The Name Panteleimon

The saint the Orthodox world knows as Panteleimon was, by the Passio’s own account and by the witness of the earliest cult, originally named Pantoleon (Παντολέων, “in all a lion” / “all-lion”). The name by which he is now universally venerated — Panteleimon (Παντελεήμων, “the all-merciful,” from pan + eleēmōn) — is the devotional, martyr name, given (in the developed tradition) in connection with his merciful healing or proclaimed by a heavenly voice at the martyrdom. This file sets out the two names and their etymologies, the Passio and menologion accounts of the renaming, the theology the name “all-merciful” carries within the Orthodox understanding of mercy (eleos, Kyrie eleison), and the source-critical fact that the earliest cult names Pantoleon while Panteleimon is the later name that became universal.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (Great Martyr; Unmercenary Healer)

Two Names, Two Meanings

The change of name from Pantoleon to Panteleimon is not an incidental detail of the legend but stands close to its theological centre, because the two names mean different things and the difference is exactly the point of the saint’s story.

The baptismal name the Passio gives him is Pantoleon — in Greek Παντολέων, a compound of pan (“all,” “in all things”) and leōn (“lion”). It means “in all a lion” or “all-lion,” a name of courage and strength, the sort of name a pagan household such as that of his father Eustorgius might bestow in hope of a brave and forceful son (Passio Panteleemonis, BHG 1412z–1418, the youth named Pantoleon; the etymology from pan + leōn). It is a name fitted to the natural man — to valour, prowess, the lion’s nobility — and it belongs to the youth before his conversion, the accomplished young physician trained under Euphrosynos and still outside the Church (see The Pagan Youth and the Physician).

The name by which the Church now knows him is Panteleimon — Παντελεήμων, a compound of pan (“all”) and eleēmōn (“merciful,” “compassionate”; the same root as eleos, “mercy”). It means “the all-merciful” or “wholly merciful” (Passio Panteleemonis, BHG 1412z–1418; the name explained as “all-merciful”; the Menaion for 27 July repeatedly applies the epithet eleēmōn to the saint). The shift from the one name to the other is a shift from a name of strength to a name of mercy — from the lion to the merciful one — and the Passio and the tradition that depends on it read the renaming as the very meaning of the saint’s transformation: the brave youth becomes the merciful healer, and the new name records the new man.

It should be marked at once that the two names are not variant spellings of a single word but distinct compounds with a shared first element. Pan-to-leōn and pan-tel-eēmōn sound alike — both begin “Pantele-/Pantol-” and both run to four syllables — and this aural nearness is part of why the one name could so readily be received as the “true” form of the other. But the second element differs entirely: leōn, lion, against eleēmōn, merciful. The name did not so much change its spelling as change its meaning, while keeping enough of its sound that the change felt like a fulfilment rather than a replacement.

The Passio and Menologion on the Renaming

The sources do not speak with a single voice about when and why the name Panteleimon was given, and the variation is itself instructive.

In the Passio tradition (BHG 1412z–1418) and its tenth-century Metaphrastic rewriting, the dominant explanation ties the name to the saint’s merciful healing: the youth Pantoleon, having been converted by the priest Hermolaos and having begun to heal the sick freely and in the name of Christ, is called — or comes to be called — Panteleimon, “the all-merciful,” because mercy is now the mark of his whole life and act (Passio Panteleemonis, BHG 1412z–1418; the name connected with the saint’s mercy toward the sick; cf. the Metaphrastic Vita et passio, in Patrologia Graeca 115, where verified). On this account the new name is the seal set upon his unmercenary practice: he is “all-merciful” because he pours out the mercy of Christ freely upon all who come to him (on the free healing itself, see Healing Without Payment).

A second strand of the tradition — present in some recensions and richly elaborated in later devotional retellings — associates the giving of the name with the martyrdom itself, and specifically with a voice from heaven. In this telling, as the saint endures his sufferings or comes to his end, a voice from heaven is heard to call him no longer Pantoleon but Panteleimon, ratifying from above the name of mercy and confirming his crown (the heavenly-voice renaming, present in some recensions of the Passio and amplified in later synaxaria and devotional accounts; on the motif and its development, see the [Disputed] note below). On this account the renaming is an act of God: the name “all-merciful” is bestowed not by men in recognition of his charity but by heaven in confirmation of his martyrdom, much as Polycarp at his stadium hears a voice from heaven — “Be strong, Polycarp” — at the threshold of his death (cf. Martyrdom of Polycarp 9.1; see St. Polycarp of Smyrna for the heavenly-voice motif in the earliest martyr-act).

