about Anthony's path to sainthood is its speed relative to almost every other figure of the period: he was canonized within roughly a year of his death in 1231, among the fastest canonizations in the Church's history, a pace that reflects an immediate and overwhelming popular cult rather than a slow institutional evaluation of his life. That popular devotion, particularly his later reputation as the saint to invoke for lost objects and lost people, developed early and has never really faded. The formal recognition of his intellectual and doctrinal contribution came far later and on an entirely different timetable: he was not declared a Doctor of the Church until 1946, more than seven centuries after his death, showing a wide gap between an instantly popular folk devotion and the Church's much slower formal judgment of his theological standing.