For all Akathists published on our site, click here. This life of the saint was recently provided in English by Maxim, who kindly asks all Orthodox Christians to keep him in their prayers for his repentance.
An icon of Saint Zayya
Feast Days: September 13, January 7 and May 26
This Life of Saint Zayya is provided while keeping in mind the exhortations of Saint John Maximovitch (and also of the ROCOR synod at that time) that Orthodox in the West should recover the “lost” Saints from the pre-Schism era. Further, Orthodox in the West should not fear venerating people from the West who had a cultus before the Great Schism, even if they were never formally canonized or commemorated in the Eastern Church. In the same spirit of recovering our undivided Christian past, I am likewise trying to rediscover the “lost” Saints of the Eastern Lands.
Thus I present to you Saint Zayya, a pre-Schism saint who was born in the year 309 AD and died in the year 431. He is currently venerated only by the Nestorians (the Assyrian Church of the East) – but he lived and died before the Christological controversies that separated the churches. Thus he is a Saint of the Universal Undivided Church. As the Persian Church adopted the Nestorian heresy officially and synodally at the Synod of Beth Lapat in the year 484 AD – officially repudiating the Third Ecumenical Council held at Ephesus in 431 – we have, therefore, Saints in that area till the year 484 AD. And as was already pointed out, Saint Zayya lived and died before the schism of the Persian Church in 484. In fact he even died before the Council of Ephesus was convened, dying on January 7, 431 AD and the Council of Ephesus starting only later in June 431. Thus, he is truly a Saint of the Universal Church, even though he is virtually unknown among Orthodox Christians.
Sts. Zay’ā and Tāwor Cathedral Church in Jīlū, built in 427 AD
Saint Zayya (Syriac: ܡܪܝ ܙܝܐ), was a travelling mystic, holy man and healer who made his way from Palestine to the mountains of northern Mesopotamia and Assyria spreading Christianity with his disciple St. Tawor. The Church of the East honours both Zayya and St. Tawor for their missionary efforts in northern Iraq and the region of Upper Dasen (modern Hakkâri province, Turkey) during the late 4th and early 5th centuries. He is also the patron saint of travelers and the Jilu district, where he is buried, and is invoked for protection from hail, famine, plague, anger, illness, disease and the Angel of Death. Zayya is often depicted in miniatures from manuscripts of the Book of Protection as an equestrian saint, spear in hand, attacking the Angel of Death.
He is the Patron Saint of Jilu, travelers; protects against hail, famine, plague, anger, illness, disease and the Angel of Death.
According to the calendar of the Church of the East, the birth of St. Zay’ā is celebrated on May 26, and a three-day rogation (fast) precedes the commemoration of his death on the first Wednesday of January.
Traditionally, the Assyrians of Jilu celebrate the Feast (Syriac: Shahrā) of St. Zay’ā on September 13 every year on the Feast of the Cross. The reason given for this is that the Saint’s other festivals fell on dates when the weather was too cold for pilgrims to be able to travel to the main shrine for the celebration. Often, the Jilu District was snowed in for six months of the year, so holding the Saint’s Feast day on September 13, when the weather was more agreeable, meant not only taking advantage of the brighter light of the Moon at night, but also allowed those Jīlū men who planned on travelling before the first snows to pray for a safe and successful journey, while making their vows to the Saint before departing.
Other feasts to the Saint are also celebrated by the Assyrians of Arbūsh (Tell-‘Arbush) and Halmon (Tell-Jum’ah) in the Khabur district of Syria, as well as by Assyrians from the Amadiya district of Iraq, and some Assyrians from the Urmia region of Iran.
Early Life
Tradition holds that Zayya preached the Gospel in Jerusalem and the districts of Mosul, Aqrah, Amadiya, Tkhuma, Baz, and Jilu. He is also said to have visited Baghdad. The legend reports that Zayya was born into a Christian family in Palestine. He was born on the feast day of Christ’s Ascension in the year 309. In all probability, he spoke both Greek and Aramaic, like almost all of his contemporaries in that area. According to the legend, Zayya was a son of Simon the merchant and his wife Helena. His two older brothers were knights in the Byzantine army.
