Pantaleon

Pantaleon (Panteleimon) (d. c.305), doctor and martyr. His name means ‘all-compassionate’: his cult was well established from an early date in both East and West, particularly in Nicomedia and Bithynia. According to his Legend he was the son of a pagan father and a Christian mother, Eubula, who brought him up as a Christian. But he later relapsed into paganism until he was reconciled to the Church through a fellow-Christian, Hermolaos. By this time he was a successful physician who numbered the Emperor Galerius among his patients. When the persecution of Diocletian began in Nicomedia in 303 he was denounced as a Christian by his colleagues, was arrested, tortured in various ways, and ultimately beheaded. In the East he is venerated as a great martyr and wonder-worker and as one of the holy men who looked after the sick without being paid. In the West he was considered (in Germany and the Low Countries) as one of the Fourteen Holy Helpers; his blood at Ravello is believed to liquefy like that of Januarius. Churches were dedicated to him in Constantinople and Rome. Feast: 27 July.

Bibliography
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• AA.SS. Iul. VI (1729), 397–426; H. Delehaye, Les Origines du culte des Martyrs (1912), pp. 181 ff.; I. R. Grant, The Testimony of Blood (1929), pp. 17–44. The liquefaction is also described by J. H. Newman in a letter to H. Wilberforce of August 1846. Bibl. SS., 108–17