Holy Apostle Simon the Zealot
From Cana to the Nations
Passages from the Gospels and tradition
Simon called Zelotes
Editor's note
Two of the Twelve were named Simon, and the Gospels carefully distinguish them: Simon Peter the son of Jonas, and Simon called Zelotes, the Zealot. The Zealots were a party in first-century Judaea who longed for the deliverance of Israel from Roman rule, sometimes by force of arms. The name preserved with Simon suggests that he had once belonged to that party, or at least had shared its fire, before the Lord called him into a kingdom not of this world.
Luke 6:15-16 (KJV)
ScriptureVerbatim Scripture.
Matthew and Thomas, James the son of Alphaeus, and Simon called Zelotes,
And Judas the brother of James, and Judas Iscariot, which also was the traitor.
The long mission
Editor's note
Of all the Twelve, Simon the Zealot is the one whose missionary travels are described over the widest map. The traditions place him at one point or another in Egypt, Cyrene, Mauretania, Britain, Persia, and the Caucasus. The accounts are not always consistent, but they witness to the early Church's memory of a man who never stopped moving and never settled into a quiet see.
He preached, the synaxaria relate, in Egypt and along the coasts of North Africa; then, by some accounts, he sailed as far as Britain; and at last he returned to the East, where he joined the Apostle Jude in the work among the Persians and Armenians.
He was martyred, the older sources agree, by being sawn asunder for the witness of Christ. The Orthodox Church keeps his memory on the tenth of May.