The ritual use of the collection of alms sung in honour of Saint Anthony the Abbot draws on some elements of his biography written by St Athanasius. Anthony was born in 251 at Koma, in Egypt, and died on 17th January 356 in Quolzoum, at the age of 105. He lived as a hermit in isolated places, eating only food that was given to him; his fight against the noisy demons took place with the help of song and prayer. He was also considered a powerful thaumaturge, able to heal people from serious diseases and to release them from demonic possession.

The order of the Antonines was officially founded in the West in 1297, but the activity of religious orders and congregations inspired by the holy Egyptian had already been deep-rooted for a long time: his followers were specialized in curing ergotism and helping the poor and worked in foundations and hospitals. They lived on the collection of alms and breeding of pigs – which were fed by the entire community – for the maintenance of the buildings and the therapies based on pork fat. Sick people and pigs were announced by bells, just like the musicians that go around collecting  alms with a bell fixed to the top of a stick. Today the begging team recreates the image of the group of hermits following the holy saint, or that of the Antonines collecting alms to be destined to the poor and the sick. Songs and music are the tools that give power to the ritual: according to local beliefs they purify places from negative influences, as for Saint Anthony the Abbot they were the instruments used to defeat the devil.

In Arsita, at the foot of Monte Camicia, the ritual collection is particularly popular  in the village and in the rural districts. The door-to-door collections are carried out  in the days leading up to 17th January, to celebrate not only the saint but also the relationships with family members neighbours and friends,  all the ties and social alliances that form the fabric of the community. Welcoming the teams on their way is an honour and  refreshments are always offered, together with food to take away: sausages, pork loin, cheeses, biscuits and, sometimes, roosters, rabbits and other live animals.

The ethnomusicologist researcher Marco Magistrali has found evidence of a wide and deep-rooted practice of this ritual. In the Acquasanta district the alms collectors usually perform In honour of Saint Anthony , a song introduced in the 1950s by the diasillari (wandering alms collector singers) from the northern area of the province of Teramo. Like other songs, it is also  known in the form of urazijionë (prayer), and it merges the Egyptian abbot and Saint Anthony of Padua into a single figure , thus increasing his powers and attributes by linking them to the history of a proud and greedy merchant, punished for his misbelief, in order to remind men and women of the obligation of humility and the power of the patron saint  of animals.