Saint Panteleimon the Great Martyr and Unmercenary Healer
Physician, Great Martyr, Unmercenary Healer
- Feast day
- July 27
- Lived
- c. 275–305
- Patronage
- Doctors, the sick, hospitals; principal healer-saint of Orthodoxy
Saint Panteleimon — 'all-merciful' — was the personal physician of the Emperor Maximian who treated the poor without payment and was martyred for it. He is the great healing saint of the Orthodox Church, invoked at every service of Holy Unction.
Life
Born Pantoleon in Nicomedia to a pagan father and a Christian mother who died when he was young, he was trained in medicine by the famous physician Euphrosynus. The priest Hermolaus instructed him in the faith, and he was converted decisively after raising a child killed by a viper by calling on Christ.
He healed a blind man whom no physician could help, converting both the patient and his own father. Denounced by jealous colleagues during Diocletian's persecution, he refused to sacrifice, was tortured by every means the prefect could devise, and was beheaded — the olive tree he was bound to bursting into fruit at the moment of his death.
Veneration
His relics are distributed widely, with his head kept at the Russian monastery of Saint Panteleimon on Mount Athos. In the Orthodox rite of Holy Unction his name is invoked among the unmercenary healers, and his icon, holding a medicine box and spoon, hangs in Orthodox hospitals and clinics worldwide.