The Martyr Anthony was a Christian of Alexandria in Egypt who was put to death for confessing Christ during the persecutions of the early Church. The sources that preserve his memory place his martyrdom in the pre-Nicene era, before the Council of Nicaea of AD 325, though the exact year of his death is unknown.
According to the synaxarion, Anthony was arrested for openly confessing his faith. He was tied to a tree and his body was torn with iron hooks, after which he was sentenced to be burned. Tradition relates that as he stood in the fire he calmly exhorted the onlookers to toil not for the body, which is temporal, but for the eternal soul in their aspiration toward God. The Orthodox Church commemorates him on August 9.
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Martyrdom
The accounts of Anthony's life are brief and concern almost entirely the manner of his death. Arrested for his confession of faith, he was first bound to a tree and his flesh torn with iron hooks, a form of torture used to compel apostasy. When he would not renounce Christ, he was condemned to death by fire.
The synaxarion relates that Anthony bore his suffering without fear, and that standing in the flames he turned his attention to those watching, urging them to labor for the soul rather than the perishable body. By tradition, when the fire died down his body was found unharmed by the flames.