It is written that his birth was announced to his father by the Angel Gabriel in a dream, as was his name Zayya, which derives from the verb to shudder in fear – because not only did the earth shake at the time of his birth, but he is also said to make both demons and the evil and ruthless shudder in fear. According to the legend, Simon was 120 and Helena was 93 years of age at the time of the Saint’s birth. At age three, Zayya was taken by his father to a teacher named Jonathan who taught him to read and recite the Holy Scriptures. After two years of study, he decided he had learnt enough and began to study the scriptures on his own at home.
Sojourn in Jerusalem, Discipleship of Saint Tawor
At age six, Zayya decided to go to Jerusalem with a man named Shamli, who also happened to be going there at the time. The Saint requested to accompany him as his pupil. In Jerusalem, Zayya was ordained as a priest by the local bishop. After three days he was taken into the wilderness by an angel, where he was nourished for 12 years by a mountain goat which the angel provided him. The legend recounts that Tawor, son of King Paras, was hunting in the wilderness. As he drew his bow and arrow to shoot at the mountain goat which had nourished Zayya, the Saint stopped him. Tawor brought Zayya to his father in the city where they dwelt, and he converted them from the worship of the goddess Artemis to Christianity.
Tawor then left his throne, wife and children, to become the Saint’s disciple, learning more about his new religion. According to the legend, in Tawor’s absence, his enemies the Amalekites sacked and laid waste to his city, taking his wife and children captive. In reaction to this, he and Zayya went to retrieve them. It is said that the angel of the lord slew 5,000 Amalekite warriors before Tawor took his family and possessions to return them to their home. Twenty days later, Saints Zayya and Tawor departed for Mosul.
Travels in Mesopotamia and Assyria
In Nineveh (modern Mosul), Zayya is said to have resurrected 200 people from the dead, as well as performed other miracles, and converted many people to Christianity. From there the Saints travelled to the village of Shosh in the Aqrah District, where Zayya is said to have cleaved a dragon in two with his staff to stop the villagers from worshipping it, and sacrificing their children to it. After that they settled for 40 years in the mountains of Gara, where they are said to have healed 500 mute, blind and crippled people. From there they descended into the district of Sapna (Amadiya), where they performed miracles and healed the sick at Murdni (Bamarni), Aqdesh and Komane. At the latter place Zayya also stopped a plague that had been killing its inhabitants. At Murdni Zayya, he was reunited with Shamli, who had accompanied him to Jerusalem in his childhood, now a local bishop.
According to the legend, the Saints then travelled north to Arbush, where they performed more miracles, and then to Baz where they desired to build a church. Since they found the inhabitants of Baz unsuitable, they proceeded to the kingdom of Jilam-Jilu, which at that time was ruled by King Balaq, son of King Zuraq. They went to the king to request land and construction workers to build their church, performing more miracles at his court and in the land. Zayya is also said to have fasted and prayed for three days to rid the district of the plague, turning the Angel of Death away from its inhabitants in order to bring them back to Christ.
According to the legend the church Saints Zayya and Tawor built required a team of four thousand workers for its construction, who carved and dragged twenty large blocks of stone to the building site each day. It is said that thirty oxen and fifty lambs were slaughtered on a daily basis to feed them. The church was built in exactly five months and three days, from 1 May to 3 November 427 AD. The Saints used the church they built as a base for the consolidation of Christianity and the preaching of the Gospel in the Jilu District. It was also there that many miracles were performed and the sick were brought to them to be healed. It is said that Zayya healed 2,000 sick people and raised 203 from the dead in his lifetime.
Assyrian church of Mar (which means Saint) Zayya in Gug Tappeh, Iran.
Death and Remains
According to the Saint’s Vita, two years and nine months after the construction of their church, Tawor became ill for three days and passed away on Monday 1 September 430 AD, aged 90 years and three months. He was buried in the outer nave of the church. Zayya mourned his beloved friend and disciple for three months. He himself then died on Wednesday 7 January (Old Style) 431 AD after suffering an illness that lasted only one day. He was aged 121 years at the time of his passing and his burial took place in the inner nave of the church he and his disciple had built in the village that later took its name Mata d-‘Umra d-Mar Zayya (i.e. the village of the church of St. Zayya) in the Jilu District.
In the summer of 1915, during the Assyrian Genocide, the church was abandoned. The saint’s remains were never removed from their resting place there. The church still stands today, although it lies within an area that has unfortunately today become a battleground between the Turkish military and Kurdish rebels of the PKK.
