Zoilus of Aquileia
The Holy Martyr Zoilus
Martyr · d. c. 304
Commemorated 22 December — Commemorated with the great-martyr Anastasia
Zoilus (†c. 304) was a Christian presbyter near Aquileia who reverently recovered from the sea the body and severed head of the martyr Chrysogonus and hid the relics in his house. Granted a vision in which Chrysogonus foretold the martyrdom of three holy sisters and the presbyter's own approaching repose, Zoilus fell asleep in the Lord nine days later, as had been foretold. He is numbered among the martyrs commemorated with the great-martyr Anastasia the Deliverer-from-Bonds on December 22.
Zoilus belongs to the cycle of the passion of Anastasia the Deliverer-from-Bonds, and his part is told within her Life. When the martyr Chrysogonus, teacher of Anastasia, had been beheaded at Aquileia in the persecution of Diocletian and his body and head cast into the sea, the waves bore them to the shore, where Zoilus — a presbyter of the district — found them. He laid the relics with reverence in a chest and kept them concealed in his house. There Chrysogonus appeared to him in a vision, revealing that three Christian sisters living nearby, Agape, Chionia and Irene (commemorated April 16), would soon be crowned with martyrdom, that Anastasia should be sent to strengthen them, and that Zoilus himself would depart this life within nine days. All came to pass: Zoilus reposed on the ninth day, and Anastasia went on to encourage and afterward to bury the three maidens. The Greek synaxarion's distich turns on his name (Zōilos, "life"): "Zoilus, having left this flowing life, found abiding life in the place of the living."
Feast and commemoration
December 22 (church date; Old Calendar civil January 4), within the forefeast of the Nativity, kept together with the great-martyr Anastasia and the martyrs Chrysogonus and Theodota, in whose cycle his memory is transmitted. No proper service is appointed to him; he is commemorated in the synaxarion of the day with a distich, and in the hymns of Anastasia's office.
Hymns
Troparion — Tone 4 (from the common of a martyr)
Thy martyr Zoilus, O Lord, in his contest hath received an incorruptible crown from thee our God; for, possessed of thy might, he cast down the tyrants and broke in pieces the powerless boldness of the demons. By his intercessions save thou our souls.
Original translation from the Greek
Iconography
No pre-modern image of Zoilus has been identified for storage; the Menologion of Basil II depicts his companions Anastasia, Chrysogonus and Theodota, but not the presbyter separately. He would be represented as an elder cleric in priestly vesture, holding the chest containing the relics of Chrysogonus that he drew from the sea — the scene by which the tradition remembers him.
Disputed questions
- Martyr or confessor. The Greek Menaion of December 22 titles Zoilus "Holy Martyr" (Ἅγιος Μάρτυς Ζωΐλος) and numbers him with the martyrs of the day, and the calendars follow that styling; but the received Life describes his end as a peaceful falling-asleep nine days after he recovered the relics, not a violent death. The Church's commemoration of him as a martyr is followed here, with the manner of his repose recorded honestly: he shares the martyrs' company for his confession and his service to the relics of a martyr, rather than for a death by torture. (Flagged for verification against a fuller critical synaxarion.)