Description
From an early stage, Saint Pancras was venerated together with Saints Nereus and Achilleus in a shared feastday and Mass formula on 12 May. In 1595, 25 years after Pope Pius V promulgated the Tridentine Missal, Saint Domitilla was added also.
Since 1969 Saint Pancras is venerated separately, still on 12 May. He is, traditionally, the second of the Ice Saints.
Since he was said to have been martyred at the age of fourteen during the persecution under Diocletian, Pancras would have been born around 289, at a place designated as near Synnada, a city of Phrygia Salutaris, to parents of Roman citizenship. His mother Cyriada died during childbirth, while his father Cleonius died when Pancras was eight years old. Pancras was entrusted to his uncle Dionysius’ care. They both moved to Rome to live in a villa on the Caelian Hill. They converted to Christianity, and Pancras became a zealous adherent of the religion.
During the persecution of Christians by Diocletian, around 303 AD, he was brought before the authorities and asked to perform a sacrifice to the Roman gods. Diocletian, impressed with the boy´s determination to resist, promised him wealth and power, but Pancras refused, and finally the emperor ordered him to be decapitated on the Via Aurelia, on May 12, 303 AD; this traditional year of his martyrdom cannot be squared with the saint´s defiance of Diocletian in Rome, which the emperor had not visited since 286, nor with the mention of Cornelius (251-253) as bishop of Rome at the time of the martyrdom, as the most recent monograph on Pancras´s texts and cult has pointed out.
A Roman matron named Ottavilla recovered Pancras´s body, covered it with balsam, wrapped it in precious linens, and buried it in a newly built sepulchre dug in the Catacombs of Rome. Pancras’ head was placed in the reliquary that still exists today in the Basilica of San Pancrazio.
