Sampson the Hospitable

Saint Sampson the Hospitable was a citizen of Constantinople, priest and physician, who devoted his life to serving the poor and died around 530. He is venerated in the Eastern Churches and in the Catholic Church. The Church remembers him on 27 June, and his name is invoked at the sacrament of Holy Unction.

According to tradition he was born in Rome into a rich and distinguished family and received a good education. He learned medicine in order to help the sick. After his parents' death he inherited a large fortune, of which he gave generously to the poor, and he freed his slaves. He turned his house into a free clinic, where patients had food, lodging and care. He trained staff to receive the multitude who came for both body and soul. He then moved to Constantinople, where he lived in a small house, from which he gave alms, comfort, advice, hope and medicine to those suffering in body and spirit. The patriarch ordained him a priest.

Later Byzantine tradition makes him a contemporary of Emperor Justinian the Great. When Justinian fell ill and the physicians thought him incurable, God, according to tradition, showed him in a dream that Sampson would heal him. When the old man laid his hand on the sore place, the emperor recovered. The emperor wished to reward him, but Sampson accepted nothing, saying that he had left gold and silver for Christ. At last he asked for a home for the poor, and the emperor built it. It became the largest free clinic in the empire, between the church of Saint Irene and Hagia Sophia, and served the people of Constantinople for six hundred years, and Sampson was placed at its head.

He fell asleep on 27 June 530 and was buried in the church of the holy martyr Mocius, his kinsman. It is said that after death he appeared to those who called on his aid. In Russia, on his feast day, Tsar Peter the Great defeated Charles XII of Sweden at the Battle of Poltava, and for this he was venerated there, and the Cathedral of Saint Sampson was built in Saint Petersburg.