ON SAINT ZENO
ANCHORITE IN EGYPT.
4TH CENTURY.
HISTORICAL COLLECTION.
From the Menaea of the Greeks, and the Lives and Sayings of the Fathers.
Zeno, Anchorite in Egypt (St.)
G. H.
The memory of our Father Zeno is celebrated on this 19th of June in the Great Menaea of the Greeks, and this eulogy is added: "This man, having renounced the world, and become a disciple of the great elder Silvanus, by his surpassing obedience and utmost poverty, became a worker of signs; for indeed he drove out demons from many men. Having thus lived a holy life in the angelic struggles, when he had lived sixty-two years, he departed to the Lord." That is: "This man, having bidden farewell to the world, having become a disciple of the great elder Silvanus, on account of his most excellent obedience, and exercise of the religious virtues, and love of poverty, endowed with the grace of working enormous miracles, freed many from demons. Having therefore passed so illustrious a life, and devoted to the angelic studies of the struggles, when he had lived sixty-two years, he migrated to the Lord." These things in the Menaea; similar to which are read in the Menologium of Sirletus.
[2] he often changes his habitation, Of the same Zeno there is treatment in Book 5 On the Lives of the Fathers, by a Greek author, the translator Pelagius, in booklet 8, ch. 5, where Abbot Zeno, the disciple of Abbot Silvanus, said: "Never stay in a famous place, nor with a man having a great name, nor lay a foundation to build yourself a cell at any time." It seems that in the same place, in booklet 15, ch. 7, the same Zeno is treated in these words: after a long wandering he receives food from heaven. They said of Abbot Zeno, that when he was dwelling in Scetis, he went out by night from his cell, as if to the marsh; and when he had gone astray, he spent three days and three nights walking and laboring: and when he had failed, he fell half-alive. And behold a little boy stood before him, having bread and a small jug of water, and said to him: "Rise: eat." But he, rising, prayed, thinking that it was a phantasm: but the boy, answering, said to him: "You have done well," and again he prayed a second and a third time. And he said to him: "You have done well." Rising therefore he took and ate, and after these things the boy said to him: "As far as you have walked, so far are you from your cell; but rising, follow me." And immediately he was found in his cell. The elder therefore said to him: "Come, enter, and give us a prayer." And when the elder had entered, the boy suddenly did not appear. These things there: which same are read in Book 3 by the author Rufinus, ch. 210.
[3] Again in booklet 10, ch. 22, these things are related: Once certain Brothers came to Abbot Zeno, and questioned him, saying: "What is it that is written in the book of Job, he answers how the heaven is not clean; that not even the heaven is clean in the sight of God?" And the elder answered, saying: "Men have abandoned their sins, and scrutinize heavenly things. But this is the interpretation of the saying which you set forth: that since God alone is clean, it was said that not even the heaven is clean in his sight." Again in the same Book 5, booklet 4, ch. 17: Abbot Zeno, once walking in Palestine, when he had labored, sat down to eat next to a cucumber-bed. lest he eat what is stolen, And his spirit urged him, saying: "Take yourself one cucumber, and eat. For how much is it?" Who, answering his own thought, said: "Thieves go to torments. Test yourself in this, then, whether you can bear torments." Who, rising, stood in the heat for five days, and scorching himself in the sun, said as it were his spirit to himself: he imposes penance on himself: "I cannot bear torments." He said therefore to his spirit: "If you cannot bear torments, then do not steal that you may eat." All these things are also narrated in Book 3 by the author Rufinus; and they seem to fit one and the same person.
D. P.
[4] Jean-Baptiste Cotelier, in Tome I of the Monuments of the Greek Church, published in both languages a notable work On the Apophthegms of the Fathers, accustomed to receive or give nothing, he changes his custom: arranged according to the alphabetical order of names from various authors or older collections; where he not only has all that has already been related, but in nos. II, III, VII, and VIII adds the following, not yet found elsewhere by us. They related of Abbot Zeno, that at first he was unwilling to receive anything from anyone; whence those who brought things withdrew sad, that he did not receive them; and others coming to him wished to receive, as from a great elder, and he had nothing to give, and they too departed sad. The elder said: "What shall I do? For they are saddened, both those who bring and those who desire to take. This is best: he prefers Egyptians to Syrians and Greeks: if anyone brings, I will take: and if anyone asks, I will give it to him: and so doing, he had quiet, and satisfied all." An Egyptian Brother came to visit Abbot Zeno in Syria, and accused his own thoughts before him. But he, wondering, said: "The Egyptians hide the virtues which they have, but accuse continually the defects which they do not have: but the Syrians and Greeks proclaim themselves to have the virtues which they do not have, but hide the defects which they have."
