Zosimos of Apollonia-Sozopolis

Saint Zosimos of Apollonia-Sozopolis, a soldier who was reputedly martyred in the ancient region of Pisidia (SW Turkey) during the reign of the emperor Trajan (98-117 AD) after resigning from the Roman army to become a Christian, is a relatively unknown saint celebrated by the Greek Orthodox Church on the 19th of June. In modern scholarship, he is discussed as a soldier who originated from ancient Apollonia Pontica - Sozopolis in the Roman province of Thracia on the western Black Sea coast, and resigned from the Roman army in Pisidia, where he was martyred. This characterisation of Zosimos as a Thracian soldier is a case of mixed identities, or better, of mixed origins. It is the aim of this article to demonstrate that the Apollonia/Sozopolis referred to in the sources concerning the saint is not the Bulgarian city of Sozopol where the saint is still worshipped today but the homonymous city located in the northwestern part of ancient Pisidia in modern Turkey. A textual analysis of the Passio of Zosimos will offer several indications for this. The article also looks for the origins of the Passio of Zosimos: several elements mentioned in the text demonstrate that the account of the saint’s martyrdom was most probably a late antique construct, part of the abundance of hagiographical texts produced in late antiquity. It may have been composed to emphasize the position of Apollonia-Sozopolis as a major centre of early Christianity within the province of Pisidia during the 5th and early 6th centuries. There is subsequent evidence for the veneration of Zosimos at Gračanica in Kosovo and at Sozopol in Bulgaria, and the paper will try to establish why the cult of this Pisidian saint eventually came to be centred at Sozopol in Bulgaria, where he is still the object of veneration today.