medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Information about Sozon of Pompeiopolis (also S. of Cilicia and S. of Lycaonia), such as it is, comes from a brief pre-metaphrastic Passio (BHG 1643) and from its metaphrastic expansion (BHG 1644), as well as from briefer synaxary accounts that differ from the Passiones in manner of his execution. According to this at least largely legendary tradition Sozon suffered under an historically unattested governor of Cilicia named Maximianus or Maximus, the persecutor in the likewise legendary Passiones of the also Cilician martyrs Calliopius, Doulas, and Tarachus, Probus, and Andronicus. None of these texts specifies, either by an emperor's name or by some other ready indication, a greater persecution in which this Cilician one will have taken place.
According to his Passiones Sozon (whose name means "Savior" and who is also known as Sozontius and as Sostis or Sostes) was a devoutly Christian shepherd in Lycaonia. Having received a vision foretelling his martyrdom, he went to nearby Pompeiopolis in Cilicia, entered a temple at which festivities were soon to take place, broke off a hand from its golden cult statue, sold this object and used the proceeds to benefit the poor. Sozon's guilt was not immediately discovered but when others were falsely accused he came forward and confessed his deed. After his trial, Sozon was taken to the amphitheater, was forced to walk there with nails driven through the soles of his shoes, observed bravely to his persecutor that his shoes were a finer red than that worthy's cloak, and then was executed by fire. According to the synaxary accounts, after the torment of the nailed shoes Sozon was strung up on a tree and beaten to death.
Sozon's feast on 7. September is recorded in the early (pre-Byzantine) liturgical calendar from Palestine preserved in a Georgian-language version in the tenth-century _Codex sinaiticus_ 34. He has the first entry under this day in the originally tenth-century Synaxary of Constantinople and he is the saint of the day for 7. September in the likewise originally tenth-century Metaphrastic Menologion. With some exceptions (e.g. 6. September at his churches on Sifnos and on Tinos) modern Byzantine Rite churches also celebrate Sozon on 7. September. In the Roman Rite today (7. September) is his day of commemoration in the Roman Martyrology.
Some period-pertinent images of St. Sozon of Pompeiopolis:
a) as twice depicted (torture by nailed boots and by suspension from a tree) in the late tenth- or very early eleventh-century so-called Menologion of Basil II (Città del Vaticano, BAV, cod. Vat. gr. 1613, p. 20):
http://tinyurl.com/jb4n33c
b) as depicted (martyrdom by clubbing) in an illuminated eleventh-century copy of the September portion of the Metaphrastic Menologion (London, BL, MS Add 11870, fol. 74r):
www.bl.uk/manuscripts/Viewer.aspx?ref=add_ms_11870_f074r
c) as depicted (at left; at right, St. Gerontius) in the earlier fourteenth-century frescoes (betw. ca. 1312 and 1321/1322) in the north-east little dome of the monastery church of the Theotokos at Gračanica in, depending on one's view of the matter, either Serbia's province of Kosovo and Metohija or the Republic of Kosovo:
http://tinyurl.com/3bsslyn
d) as depicted (at left; at right, St. Hippolytus, bp. of Rome) in the earlier fourteenth-century frescoes (betw. ca. 1312 and 1321/1322) in the south-east little dome of the monastery church of the Theotokos at Gračanica in, depending on one's view of the matter, either Serbia's province of Kosovo and Metohija or the Republic of Kosovo:
http://tinyurl.com/3jnm2as
e) as depicted (lower register in the panel at upper right; martyrdom by stoning [a stoner is shown at upper left]) in an earlier fourteenth-century pictorial menologion from Thessaloniki (betw. 1322 and 1340; Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Gr. th. f. 1, fol. 8r):
http://image.ox.ac.uk/images/bodleian/msgrthf1/8r.jpg
f) as depicted in the earlier fourteenth-century frescoes (betw. 1335 and 1350) of the nave in the church of the Holy Ascension at the Visoki Dečani monastery near Peć in, depending on one's view of the matter, either the Republic of Kosovo or Serbia's province of Kosovo and Metohija:
http://tinyurl.com/3uyo5xc
g) as depicted (upper roundel) in a mid-fourteenth-century fresco in the church of the Holy Apostles in the Patriarchate of Peć at Peć in, depending on one's view of the matter, either the Republic of Kosovo or Serbia's province of Kosovo and Metohija:
http://tinyurl.com/2cptmk8
h) as depicted in a mid-fourteenth-century fresco (1359/1360) in the church of the Taxiarches of the Metropolis in Kastoria (Kastoria prefecture) in northwestern Greece:
http://tinyurl.com/3geo7lm
Best,
John Dillon
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