Walters Art Museum viaWikimediaCommons//CC BY - SA 3.0
There is little doubt that the hands of Saint Pantaleon were his body part most worthy of veneration . Bornin what is now Turkeyin the 3rd one C CE , Pantaleon was a renowned medico who , according to his hagiography , once mend a blind man by invoking the name of Jesus . His report for curing the incurable spread , and Pantaleon ’s knowledge and praxis of medicine was so renowned that he was call to serve the papist Emperor Maximian . The invitation was undoubtedly a boon to Pantaleon ’s life history , but hazardous for his own wellness : Like many eventual saints , Pantaleon fell victimto Diocletian’spersecutionof Christians .
Pantaleon ’s tale is a intimate one : a public commitment to the faith followed by blood , gore , and an inevitably miraculous death . Though it ’s unclear on the dot when Pantaleon was canonized , there arereferencesto his veneration as the patron saint of physicians , in exceptional , as early as the fifth century . By the fourteenth hundred , Pantaleonwas veneratedas one of the Fourteen Holy Helpers , a group of saints known for their special power to intercede on behalf of the crazy , in particular those affected by the plague .
This arm reliquary , heldby the Walters Museum in Baltimore , dates to the former thirteenth C . Made of sumptuous silver , the West German ( Rhineland ) reliquary draw the branch of Saint Pantaleon , finger’s breadth turn away into the approval gesture , engineer toward the worshiper . The ornate reliquary features ornamentation with jewels as well as fine , elaborated metalwork .
Walters Art Museum viaWikimedia Commons//CC BY - SA 3.0
fit in to the Walters , some of the embellishments were added later in the 15th century , including the large quartz glass at the manacle of the arm and the drinking glass doorway , which would have provided worshipers a in effect look at the reliquary ’s contents , likely an weapon system os said to have been once attached to Saint Pantaleon . The additions certify the continued grandness of Pantaleon and his earthly stay to later pilgrim look for his intervention . As the reliquary bear on to be an object of awe long after its creation , it ’s potential that it had particular relevance during the fourteenth hundred as Black Plague moved across Europe , claiming hundreds of thousands of lives .
influence reliquaries like Pantaleon ’s branch were designated [ PDF ] by Germans asredende Reliquaire , translated but as “ speaking reliquary . ” The terminus was specifically used for reliquary that generally resembled the body part contained deep down , like this one . Simply put , verbalise reliquaries plain and visibly communicate their contents . Such reliquarieswere commonin European church by the thirteenth century , but there are example that dateas lateas the eighteenth century . legion speaking reliquary still make it , including alavishgilt bust reliquary of Saint Baudime and afootreliquaryof Saint Blaise see from the mid-13th one C .
subdivision reliquaries like Saint Pantaleon ’s are , by far , the most uncouth of the speaking reliquaries . Medieval art historian Cynthia Hahn suggests [ PDF ] that they were the most prosperous to preserve , and notes that they were in all likelihood the most produced of the talk reliquaries because , unlike foot or bust , they could play a pivotal role in the spectacle of mass . The arm reliquary was a kind of “ liturgical prop ” that abide in for the angel ; it could bless the pilgrim , founder the worshipper a recreation of a lineal experience with a long - dead saint . Hahn mention that numerous medieval texts describe clergy using hand reliquaries to bless worshipers with the signboard of the hybridization .
In this obedience , Saint Pantaleon ’s hand , which , centuries before , had supposedly healed a unsighted man and a paralytic , couldmimicthe gesture of those miracles for a worshiper seeking relief from the Black Plague . The hand of the saint , imbued as it was with mystic mogul , could rival and heal the fold without the constraints of mere time . speak reliquaries were , no doubt , powerful visual internal representation of saints and their miracles .
heading images : Chloe Effron // Walters Art Museum viaWikimedia Commons(Reliquary ) , Luigi Chiesa viaWikimediaCommons(Background ) //CC BY - SA 3.0
