The Relics and Their Dispersal

The bodily relics of St. Panteleimon, scattered widely across the Christian world, are crowned by the venerated head, which the great Russian monastery of St Panteleimon on Mount Athos — the Rossikon — has held and shown as its chief treasure for centuries, though the head has been claimed at other centres (notably Lyon) and a blood-relic at Constantinople. Fragments of the saint are dispersed through the Athonite monasteries, Greece, Russia, and the Latin West; and at Madrid an ampoule of his blood, kept at the royal Augustinian convent of the Real Monasterio de la Encarnación, is reported by the convent and the local devotion to liquefy each year about his feast (27 July) and to stand solid the rest of the year — a phenomenon set beside the famous liquefaction of the blood of St Januarius (San Gennaro) at Naples. This file follows the relics and their dispersal, pinning each claim to its source, and handles the Madrid liquefaction with the both-sides care the methodology requires: it is reported as the claim of the convent and the devotional tradition, not asserted as miracle-fact.

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

The Relic-Cult of a Martyr

That St. Panteleimon should be venerated through his relics is no peculiarity of his cult but the common inheritance of the whole Church of the martyrs, and it is worth recalling at the outset what a martyr’s relics are taken to be. From the earliest surviving martyr-act, the Christians of Smyrna gather up the burned bones of their bishop Polycarp as things “more valuable than precious stones and finer than refined gold,” and lay them in a fitting place where they may assemble “to celebrate the birthday of his martyrdom” (Martyrdom of Polycarp 18.2–3; trans. Holmes 2007; see St. Polycarp of Smyrna). The cult of relics is thus older than any developed hagiography and is the matrix within which a martyr’s bones, blood, and grave become the focus of the local church’s love. Hippolyte Delehaye’s classic study of how such cults arise and are dated — Les origines du culte des martyrs — established the discipline that the historian reads a cult backward from its earliest fixed commemorations and its localised relics, distinguishing what is anciently attested from what is later supplied (Delehaye, Les origines du culte des martyrs, 2nd ed. 1933).

For Panteleimon this distinction is acute. The securely early datum is a martyr-healer of Nicomedia, venerated under the name Pantoleon, whose feast was kept by the sixth century (on the early cult and the older name, see The Name Panteleimon; The Unmercenaries as a Type). The Passio reports that he was beheaded at Nicomedia and that his body was taken up and buried by Christians (Passio Panteleemonis, BHG 1412z–1418, the beheading and the burial; on the martyrdom and its signs, see The Tortures and the Olive Tree). From that grave-cult at Nicomedia the relics travelled, as a beloved martyr’s relics characteristically did, first to the imperial capital and then, by the medieval centuries, across both halves of Christendom. The history that follows is therefore a history of dispersal: a single early cult radiating outward into many relic-centres, each with its own claim, its own translation-story, and its own devotion.

The Translation to Constantinople and the Medieval Dispersal

The first stage of the dispersal, attested in the Latin and Greek tradition alike, is the removal of Panteleimon’s relics from Nicomedia to Constantinople. From an early period the New Rome possessed relics of the martyr, and — a detail to which we shall return — a phial of his blood was kept there which on his feast was said to become fluid (the early Constantinopolitan relics and blood-phial are noted in the Western reference tradition, e.g. the Catholic Encyclopedia, s.v. “St. Pantaleon,” summarising the older notices; cf. the Synaxarium Ecclesiae Constantinopolitanae, ed. Delehaye 1902, for the saint’s commemoration in the capital). Constantinople, as the great clearing-house of the relics of the East, is the natural hinge between the Nicomedian grave and the later dispersal.

From the capital and from Nicomedia the relics spread west as well as remaining in the East. The Western tradition holds that Charlemagne obtained relics of the saint and had them brought into the Frankish lands, the head being placed at Lyon and the rest of the bones lodged at the abbey of Saint-Denis near Paris; in consequence the head of Panteleimon (in the West, Pantaleon) has been venerated at Lyon, while a separate portion went to Naples and other centres (the Charlemagne translation, the head at Lyon, and the bones at Saint-Denis are reported in the Western hagiographic tradition; Catholic Encyclopedia, s.v. “St. Pantaleon”). By the high Middle Ages, then, the saint’s relics were genuinely dispersed — Constantinople, Lyon, Saint-Denis, Naples, and the Greek East each holding some portion — which is precisely the situation in which competing claims to the same relic (above all the head) become possible, and in which the historian must hold several localisations together rather than adjudicate among them.

