Pantaleon

ON ST. PANTALEON, MARTYR,

AT NICOMEDIA IN BITHYNIA.

IN THE PERSECUTION OF Diocletian.

PRELIMINARY COMMENTARY.

Pantaleon, martyr, at Nicomedia (St.)

BY P. B.

§ I. The solemnity and antiquity of his cult in the eastern church.

Here anew we bring forward, with the Church, another Pantaleon, much more famous than the former, and long since most celebrated throughout both East and West, though not everywhere by the same name: for whom we generally call Pantaleon, St. Pantaleon, physician and martyr of Nicomedia the Greeks everywhere call Panteleemon, as by a more illustrious name and divinely bestowed; as will be seen below. But if at any time they use his first name, they do not name him Pantaleon, but Pantoleon, or Παντολέοντα, that is, in all things like a lion; which word they frequently employ in the Acts, when they narrate the things which befell the holy Martyr before the last revelation, by which that name, another being substituted, is believed to have been made obsolete. We meanwhile, by the custom already received here, shall call him Pantaleon, by which name we wish to be understood the physician and Martyr of Nicomedia; not another: for that there were others of the same name, we deem altogether certain. And of the one of Vigiliæ the thing itself speaks; as also of Pantaleon the monk, whom the Ethiopians reckon among their apostles, Tellez our author testifying, History of Ethiopia, book 1, chapter 31, and venerate on the 6th of October, as may be seen in their Calendar in Ludolf: of several they will not suffer doubt, the things which will be said below of the relics; although neither do any deeds of them survive, nor a sufficiently distinct memory in the Fasti, both Greek and Latin.

[2] But on this day this our holy Martyr is celebrated with a solemn Office among the Greeks, as may be seen in the great Menaia; on this day he is venerated with a solemn Office among the Greeks, in which he is announced with these words: Μηνὶ τῷ αὐτῷ κζ τοῦ ἁγίου μεγαλομάρτυρος καὶ ἰαματικοῦ Παντελεήμονος. That is: In the same month July, on the 27th day, the birthday of the holy and great martyr, distinguished by the power of healing, Panteleemon. Toward the end are recited these verses: Γαλατόμικτον, Μάρτυς, αἷμα σῆς κάρας. Δι᾽ ἣν ὑδατόμικτον ὁ Χρίστος χέει. Φάσγανον ἑβδομάτῃ εἴλαχ᾽ εἰκάδι Παντελεήμων. That is: With milk and gore flows the neck of the Martyr: for whom Christ had poured out watery blood. On the twenty-seventh Pantaleon obtained death by the sword. (Latin: "With milk and gore the neck of the Martyr flows: / For whom Christ had shed watery blood. / The twenty-seventh gave Pantaleon to death.") On the same day agree the Typicon of St. Sabas, the Horologium of Grottaferrata, the Calendar of the Greeks published by Genebrardus, and the Ruthenian one by our Possevinus, the Menaeum of Chifflet and other manuscripts, as also the Slavo-Russian Menologium translated by Sparwenfeld; where it is added that on that day wine and oil are permitted; which is also noted in the Horologium of the Greeks printed in the year 1607.

[3] and indeed a feast among the people. But in the compendium of the Menaia printed at the foot of the small Horologium at Venice in 1601, on the same day it reads thus: Τοῦ ἁγίου Παντελεήμονος, ἀργία, καὶ κατάλυσις οἴνου καὶ ἐλαίου. That is: Of holy Panteleemon; cessation (from servile and forensic work) and free use of wine and oil. This day, therefore, is among the Greeks a feast, as we commonly speak, among the people, and one indeed of the more celebrated; although in the twelfth century, under the emperor Manuel Comnenus, it was less solemn; as is clear from his constitution concerning the Feasts, in which among the semi-solemn feasts (that is, those on which one had to abstain from the forum and give oneself to divine things in the morning, until they were finished in the church) is numbered the 27th of July, ὅτι τὸν ἀθλοφόρον καὶ θαυματουργὸν Παντελεήμονα ἑορτάζομεν, that is, Because we celebrate the victor and worker of miracles Panteleemon (not John the merciful, as Leunclavius ineptly translates).

[4] His eulogy from the Synaxarium of Basil, and others. On the same day it is reported in the Synaxarium of the emperor Basil, whose Greek text we gave in the first volume of July, page 696, "The combat of the holy great-martyr Panteleemon," with this eulogy: "Panteleemon, the greatest martyr of Christ, was indeed a native of the city of Nicomedia; but the son of Eustorgius, a gentile, and of Eubula, a Christian (Χριστιανῆς, as the manuscript copy has; not Χριστιανὸς, as it is wrongly printed); a physician by art; which he had been taught by Euphrosynus, the most celebrated of physicians: but he learned the faith from Hermolaus the presbyter, by whom also he was baptized; through which he both raised a boy struck by a viper and killed, and restored sight to a blind man, and wrought several other miracles. But being recognized by the emperor Maximian, and seized, and having confessed Christ, he was tortured in various ways; and at last, the sentence of death to be inflicted by the sword being pronounced, bound with chains, when he had reached the place of punishment, he was tied to an olive tree; and, his head being cut off, blood flowed and milk; which, appearing even to this day, afford healings to all the faithful who approach." In the Sirletian Menologium in Canisius, on this day the eulogy is much shorter; but in the printed Menaia, and from these in the Arcudian Anthologium, much fuller, as also in the Βίοις Ἁγίων, that is, Lives of the Saints, of Maximus of Cythera. Yet we pass over these, because they teach nothing different from the Acts to be produced below, of which they are mere compendia; save that the Menaia add this: Τελεῖται δὲ ἡ αὐτοῦ σύναξις ἐν τῇ αὐτοῦ ἐπωνύμῳ ἐκκλησίᾳ. That is: But his solemnity is celebrated in the church distinguished by his name. Moreover, to the Greeks may be joined the Egyptian Arabs, in whose Martyrology, which Gratia Simonius translated into Latin for us, on the same day is noted "The memory of St. Pantaleon."

[5] But since mention has been made of the church of St. Pantaleon, it seems worthwhile if, both of that and of others dedicated to God by his name, some things be said: The most ancient churches dedicated to God by his name for they contribute not a little to prove the splendor and antiquity of his cult. We think, therefore, that churches were built to this Martyr from the times of Constantine the Great; when, the liberty of the Christian religion being established, the shrines of the gods began to be overthrown, and from their material new temples raised to the holy Martyrs: for this Theodoret seems to assert, in Sermon 8 on the Martyrs, vol. 4 of the Sirmondian edition, page 606, thus writing: "For the temples of these (idols) have been so destroyed that not even the appearance of the figures has remained, nor do the men of this age know the form of the altars: but all their material has been dedicated to the shrines of the Martyrs. For the Lord our God has brought in His own dead into the temples instead of your gods: and them indeed He has rendered empty and vain; but to these He has attributed their honor. For instead of the Pandia and Diasia, and Dionysia and your other feasts, the solemnities of Peter and Paul, and Thomas, and Sergius, and Marcellus, and Leontius, and Panteleemon, and Antoninus, and Mauritius, and other Martyrs are performed," etc. That the discourse here is of our Pantaleon is clear; since he is in the Eastern church, as we have already seen, most celebrated, nor does any other of the name Panteleemon appear known anywhere in it. His solemnity, therefore, both flourished under Theodoret, and had long before been substituted for the feasts of the idols, and a shrine existed, raised, as is hinted, from the scattered ruins of the idols; although it is not said whether one or several, or where they were placed.

[6] That Constantine caused a great church to be built at Sebaste in Armenia in the name of St. Pantaleon, [at Sebaste and Constantinople in the fourth century; one of which the emperor Justinian I restored.] is narrated in a certain ancient codex of the monastery of virgins of the Order of St. Augustine at Toulouse, from which our Peter Possin copied some things for us in the year 1645; but such that they scarcely merit any credence, which will appear below more evidently. To the same times can be referred that church of St. Panteleemon which, situated on the right shore of the Bosphorus for those sailing from Constantinople to the Euxine Sea, where the straits at the Fanum are noted, was already in the sixth century, under the emperor Justinian, falling to ruin from age. Of this Procopius of Caesarea thus, On the Justinianean Buildings, book 1, chapter 9: "Thence, to one making for the Euxine Sea, there meets a certain steep promontory jutting out from the shore of the strait, on which the martyrium of St. Panteleemon was situated, and, once negligently built, was now succumbing to age. This being demolished, and the church which is today seen there being most magnificently built, Justinian restored the honor

to the Martyr, and added ornament to the strait."

[7] That monastery too must have been ancient, [His most ancient monastery; and a church erected at Constantinople in the sixth century,] of which the same Procopius, in the same work, book 5, chapter 9, has these things: "At Jerusalem he restored (that is, renewed, ἀνενεώσατο, namely the same Justinian) these monasteries: of St. Thalelaeus, of St. Gregory, of St. Panteleemon in the desert of the Jordan." More recent is the church, ancient nevertheless, which to the same holy Martyr at Constantinople Theodora, the wife of the same Justinian, erected, of which Codinus in the Origins of Constantinople, in the Paris edition of the year 1655, page 52: "The church of St. Panteleemon," he says, "Theodora, the wife of Justinian the Great, built: because, coming from Paphlagonia to Constantinople, she had dwelt there in a portico, then a poor little woman and seeking her living by wool-work. But after she came to the empire, she changed those poor dwellings into a church." Agrees the Anonymous in Bandur, Eastern Empire, vol. 1, part 3, book 3, page 47, except that in the title he has: Περὶ τοῦ ἁγίου Παντελεήμονος τοῦ μεγάλου. That is, as the interpreter renders it: "Of the church of St. Panteleemon the Great"; but I know not whether that was the sense of the author: for since he is wont to call the temples of the Saints by the very name of the Saints in the nominative, as "St. Julian," "St. Agathonicus," etc., for the temple of St. Julian, of Agathonicus, etc., it is uncertain whether τοῦ μεγάλου (the Great) ought to affect St. Panteleemon, or this church of his. For the rest, that this church is different from the Justinianean, of which in the preceding number, Bandur shows in the Commentaries on his Anonymous, vol. 2, page 686, because this one was built in the part of the city of Constantinople which faced the Propontis. It could be added that the former church was built in the place of another more ancient one, demolished for this; but this one in a place before profane, as is clear from the adduced text of Codinus.

[8] likewise another there, built by the patrician Nicholas, There was also another at Constantinople, concerning which Codinus in the same place, page 48, and the Anonymous of Bandur, part 2, book 2, page 39, agree. And the former reads thus: "Chrysobalandum (or the Purse of Gold) was the house of Nicholas the patrician and Domestic of the Easterns, which he changed into two temples, of the holy archangel Michael and of St. Panteleemon, for this cause: the wife of the aforesaid Domestic, her husband staying in the camp, was seduced by a certain other man: of which matter he himself being made certain, unexpectedly returned to the city, and, both being caught together, cut them limb from limb. But afterward, out of remembrance and fear of the last judgment, he built these two temples. But when, the structure being now nearly finished, he was greatly troubled by lack of money, the archangel appeared to him in sleep, saying: 'Go to that place near the cistern of Aspar, and thou wilt find a purse containing a hundred pounds of gold.' The Domestic, therefore, going thither, found the purse; and, the structure of the temples being completed, he named the place, as we said before, Chrysobalandum." But Chrysobalandum, or Chrysobalantum, is situated in the western part of the city, not far from the walls between the gates of Polyander and of Romanus, according to the second map prefixed to vol. 2 of the Eastern Empire; thence also not far off you will find the Deuterum noted, of which among the writers of Constantinople there is frequent mention; but whence that region of the city was called Deuterum, the Bandurian Anonymous explains, vol. 1, part 2, book 2, page 58; namely because thereby Justinian Rhinotmetus entered the city, when he occupied the empire a second time. See also the Origins of Codinus, page 49.

[9] and another, by Narses in the sixth century; and a monastery in the ninth. Another again there is, which Zonaras writes that that Narses, who was burned by the emperor Phocas for rebellion, built, in the Annals, book 14, §14; whose Latin interpretation of the passage does not please: "This Narses built the church of divine Panteleemon and of the holy martyrs Probus, Tarachus, and Andronicus, and a neighboring hospice": for he seems to assert only one church, which was common to St. Panteleemon with three other Martyrs; whereas one was the church of Panteleemon, another of those three; as is clear from the article repeated in Greek: τὸν τοῦ ἁγίου Παντελεήμονος ναὸν ἐδομήσατο, καὶ τὸν τῶν ἁγίων μαρτύρων Πρόβου, etc. That is: he built the church of St. Panteleemon, and that of the holy martyrs Probus, etc. This seems to be that church of this Martyr which in the second map of Bandur is noted in the southern part of the city near the port of Eleutherius; certainly near to it is that house and district of Narses. Again another there is, or rather a monastery, of St. Panteleemon, of which Codinus, page 57: "The monastery at the Armamenta, or of St. Panteleemon, was at first built by Maurice as an armory. But Theodora, the wife of the emperor Theophilus, changed it into a monastery after two hundred and forty-eight years; and enriched it, as the Anonymous of Bandur adds, part 3, book 3, page 57, with many possessions." This monastery is placed in the second map of Bandur toward Blachernae and the northern corner of the city. See also his Commentaries, page 729 and following, where he doubts also concerning the Bridge of St. Panteleemon, which overhung the river Barbyses, whether it took its name from this monastery, though near, or rather from the Justinianean church of the same saint; which, however, according to his third map, is distant from the Barbyses as far as possible.

[10] Concerning the emperor Romanus Lacapenus, the Anonymous relates these things, another monastery in the tenth century, and two churches, whom Combefis published among the Byzantine historians later than Theophanes, page 269, §50: "The emperor Romanus … restored also the monastery of Manuel: in like manner also he raised from the foundations the monastery and basilica of Panteleemon, whose surname is the Port of Ophri: he gathered there eight hundred monks under a holy institution, and appointed for them fixed stipends, whence they might be sustained, which he furnished to Sergius the monk, his spiritual father, for their provision." There is besides some temple of St. Panteleemon noted on the Anaplus of the Thracian Bosphorus, or the third map of Bandur, across the horn of the Byzantines at the source of the river Cison; concerning which I have found nothing elsewhere. Finally, our Predecessors, vol. 2 of February, page 382, judged that to our Pantaleon too should be referred what in the great Menaia on the 17th of September is subjoined to the commemoration τῶν ἁγίων μαρτύρων Χαραλάμπους, Παντολέοντος, καὶ τῆς συνοδίας αὐτῶν, of the holy martyrs Charalampas, Pantoleon, and their Companions; but there is added: Τελεῖται δὲ ἡ τούτων σύναξις ἐν τῷ μαρτύριῳ αὐτῶν, τῷ ὄντι ἐν τῷ Δευτέρῳ. That is: But their feast is kept in their own church, which is in the Deuterum. Here, then, a temple seems to be asserted, different from the former; inasmuch as not proper to Pantaleon alone, but common to him with others.

[11] From what has been said, gather: 1. How ancient, how constant, besides others unknown to us. how illustrious was the veneration of St. Pantaleon in the Eastern church. 2. That it cannot be doubted, since so many churches were erected to him in the single city of Constantinople and its vicinity, that many more were built throughout the whole East; although the knowledge of them has perished. 3. Much less can it be doubted that Nicomedia claimed for itself his temple and chief cult; as one which of old gave to this Martyr life, faith, arena, sepulcher, which down to the tenth century (if we believe Hugo of Flavigny, to be cited below) it most religiously guarded. 4. Finally, that out of so many of his churches it is difficult to say which is that of which above, no. 4, the Menaia made mention.

§ II. His cult in the West; likewise his Acts, and miracles.

Not such was the glory of this Martyr, as to illustrate only the East: having besides spread through the whole West, it long since drew [men] to his love and cult; He is venerated today too in the Latin Church; and now indeed on this same day the Roman Martyrology thus celebrates him: "At Nicomedia, the passion of St. Pantaleon the physician, who, held by the emperor Maximian for the faith of Christ, and tormented with the punishment of the rack and the burning of torches, but amid these refreshed by the Lord appearing to him, at last consummated his martyrdom by the stroke of the sword." Baronius adds in the notes: "Of whom on this same day Bede." But if anyone understand this of the genuine Martyrology of Bede, he will err: for nowhere in it does St. Pantaleon appear; but if of the spurious, or Plantinian, which is wont to be everywhere cited by the name of Bede in the same annotations; it is true indeed that in it mention is made on this day of St. Pantaleon, but not on his own account, but only on the occasion of St. Hermolaus, whose feast is there announced on this day; but of the birthday of St. Pantaleon himself it there treats only on the following day, or the 28th of July, according to the custom of the ancient Martyrologists in the West: for we have seen no Latin one who, with the Greeks, reckons St. Pantaleon on this day before Belinus, from whom both the day and the eulogy seem to have been borrowed by those who arranged the Roman Martyrology as it now is.

[13] yet of old his feast was kept on the 28th of July, The ancients, as I was just saying, our Martyrologists assigned the birthday of this Saint to the 28th of July, or the 5th of the Kalends of August; on which in the Hieronymian copies, most ancient, in Florentini it reads: "At Nicomedia, the birthday of St. Pantaleon": in the small Roman: "At Nicomedia, of St. Pantaleon the martyr": in Wandelbert: "The fifth (before the Kalends of August) Nazarius with Celsus possesses: and this / Pantaleon the martyr claims for himself by his own honor": In Ado: "At Nicomedia, the passion of St. Pantaleon: who, when, by the command of Maximian, he was learning the art of medicine, converted to the faith of Christ by the presbyter Hermolaus, did many miracles, and subjugated his father, the senator Eustorgius, to the faith of Christ. For which cause, held by the same Maximian, tormented with the punishment of the rack and the burning of torches (but amid these refreshed by the Lord appearing to him), at last consummated his martyrdom by the stroke of the sword." Ado on the same day is copied by Notker, and the manuscript Florarium of the Saints, which only subjoins to the Adonian text: "In the year of salvation 300": but Usuardus so abridges as almost to have the Roman Martyrology above.

[14] nay even on the 18th of February, Rabanus chose for himself another month, another day, namely the 18th of February, on which he reads thus: "At Nicomedia, the birthday of Pantaleon the martyr, who under the emperor Maximian fulfilled his martyrdom. He, born of a father Eustorius (Eustorgius), and imbued with the faith by Ermolaus (Hermolaus) the presbyter, before he was baptized, freed a boy bound by a serpent, and slew the serpent by prayer. But after baptism he enlightened a blind man, converted his father Eustorius to the faith, and wrought many miracles in the name of Christ. On account of which Maximian ordered him to be hung on the rack, and torches to be hung at his sides; but their flames were suddenly extinguished. Afterward he was cast into a frying-pan of fire, that he might there be burned with melted lead: but, by the power of Christ, the heat growing cold, he was in no way injured. Afterward he was cast into the sea; but thence he was brought whole to the shore. Then he was delivered to the beasts; but by none of them was he defiled. But at last he was beheaded: but the strikers

themselves took away the relics of his body, and honorably buried it." Here you have a complete compendium of the more ancient Acts.

[15] Several copies of the Hieronymian Martyrology commemorate St. Pantaleon not only on that day which we saw, and on other days, the 28th of July, but also on others; but this our man, or others, I know not whom, who could clearly distinguish? Thus on the 21st of April the manuscript of the queen of Sweden, Florentini testifying, has: "At Nicomedia, of Pantaleon the monk"; which Holstenius also observes in the Animadversions on the Roman Martyrology on the same day. Thus too on the 23rd of April it reads in various copies: "Elsewhere the birthday of St. Pantalimon," or Panteleemon, as it is in the Baluzian codex in d'Achery, in the Spicilegium reprinted at Paris not long ago, vol. 2, page 29. Thus finally on the 26th of July in the codex of Florentini it is written: "At Laodicea of Phrygia, the birthday of St. Jovian, Julian, Pantaleon," etc. But since in all these the ancient codices differ among themselves, there is not sufficient argument for us to assert here Pantaleons different from today's: for one and the same could have been intruded on various days on account of his relics received or translated: "monk" could have been copied for "physician" by a copyist not sufficiently practiced in reading the abbreviations, which in certain ancient codices are both most frequent and most compendious: finally, one name could have been changed into another, and passed from one entry into another, as the copies of this Martyrology are everywhere full of errors. And so in the Prætermissi at the days just assigned we referred all these to our Pantaleon of Nicomedia, since we found no other known one to whom they could apply; although we deem it certain that there were others; but wholly unknown.

[16] The same certainly is clear to have happened to the Usuardine Martyrologies: by reason of his relics received. for since in its genuine text the memory of St. Pantaleon occurs only once, and indeed on the 5th of the Kalends of August; yet in its various copies the same recurs on other and other days; and indeed of the same Saint, but not for the same cause, as may be seen both in the Prætermissi and in our Usuardus at the 5th, 6th, 14th, 17th, 18th, and 19th of February; the 27th and 28th of July, and finally the 4th of August. Namely, the 28th of July, as the birthday of St. Pantaleon, was of old venerated throughout the whole Church of the West; but to this particular churches added other days on account of various translations of relics, as will be observed below in their places. But what impelled the Latins to celebrate his birthday the day after it is venerated by the Greeks, is not easy for me to divine.

[17] But although from the adduced Martyrologies, and especially from the most ancient Hieronymian, it is certain How ancient and solemn his cult in the West. that the memory of this holy Martyr in the Church of the West is very ancient, and most likely that under Gregory the Great it was recited yearly in the Roman church, as may be gathered from the preface to our Usuardus, chapter 1, article 1, no. 22: yet we confess that we have no monuments by which we may show his cult either so ancient among us, or (if we speak of the whole Western Church) so solemn, as we have already demonstrated it to have been among the Greeks. Certainly even now, when through so many centuries his knowledge and glory and the veneration of all peoples has increased everywhere and constantly, his birthday is celebrated only with a simple Office according to the Roman Breviary. But if it be a question of particular churches, he would be infinite who should enumerate all those, distinguished either by his name, or by his relics, or by both, throughout the whole West, in which St. Pantaleon enjoys a peculiar and solemn Office and celebration: it will be permitted to conjecture this from the things which will be subjoined concerning the relics, after we have said a few things about his Acts.