The acts of Saints Zayya and Tawor are recorded in the Vita of Saint Zayya the Blessed and of St. Tawor his Disciple, which has been published in the Classical Syriac original (1890 and 1990), as well as translations in Arabic (1960), Assyrian Neo-Aramaic (1960 and 1990), English and Russian. The source of the original text was a manuscript kept in the saints’ church in Jilu.
A prayer commonly attributed to St. Zayya is:
O almighty Lord God, examiner of the heart and kidneys, before you my God I worship, and from you I ask for mercy upon this land (Jilu) and its inhabitants, and also upon every man that recounts or every one that writes and hangs upon himself your holy name, almighty Lord God, and my own name, your servant Zayya, and pleads and kneels before almighty Lord God; cause to pass from them, and may there not be in their houses, neither hail nor famine, neither plague nor anger, not the Angel of Destruction, and neither illness nor disease. Amen.
This prayer appears in a shorter form in the Saint’s Vita, and also in different versions of the Book of Protection, from which amulets and talismans were copied.
TWO MODERN MIRACLES OF SAINT ZAYYA (taken from here):
- In 1991 a team of men from America went to search for the abandoned Church of Saint Zayya in Jilu, not knowing exactly where it was. They were from Chicago. In the end, they reached their destination where they met a Muslim Kurdish family from Turkey who lived there where the Church was. The team videoed everything. The Kurdish family was taking care of the old abandoned Church. Baffled, the team of experts from America asked the family why they did this. Thus the family started to recount the miracle that had happened to them.
“We do this because this Saint has done a miracle with our daughter.” – said the parents of the family.
The team asked: “What is the miracle?”
“We had a demented daughter. We tried everything. Nothing was working. Then we decided: how about we go and ask the Saint of this Church?”
So the family went to the Church with their mentally ill daughter. Now the church was abandoned. Nobody prayed there anymore. It was in ruins.
The family continued to tell the story: “We decided we’re gonna take our daughter, bring her to the Church and lock her in there for the whole night. And so we did.” – they also locked the daughter in because she might have wanted to try and escape in a frenzy.
The family, of course, went back home that night and they only returned in the morning. They found her healed in the morning. Their daughter then described to her family what happened to her that night:
According to her Saint Zayya walked into the Church in the morning, before her family came, very luminous, covered in light. Shining light. The way the girl who was cured described Saint Zayya looking was that he was a very tall man with a very long and white beard and very skinny.
He was emanating with light, covered in light. Heavenly light.
Then Saint Zayya started to make the sign of the cross over her, three times. After doing that, the Saint spoke to the girl: “There is nothing wrong with you, child. You can go back home.” She then suddenly finds herself completely healed.
In the morning her family comes to the Church and they open the door seeing their daughter sitting fully sane, nothing wrong with her, fully healed.
“And this is the reason why we take care of this old ruined Church till now” said the family to the American expeditioners.
- The second miracle happened in Sydney, Australia, a couple of years ago. A young woman of 21 years old, an Assyrian woman, came to an Assyrian church on the feast of Saint Zayya. While in the church, after the service, she started to talk to the priest of that church.
She said: “Last year I came to Saint Zayya’s feast and I had leukemia. And the doctors gave me three weeks to live. I prayed and I asked Saint Zayya to intercede for me. After the feast, I had a doctor appointment and some tests to be done. So I went to do the tests and the doctors came back and said that the tests are wrong. I need to go again and redo them. I was thinking the worst. I was frightened. And then they’ve done the tests, and the results came out and then they were sure that these tests belong to me. They thought they were mistakenly mixed with some other patient’s. They called me and they said to me: “Look, we don’t know what to say to you, but you are free from leukemia. There is nothing wrong with your blood. It is clear.”.
In this manner was this young woman cured by Saint Zayya.
Glory to God and praise to Saint Zayya!
May Saint Zayya and his disciple Saint Tawor pray for us!
For the prayers of Your Most Holy Mother, of all of Your Saints and for the prayers of our Fathers among the Saints Zayya and Tawor, O Our Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on us, sinners. Amen!
SOURCES:
Source of Miracles:
https://www.youtube.com/live/T84AfB3qEFg?si=YCY1weqD4BUJ5WAZ&t=7613 (from 02:06:53 till 02:12:31)
Thank you, another wonderful story! This one of an all but forgotten saint in too many areas. May God Bless Orthodox Reflections and keep this site intact and healthy.