The two explanations are not strictly exclusive — a name given for mercy in life can be ratified by heaven at death — and the tradition has often held them together. But they sit at different points in the narrative and carry different weights: the first makes the name the fruit of the saint’s own merciful agency, the second makes it the gift of God’s testimony. The source-critical question of which is original, and whether the heavenly voice belongs to the primitive Passio at all, is taken up below.

The Theology of Mercy in the Name

Whatever the route by which it was given, the name Panteleimon is freighted with one of the central words of Orthodox theology and prayer: eleos, mercy. The saint’s defining mark, fixed in his very name, is mercy — and in the Orthodox register mercy is not first a sentiment but an act of God toward the helpless, the eleos that the Church invokes in nearly every petition of its prayer.

The whole liturgical life of the Church is saturated with the root that the saint’s name carries. Kyrie eleison — “Lord, have mercy” — is the most frequently repeated prayer in the Orthodox services, the standing response of the people to the deacon’s petitions, sung in litanies dozens of times in a single office; and eleēmōn, the second element of Panteleimon’s name, is the adjective from the same root eleos (on the centrality of eleos/eleēmōn in Orthodox prayer, cf. the litanies and the Jesus Prayer, “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me”). To be named Pan-eleēmōn, “all-merciful,” is therefore to bear in one’s name the very plea that the Church lifts up without ceasing — and, more than that, to bear an epithet that properly belongs to God. Scripture and the liturgy call God Himself “merciful”: “the Lord is merciful and gracious” (Psalm 102/103:8 LXX), and the Lord’s own command, “Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful” (Luke 6:36), holds out the divine mercy as the pattern of the human. The name Panteleimon thus marks the saint as one who has fulfilled that command to the uttermost — who has become “all-merciful” in imitation of the all-merciful God, mercy having so wholly possessed him that it has become his name.

This is why the change from Pantoleon to Panteleimon reads, in the tradition, as the whole gospel in miniature. The lion’s strength is not condemned but transfigured: the courage that the pagan name praised is taken up and put wholly into the service of mercy, so that the brave youth becomes the merciful martyr, and the strength that might have served self is spent freely on the sick and surrendered finally to Christ. The Menaion for 27 July sings him under both signs at once — as the one whose mercy heals and whose courage endures the martyr’s torments — and the new name holds the two together: an all-merciful whose mercy is no weakness but the lion’s strength turned to compassion (Menaion, 27 July; the saint hymned as merciful healer and brave martyr).

The Source-Critical Datum: Pantoleon First

Beneath the theology lies a plain fact of the cult’s history, and the discipline of this collection requires that it be stated clearly: the earliest cult names Pantoleon; Panteleimon is the later, devotional name that became universal.

The historical residue beneath the vast cult is an early-attested martyr of Nicomedia venerated under the name Pantoleon — the name preserved in the earlier liturgical and synaxarial notices — whose feast was kept by the sixth century (on the early cult and its name, Synaxarium Ecclesiae Constantinopolitanae, ed. Delehaye 1902; Delehaye, Les légendes hagiographiques, 1905; and the source-critical treatment at Pantoleon to Panteleimon). The name Panteleimon, “all-merciful,” is the form that the developed Passio and the later devotion fixed upon the saint, and it is this devotional martyr-name — not the original Pantoleon — that swept the Orthodox world and that the Church now uses almost without exception. The very universality of “Panteleimon” is therefore a sign of the cult’s growth: the saint’s later, immense fame travels under the name that the legend gave him, while the older form survives chiefly as a datum for the historian and in a handful of early notices.

[Disputed: Which name is original. The earlier liturgical witness and the older synaxarial notices preserve the form PANTOLEON (Παντολέων, "in all a lion"), and the critical study of the cult treats this as the primitive name of the martyr (Synaxarium Eccl. Cpl., ed. Delehaye 1902; Delehaye, Les légendes hagiographiques, 1905; cf. Les origines du culte des martyrs, 2nd ed. 1933, on reading a cult back from its commemorations); PANTELEIMON (Παντελεήμων, "the all-merciful") is the later devotional/martyr name that became universal. The etymology accordingly SHIFTED: the original compound is pan + leōn ("all-lion"), but in the developed tradition the name was re-heard as pan + eleēmōn ("all-merciful") — an etymologizing reinterpretation that the Passio itself encodes as a change of name marking the saint's conversion to mercy. Whether the heavenly-voice RENAMING (a voice from heaven proclaiming him Panteleimon at the martyrdom) is original to the Passio or is a developed elaboration is likewise disputed: it is absent from the barest notices and the source-critical method of Delehaye (1905) treats such heavenly-confirmation scenes as characteristic accretions of the developed martyr-legend rather than primitive data, so that the renaming is best read as the legend's theological interpretation of the cult's two attested names — Pantoleon early, Panteleimon universal — rather than as a recoverable historical event. See further [Pantoleon to Panteleimon](../05-sources-and-history/pantoleon-to-panteleimon.md).]

