medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture



27. July is in many churches the feast day of Pantaleon of Nicomedia (d. early 4th cent., supposedly).  We know nothing of the actual life of this reputed thaumaturge and megalomartyr.  In Greek he is usually called Panteleimon (pronounced with the final "o" closed and with a slight pause between the second "e" and the "i"), i.e. "merciful to all" or "all-merciful" (were, contrary to the Greek spelling, the "ei" to be pronounced as a diphthong his name would signify rather "all meadow").  According to his Greek Passio (BHG 1412z-1414m; Latin versions are at BHL 6429-6442), this name, replacing his previous Pantoleon or Pantaleon, was bestowed upon him from Heaven just before his death.  In Latin he is ordinarily called Pantaleo or Pantaleon.  Modern scholarship when using a Latin name-form often adds the geographic specification "of Nicomedia" (thus distinguishing this saint from his homonym of Bisceglie, one of the companions of that Apulian city's legendary early martyr-bishop Maurus).  Pantaleon's legend makes him a physician of Nicomedia who learned that the only important medicine was the cure of souls but who nonetheless was given the grace to operate many miraculous cures of the body.  His suffering, in which colloquies with a villainous emperor Maximian (presumably Galerius) are followed by a series of miraculously ineffective tortures leading in the end to decapitation, is also said to have taken place in Nicomedia, then the capital city of the Roman East.



In "Eastern"-rite churches Panteleimon has been celebrated on various days in late July, especially the 27th (his feast day in the Byzantine Rite).  The earlier ninth-century Marble Calendar of Naples, with its admixture of "Eastern" and "Western" feasts, likewise places Pantaleon's celebration on this day.  But in the Latin West Pantaleon's late antique and medieval feast day was often 28. July (so the [pseudo-]Hieronymian Martyrology; also the ninth-century martyrologies of Florus of Lyon, St. Ado of Vienne, and Usuard of Saint-Germain).  From its sixteenth-century inception onward the Roman Martyrology has commemorated him under 27. July.  In the late medieval and early modern cult of the usually Fourteen Holy Helpers Pantaleon was invoked against headache ("Take two aspirin and call me in the morning.").



Some medieval images of Pantaleon / Panteleimon



a) Panteleimon as depicted in a tenth-century ceramic icon in the Walters Art Museum, Baltimore:

http://tinyurl.com/q9aq3l2



b) Panteleimon as portrayed in relief (upper right; at upper left, St. Philip the Apostle) on a leaf of the mid-tenth-century ivory Harbaville Triptych in the Musée du Louvre, Paris:

http://tinyurl.com/o329r2u



c) Panteleimon as depicted (at left) in a late tenth-century fresco (ca. 991/92)  in the left apse of the church of Agios Panteleimon in Ano Boulari (Mesa Mani), Lakonia:

http://www.zorbas.de/maniguide/scans/anbo.jpg



d) Panteleimon as depicted in an eleventh-century fresco in the church of St. Anthony at Kellia (Larnaka prefecture) in the Republic of Cyprus:

http://tinyurl.com/84qgq3l



e) Panteleimon as depicted in an eleventh-century fresco in the monastery church of the Theotokos Eleousa at Veljusa (Strumica municipality) in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia:

http://tinyurl.com/o7q9lvb



f) Panteleimon as depicted in the earlier eleventh-century mosaics in the upper church of the katholikon in the monastery of Hosios Loukas near Distomo in Phokis:

http://tinyurl.com/qxsaupa



g) Panteleimon as depicted in the mid-eleventh-century frescoes of the Nea Moni on Chios:

http://www.eikonografos.com/album/displayimage.php?pid=5998&fullsize=1



h) Panteleimon as depicted in a fragmentarily preserved earlier twelfth-century icon in the Great Lavra on Mt. Athos:

