Zoora

Zoora (Syriac Zʿura), also called Zoora the Stylite, was a Syrian monk and stylite in the Eastern Roman Empire in the 530s, a prominent Miaphysite theologian and a close associate of Severus of Antioch. He is highly venerated in the tradition of the Syriac Orthodox Church, a Church that did not accept the Council of Chalcedon; he is not commemorated in the calendar of the Chalcedonian Churches.

His life is known mainly from the hagiography written by his contemporary John of Ephesus, who probably met him in Constantinople around 536. He came from the region of Amida and received his spiritual training under a certain Habib. Before the Hunnic invasion of 515, in the time of Anastasius I, he ascended a pillar. He was short, and John of Ephesus remarks humorously that his name means "small" in Syriac. He remained a stylite at least until the end of the reign of Justin I, in 527, though the Chalcedonians forced him to come down.

Early in the reign of Justinian I he went to Constantinople with ten disciples. He was renowned, and in Constantinople he had a stormy interview with Justinian, whom he cursed for persecuting his co-⁠believers. Empress Theodora, a Miaphysite, protected him; when Justinian fell ill with a swelling, she had him pray for the emperor and he was reportedly healed. She settled him in the district of Sykai, where he baptized and celebrated the Miaphysite liturgy, otherwise illegal in the empire, and for this reason he was recorded as a priest at the council of 536. He reportedly set up a hundred tables a day to feed the poor and baptized many children of the Imperial Guards.