d him, and he, stretching out his feet, without any other
sign calmly ceased to breathe. His death happened in the year 355,
probably on the 17th of January, on which the most ancient Martyrologies
name him, and which the Greek empire kept as a holyday soon after his
death. He was one hundred and five years old. From his youth to that
extreme old age, he always maintained the same fervor in his holy
exercises: age to the last never made him change his diet (except in the
use of a little oil) nor his manner of clothing; yet he lived without
sickness, his sight was not impaired, his teeth were only worn, and not
one was lost or loosened. The two disciples interred him according to
his directions. About the year 561, his body[29] was discovered, in the
reign of Justinian, and with great solemnity translated to Alexandria,
thence it was removed to Constantinople, and is now at Vienne in France.
Bollandus gives us an account of many miracles wrought by his
intercession; particularly in what manner the distemper called the
Sacred Fire, since that time St. Antony's Fire, miraculously ceased
through his patronage, when it raged violently in many parts of Europe,
in the eleventh century.

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A most sublime gift of heavenly contemplation and prayer was the fruit
of this great saint's holy retirement. Whole nights seemed to him short
in those exercises, and when the rising sun in the morning seemed to him
too soon to call him from his knees to his manual labor, or other
employments, he would lament that the incomparable sweetness which he
enjoyed, in the more perfect freedom with which his heart was taken up
in heavenly contemplation in the silent watching of the night, should be
interrupted or abated. But the foundation of his most ardent charity,
and that sublime contemplation by which his soul soared in noble and
lofty flights above all earthly things, was laid in the purity and
disengagement of his affections, the contempt of the world, a most
profound humility, and the universal mortification of his senses and of
the powers of his soul. Hence flowed that constant tranquillity and
serenity of his mind, which was the best proof of a perfect mastery of
his passions. St. Athanasius observes of him, that after thirty years
spent in the closest solitude, "he appeared not to others with a sullen
or savage, but with a most obliging sociable air."[30] A heart that is
filled with inward peace, simplicity, goodness, and charity, is