[18] That is surely no least argument to prove the esteem and value of our Martyr among all, His Acts written by Metaphrastes, that his Acts, divulged in the writings and monuments of almost all nations, are long since circulated; but would that they were sincere! For, to pass over the more recent, published in Latin, Italian, Spanish, French, German, Belgian (and in what not?) type, we were not permitted to obtain even the sources of them all wholly unmuddied. These are two Greek copies; of which one we once received from the Medicean manuscript of the king of France, as is ascribed by Rosweyd; and it thus begins: Τῆς εἰδωλικῆς ἀχλύος κατὰ πάσης διασκεδασθείσης τῆς οἰκουμένης. That is: The idolatrous mist being dispersed over all the world. This the anonymous poet seems to have followed, whose Greek poem on the most holy martyr Panteleemon, with a Latin version, Morel published at Paris in the year 1605; from the same perhaps Nicephorus Callistus abridged an epitome, Ecclesiastical History, book 7, chapter 14. The same Lipomanus translated into Latin; hence it passed to Surius, thence everywhere to the vernacular hagiographers. The style is elegant and plain, so as easily to prove Metaphrastes the author, to whom accordingly it is attributed by the learned, Lipomanus leading. Yet Allatius denies it to Metaphrastes, in the Diatriba on the writings of the Simeons, page 123; "but for what cause, I know not," says Tillemont, note 68 on the persecution of Diocletian: nor do we know it, even after reading the diagnostic principles which Allatius delivers on this matter. It certainly agrees very much, if you regard the order of things and the circumstances, with that Life which Agapius the monk published at Venice in the year 1644 in his Ἐκλογίῳ (Anthology), and that, as he asserts on the front of the book, from Symeon Metaphrastes, although he himself accommodates the style and phrases to the modern and barbarous idiom of the Greeks.

[19] and others more ancient; There are other Greek Acts of St. Pantaleon, whose beginning Allatius, in the same place, page 125, says is: Βασιλεύοντος τοῦ ἀσεβεστάτου καὶ παρανόμου. That is: In the reign of the most impious and lawless one. These he himself attributes to Metaphrastes; we have not seen them in Greek; perhaps they are those of which our Possin warned us in the year 1644, that there is at Toulouse, in the monastery of the virgins of St. Pantaleon, an old Greek manuscript, kept among the treasures, in which the history of the life, martyrdom, and miracles of that Saint is contained: of which besides I find nothing; doubtless because, the matter being examined, our Predecessors judged them nothing better than the rest. And indeed, if from Allatius' few words a conjecture may be made, they are those which everywhere occur in the Latin manuscript codices with nearly the same beginning, "In the reign of the impious and most wicked Maximian"; such we have here from the manuscript of St. Martin at Trier, collated with similar manuscripts of St. Maximin at Trier, and of the island of Caesar, and likewise in the Utrecht manuscript of St. Salvator, and in our old codices ✠ Ms. 74, ✠ Ms. 87, Ms. P 19; and very near agree the things which Mombritius delivers. But that they were translated from the Greek is most manifestly clear from the constructions everywhere twisted to the Greek syntax. But these, as Tillemont also observes above, by no means savor of the Metaphrastean elegance; and we accordingly think them more ancient than Metaphrastes, nay that they shone before him in arranging his own, since he himself observes the same order of narration: certainly it is more probable that from a barbarous text a polished one came out, than from so polished a one so barbarous. Add that Metaphrastes was not so ignorant of heathen superstition as to believe that Hippocrates and Galen had once been worshiped as gods, which is asserted in those Acts; but is emended in those which we have adjudged to Metaphrastes.

[20] but no better, Somewhat more do two other copies recede from Hellenisms; of which the first we obtained from the most ancient Bertinian manuscript, collated, as Rosweyd noted, with the most ancient manuscript of St. Amand; whose beginning is: "In the days of the emperor Maximian": the other we received from the manuscript of the church of St. Omer, and collated with the manuscripts of the monastery of Marchiennes, and of the queen of Sweden, no. 13; and it begins: "At that time a persecution of the Christians was made." Both, both among themselves and with the others, of which in the preceding number, so agree, that we do not doubt they came from the same workshop, if, as I said, you except the Hellenisms, which are here less frequent, and certain additions, by which some codices exceed others. From these, moreover, the biographers older than Lipomanus took what they report of St. Pantaleon — Vincent of Beauvais, Petrus de Natalibus, Hilarion the monk in the supplement to the Legend of Jacobus de Voragine, and others; as in the eleventh century Fulbert of Chartres in the hymn on St. Pantaleon, which the Library of the Fathers, Cologne edition, vol. 11, page 44, exhibits; and perhaps Nicetas the rhetor, in the oration, which we have not yet seen, εἰς τὸν ἔνδοξον μεγαλομάρτυρα Παντελεήμονα, that is, "To the glorious great-martyr Panteleemon," of which Allatius makes mention in the cited Diatriba, page 96; nay even, as we believe, the martyrologists of the ninth century themselves, praised before; since we have found no other Acts in the most ancient codices: these, however, in their compendia of these Acts which they deliver, more prudently dissemble their open faults, the episodes being cut away which show rather the ignorance of the author or of the interpolators than the credibility of the history: as it will be permitted to observe in the annotations to the Metaphrastean Acts, which, as more purified than these, though more recent, it has seemed good here to prefer.

[21] More purified, I say: for that they are wholly sincere and thoroughly purged, the neoterics too crudely proscribe. we cannot affirm: for whom, to pass over other things, does it not strike, or what appearance of truth can it bear, that at the end is narrated either of soldiers now openly confessing Christ, and yet killing the Martyr; or of the Martyr himself, driving them to inflict a most unjust death upon him? Yet far be it that we should adhere either to Tillemont, who, in the places before cited, crudely pronounces that both these and all the earlier Acts of St. Pantaleon are neither of value nor merit any attention; or to Baillet, who, the miracles being expunged in his manner, but with no authority, nay against the ancient authority, brings forth from the Acts as probable only this, that it would scarcely equate the Great-martyr, as he has always been held, to the lowest class of Martyrs. How unjust this is, will be clear from the annotations to the things which are narrated in nos. 5 and 9, and which, as alien from all probability, this neoteric and Roman-fabricated author has thrust out.

[22] For the rest, we did not think it worthwhile that the Greek text of Metaphrastes should be joined to the Lipomanian interpretation; We give the Metaphrastean [Acts collated with the more ancient.] yet we have again collated the latter with the former, lest anyone doubt of its fidelity; as also with the more ancient Acts: then, if anything was worthy of remark, we observed it in the annotations. But because the episode is somewhat long which is read only in three copies of the more ancient Acts, concerning the conversion and martyrdom of the soldiers by whom St. Pantaleon had been killed; that will be subjoined to the Metaphrastean Acts in the place of an appendix, lest we seem to have dissembled or suppressed anything: although otherwise we decide nothing of the truth of the matter; since we know of no mention made of those Martyrs either among the Greeks or among the Latins in the Fasti; and because of so many of our manuscripts only the Utrecht manuscript of St. Salvator reports it, the codex

the parchment P. 19, which does not appear more ancient than four centuries, and the codex, indeed not a little more obsolete, ✠ Ms. 74; finally because these differ in style from the rest, and savor not of any Greek prototype, but rather of the invention of a certain Latin writer.

[23] Concerning the year of the martyrdom there is nothing very certain, not even from the Acts: for in them, no. 16, St. Pantaleon is said to have suffered a little after St. Anthimus, The year of the martyrdom uncertain. bishop of Nicomedia, who lately (πρὸ μικροῦ, that is, a little before) had been miserably deprived of life. But the victory of the latter is referred to the beginning of the Diocletianic persecution, as we signified on the 17th of April, on which he is venerated; and accordingly to the year of Christ 303, as Pagi in the Critical notes on the Annals, and Tillemont, note 10 on the persecution of Diocletian, prove. It would follow, then, if the Acts were consistent with themselves, that the combat of St. Pantaleon should be judged to have happened in the same year. But the same relate that it happened, Maximian being present and acting (Galerius, namely: for Herculius was far off), and indeed as emperor; but he was not emperor before the year 305, and, before the last punishments were decreed against all Christians indiscriminately, before any presbyters or ministers of the Church were seized, had departed from Nicomedia, as we learn from Lactantius, On the Deaths of the Persecutors, chapters 14 and 15; and Diocletian alone then raged there. What then? Was the name of Maximian intruded into the Acts by the fault of an interpolator, for the name either of the emperor simply, or of the emperor Diocletian; as seems to have been done in the Acts of St. Anthimus? Should Diocletian, therefore, be restored for Maximian, as is done in the reformed Roman Breviary in today's lesson on St. Pantaleon? Or, on the contrary, should that "lately," or πρὸ μικροῦ, that is, a little before, be extended more widely, either to the return of Maximian to Nicomedia, or to his elevation to the empire? But why then should he mention Anthimus especially, whom Diocletian, he being absent, had tortured; when he could commemorate his own deeds, both more recent and more cruel? Or was the example of Anthimus perhaps intruded by some smatterer? For the ancient manuscripts vary in this name, as will be seen in its place. Let others determine; to us it is not clear.

[24] Certain miracles. Finally, to the Acts we subjoin certain miracles wrought by the patronage of this Saint, and collected by a certain monk of the monastery of St. Pantaleon at Cologne Agrippina, and sent to us by our Gamans from a notable and very ancient manuscript of St. Pantaleon at Cologne, as was noted on the front. The name of the author and his age are unknown to us: except that he seems later than the eleventh century, as will appear no. 12: the other marks of his time are obscure. There are indeed also other very great and very many miracles, long since published in German at Bamberg by Brother Thomas, abbot of Langheim, in the Paradise of Frankenthal; but these we pass over, because they are not proper to our Martyr, but common to him with other Saints, whom they call Auxiliaries; by which name fourteen are venerated together in Germany, but among the Italians fifteen; of whom mention will recur on the 8th of August, on which they are celebrated at Langheim. That there were others most ancient and proper to him and most celebrated, and especially pertaining to diseases and demons driven off, we gather again and again from his present Acoluthia in the printed Menaia, but we have found none narrated in particular.

§ III. The relics which are thought to be of this Martyr, very many and famous for miracles both in the East and in the West.

That the body of St. Pantaleon was buried at Nicomedia, the Acts narrate at the end: but that it was kept there until about the year of Christ 970, will be attested below by Hugo, abbot of Flavigny. Yet I would not have this so understood, The Saint's body buried at Nicomedia; a part translated to Constantinople; as if in the meantime no part could be taken from it: for already from the beginning of the sixth century the people of Constantinople had some part, and indeed, as it appears, noble for miracles, and a refuge of the wretched. This is drawn from a fragment of Theodoret, or rather Theodore Lector, which St. John Damascene cites, book 3 On Images, near the end; where it treats of the prodigious burning of a certain blaspheming Arian, whose memory a picture preserved in the place. This picture, overcome by the prayers of the Arians, he who had been charged with the care of the place, Eutychianus by name, took away and hid: when, behold, a certain divine indignation so invaded him, says that author, that his right eye melted away, and his other limbs likewise were most grievously afflicted, until he should approach the sacred oratory where a part of the relics of the blessed Pantaleon and Marinus is kept (in Greek, is believed to rest). Which oratory indeed is called Concord (Ὁμόνοια); because thither a hundred and fifty bishops, in the reign of the emperor Theodosius the great (in the year of Christ 381), came together concordant in this opinion, that they should establish the same essence to the divine Trinity, and declare that the Lord assumed human flesh from the Virgin. Of the Homonoea more in Du Cange, in Christian Constantinople, book 4, page 157: where he explains this text of our St. Pantaleon; although a little before, page 132, of the same Martyr he had written thus: "But whether Constantinople kept his relics, seems uncertain."

[26] Theodore continues in the same place: "But when he had stayed there about seven days, and received no help," etc. where also his blood with milk was prodigious. From which is understood how much confidence in the minds of the suppliants these sacred relics were already then wont to excite; which is not wont to be done except through frequent miracles. Although what is here narrated is very dreadful; if, however, to St. Pantaleon is to be attributed the apparition which is there described; which that writer does not dare to assert. Moreover, that these relics were not of any kind whatever, but a very notable part of the body, is necessary; since they are those which in the fifteenth century are said to have been brought to the Portuguese, of which matter from Roderick da Cunha it will be seen below. But the blood too of this Martyr, with a milky liquor, was long and in great honor in the same city on account of continual miracles, as the writer of the miracles has, whom we shall produce after the Acts, no. 2; whose narration seems in some way confirmed by the Synaxarium of Basil above, no. 4.

[27] Of his relics, as translated of old to them, very many cities in the West glory; Rome too claims his body for itself, at St. Gregory's; and in the first place Rome, and indeed in various churches: for that his body is laid up among the Camaldolese at St. Gregory's on the Caelian hill under the high altar, Pancirolus in the Hidden Treasures of Rome, page 690, and others deliver: but when it was brought thither, or whence, we know not. That it was, however, before the middle of the tenth century, can be gathered from the following paragraph, no. 43. "It is believed," says Piazza in the Sacred Hemerology at this day, "to have been laid there by St. Gregory the Great"; but Pancirolus, who wrote before him, page 702, thinks it was obtained by Louis, [son] of Charlemagne, who received it from Africa, the grandson (nay, the son, of the founder of the monastery of Inden, of which he there makes mention). Neither satisfies, since it rests on no testimony of antiquity. But what Charlemagne obtained of the body of St. Pantaleon from Africa, or whither he destined it, I shall say a little below: then anyone will easily understand what is to be attributed to the conjecture of Pancirolus. The most illustrious Marius Florentinius also informed us, by letters given in the year 1715, that in the sacristy of the same church there is kept by the Camaldolese Fathers in a silver shin-bone a part of the leg, etc.

[28] and the head, and the miraculous blood, There, in the church of the Fathers of the Pious Schools, distinguished by the name of St. Pantaleon, are said to be kept the bones of our Martyr, as see in Fioravante Martinelli in Rome Sacred, page 268; but what those bones are, he does not explain: and so we understand the head of the Saint, or the skull (or part of it), which there, Pancirolus testifying, page 691, and Piazza in the Hemerology at the 27th of July, is exposed not without much solemnity; and by it water is consecrated, which the faithful, flocking thither with great devotion, drink, the heavenly Physician proving even today the virtue of his powerful patronage. That a part of the skull and an ampulla of his blood is also among the Neri Fathers at the Vallicella, Florentinius taught us in the cited letters; and of the blood indeed this Pancirolus and Piazza cited also affirm; of whom the latter says that St. Philip Neri was presented with that treasure by Cardinal Cusanus; but the former, that that blood, though it appear congealed the whole year, yet liquefies every year on the feast-day of the holy Martyr, which is there celebrated with a semi-double rite. Pancirolus wrote these things fifty years before Aringhi published his Subterranean Rome in the year 1651; who, treating of the same blood, book 1, chapter 16, no. 25, when he had narrated that the same miracle is observed among the people of Ravello every year, adds these things:

[29] received from Ravello: "Our Vallicellan church of Blessed Mary and St. Gregory in the City is ennobled likewise with another ampulla of the same blood, taken from the greater church of Ravello; which the most Eminent Cardinal Cusanus once gave as a gift to our Congregation: which sacred gore, from the First Vespers of his festive day, though it before existed coagulated, was seen in a wonderful manner to liquefy and to bubble up while all beheld: of which matter many of the Fathers of our congregation were eyewitnesses: but for many years now the Martyr, by the secret counsel of God, has not so openly shown it; but only this marvel shines forth, that this blood, though within the course of the year it is of a dusky color, about these festive times presents the appearance of a bright and limpid color, and, as it seems mixed with milk, that certainly is to be proclaimed, that it perseveres incorrupt after one thousand three hundred and thirty-two years." There are also in other churches of the City relics of this Martyr, as the same Pancirolus notes in the index, but less either celebrated or notable; such as I should easily believe are found in the other church of St. Pantaleon at Rome (for there are two).

[30] where even now a greater part is kept, and famous for miracles, But what Aringhi there narrates of the relics of Ravello, the same Ughelli also testifies in the Italia Sacra, where he treats of the bishops of Ravello, vol. 1, col. 182, in the latest edition. We in the year 1714 received from the place itself a description and measurement of the ampulla of Ravello, with an adjoined brief notice in Italian, subscribed by Lorenzo the canon Pepe, treasurer of the cathedral church of Ravello, by the benefit of the most illustrious D. Domenico de Giorgio, a noble Neapolitan, to whom we owe not a few other things also. The measurement was exhibited by a paper cut to the fashion of the ampulla, and nearly, if you except the not-high orifice, round. Its diameter is about eight fingers. The ampulla is divided into four unequal spaces, from the bottom to the orifice, expressed by transverse lines parallel to one another. In the lowest space, about two fingers high, is noted

that it is the earthy part of the blood; in the second, which is one finger and a little more high, is signified the less earthy part of the blood: in the third, which in height scarcely equals a finger's breadth, is indicated the pure blood, like a ruby, when it liquefies; on the surface of the blood are expressed little bubbles formed of its fattier matter. The uppermost space, up to the orifice, which is somewhat less than half the ampulla, is exhibited empty. The ampulla stands upon a hexagonal base skillfully made of silver and gilded. These things [are] on the paper which I mentioned, separately; but the adjoined notice we thus translate:

[31] The size of the ampulla, which contains the blood of our glorious martyr Pantaleon, I know not whence or when it was translated thither, with a part of the bones. is equal to the paper just appended. From the bottom to the middle and beyond is blood; what is above, the space toward the orifice of the ampulla, is empty. Upon the said orifice is placed a whole figure of the Saint of gilded silver: but a silver and gold-colored circle surrounds the ampulla. The glorious blood liquefies at the First Vespers of his feast, when there is intoned "God of thy soldiers," until the Second Vespers of the same feast, which is celebrated on the 27th of July; as also on the day of his translation, which is venerated on the third Sunday of May. The ampulla cannot be moved, nor carried about in procession; since it is cautiously kept in the middle of its altar, fortified before and behind with iron gratings, which are unlocked with various keys, of which one the bishop keeps, another the treasurer, a third the nobles, a fourth the city itself. It liquefies besides as often as something good or unlucky is imminent; as on various occasions experience has taught. Finally, of the translation of the said blood to the city of Ravello there is a tradition, that there were certain ships which, on account of the sea being dangerous, could not further direct their course without the most present peril of perishing. The Saint therefore permitted that those noble travelers could not proceed elsewhere before they had deposited and left at Ravello this great pledge and treasure; as they did; and thus afterward departed to their other regions. In the aforesaid ampulla four species of blood are clearly seen, as in the little paper (of which I spoke) they are distinctly noted.

Lorenzo the canon Pepe, Treasurer of the cathedral church of Ravello.

It is indeed to be lamented that a thing so illustrious rests on so obscure a tradition, from which you can attain neither by whom, nor whence, nor when it came! Florentinius writes besides, in the epistle praised above, that there is kept in the same place a great part of the bones of the same Martyr. Let the credence be with the author.

[32] But such ampullae are several in Italy, all of St. Pantaleon, Other ampullae of blood at Naples, an arm and other relics, as they will have it, rich with the blood of this our man. "In the city of Naples," says John Baptist de'i Franchi, a Dominican, in the Italian book which he entitles The Devotion of the Fifteen Holy Auxiliaries, page 134, "in one of the convents of our Order of Preachers under the title of St. Severus is kept a little ampulla of the liquefied blood of the same Saint," namely Pantaleon of Nicomedia, of whom he there treated more fully. The same, in the description of the same church, Caracciolo sets forth a little more clearly, in Sacred Naples, part 2, page 370, when he says that that blood liquefies there every year on the vigil and day of his martyrdom. But whence this ampulla came to the Dominican Fathers, those authors do not indicate. Caracciolo does not ascribe the same miracle to other ampullae of the same blood laid up in the same city, as he asserts, for instance in the church of the Holy Apostles, where he assigns, part 2, page 167, one flask with the blood of St. Pantaleon, likewise the blood and a bone of St. Pantaleon: and in the church of the Conception, where again he notes another, in the same place, page 601, an ampulla with the blood and relics of St. Pantaleon the martyr. Why should I commemorate the other relics of this Martyr, which the same author testifies are honored in various churches of the Neapolitans? Among these seems to hold no lowest place the arm of St. Pantaleon the martyr, which in the same place, page 363, he writes is kept in the church of St. Gregory, commonly called San Ligorio.

[33] another ampulla of blood at Bari, At Bari too, which is a city of the Neapolitan kingdom and an archiepiscopal see, an ampulla of this kind is seen, of which our Beatillus thus, in his History of Bari written in Italian, book 4, at the year 1590: "In the city of Benevento there were found some years ago certain worthy relics, and namely some bones with several pieces of congealed and hard blood of the glorious martyr St. Pantaleon. Some part of this the Rector of our college of Benevento received as a gift from the archbishop, who bestowed a little of that blood on me too; which I at once placed in a little glass flask, that I might keep it more becomingly. It happened afterward, by I know not what reasoning, that I wished to pour into the same little vessel some little drops of the manna of St. Nicholas. Scarcely had I done it, when, behold, suddenly, to my greatest wonder, that blood, which was coagulated and divided into several pieces, began to liquefy, and, bubbling and foaming, to be inseparably joined and mingled with the manna. Yet at the bottom a little something undissolved settled; which I indeed judge to be earth, which of old coalesced with the blood, when it was first poured out. And these are those relics which are kept in the cathedral church of Bari in a silver case, and exposed to the pious veneration of the faithful." Namely, Beatillus himself, a little before, had narrated that he had granted them, among others, to the Chapter asking for them. For the rest, of the discovery of St. Pantaleon among the people of Benevento I shall speak later.

[34] [another at Venice; where also a hand, and a part of the head, a whole foot, a shin, an arm, a finger:] Another ampulla of this kind, Florentinius testifying in the epistle already mentioned, is kept at Venice in the ducal church of St. Mark, together with the hand of the same holy Martyr, and two bones of the head, of all which Bernard Cestari makes mention in the Italian little work on the notable things which are at Venice, book 2, page 258 and following, where he observes that the inscriptions of these relics are Greek; perhaps because the Venetians received them from the Greeks. But that in other churches of the same city other relics of our Saint are shown, Florentinius affirms in the same place; as in the church of St. Pantaleon a whole foot, a bone of the shin, and of the arm, a part of the skull, and the ring finger; likewise in the church of St. Mary Magdalene, for which he cites the words of Nicolaus Manerbius, others Malerbius, from the Lives of the Saints, which in Latin sound thus: "Whose (St. Pantaleon of Nicomedia) shin of the other leg is had in the church of St. Mary Magdalene at Venice, and a part of the arm, both flashing with miracles."

[35] another ampulla at Lucca, where also the head of the Saint. Another ampulla of blood, finally, is prized at Lucca, which Francesco Maria Florentinius attests in the annotations on the Hieronymian Martyrology on the 28th of July; where he reads thus: "In the city of Lucca in Tuscany, my fatherland, it was long ago the opinion of many centuries that the body (of St. Pantaleon) rests in the basilica of SS. John and Reparata. The head indeed, enclosed in a silver case (and that indeed emitting a marvelous odor, as others testify), with a conspicuous part of the whole skull, is exhibited to the pious faithful to be kissed on the 27th of July, and an ampulla of the same blood the religious Fathers of the Mother of God keep among the sacred treasures in the same city in the church of St. Mary of the Court of the Orlandini." But it is to be noted that these things were written forty-six full years before the discovery at Lucca, of which more will be treated below, §6.

