ON ST. ZENO OF BENEVENTO, OR ZOSIMUS, BISHOP AND CONFESSOR,
ABOUT THE YEAR 585.
HISTORICAL SYLLOGE.
Zeno or Zosimus, bishop and confessor, at Benevento in Italy. (S.)
J. V. H.
The time of his episcopate; We have scarcely anything else certain about St. Zeno or Zosimus than his episcopate in the see of Benevento and his cult there continuing down to this day. Ughelli in Italia sacra writes this of him Ughelli, Italia Sacra, volume VIII, p. 17, Venice edition 1721.: "At what time St. Zeno, or, as others write, Zosimus, administered the see of Benevento is not established: yet Vipera writes by conjecture that he lived about the year of the Lord 543; whose feast day is celebrated in the Church of Benevento on the 17th day of October, and he has at Benevento a parish church raised to him." According to this opinion of Vipera, therefore, St. Zeno would come in the twenty-eighth place among the bishops of Benevento. And the Italian Hagiology adds under this day that his body is preserved in the church of St. Sophia. Giovanni de Nicastro has almost the same things Pinacotheca Beneventana, p. 77., except that he says that he had a church built to his name in the past age, at present (namely in the year 1720) levelled to the ground by the injury of the times. The same Giovanni has that St. Zeno was substituted for St. Marcian Cf. Acta Sanctorum, volume II of June, p. 958. about the five hundred and third year of the Lord, Vigilius being Pope, which epoch suffers from a manifest fault, which we ascribe to the typesetter; since Vigilius occupied the Roman see from the year 537 to 555; and accordingly the praised Giovanni seems to judge with others that the saint began his episcopate in the year of the Lord 543, which he then continued for about forty-two years; so that he would have closed his last day about the year of the Lord 585.
[2] and the place of his burial. In this all agree, that St. Zeno was laid in the church of St. Sophia. And this church is dedicated not to some holy woman of this name, but to the eternal Wisdom, or to Christ the Saviour, as Arichis, duke of Benevento, of the race of the Lombards, plainly says in the charter of foundation of the said church: "I," he says Chronicle of St. Sophia, Ughelli, Italia Sacra, volume X, p. 422., "who am indeed a frail creature, Arichis, eminent prince, running through the chances of a perishable life and desiring to obtain the riches of perennial immortality, believing indeed, and divinely inspired with no vain hope, that a hall should be consecrated in the name of your Holy Wisdom, you who are the true Wisdom of the Lord, O Christ." But this duke Arichis occupied the principality of Benevento from the year 758 to 787. Wherefore, if he raised the church of St. Sophia from its foundations, it must be that he translated the body of our saint from some former sepulchre, perhaps situated, according to the custom of those times, outside the walls of the city, into another; of which translation indeed no memory survives. Nothing besides occurs, or has it been permitted us to find, by which we may illustrate the name and glory of St. Zeno.