Saint Sampson the Hospitable

Three kinds of record survive. The Martyrology gives a single line: a priest of Constantinople who "harbored the poor," in the 1897 English text, and in the current one a refuge of the poor who is said to have built a hospital at the invitation of Justinian after curing him of an illness. ⁴⁵ The historian Procopius, writing under Justinian, mentions the hospice and its founder in his book on the emperor's buildings. ² And there is a Greek life, which the Bollandists printed in the Acta Sanctorum with a long commentary and attributed to Symeon Metaphrastes, the tenth-century compiler of saints' lives. ¹

Its author is candid about his materials. He says he lives close to Sampson's tomb, that he found only a short life written by a cleric, carelessly put together, and an encomium that told the story sparingly, and that he has had to follow them because he has nothing else. ¹ The Bollandists accept the outline of his story and correct his dates. ¹

He is a different man from Samson of Dol, the bishop of Brittany, whom the 1897 Martyrology keeps on July 28. ⁵

The Vita says Sampson was born at Rome to parents who were rich and well regarded, and the Greek service books quoted by the Bollandists make him a kinsman of Constantine the Great. ¹ He gave himself early to reading Scripture and to the study of medicine. ¹ The Vita adds that he made almost no money from it: among the poor he treated even incurable illnesses, and used his medical skill, out of humility, as a cover for healing that came from grace. ¹

When his parents died he did not wait. ¹ Taking the Gospel command to sell what one has and give alms, he distributed his wealth with both hands, as the Vita puts it, and kept giving for the rest of his life. ¹ He would not keep slaves; he set his servants free and gave them enough to live on. ¹ Then he left Rome with one tunic and one attendant and came to Constantinople. His biographer admits that he cannot say why. ¹

In the city he lived in a small, poor house and took in the sick, free of charge, as guests. ¹ He treated them as brothers and gave them food and a bed as well as medical care, partly by his art, the Vita says, and partly by the gift of grace. ¹ The service books add that he prayed constantly in the churches of the holy prophets and lived quietly and unnoticed, reading Scripture. ¹

Word of him reached the patriarch, whom the Vita names as Menas, and he was ordained a priest a little after his thirtieth year. ¹ The Bollandists doubt this detail. Following the scholar Nicolaus Alemannus, they cite the deacon Liberatus, who wrote that Menas, an Alexandrian, had been head of the greater hospice called Sampson, which means that Menas rose to the patriarchate only after Sampson had died. ¹

The best-known story in the Vita is the healing of Justinian. The emperor fell gravely ill with an ulcer of the bladder, and a crowd of physicians argued around his bed without helping him. ¹ He turned to God, and in a dream was shown one man among the doctors, humble in appearance, gray-haired and decently dressed, who would cure him. ¹ On waking he had every physician brought before him and studied their faces, found none who matched, and promised rewards to anyone who could find the man. ¹ At last one of the court physicians, a friend of Sampson's, recognized the description and named him. ¹

When Sampson came, the emperor knew him from the dream, took him into his private rooms, sat him beside him, and kissed his hands and wept. ¹ Sampson protested, the Vita says, that he was a sinner like other men and in need of Christ's mercy, and that the cure would come from Christ and from the emperor's own faith. ¹ He laid his hand on the diseased part and applied ordinary remedies so that the cure would look like medicine. Within a few days Justinian was well. ¹

The emperor offered him gold. Sampson refused it, saying, in the Vita's account, that he was being offered what he had gladly given up for Christ. ¹ The service books record what followed: at Sampson's urging Justinian built a great house as a hospice for the poor and the sick, and he put Sampson in charge of the sacred furnishings of the Great Church. ¹

Procopius places the hospice between the two great churches of the city, Hagia Sophia and Hagia Irene, and describes it as devoted to "those who were at once destitute and suffering from serious illness." ² He says it was "erected in early times by a certain pious man, Samson by name," that it burned together with the churches on either side of it when rioters set the city alight, and that Justinian rebuilt it, "making it a nobler building in the beauty of its structure, and much larger in the number of its rooms," with "a generous annual income" for its upkeep. ²

