Life and Episcopate
Zeno came from North Africa, where by tradition he was born about the year 300 and received a good education before coming to northern Italy. He entered the ascetic life and, around 362, was elected bishop of Verona in succession to Gricinus. His tenure of roughly a decade fell within the long struggle over Arianism that divided the fourth-century Church.
The sources credit him with a vigorous pastoral program: he baptized many, drew converts back from Arianism to the orthodox faith, and reformed the rite of adult baptism, administering it by complete immersion. He founded a community for women, ordered the conduct of funeral observances, and was remembered for his care of the poor. By legend he was fond of fishing in the river Adige, an image that passed into his iconography.
Writings
A large body of preaching is transmitted under Zeno's name — by tradition more than ninety sermons, the greater part of them expounding the Old Testament. Their style reflects the conventions of African Christian Latin, with its fondness for wordplay and coined expressions, consistent with the tradition of his African origin. This corpus makes him among the more fully preserved Latin bishops of his century.
The Question of Martyrdom
Whether Zeno died as a martyr was already a matter of differing report in antiquity. St. Gregory the Great, in his Dialogues, names him a martyr, and the Orthodox synaxarion accordingly titles him hieromartyr. St. Ambrose, by contrast, speaks of his happy or peaceful death, and the later Roman martyrology records his repose without asserting a martyrdom. He may have suffered persecution under the emperors Constantius and Julian without being put to death. The repository sources note this divergence rather than resolving it.
Relics and Veneration
Zeno is commemorated on April 12. A secondary observance on May 21 marks the translation of his relics in the year 807, an event attended by the Frankish king Pepin. After the basilica raised over his shrine was damaged in Hungarian raids, it was rebuilt with support from the emperor Otto I, and the present Basilica of San Zeno at Verona, built largely between the twelfth and fifteenth centuries, preserves bronze doors depicting scenes from his life and miracles. He is venerated as patron of Verona and, in popular tradition shaped by the fishing legend, of fishermen and of newborn children.