The honest account, then, runs thus. There was an early martyr-healer of Nicomedia named Pantoleon. As his cult grew and his Passio developed, his name was re-heard and re-given as Panteleimon, “the all-merciful,” and a narrative of the renaming — by his mercy, or by a heavenly voice at his death — was supplied to explain the new name. The renaming is best understood not as a datable event in the saint’s life but as the tradition’s own theological reading of its hero: the legend tells, in the form of a change of name, what the Church had come to see in him — that the lion had become the merciful one, and that mercy was now his name.

Why the Merciful Name Prevailed

It is worth asking why the name of mercy, and not the name of the lion, became the universal one — for the answer illuminates the whole shape of the cult. Panteleimon is venerated, above all, as a healer, and healing in the Orthodox understanding is an act of mercy: the cure of the sick is eleos made visible, the compassion of God reaching the suffering body. A saint invoked at every sickbed, sung in the blessing of the waters, called upon by the desperate and the dying, is fittingly named not for the lion’s strength but for mercy — for it is mercy that the sick implore and mercy that the healer-saint is believed to bring (on the cult of the healer, see The Healer of the Orthodox World and, for his patronage of physicians and the sick, Patron of Physicians and the Sick). The name Panteleimon prevailed because it names what the faithful sought from the saint. The lion-name praised what the youth was by nature; the mercy-name proclaimed what the martyr-healer became by grace and what he is believed to give — and it was the latter, the merciful healer, whom the Orthodox world came to need and to love. So the devotional name outran and finally displaced the historical one, and the saint passed into the Church’s universal memory not as the all-lion but as the all-merciful.

References

The Greek Passio of St. Panteleimon (Passio Panteleemonis), BHG 1412z–1418. Catalogued in Bibliotheca Hagiographica Graeca, 3rd ed., ed. François Halkin. Brussels: Société des Bollandistes, 1957. (The baptismal name Pantoleon; the name Panteleimon explained as “all-merciful”; the renaming connected with the saint’s mercy, and, in some recensions, with a heavenly voice at the martyrdom. The renaming-episodes are reported as the Passio’s own narrative per METHODOLOGY §3.5.)
Symeon Metaphrastes. Vita et passio S. Panteleemonis (10th c.). In Patrologia Graeca 115, where verified; and the Menologion tradition. (The polished rewriting that fixed the name and its explanation for later Orthodoxy.)
Synaxarium Ecclesiae Constantinopolitanae (Synaxarion of Constantinople). Ed. Hippolyte Delehaye. Brussels: Société des Bollandistes, 1902. (The early commemoration; the preservation of the older form Pantoleon in the earlier notices.)
Menaion, 27 July. (The hymnography of the Great Martyr Panteleimon, applying the epithet “all-merciful” (eleēmōn) and hymning him as both merciful healer and brave martyr.)
Scripture: Psalm 102/103:8 LXX (“the Lord is merciful and gracious”); Luke 6:36 (“Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful”); and the liturgical Kyrie eleison (“Lord, have mercy”), from the root eleos / eleēmōn that the saint’s name carries.
Delehaye, Hippolyte. Les légendes hagiographiques. Brussels: Société des Bollandistes, 1905. Eng. The Legends of the Saints, trans. Donald Attwater. New York: Fordham University Press, 1962. (Method for reading a martyr-legend; the treatment of heavenly-confirmation scenes as accretions of the developed legend; the primitive name of the cult.)
Delehaye, Hippolyte. Les origines du culte des martyrs. 2nd ed. Brussels: Société des Bollandistes, 1933. (Dating and reconstructing a cult from its earliest liturgical commemorations.)
Martyrdom of Polycarp 9.1 (trans. Holmes, The Apostolic Fathers, 3rd ed., 2007). (Cited for the heavenly-voice motif — “Be strong, Polycarp” — in the earliest Christian martyr-act, as comparandum for the heavenly renaming.)