Zoe of Attalia
Christian martyr (d. 127 or 137)
Feast: 2 May (not on the universal Roman calendar; kept in the Roman Martyrology or local calendars)
Who they were
At Antalya in Pamphylia, in present-day Turkey, the holy martyrs Hesperus and Zoe, a married couple, and their sons Cyriacus and Theodulus, who, as the story goes, under the emperor Hadrian, being slaves of a pagan, were all, by order of their own master, first beaten and cruelly tortured for having openly professed the Christian faith; finally, thrown into a blazing furnace, they gave up their souls to God.
The miracles
There was never a formal cause: she has been honoured as a saint since before the Church's formal processes began.
Why that counted as sanctity
The Roman Martyrology remembers her on 2 May as a slave martyred with her husband and sons under Hadrian, according to the story told.
Connected on this site
- Exuperius Saint Spouse
- Roman Martyrology, 2 May (Italian Bishops' Conference, Santo del giorno)
- Wikidata Q227105 — dates, feast day and identifiers (CC0)
Checked against the sources listed on 22 September 2026. Corrections welcome.