7 May 2021 10:01am
The feast day of Zoodohou Pigis, life-giving spring, is celebrated on the Friday after Orthodox Easter. Those who are named Zoe, Zissis, Ziggy, Zoyia, Pigi, Peggy and other derivatives of this name celebrate their name day today.
The Mother of God of the Life-giving Spring or Life-giving Font (Ζωοδόχος Πηγή) is an epithet of the Holy Theotokos that originated with her revelation of a sacred spring in Baloukli, Constantinople, to a soldier named Leo Marcellus, who later became Byzantine Emperor Leo I.
The traditional account surrounding the feast of the Life-Giving Spring is recorded by Nikephoros Kallistos Xanthopoulos, the last of the Greek ecclesiastical historians circa 1320. It begins with a miracle that occurred involving a soldier named Leo Marcellus, the future Byzantine Emperor Leo I.