[36] What shall I say of the other relics, which are all said to be of the same Pantaleon? His body near Burgos; elsewhere other relics partly known, Lest I bring weariness to the readers, I briefly enumerate those of which I could find any knowledge from the assigned authors; for we have found no authentic instruments of them, from which it is permitted to learn anything of their origin or acquisition. "Also in Borobia (commonly la Bureba, which is a district, or small province, in Old Castile under the archbishopric of Burgos) is the body of St. Pantaleon M., whose feast is kept on the 27th of July. But whence, or how, that Saint came thither, I wholly know not." So Marieta, Ecclesiastical History of the Saints of Spain, book 22, folio 11 verso. Hence perhaps in that diocese he was of old venerated with an Office of nine Lessons on the 19th of February; as we learn from the Breviary of Burgos of the year 1502. Those Lessons are drawn from the more ancient Acts: but of a translation no mention is made in them. At Brindisi in the cathedral church a whole arm is shown; at Crema on the high altar a part of the head; Marius Florentinius attesting both in the epistle already often mentioned. And at Crema indeed he is venerated as patron of the city on the 10th of June, as was said there in the Prætermissi. At Ravenna Henschen and Papebroch saw nearly the half of his jaw in the sacristy of the monastery of Porto, as they noted in their Italian manuscript Itinerary, page 225. To the same the body of St. Pantaleon was shown at Genoa, as they affirmed in the Prætermissi at the 16th of March. At Volterra, in the sacristy of the cathedral church, some bone of his, I know not what, we learn to be, from the manuscript relation of the Visitations, sent hither thence about the year 1648; at Milan likewise Paolo Morigi assigns something indefinite in the Sanctuary of the cathedral church, page 8. The same testifies of Oviedo in Spain, and Beyerlinck, at the word Relics, pages 297 and 285, of the monastery of Andechs in Upper Bavaria. Rayssius in the Belgian Hierogazophylacium says that there is of the bones of St. Pantaleon at Cambrai in the abbey of St. Aubert, page 81; at Bruges a part of the arm, page 357, and another part among the Benedictine nuns of Broucburg, page 127; a bone among the people of Lo, page 280; something else among the people of Luxembourg, page 366, and of Mechlin, page 495.

[37] I do not doubt that elsewhere too several other such relics exist; partly unknown to us. and there especially where either he is venerated on another day than that which is ascribed to his birthday, either in the modern Roman or in the ancient Martyrologies (for then that different day seems chosen on account of some translation), or where he is celebrated with a more solemn rite than the Roman Breviary prescribes, which happens in several places; or finally where there are churches or monasteries erected under his title, which is established of the monastery of St. Pantaleon at Cologne, and at Toulouse; of that at Passau (of which Hundius in the Metropolis of Salzburg, vol. 2, page 530 and following) not so, although it appears probable enough, as also of the church of St. Pantaleon near Udine, of which mention was made in vol. 1 of June, page 796 f, of that at Troyes, which is a wholly exceptional ornament of that city, as is written in the Literary Journey of the Benedictines, published at Paris in the year 1717, part 1, page 93; of that at Bourges in Labbe, in the Library of Manuscripts, vol. 2, page 385; and others, some of which we shall presently produce on the occasion of various translations.

§ IV. Various translations of his relics made from the ninth century down to the thirteenth.

[The translation of the head from Africa to Arles in the year 807; thence to Lyons;] The first translation of the relics of St. Pantaleon into Europe, which at least we know to be confirmed by historical monuments, is that which happened at the beginning of the ninth century, either in the year of Christ 806, as Pagi in the Baronian Critical notes at that year contends from the Annals, commonly Eginhardine; or the following, as from the Chronicle of Ado gather Cardinal Baronius, Labbe in the historical Chronology, and Cointe in the Ecclesiastical Annals of the Franks. When, namely, the head of this Martyr, together with the bones of St. Cyprian and the body of St. Speratus, was brought by the legates of Charlemagne from Africa to Arles in Gaul, and thence somewhat after, at the request and by the effort of Leidrad, bishop of Lyons, was, with the aforesaid relics of the others, carried to the church of Blessed John the Baptist and St. Stephen the martyr at Lyons. Of which matter, because it was treated at length in the preliminary Commentary to the Acts of the holy Scillitan Martyrs on the 17th of July from page 210, thither we refer the reader; and only this we ask in this place, whether that sacred head remained at Lyons, or was carried elsewhere, and when.

[39] where it is said to be kept even now; That it was kept at Lyons and honored down to his own times, Jacobus Severtius, doctor of sacred theology of Paris, and ecclesiastic of Lyons, affirms in the Chronology of the archbishops of Lyons, where he treats of Leidrad, whom he sets as the fifty-fifth prelate of that see, §5. But he brings nothing by which to prove it in particular of the head of St. Pantaleon, besides his own authority, which he so interposes that, if anyone will have some portion of it translated elsewhere, he says he does not hinder it. "Meanwhile let everyone remember," he says, concluding the paragraph, "that the translation of the same relics (from Arles to Lyons) happened on the 16th of the Kalends of August, from the Registers of the church of Lyons." Which day is solemn in the divine Offices of that basilica on account of the relics of this kind there religiously laid up and held in honor.

[40] others will have it that from Lyons it was translated to Compiègne; Theodoric Ruinart, in the Sincere and Select Acts of the Martyrs, in the preliminary admonition to the Acts of the Scillitan Martyrs, treating of the same relics, says: "But that these sacred pledges were at last translated thence (from Lyons) to Compiègne by the emperor Charles the Bald, our fellow monks of Compiègne contend, in whose royal basilica they are even now religiously kept." The same Mabillon confirms in the Annals of the Benedictines, vol. 3, at the year of Christ 877, no. 94, from the records of the monastery of St. Cornelius of Compiègne, in these words: "The domestic records add, with the vulgate Ado, the relics of St. Cyprian, and together of SS. the martyrs Speratus and Pantaleon, which from Africa in the time of Charlemagne had been brought to Arles, Ado testifying, and thence to Lyons. Certainly the relics of SS. Cornelius and Cyprian are kept in one precious casket in the church of Compiègne, and there in two cases the relics of SS. Speratus and Pantaleon." That the learned man cites the vulgate Ado for the relics of Compiègne, that argument is very weak. It is read indeed in the vulgate Ado on the 14th of September: "But after an interval of time, the glorious king Charles reigning, son of the emperor Louis, again the relics of blessed Cyprian were, by his command, translated to the new monastery which the same king built with august work at his palace of Compiègne": but here mention is made of Cyprian alone, not of Speratus, not of Pantaleon: besides, these do not seem to be the words of Ado, but the addition of an interpolator, I know not whom: for neither Usuardus nor Notker, who are wont to follow Ado, have any word of this matter on that day; nor Ado himself in the Chronicle. And what of the fact that Ado wrote his Martyrology before his episcopate; and so long before this translation can be believed to have been made? Certainly it is not credible that Charles ordered the relics to be carried thither before the church was dedicated and the monastery founded; but that dedication and foundation, according to the cited Mabillon, happened in the year 877; that is, two years after the death of Ado.

[41] Saussay in the Gallican Martyrology on the 18th of February attributes it to the people of Cologne: for thus he writes: others, but falsely, to Cologne. "In the royal monastery of St. Denis, the reception of a portion of the relics of St. Pantaleon the martyr: whose head too, formerly brought from Africa by the legates of Charlemagne with the bones of St. Cyprian into the Gauls, is today also venerable at Cologne." But the Martyrologist seems here to have erred: for that there is another head of St. Pantaleon, ours or another's, and brought from elsewhere to Cologne, we shall presently demonstrate, no. 49. But as for the portion of his relics, which he affirms the monks of St. Denis received, they themselves think it was drawn from the same treasury of Lyons; if Baillet narrates true in the Legend at this day: "Meanwhile," he says, "the monks of St. Denis in Gaul contend that the head of St. Pantaleon remained at Lyons; but that his other bones were translated to their abbey." This does not say he who published the history of that monastery at Paris in the year 1706, Michel Félibien: for on page 539, letter S, where he explains the case of the relics of St. Pantaleon engraved in the preceding plate, he has only this: "A silver-gilt reliquary containing some relics of St. Pantaleon the martyr, as is clear from its inscription: Of the bones of St. Pantaleon." Of the place whence the bones were acquired, or of their donor, which he often notes elsewhere, here he says not a word. And rightly indeed: for under Charlemagne nothing of the relics of St. Pantaleon was brought from Africa into Gaul, except his head.

[42] Certainly of the head alone the ancients made mention; as Florus, deacon of Vienne, in the fragment of a poem pertaining to this, From Africa only the head of the Saint was brought; not his other bones. which you have in the Commentary on the Acts of the Scillitan Martyrs on the 17th of July, §3, no. 29; Ado and Notker in their Martyrologies on the 14th of September; and Sigebert in the Chronicle at the year 802: nor does the poem of Agobard, given in the same Commentary, disagree; although the poet, compelled by the meter, used an ambiguous expression, when he thus sang: "Of Speratus too, the blessed martyr, / And of Pantaleon the bones hastily / They take up," etc. But this amphibology is sufficiently unfolded by the other authors whom we have just cited, and especially Florus, who did not suffer even his meter to wander too freely from the exact and proper denomination of each thing. We do not believe, therefore, that from the African treasure came, if any sacred bones of St. Pantaleon which are not parts of the head are said to be kept anywhere; either at St. Denis; or at Rome (whatever Pancirolus thought otherwise above, no. 27); or elsewhere. But of this first translation enough now; the first, I say; not that I deny that others preceded, but that I have found them nowhere described among the ancients.

[43] Some of his relics translated from Rome to Cologne in the year 953. The nearest translation to this, though it was about a century and a half later, we found narrated in the Life of Blessed Bruno, archbishop of Cologne, who was the brother of the emperor Otho I, surnamed the Great, no. 33, in Leibniz, in the Brunswick Writers, vol. 1, page 281; where the contemporary author reports that a synodical epistle was directed by Bruno, through Hadamar, abbot of the monastery of Fulda, to Agapitus II, the Roman Pontiff; but that Hadamar, returned from Agapitus, brought to Bruno from Rome, together with the pallium, relics of the very body of St. Pantaleon the martyr; to meet which the city of Cologne hastened joyful, and from every side a jubilant multitude ran together, and all met in the suburb near the ancient place where the church of the same precious Martyr was, still uncultivated and near to ruin: there the welcome burdens were deposited; then each laid up in its place. Then he adds that in that very place the holy bishop was afterward buried; inasmuch as he had been affected toward this Martyr in a wholly singular manner; in whose name too he had built there a new church and monastery. But this translation happened in the year of Christ 953, as Gelenius notes, On the Greatness of Cologne Agrippina, book 3, syntagma 12, §1; who, from the antiquity of that church, of which the author of the Life of Bruno makes mention, gathers, in the same place, §3, another more ancient translation of relics; which was then made, when that most ancient church of St. Pantaleon was built: "for the ancients," he says, "did not build memorials of the Martyrs without their relics."

[44] Another threefold translation of St. Pantaleon, This translation was followed, not so long after, by another twofold, nay threefold, which we wonder Gelenius was ignorant of, a man otherwise most versed and diligent in clearing away the antiquities of Cologne. Namely, he had not yet seen the Chronicle of Verdun, which our Philippe Labbe published in the year 1657 in vol. 1 of the Library of Manuscript books. In it that translation is described by Hugo, first a monk of the abbey of St. Vanne of Verdun, and afterward abbot of the monastery of St. Peter of Flavigny in the duchy of Burgundy, who died at the beginning of the twelfth century; it is described, I say, page 166, on the occasion of the new basilica of St. Vanne built by abbot Richard, whose magnificence he there at length pursues: "There was made," he says, "also a portable altar of purest gold, wonderfully wrought within, of similar work, by the zeal and munificence of the lord count Herimann, joined and compacted in the manner of tablets, which, when it is opened, is both an altar, and the tablets are opened; on which if you dwell, that which is an instrument glorious with the images of Moses and Aaron, expresses the figure of the Lord's cross. This has at its four corners the four Evangelists, the species of a man, a lion, a bull, and an eagle, of silver, of cast work, bearing the aforesaid altar, and beholding one another with turned faces." These things I have transcribed, that the reader may understand how greatly the relics of St. Pantaleon were then prized there: for it follows:

[45] "But upon that altar the arm of St. Pantaleon is placed, namely of the body from Nicomedia to Cologne, wrapped in silk cloth, and enclosed in wood, adorned with silver and gold; which the bishop of Cologne brought with his body from Nicomedia, obtained as a gift from the emperor of Constantinople, when, for the purpose of joining his daughter in marriage to Otho II, by the command of the same Otho he was sent as legate to the same emperor with two bishops, dukes, and counts. And when, having obtained the things for which he had gone, he had received leave to return, and the emperor had offered him and his companions many gifts, and they had refused to accept them, the archbishop asked of him the body of St. Pantaleon, and obtained it, and, returning, brought it to Cologne." This is one translation; to which two others are at once subjoined in these words:

[46] "But there had been with him in that expedition a certain kinsman of his, and of the Arm to the Castle of Commercy, thence to Verdun; the lord of the castle of Commercy, and with much prayer he obtained from him the arm of the body of St. Pantaleon, which also in

the church of the aforesaid castle he laid up. After some years had passed, that very castle was besieged, and overthrown and burned. And when the flame slipped into the roofs of the church, and with victorious masses licked the interior of the church, the priest, grieving over the burning of the holy relics, signified to a certain one of the armed men that he should enter the church and take the relics from above the altar. Who, having soon entered, took the relics and laid them up; and when the abbot was there, he sold him also the arm of the Saint, the presbyter being present, for a mark of silver; which the lord himself, when he knew for certain that they were the relics of the Martyr, brought rejoicing to Verdun; and, prepared with silver and gold, on feast-days it is placed upon the altar." The rest that follows pertains to another matter.

[47] Two legations to obtain for his son a wife, Theophano or Theophania, of these the first and second happened in the year 971, the daughter of Romanus the younger, the deceased emperor of Constantinople (of whom see Du Cange in the Byzantine Families, family 19), Otho the Great directed to Constantinople; the first indeed to Nicephorus Phocas; which Luitprand undertook with vain and unhappy result; as the legate himself explains in Baronius, in the Annals at the year of Christ 968: the other to John Tzimisces, who was raised to the throne of the slain Nicephorus at the end of the year 969. This succeeded according to wish; and accordingly this is designated here by Hugo. Its fruit was peace between both empires, and Theophania betrothed to Otho II, in the year of Christ 971, as, after Baronius, Pagi observes, no. 5; which year without doubt was that of our translation. But the archbishop of Cologne, who presided over the legation and the translation, must have been Gero, who had succeeded Folcmar in the year 969; as Dionysius de Sainte-Marthe has, in the new edition of Gallia Christiana, vol. 3, col. 649. Nor ought it to offend that he is said to have been sent to Constantinople by the command of Otho II: for he already then reigned with his father, and in this legation his affairs were chiefly transacted. But Gero was the nephew of Otho II by his brother, as Gelenius affirms in the praised work, book 3, syntagma 1, page 847.

[48] The translation of the Arm to the castle of Commercy (which is a little town of Gaul in the duchy of Bar on the river Meuse, but the third at the beginning of the eleventh century. and formerly the head of a small adjacent district, as Baudrand says) seems to have been made about the same time as the former of the body; not so that by which the same arm passed thence to Verdun: for it happened "after some years had passed"; that is, unless I err, at the beginning of the abbot Richard, of whom the author there treats; for since he does not express by name the abbot who translated it, he without doubt means that one of whom he there has a very long discourse. But Richard was elected abbot, as he had said somewhat before, in the year of Christ 1004, and presided very long, namely until the year 1046, as he asserts, page 190. But that the soldier is said to have sold the relics to the abbot, that may seem crude; not so much because the soldier sold them, as because the abbot bought them, especially such and so great a one as Richard was. But doubtless many circumstances can be considered which take away the odium of the somewhat harsh expression. The castle besieged, taken by force, overthrown, burned, and so given up to military license, fury, and plunder, the relics themselves in the power of a soldier (perhaps even a heterodox one), who had brought them out from the midst of the masses of flames, half-scorched, not without the greatest peril of his life, the danger of profanation if they were left to him, and other things of this kind could easily lead the most religious abbot either liberally to recompense the soldier's bold deed, or at least to think that the injuries of the relics, which he feared, ought at any price to be holily redeemed; which was customary even in the first times of the church, Baronius observes at the year 110, no. 6.

[49] The translation of the head from Constantinople to Cologne in the year 1208. Finally, the last, which at least pertains to the people of Cologne, Godfrey, a monk of St. Pantaleon at Cologne, where he flourished before the middle of the thirteenth century, noted in the Annals published by Marquard Freher; for he thus reads at the year of Christ 1208: "Likewise in the same year, on the 3rd of the Ides of April, there were brought to us the relics of the head of St. Pantaleon, our patron: which, translated by Henry of Ulmen from Constantinople with innumerable other relics, and transmitted by him to us through the lord Albert, abbot of Laach, and received with the greatest veneration of the whole clergy and people, were laid up with other most precious relics in a silver and gilded head." This is certainly, of all who made mention of this translation, the most ancient writer, contemporary, and one who professed the monastic life in the place of which he narrates. It is wonderful, therefore, that for the anniversary memory of this translation the day of the 3rd of the Ides of April was noted by no martyrologist, but either the 12th of the Kalends of March, or others, which we noted in the Prætermissi at the 20th of February. Of Henry of Ulmen more may be read in Gelenius, book 3, syntagma 12, §3.

[50] Which of these relics now survive at Cologne. But it is to be noted that all these translations of Cologne pertain to the monastery of St. Pantaleon; where the mentioned relics are said to be kept even now: for those which Hadamar brought from Rome to Bruno of the very body of St. Pantaleon the martyr, I suspect to be those which the cited Gelenius says are enclosed in the twelfth reliquary, namely the burned ashes of St. Pantaleon: but those which we said the archbishop Gero brought from Nicomedia, I judge to be that body which he testifies was shown to him there in the year 1660, Henschen, in the annotations to the Acts of Blessed Wolphelm on the 22nd of April, page 77: for we do not think that the already-mentioned ashes are here called a body; but at least some bones; of which a smaller part, namely the arm, was taken off and given to the lord of Commercy: but those which Ulmen gave, these must be those which Gelenius exhibits in the fifth reliquary, namely a notable part of the head of St. Pantaleon the physician, and his tooth, enclosed together with other relics of other Saints. But here a difficulty occurs to us by no means slight, which, lest this paragraph be longer than just, I remit to the following. I observe here meanwhile from Gelenius, in the same place, §4, that in the monastery of which we treat, besides the birthday of their Patron, which they there celebrate on the 28th of July, the festal memory of a single translation, I know not which, or perhaps of all the translations together, is solemnly kept every year on the 6th of February.

§ V. A difficulty concerning the relics of Cologne: other translations of the fourteenth and fifteenth century.

He will not be able to doubt, who has attended to the preceding paragraph, that the monastery of St. Pantaleon was, from its very cradle, enriched with notable relics of its holy Patron, With so many relics of this Saint at Cologne and that to these once and again a great increase of the same accrued; so far that, I might almost say, the prelates of that place were able to be prodigal of them, not only to the churches of Cologne, but also to foreign ones: for thence we think were received those which are now kept in the metropolitan church of Prague, Pessina testifying in the Seven-Horned Phosphorus, page 514, "two notable parts of St. Pantaleon, brought from Cologne by Charles (IV, the emperor and king of Bohemia) in the year 1357; and besides many other particles bound together in a green little bag": thence also those which are seen at Cologne, according to Gelenius, in the church of St. Gereon, page 266; in the church of St. Severinus, page 275; in the church of St. Cunibert, page 289; in the church of SS. John and Cordula, page 445; among the Reverend Dominican Fathers, page 464; among the conventual virgins of the third Rule of St. Francis, page 587; and perhaps elsewhere; although what, or how much, of these the already-mentioned churches have, Gelenius does not define.

[52] What, then, does the Epistle mean, of which we received a transcript from the same monastery, an epistle seems opposed, which very recently we collated with a printed copy (I do not remember in what work) and found wholly consonant; what, I say, does this Epistle of the abbot of St. Vanne to the abbot of St. Pantaleon mean? (for that title is ascribed to it:) "To his venerable lord H., abbot of the excellent martyr Pantaleon, brother L., servant of St. Vanne, with all the congregation committed to him, all manner of love in Christ. Hearing of your good zeal, and your devotion, which we know you eagerly have toward your blessed Patron, and recognizing that you have great scarcity of such happy pledges, by the instinct of mutual charity we have sent you a part from the abundant store which the divine magnificence granted to our predecessors; that, according to what you have in your desire, devotion toward so great a Patron may be increased. Truly in what way so happy and so glorious a patronage came to our church, brother R. will better explain to you, by whose mediation we direct so great a gift. We send also a part of the relics of the most blessed patron Vanne, and of Theodore the glorious martyr, whose memorable triumph is celebrated on the 5th of the Ides of November; that between your church and ours there may now remain a perpetual and unanimous fellowship, and the honor and reverence of the Saints be from time to time heaped up. Farewell."

[53] Among the names of the abbots of St. Vanne of Verdun in de Sainte-Marthe, whose initial letter was L, only one is found which could agree with the times of some abbot of St. Pantaleon at Cologne, whose name is derived from the initial letter H. That name is Louis the first, of whom the Gallia Christiana has only this: written about the year 1230; "Louis I, brother of Albert, bishop of Verdun, in the year 1237, died on the 16th of the Kalends of July": from which you cannot know whether in the year 1237 he began to be abbot of St. Vanne, and afterward died in an uncertain year; or whether he died in the year 1237, and the year in which he was previously created abbot is unknown: for neither is the end of his predecessors noted, nor the beginning of his successor. However it be; he does not seem to have lived long after the year 1237; since his successor William is said to have translated the body of St. Dodo the bishop in the year 1247; nor to have been abbot long before about the year 1220; since after Alestan, who was abbot in the year 1183, and whose end we know not, three others are noted without a time, who preceded Louis. Either, then, Louis wrote to Henry III of Werden, and indeed near his death (for he died in the year 1220, having been abbot of St. Pantaleon for 20 years), or to Henry IV, the successor of the former, who ceased to live in the year 1227; or finally to Henry V, surnamed of Hurne, who held the same abbey from the year 1230 to 1242. However you take it, it must be confessed that the epistle was written after all the translations of so many relics of St. Pantaleon to his monastery of Cologne, of which we made mention above, and of which it even now shows the treasures. How, then, could Louis then have known that that monastery had great scarcity of such happy pledges?

