Suggest an Edit — Zacharia

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Biography

Short Description

The single name Zacharia, given here without a Wikidata identifier, a Wikipedia article, a see, a century, or any other stable epithet, cannot be matched to one historical person with the certainty a biographical record requires. In Christian history and hagiography the name appears in several well-attested but mutually exclusive forms: the post-exilic prophet Zechariah; the priest Zechariah, father of John the Baptist; Pope Zachary (Zacharias) of Rome; Patriarch Zacharias of Jerusalem; and the Coptic Pope Zacharias of Alexandria. Assigning the present query to any one of these lives would be a guess. Guesses are excluded, and fields that cannot be verified for a uniquely identified subject are therefore left blank.

The prophet associated with the Book of Zechariah was active in Judah in the late sixth century BCE, in the generation of the return from Babylonian exile and the rebuilding of the Temple. The New Testament priest Zechariah, of the priestly division of Abijah, is described in the Gospel of Luke as the husband of Elizabeth and the father of John the Baptist; he is commemorated on 5 September in the Roman Martyrology and on corresponding dates in Eastern calendars. For neither figure does independent historical evidence establish a year of birth, a precise birthplace beyond the general region of Judah, or a documented burial site that can be verified outside the scriptural and liturgical tradition.

Pope Zachary, a Greek by origin from Calabria, was bishop of Rome from 741 until his death in 752. Near-contemporary sources record his correspondence with Saint Boniface, his negotiations with the Lombard kings, and his role in acknowledging Pepin the Short as king of the Franks. He died in Rome and was buried at Saint Peter’s. His cult is ancient; eighth-century popes were not put through the later formal process of canonization. A year of birth is not securely documented in the sources and is not supplied here. This Roman pope is not the same person as the Jerusalem patriarch or the Alexandrian pope of the same name.

Patriarch Zacharias of Jerusalem held that see in the early seventh century. After the Persian capture of Jerusalem in 614 he was taken into exile together with the relic of the True Cross and was later restored; he died in the 630s. The Coptic Pope Zacharias, sixty-fourth patriarch of Alexandria, governed the Coptic Church in the early eleventh century under Fatimid rule and is remembered in Coptic synaxaria. These two prelates were patriarchs, and the Alexandrian was a Coptic pope, but they are historically distinct from one another and from the Roman pope and the biblical figures.

Because the query does not distinguish among these persons, no year of birth or death, no city or country of birth or death, no burial place, no list of patronages, and no names of canonizing or beatifying authorities are entered. Married status and children likewise cannot be stated for an unidentified subject: the New Testament priest was married and had a son, while the medieval popes and patriarchs of this name belonged to celibate hierarchies. A complete hagiographical notice would require at least one stable identifier—an episcopal see, a clearly attested feast, or a catalogue number—before any of those particulars could be given as fact.

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