Espero and Zoe, Saints, Martyrs

ESPERO and ZOE, saints, martyrs. — They are commemorated together with their sons Theodulus and Cittacus on 2 May. They were servants of a certain Catalus, a pagan, who took them with him from Rome to Attalia in Pamphylia. One day the two young sons, unable to bear their master’s yoke, openly declared themselves Christians, but Catalus sent them, together with their mother, to one of his estates. There, on the occasion of the birth of a son to Catalus, they refused to eat sacrificial meat; they were therefore summoned by their angered master, and, since they persisted in their refusal and professed their Christian faith, Catalus first had the two young men flayed in the presence of their mother, and then had all four of them thrown into a burning furnace. Their martyrdom is said to have taken place during the reign of Hadrian. In Constantinople Justinian had a church built in honor of Z.

Agostino Amore