[54] unless it be explained otherwise than by Gelenius. What, then? Was it spoiled after the year

1208 and before about the year 1237 that the monastery of Cologne and its reliquary-treasury? No one, so far as I know, reports it; not even the monk Godfrey in the Annals, which he was writing at that time and about that time in that place, in which he does not omit far smaller matters of his monastery. Did Louis perhaps not know that which he says he knew? Neither is this probable: for he is not to be believed to have sent relics unless asked; nor to have been asked, except by those who alleged a scarcity of them. Shall we say the epistle is fabricated, since it signifies that relics also of SS. Vanne and Theodore were sent, which now among the monks of St. Pantaleon are not known, according to Gelenius? That appears hard, both because those relics could either be lost, or laid up among the anonymous ones; and because this epistle has hitherto been so diligently kept in the archive of the same monastery, and in it also once found by Gelenius; as is clear from the place often mentioned, page 370. What if, then, against the mind of Gelenius, we suspect that the relics neither asked by the people of Cologne, nor sent by those of Verdun with this epistle, were of St. Pantaleon, but of another Saint, who is held patron of the same monastery of Cologne? For the monastery is also called by Gelenius that of the holy physicians Pantaleon, Cosmas, and Damian, and Quirinus the martyrs; and it has the relics of each. What if, I say, Louis here signified some of these? Then certainly there would be nothing at all inconvenient to what was said before from these letters. For the rest, it is a bare conjecture, which we leave to be discussed by those who possess the archive, whence it can either be more solidly established, or refuted. Let us meanwhile dispatch the other translations.

[55] To Toulouse, besides an admirable bowl from the East, There is at Toulouse an illustrious convent of the canonesses regular of the Order of St. Augustine, founded from the testament of Jean-Raymond of Comminges, first archbishop of Toulouse, and afterward Cardinal-bishop of Porto and St. Rufina of the Holy Roman Church, who died in the year 1348, that is, two years before there was built, by the executors of his testament, the monastery of which I was just speaking, with a church to which the name of St. Pantaleon was given, on account of the several relics of that Martyr left to it by the deceased Cardinal founder, and among others a very precious bowl, which St. Pantaleon had engraved with his own hands; of which bowl, says Catel in the Monuments of Occitanian history, book 2, page 175, whence we drew these things, a very venerable ancient manuscript of the same monastery makes mention in these words: "In the year of the Lord two hundred and twenty-eight, blessed Pantaleon in the city of Nicomedia, while he was a pagan, a philosopher, and a physician, made with the art of astrology his vessel of precious stone; and with it he gave the sick to drink, healing them. But when he was converted to the Catholic faith, the said most excellent vessel was sanctified by the Lord."

[56] Then Catel adds: "In the same ancient manuscript adorned with figures, [there was brought also, we know not whence, a bone of the arm of St. Pantaleon about the year 1350.] there is read woven in a peculiar history of this bowl, in which is narrated in what way Constantine the Great, drinking from it, recovered from several diseases with which he was afflicted: who then gave that bowl to the church of St. Pantaleon in the city of Sebaste, by some called Suas. Thence Chosroes, king of the Persians, took it away; after whose death it was carried to Antioch; whence it came to the hands of the emperor Frederick II, and from him to Manfred, tyrant of Sicily, and finally to the Cardinal of Comminges; who gave it, with several other relics which the abbot of St. Maurice (I mean of Agaune) had sent him, as a gift to the already-mentioned convent of virgins. In the same book," he says, "there are read, written by a more recent hand, the following: 'This lord Cardinal of Comminges is he who founded at Toulouse a monastery of religious virgins in honor of the eleven thousand Virgins, and gave several other relics, worthy of honor and reverence, and who brought back and laid up the aforesaid vessel with the bone of the arm of the aforesaid St. Pantaleon … in the aforesaid monastery (namely already destined, but not yet built) of St. Pantaleon. Thanks be to God.'" So he. From which it is clear that, besides that crater, a bone of the arm of St. Pantaleon was also translated thither; but whence received? From the abbot of St. Maurice? But whence had he it? It is not said.

[57] But as for the manuscript history of that bowl, but the history of this bowl I know not what could be read more inept: for what is it, that in the year 228 Pantaleon [is] a physician; who, as the Acts bear, died a youth almost a whole century afterward? What of the vessel made by him "with the art of astrology"? These paradoxes, I suppose, impelled our Predecessors to have recourse to the very source at Toulouse, and that through our Peter Possin; who, most obliging as he was, sent hither the narration copied with his own hand from the ancient codex of the monastery of virgins of the Order of St. Augustine at Toulouse, on the 10th of November in the year 1645; more, I believe, that he might satisfy us more fully, than that the most learned man thought that monument to be of any value: for the matter is so wretched that it is a shame to produce it here. In the very title Constantine is said to have built Constantinople in the year 315, and then, when he suffered from the stomach and gout, to have received that bowl from the deceased wife of the emperor Maximian. A few little lines afterward, the writer, soon forgetful of himself, "And (Constantine)," he says, "caused Constantinople, a great city, to be built: then he was afflicted with an ailment of the stomach and gout; but the wife of the emperor Maximian was staying in the city of Nicaea: for she heard of the emperor's infirmity: she sent him the precious vessel of St. Pantaleon, which she had had from her son, who had been a paralytic, and was cured," etc. He then narrates that the Persians and Chaldeans rushed into Armenia; that Constantine soon met them with an army; and, they being routed, at Sebaste, which he had freed from siege, built a great church in the name of St. Pantaleon, and there placed this precious vessel; and that several miracles then followed.

[58] it teems with so many errors, To this another narration is subjoined from the same work, no better, concerning Chosroes, king of the Persians, who, having plundered Palestine, took away the cross of the Lord; and, returning into Persia, overthrew Sebaste, the bowl of St. Pantaleon being carried off with him; drinking from which afterward, he was cured of an ailment of the spleen and stomach. Afterward he caused a tower to be built with gold and silver, and there placed three thrones: on the right he placed the wood of the holy Cross, and on the left the said holy vessel, and himself sat in the middle, as a sign of the Trinity; and caused the people to adore him; because he said that he was God: then Heraclius rushed into Persia, and destroyed all things, and found king Chosroes; and seized him; and asked him to be made a Christian, because he had honored the wood of the holy Cross and the said holy vessel, and other sanctuaries: and because the king refused, he (Heraclius) caused his head to be cut off. Afterward he took the wood of the holy Cross, and carried it to Jerusalem, and many other things, with great triumph, and rebuilt the holy city: but Jachan (who above had been said to be bishop of Sebaste) saw all these things done at Sebaste, and took the holy vessel of St. Pantaleon, and secretly carried it back to the city of Antioch, and placed it in the church of St. Peter … and wrote this history for the perpetual memory of the matter.

[59] so that you know not what can be believed from it. But indeed, in what way a monument of this kind could be called venerable, we do not see; since it betrays such gross errors in so small a narration: for, to say nothing of the wife of Maximian, alive and dead at once, and other things; who has even saluted history from the threshold, who does not know that in the year 315 Constantinople was not built; that Constantine indeed prepared himself for the Persian expedition, but, it not yet being undertaken, departed from life; that Chosroes never came into the power of Heraclius, much less was slain by him? For the rest, of Frederick and Manfred Possin copied not a word thence; but the title of a far different narration conceived in the French, but now obsolete, tongue, which we thus render into Latin: "How the lord Louis of France crossed the sea at the time of the passage (or expedition to the Holy Land), and then fell into sickness, and at Antioch suffered from dropsy, and there found the holy vessel which the lord Pantaleon had made to drive off the diseases of men, and which the community of the city had in the church of the holy father (du sainct pere, perhaps for de sainct Pierre, of St. Peter) and, for the honor of the city, guarded well. But the lord Louis so managed that he obtained from that community that sacred vessel, and blessed himself with it, and came out whole; and so departed, and carried off with him the holy vessel into his own region." Thus far the same manuscript codex, of whose credence and value, therefore, at least in the things which pertain to the bowl of Toulouse, I appeal to the judgment of any reader.

[60] There remains the last translation of the relics of St. Pantaleon into Portugal, which our Antonio de Vasconcellos in the Description of Portugal, which was printed at Antwerp in the year 1621, The body of St. Pantaleon brought into Portugal about the year 1453, briefly noted, page 562, in these words: "The heavenly Divinity showed His love to the people of Porto, when from Nicomedia, a city of Bithynia, He translated to them the body of the martyr Pantaleon: which John, king of Portugal, ordered by his testament to be enclosed in a chest cast of silver." Before him Vaseus had thus written in the Chronicle of Spain at the year 306, where he treats of the persecution of Diocletian: "In this persecution blessed Pantaleon suffered at Rome; whose body was afterward carried by the Romans fleeing the persecution of the barbarians into Portugal, and in the city of Porto shines even now with many miracles." Much more fully these things the most illustrious Roderick da Cunha, bishop of Porto, treats in his Catalogue and Portuguese history of the bishops his predecessors, part 2, chapter 32, whose narration comes to this: "The relics of St. Pantaleon, John Damascene testifying, were at Constantinople in the temple of Concord, and were also a little before that city succumbed to Mahomet the second, as says, I know not who, Roca of Valencia in the history of the Turks: thence, therefore, that they were translated about that time, is both agreeable to reason and to ancient tradition. Constantinople, therefore, being plundered by the barbarians, certain Christians took away the stone sepulcher which contained his relics, and, placing it on a ship, carried it with them as far as Portugal and the suburb of Porto, where they deposited it in the church of St. Peter of Miragaya, situated on the river Douro, in the year more or less 1453; and there built a street, which is even today called the Way of the Armenians." It is clear here that Roderick differs from Vasconcellos, when the latter judges those relics brought from Nicomedia, the former from Constantinople: with Vaseus I know not who can agree, unless he sets this Pantaleon as different from the one of Nicomedia: but let us pursue the history begun.

[61] This sacred pledge remained in the church of St.

Peter for 46 years, and translated to the church of Porto from Miragaya in the year 1499, until in the year 1499, on the 12th of December, it was translated thence with solemn procession to the greater chapel of the cathedral church by Diego de Souza, bishop of Porto; who also translated the sepulcher, enclosed in which it had come hither, which now serves as an altar in the chapel of the most holy Sacrament. Besides, the bishop and chapter decreed that every year that day of the translation should henceforth be kept solemn and festal, and that of it an Office should be recited with a double rite on the 12th of December. The same relics were afterward placed in a wooden chest, but magnificently covered with silver plates, by the munificence of two kings of Portugal, John II and Emmanuel, surnamed the Great; of whom the former had ordered this to be done by his testament, the latter carried it out in the year 1502. The insignia of both kings were engraved; and on this side indeed the five shields of the kingdom of Portugal; on that the Pelican of king John II, the symbol of the love with which he embraced the peoples subject to him. The middle is occupied by the effigy of the glorious Martyr, patron and protector of this city (of Porto); which, before it had received him, had acknowledged as patron St. Vincent the martyr, both because the same was patron of Lisbon, which is the head of the kingdom, and because Porto also had his notable relics.

[62] But as great as was the grief of the inhabitants of Miragaya after the sacred body was translated (whose arm they left them for solace and refuge), the arm nevertheless being left there. so great was the joy of the city and cathedral church with which it received it: which so illustrates both, that it extends its fame through the whole world; while by the patronage of this Saint God and our Lord works infinite miracles, and that especially when the plague begins to rage, from which He very often defends this city and all its citizens. Thus far the most illustrious prelate; let all his things be said on his faith, although for the compendium of the narration we have used our own order, and not rarely our own words also. Here you have meanwhile the body of St. Pantaleon again, and an arm separated from it; which would that it could be proved, whence it came, from more authentic instruments!

§ VI. The twofold discovery of the body of St. Pantaleon.

The body of St. Pantaleon found at Benevento in the year 1586. So many translations of the relics of St. Pantaleon having hitherto been described, there followed a twofold discovery of the same Martyr, as they will have it; one at Benevento, the other at Lucca, both in Italy. Of the former we have received only this, which in the Catalogue of the Saints who are venerated at Benevento, Marius de Vipera, archdeacon of Benevento, delivers, at this day of the 27th of July, on which he affirms that the feast of St. Pantaleon the martyr of Nicomedia is celebrated with a double rite in his church, and then, after a brief eulogy which he borrows from the Roman Martyrology, he subjoins these things: "His body was found at Benevento in the ruined sacred church of St. Cornelius de Plano Curiae in the year of the redemption of the world 1586, Pope Sixtus V and archbishop Maximilianus Palumbaria reigning, under an altar dedicated to him; where his Acts, long ago painted, appear even to the present day: and it was carried to the cathedral with great veneration and a great concourse of the people, and there buried under the high altar. But how it was translated to Benevento, no memory exists; on account of the frequent devastations of that very city it is believed." So he, citing in the margin the Acts of the archiepiscopal court of Benevento concerning the discovery of St. Pantaleon. Similar things the same author reports in the Chronology of the bishops and archbishops of the church of Benevento at the year 1586.

[64] At Lucca in Tuscany in the church of SS. John and Reparata The discovery at Lucca is described in compendium in the little book, or cause, there agitated and decided in favor of the identity of the relics found with the body of St. Pantaleon, martyr and physician of Nicomedia; which little book, printed in Lucca type, appeared in the year 1718. But because the same the most illustrious man, and himself an eyewitness, Marius Florentinius, depicted not a little more distinctly in letters given here to Janning from Lucca, it pleases us to recount it here in his words. Thus, then, in the year 1714, on the 12th of December, and the fifth or sixth after the discovery, and again to the same effect on the 19th of the same month, he wrote: "That you will congratulate us on the sacred treasure lately found, most learned Father, I trust. On the 7th of the Ides of December (the printed little book has, on the sixth day of December), while the Prior and canons of the distinguished collegiate church of SS. John and Reparata had decreed the repair of the choir into a more elegant form, and were already expending the labor of the mason, it came into the mind of the same lords that the body of St. Reparata might rest there; since they had read it in Franciotti, and in the older Martyrology of Francesco Maria Florentinius, and there is a constant tradition. They ordered therefore behind the high altar and under the same to be excavated; and while they had dug to the depth of about three arms (the printed little book, about one arm), they found a marble stone of no small size with a cross engraved, upon which another marble tablet was placed: which being removed, they saw a narrow place, or little path, scarcely capable of a man bent down; into which having entered, the Reverend lord Amedeus, Prior of Saminiati, and some canons, at once there came into view a small and square little chest, filled with true and solid coals, yet not covered above, in which are seen engraved characters, which below will be exactly expressed.

[65] Then next to this a larger chest appeared; of which I took care to have the form and the inscription of the Roman characters delineated in the adjoined leaf most exactly, in the year 1714 a marble urn was found, as far as the brevity of the time permitted: at all which I was present as an eyewitness. Then, the most reverend archdeacon Octavius Sardi, vicar general of the most illustrious and most reverend bishop Genesius Calchi, a patrician of Milan, being summoned, he descended into the artificial crypt, and had the chest drawn out; which, since it was fortified on both sides with two iron plates, at the first touch at once burst into pieces, greatly corroded and consumed by rust. The extracted chest he secured with silken cords and his own seal, to be opened when it should please the most illustrious bishop, that the enclosed relics, recognized by him (if there be any, as we hope), may be exposed to due worship and veneration. Suffused with great joy, I too was present at all these things, and at once determined to announce these things to you, most illustrious lord … A pious curiosity urges us to look into the urn, which externally has on the front part a clear engraved inscription of Roman characters: on one side a little tree, which we interpret as an olive; and on the other two little vessels, as are found in the sepulchers of the Martyrs, which perhaps indicate that blood is contained within, witnesses of the martyrdom; and in the middle of these there is seen as it were a round pan, as in the drawn figure: what it means, and what kind of instrument it is, I still know not. These things I wished to signify to you cursorily; and as soon as the chest shall be opened, what shall be found within I will diligently write back. Farewell," etc.

[66] whose figure is here exhibited: Behold now the figure, which was enclosed in the epistle, exhibiting separately that square marble little vessel, which was found full of coals, having on the edge or lip an inscription not accurately enough sketched; since in it the words, according to the little book praised before, badly figured, ought to be reported and unequally engraved. To this no measure was ascribed. It exhibits besides the exterior figure of the urn found, namely the front face with the inscription, and the two sides with the engraved emblems; the back of the chest, or its posterior part, because nothing was engraved on it, is omitted. This urn in length, as is noted in the little book already mentioned, equals five sixth parts of an arm (that is, according to Florentinius, two palms and four fingers' breadth); three and a half in breadth; two and a half in height.

[67] Thus far we have proposed the urn to be considered externally; and in it, when it was opened, now let us look into it with the same Florentinius from his letters to the same Janning, given the 8th of January 1715: "On the 17th of the Kalends of January," he says, "at the first hour of the night the marble chest, described elsewhere, was opened, which was divided into two little compartments by an intervening wall of the same marble. In the right side of the cavity, to the height of about two fingers, was found a certain black, burnt earth, mixed with some very small coals and tiny fragments of little bones and small pebbles and one white tooth. Above these was placed a round glass vessel, of which the upper part of one side was broken; nor was any fragment of the broken glass found. In this vessel rested some bones of the holy Martyr, which, even washed, seemed to keep the mark of blackness or burning, except one whitish one. And in the bottom of the same vessel, under the bones, with a little portion of the aforesaid earth, stagnated about eight ounces of clear water, devoid of taste and odor.

[68] the bones of St. Pantaleon, The other part of the urn appeared wholly empty; but from a sign or line surrounding the marble walls on every side, it could be inferred that in that part too bones or ashes or something similar once lay hidden; and perhaps the bones which for a long time have been enclosed in a silver case and are for many years exposed to the veneration of all on the festivity of the holy Martyr. Yet all the bones, both in the glass of the marble chest and in the silver case, cannot form and constitute the size and skeleton of a middling and youthful body, nor the greater part; as you can easily infer, most illustrious man, from the bones to be noted below, which are found with us. The bones found in the marble chest, diligently and faithfully examined by two skilled surgeons, I too being witness, are the following:

[69] here enumerated: The phalanges of one hand, consisting of nineteen disjointed joints: twenty-five bones of the feet: a fragment of the sacrum and of the ilium: seven fragments of the bones of the hand, namely a joint, and six bones of the wrist: a fragment of one false rib: a white eye-tooth, found, as above, in the bottom of the chest: the temporal or petrous bone with the auditory passage, split into two parts: thirty-six small fragments of various parts, namely of the scapula, the ischium, and the cranium: eighty tiny fragments of various bones. In the silver case, engraved on every side with figures rudely made, expressing the instruments and images of the miracles and the martyrdom, and with Roman and Latin characters marked above, there were kept, wrapped in white linen veils and purple silk, the following bones: three little pieces of the cranium united together, which slightly exceed the breadth of a larger silver shield: the lower jaw whole with four white teeth: three vertebrae of the neck, and two lumbar: the head of one thigh-bone, and a long fragment of the shin, divided into two parts, and tiny fragments of other bones. All described and enumerated by the chancellor of the episcopate, Nicolò Cristofani, and confirmed by a public instrument, I too intervening. At the narrated inspection were present the most illustrious and most reverend Genesius Calchi, bishop of Lucca; the archdeacon Octavius Sardi, vicar general; Amedeus Saminiati, Prior of the church of SS. John and Reparata, with other canons, and several noble men.

[70] When Florentinius wrote these things to Janning, the most noble heir and emulator of his father's learning and exceptional piety toward the Saints, whose cult there shone from the tenth century. he at the same time most modestly asked his judgment on the whole matter, and especially what he thought, whether sufficient argument appeared in all these things, that the aforesaid relics should be believed to be not of any St. Pantaleon the martyr, but of the one of Nicomedia alone. Which since he himself wholly thought, he suggested to Janning to be weighed both in this and in the following epistle, given the same year on the 10th of April, many weights of his opinion; for instance, that the veneration of the people of Lucca toward St. Pantaleon the martyr was most ancient; and to demonstrate it several authentic instruments are at hand; from which it is established, not only that other churches through the diocese were named by the title of this Martyr, but that especially that very one in which the body was found was called St. Pantaleon's in the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth centuries: that it was already of old believed that the body of the Saint lay hidden in the same; that this is manifest from the acts of the visitations of the years 1566 and 1575; although it is unknown whence it was brought thither or when: that in past times the supreme magistrate of the republic of Lucca was wont to assemble in the same church on the feast of St. Pantaleon, to assist at the divine service: that in the public palace, above the door of every chamber of the most exalted decemvirs, the names of the holy bodies which it was believed were kept in the city of Lucca were engraved in cubit-long letters, and among others of St. Pantaleon: that in a manuscript kid-skin Breviary of his library of about the year 1300 it was thus read: "On the 6th of the Kalends of August, of St. Pantaleon the martyr, at Lucca, lesser double," and that in red characters, as in the greater festivities:

[71] But that all these things are to be understood of St. Pantaleon the physician and martyr of Nicomedia, The people of Lucca will have this to be the one of Nicomedia; is persuaded first, because only two SS. Pantaleon MM. are known, namely the one of Nicomedia and the one of Vigiliæ; but that these things cannot be understood of the one of Vigiliæ is established from the Acts of Vigiliæ: second, because of the one of Nicomedia alone a constant tradition flourished at Lucca: third, because on his feast in the same church the college of physicians of Lucca was wont to be present every year at the celebration of the Mass, at least from the year 1630, and to bestow wax torches: fourth, because there, from time immemorial (this the printed little book of his cause asserts, page 11), in his Office the first Lesson of the second nocturn is wont to be drawn from the Roman Breviary on the 27th of July: fifth, finally, because the relics of Lucca themselves, with their cases, reveal only the one of Nicomedia, both those lately found, and those which were of old there publicly, as now, exposed in a silver little chest on the 27th of July above the high altar, the canons and all the clergy of the cathedral church assembling, and singing there a solemn sacrifice of the Mass, and then wont to kiss the same relics: since that little chest is distinguished with the ancient images of the martyrdom of St. Pantaleon of Nicomedia, and of the instruments of his passion: but the relics found more recently there, since they exhibit the bones of a youthful body, whom do they prove but Pantaleon of Nicomedia, whom the Acts make a youth? What does their blackness, what the coals placed with them, but denote the burning of the body, which in the Acts of St. Pantaleon of Nicomedia is narrated at the end? What the olive engraved on the marble; does it not indicate that to which the same Pantaleon is read to have been beheaded? What the two little vessels engraved opposite with a hollow orb, do they not seem to represent the melted lead and the cauldron or frying-pan, of which the same Acts made mention?

