St. Anthony the Roman

The Life says he was born at Rome about 1067 of wealthy Christian parents of the Greek rite, that he gave away what he inherited, put the rest into a barrel and cast it into the sea, and lived for a year on a rock on the shore in prayer.

On the fifth of September, 1105, the tradition says, a storm broke the rock free and carried it, and Anthony on it, out to sea and north, and set it down on the bank of the Volkhov at Novgorod on the eighth of September, 1106. He knew neither the language nor the country. The barrel he had thrown into the sea at Rome was later drawn up in the nets of Novgorod fishermen and given to him, and he used what was in it to buy the land for a monastery.

Bishop Nikita received him, and Anthony founded there the monastery of the Nativity of the Most Holy Theotokos, and was its abbot until his repose on the third of August, 1147. His relics were uncovered in 1597 and he was glorified the same year.

The stone is still shown at the monastery church in Novgorod. The Church tells the account as the Life tells it, and it is one of the places where the Russian tradition is plainly aware that it is repeating something extraordinary and repeats it anyway.