Baring-Gould’s sources: Roman Martyrology and those of S. Jerome, Usuardus, Ado, Notker and others. Greek Menaeaand Coptic Calendar July 9. Authorities: — Theophanes the potter, B. of Taormina (circ. 1140) who refers to a life by Evagrius, a disciple of S. Pancras. S. Theodore of the Studium (d. 826) had already quoted this life, but the quotation is quite sufficient to establish the life as a late forgery. In the early portion of the 9th century, there flourished a monk in the monastery of Paguria, named Gregory, who preached a panegyric upon S. Pancras at Taormina, which is extant, as is also an Ode on their saint by S. Joseph the Hymnographer (d. 883), and these,— the sermon and the ode,— contain the legend from the apocryphal life by Evagrius.J |N all probability the main outline of the story of S. Pancras is true, but we must certainly receive the details with caution. He is said to have been sent by S. Peter into Sicily to preach the Gospel, and this he did with considerable success. He found the Sicilians greatly devoted to the worship of two idols Phalca and Lyssio, the latter a figure round which a huge serpent was coiled, as though clothing it He precipitated both these idols into the sea; then, in order to vol. iv. 3 confirm the people in the right faith, and give them a clear notion of the person of Christ, at the command of S. Peter, he sculptured a representation of the Saviour, on a tower, “ That the people may see what form the Son of God assumed, that seeing they may more readily believe, and looking on the form, may recall those things which have been announced by us to them.

S. Pancras sealed his testimony by his blood, for he was stoned to death.