[72] Concerning which matter a suit was agitated, Writing to nearly this effect, Florentinius, as I was just saying, explored and urged the judgment of Janning; of which the Prior and canons of SS. John and Reparata had not long need; since, instructed especially with these Florentinian arguments, but drawn out more fully and laboriously, they themselves began to plead their cause before the bishop of Lucca, and so proved against all the objections, that at last they obtained from the judge this sentence on the 30th of May in the year 1718: before the bishop of Lucca, "We Genesius Calchus, by the grace of God and the Apostolic See bishop of Lucca, immediately subject to the same Holy See, and count; domestic prelate, and bishop assistant of the sacred Pontifical throne, in the cause pending between the chapter of the distinguished collegiate, baptismal, and parochial church of SS. John and Reparata of Lucca on the one part, and the fiscal promoter of this our episcopal court, in this part also as promoter of the causes of the Holy Faith, the parties on the other, concerning and upon the finding of a certain marble little chest, sealed with iron locks, found under the high altar of the same church, in which several bones were found, the instances being heard several times and repeatedly made by the deputies of the same chapter; several public and authentic transcripts and documents being seen, and, maturely considered, the allegations both of fact and of law and other rights, and the whole process thereupon constructed being diligently examined and searched; the above-written promoter of the Holy Faith being heard several times and again and again, both by word and in writing, and his animadversions being well weighed; the unanimous vote and counsel being heard of several theologians, canonists, and other pious men specially deputed by us for this, in a particular congregation instituted before us thereupon at the report of Father Ludovicus Marraccius, of the Congregation of the Mother of God, and a personal visitation being made by us ourselves of the same marble little chest and of the bones found in it, and a diligent observation of all being made, and other things to be seen being seen, and things to be considered by law being considered, sitting for tribunal in our episcopal palace in the hall of public audience,

[73] The names of our most holy Lord Jesus Christ, and also of the most blessed ever-Virgin Mary, and of the blessed Martin, [and decided in favor of the identity with the relics of the Martyr of Nicomedia in the year 1718,] Joseph, Ambrose, Charles, Anthony, and Genesius being piously invoked, we say, pronounce, declare, decree, and by our authority definitively sentence, that the bones, of which in the Acts, and as found above, are of the sacred relics of the most blessed St. Pantaleon the physician and martyr of Nicomedia, and that of their identity it is established, and to them, as such, and as pertaining to his holy body, we decree that public cult and veneration are due; and we release, grant, and impart to the same chapter the faculty of exposing the same sacred relics, with becoming ornament, to the public veneration of the Faithful, to the greater glory of God and of the same holy Martyr, and to the spiritual solace of the faithful committed to us by divine providence: decreeing a special feast to be celebrated at the first public exposition of the same sacred relics, of which exposition and feast we reserve the day to be designated by ourselves. And so, etc., with all, etc. Thus I have pronounced, I, G. bishop of Lucca."

[74] Thus the little book already often praised, and made public; not without the public exultation of the citizens. in which also the following were added: "The above-said sentence having been pronounced at the twenty-second hour of the aforesaid thirtieth day of May, very many being present, especially those constituted in ecclesiastical dignity, and professors and masters of sacred theology called as witnesses; at once all the bells of the churches of the city, both secular and regular, in sign of pious applause and public exultation, resounded for nearly an hour with harmonious concord." For the rest, we think that our judgment is not to be interposed, either in this suit, thus decided, as we have seen; or in others, which concerning the relics hitherto reviewed have either been raised or can further be raised: for as it must seem certain that they cannot all be of one and the same Martyr, but of several; so it is difficult and liable to rashness to wish to distinguish them among themselves. Yet it has pleased us to enumerate as many as anywhere occurred under this name, to illustrate the glory of so great a Martyr, whom so many nations, distant from one another, not only venerate and greatly esteem, but besides all wish to be their own.

* read "resounded" (resonuerunt)

THE LIFE AND MARTYRDOM

According to the interpretation of Aloysius Lipomanus, again drawn up from the Greek text of Simeon Metaphrastes.

Pantaleon, martyr, at Nicomedia (St.)

From Metaphrastes.

CHAPTER I.

The birth of St. Pantaleon; his condition; the conversion both of himself and of his father, and of a blind man whom he had healed.

When the mist of idols was diffused through the whole earth, when Maximian held the scepters of the Roman empire ^a, then was known at Nicomedia the admirable and great among the martyrs, Panteleemon. St. Pantaleon's fatherland, parents, education, For from that city he drew the origin of his race: and he was indeed called Pantoleon: but he was the son of Eustorgius ^b, distinguished indeed by wealth, but of more distinguished impiety: for he was given to the superstition of the gentiles, and was inflamed with ardent zeal for it. But he had a faithful mother, who, as far as pertains to religion, fought diametrically with her husband: and Eubula ^c (for that was her name) was well affected toward the affairs of the Christians. When, therefore, the good Son was educated by such a mother and teacher, he is deprived at once of his bodily and spiritual nourishment, by the law of death and of common nature, being of an imperfect and immature age, when he had little (alas for the grief!) enjoyed that maternal care.

[2] his medical training, his favor with the emperor; But after his father saw that he was, by his age, fit for studies, he hands him to a grammarian; then to preceptors and instructors. But after he was sufficiently learned in the Greek disciplines, he is taught medicine, being handed for instruction to a man at that time most excellent in that art, named Euphrosynus. But he, by the swiftness of his genius, like a certain bird cleaving the air, with great ease passed through all things, needing little of the labors of those who might help him, on account of the powers of his genius. And thus in a short time he left all his equals behind ^d. But he was both modest in morals, and pleasant in speech, and distinguished in beauty. Which things indeed caused that he was with great pleasure in the mouth of all, and was held by all in admiration: so that Maximian himself, when he had at some time seen him (for he came often to the palace, following his master), did not pass him over in silence; but, summoning him, inquired about him, whose son he was, and whence; and asked other things: nay even ordered his preceptor to exercise him, as quickly as possible, in all medicine: for he was delighted by his morals and the flower of his virtue; and determined to have him in the palace.

[3] his approach to St. Hermolaus, But at that time a certain old man, a Christian by religion, named Hermolaus, was hidden in a certain little house with other Christians (for the fear of the emperor caused this); who, when he saw Pantoleon going to his preceptor, and observed that a pearl was hidden by an outer shell, considering what was his gait, what his motion, what his aspect, how great was the serenity and tranquillity of his eyes; these things, I say, when he saw, and (as those who hold the knowledge of these things judge a certain generous horse, even if it be still a colt, will be excellent; [or from a tender plant still an tree fit for

fruit)] ^e had recognized through the spirit that he would be, in the sentence of Paul, seen as a vessel of election, he deemed it great and made much of it, if he could hunt down such a soul. When, therefore, he had at some time summoned him as he passed by, he asked him to enter into that little house in which he was hidden. And he entered. Whom, when he had made him sit near, he asked about his race, and parents, and of what religion he was, and then each thing. But Pantoleon at once relates all, as the truth of the matter was: both that his mother indeed was already dead, who was of the Christian religion; but that his father, though living, was dead, following the superstition of the gentiles. Then, when the old man had added: "But thou, good Son, of what part dost thou wish to be, and of which religion?" Pantoleon said: "My mother indeed, while she was still surviving, persuaded me to assent to her religion, which indeed pleased me: but my father, as being the stronger, compels me to give my effort to his religion: for he wishes to enroll me in the number of the palatines." "But what is that discipline to which thou art devoted?" said the old man. "That of Aesculapius," he said, "and of Hippocrates, and of Galen: for this too seemed good to my father. Nay even the master himself affirmed to us, that if I learn it accurately, I shall be able to cure every human disease, and to oppose it, as the stronger, to any affliction."

[4] But Hermolaus, an occasion and a seed being taken from his words, who persuades him to the Christian religion, as if having found a most beautiful receptacle, began to pour into it the divine stream of faith: "Believe me," he said, "O best Youth, speaking the truth. These things of Aesculapius, Hippocrates, and Galen are small, and can profit little those who use them ^f. Nay even the gods themselves, whom Maximian worships, are wholly an empty fable, and the deception of lighter minds ^g. But the one and only true God is Christ: in whom if thou believe, by His invocation alone thou shalt loose and put to flight all diseases: who gave light to the blind, life to the dead, cleansing to the lepers: who by a word and command alone expelled from men the demons which are adored by Maximian: whose garment's hem too, when a woman had only touched it, at once stopped the channels of blood which had flowed for twelve whole years. And what need is there to tell his deeds? for it is the same as to measure the sand, the stars, and the drops of water, to enumerate his miracles and great works. And now too he is present to his own an unconquerable helper, consoling in troubles, enlarging in affliction: in adverse things, I say, and those which happen against our will, by no means awaiting prayers, but preventing the very motion of the heart. Nay even to those who love him, granting greater miracles to be done than he himself did, he then gives life which has no end."

[5] When Pantoleon, like good earth, had received and hidden these words in his heart, God concurring by a miracle. he believed, and judged them to be true, and wholly depended on them, and sweetly meditated on them, and told Hermolaus that he had often heard them from his mother, and had seen her praying, and invoking the God whom he preaches. But he wished to signify these things to his master too. Every day, therefore, Pantoleon went to the old man, and delighted himself with these beautiful streams, and was little by little confirmed to the true faith: and coming daily to his master, he did not return home before he had delighted his ears with the words of the old man. And so at some time, returning from his preceptor, when he had turned aside a little from the way for some purpose, he sees a dead infant ^h, whom a viper had bitten, and the beast itself standing near him, and as it were showing who had done the slaughter. Him, therefore, when he had seen it, fear invaded, and he withdrew a little. Then, when he had again collected himself, he returned, and stood beside the boy. For he judged that this would be a sufficient sign of the things which the old man had said, if they were true: "For the boy," he said, "will rise by his word, and the beast will suffer that which it did to him." This came into his mind, and he asked by prayers, and at once the infant was seen alive, and the beast dead, and that which was with it, that beast which is apprehended by the intelligence, much more destroyed and killed ⁱ.

[6] When Pantoleon had thus come to the perfection of faith in Christ, at once he looked up to heaven with his external [*] eyes, and blessed God, who had called him from the darkness of destruction to the light of truth, with much tranquillity of mind. Pantaleon is baptized, secretly from his heathen father, Then, when he could not bear his joy, he approaches the old man Hermolaus, and sets forth what had happened, and asks of him the venerable baptism. But he (for he knew what he bestows and on whom) gladly served in this, and, one who was worthy of light, perfected him with the divine baptism. But when he had remained seven days with the old man, his heart is watered by his drink-like words, and his soul is fattened, and his belly is filled with divine streams. And thus he lived under the good spirit, being preserved a profit and an illumination to many. But when it was the eighth day, he came to his father. And he: "Where wast thou," he said, "Son, on the former days, and hast cast me into great sickness of mind? Has anything happened to thee beyond expectation?" And he: "To a certain one," he said, "of those who dwell in the royal court, laboring under a grave disease, we had gone, I and my master, and since he was pleasing to the emperor, and worthy that great care should be taken of him, it was not at all easy for us to withdraw thence, but for seven continuous days we were present there, until he obtained pure health." These things he said, not telling a lie, but mystically dispensing his words in the judgment of economy, but not for the cause of some evil counsel ^k.

[7] whom he gradually turns away from the idols, Likewise, when on the following day too he had come to his master Euphrosynus (since he also asked the same things), he used to him a similar excuse, saying: "My father bought a field, and ordered me to take it, from which I have no leisure to depart, until I have attentively inspected all its things, and delivered the care of it to those to whom it is fitting. For it is of great price, and such as can be compared with no other possession." But this he said, tacitly hinting at the grace of the divine baptism. Moreover, he applied great zeal and diligence to lead his father from error, and to bring it about that he should assent to piety ^l; himself striving to regenerate through the spirit him who had begotten him according to the flesh. Wherefore he never ceased to approach him wisely, and to propose questions which could not easily be solved; and thus to try to dissolve his superstition in the false gods. "For what cause," he said, "O father, do those which from the beginning indeed stood, still now stand, never mindful of sitting? But whoever again sit, thus remain perpetually, and are never seen to rise?" These and other similar things the father, hearing, hesitated in their solution; and now wavered in his opinion of the gods, and was of doubtful mind. Which indeed Pantoleon seeing, extolled the name of Christ with great praises, and gave great thanks to Him, that He had rendered his father at least doubting, and (as the divine Hosea says) dividing his heart. Wherefore he no longer saw him, as he was wont, offering frequent and best sacrifices.

[8] and, a blind man being healed by a miracle, And so, when at first he had wished to grind and destroy his father's images, which were many in his chamber, he restrained himself: for he made much of honoring his father: for he said: "I will rather lead him by persuasion, and by gentleness and mildness bring it about that he believe in Christ; and thus it will be lawful for both to cast them down." And therefore He who commanded to honor the father, embracing his great piety, furnished a fitting occasion; which caused that his father plainly and placidly believed: and He provided that he should prepare for himself a great reward. While Pantoleon thought these things, there come certain persons, bringing a blind man who is led by the hand. And when they had knocked at the doors, they asked whether Pantoleon the physician was there. And when they understood that he was there, they waited. And he, when he had heard, goes out with the greatest zeal, taking his father also with him. And when he had seen the blind man, he asked what he needed. And he: "Light," he said, "of which I am deprived, and than which nothing is more pleasant to men. Moved, therefore, by mercy for my calamity, grant that I may not live thus imperfectly, and as it were by half: but that I may see the sun, may see the sky: for we indeed, living thus, differ in nothing from those who are among the dead. And when we have given all our means to physicians, we have lost even the little light which was left to us; obtaining this alone from those illustrious physicians, that with our means we have been deprived of our light too." But Pantoleon: "When to other physicians," he said, "thou hast given thy means, and hast received no profit, if thou see again, what wilt thou give me?" And he: "What are the remains of my means," he said, "I will pay out with a ready and eager mind." Then Pantoleon: "The gift indeed of light through us the Father of lights will give thee: but do thou, what thou hast promised me, go, and give to the poor."

[9] When his father had heard these things, he drew him away from what he had begun, saying: "Do not, he converts to Christ, together with the blind man healed. O most dear one, lest thou too be mocked. For what more wilt thou be able to do than the former physicians?" But Pantoleon: "No one," he said, "of the other physicians knows how to treat this man as I am about to treat him. For there is much difference between them, and Him who taught us." But when the father thought that he had said these things of Euphrosynus: "Him too," he said, "Son, I hear applied his diligence in curing this man, and profited nothing." But Pantoleon: "Wait," he said, "father, and the thing itself will show." When he had said these things, and had touched the eyes of the blind man, and had called the great name of Christ, and had asked of Him by prayers his cure, at once he loosed the darkness, for the one indeed of his eyes, but for his father of impiety, and brought it about that he openly confessed piety; or rather he gave to the blind man a double cure: for he was blind in the eyes of flesh and of soul, as one who was an adorer of idols, and through the now bodily light had the eyes of his heart opened ^m. Both, therefore, when they had believed, he deigns to endow with divine baptism, and enrolls in the number of the faithful. But the zeal of Eustorgius for piety could not stop there, as one who was the father of the great Pantaleon: but most openly showing that he held error in hatred, when he had ground the idols which were in his chamber, he casts them into a pit, as those which were truly worthy of oblivion and the depth.

ANNOTATIONS.

CHAPTER II.

The martyrdom of the blind man healed; the constancy of St. Pantaleon against idolatry and torments; the frequent apparition of Christ under the appearance of Hermolaus.

No very great space intervenes, and the father of Pantoleon dies. But he dies by the death of the body: The wonderful cures of the blind man and others, the envy of the physicians for from the death of the soul he was already wholly freed through faith and the divine baptism. Wherefore Pantoleon, when he had found time to bring help to his will, frees his servants indeed from servitude, and gave them enough money: but other things the hands of the poor received. Then he also went about curing those who were in prisons and who were vexed with torments and diseases, and furnishing what was necessary: so that he seemed the physician not only of disease, but also of want. From which thing what happened? Almost the whole city, having bidden farewell to the other physicians, come to Pantoleon and are freed by him from the diseases which each one had; as one who had, helping him too, the grace of the good spirit ^a. This calls him into great envy among the physicians: and when at some time he passed by who had before been blind, whose restoration of the faculty of seeing was a work of Pantoleon's piety, they took it ill, and said among themselves: "Is not this the blind man who accuses our art, as one that profited him nothing? Who then is he who cured him, and who can furnish such medicine?" And when they had called him, they asked. But he did not conceal him who had been the physician.

[11] and stir up accusations against St. Pantaleon; But after they understood that he was Pantoleon, the disciple of Euphrosynus: "Of a great master," they say, "he is truly a great disciple." Thus, ignorant, they prophesied concerning Christ. And an occasion was sought by the physicians on account of envy, to detract from him before the emperor. But when they had found that a certain one of the confessors was being cured by him, coming to Maximian, they said: "O emperor, he whom thou didst command with all zeal to learn medicine, that he might be useful to thy power, he, as it seems, caring little either for thy fear or thy benevolence, goes about curing those who are contumelious to the gods, and not only holding the same opinions as they, but also drawing others to worship the same; from whom, unless thou quickly take away his life, he will bring thee no small trouble; as one whom thou mayest see leading many away from the sacrifice of the gods, and ascribing to Christ the cures of Aesculapius." When they had said this, to give credence to what had been said, they asked that he should approach who had once been blind: but Pantoleon had cured him. But after they were heard, and he stood by: "How," they said, "did Pantoleon cure thy eyes?" And he: "By Christ," he said, "invoked: and that when he had not stayed with me even a short time, so that any thought of art could come to our mind: but the sight of the eyes almost preceded the invocation." "But what seems to thee?" said the emperor: "Dost thou say it was Christ who cured thee, or the gods?" But he who had been cured: "Emperor," he said, "the judgment of this matter is to be left to the things themselves. These physicians whom thou seest, when they had labored much for me, profited themselves indeed; as those who cropped my means ^b: but me nothing, nay rather they even harmed me; as those who corrupted the little light which I had. Whom then must I esteem my helper? Aesculapius, who was called upon by many, and profited nothing; or Christ, who, invoked by Pantoleon alone, at once gave me the light dear to me? [This, O emperor, in what other way should I say? For this very thing is evident even to a blind man, as it is said.]"

[12] but the martyrdom of the blind man healed. To this Maximian, since he had nothing to say, and could in a manner be persuaded by command alone: "Do not," he said, "behave foolishly, and do not at all name Christ: for openly the gods gave thee light." But he, looking altogether to the truth, not to the power, and speaking more freely than the blind man of the Gospel: "Thou," he said, "behavest foolishly, who callest those who are blind givers of light, together with whom thou too remainest blind, who thinkest such things, and canst not gaze at the light of truth." On account of these things the tyrant was stirred to anger. For how could ears, which have withered and been corrupted by flatteries, at all endure the harsher discourse which is spoken from truth? And at once, judging that the things which had before been said to him by the physicians were true, he orders the head of the friend of Christ to be cut off, inflicting death upon him as the punishment of truth, and

unwillingly bringing it about that he should render beautiful thanks to Christ, who had cured him, namely his confession. But the good Pantoleon did not even so neglect to do the things which suited the time and the circumstances. But when he had bought the Martyr's body from those who had been present, he buries it with his own father; as one who, through his confession of Christ, had deemed him his own, and reckoned him, by the kinship of blood, far more closely joined.

[13] Then the emperor summoned Pantoleon to himself. But he, as he was being led away, Then St. Pantaleon, brought to the tyrant, sang with his lips a psalm suited to the time, saying: "O God, be not silent of my praise: for the mouth of the sinner and of the deceitful is opened against me. They have spoken against me with a deceitful tongue, and have compassed me about with words of hatred, and have fought against me without cause. Instead of loving me, they calumniated me: but I prayed. And they rendered me evil for good, and hatred for my love. But do thou help me, O Lord my God, and save me according to thy mercy. Let those who calumniate me be clothed with confusion, and be covered, as with a double garment, with their own shame: but thy servant shall rejoice in thee." But when his prayer was finished, he stood before the king, or, to say better, not before him, but before the immortal and eternal One: for before Him he truly stood, and in mind conversed. To whom he first, placidly and kindly: "The things which we have heard of thee, O Pantoleon, are not good, that by thee Aesculapius indeed has been held in great contempt, and the other gods who are among thee: but that in that Christ, who died wretchedly, thou hast placed thy hope, and namest Him alone God. Although thou art not wholly ignorant with how kind eyes I have looked upon thee, and how, when I had enrolled thee in my household, I diligently ordered thy preceptor Euphrosynus to make thee as soon as possible most excellent in medicine, that thou mightest be of use to me in that matter. But thou ^c. But surely men have said many false and empty things. And therefore I summoned thee, that those things which have been heard by me may be proved vain, and the calumny of otherwise envious men; and that thou mayest offer sacrifice, as is fitting, to the greatest gods."

[14] To this Pantoleon: "Deeds," he said, "O emperor, are more credible and stronger than words; he confounds the idolaters, and proves the true faith, and before all other things faith and truth ought to go first: but piety toward God, the higher it is, the more it needs perfection and completeness. And He indeed who is worshiped and adored by me made heaven, established the earth, raised the dead, restored sight to the blind, cured the lepers, raised up the paralytics: and that by His will and word alone. But those who are called and worshiped by you as gods, I know not whether they have done anything such, or can do it at all. And if thou wilt, let us now try this by the thing itself. Let there come here some one of those who labor incurably, and whose cure human art and hand despairs of. But let there also come those who are priests among you. Then by them indeed let their gods first be invoked: but by me He whom I worship. And whoever, being named, shall have put the disease to flight, let Him alone be reckoned and worshiped as God: but the others let us send off to a bad end, overwhelming them with great oblivion." These things pleased the emperor. For this was the counsel of God and of His divine providence, that thus the right faith should be beyond controversy even with the enemies themselves, and truth should conquer the more openly.

