Zenais of Caesarea

The Holy Martyr Zenais the Wonderworker, of Caesarea in Palestine

Martyr · Wonderworker · b. 284, at Caesarea in Palestine — d. early 4th century, at Caesarea in Palestine

Commemorated 7 June — Martyrdom at Caesarea in Palestine

Zenais — the name also appears as Zenaida — was born at Caesarea in Palestine in the year 284, and is remembered in the Byzantine books for two things only: that she was given the gift of working miracles, and that she ended her life by a martyr's death. Her surname in the Greek synaxaria is ἡ Θαυματουργός, "the Wonderworker," and the Menaion's couplet for her turns on the one fact transmitted about her: that she poured out wonders both in her life and after her end. Her cult was real and reasonably wide — the Synaxarion of Constantinople records a synaxis in her honour in the capital on June 6, and she is entered in a ninth-century calendar of Naples — but no passion of hers survives, and the Greek day-books say frankly that they have no details of her life. She is commemorated on June 7.

What is transmitted

The whole of the biographical record is three facts and a date. Zenais was born in 284 — an unusually precise datum for a saint of whom nothing else is known, and one which by itself places her death in the persecution of Diocletian or its immediate aftermath, since she would have been about twenty when the edicts of 303 fell. She was of Caesarea in Palestine, the Roman capital of the province and the busiest place of martyrdom in the East. And she was found worthy of the charism of miracles — that is, she was a wonderworker in her lifetime, which is rare enough in the calendar for a young laywoman and is the reason her name survived when her story did not. She ended her course by a martyr's death.

The Greek online synaxaria are honest about the rest: "we have no details of the life of this saint." What has come down instead is the liturgical couplet, which is not biography but which preserves what the Church thought worth saying about her:

Zenais, both while she lived and after her end, pours forth wonders. O greatness of worth!

(Translated for this collection from the Greek of the Menaion's synaxarion verse: Ἡ Ζηναῒς καὶ ζῶσα καὶ μετὰ τέλος, / θαύματα βρύει· ὢ μεγίστης ἀξίας!)

The cult

That so little narrative survived does not mean the veneration was slight; in Zenais's case it was the reverse, and the traces of the cult are better than the traces of the life. The Synaxarion of Constantinople records a synaxis — a stational gathering with a liturgy, which implies a church or a shrine bearing her name — kept in the capital on June 6, the day before her commemoration; the day of a synaxis and the day of a saint's notice frequently differ by one in the Constantinopolitan books, and the pairing is itself evidence that her memory was liturgically established there and not merely listed. She appears in the printed Greek liturgical books and in the manuscript menologia, and — a sign of how far the cult travelled — in a Neapolitan calendar of the ninth century, one of the Greek-influenced calendars of southern Italy.

The pattern is a familiar one for a wonderworker: it was the healings at the shrine, not the passion, that kept the name alive, and the couplet's insistence that the wonders continued after her end is the trace of a working tomb. Where that tomb was, and whether it was at Caesarea or in Constantinople, is not recorded.

Feast and commemoration

June 7 (church date; New Calendar civil June 7; Old Calendar civil June 20), with the synaxis at Constantinople on June 6 noted in the Byzantine books. The Greek synaxaria carry her as Ἁγία Ζηναῒς ἡ Θαυματουργός with the couplet and no life; the OCA calendar carries her as "Martyr Zenaida (Zenais) of Caesarea in Palestine." The Russian Old-Calendar day-pages for civil June 20 do not list her, so that the commemoration, while ancient, is not uniformly kept — a divergence recorded rather than resolved.

She shares the day with a fellow-citizen, Kyriake, Kaleria and Mary of Caesarea, with the Egyptian martyr Potamiaena of Alexandria, with the Galatian martyr Theodotus of Ancyra, with Daniel of Sketis, and with the Roman company of Marcellinus and Marcellus. No proper office is appointed; the common of a woman martyr serves.

Hymns

Apolytikion — Tone 4 (common of a woman martyr)

Thy martyr Zenais, O Lord, in her contest received from Thee our God an incorruptible crown; for having Thy strength she laid low the tyrants and broke the powerless insolence of the demons. At her supplications, O Christ God, save our souls.

Iconography

Zenais has no established type. A painter working from the notice would give her the ordinary formula for a young woman martyr: standing frontally, veiled in the maphorion over a long chiton, haloed, the small cross of witness in the right hand and the left palm open in prayer, with Η ΑΓΙΑ ΖΗΝΑΪΣ lettered beside her head. Because her one transmitted attribute is the gift of miracles, and specifically of miracles continuing at her tomb, the attribute that would properly belong to her is the healer's: a vessel of ointment or a small casket, as the unmercenary healers carry, or the arca of relics — but that is a reconstruction from the synaxarion couplet, not a received usage.

No pre-1900 image of Zenais of Caesarea has been located for this collection, and the danger of taking an image of the better-known Zenais of Tarsus (October 11) for her is exactly the kind of prejudicial misidentification the icon policy forbids, so no candidate has been stored. The Menologion of Basil II cannot help: it covers only September to February.

Disputed questions

Not the same as Zenais of Tarsus. The most serious risk of confusion in this entry, and the reason it exists as a separate file, is with Zenaida and Philonilla — the sisters Zenais and Philonilla of Tarsus, kinswomen of the Apostle Paul, unmercenary physicians of the first century, commemorated on October 11. The two Zenaides are distinguished by everything except the name: century (first against fourth), place (Tarsus and Demetrias against Caesarea in Palestine), companion (a sister against no one), profession (medicine practised without payment against no profession recorded), manner of death (stoning in a cave, or a peaceful repose, against an unspecified martyrdom), and feast day. Both are called healers or wonderworkers, which is precisely what makes the confusion easy; the calendars keep them apart and so does this collection.
The Latin conflation with the martyrs of June 5. In revising the Roman Martyrology, Cardinal Caesar Baronius entered Zenais under June 5 together with the martyrs Valeria, Cyriaca and Maria of Caesarea in Palestine — that is, with Kyriake, Kaleria and Mary, who are commemorated in the Byzantine books on June 7 as a separate notice. The attraction is obvious: four women martyrs of one city on adjacent days. But the Greek books keep two notices, not one, and the OCA's own account of Zenais describes Baronius's entry as mistaken. This repository keeps them distinct and records the conflation.
Wonderworker or nun? Some modern lists soften "wonderworker" into a description of a holy woman or ascetic, but nothing in the transmitted notice makes her a monastic — women's monasticism in Palestine in 304 is barely in existence — and nothing makes her anything else either. The types recorded here are the two the sources support: martyr and wonderworker.
The manner of her death. Unstated in every witness. The notice says only that she ended her life by a martyric death, and no torment, sentence or magistrate is named. Nothing has been supplied here to fill the silence.
The year 284. The date of birth is transmitted with confidence and the date of death not at all, which is the reverse of the usual case and probably indicates a lost passion that gave her age. If she died in the Great Persecution she was in her twenties; the entry therefore assigns her to the fourth century while giving only "early fourth century" for the repose.