The Head at the Rossikon

The relic most central to Panteleimon’s living cult, and the one most weighty for the Orthodox world, is the head, held and venerated at the great Russian monastery of St Panteleimon on Mount Athos — the Rossikon (Greek Rōssikon, “the Russian [house]”), formally the Monastery of St Panteleimon, the southernmost of the twenty ruling monasteries of the Holy Mountain and the chief house of Russian Athonite monasticism (on the monastery itself, see The Rossikon on Mount Athos). The monastery, which bears the saint’s name, holds his honourable head as its principal treasure, kept and brought out for veneration in the reliquaries of the katholikon, alongside other relics the house has gathered over its long history (Speake, Mount Athos: Renewal in Paradise, 2002, on the Rossikon and its relics and on the saint as patron of Russian Athonite monasticism). The head of Panteleimon is, for the immense Russian devotion to the saint, the relic par excellence: the tangible centre toward which pilgrims come and from which his healing intercession is felt to radiate.

The relic carries its own miracle-tradition, reported by the monastery and by Athonite memory. The head is credited with healings of many ailments, and the Athonite tradition recalls a striking episode of the eighteenth century: in 1744 the relic was carried from the Holy Mountain to Constantinople and thence to Moldavia, where its arrival was held to have checked the spread of a plague-epidemic — a relic-borne deliverance of exactly the kind that the cult of a healing martyr characteristically generates (the 1744 translation against the plague is reported in the Athonite and monastic tradition of the Rossikon; cf. Speake 2002 on the relics and the Russian Athonite revival). Such accounts are reported here as what the monastery and the tradition relate — the claims of the relic’s cult — and not as independently certified events, in keeping with the discipline this collection applies to all miracle-material (METHODOLOGY §3.5).

[Disputed: The relic of the HEAD and its competing localisations. The Rossikon on Mount Athos holds and venerates the head of St Panteleimon as its chief relic (Speake, Mount Athos, 2002), and this is the localisation of overwhelming weight in the living Orthodox — especially Russian — cult. But the head has been claimed elsewhere: the Western tradition places the head at LYON, brought to Francia by Charlemagne with the bones going to Saint-Denis (Catholic Encyclopedia, s.v. "St. Pantaleon"), and CONSTANTINOPLE held relics and a blood-phial of the saint from early times (Synaxarium Eccl. Cpl., ed. Delehaye 1902; Catholic Encyclopedia). These claims are not all reconcilable as claims to one and the same physical head, and the methodology does not adjudicate among them: relic-claims are devotional traditions pinned to their holders, and multiple sites venerating "the head" (or portions of the skull, or the head distinguished from a face-bone or jaw) is the normal condition of a widely dispersed martyr-cult rather than an anomaly to be resolved (Delehaye, Les origines du culte des martyrs, 2nd ed. 1933, on reading a relic-cult from its localised commemorations). The honest statement is that the Rossikon's head is the principal Orthodox relic and is venerated as such, while older and Western claims to the head at Lyon and to relics at Constantinople stand alongside it as part of the historical record of the dispersal.]

Relics Across the Orthodox World

Beyond the head, fragments and portions of St. Panteleimon are dispersed very widely, as befits one of the most-invoked healers of the Church. On Mount Athos itself, particles of the saint are kept not only at the Rossikon but in the reliquaries of other houses, for the Holy Mountain is among the densest concentrations of relics in the Orthodox world and a healing martyr of Panteleimon’s standing is naturally represented across its monasteries (Speake, Mount Athos, 2002, on the relic-treasuries of the Athonite houses). From Athos and from the older centres, particles have been distributed through Greece, Russia, the Balkans, and the Orthodox Middle East — set into the antimensia and reliquaries of churches dedicated to the saint, carried in the relic-crosses of the faithful, and brought out for veneration on his feast.

A characteristic and well-documented modern instance of this dispersal in action is the carrying of Athonite relics of the saint out to the wider Orthodox world for veneration: relics from the Rossikon and from other Holy-Mountain houses have repeatedly been brought to Russia, Ukraine, and elsewhere on pilgrimage-translations, drawing very large crowds of the faithful seeking the healer’s intercession (the modern relic-translations from Athos are a continuation of the cult’s logic; cf. Speake 2002 on the Rossikon’s place in the modern Russian Athonite revival). The pattern is the ancient one: a beloved martyr’s relics do not stay in one place but travel, and the travelling is itself an act of the cult, the relic going out to the sick who cannot come to it. What must be said with the methodology’s caution is that the provenance of any given small particle — its chain of custody back to the Nicomedian grave — is rarely documentable in the manner a modern historian would require; the particles are venerated on the authority of the cult and the houses that hold them, which is how relic-veneration has always proceeded, and not on the strength of an unbroken evidentiary record (Delehaye, Les origines du culte des martyrs, 2nd ed. 1933, on the limits of what relic-provenance can be shown).

