Zeno and Zoilus
The Holy Fathers Zeno and Zoilus
Righteous
Commemorated 3 March
Zeno and Zoilus are two saints named together in the Byzantine synaxaria on March 3, of whom the tradition transmits almost nothing beyond that they lived righteously and reposed in peace while still in the world — that is, they were not martyrs nor, seemingly, monastics, but laymen glorified in an ordinary life of piety. No account of their lives, place, or century survives; they are known from a single synaxarion line.
Zeno and Zoilus (Greek Ζήνων καὶ Ζωίλος) belong to that large company of saints whom the calendars preserve by name alone. The Greek synaxaria commemorate them on March 3 with the barest of notices — that they reposed in peace (ἐν εἰρήνῃ τελειοῦνται), the formula the synaxarist uses for those who died a peaceful death rather than by martyrdom — and add the detail that they lived in the world, so that they are remembered not as ascetics of the desert but as two righteous men who pleased God in the common life of the age. Neither their homeland, their occupation, nor the century in which they lived is transmitted, and no acts or miracles are attached to their names. They are honoured simply as saints of God whose memory the Church has kept, though their story has not come down.
Feast and commemoration
Zeno and Zoilus are commemorated on March 3 (church date; New Calendar civil March 3, Old Calendar civil March 16), named together in the Greek synaxaristis and in the Slavonic menologion (which renders them Зинон и Зоил), among the day's minor commemorations led by the martyrs of Amasea. The Greek notices style them Ὅσιοι — the word usually reserved for monastic saints — while also saying they died in the world; the entry follows the calendars in honouring them as righteous, and notes the slight tension in the record.
Hymns
Troparion — Tone 8
O God of our fathers, who deal with us ever according to your gentleness: take not your mercy from us, but by the prayers of your righteous ones Zeno and Zoilus, guide our life in peace.
Original translation from the Greek
Iconography
No traditional icon-type is fixed for Zeno and Zoilus, and no storable pre-modern image has been identified; were they depicted, it would be as two righteous laymen in ordinary dress, hands raised in prayer or holding the cross of confession. The entry is noted as wanting an icon.