St. Zeno of Verona, the African Bishop Who Smiles Over Verona

Who was St. Zeno of Verona?

St. Zeno of Verona was a bishop of the fourth century, born in Roman North Africa, who shepherded the Church of Verona in northern Italy from about 362 until his death. He preached against the old pagan religion and against the Arian heresy, baptized crowds of converts at Easter and left a collection of sermons that are among the oldest Latin preaching to survive. Verona has loved him ever since. He is its patron saint, and the patron of fishermen too. We keep his feast on April 12, and Verona celebrates him again on May 21.

His great Romanesque basilica, San Zeno Maggiore, still holds his body, and inside it a smiling statue of him has greeted pilgrims for seven hundred years.

The life of St. Zeno: history and legend

What history tells us

The firm facts are few but good. St. Ambrose of Milan, writing to a later bishop of Verona, calls Zeno a bishop "of holy memory." Ancient lists of the bishops of Verona, including the names embroidered on an eighth-century vestment found at Ravenna, place him eighth. The Catholic Encyclopedia dates his time as bishop to 362–380. The sermons tell us the rest: he was African, trained in the Latin rhetoric of Carthage, a lively preacher and a fierce friend of the Nicene faith.

Those sermons were nearly lost. They lay forgotten in the bishop's library in Verona until two Dominicans printed 105 of them at Venice in 1508. The brothers Ballerini published a critical edition in 1739. About ninety are now accepted as his. Many are short talks to the newly baptized at the Easter Vigil, full of joy at the font, the altar and the Church as a mother giving birth to new children.

The legends

Later Verona tradition, written down in a Life by a notary named Coronato in the Lombard or Carolingian era, adds colorful stories. It says Zeno lived in a monastery outside the city and fasted and prayed to be allowed to preach. It also says he was so gentle in speech and manner that pagans abandoned their idols. A well-known legend, which the Roman Martyrology long repeated, makes him a martyr under the emperor Gallienus and says he freed the emperor's daughter from a demon. Both are traditional: Gallienus reigned a century before Zeno's time, and the Catholic Encyclopedia concludes that Zeno was "probably" a confessor who died in peace.

Verona also remembers him as a fisherman. Tradition holds that he lived so simply that he caught his own meals in the Adige. Many Christians have read the story as a picture of the bishop as a fisher of men, too.

The miracles of St. Zeno

• The flood of 589: reported. St. Gregory the Great, writing about five years after the event, tells what the tribune John told him. In the year the Tiber overflowed the walls of Rome, the Adige rose at Verona until it reached the windows of "the holy martyr and Bishop Zeno's" church. "Though the church doors were open, yet did it not enter in." People trapped inside drank from the standing water at the doorway as if from a wall of glass. Gregory compares it to the three young men in the furnace whose clothes the fire could not touch.
• The emperor's daughter: traditional. The Verona legend says Zeno cast out an evil spirit from the daughter of Gallienus.
• The devil's basin: traditional. Another Verona story says Zeno won a wager with the devil and made him carry a stone baptismal font on his back from Rome to Verona.

Why St. Zeno is the patron saint of Verona and fishermen

He was the city's great early bishop, and his tomb became the heart of its devotion; a basilica and some thirty other churches and chapels in Verona bear his name. Coins with his likeness once circulated there. His patronage of fishermen, especially freshwater fishermen, comes from the fishing tradition and the fish he holds in nearly every image. See more causes on our patron saints page.

Symbols of St. Zeno in art

St. Zeno is shown as a bishop, in miter and cope with a crozier. His surest sign is a fish hanging on a line from his crozier, sometimes two, or a fishing rod at his side, for the Adige legend. Because he came from Africa, he is often painted with dark skin, and in Verona he is often called "il Vescovo Moro," the Moorish bishop. A small devil at his feet or a kneeling princess recalls the exorcism legend.

The most famous image is San Zen che ride, "the smiling St. Zeno," a seated statue in red Verona marble in the upper church of his basilica. Diocesan scholars date it to around 1300; the metal crozier and fish were added later. In Mantegna's altarpiece over the high altar, Zeno stands among the saints in the left-hand panel. Bartolomeo Montagna painted him as a white-bearded bishop beside St. John the Baptist.

The Basilica of San Zeno and his relics

San Zeno Maggiore, rebuilt in its present Romanesque form in the 1100s, stands on the site of the church Gregory wrote about. Its west doors carry bronze panels with scenes from Scripture and from Zeno's legend.

Andrea Mantegna's San Zeno Altarpiece (1457–1460) still stands over the high altar it was painted for, with the Virgin and Child enthroned among the saints.

The saint's body rests in the crypt beneath, in a glass urn where the faithful come to pray. On May 21 Verona keeps the anniversary of the translation of his relics.

Prayer to St. Zeno

No single traditional prayer to St. Zeno is found in the standard Catholic prayer books. In Verona the faithful honor him at his tomb and in the Mass of his feast. Let us ask St. Zeno of Verona, who rejoiced to bring new Christians to the font, to pray for us, that we may live our baptism with joy and be, like him, fishers of men. Find other saints of April and May on our feast days page.