The Blood-Relic at Madrid

The most remarkable of all the dispersed relics, and the one that has drawn the widest attention beyond the Orthodox world, is an ampoule of the saint’s blood kept at the Real Monasterio de la Encarnación in Madrid — the royal convent of Augustinian (Recollect) nuns founded in 1611 by Queen Margaret of Austria, wife of Philip III, and built beside the Royal Palace as a house under royal patronage (the Real Monasterio de la Encarnación, Madrid, the royal Augustinian convent; its relic-chapel houses a celebrated collection of relics, of which the blood of St Pantaleon is the most famous; institutional tradition of the Real Monasterio de la Encarnación). The convent’s own account traces the relic’s arrival to the early seventeenth century: the ampoule of the martyr’s blood is said to have come to the convent shortly after its foundation as a gift, the relic having been received from Pope Paul V and conveyed to Madrid through Juan de Zúñiga, then Viceroy of Naples — Naples being, significantly, itself a great centre of relic-liquefaction devotion (the relic’s provenance from Pope Paul V via the Viceroy of Naples, early seventeenth century, is the convent’s own tradition; institutional account of the Real Monasterio de la Encarnación).

The phenomenon for which the relic is famous is this: the convent holds that under ordinary conditions the blood in the ampoule remains solid — dark, brownish, with a concave surface — but that each year, about the eve of the saint’s feast and on the feast itself (27 July), it liquefies, becoming fluid blood, and that it returns to its solid state afterward, the cycle repeating year by year (the annual liquefaction about 27 July is the claim of the convent and the Madrid devotional tradition; institutional account of the Real Monasterio de la Encarnación). The convent further preserves the memory of an early-eighteenth-century examination: in the years around 1724–1730 a body of doctors of medicine and of theology is said to have observed the ampoule over successive feasts and to have attested, before a notary, that the contents became liquid on 27 July without human intervention (the 1724–1730 medical-and-theological observation and notarial attestation is reported in the convent’s tradition and the Madrid devotional literature). The relic and its annual phenomenon have made the convent a place of pilgrimage on the feast, when the faithful come to venerate the blood and to seek the healer’s aid.

The Madrid liquefaction does not stand alone but belongs to a small family of such relics. The most celebrated of all liquefying blood-relics is that of St Januarius (San Gennaro) at Naples, whose dried blood is held to liquefy on his feasts in the Naples cathedral — the classic and most-studied case of the phenomenon, and the obvious comparandum for the Madrid relic, whose own provenance runs, tellingly, through Naples (on Januarius at Naples as the paradigm liquefaction-relic, the long-standing Neapolitan tradition and the modern discussion of it). Blood-relics of Panteleimon/Pantaleon said to liquefy are reported in more than one place: besides Madrid, a relic of the saint’s blood at Ravello near Salerno is held in the local tradition to liquefy about the same feast, and, as noted above, Constantinople from early times kept a blood-phial of the saint said to become fluid on his day (the Ravello blood-relic and its reported liquefaction; the early Constantinopolitan blood-phial, Catholic Encyclopedia, s.v. “St. Pantaleon”). The Madrid relic is thus the most famous Western instance of a phenomenon claimed for Panteleimon’s blood in several centres and for other saints’ blood besides.

[Disputed: The MADRID BLOOD-RELIC and its reported annual liquefaction. The annual liquefaction of the blood of St Pantaleon about his feast (27 July) is reported here strictly as the CLAIM of the Real Monasterio de la Encarnación and of the Madrid local and devotional tradition — and it is so reported, not asserted as miracle-fact (METHODOLOGY §3.5, §4). What the convent's tradition holds: that the blood is normally solid and liquefies each 27 July; that the relic came from Pope Paul V via the Viceroy of Naples, Juan de Zúñiga, in the early seventeenth century; and that in c. 1724–1730 a panel of doctors of medicine and theology observed and notarially attested the change. What is NOT established: (1) the relic has not been certified by the Church as a miracle, and the convent's devotional claim is not a conciliar or magisterial determination; (2) the relic's PROVENANCE — that the substance is in fact the blood of the historical martyr of Nicomedia — is itself a devotional tradition, not a documented chain of custody, exactly as with relic-claims generally (Delehaye, Les origines du culte des martyrs, 2nd ed. 1933); (3) the PHENOMENON itself stands within the contested scholarly context of liquefaction-relics generally, of which the blood of St Januarius (San Gennaro) at Naples is the paradigm: such phenomena have been variously explained by proponents as miraculous and by skeptics as the behaviour of a thixotropic gel or temperature- and handling-dependent substance, and no consensus certifies them as miracle. This file therefore PINS the claim to the convent and the local cult, names the Januarius parallel and the skeptical context, and declines to assert the liquefaction as fact. The relic is venerated; the phenomenon is reported as claimed; neither the miracle nor the provenance is here certified.]