[15] healing at once a paralytic whom they themselves could not. And so a paralytic man is brought into the midst, who for a long time now lay in bed, and who could almost no more be moved than the bed which held him. When, therefore, the priests of the vain gods had approached, and those who had been versed in medicine, some indeed invoked Aesculapius ^d, others Jupiter, others Diana, others other gods, madly supplicating things which lack mind and sense, and especially in a matter so great, and which so far surpassed nature. For it was equally difficult both that he should recover, and that their gods should be seen endowed with sense and reason. For what things so mute and trifling can furnish any cure to others? Therefore neither did they furnish it: but when those who have been mentioned had asked much, this very thing which they were, namely stones, they openly appeared to those who asked. But Pantoleon, seeing them asking, decorously mocked their vain labor by smiling. But after he too was ordered to invoke, he raises his eyes to heaven, and with them lifts up his voice, and: "Lord," he said, "hear my prayer, and let my cry come to thee. Turn not away thy face from me: in whatever day I am troubled, incline thy [ear] to me. In the day when I shall invoke thee, quickly hear me: and show to those who know thee not, and worship gods that are not, that thou canst do all things, O King, by thy power. But there is nothing that cannot be done by thee." Thus he said; and when he had touched the hand of him who lay there, he says: "In the name of Christ, who raises up those who are broken, be whole, and use thy limbs soundly." He said, and the word was followed by the effect; and no longer did the bed sustain the paralytic, but his own feet, as he walked boldly, and almost leaped up, and at once with great pleasure went out of the house.

[16] They therefore kindle the tyrant to his death, Nor indeed did the cure stop with him; but he indeed in body, but many others in soul paralytic, and enervated by the disease of impiety, when they had seen what had been done, rose up and were raised: and at last, their former error being condemned, they worshiped the true God. For thus the Lord both enlightens the blind, and knows how to raise the broken. But the wicked priests and physicians, who of their own will were incurable, the light of truth did not enter: but since they could not be freed from evil things, as those long accustomed to them, coming to Maximian, they provoked him to anger against the Saint: "If thou suffer him to live," they said, "both the gods will perish with thee and the sacrifices: and our religion and sacred rites will openly seem a fable: and the Christians will laugh at us profusely, and their affairs will more flourish, and will be much stronger than ours." When they had said this, he lent them a ready ear, and obeyed. And so the emperor summons the Saint, and, as a bait of kindness, holding out to him an admonition: "Believe me," he said, "Pantoleon, and offer sacrifice to the gods. Dost thou not see that whoever were not persuaded to do what had been said, had the gravest punishments and death as the reward of their unbelief? Of these there is a witness, who lately was miserably deprived of life, that old man Anthimus ^e. But I take care of thy youth, and do not wish thee so ill to perish: for know that many and grave punishments will befall thee, if thou follow the same disobedience."

[17] But Pantoleon, avoiding the admonitions as open fraud; whose blandishments and threats the Saint spurning, but despising the threats, as weaker than dreams themselves: "Do not think, O emperor," he said, "that thou wilt persuade me by admonitions, nor that thou wilt terrify me by threats. For what will either seize me from the goods of the world, or terrify me from terrible things, who not only despise death, but even judge it to be desired for the sake of Christ? But as for torments, so far am I from dreading them, that I even esteem it a great loss if there be not more and gravest; and in these I hold clemency to be graver than any cruelty. Certainly the excellent Anthimus I judge, not, as thou dost, wretched, but even greatly blessed, and prefer his death to any life, because by such an end he adorned such an old age, and reddened the whiteness of his gray hairs with the blood of martyrdom. But if he, who was of so advanced an age, showed himself so strong and constant; how should not I, who am still of youthful age, which ought not to bear grievous things, be held worthy of the same crowns as the old man? Thou wilt not, therefore, persuade, thou wilt not overcome, thou wilt not lead us from this confession: not by any means, I swear by the sacred and divine signs by which I have been made more certain of the truth. For I should shame my fatherland, and the piety of my mother who bore me, by which in the things which pertain to piety I was beautifully formed before, and with whom I hasten to rest in the eternal tabernacles." These things Pantoleon said; and in few words showed what a man he had met with who boasted of scepters and throne ^f. Wherefore, since he knew not by what reasoning he could persuade, he tried by torments; which was of power, but not of wisdom and prudence.

[18] And first indeed he was hung on wood, and the Martyr was torn with iron hooks. he is torn with hooks and burned with torches; Besides, torches of fire too were applied to his sides. But he attended not to the blows and burnings, but to Him who can bring help, and, raising his eyes to heaven, prayed; and therefore at once the liberator was present, and Christ, appearing in the habit of the old man Hermolaus, truly and genuinely consoled and refreshed him, saying: "For I am with thee in all things in which, suffering for me, thou behavest bravely." But that He was present, the proof was not far off: for at once the hands of the lictors were relaxed, the torches too were extinguished, and the emperor abstained from chastising, and was plainly in doubt what to do. He orders him, therefore, to be taken down from the wood, not because he pitied him, but rather because he plainly knew not what to do ^g. Then, approaching nearer: "What," he said, "O Pantoleon, is the art of thy tricks, which extinguished thy torches, and took strength and vigor from the satellites?" But he: "My trick," he said, "is Christ, who also is present to me working these things." "If then," he said, "I inflict greater torments on thee, what wilt thou do?" "What else," said the Martyr, "than that I too shall obtain greater rewards?" Wickedness heard, and wished to try: for it knew neither to believe good things, nor to abstain from evil.

[19] He ordered, therefore, an iron cauldron to be brought, in which was lead, and it to be kindled with fire beneath, and the Athlete to be cast into it. But after what had been ordered was diligently done, when the Martyr was being led to the punishment, again a prayer, as it were prepared for extinguishing, thence freed by Christ appearing, he is immersed in the melted lead; and a consolation which could sufficiently refresh him,

he takes on his lips, and sang it in that terrible cauldron, saying: "Hear, O God, my voice, when I pray to thee: from the fear of the enemy deliver my soul: protect me from the assembly of the malignant, from the multitude of those who work iniquity." Thus he prayed, and again in the form of the holy old man Hermolaus Christ was seen by him, and entered the cauldron together with him, and the fire was forthwith extinguished, and the lead was changed into its natural coldness. And again a prayer and a psalm was opportunely sung by him: "I cried to God, and the Lord heard me. Evening and morning and at noon I will tell and declare, and he will hear my supplication."

[20] and, freed in like manner, is cast into the sea in vain. And of those indeed who were present, admiration seized all the rest: but the emperor alone stuck strongly in his error: who considered within himself with what punishment he might punish the Martyr of Christ, and either lead him from piety, or ill deprive him of life. But when those who were present advised that the Saint should be cast into the deep of the sea (for even after his death they envied the Christians his relics), the emperor, hearing, was persuaded; and orders a very heavy stone to be tied to his neck, and thus to be cast into the sea. But it was the care of the ministers to carry out quickly what had been ordered them; but of God, to lend a helping hand to him who suffered for His sake. Which indeed it was also permitted to see done. For they indeed, when they had come to the sea, and had tied the stone to his neck, cast him into the deep: but Christ, when He had again appeared in the former form of Hermolaus, brought it about that the stone indeed floated on the sea, not otherwise than a leaf of a tree: but him, not otherwise than formerly the great Peter, leading by the hand, He made walk with his feet upon the waves. For He Himself was the one who redeemed and saved, whose ways are in the sea, and whose paths and footsteps in many waters, as the divine David says, are not known. That admirable Pantoleon, therefore, walked, and was already on the shore, weaving a praise to Him who had saved, worthy of his pious soul, and of the admirable deeds. Whom when the emperor had thus seen safe beyond hope: "What is this," he said, "Pantoleon; hast thou overcome the sea too by thy tricks?" But he: "Even the sea," he said, "did what was commanded by the Lord. For to Him the sea and the land yield, and whatever things are, yield to Him more than to thee the emperor, who now for a time serve."

ANNOTATIONS.

CHAPTER III.

The other victories of our Martyr, adorned first with the martyrdom of SS. Hermolaus and his Companions, then also with his own.

To this the tyrant, wishing rather to persuade to evil than to be persuaded to good and salutarily, orders every kind of beasts to be brought out against the excellent Man. He is exposed to the beasts, Which when they had been brought, and he had set them near him, partly indeed striking fear into him, partly feigning that he was moved by mercy, and turning himself in every direction to persuade: "These," he said, "O Pantoleon (showing him the beasts), have been brought on account of thee and thy destruction. If, therefore, thou art moved by any mercy for thyself (for I take care of thy form and age), be willing to be persuaded, and to seem prudent and wise, as one who canst prefer life to death, joy to pains, glory and delights to ignominy." To whom the Saint: "If, before I had experienced how great a defense God takes up for me, I could not be persuaded by thy words; now, since I have obtained so great help, shall I be persuaded? Why dost thou seek to terrify me by the cruelty of the beasts, O emperor? For He who made the hands of thy satellites, prepared for torturing, useless and weak, and rendered the fire cold, and transmuted the lead into water, and bound the very sea with fetters, will be able altogether to tame the beasts too, and to make them for us gentler than sheep."

[22] When, therefore, the Martyr of Christ, not obeying, was about to fight with the beasts, which fawn upon the Martyr; which is the occasion of the conversion of many: as one who had reckoned it lighter to be delivered to the beasts than to adore the demons; the whole city indeed flowed together to see what was being done; namely so beautiful a Youth, excellent both in body and in mind, who had done no evil, about to suffer evil, and to be delivered to the wild beasts. But the Just one was led away, trusting like a lion, as it is sung, and gazing at nothing soft and remiss, or that might move to mercy. For how was he to do this, when again Hermolaus came into his sight, and ordered him to be of good cheer? Then, when the beasts had now closed with the Athlete, the tyrant so commanding, those who were present indeed thought that the Saint would at once be torn to pieces, as if there were not one to save and rescue: but of the pious Man He had not so determined, who says: "Thou hast set the Most High thy refuge; evils shall not come to thee, and the scourge shall not approach thy tabernacle." And: "Thou shalt walk upon the asp and the basilisk, and shalt trample the lion and the dragon." And so neither did He deceive the hope of him who had believed. For so far were the beasts from doing the Saint harm, that they almost seemed not even beasts; beasts, I said, nay not even, to say it once, animals lacking reason, and deprived of the power of understanding; but as if prudent, and of the number of those which are endowed with reason, they approached the Martyr with great reverence, sweetly fawning, and with kindly and healing tongue touching his feet: and otherwise contended among themselves which should first approach him, and not withdraw before the Martyr had laid his hand upon it and blessed it.

[23] therefore the tyrant orders them to be killed and buried. It was permitted, therefore, to see a thing most new, and by far most pleasant, men indeed changed into the savagery of beasts; but again beasts seen, as if endowed with reason, and believed to have human gentleness ^a. Those certainly who were present, admiring what had been done, cried out: "Great is the God of the Christians, who indeed is the only and true one: and let the just man be dismissed ^b." What then? He who was truly savage and most cruel, the emperor, brings his anger upon the beasts, and at once takes them all out of the way, as if envying them their prudence, and not able to bear their reproof. But they, when they had thus been killed, remained many days uneaten by any of the carnivores, God honoring the Athlete in this too, and exhorting others to piety: so that when the foolish emperor had learned this, he ordered them to be buried, thus confirming the faith of many. Thus, therefore, Maximian, doubting: "What shall I do," he said, "to Pantoleon? For already, as you see, he has led many away from the gods." But they: "Let a wheel be made," they say; "and let it be carried to a high place. Then, when Pantoleon has been tied to it, let him be sent down the slope: for it will altogether happen that, as he is carried downward, he will be crushed part by part and limb by limb, and thus the evil one perish evilly." And these things indeed those suggested who were ready to find evil, and who did nothing so well as they harmed. But God, who always protects those who love Him, does not even now desert Pantoleon; but again defends him, like a dear son.

[24] They wish in vain to destroy the Martyr with a wheel, but not with impunity. And meanwhile indeed he remained in prison, until the wheel was constructed. But when it was now constructed, again a great multitude running together, inasmuch as the emperor himself was present as spectator, the Martyr is tied to the wheel, and himself let down from above along the slope. And a psalm ^c indeed moved his lips, and prayers which called the Powerful One to help; but He forthwith was present, confirming him: and to show His presence, the bonds were broken, the Martyr was loosened, and was whole from all evil. But the wheel, driven not so much against him as for him, killed many unbelievers ^d: and thus the avenging punishment happens in a way which cannot be told: and God is known executing judgments, and the God of vengeances acts freely. On account of this fear invaded the city, admiration the emperor. And since he was still gross with vice, nor could receive the light of truth, he asked the Saint: "What do these things mean? And how long wilt thou lead some of our people away from the gods, and give others to death, so that we suffer the loss of these, and have those too adverse to us?" Then he also asked what teacher he had had, and from whom he had learned Christianity.

[25] But the Martyr of Christ confidently confesses Hermolaus; SS. Hermolaus and his Companions are set before the tyrant, as one who could not conceal him, who was worthy not of a corner and oblivion, but of light. But when he had ordered that he be brought into his sight, the Martyr by no means delayed; as one who had learned by experience what tongue and genius he had, which could more easily capture than be captured. Going, therefore, as ordered, together with three soldiers to whom his custody had been entrusted, he came to the house in which the divine Hermolaus was hidden. Whom when he had beheld: "Why hast thou come here,

Son, and for what cause?" he asked. And he: "The emperor calls thee," he said, "my lord old man." And he said that he knew this; since the time was at hand of suffering and dying for Christ, as He Himself had signified to him that night. After, then, they stood before the emperor, he asked who he was, and what was his name. And he both told his name, and did not conceal that he was a Christian. Then, when the emperor asked whether he also had other Christians with him: he, since he was truthful, said, Hermippus and Hermocrates, whom he had. When, therefore, he had ordered them too to be set before him with Hermolaus; when they were present: "Are you," he said, "those who led Pantoleon away from the worship of the gods?" But they: "Those," they said, "who are worthy of Him, Christ knows how to call to the light." But the emperor: "Trifles being dismissed," he said, "if you wish to be absolved from this former fault, and to be numbered among those who are loved by us, and obtain the first honors from us, bring it about that he be persuaded to sacrifice to the gods." But they: "How," they said, "should we do this, who first have persuaded ourselves not to forsake Christ, nor to offer sacrifice to deaf images?" These things they said, and raised the eyes of sense and mind to the heavens. But as they thus prayed the Savior appears; and at once the whole place is agitated and moved.

[26] But the emperor, of a mind indeed truly moved, said that the gods, being indignant, had moved the earth. To whom the Martyrs, very prudently and bravely: "What if it should happen," they said, "that thy gods too fall together?" The speech was not yet finished, and a certain one of the emperor's ministers approached him, a messenger of calamity, saying: "The gods, O emperor, have fallen and are broken." Thus those terrible ones, and shakers of the earth, lay cast down upon the earth by a sad fall, ridiculous to those who were not equally blind and plainly stones. And any other, who had even a little prudence, and to whom his form alone did not stand in the way, so that he should not openly be believed to be a beast, would have acknowledged the true God, and one who could do these things: but not he; who, how much better he had come out, and how great profit he had gained from piety, at once from the things themselves discloses: for at once those three Saints ^e, after he had afflicted them with many punishments, he condemns to death. But the great Pantoleon meanwhile he sends to prison. And of the Martyrs thus killed the care was to the Christians to take up their bodies, and, as was fitting, to bury them.

[27] But when the emperor had called Pantoleon from prison: which sentence, after the tyrant's arts were eluded, "Dost thou think," he said, "that thou canst escape my hands alive, if thou first come and sacrifice to the gods? And that when thy teacher Hermolaus, and Hermippus and Hermocrates, now changed, have learned what is good, and have offered sacrifice to the gods, who also have received from us the reward of obedience, to be first in the palace? If therefore thou sacrifice, imitating their beautiful change, then thou wilt see, Pantoleon, how I, who am grave in punishing those who do not obey, am liberal and munificent in doing good to those who obey." But this he said malignantly and maliciously (as regards, I say, the Saints) to persuade him ^f. For how could they sacrifice, whom he had already before killed? But that he might ensnare him who was enlightened by God. Wherefore neither could it be hidden: but: "Let me too see them," he said, "O Emperor, standing before thy face." But Maximian, not yet ceasing to act by fraud (for he too had placed his hope in a lie, to speak with the great Isaiah, and determined to cover himself with a lie): "They are not here," he said, "but for some necessary cause have been sent by us to another city." But the Martyr: "Even unwillingly," he said, "thou hast spoken the truth, though thou love a lie: for they are now in the heavens, dwelling in the city of God."

[28] [is brought also against St. Pantaleon; but the execution is wonderfully suspended,] But when he had left no stone unmoved, the adorer of stones: and saw that he relaxed nothing of his constancy, and neither yielded to flatteries, nor to the persuasions of words, nor to the promises of gifts, nor to the threats of punishments, nor by any other of those things which can either soothe or terrify, was led away from piety, when he had still beaten him vehemently with scourges (not that he hoped to be able to effect anything, but to satisfy his mind's lust), he condemns him to undergo death by the sword: and then after his death that his beautiful body be committed to the fire: he, I say, condemns, who was truly worthy of eternal fire. And so the Athlete was led to the place of consummation, committed to the hands of the lictors. To which when he had come, and his mind was full of joy (for he knew from what afflictions what pleasures were about to receive him), he sang this of David: "Often have they fought against me from my youth: and yet they could not prevail against me. Upon my back the sinners have built, they have prolonged their iniquity: the Lord justly will cut the necks of the sinners." Then here too God does a miracle not less than the former miracles. For they tie him to an olive plant, and a certain one strikes his neck with a sword. But at once the edge of the iron was turned, like wax: and the neck remained as it was from the beginning, having no sign at all of the cut.

[29] until he wills, being now not Pantaleon, but Panteleemon; For this cause trembling invaded the slayers, and, approaching, they become suppliants to him whom before they thought not even worthy to live among them: whose beautiful feet too they grasped, what did they not say, what did they not do, asking pardon for their boldness, and openly confessing faith in Christ? But he not only forgives, as regards himself, but also asks for them from Christ a perfect remission. Wherefore he heard also a voice from the heavens confirming that the things he had asked would be accomplished: and that he should no longer be called Pantoleon, but Panteleemon. "But the thing," said that voice, "will suit the name: for very many through thee shall obtain mercy." When he had heard this voice, and was made more certain of the things of which he had been held worthy; turning, he ordered the lictors to do what had been commanded them. But they refused, and judged that this was by no means to be endured. But when the Martyr insisted that they should do what had been commanded them by the tyrant, openly doubting, and not knowing what to do, they divide themselves between both, namely piety, and the command of the holy Man. And when they had first kissed all his limbs, and had sufficiently testified how they revered and venerated him, they then cut off his blessed head with the sword ^g on the twenty-seventh of July. Which indeed, as I judge, they could not have done, if he had not consented, as one who was unwilling to fall from the great dignity of martyrdom.

[30] And again there are miracles following miracles, when blood flows instead of milk; and the olive bears fruit. He who was glorified glorifying him who for His sake chose to suffer these things. For milk flowed forthwith instead of blood, and the olive plant to which he had been tied was seen wholly laden with fruit. Which indeed, when it had come to the tyrant's notice, he orders the plant to be cut down, and the body of the Martyr to be given to the fire, as he had also before commanded ^h. And the soldiers indeed, who had believed, returned no more to the emperor, condemning him of great cruelty, and imitating what the Magi did to Herod: but God and His Martyr they perpetually glorified. Nay even when certain of the faithful had assembled in that very place outside the city, in which the Martyr underwent his consummation, they deposit that sacred body most reverently in the suburban estate of a certain scholastic (but his name was Adamantius): To the glory of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, to whom is one divinity and kingdom: to whom belongs honor and adoration forever and ever, Amen.

ANNOTATIONS.

APPENDIX

Concerning the conversion and martyrdom of the soldiers who inflicted the extreme punishment on St. Pantaleon.

From the Utrecht manuscript of St. Salvator and two other parchment codices of ours.

Pantaleon, martyr, at Nicomedia (St.)

BHL Number: 6430

The soldiers converted by the miracles of St. Pantaleon, But those soldiers, for whom the most blessed Martyr prayed, the emperor ordered to be presented to him; to whom he also said: "What madness suffering, were you unwilling to fulfill the commands of your king? Know you not that your life is in my power?" And soon they answered and said: "To put to death, through the malice of thy father the devil, thou hast power; as also he, always the adversary and murderer of the human race, did from the beginning: but of giving life thou hast no power, but the Lord Christ; who for the sake of His creature put on flesh of the holy Virgin, that He might free us from carnal vices, and from the most vain worship of idols, in which thou seemest blinded, as until now we too. But the Creator Himself and the good Shepherd called us through His servant Pantaleon, who also drove the sword upon his neck, and, like wax, folded it double: and we heard the heavenly voice inviting him to the kingdom of brightness, and we saw the little plant, how in a moment it showed forth so great fruits, and from his holy and venerable body milk flowed instead of blood.

[32] At such signs, then, and prodigies, who would not believe? they are beheaded. So dost thou wish us to be like thee too; who hast seen so much done by the servants of God, and, blinded and made mad, hast not understood thy Creator? One thing thou shouldst know, that thou wilt not be excusable in the day of the great judgment of God, and guilty and confounded thou wilt receive with thy father the devil the eternal sentence, and wilt obtain no mercy; because, knowing all the truth, thou hast stood forth an adversary of God, and the sword of thy command has killed so great multitudes of Christians. O wretched and fallen one! To others thou hast acquired eternal life and unfading crowns; but to thyself eternal death and unceasing torments. Most impious one, what answer wilt thou give to thy Creator, who granted thee this temporal kingdom? Because thou hast heard and seen the blind enlightened and the paralytic recover continual health." And when the king had heard this, filled with exceeding fury, he ordered them to be consumed with the sword. Which was also fulfilled; and they all together acquired the crowns of martyrdom from the just God, to whom be honor and glory forever and ever. Amen.

* for "but" (sed)

THE MIRACLES OF ST. PANTALEON THE MARTYR,

by an anonymous monk of St. Pantaleon, from an ancient manuscript of the same monastery.

Pantaleon, martyr, at Nicomedia (St.)

BHL Number: 6445

FROM THE ANCIENT MANUSCRIPT.

CHAPTER I.

His prodigious blood at Constantinople, apparitions and various benefits.

Almighty God, whose nature is goodness, whose essence is sweetness, pitying the condition of human misery before the law, The blood of St. Pantaleon is compared to the blood of Abel, under the law, under grace, by miracles, by preachings, calling whatever mortal thing He created to immortality, ceased not to cry, saying: "Come, children, see me: I will teach you the fear of the Lord." The proclamations of this voice Abel, first of all the protomartyr, dedicated with his blood; when, uncovered, he cried to the Lord. Witnesses too of this proclamation under the law were the Prophets, with whom God spoke, and showed them His secrets: of whom some were cut asunder, some stoned, some consummated by various deaths. But what shall we say of the time of grace; where we find so many witnesses of Christ, that the day would fail us sooner than we could relate their praises or the glorious combats of their death? Among whom the most glorious martyr Pantaleon, glorifying Christ by the blessed shedding of his blood, deserved so to be exalted by God, that with the blood of the just Abel his blood, by the merit of a visible sign, seems to cry: "Earth, earth; thou hast not covered his blood, nor has his cry found a place to lie hidden in thee."

