Panaretus of Paphos
Our Father among the Saints Panaretus, Bishop of Paphos
Bishop · Venerable · b. c. 1710, at Peristeronopigi in Cyprus — d. 1790
Commemorated 1 May — Repose of the bishop of Paphos
Panaretus (c. 1710–1790) was bishop of Paphos in Cyprus for twenty-three years, in the hardest decades of Ottoman rule on the island, and is honoured as one of the very few eighteenth-century Cypriot hierarchs glorified as a saint. Born at Peristeronopigi in the Famagusta district and formed as a monk at the monastery of Saint Anastasius, he was exarch of the archbishopric and abbot in Nicosia before his consecration to Paphos in January 1767. He rebuilt and restored churches across a devastated diocese, defended his flock against the extortions of the Ottoman governors, and paid for the printing of books; and beneath all of it he lived as an ascetic, eating once a day and wearing an iron chain next to the skin. He foretold his own repose, was granted the arrival of his confessor by what the tradition treats as a miracle, and died in the late spring of 1790. Patriarch Gerasimos III of Constantinople proclaimed his sanctity in 1794, only four years after his death.
Origins and monastic formation
Panaretus was born about 1710 in the village of Peristeronopigi, in the district of Famagusta, of a well-to-do and devout family. He was sent to the Greek school at Nicosia, then the only serious school on the island, and received a better education than most Cypriot clergy of his generation. Returning home he entered the monastery of Saint Anastasius at Peristeronopigi, was tonsured and in due course ordained priest.
His abilities brought him quickly into the administration of the Church of Cyprus. He served as exarch of the archbishopric — the archbishop's deputy and visitor — and as abbot of more than one house, among them the monastery of the Theotokos at Pallouriotissa on the edge of Nicosia. These were the years of the heaviest Ottoman taxation, when the Cypriot peasantry was being ruined by the muhassils and the Church was the only body able to petition on their behalf; the sources say that in this work Panaretus, "in danger of his own life," became the consoling presence among a suffering people, and it was this that made him the obvious choice for a bishopric.
Bishop of Paphos
On 14 January 1767 he was consecrated bishop (metropolitan) of Paphos, succeeding Chrysanthos, and he held the see for twenty-three years until his death. The diocese of Paphos was the poorest and most neglected on the island, its churches half-ruined and its clergy barely literate. Panaretus travelled it constantly. He built new churches and restored old ones, provided them with vessels and books, and gave icons and furnishings out of his own income — a large icon of Saint John the Theologian which he donated in 1762 still survives. He renewed the monastery of the Holy Unmercenaries at Miliou, which the Cypriot tradition treats as substantially his foundation. With the archbishop and his brother bishops he financed the printing of theological and liturgical works — the eighteenth-century Cypriot hierarchy's chief contribution to Greek letters, since nothing could be printed on the island itself — and he had a part in the compilation and publication of a chronological history of Cyprus.
He was also a political figure in the only way a bishop under the Porte could be. In 1783 he joined the archbishop and the other bishops in the formal petition to Constantinople for the removal of an oppressive governor, one of several such interventions by which the Cypriot hierarchy protected the island's Christians — and one of the reasons the bishops came to hold, by the end of the century, an authority in Cyprus that was civil as well as ecclesiastical.
The ascetic bishop
What the Church remembers about Panaretus is not the administration but the asceticism carried on inside it. He ate once a day, and then sparingly; he kept the vigils; he wore an iron chain about his body under the episcopal vesture, and it was found on him at his death. His iron chains are still preserved at the monastery of Stavrovouni. His confessors testified that he lived in the continual remembrance of death, and the anecdotes preserved of him turn on his combination of severity and gentleness — forgiving instantly anyone who genuinely repented, and immovable with the impenitent.
One such anecdote is told to explain the second: a priest of the diocese who was defrauding his people was warned by the bishop again and again, and each time swore falsely that he was innocent. At last Panaretus said to him that since he did not fear to lie and to swear, he should shut his mouth and not speak; and the priest was struck dumb, and remained so until genuine repentance brought him back to the bishop and to speech. The story is characteristic of the way Cypriot tradition remembers him — a hierarch whose word carried a weight not his own.
Repose, relics and glorification
He foreknew his death and prepared for it, having his grave made ready. The tradition adds a detail that his hagiography treats as the sign of his sanctity: he announced that his confessor was coming, though no one was expected — Parthenios, formerly bishop of Karpasia, whose ship had been driven aground by foul weather near the coast. Parthenios came, heard his confession and gave him Communion, and on the following day Panaretus reposed. It was the late spring of 1790.
His relics were found to give off a fragrance, and healings were reported by those who invoked him. On the strength of this and of the testimony of his life, Patriarch Gerasimos III of Constantinople led the proclamation of his sanctity in 1794, four years after his death — a swift glorification by the standards of the age, and evidence of how his memory stood in Cyprus.
Feast and commemoration
May 1 (church date; New Calendar civil May 1, Old Calendar civil May 14). The feast is kept by the Church of Cyprus, above all in the metropolis of Paphos and at the monastery of the Holy Unmercenaries at Miliou, and is entered on the Greek and American calendars; the American calendar lists him without a life. He is one of a small group of eighteenth-century Cypriot saints — with the new-martyrs of the island and the Cypriot elders — through whom the Church of Cyprus remembers the Ottoman centuries.
Hymns
Apolytikion — Tone 4 (common of a hierarch)
O God of our fathers, who dealest with us ever according to thy gentleness, take not thy mercy from us, but by the prayers of thy hierarch Panaretus direct our life in peace.
Iconography
Panaretus is painted as a hierarch of the Ottoman period: full white beard, the black monastic epanokamelavkion over the head, the mandyas or the phelonion with the omophorion, the Gospel in the left hand and the right raised in blessing, and the pastoral staff. His distinguishing attribute is the iron chain — sometimes shown looped in his hand, sometimes visible at the neck or beneath the vesture — which is his emblem exactly as the millstone is Nicetas's, and which corresponds to the relics kept at Stavrovouni. Cypriot icons frequently show him with a model of the church of Miliou, or with a view of Paphos, and place him beside the other saints of the island.
All known icons of Panaretus are twentieth- or twenty-first-century Cypriot works, painted after his cultus revived; no pre-1900 image has been located, and none is stored here.
Disputed questions
- The year of his death. The Cypriot sources and the patriarchal act of glorification give 1790; some calendars and reference works, including notices circulated in English, give 1791. The discrepancy probably arises from the difference between the year of death and the year in which his memory began to be kept. 1790 is followed here.
- His title. He is styled both bishop and metropolitan of Paphos; the see was a metropolis of the autocephalous Church of Cyprus, but the eighteenth-century acts use both words indifferently.
- The monastery at Miliou. Cypriot accounts of the monastery of the Holy Unmercenaries give a foundation date in the seventeenth century as well as attributing the house to Panaretus; the two are reconciled by taking his work as a refoundation and rebuilding of an older monastery, and the confused dates found in some notices are noted here rather than resolved.
- Not to be confused with the several later Cypriot and Greek hierarchs named Panaretos — among them an archbishop of Cyprus of 1827–1840 and Panaretos (Petridis) of Eleutheroupolis in the twentieth century — none of whom is a saint of the calendar.