Section 60

This happened on another occasion as well. Antony was sitting on the mountain when, looking upward, he saw someone being carried into the air, surrounded by great rejoicing among those who met him.

Antony marveled and considered such a company blessed. He prayed to learn what this meant, and immediately a voice came to him: “This is the soul of Amun, the monk of Nitria.”

Amun had persevered in ascetic discipline into old age. Nitria was a journey of thirteen days from the mountain where Antony lived. Antony’s companions saw the old man astonished and asked what had happened. He told them that Amun had just died.

Amun was well known to them because he had often stayed at Antony’s mountain and many signs had been worked through him. One of them was this.

Once Amun needed to cross the river called Lycus during the season when it was in flood. He asked his companion Theodore to move some distance away so that they would not see one another naked while swimming across. After Theodore had withdrawn, Amun became ashamed even at the thought of seeing himself naked.

While he stood there full of embarrassment and wondering what to do, he was suddenly carried to the other side of the river. Theodore, himself a good man, came across afterward and saw that Amun had arrived first without even a drop of water on him. He asked how he had crossed.

When Amun did not want to tell him, Theodore held him by the feet and declared that he would not let him go until he learned what had happened. Seeing Theodore’s determination, especially from what he had said, Amun made him promise to tell no one until after Amun’s death. Then he told him that he had been carried through the air and placed on the opposite bank. He had not even set foot on the water. Such a thing, he said, was not possible for a human being, but only for the Lord and for those whom he permits, as he did in the case of the great apostle Peter.

Theodore revealed this after Amun’s death.

The monks to whom Antony had spoken about Amun’s death recorded the day. When brothers arrived from Nitria thirty days later, they asked them and learned that Amun had fallen asleep on the very day and at the very hour when Antony had seen his soul being carried upward.

Both groups marveled at the purity of Antony’s soul: he had immediately learned what was happening thirteen days’ journey away and had seen Amun’s soul as it was taken up.