The Catholic Encyclopedia's article on hospitals tells the same history: St. Samson founded a hospital near Hagia Sophia early in the sixth century, and it was destroyed and then restored under Justinian, who built other hospitals in the city as well. ³ Citing Du Cange, it counts thirty-five such establishments in Constantinople alone. ³

The Bollandists add more fires. They cite the chroniclers for the great hospice of Sampson burning in Justinian's fifth year, with the sick inside dying in it, and Theophanes for a second fire that consumed it in the emperor's thirty-seventh year; it was rebuilt again afterward. ¹ They also note that Jacques de Vitry listed the hospital of Saint Sampson at Constantinople beside the hospital of the Holy Spirit at Rome. ¹

The dates are a real problem, and the sources do not settle it the same way. Procopius calls the founder a pious man of earlier years, and Cardinal Baronius, the Bollandists report, concluded from this that Sampson lived long before Justinian and that the Vita could not be trusted. ¹²

The Bollandists answer that Sampson's first building was small and Justinian's rebuilding magnificent, so both writers can be right, and that Procopius was writing at the end of the reign, more than thirty years after Sampson's death. ¹ Justinian himself, in one of his laws, already speaks of Sampson as of holy memory. ¹ From that law and the fire, the Bollandists conclude that no one should doubt he was dead before the fifth year of Justinian's reign, 532, and that the Vita's chronology, though not its story, needs correcting. ¹

He died in peace, and his body was laid in the great church of the martyr Mocius, where, the service books say, a spring gave healing to the sick. ¹ The Vita tells several miracles from after his death. During the riot against Justinian, it says, the fire from Hagia Sophia reached his buildings, and some people saw Sampson running around the roof rebuking the flames, until thunder broke, heavy rain fell, and the house was saved except for its roof. ¹ Procopius, as above, says it was destroyed. ²

Another story concerns Gerontius, a cleric who served the hospice for thirty years but grew careless of the patients. ¹ The Vita says Sampson came to him one night, struck him several blows and asked why he did not see to what the sick needed, and that Gerontius was left unable to speak until a court official went to the saint's house and prayed for him. ¹ When his tongue was loosed, he said the saint's anger had been chiefly over the little house Sampson had lived in, which had been of no account during his life and deserved honor after his death; it was afterward turned into a church. ¹

None of the sources used for this page names a patronage for Saint Sampson. ¹²³⁴⁵ The Martyrology calls him a refuge of the poor, and the 1897 text says he "harbored the poor." ⁴⁵ The Greek title the Bollandists give him, Xenodochos, means the keeper of a guest house: the name of his work rather than of a patronage. ¹

Saint Sampson's feast day is June 27. ¹⁴⁵ The current Roman Martyrology, as the Italian bishops print it, commemorates him that day at Constantinople as a priest who was a refuge of the poor and is said to have set up a hospital at the invitation of the emperor Justinian, whom he had cured of an illness. ⁴ The 1897 English Martyrology has him on the same day, "priest, who harbored the poor." ⁵

The Bollandists print his life under June 27 and report that the Greek calendars keep him on that day. ¹ They add that his feast was among the solemn days of Constantinople, as an edict of Manuel Comnenus on feast days, issued in 1166, shows. ¹

Almost everything Sampson is remembered for happened in a small house. ¹ The Vita describes a doctor who took the sick in, fed them and gave them a bed, and did not charge them. ¹

He gave the money away first and kept the profession. ¹ His medicine was the ordinary kind, and the Vita says he leaned on it on purpose, so that what he did would look like skill. ¹ Even with the emperor he applied remedies and hoped the healing would pass unnoticed. ¹

The work outlasted him. The house he kept was rebuilt by an emperor, burned, and rebuilt again, and the man who later ran it became patriarch. ¹²³ The story about Gerontius is a reminder that the Vita's author knew the hospice could be run carelessly, and thought its founder would mind. ¹