[5] Abbot Zeno said: "He who wishes that God should quickly hear his prayers, when he has risen and stretched out his hands to God, before all things, he teaches to forgive enemies even before his own soul, let him pray from his heart for his enemies; and through this excellent deed, whatever he asks of God, He will hearken to him." They related that in a certain village there was someone who fasted very much, so much that the name of "the Faster" had been given him. When Abbot Zeno had learned of him, he summoned him. He came glad, and a prayer being made they sat down. The elder then began to work in silence: but the Faster, not being able to talk with him, began to be troubled by the vice of weariness, and said to the elder: "Pray for me, Abba; for I wish to depart." The elder says: "Why?" He answered: "Because my heart as it were burns, and I do not know what it has: for when I was in the village I fasted until evening, nor did any such thing ever happen to me." Then the elder: "In the village you were nourished by your ears. But take food, and from this time eat at the ninth hour;
and whatever you do, do in secret." When therefore he began to do so, and to fast secretly. he could hardly await the ninth hour: and those who knew him said, "The Faster has been seized by a demon." But he, coming, reported all to the Elder: who said to him: "This way is according to God."
[6] The same Zeno, the Menologium being cited, Ferrarius refers in his General Catalogue, Silvanus, Master of Zeno, on 22 Sept. and assigns him to Palestine, although he treats of him in the Life of St. Silvanus the Abbot, and celebrates this one on the 22nd of September, as illustrious at Scetis in Egypt. He also alleges Peter de Natalibus, Maurolycus, and Felicius: of which two the words, inasmuch as they make nothing for the history, it is of no consequence to describe here. Peter, Book 4, ch. 47, has thus: and on 12 April "St. Zeno the monk was a disciple of Abbot Silvanus: of whom Heraclides relates, among the other tokens of his virtue and constancy, that in the region of Egypt of the most burning sun, he stood in the heat for five days, drying himself in the sun: that from this he might prove whether he could tolerate torments, and after works of wondrous penance, he migrated in Christ, on the day before the Ides of April": on which day he is also indicated by Grevenus and Canisius. But on what foundation this began to be written, I would not easily divine: as neither at what time the same Saint flourished, or his master Silvanus: Zeno also on 12 April, whom it is strange that the Greeks nowhere commemorate; and that a day nowhere else found is assigned to him by Maurolycus: for neither did Peter de Natalibus, who first ascribed him to the Saints, presume to define a day. Yet this Silvanus is found to have been an intimate of Abbot Moses, not the Ethiopian, nor the Syrian (of the first of whom there will be treatment on the 28th, of the second there was treatment on the 23rd of February), but the Egyptian, recurring rather often in the Lives of the Fathers. And this one had as an intimate St. Pior, of whom Ammonius seems to make mention in no. 21 of the Epistle on SS. Pachomius and Theodore, illustrated by us on the 14th of May. If all these lived at the same time, he seems to have lived around the year 400. and synonymy does not deceive us, Pior—of whom we treated on the 17th of June—will have to be referred, equally as all the rest with St. Theodore, to the middle of the 4th century: and to the end of the same century or the beginning of the next, Zeno will have extended. For the rest, let no one wish to suspect that this Zeno here referred could be the one of whom we narrated such illustrious things in the life of St. Hypatius on the 17th of June, who toward his end, having relinquished the monastery which he administered at the Red Sea, where he had lived with great sanctity and not without miracles, closed his life unknown in the Rufinian monastery near Chalcedon around the year 452. For this one was both younger and first recognized after death. See, however, the last chapter of that life.
Notes* a small jug * otherwise, before the cell