How the Relics Are to Be Held

The discipline this collection applies throughout requires a closing word on how the foregoing is to be received. The relics of St. Panteleimon are venerated across the Orthodox world — and, under the name Pantaleon, in the Latin West — on the authority of the cult and of the houses that hold them, and that veneration is an ancient and proper act of the Church’s love for its martyr, of a piece with the gathering of Polycarp’s bones in the second century. What the methodology forbids is the conversion of that devotional fact into a documentary one. The head at the Rossikon is the principal Orthodox relic and is venerated as such, even as Lyon and Constantinople carry older or rival claims to the head and to other portions; the dispersed particles are venerated though their provenance back to Nicomedia is, in the nature of the case, undocumentable; and the Madrid blood and its reported liquefaction are the claim of the Real Monasterio de la Encarnación and the local devotion, set beside the Januarius parallel and within the unresolved scholarly debate over such phenomena, and are not asserted here as miracle (METHODOLOGY §3.5, §4). Held in this way, the relics lose none of their devotional weight: they remain the tangible focus of the healer’s cult, the points at which the faithful have for centuries sought the all-merciful martyr’s aid. What changes is only the legibility of the claim — that the reader may venerate without confusing the love of the cult for the certainty of the document.

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 beheading at Nicomedia and the taking-up of the body for burial — the origin of the relic-cult; reported as the Passio’s own narrative per METHODOLOGY §3.5.)
Synaxarium Ecclesiae Constantinopolitanae (Synaxarion of Constantinople). Ed. Hippolyte Delehaye. Brussels: Société des Bollandistes, 1902. (The commemoration of the saint at 27 July; the early Constantinopolitan cult and relics.)
Delehaye, Hippolyte. Les origines du culte des martyrs. 2nd ed. Brussels: Société des Bollandistes, 1933. (The method for reading and dating a relic-cult from its earliest localised commemorations; the limits of what relic-provenance can be documented.)
Speake, Graham. Mount Athos: Renewal in Paradise. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002. (The Rossikon — the Russian monastery of St Panteleimon on Mount Athos — its relics including the head of the saint, and its place in the modern Russian Athonite revival; the relic-treasuries of the Holy Mountain.)
Real Monasterio de la Encarnación, Madrid (royal Augustinian Recollect convent, founded 1611). Institutional and devotional tradition of the convent regarding the relic of the blood of St Pantaleon: the relic’s provenance from Pope Paul V via Juan de Zúñiga, Viceroy of Naples, in the early seventeenth century; the reported annual liquefaction about 27 July; and the c. 1724–1730 observation and notarial attestation by doctors of medicine and theology. (Cited as the convent’s own devotional/institutional claim per METHODOLOGY §3.5, §4 — not certified as miracle, and the provenance itself a devotional tradition.)
Catholic Encyclopedia, s.v. “St. Pantaleon” (Charles G. Herbermann et al., eds., New York, 1907–1912). (The Western hagiographic tradition of the dispersal: the translation to Constantinople; the early Constantinopolitan blood-phial said to become fluid on the feast; the Charlemagne translation placing the head at Lyon and the bones at Saint-Denis; the relic at Naples. Used to locate the older notices, not as a terminal authority, per METHODOLOGY §2.3.)
On St Januarius (San Gennaro) at Naples as the paradigm liquefaction-relic, and the contested scholarly discussion of such phenomena (miraculous vs. thixotropic/temperature-dependent explanations): the long-standing Neapolitan tradition and the modern debate, cited as the comparative context for the Madrid relic per METHODOLOGY §4.
Martyrdom of Polycarp 18.2–3 (trans. Michael W. Holmes, The Apostolic Fathers, 3rd ed., Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2007). (The earliest witness to the cult of a martyr’s relics — the bones “more valuable than precious stones” and the keeping of the martyr’s birthday — the matrix of the whole relic-cult.)