[2] celebrated at Constantinople in an ampulla by an anniversary prodigy, For what has been done in the city of Constantinople through the merit of the blood of this our oft-to-be-remembered Patron, is today commemorated by the inhabitants of the aforesaid city, and transmitted to future posterity in generations of generations. For in the same city the blood of this glorious Martyr of Christ is held in great, as is fitting, veneration in a transparent ampulla, of two colors, that is, white and red, and, to say it more manifestly, partly white milk, partly red blood ^a. These two wonderfully keep the yearly alternations of their position commanded by the Lord; namely in such a way that, if in the preceding year the red appeared above, at the beginning of the following year it descends, and the white milk appears above, to descend nonetheless when the year returns; that above may shine the precious purple of the glorious blood. Almost never does this alternation cease, with great praise and glory of our Lord Jesus Christ proclaiming His most blessed Martyr; to whose merits neither roses nor lilies are lacking, whose virgin whiteness, whose bloody redness of martyrdom is ever profitable for the praises of almighty God to be renewed.

[3] which, once interrupted, portended a bloody battle. Only once in our memory, in the reign of the emperor Michael ^b, who lately died, is this alternation of descent said to have ceased; so that in its turn the blood did not descend, but remained above the whole following year, as it had been in the preceding year: but that same whole year was bloody with the blood of battles, the Christians of the same empire fighting against the neighboring pagans, whom we Latins commonly call … ncenates ^c; but by an ancient name most suspect they were wont to be called Massagetae. So great, in short, was the slaughter, that of them, Christ helping His own, almost none who had come into the combat survived; and an incredible multitude was consumed. Then it was observed that of this matter, of so great and so admirable a battle, this was the sign, that the redness of the precious blood remained above, and in its turn did not descend. And who does not know that that shedding of so great blood and the slaughter of the enemies of Christ pertained to that vengeance which the prophetic spirit in the psalm demands, saying: "Avenge the blood of thy servants, which has been shed"? Who then would not marvel at the magnificence of almighty God, who calls the things that are not, as the things that are? Let us praise, therefore, His magnificence, who has granted us the merits of so great a Patron; that, recalling his feasts, by his intercession we may so pass through temporal goods as not to lose the eternal.

[4] King Harold torn by a bear, Almighty God, the worker of signs and miracles, more rarely indeed in our times works signs and virtues through His Saints; because, namely, we, cold, caring less for heavenly things, have greater consolation from earthly things than our fathers or the Apostles and holy Martyrs. Since even before us it was truly said hence, that the Church grew by persecutions, was crowned by martyrdoms: but after it came to Christian princes, it was made greater indeed in power and riches, but less in virtues. Yet there are certain things done in our age through this most blessed Martyr mercifully, according to his name, which is Panteleymon, handed down to our knowledge by no doubtful authors; which, to the praise of the Lord, let it not weary us to commit to lively memory in the present discourse. Harold, king of the nation of the Russians ^d, who, while we write these things, is still surviving, being caught by a bear leaping upon him, his belly torn, and his vitals poured out even to the ground, lay half-dead in such a way that no hope of living remained. For while he was a little within the coverts of the woods, whither for I know not what cause he had withdrawn from his companions, and thus, the bear, as has been said, leaping upon him, when he had neither arms present then, nor any one at hand for help, he was caught by the beast's ferocity and torn apart. At his cry someone quickly ran up, and the beast indeed was slain, but the king was succored too late. Carried, therefore, in the hands of those wailing, he is placed on a little bed, all expecting nothing else but that he should breathe out his last breath. Then all being excluded for the sake of quiet, his mother alone sat by the little bed, with a torn mind; because, namely, she could not with a whole mind see such tearings of her son.

[5] Meanwhile, when for some days, his safety despaired of, his end was awaited; is suddenly healed by St. Pantaleon appearing. when that wounded man neither saw nor heard what was done about him, almost all the senses of his body being buried; behold, there stood by him a comely youth, sweet to behold, and serene of countenance, who also professed himself a physician. He gave also his name; that he was called Pantaleon; that his home too was at Cologne, he makes known familiarly enough. Then he subjoins the cause why he had come, saying: "For the sake of thy health I have now come. Thou shalt be healed, and today health is near to thy body; pain and death, I being the physician, will be far off." Moreover the mother, who, sitting by, exhibited as it were the sad watches of death, had long begun to ask this of her son the king, that with his peace and love it might be permitted her to set out for Jerusalem. When, therefore, he who lay almost dead had received such a vision and colloquy, suddenly his eyes were opened; memory returned; the motion of his tongue and voice came to his throat; and, recognizing his mother, he related the things seen; he narrated what had been said to him. But his mother, Gida by name, had long since recognized both the name and the merit of Pantaleon, and had liberally deserved to be a sister of that holy congregation which serves Christ in his honor at Cologne. When, therefore, she had heard these things, her spirit revived, and, the son speaking, the mother was roused, and bursting into voice and tears for joy: "That Pantaleon," she said, "whom thou hast seen, O son, is my Lord; and, behold, health is restored to thee by the Lord with such a Patron: therefore, that I to Jerusalem, thou not opposing,

may set out, is at hand." What more? On the same day a certain youth is present, professing the art of medicine, in all things like him whom the king had seen in the vision; and, care being applied, life returned to the dead, or despaired-of, man; and the faithful mother joyfully fulfilled the vow of her pilgrimage.

[6] Likewise another mark of heavenly virtue that same Physician has in our age wrought in this manner. A certain rich and noble matron of the English nation, A woman cruelly mutilated by her husband, her former husband being dead, had unhappily entered a second marriage: for he who married her, his love being at once wickedly turned into hatred, as one cruel with a barbaric tyranny, all her wealth being taken away and kept for himself, rejected from his society the body he had ill desired. But she had learned to work laudably; and by the craft of her hands consoled her needy life, needing almost nothing, though despoiled of all which she had possessed. She lived, therefore, and somehow sustained her unhappiness. But great hatred, especially degenerated from inordinate love, what does it not do? That barbarian envied her, now not a husband, but a devil, and, not bearing that the woman's nimble fingers should remain capable of working, attacked them with iron, cut the veins of her arms, dissolved and cut through the sinews. Thus the woman, barbarously torn, could now have nothing left but beggary: as one who was miserably ashamed to return to her kinsfolk, or to be seen by them.

[7] a vow being made, she is healed; it being violated, she is punished. When she had thus wasted away; behold, there is present in a dream the worker of divine mercy, a beautiful youth, professing himself a physician, by name Pantaleon, by the grace of Christ a martyr. "If, therefore," he said, "thou desirest to recover health, vow what thou wilt; and the reward of thy vow, health, is at hand." Again and again forewarned in this manner, she vowed perpetual abstinence from the eating of flesh. Soon awaking, she felt that the former strength had returned to her sinews and fingers, and, obtaining the accustomed faculty for every work, as she willed, she determined to keep what she had vowed. Thus consoled, not long after she returned to her kindred. After some time there was a famous banquet of her kinsfolk, and she did not hesitate to be present. But when they dined, the abundance of foods on which it was lawful for them to feed after the vow was lacking. She was asked, as it were for charity's sake, to eat of the flesh set before them; and she consented. Why should I delay with many words? The following night the same Youth as above, now sterner, standing by: "Behold," he said, "thou art made guilty of transgression. Concerning thee the Lord showed His power; but thou, by feminine levity, didst not fear to make thy vow void. And so both health flees from thee, and, behold, as thou wast, powerless and ineffective thou shalt remain." He said, and left her, awaking, in the debility which she had before contracted. By this deed the glorious Martyr confirmed by a venerable example that which the psalmist says: "Vow ye, and pay to the Lord our God, all ye who round about Him bring gifts."

[8] A few miracles of many, done after the relics were brought to Cologne; After, through the most reverend and truly God-worthy chief prelate, holy Bruno, brother of the emperor Otho, surnamed the Red ^e, the pledges of the most holy martyr Pantaleon had been translated to us with great honor, in manifold ways, far and wide, and by many kinds of the privileges of signs, the Lord deigned to declare to the world His beloved Witness, not, as I think, unmindful of that fatherly promise, by which He deigned to promise him, saying: "Thou shalt no longer be called Pantaleon; but Panteleymon, which is interpreted pitying all; because, namely, thou shalt free very many from the perils of the present life and from eternal damnation: finally, thou shalt be the port of the shipwrecked, the receiver of the troubled, the physician of the sick, the driver-away of demons" ^f. That these privileges of signs, then, most dear ones, the Lord has frequently fulfilled, and more often multiplied through the merits of the most blessed Martyr, as is very often hinted to us by our own, is clear, who also, being present, deserved to see these things: of which a few, according to our measure, as it were plucking certain little flowers, to the praise of the Martyr, and to the profit of present and future, we have deemed most worthy to commit to memory.

[9] A certain lame man, then, destitute of all the limbs of his body, among which is that of a certain lame man and deprived of all strength, so that he could scarcely creep from the ground with his hands, was brought to the patronage of the Martyr by the support of his kinsfolk: where, received charitably enough by the brother to whom the care of receiving the poor had been entrusted, he was placed in a certain little dwelling in which the lights for the divine Offices were made, which was situated on the left side of the same church, in which place now a most beautiful oratory stands, founded with wondrous work; where also for some space of time he is humanely treated. This man, therefore, although he was in all the limbs of his body sluggish and destitute, yet by the ardor of holy devotion continually gave himself to fasts, vigils, and supplications, and very often anticipated the nocturnal vigils; and showed himself admirable and praiseworthy to all: and for him, on account of the fervor of his devotion, that he might the more expeditiously, without any fear, apply himself to prayer, the brethren were wont at once to open the doors of the temple.

[10] And when on a certain night he had come as usual, and was ringing at the door of the choir ^g, a wonderful and pleasant healing; and the brethren, moved by that assiduity, delayed very long to open to him, and he, as he had been wont, spent the night there before the choir-door of the temple, applying himself to prayers, behold, a certain youth stood by him, adorned with a garment, comely of face, most like the blessed martyr Pantaleon, whose form perhaps he had before recognized in pictures: who took away from him his supports, which he was wont to carry in his hands, and cast them far from himself; and vanished from his eyes. Then he, crying out with a dire voice (for he had been struck with excessive fear), terrified all the brethren; and, they running to him one by one, he narrated to them all things which had befallen him; complaining that his supports had been snatched from him. And when the brethren, moved by mercy, had sought his supports, behold, he too began to run with them, as if to be at hand to the brethren for the seeking. But afterward, summoned to the brethren, and more diligently questioned about the author of the perpetrated sign: "Not by any Saint whatever," he said, "but by the merits of the blessed martyr Pantaleon, whose patronage I sedulously implored, I have been granted health." Then the brethren, the truth of the matter being recognized, extolled the Lord with worthy praises. And he, for the remembrance of so signal a sign, composed his own form in the pavement of the choir of the same Martyr with small stones by his own hand, and his supports, afterward found, he hung on a certain line before his altar, and remained in the service of the blessed Martyr and of the brethren through the courses of many times, praising God.

ANNOTATIONS.

CHAPTER II.

Other apparitions and benefits of the same, and likewise the punishments of those neglecting his cult.

Likewise the deliverance of a demoniac. Another signal miracle too was celebrated among us; and we deem it worthwhile to weave this also into these pages, which is recited by the relation and memory of many: because, although in the relation of a terrible thing there is fear, in the edification there comes fruit. A certain petty king ^a, then, sprung from the province of the Saxons, relying on riches, and exalted by the affluence of all worldly things, seized by the most savage enemy, was atrociously and hostilely tormented through the courses of many times. And when the fame of the virtues of blessed Pantaleon flew everywhere, and those of the assembly of nobles had learned it, whom the glory of things and the various comeliness of appearances made lofty, who were both his contemporaries and kinsmen, believing in their heart unto justice, namely that He who imparted to some by the gift of His bounty, would not, being entreated, refuse to this man too; counsel being deliberated with the parents, bound with chains and laden with iron they carried him to the memorial of our Patron, and thus placed him before his altar. And when, at the request of the kinsfolk, the relics of the Martyr were brought, behold, the demon himself, not knowing how to suffer delay, not prevailing to endure that the chest of the Martyr should come to him, began instantly to vex the man; and, suspending him a little from the ground upward, together with the vehicle in which he had been bound, gave him headlong down the steps by which he ascended to the altar; and there the demon, going out through the lower part of the body, left the man indeed whole, but, as truly befitted him, most foully. And when the man had been washed and refreshed, he hung the chains with his own hands before the altar of the Martyr, and gave himself over to his dominion; and, returning to his fatherland, he transmitted through his most faithful servants a pall very useful to the Martyr, and a yearly tribute, as long as he survived, namely for a token of his health.

[12] We have deemed it worthy also to commit to memory what in the parts of Saxony, The monks of Helmwardhusen wishing to neglect the Saint's feast, in a certain monastery of Helmwardeshusen ^b, a brother of the same church relating it, we have heard. For this church, joined from antiquity by the familiarity of fraternity to the ancestors of our church, to strengthen the stability of the same fraternity, decreed to keep the memory of our most holy patron Panteleymon, and, our church handing it over, undertook the history of his deeds to be sung with the chant of melody. But because the posterity of the lesser is often wont to abolish the statutes of the greater, to perpetuate the decree of so salutary a statute, it was confirmed by the consent of the whole chapter, that after the labor of the divine service of so solemn a day, to the brethren coming to refection, beyond the usual, some solace of charity should be bestowed. But to the religious [men],

who had established these things having been taken from their midst, and the charity of their elders growing cold, through the negligence of the stewards the appointed solace of charity was withdrawn from those same brethren.

[13] The brethren, passing over this in silence, and being now in the fourth year unwilling to dissemble any longer, are terrified from heaven. when on the vigil of blessed Pantaleon they had heard that they were to receive no solace in memory of so great a feast, resolved unanimously that they would by no means celebrate the solemnities of our so oft-remembered Patron. And so, when the time of evening came, they celebrated Vespers in the ferial manner with the customary ringing of the bells. And when they were chanting the canticle of the Gospel, namely "My soul doth magnify the Lord," suddenly, though the air was clear, such lightnings and thunders flashed forth that none of the brethren dared to remain in his seat. While they were placed in this fear, by a sudden stroke of thunder the whole church was shaken; and moreover a certain part of the altar appeared split. For when everything seemed to be shaken by the force of the storms, amid these agitations of distress the precentor of that church, calling to mind that they were being battered by such a whirlwind on account of the injury done to God's Saint, lifting up his voice on high, began to chant the antiphon "The festive solemnity of blessed Pantaleon is at hand"; and all applauding him, they solemnly carried through the evening Office with fitting melody out of devotion to this our holy Patron. And without delay all the tumult of the storms grew quiet. And thus it came about that they thereafter attended upon him with greater veneration, whose merit before the eternal King they had judged to be so exalted.

[14] Nor do I think it should be passed over what the divine power was pleased to work through the merits of this holy Martyr in the city of Strasbourg ^c. A dying soldier, at the Saint's persuasion, There was, then, in the aforesaid city a certain soldier continually devoted to the blessed Martyr in almsgivings, in prayers, and in the other acts of good works, according to the measure of his ability: this man, having gone out of the city one day, was surrounded near the walls of the city by his enemies and struck with a mortal wound; and falling to the earth, as he lay failing and now all but lifeless, he sees blessed Pantaleon, to whom he had ever shown devout service, sitting beside his head with venerable countenance, in a garment radiant with silk and gold, and with the gentle touch of his hands handling his wounds, and healing with his own hands the head, in which he had received the mortal wound, which seemed as though divided by a cut through the middle: to whom, among other things, he said: Set in order the state of your affairs, and especially those things which pertain to the provision for a long journey; lest, suddenly taken away, you stand unprovided before the presence of Him to whom you are to render an account of your works. When he asked who it might be that, bestowing such benefits, was speaking to him, he heard this from him: I am, said he, Pantaleon, who by my blood glorified Christ upon the earth; and, because I have looked with fitting gratitude upon the homage of service which, ever devout, you were rendering to me, now His grace comes to console you.

[15] [furnished with the Viaticum he departs this life; and is set before the judgment,] His companions, therefore, who having slipped away in flight had carried the sad tidings to his friends in the city, going out with the priests and a multitude of the people, found him failing and almost lifeless. There he was straightway fortified by the priest's anointing, and by the reception of the life-giving Body and Blood of the Lord, a pure confession having first been made. When these things had thus been done, and a multitude sitting round about and awaiting his end, lifting up his eyes and looking upon the people, he said: Why do you not honor with fitting veneration blessed Pantaleon, whom you behold present? And when they looked about and hesitated: By no means, they say, have we perceived the Saint whom you say to be here. And he in amazement said: Do you not see with how great brightness of countenance and with how great comeliness of raiment adorned he sits beside my head, and, mercifully cherishing my grievously wounded body, gives me consolation, that I ought not to fear? And saying this, while all marveled, his eyes reverently lowered, leaving behind the miseries of the world, he put off the man. And he, lifted up from the place with great lamentation by his friends and kinsmen, was borne in the hands of the bearers into the city, and there was committed to the earth with fitting honor, as befitted such a man.

[16] [where, by the same interceding, he obtains the faculty of appearing to his friends,] After his death, therefore, he came, led to the tribunal of the Judge together with his most holy Protector. And that merciful one, taking pity on all *, prostrate before the knees of the terrible Judge, asked that the salvation of that man be granted to him. And when it was answered by the Presiding One that this could by no means be done, with greater insistence the blessed Martyr demanded that this man be given to him. But when the Judge persisted in the sentence, that most holy Patron, approaching nearer, said: Remember, Lord, my wounds, and the shedding of my blood for the glory of Your name, and grant this man to me, that in memory of my name Your name may be glorified among the nations. To whom the Lord said with a gracious voice: I will do what you have asked: let the sentence of judgment be deferred for the space of thirty days; in which space of time let him have the faculty of appearing to his friends, and of asking them that they strive unceasingly to do on his behalf those things which are for eternal salvation.

[17] and of requesting their suffrages. Having received this respite, and returning from the judgment, he frequently appeared to his friends and kinsmen, both in vision and manifestly, by day and by night, in the city, in houses, in the fields and woods, saying how, through the intercession of the most holy martyr Pantaleon, having received a respite, it had been permitted him of himself to stir them up. Wherefore, said he, have mercy, O friends, and from my inheritance and my goods render to all, to whom I am bound, their debts, lest, on account of their complaints, when the days of the granted delay are past, the hand of the Lord touch me with a terrible sentence ^d; and succor me with alms and prayers and the celebrations of Masses, while you are able; because there will be no place for petition, when you shall have passed into the lot of death, whose debt I have paid. Thus for the space of thirty days, appearing to his friends and kinsmen, he earnestly besought that prayers and those things which pertain to salvation be done for him. Nor is there any doubt that, the respite being past, by the suffrage of his merciful Patron and pious Protector he found pardon, to whom it was granted that, by his merits stripped of the bonds of the flesh, he might attain the works of justice, which he had less fully fulfilled while living, through the suffrages of his friends, by appearing to them and conversing with them.

[18] There was a certain man, exceedingly rich according to the middling measure of life, A girl wretchedly tortured by the falling sickness, who had obtained a wife suited to him, from whose union he had received a daughter, to whom the name Gertrude was given in baptism. This girl, at about seven years of age, is handed over, as is the custom, to a certain religious person to be instructed, so that her childish age, given over to discipline, might grow less insolent than is wont. First, therefore, she is instructed in the elements of letters, then she was taught with keen application the tenor of the Davidic song. And while she was engaged for some time in these studies, by the inscrutable judgment of the omnipotent God she was struck with the falling sickness: and first indeed, feeling a vertigo of the head spreading upon her, she was afterward brought wholly into alienation of mind: which her mistress, perceiving, made known the cause to the parents by sad tidings. But they, thinking that this report was not easily to be believed, sent back word that she should without hesitation carry out the work of instruction begun with regard to their daughter. Yet the girl seemed at intervals of time to fare more lightly; but again, as the disease grew strong, she uttered importunate cries and gnashings of teeth, so much so that she threw her mistress into vehement amazement. But when the truth of the matter became known to the parents, they renewed the grief they had before dissembled; and taking the sick girl back from the mistress, they bring her to their own home, to explore the nature of the infirmity. And without delay the girl, in their sight, raged with horrid gesture, and after the manner of a lunatic falls down, ranting and shouting this way and that, presenting a wretched spectacle to the beholders. And the affliction of the disease was strong; so that arrows, sent from heaven, as she herself confessed, were fixed in her, and her legs seemed to be invisibly cut off. For she was made so senseless that, unless a diligent guard were at hand for her, she would have drowned herself in any waters found anywhere: holding also a spindle in her hand one day, she strove to pierce her throat; being about to disable her other limbs with like cruelty, if she were allowed.

[19] Then the parents, wailing, resolved that she must be led to the basilicas and patronages of the Saints, and healed for a while by the help of St. Cornelius, but soon relapsing, that by their merits the omnipotent God might restore their sick daughter to health. And going to the basilica of blessed Cornelius ^e in the village whose name is Inda, they there implored on her behalf the mercy of the Lord and the patronage of St. Cornelius, pouring forth very many tears out of the immensity of their grief and affection. Meanwhile the girl, raising her feeble limbs, felt her sickness lightened through the merits of St. Cornelius, and, the vows performed, returning home with her parents and those who had brought her, she attained entire health. A short time having passed after this, the trouble of her former ill health broke out afresh, and a recurring pestilence subjugated the wretched little girl with such mockeries of sufferings that it surpassed the first infirmity in its bitterness. What then the wretched parents might do, what they might contrive, they knew not. Applying also the aid of physicians, they accomplished nothing against an infirmity of this kind.

[20] But the mother, hearing of the blessed martyr Pantaleon, that Christ helped many through his merits, suffused with tears, sent assiduous prayers to him with groanings, that by the clemency of his kindness he might heal the torments of her daughter. restored to health at last by St. Pantaleon appearing. She vowed moreover that, if she should obtain the desired health, for thirty continuous days she would go to his basilica with bare soles and clad in wool. The woman, having offered such vows beforehand, quite often solicited the Martyr for her daughter; and, behold, as the feast of the same Martyr drew near, when she one night was resting in sleep, the oft-mentioned Patron stood beside her and said: Why, woman, have you solicited me so greatly? Arise, and go forth to my monastery with your daughter: the benefits of God will be present to her through me. The woman, awakened, understood the divine gift; and coming with her daughter to the basilica of the Martyr, rendering thanks to Christ and to His Martyr for her health, she paid the aforesaid vows, and made known so evident a miracle to the brethren.

