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The seven letters of St Antony of Egypt, after the ground-breaking study of Samuel Rubenson, have been revealed to be one of our earliest sources for Egyptian monastic and ascetic theology of the fourth century. However, the letters, except for some fragments, are not extant in their original Coptic version and the most reliable source we have is a Georgian translation of the seven letters and a complete Latin translation first published in 1516. This Latin version is usually considered by scholarship as a humanist translation made on the basis of a lost Greek original. This view has remained ever since accepted in later scholarship. A deeper examination of the Latin text and its transmission, however, reveals a completely different story and the Latin translation has turned out to be much earlier than it was previously assumed and it should be regarded as an early composition, made sometimes between the fifth and seventh centuries which, beside the fifth century Syriac translation of Anthony?s first letter, makes it one of the earliest extant witnesses to Antony?s letters.
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