ZACHARY THE RHETORICIAN. - Born ca. 465 at Majuma in Palestine and died shortly after 536.

He studied in Alexandria and at Berytus. After having converted his friend Severus, later bishop of Antioch, to asceticism, he went ca. 492 to Constantinople where he practiced as a lawyer, whence his title; Z., a person very prominent in the capital, adhered fully to the imperial policy that had proclaimed the "Henotikon" (482); then he was elected bishop of Mytilene and as such assisted at the Constantinopolitan Synod of 536 which condemned his former friend Severus. Z. died in orthodoxy after having followed the Monophysite policy of the Court.

He composed an important historical work whose Greek text has been lost but which has been preserved in a Syriac version in the historical compilation (only books III-IV) of an anonymous author of the 6th century. Z.'s narrative covers the years 450-91, and is precious for what concerns Palestine and Egypt. Z. also wrote a Life of Severus of Antioch, rather apologetic, as well as the biography of the Egyptian monk Isaiah, preserved in Syriac, and that of Peter the Iberian, of which only fragments remain. Also belonging to Z. are the De mundi opificio contra philosophos disputatio, preserved in Greek, and the Disputatio contra manichaeos, of which some fragments have come down in a Latin version.

Bibliography7 works

BIBL.: ed. of the Historia ecl. edited by E. W. Brooks, in Corpus Script. Christ. Orient., Script. Syri, V-VI, Paris 1919-24; the Life of Severus, edited by F. Nau, in PO, 2, and the Life of Isaiah, edited by E. W. Brooks, ibid., 25; the De mundi opificio, in PG 85, 1011-1114 and more recently edited by J. F. Boissonade, Paris 1836; the fragments of the disputation against the Manichaeans in PG 85, 1143-44. On the biography of Peter the Iberian v. L. Sikorski, Die Lebensbeschreibung Peters das Iberers, in 97. Jahresber. der Schles. Ges. J. Vaterland Kultur, I, 4, Breslau 1945, p. 7 ff.; Th. Nissen, Eine christl. Polemik gegen Julius Rech und den König Helios, in Byz. Zeitschr., 40 (1940), pp. 15-22; G. Bardy s. v. in DTNC, XV, pp. 3676-80; E. Honigmann, Patristic Studies (Studi e testi, 173), Vatican City 1953, pp. 194-204.

@incollection{ec12_zaccaria_il_retore, author = {Ortiz, de Urbina Ignazio}, title = {Zaccaria Il Retore}, booktitle = {Enciclopedia Cattolica}, volume = {XII}, pages = {1761}, note = {Cited by column}, publisher = {Ente per l’Enciclopedia Cattolica e per il Libro Cattolico}, address = {Città del Vaticano}, year = {1954}, url = {https://azioneromana.com/article/zaccaria-il-retore} }

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Zachary the Rhetorician

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