[21] Among the people of Viviers the Saint's feast is kept with a peculiar cult, In the diocese of Viviers ^f a certain village, Sisicha by name, is situated; whose inhabitants used to venerate the festivity of blessed Pantaleon with fitting celebration, all servile work being set aside. Which festivity, from the devotion of the ancients and from long-continued observance of the yearly veneration, was held among them by custom; so that, as if by legal tradition, it had lasted inviolably down to these times. But, as posterity has often been wont to weaken ancient established observances, in a certain year one of the aforesaid inhabitants, at the instigation of the devil, on the day of the blessed Martyr, making little of the rite of that celebration, while his neighbors and fellow tribesmen were celebrating according to custom on that same day, commanded his servant to yoke the beasts of burden, bound by their thongs, to the wagon; [and] to proceed to gather in the harvest, he himself also not blushing to follow his steps to the same work. But the neighbors, seeing so great presumption of the man, censuring him for his irreligion, reproached him, saying: You ought to have kept the venerable solemnity of St. Pantaleon celebrated together with the rest; and, behold, without shame and without regard for Christ and His Martyr, you hasten as a hateful transgressor to the harvest. A worthy vengeance is owed to your rashness, you who this day do not fear to disparage the Saint of God and to exasperate men by your deed.

[22] While they were reporting these and similar things to them, the transgressor

that man, like an asp stopping its ears, because a certain man violating it is punished by heavenly fire. passed on more swiftly, and having reached the boundaries of his fields, spent the whole day in gathering the harvest. But at the evening time, when he was now resolving to return, as though he had provided for his affairs, behold, in the middle of the road fiery globes of flame, borne with a mighty thunderclap upon the wagon of the returning man, burned it up together with the harvest and the beasts of burden, so that no traces of the burned things remained. And when this event became known, being spread abroad among the aforesaid inhabitants, who had called down divine vengeance upon him as he set out, they advanced in greater devotion toward blessed Pantaleon, and decreed that the celebrity of his festivity was to be held equal to the Lord's Day.

ANNOTATIONS.

IN THE PERSECUTION OF DIOCLETIAN.

PRELIMINARY COMMENTARY.

The Blind Man of St. Pantaleon, Martyr (St.) Hermolaus, priest, Martyr (St.) Hermippus, Martyr (St.) Hermocrates, Martyr (St.)

BY THE AUTHOR P. B.

The martyrdom of St. Pantaleon, as we have just seen, at least four others adorned; whose memory is also celebrated in the sacred Calendars; namely of the Blind Man, to whom he had restored sight; of Hermolaus, by whom he had been imbued with the Christian faith; The Blind Man of St. Pantaleon is honored today by the Greeks; and of his companions Hermippus and Hermocrates; all of whom, although they died before St. Pantaleon, we nevertheless place in this location, because the knowledge of them ought to be sought again from his Acts. And concerning the Blind Man indeed a commemoration is added on this same day in the manuscript Menaion of Chifflet, whose announcement is as follows: κζ᾽ Παντελεήμονος. Ὁ Τυφλὸς αὐτοῦ. That is: The 27th (of July), of Pantaleemon. His Blind Man. The great printed Menaea insert these words into the Office of St. Pantaleon: Τῇ αὐτῇ ἡμέρᾳ ὁ ὑπὸ τοῦ ἁγίου Παντελεήμονος ἰαθεὶς Τυφλὸς ξίφει τελειοῦται. That is: On the same day the Blind Man healed by St. Panteleemon consummates his martyrdom. Then they subjoin these two little verses: Αὐγὴν ἐφευρὼν σαρκικῶν Τυφλὸς λύχνων, καὶ ψυχικὴν ἤθροισεν αὐγὴν ἐκ ξιφους. That is: Having attained the light of the bodily lamps, the Blind Man, being slain, at the same time bore off the light of the spirit from the sword. Nor does anything further occur concerning him. His Acts must be sought from the Acts of St. Pantaleon above, from number 8 up to number 13.

[2] But the cult of Hermolaus and his Companions is much more illustrious, but Hermolaus and his Companions on the day before: nor is it spread abroad in the Greek church only, but everywhere. Among the Greeks they have an Office intermingled with the Office of St. Parasceve on the 26th of July, as may be seen in the printed Menaea; where they are announced with these words: Μηνὶ τῷ αὐτῷ κς᾽, τοῦ ἁγίου ἱερομάρτυρος Ἑρμολάου καὶ τῶν σὺν αὐτῷ. That is: In the same month (July) on the 26th, of the holy and sacred martyr Hermolaus and his Companions. In agreement are the Typicon of St. Sabas, the Horologium of Grottaferrata, the Anthologium of Arcudius, and nearly all the rest which were cited for St. Pantaleon in the preliminary Commentary, §1, number 2. The great Menaea, however, toward the end of the Service, adorn the repeated memory of the same with this eulogy: Ἑρμίππος, Ἑρμόλαος, ἠδ᾽ Ἑρμοκράτῆς Ἑρμῆν σέβοντας ᾔσχυναν παῤῥησίᾳ. That is: Hermippus, Hermolaus, Hermocrates by their constancy shamed the followers of Mercury. It is an allusion to the names of the individual Martyrs, which, since they are derived from the word Ἑρμῆς, which signifies Mercury, nevertheless in reality so ill accorded with them that they even put to shame, by the most free confession of the Christian religion, those very ones who venerated Mercury as idolaters. There is subjoined in the same place a brief narration of the Acts; which, because it agrees not only in matters but almost also in words with that which we have given in Greek from the Synaxarion of the emperor Basil at the end of the first tome of this month, we shall here pass over, content to have translated one for the pair. Thus, therefore, the Synaxarion, presented on page 696, sounds in Latin:

[3] Their eulogy from the Synaxarion of the emperor Basil. In the same month, on the 26th day, the contest of the holy hieromartyr Hermolaus and his Companions. Hermolaus the hieromartyr; and those who were with him, Hermippus and Hermocrates, were priests from the clergy of the Nicomedian church, survivors from the twenty thousand Saints burned up by the impious Maximian in a sacred building, and hiding in a certain little house. But after St. Panteleemon had been apprehended, and given over to interrogation by the wicked Maximian, and had been compelled to tell about Hermolaus, where he was hiding, and had indicated the place (as one who did not know how to lie), Hermolaus, Hermippus, and Hermocrates were themselves also seized: and when, bound, they were set before the tyrant, they intrepidly confessed Christ; and holding the idols in derision, they rent them with reproaches, saying again and again that those were wretched who placed any confidence in them. Wherefore, after various torments, they were beheaded, and the contest being finished, attained an indissoluble kingdom and everlasting life. Thus the Synaxarion of Basil, with which are in agreement, as I have already said, the printed Menaea; nay, also the Menology of Sirletus in Canisius; although this is somewhat more concise than they.

[4] Whether they were priests; whether brothers. Observe further from what has been said: 1. That the same day is not consecrated among the Greeks to the memory of these Martyrs which is assigned to the celebration of St. Pantaleon; as is now done among the Latins. 2. That the tradition of the Eastern church concerning the priesthood not only of Hermolaus, but also of his Companions, is ancient; although Nicephorus Callistus, book 7, chapter 14, does not ascribe that title to the Companions, but adds to Hermolaus alone τῷ ἱερεῖ, that is, priest, not bishop, as the translator wrongly renders it. 3. That neither in this eulogy, nor in the others which I have just cited, nor in their odes in the Menaea, nor in the Metaphrastic Acts of St. Pantaleon, nor in Nicephorus, are these three Martyrs, or at least two of them, called brothers; as we shall presently show they are called by the Latins. 4. Finally, that whereas they are said to have been survivors from the twenty thousand Saints burned in the church, this is not so necessarily to be understood as though they themselves were enclosed in the same church: unless one wishes to attribute to them what the Menaea and the Synaxarion of Basil relate of the bishop Anthimus alone, namely that he, by divine help, after he had baptized all in the same church now besieged, escaped, in order to win more for Christ. But concerning the Nicomedian church burned with the Christians, see Nicephorus Callistus, book 7, chapter 6, or the Annals of Baronius under the year 301; we shall have to treat of this matter on the 25th of December, on which that sacred band of Martyrs is announced in the Roman Martyrology; although the Greeks celebrate them on the 28th of the same month. And as for the fact that in Greek they are said to have been twenty thousand, the number, I believe, will have been a definite one used for an indefinite and great one, according to a sufficiently usual manner. But of this elsewhere.

[5] The Latins celebrate them today. In the Latin Calendars, Hermolaus alone first began to be inscribed, as is plain from the old Roman Martyrology of Rosweyde, which we think was compiled before the middle of the eighth century; where on the 6th of the Kalends of August is read: At Nicomedia, of Harmolaus the priest; nor is anything added. Also throughout the later century Wandelbert alone announces on the same day, with this little verse: The priest and martyr Hermolaus shines forth on the sixth. He alone also appears in Ado, who on the same day has thus: At Nicomedia, the birthday of St. Hermolaus the priest; by whose doctrine blessed Pantaleon was converted to the faith: who, held by Maximian, was punished with a capital sentence for the confession of Christ. With Ado agrees Notker: not so Usuard on that day: for he brings forth three Champions at once into the battle-line of the Saints in this manner: At Nicomedia, of the blessed martyrs Hermolaus the priest, Hernempus and Hermogras, brothers; who after many punishments inflicted upon them by the emperor Maximian, were punished with a capital sentence for the confession of Christ. The Martyrology of Bellinus, and the modern Roman one, express Usuard; except that in this the names of Hermippus and Hermocrates are corrected, which in that one, more corruptly than in Usuard, were read Herenepus and Hermogenes: each differs from Usuard and the other ancients, in that it sets forth on the same day both Hermolaus and Pantaleon; whereas the ancient Martyrologists on the 27th day treat only of the first, on the following day of the second, and that indeed according to the manner of the Greeks in observance, but not in the day; since these assign the 26th day to Hermolaus and his Companions, and the following day to Pantaleon.

[6] Various churches glory in the relics of St. Hermolaus; but before all the church of St. Simeon, The relics of St. Hermolaus at Venice. What sort the Acts are. commonly the Greater, in the city of Venice; inasmuch as it preserves his body, translated from Nicomedia to Venice, enclosed in a marble urn; as assert Nicolaus Doglioni in his Italian booklet on the marvels of Venice, page 346, Ughelli in his Italia Sacra, new edition, tome 5, column 1180, and others, among whom also Peter de Natalibus, book 6, chapter 145, adding that it there is potent with very many miracles. But at what time or in what manner it was brought there, we do not read. No Acts of St. Hermolaus seem to have been formerly written separately: for whatever either the more ancient Latin Martyrologists, or the Greek church, hand down concerning them, these are drawn almost entirely from the Acts of St. Pantaleon, as we have seen: so that it is manifest that those are of more recent date which our Papebroch once transcribed from a manuscript Codex of the holy Camaldolese hermitage. But they are of such a kind that they are by no means worthy to have a place here, as will appear even to one reading cursorily.

It has seemed good, nevertheless, not to pass those over, after I discovered that a compendium of them had once been published in print in the Catalogue of Saints of Peter de Natalibus, bishop of Equilio, and indeed somewhat more correctly. Therefore, gather from the fountain how much that little stream is worth, which I subjoin for this reason alone. But if one desires older and better things, or at least less bad ones, let him go to the Acts of St. Pantaleon above, chapters 1 and 3.

SPURIOUS ACTS

of St. Hermolaus, priest and martyr, from a manuscript codex of the holy Camaldolese hermitage, folio 100.

BHL Number: 3858

FROM THE CAMALDOLESE MANUSCRIPT

[1] St. Hermolaus, after apostolic works Hermolaus, a most Christian man, drew his origin not from the lowest of the Romans ^a; and serving God from his very cradle, and guarding himself from all filthiness, he deserved to be divinely advanced to the dignity of the priesthood. Then he publicly taught many in the faith of Christ with paternal love, all heresies being spurned; among whom especially Savina, sprung from a noble race ^b, he drew by his admonition to the faith of Christ. Pantaleon, an illustrious man, son of the senator Eustorgius, he not only instructed in letters, but also determined to make him a champion ^c of Christ.

[2] having confessed Christ before the emperor Maximian, Hearing this, the emperor Maximian ^d, a most savage persecutor, commanded blessed Hermolaus to come to him. And speaking thus he says: Are you Hermolaus, who with much deception persuade those who worship the most invincible gods? To whom blessed Hermolaus boldly answered: Hear, you, emperor; if you would forsake the vain temples of the gods, and adore the one God of heaven, to whom all things visible and invisible are subjected in heaven and on earth, and to whose dominion all the elements are subject, in like manner I would strengthen you; and would show you in what order you should be turned from darkness to light; and, the diadem laid aside, hasten to the wave of holy baptism; and believe for certain that there is one God, omnipotent, consubstantial, and immutable, and coeternal, Father and Son and Holy Spirit: that the Father is made by none, neither begotten, nor created; the Son begotten by the Father alone; the Holy Spirit proceeding from both ^e. And why say more? Coruscating in this world with various miracles, he wrought unspeakable prodigies, whose number, even if all the limbs of men were turned into tongues, they could not count.

[3] the idols being exploded. At this the most savage emperor, moved with anger, said: If you had regard for the excellence of my empire, you would not tell me such nefarious things, and you would adore my gods. Then blessed Hermolaus said to him: If you had regard for the summit of the Roman empire, what its sublimity is, you would beg that I tell you the things which have been said by me; and the gods whom you have hitherto adored, you would henceforth utterly cast down: for of what sort are your gods? If they are overthrown, they cannot rise of themselves; and better than these are the little crows which flit between the midst of heaven and earth; and those gods of yours are themselves frivolous; although they have eyes, yet they do not see; they have hands, and do not feel; they have feet, and do not walk, nor can they help themselves, nor you. But if you would forsake such superstitions, and adore God the omnipotent Father, who created you out of nothing, you would prolong the nobility of the Roman empire. Indeed, when you shall have thus treated and made light of what I suggest to you, you will lose both, the earthly and the heavenly.

[4] And when St. Hermolaus was relating such things, Maximian, the most savage persecutor, he is tortured, an angel consoling him. handed him over to the torturers, that they might afflict him with various punishments. Then the ministers, obeying the emperor's commands, seized him naked, flaying him, until his flesh flowed down to the earth. And while he was being thus treated, an angel of the Lord appeared to him, strengthening him, and said: Hermolaus, precious martyr of Christ, do not fear the torments which these men maliciously inflict upon you: but for the contest the crown of life is owed to you. To whom St. Hermolaus, speaking, says: I give You thanks, Lord Jesus Christ, who have deigned to visit me even through Your angel. Then, taking him down from the rack, and clothing him with the garments of which he had been stripped, they bore him to the emperor.

[5] And when the emperor beheld him, he said: Hermolaus, He spurns the tyrant's promises: I grieve exceedingly over your nobility and over your appearance worthy of empire. Turn back, and dismiss the vain religion which you have hitherto followed; and above all you shall be the greater in my palace, and you shall be pre-eminent over all those cities which lie under my imperial dominion. To whom St. Hermolaus says: Hear, you, wicked one and prince of all the iniquitous; why do you wish me to be separated from the participation of the Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, and desire to have me in your palace, and to set me over your cities? For your palace and your cities are temporal: but the palace of Christ and His cities are everlasting. But if I shall persevere in the commandments of my Lord, not one of them shall fail me, and for the contest I shall obtain for myself the crown of life. But to you and to all your followers eternal punishment is owed. Hearing these things, the emperor, having him beaten, commanded him to be thrust into prison.

[6] And when he had been thrust back into prison, many Christians came to him by night for the sake of visiting, and thrust back into prison he heals and converts many, and helped him with necessary things. But the mercy of the Lord, which always works in His faithful, did not cease in this man. Indeed, while St. Hermolaus was detained in prison, our Lord Jesus Christ deigned to work various marvels through him: he restored right hands to the maimed, restored light to those whose eyes had been plucked out, and, His name being invoked and the waves being calmed, he brought those shattered by the peril of the sea into the harbor of safety, cast out demons, drove away fevers, restored hearing to the deaf, sight to the blind, gave walking to the paralyzed; and whatever he acquired by way of alms, he distributed the whole among the poor. And there he taught and preached to the people, saying thus: As the eyes of a handmaid are in the hands of her mistress … The handmaid is our flesh; our mistress is our soul. When anyone fasts, prays, sings psalms, keeps vigil, gives alms; then the soul, which is our mistress, commands the handmaid, which is our flesh: but when anyone commits adultery or is defiled by the other diseases, then the handmaid commands the mistress.

[7] While the servant * of God and martyr of Christ Hermolaus was uttering such things in discourse, behold, a certain leper coming and standing before the window of the prison, through which the light of day entered, among whom a leper with a numerous household. begging mercy from him, that he might deserve to be cleansed from his ghastly leprosy. Looking upon him, the holy Man, gazing into heaven, said: Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the living God, who of Your own accord redeemed the lost world with Your blood, and snatched the apostle Peter unharmed from his chains, and did many other miracles in this world, incline Your ear to my most humble prayers, and free this Your servant from the leprosy from which he begs to be cleansed through You, the Recoverer and Savior of all ages, who with the Father and the Holy Spirit live and reign, God, through all ages of ages. And when all who were present had answered: Amen, immediately that man was cleansed from the leprosy, so that no wrinkle of the infirmity remained in him, and rejoicing he returned to his own home, giving thanks to God; and thus he said: Truly great is the God whom Hermolaus preaches. And on the following day he himself returned with his whole household, and he was baptized together with all his people, and with him 150 men and as many women ^f, receiving a blessing from St. Hermolaus, returned to their own homes with joy.

[8] Then, a dead man having been raised, These, therefore, having withdrawn, behold, a certain noble Roman with his wife and an innumerable crowd, coming before the dawn of day ^g to where St. Hermolaus was staying in prison, bearing with them on a pallet their only son who had died, begging with weeping that he would raise him from the dead. Then St. Hermolaus, speaking with paternal voice, says to them: If you desire to hear the words of God and to keep them in your hearts, and to believe in one God omnipotent and threefold in persons, of whom there is one essence, one inseparable quality, one majesty, one deity, one greatness, a connection of equality, you shall be able to have your son raised from the dead. Then they eagerly receiving the words of St. Hermolaus, martyr of Christ, and professing that they believed all things, professed that they wished to be baptized. To whom St. Hermolaus, martyr of Christ, said: Men, brothers, be attentive, lifting up your hands to heaven, pray with me.

[9] Then St. Hermolaus, his eyes lifted up to heaven, he wins many for Christ: said: Lord Jesus Christ, most high King, Father of glory, who hung upon the cross, and permitted Your holy palms to be fixed upon the wood, and endured five wounds for us, and freed the world from the servitude of the devil, and opened paradise to the thief, hear me; and do not regard my sins; but regard the faith of those who ask that their son be raised. Raise, Lord, this youth, that Your name may be praised through the infinite ages of ages. And when all had answered with tears: Amen, straightway the youth rose again, magnifying and praising God, who makes safe those who hope in Him. And the father and mother of the youth, with all that crowd which had followed him, believed in the Lord; and the youth himself was baptized with all, nearly 353 in number. Then they returned exultingly to their own homes with joy.

[10] therefore he is again brought before the tyrant, But when this was announced to the emperor Maximian, he commanded all the satraps and the magistrates of the Romans and all the nobles of his empire to assemble to him ^h; and he speaks to them thus, saying: I have caused you, the powerful of my whole empire, to assemble for this, that according to the prudence of your dignity I may decree what I ought to do concerning Hermolaus, whom I once afflicted with more atrocious torments, so that his flesh, mingled with blood, flowed down to the earth; and when he had suffered such things, he cast at me many unlawful words, blaspheming our gods. Afterward, having been beaten and thrust back into prison, he there seduced many and drew them away by worshiping his God. But one of them addresses him thus, saying: My lord emperor, if it please the dignity of your most invincible empire to hear me, and if you would be willing to condescend to my counsel, command that Hermolaus come forth from that prison, and be presented before your majesty. This counsel pleased all.

[11] And when he came out of prison and stood before the emperor, and no less constant, the emperor said to him: Once my empire, Hermolaus, promised you many things if you would forsake vain, foolish, superstitious things and adore the most invincible gods: but what is

the madness of your thinking, something wonderful it seems to me. You who did not condescend to my imperial promises, at least on account of blows of this kind, which you have suffered, ought either to condescend to my imperial dignity, or to be afraid on account of the torments which can be brought upon you. To this St. Hermolaus, speaking confidently, says: Your threats and your blows, which you have inflicted upon me, and the others which you promise to inflict, are sweeter to me than a honeycomb: for if you should afflict my body with various torments, you will nevertheless not be able to separate me from the service of my Lord Jesus Christ. To whom the emperor said: My empire once promised you many things; but now what we endeavor to pledge in the presence of these men, lest we resort to a lie, what we promise in words we are prepared to show in deeds. To whom St. Hermolaus, speaking, says: What you promise is a lie; what you say you will show in deeds is in no way to be believed: because to adore the gods whom you worship and cause to be worshiped is frivolous: what you hope for is not to be retained. If you would consider the prophetic narration, I shall prove you a liar, as he himself says: Every man is a liar: but Maximian the emperor is a man: therefore a liar. Hearing these things, the emperor, seeing himself confounded and vanquished by a philosophical conclusion ⁱ, was greatly angered.

[12] Then he commanded blessed Hermolaus the Priest to be raised up with his hands bound, tortured anew, at last he is beheaded. so that his feet did not touch the earth; and the executioners to scrape around his body with iron claws, so that his flesh flowed down to the earth. Others supplied burning iron plates. And when the athlete and martyr of Christ Hermolaus endured this for the faith of Christ, he said: Attend unto my help, O God. And when the ministers failed and could not move themselves, he commanded other more atrocious ministers to be applied, and these too failing, St. Hermolaus, lifting up his eyes on high, said: King of glory, Lord, who reign with the Father ever and with the Holy Breath, now regard my prayers, which I strive to ask of You, most kind Christ. And to these who know not what they do, grant pardon; to those sailing grant the harbor of safety, and whoever shall be held by any tribulation whatsoever, my name being invoked ^k, help; and those whom You know will attain to the Christian faith, help and govern; refresh the weak, raise up those falling, through You, Recoverer and Savior, who live and reign ever unto the ages of ages. And when for three days St. Hermolaus remained unfailing upon the gibbet, the emperor commanded him, taken down thence, to undergo the capital sentence. Then blessed Hermolaus was beheaded together with two other most religious men, by name Hermippus and Hermogenes *, under the emperor Maximian, on the 6th of the Kalends of August, in the reign of our Lord Jesus Christ, to whom is honor and glory unto the ages of ages. Amen. ^l

ANNOTATIONS.