Zacharias Rhetor

Zacharias of Mytilene (c. 465, Gaza - after 536), also known as Zacharias Scholasticus or Zacharias Rhetor, was a bishop and ecclesiastical historian.

The life of Zacharias of Mytilene can be reconstructed only from a few scattered reports in contemporary sources (the accounts are also partly conflicting - for example, some Syrian authors have "Melitene" instead of "Mytilene"). Zacharias was born near Gaza, which hosted a significant school of rhetorics in Late Antiquity. That was also where he received his initial education. In 485, he travelled to Alexandria, where he studied philosophy for two years. In Alexandria, he was embroiled in a conflict between Christians and Pagans in connection with the Horapollo affair (see that article). It was also there he met Severus, who was later to become a notable patriarch of Antioch. Zacharias was baptized and travelled in 487 to Beirut to study law at the academy there. He stayed there, leading a very ascetic life, until 491, but he also made several journeys to different parts of Palestine in search for religious knowledge. He finally moved to Constantinople, where he worked as a lawyer for a long time. Zacharias, who was leaning towards moderate Monophysitism, seems to have often played with the thought of becoming a monk. He apparently had good contacts with the Imperial court and that probably won him the appointment as Bishop of Mytilene (on Lesbos). His successor is known to have taken the post in 553, setting the terminus ante quem for his death. He was certainly alive in 536, as he took part in the Synod in Constantinople that year.

Zacharias composed several works in Greek, among which a Ecclesiastical history that was probably completed towards the end of the 5th century. The document, dedicated to Eupraxius, a dignitary, contains valuable historical material and describes the time period from 451 to 491. It was used by Evagrius Scholasticus for his own history. The original is lost, but a truncated and revised Syrian version has been preserved, as a Monophysite monk from Amida incorporated it in his 12-volume compilaion of ecclesiastical histories (volumes 3-6). Zacharias also composed three biographies of Monophysitic clergymen that he had met personally: the above-mentioned Severus, Peter the Iberian and the Egyptian monk Isaiah the Younger. The biographies have been preserved with varying quality. Zacharias also wrote several polemic works, e.g. against the philosopher Ammonius Hermiae and against the Manichaeans.

Literature

Editions and Translations

*Historia Ecclesiastica Zachariae Rhetori vulgo adscripta. Ed. by E.W. Brooks. Louvain 1924.
*Die sogennante Kirchengeschichte des Zacharias Rhetor. Ed. by K. Ahrends, G. Krüger. Leipzig 1899.

ecundary sources

*P. Allen: Zachariah Scholasticus and the Historia Ecclesiastica of Evagrius. In: JTS 31 (1980), p. 471–488.