St. Antonios (251–356) was the "Father of Monasticism" who organized his disciples into a worshipful community and inspired similar communities throughout Egypt 2 centuries before Benedictus Nursia established his monastic rule. As a boy Gustave Flaubert witnessed a marionette performance of “The Mystery of St. Anthony” and in 1845, at 24, he was overwhelmed by a 16th-century painting, by Pieter Bruegel the Elder or 1 of his students, in the Palazzo Stefano Balbi in Genova. From that point on, “St. Anthony accompanied Flaubert for twenty-five or thirty years,” according to Michel Foucault. In 1849 Flaubert completed "La Tentation de Saint Antoine." Over the course of 4 days he read it to his friends Louis Bouilhet and Maxime Du Camp but would not allow them to interrupt him or express their opinions about it; unimpressed, they advised him to set it on fire. He rewrote it in 1856 and published some extracts, and finally completed a version, written in the form of a script, in 1872. Foucault called the final novel an “overcrowded bestiary” with “creatures of unnatural issue” and described Anthony’s temptations as “false gods resembling the true God.”
St. Antonios (251–356) was the "Father of Monasticism" who organized his disciples into a worshipful community and inspired similar communities throughout Egypt 2 centuries before Benedictus Nursia established his monastic rule. As a boy Gustave Flaubert witnessed a marionette performance of “The Mystery of St. Anthony” and in 1845, at 24, he was overwhelmed by a 16th-century painting, by Pieter Bruegel the Elder or 1 of his students, in the Palazzo Stefano Balbi in Genova. From that point on, “St. Anthony accompanied Flaubert for twenty-five or thirty years,” according to Michel Foucault. In 1849 Flaubert completed "La Tentation de Saint Antoine." Over the course of 4 days he read it to his friends Louis Bouilhet and Maxime Du Camp but would not allow them to interrupt him or express their opinions about it; unimpressed, they advised him to set it on fire. He rewrote it in 1856 and published some extracts, and finally completed a version, written in the form of a script, in 1872. Foucault called the final novel an “overcrowded bestiary” with “creatures of unnatural issue” and described Anthony’s temptations as “false gods resembling the true God.”
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