Holy Apostle Simon the Zealot

Simon, called Zelotes in Luke and the Canaanite in Matthew and Mark, was one of the Twelve. The names Zealot and Canaanite are the Greek and Aramaic forms of the same word: not 'of Cana' nor 'of Canaan,' but 'the zealous one,' a man who had once belonged, or had at least sympathized, with the party of Jewish patriots who longed for the deliverance of Israel from Rome.

A pious tradition going back to early Christian centuries identifies him with the bridegroom of the wedding at Cana, the first to receive a miraculous sign from the Lord through the request of his Mother. The identification is not given in Scripture, and the Church receives it as devout speculation rather than as a defined memory.

After Pentecost the traditions follow Simon over the widest map of any of the Twelve. The synaxaria send him through Egypt and along the coasts of North Africa to Mauretania and Cyrene; some accounts add a voyage to the west as far as Britain. He returned at last to the East, where he laboured among the Persians and the Iberians of the Caucasus, in some accounts together with the apostle Jude.

He was martyred for the Gospel, the older sources agree, by being sawn asunder. The Orthodox Church keeps his memory on the tenth of May. His relics, divided over many centuries, rest in part at the Vatican Basilica in Rome, and in part at the Iberian monastery of New Athos in Abkhazia, where a cave in which he is said to have lived is shown to pilgrims.