http://galaxy.hua.gr/~hp228304/ICONS/I%20FOTOS/8.jpg



i) Panteleimon as depicted in relief (at center) on a soapstone plaque of uncertain date mounted in a twelfth- or thirteenth-century icon in the Musei Vaticani, Città del Vaticano:

http://tinyurl.com/nufvjxb



j) Pantaleon as depicted in the later twelfth-century mosaics (ca. 1182) of the basilica cattedrale Santa Maria Nuova in Monreale:

http://tinyurl.com/4xb3bp3



k) Panteleimon as depicted in the late twelfth-century frescoes (ca. 1191) in the church of St. George at Kurbinovo (Resen municipality) in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia:

http://www.panacomp.net/uploaded/sain-panteleimon-Nerezi_fresco.jpg



l) Pantaleon as portrayed in a thirteenth-century relief said to have come from Venice, now in Burg Liechtenstein, Maria Enzersdorf (Niederösterreich):

http://www.othmar.at/kirchen/hl_pantaleon/pantaleon_liechtenstein.jpg



m) Pantaleon as portrayed in a thirteenth-century relief of Italian origin, now in the Musée National du Moyen Age (Musée de Cluny), Paris:

http://tinyurl.com/qbavkvx



n) Panteleimon as depicted in a thirteenth-century icon with scenes from his Passio in St. Catherine's monastery, St. Catherine (South Sinai governorate), Egypt:

http://www.nasledie-rus.ru/img/580000/580319.jpg



o) Pantaleon as depicted with scenes from his Passio in the earlier thirteenth-century St. Pantaleon Window (ca. 1220-1225) in the basilique cathédrale de Notre-Dame in Chartres:

http://tinyurl.com/olmrocv



p) Panteleimon as depicted in a later thirteenth-century fresco (betw. 1251 and 1300) in the rupestrian chiesa di San Nicola dei Greci in Matera:

http://tinyurl.com/odbfbxn



q) Panteleimon as depicted in the later thirteenth-century frescoes (1259) in the church of Sts. Nicholas and Panteleimon at Boyana near the Bulgarian capital of Sofia:

http://galenf.com/Bulgaria/36/bu_0004x.jpg



r) Panteleimon as depicted in a fourteenth-century icon in the Chilandar monastery on Mt. Athos:

http://www.monumentaserbica.com/mushushu/images/48.jpg



s) Panteleimon (at center, wearing light blue over purple) as depicted between his fellow healers Sts. Cosmas(?) and Damian in a later thirteenth-century fresco (ca. 1263-1270 or 1270-1272) in the south choir of the monastery church of the Holy Trinity in Sopoćani (Raška dist.), Serbia:

http://tinyurl.com/2cmfglq:



t) Panteleimon (at right) as depicted in a fourteenth-century fresco in the chapel of St. Stephen, Protomartyr, in the monastery church of the Holy Trinity in Sopoćani (Raška dist.), Serbia:

http://tinyurl.com/246kvh2

Detail view:

http://tinyurl.com/2g2z5v8



u) Pantaleon (martyrdom) as depicted in an earlier fourteenth-century copy (ca. 1301-1350), with illuminations attributed to the Fauvel Master, of a French-language collection of saint's lives (Paris, BnF, ms Français 183, fol. 240v):

http://tinyurl.com/q5l7yw5



v) Panteleimon as depicted in the earlier fourteenth-century frescoes (betw. ca. 1311 and ca. 1322) in the church of St. Nicholas Orphanos in Thessaloniki:

http://tinyurl.com/olu4u6e



w) Panteleimon as depicted in an earlier fourteenth-century fresco (betw. ca. 1317 and 1324) in the church of St. Demetrius in the Patriarchate of Peć at Peć in, depending on one's view of the matter, either the Republic of Kosovo or Serbia's province of Kosovo and Metohija:

http://tinyurl.com/y93rcvq

Detail view:

