The Importance Of Morality In The Life Of St. Antony?

Introduction
The Life of St. Antony by Athanasius was a very important book to the Christian Byzantines and was continuously read throughout the early Christian world. It was a biography that was also held up as a model of the ideal life in the Byzantine civilization. The author himself, St. Athanasius, was a man that would have preferred the monastic lifestyle, but was an important and influential man in the church and therefore, contrary to his wishes, had to live among the people. This colours his perspective and most likely makes him somewhat biased in the way that he describes St. Antony.
The attitude toward the human body in this text is that it is necessary to care for it when needed, but it does not come near to the importance of the soul, spirit, and mind. Physical appearance in "The life of St. Antony", is not significant to Antony nor to Athanasius however, the topic of the body is brought up more, but only in the context of sinning through accepting the pleasures of the flesh and the pleasure of food because to listen to the body instead of the higher power of God, is to sin. The appearance of …show more content…
True, because necessity demands it, a little time should be given to the body; but on the whole we should give our first attention to the soul and look to its advantage. It must not be dragged down by the pleasures of the body, but rather the body must be made subject to the soul" This reiterates his idea that most of the time that an individual has, according to Antony, must go towards the betterment of the soul rather than the wants of the body. When he was about to provide for his body by eating, sleeping or the other necessities that his body demanded of him, he was ashamed that he needed to do these instead of caring solely for his soul. This shame of the body also contributes to the image Athanasius creates about the significance of the body in comparison to the