Zeno and Zenas of Philadelphia
The Holy Martyrs Zeno and Zenas his servant, of Philadelphia in Arabia
Martyr · d. c. 304
Commemorated 22 June — Martyrdom at Philadelphia in Arabia
Zeno was a man of substance in Philadelphia in Arabia — the old Ammonite capital, the modern Amman — who, when the persecution of Diocletian and Maximian reached the province, freed his servant Zenas, gave away his property to the poor, and went with him to confess Christ before the governor. Master and servant were tortured together and beheaded about the year 304. The pair are a favourite of the synaxaria precisely for the order of the acts: the manumission and the almsgiving come first, and the confession follows from them, so that the martyrdom is presented as the last step of a life already surrendered.
Philadelphia in Arabia
Philadelphia was the Hellenistic refoundation of Rabbath-Ammon, one of the cities of the Decapolis, and under the Empire the southernmost great city of the province of Arabia. Its church lay in the orbit of the patriarchates of Antioch and Jerusalem, and its Christian population had been established long enough by the beginning of the fourth century to be worth a persecutor's attention.
Zeno (Ζήνων) belonged to the propertied class of the city. The synaxarion says nothing of his family or office beyond that he was wealthy, and that among his household was a servant named Zenas (Ζηνᾶς) — the Greek short form of the same divine name that stands behind his master's, so that the two names are, in effect, a single name doubled: a coincidence the metrical synaxarion plays upon.
Manumission, almsgiving, confession
When the edicts of Diocletian and Maximian were published in the province, Zeno did not wait to be denounced. He first set Zenas free, discharging him from the condition in which a slave's confession would have been legally his master's business rather than his own; then he distributed his goods among the poor; and only then did the two men, now equals, present themselves of their own accord before the magistrate and declare themselves Christians.
The order matters and the sources preserve it deliberately. The freeing of the servant is not a pious ornament attached to the passion but the first act of it — Zeno divests himself of the two things that made him a man of consequence, his household and his estate, before he divests himself of his life.
The contest
Brought before the governor, both refused to sacrifice. The synaxaria describe a protracted examination with the ordinary instruments of the Diocletianic courts — they were hung up and scraped, burned with torches on the sides, and their wounds galled — and record that they endured throughout without yielding. Neither would accuse the other, and the freedman Zenas, who might have pleaded that he had acted at his master's direction, did not. They were at last beheaded, about the year 304.
Feast and commemoration
June 22 (church date; Old Calendar civil July 5), with the hieromartyr Eusebius of Samosata, who carries the day's service. Zeno and Zenas are commemorated together as a pair and have no separate days. Their commemoration is universal in the Byzantine books and is of particular interest in the Antiochian sphere, the province of Arabia having belonged to the eastern patriarchates: they are among the small number of named martyrs the record preserves from Transjordan.
Hymns
Troparion — Tone 4 (common of martyrs)
Thy martyrs Zeno and Zenas, O Lord, in their contest received incorruptible crowns from Thee, our God; for possessing Thy strength, they cast down the tyrants and shattered the feeble insolence of the demons. By their intercessions save our souls.
Original translation from the Greek
Iconography
The pair are painted together, as the calendar keeps them: two laymen in tunic and mantle, each holding the cross of the martyrs, Zeno the elder and bearded, Zenas the younger and often beardless — the visual convention by which the sources' master-and-servant relation is rendered without any mark of servitude, since in the icon they stand as equals. In the menologion cycles they appear in the scene of their beheading, kneeling side by side. No pre-1900 image of them has been located for this collection.
Disputed questions
- Which Philadelphia? The Greek and Slavonic notices agree that this is Philadelphia in Arabia (Amman), and the Russian books make the point explicitly by calling the martyrs "Arabian." It is not the Philadelphia of Lydia in Asia Minor, one of the seven churches of the Apocalypse, with which the name is frequently confused in secondary lists.
- The names. Ζήνων and Ζηνᾶς are both formed from the name of Zeus, and the transmitted forms vary between manuscripts and languages (Zenon / Zeno; Zenas / Zena / Zina in the Slavonic). No source gives them any relation but that of master and servant.
- Not to be confused with the apostle Zenas of the Seventy (September 27), "Zenas the lawyer" of Titus 3:13, bishop of Diospolis; nor with Zeno the Faster of Antioch. The name is common in the calendar and the martyr-pair of June 22 is distinguished by the joint commemoration and by the Arabian city.
- The year. 304 is the figure given by the Slavonic books and repeated by the modern calendars; the Greek notices give only the reign of Diocletian and Maximian.