Paschasius the Deacon

Paschasius the Deacon was a deacon of the Church of Rome around 500 and died after 511. He is venerated as a saint in the Western Church and remembered on 31 May in the Western calendar. Almost everything known of him comes from the Dialogues of Pope Gregory the Great (book 4, chapter 40).

Gregory describes him as a man of extraordinary holiness, very generous to the poor. Until his death he remained loyal to the antipope Laurence, not out of malice but through error and ignorance. He died in the time of Pope Symmachus, and after his death a man possessed by a demon was healed by touching his dalmatic. Soon afterward he appeared to Bishop Germanus of Capua at the thermal baths of Angulus and told him that he had to do penance for his error; he asked the bishop to pray for him, and the bishop prayed with great zeal.

Paschasius wrote two books on the Holy Spirit, but one scholar attributes them to Bishop Faustus of Riez. A letter of his to Eugippius survives, from 511, answering a request that he write the life of Saint Severinus.