"Multipliciter commendatur beatus Antonius." Sant'Antonio di Padova come modello di virtù per i frati minori (Ca. 1232 - 1350)

Preachers writing sermons on saint Anthony during the Middle Ages are several. Most of them are Franciscan friars with few notable exceptions. All of them adress to Franciscans and their intent seems to be the construction of the ideal of the perfect friar Minor. In sermons, Anthony is celebrated through his life and his virtues, more than his miracles and the image of a perfect but imitable Franciscan saint contrasts with the one given to saint Francis by the same preachers. Moving from the usual catalogue of virtues, not all of them pertain to saint Anthony. Preachers and hagiographers, infact, focus basically on a small selection: humility, poverty, charity and, above all, wisdom in both its meanings of "doctrina" and "scientia". The paper analyses the two groups of sources to put out how some topics pertain mostly to preachers. Common virtues are wisdom, humility and poverty. The paper is structured around these three virtues, and focuses on the evolution and changes of their meanings in sources, times and environments. Finally, a systematical comparison among sermons and hagiography shows the increasing importance of Anthony as a model for Franciscan friars acting in the Church. The adaptability of his image to the situations the Order had to face at the very end of the XIII and the first half of the XIV century decreed the luck of Anthony until the time of the plague, when new models of holiness definitely stole him the scene.