| ST. PANCRAS, M.—290-304 |
| Feast: May 12
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| He is
said to have suffered at Rome in the fourteenth year of his age. Having been
beheaded for the faith, which he had gloriously confessed under Dioclesian in
the year 304, he was interred in the cemetery of Calepodius, which afterwards
took his name. His old church in that place was repaired in the fifth century by
Pope Symmachus, and in the seventh by pope Honorius I. St. Gregory the Great
speaks of his relics. St. Gregory of Tours1 calls him the Avenger of Perjuries,
and says that God by a perpetual miracle visibly punished false oaths made
before his relics. Pope Vitalian sent a portion of them to king Oswi in 656.2
Italy, England, France, Spain, &c., abound with churches which bear his
name.3 See D. Jenichen, Diss. de S. Pancratio, urbis et ecclesiae primariae
Giessensis patrono titular), in 4to. anno 1758, at Giessen, a university in
Upper Hesse, belonging to the landgrave of Hesse Darmstadt.
Endnotes 1 L. 1 de Glor. Mart., c. 39. 2 Bede, Hist., b. 3, c. 29. 3 Henschenius, t. 3, Maij, p. 18. (Taken from Vol. V of "The Lives or the Fathers, Martyrs and Other Principal Saints" by the Rev. Alban Butler, the 1864 edition published by D. & J. Sadlier, & Company) |
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Provided Courtesy of:
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