Venerable Theophanēs and Saint Pansemnē of Antioch

Saint Pansemnē of Antioch (right)
Together with Saints Alexandros and Antonina of Asia Minor, also celebrated today

On the tenth of June, we celebrate two monastic saints of the Antiochian Church, Saints Theophanēs and Pansemnē, whose hagiography may be found in the Greek Menæa which was published in the nineteenth century. Despite their hagiography lacking certain factual reference points such as even approximate floruit dates, the normally-sceptical Sabine Baring-Gould says that ‘there is nothing in these accounts which leads one to doubt that they are trustworthy’.

Saint Theophanēs was a handsome and attractive youth, born and raised in Antioch by pagan parents, who was married at the age of fifteen to a gorgeous young woman of the same town. They lived for three years together in happiness, but after the third year the wife of Theophanēs fell ill and died. The grief of the young widower was as profound as his happiness had been, and he fell into depression and despondency over his wife’s death. Theophanēs began, however, to hear the preaching of the Gospel in the streets of Antioch – and he began to be drawn to the promise of æternal life which the Christian priests in Antioch held out to him. His curiosity was drawn to Christ, and he soon made the resolution to be baptised in the name of the Holy Trinity. He went out into the wilderness and built for himself a cell in the desert. There he lived in holy seclusion and asceticism, following a mode of life similar to those of Marōn, Makedonios, Mausimas, Poplios and Marēs, Eusebios, Malchos, Thalelaios, Palladios, Thalassios, Limnaios, Baradatos and the other Eremitical Fathers of the Syrian Desert.

There were those who sought him out in his solitude, and availed themselves of his wisdom – just as Syrians have done for all of the holy ascetics and hermits mentioned above. He showed whatever meagre hospitality to them that he could offer, and listened to their problems, and gave them his advice. But he was much grieved by the fact that Antioch – and in particular the district of Daphnē, which was much given to trysts and prostitution and orgiastic pagan rites – was yet in such a state of dissolution.

In his solitude, Theophanēs was struck by a continual thought, which he tried and tested over himself to determine whether it was from God or from the Evil One. This thought, which continually touched upon the heart of the ascetic, was that while he laboured alone there were those in the city whose whole lives were spent in ignorance and wretchedness. Saint Theophanēs began to think that perhaps his ascetic strivings could be of use to even just one of these poor souls from debauchery, and that it would be to the glory of God. After reading the lives of the Syrian desert saints, one can easily see how such a thought might have tormented Theophanēs: it may very easily have been from the Devil, in an attempt to get him to abandon his hermitage and shipwreck himself. But after having tried himself in doubts and consulted with other holy men and elder hermits about this thought, he eventually determined that it was indeed from God, and left his cell to go back into the city.

In Antioch there lived a courtesan named Pansemnē, a woman of formidable beauty and even more formidable wiles, who had used her wit and the charms of her body to win to her as lovers some of the wealthiest men of the city, and through their gifts to her she managed to arrange for herself a life of considerable luxury. She was the owner of houses and land, and she wore silks and perfumes and sumptuous jewels, and entertained her lovers on a feather bed.

Pansemnē was so notorious that Theophanēs had heard of her even in his desert retreat, and he desired to see her, and so he went back to his pagan father and told him of his intent to quit his hermitage and marry again. His father, delighted, at once gave him ten pounds of gold. Theophanēs took out his most festive clothes, washed himself, perfumed his hair and made himself up to look every bit the comely youth that might draw Pansemnē’s eye – and then he went to her house. Pansemnē saw him, and did not object in the slightest when he asked for admittance. The two of them ate together, and then Theophanēs asked her how long she had been leading the life of a courtesan. Pansemnē told him truthfully that she had been selling her body for twelve years.

‘And you never thought in all that time to marry?’ asked Theophanēs.

‘No one has asked me,’ she responded.

Theophanēs caught her eye and spoke: ‘What if I were to tell you, Pansemnē, that I wanted you for my own wife? What would you say?’

Pansemnē lowered her head. ‘You’re mocking me,’ she said. ‘A woman like me, marry? Why would you say that?’

But Theophanēs took the ten pounds of gold he had received from his father, and placed it in her hands, telling her to accept it as a bridal gift. Pansemnē did not trust the word of the holy man, but here this handsome boy with perfumed hair had given her gold, and she knew that he was sincere. When she thought on how she had expected deceit and flattery from him, she began to shed tears, and agreed at last to accept him as her husband. Having received her promise, Theophanēs left her house and returned after a lengthy stretch of days, and Pansemnē went forth to meet him in a new bridal gown. She asked him where she should follow, and where they would make their home, and Theophanēs pointed up to heaven and told her:

‘There! Where they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels which are in heaven.’

Upon hearing this Pansemnē became angry, upbraided Theophanēs for having tricked her, and told him she would leave him and return to her house. But she stayed, remembering how she had been moved to love for the ascetic by his sincere words. She listened as Theophanēs told her of God’s justice and of Christ who came to earth and took on flesh to save sinners. And when she understood what it was that Theophanēs was offering her, she sought of him to be baptised. And so Saint Theophanēs took her to see a Christian priest in Antioch who baptised her; and then he took her into the wilderness and set her up in a monastic cell near his own.

Saint Theophanēs and Saint Pansemnē lived in separate cells from then on, each living a life of concentration and solitude. They served God ‘in fasting and tears’, doing battle against sin and the passions, each in their separate abode. It so happened that a plague swept through Syria the second year afterward, and both of them succumbed to it; it is said in the Menæa that Saints Theophanēs and Pansemnē reposed in the Lord on the same day, were buried in the same grave, and ascended together into Paradise.

Assuming as Baring-Gould does that this account is true, it adds further to the characterisation of the præ-Islâmic Syriac ascetics that they tended to be an idiosyncratic and independent-minded lot on the whole, with their spiritual lives marked by an intensely-personal spirituality that could express itself in variegated and even ‘extreme’ ways. We see among some of these Syrian fathers extremes of bodily mortification that would be unthinkable in a Greek or an Ægyptian monastic enclave. And yet we also see extremes like those of Saint Theophanēs, who in this account resorts to behaviours quite contrary to social expectations and contrary even to ‘proper’ behaviour for a hermit, that comes very close to holy folly. It is one thing for him to leave his cell and go back into the city. It is one thing to take gold from his father. But then visiting a well-known high-class prostitute and declaring his will to marry her, in order to win her over to the monastic life herself? Taken together, these things must be seen as a kind of anti-ascetic asceticism, a mortification not of the body but of the will.

And Saint Pansemnē did become a faithful Christian and a tireless anchoress. Her transformation in Christ, Fr George Poulos tells us, astonished her – but it did not astonish the other anchoresses who lived close to her, for whom the repentance of a ‘fallen woman’ was something natural and expected. What was impressive to them, though, was the sincerity and solidity of Saint Pansemnē’s conversion. They did not expect to see a courtesan of Daphnē fasting and keeping vigil as though she had always been an anchoress, as though she had been born to it. Holy hermits Theophanēs and Pansemnē, whose outward beauty was outshone by the beauty of your virtues illuminated by Christ, pray unto Him who is the Author of all, that our souls may be saved!