http://tinyurl.com/y9u82wr



x) Pantaleon (martyrdom) as depicted in an earlier fourteenth-century copy (1326-1350) of a French-language collection of saint's lives (Paris, BnF, ms. Français 185, fol. 92v):

http://tinyurl.com/nuqrjv5



y) Pantaleon (at center, operating a miracle) as depicted (martyrdom) in an earlier fourteenth-century copy (ca. 1335) of Vincent of Beauvais' _Speculum historiale_ in its French-language version by Jean de Vignay (Paris, BnF, ms. Arsenal 5080, fol. 250r):

http://tinyurl.com/nw59g75



z) Panteleimon as depicted in the earlier fourteenth-century frescoes (betw. 1335 and 1350) in the church of the Holy Ascension at the Visoki Dečani monastery near Peć in, depending on one's view of the matter, either the Republic of Kosovo or Serbia's province of Kosovo and Metohija:

http://tinyurl.com/os3eot7

Detail view:

http://tinyurl.com/oytykca



aa) Panteleimon (at left; at right, St. Hermolaus of Nicomedia) as depicted in the fourteenth-century frescoes (ca. 1345) of the church of the Panagia Olimpiotissa in Elassona (Larissa regional unit) in northern Greece:

http://tinyurl.com/plede64



bb) Panteleimon as depicted in a fifteenth-century icon of Byzantine origin, now in the State Pushkin Museum of Visual Art, Moscow:

http://tinyurl.com/o9nlubb



cc) Pantaleon (at left, with a donor) as depicted in the late fifteenth-century frescoes of the chapelle San Pantaleone in Gavignano (Haute-Corse):

http://elizabethpardon.hautetfort.com/media/02/00/408566018.jpg

Detail view:

http://elizabethpardon.hautetfort.com/media/01/00/3102905403.2.jpg



dd) Pantaleon as depicted in a hand-colored woodcut in the Beloit College copy of Hartmann Schedel's late fifteenth-century _Weltchronik_ (_Nuremberg Chronicle_; 1493) at fol. CXXVr:

http://www.beloit.edu/nuremberg/book/images/Martyrs/big/Panthaleon%20CXXVr.jpg



ee) Pantaleon (at center) as portrayed in relief on the late fifteenth-century Vierzehn-Nothelfer-Altar (1498) in the Münster St. Marien und Jakobus in Heilsbronn (Lkr. Ansbach):

http://tinyurl.com/o2ysfgb

Detail view:

http://tinyurl.com/phqy34l



ff) Pantaleon (just right of center) as portrayed in a statue on the early sixteenth-century choir screen (ca. 1510) in the Kirche St. Pantaleon in Köln:

http://tinyurl.com/op95c8e



gg) Pantaleon as portrayed by Daniel Mauch in an early sixteenth-century statue (ca. 1510) in the Kapelle Franz-Xaver in Bieselbach, a locality of Horgau (Lkr. Augsburg):

http://tinyurl.com/qateumu



hh) Pantaleon as portrayed in relief on an earlier sixteenth-century altarpiece (ca. 1520) in the Vierzehn-Nothelfer-Kapelle in Heimen, a locality of Hopferau (Lkr. Ostallgäu):

http://tinyurl.com/q5qkz2w



ii) Pantaleon (at center) as portrayed in an earlier sixteenth-century statue (ca. 1520) in the modern high altar of the Pfarrkirche Sankt Pantaleon in Sankt Pantaleon-Erla (Land Niederösterreich):

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/45/St.PantaleonN%C3%96.jpg

Detail view:

http://docbruni.at/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/DSC03240.jpg



jj) Panteleimon (lower roundel; upper roundel, St. Sampson the Hospitable) depicted by Theofanis Strelitzas-Bathas in the earlier sixteenth-century frescoes (1527) of the monastery of St. Nicholas Anapafsas in Kalambaka (Meteora dist.) in northern Greece:

http://tinyurl.com/obnop2k



Best,

John Dillon



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