Saint Pantaleon

Klemens Löffler, who wrote the encyclopedia article, is blunt about the stories. He tells them in full, prefaced "according to legend," and then sets them aside as worthless for history. ¹ He does not, however, set aside the man. "Yet the fact of the martyrdom itself seems to be proved," he writes, by early testimony to the veneration of Pantaleon: the fifth-century bishop Theodoret mentions him, as do the historian Procopius of Caesarea and the ancient martyrology attributed to Saint Jerome. ¹

Catholic Culture adds what the cult looked like on the ground. It was centered on Bithynia, the province around Nicomedia, where the emperor Justinian rebuilt Pantaleon's church, and churches were dedicated to him in Constantinople and Rome. ³ In the East he is still known as the Great Martyr and Wonder Worker. ¹³

Even his name has a story attached. Pantaleon is the form used in the West, and the encyclopedia explains the Greek Panteleemon, "the all-compassionate," as a name he received for praying that his executioners be forgiven. ¹ The rest of this page tells the legend as the sources tell it, and marks it as legend.

In the legend, Pantaleon is the son of a rich pagan, Eustorgius of Nicomedia, and of a Christian mother, Eubula, who taught him the faith. ¹ He drifted away from it as he grew up, studied medicine, and rose to become physician to the emperor. ¹ The encyclopedia names that emperor as Maximinianus. ¹ Pius Parsch, whose account Catholic Culture excerpts, says he "is said to have strayed from the faith because of the voluptuous life at the court." ³

He was brought back by a priest named Hermolaus. ¹ Parsch says Hermolaus did it "by pointing out the example of his virtuous mother." ³ When his father died, Pantaleon inherited a large fortune. ¹ According to Parsch, he gave his goods to the poor and turned his skill to "the most wretched and poor among the sick," and Catholic Culture calls him a celebrated "fee-less physician" who practiced without payment. ³

That generosity, in the encyclopedia's telling, is what brought him down. Envious colleagues denounced him to the emperor during the persecution under Diocletian. ¹ The emperor wanted to save him and pressed him to give up his faith. Pantaleon instead confessed it openly and, as proof that Christ is the true God, healed a paralyzed man in front of him. The emperor took the cure for magic and condemned him. ¹

What follows in the encyclopedia's summary is a series of executions that fail. His flesh was burned with torches, and Christ appeared to everyone present in the form of Hermolaus to strengthen and heal him, and the torches went out. A bath of molten lead was prepared, and Christ, again in the form of Hermolaus, stepped into the cauldron with him; the fire died and the lead went cold. ¹

He was thrown into the sea weighted with a stone, and the stone floated. He was given to wild beasts, which fawned on him and would not leave until he had blessed them. He was bound to a wheel, and the ropes snapped and the wheel broke. When the executioners tried to behead him, the sword bent, and they were converted. ¹ Pantaleon prayed for their forgiveness, and only when he himself consented could he be beheaded. ¹

The shorter accounts differ. Parsch says Pantaleon was seized by order of the emperor Maximian, tied to the rack and scorched with torches, that Christ appeared and gave him strength, and that "finally a stroke of the sword ended his sufferings." ³ Catholic Culture's page on the Fourteen Holy Helpers says he was nailed to a tree and then beheaded at Nicomedia, around 303, under Diocletian, and that he is pictured with his hands nailed together. ⁴

The encyclopedia reports that a phial of his blood has been kept at Constantinople "from early times," and that on his feast day the blood "is said to become fluid and to bubble." ¹ Catholic Culture describes a reputed relic of his blood at Ravello, in southern Italy, which it says liquefies on his feast in the manner of the blood of Saint Januarius. ³ Both sources use the language of report, and this page does the same; neither says the two relics are connected.

Other relics, according to the encyclopedia, are kept at the abbey of Saint-Denis near Paris, and his head is venerated at Lyons. ¹

In the Middle Ages, the encyclopedia says, Pantaleon became one of the "fourteen guardian martyrs," the group better known in English as the Fourteen Holy Helpers. ¹ Catholic Culture explains that devotion to the group as a whole grew up mainly during the Black Death of 1346 to 1349, when people turned to these saints to be spared or cured, and that all fourteen except Giles were martyrs. ⁴ The group had a shared feast on August 8 until the 1969 reform of the Roman calendar, which dropped it; each saint keeps his or her own day. ⁴ Pantaleon keeps company there with George, Christopher, Barbara and Catherine of Alexandria, and with Blaise, who Catholic Culture says is thought to have been a physician as well. ⁴

Saint Pantaleon is the patron saint of physicians and midwives. The encyclopedia says he came to be regarded that way in the Middle Ages, and Catholic Culture gives the same two patronages. ¹³⁴ Catholic Culture's fuller list adds doctors, bachelors, torture victims, people suffering from consumption or tuberculosis, and the protection of domestic animals. ³ Its Holy Helpers page says he is invoked against consumption and for the protection of domestic animals. ⁴

In art, Catholic Culture lists a budding olive branch or olive tree, vials of medicine, a lion, a club, and a sword and vase among his symbols. ³

Saint Pantaleon's feast day is July 27. ²³⁴ Vatican News lists "St. Pantaleon, Physician, Martyr" among the saints of that day. ² Catholic Culture lists him for July 27 as a commemoration from the Roman Martyrology rather than as a memorial of the general calendar. ³ The 1911 encyclopedia gives July 27 and adds that he is also kept on July 28 and on February 18. ¹

The Church's own historians have said for more than a century that the miracles of his execution cannot be relied on. ¹ What remains is thinner and harder to dismiss: a physician of Nicomedia who died for his faith, and whose memory Christians kept from very early on, in the East and the West alike. ¹³

The part of the story Parsch dwells on is ordinary work. A doctor with a court practice and an inheritance, as the legend has it, gave away his money and spent his skill on the poorest of the sick, without charging them. ³ The patronage of physicians and midwives that grew up around him in the Middle Ages keeps that picture of him in view. ¹

The legend also brings him back to the faith through a priest who reminded him of his mother. ³ Whatever its value as history, that is a story about the faith being handed on and recovered rather than held without a break.

In the encyclopedia's telling, his last recorded act was to ask forgiveness for the men sent to kill him, and the name the East gave him, the all-compassionate, comes from that prayer. ¹ Nothing here has been added to make the devotion easier, and the stories that do not hold up are labeled as legend.