Zosimas the Soldier
The Holy Martyr Zosimas the Soldier, of Apollonia, who suffered at Antioch of Pisidia
Martyr · d. c. 116, at Antioch of Pisidia
Commemorated 19 June — Beheaded under Trajan after the trial at Antioch of Pisidia
Zosimas was a soldier of the Roman army, a native of Apollonia in Thrace, who in the persecution under Trajan laid down his arms, was baptised, and gave himself to prayer and the care of the poor. Brought to trial at Antioch of Pisidia, he refused to sacrifice and was tortured with a deliberate cruelty aimed at a soldier's body — laid on a bed of heated copper, shod in iron sandals driven through with nails, and starved in prison — and was at last beheaded, about the year 116. His memory is a synaxarion notice of a few lines, kept on June 19 under the office of the Apostle Jude.
The soldier who left the ranks
The record of Zosimas is short and is transmitted only in the calendars. He came from Apollonia, a town of Thrace, which is why the Slavonic books style him Аполлониадский, "of Apollonia"; the Greek books call him simply ὁ στρατιώτης, "the soldier," which is the whole of his biography before his confession. He served in the armies of Trajan (98–117), an emperor whose reign the hagiographers remember not for a general edict of persecution but for the policy set out in his rescript to Pliny — that Christians were not to be hunted down, but that those denounced and convicted were to be punished. It is that policy, and not a systematic search, that the passions of this period generally presuppose.
What Zosimas did was therefore not to be caught but to declare himself. The notice says that when the persecution touched his province he forsook the military, received baptism, and turned to prayer and works of mercy — the sequence matters, since it makes his soldiering and his Christianity successive rather than simultaneous, and puts him among the soldier-martyrs who resigned rather than the ones seized in the ranks.
Trial and martyrdom at Antioch
He was arrested and brought to Antioch of Pisidia — the Antioch of the Galatian highlands, where Paul and Barnabas had preached in the synagogue (Acts 13), and not the great Syrian Antioch. There he was required to sacrifice to the idols and refused.
The tortures the notice records are of the kind reserved for a man being made an example of to his former comrades:
- he was laid upon a bed of copper heated red-hot, and the fire is said not to have harmed him;
- he was shod in iron sandals whose nails had been driven through so that the points stood up inside, and made to walk in them;
- he was shut in prison and deprived of food and water, and the tradition relates that an angel sustained him there.
Unmoved by any of it, and still refusing to sacrifice, he was at last taken out and beheaded. The year is given as about 116, at the end of Trajan's reign.
Feast and commemoration
June 19 (church date; Old Calendar civil July 2). He is a synaxarion commemoration of the day, without proper hymns; the service belongs to the Apostle Jude. He is kept in the Greek, Slavonic and Antiochian books alike, and appears in the OCA's list for the day as "Martyr Zosimus the Soldier at Antioch, in Pisidia."
Hymns
Apolytikion — Tone 4 (common of a martyr)
Thy martyr Zosimas, O Lord, in his contest received an incorruptible crown from Thee, our God; for possessing Thy strength, he cast down the tyrants and shattered the feeble insolence of the demons. By his intercessions save our souls.
Iconography
Zosimas is shown as a young or middle-aged martyr in military dress — the short tunic, cuirass and cloak of a Roman soldier — holding the martyr's cross, and sometimes with the sword laid down or held reversed to signify the arms he resigned before his baptism. Where his passion is illustrated, the distinguishing instruments are the bed of glowing copper and the nailed iron sandals, the two torments that belong to him alone among the martyrs named Zosimas. In the menologia he appears in the crowded June rank of martyrs, unlabelled except by the inscription.
No pre-1900 image of him alone has been located for this collection. The Menologion of Basil II, which supplies the standard miniature for minor martyrs of this class, covers only September to February and cannot serve a June commemoration; the Menologion's Zosimas miniature belongs to the Cilician hermit of September 19 and must not be used here.
Disputed questions
- Not to be confused with the hermits named Zosimas, and above all with Zosimas of Cilicia (September 19, with a second commemoration on January 4) — the confusion most likely to occur, since both are martyrs named Zosimas whose whole record is a synaxarion notice, both suffer in the south-eastern provinces, and both die under interrogation by a Roman governor. They are distinct: this Zosimas was a soldier of Apollonia in Thrace, baptised after leaving the army, tried at Antioch of Pisidia under Trajan in the early second century and beheaded; the Cilician Zosimas was a fourth-century hermit who lived among wild beasts, was discovered by the governor Dometian while hunting, and is remembered for the lion that lifted the stone from his neck. Neither passion borrows an incident from the other; only the name and the form of the notice are shared. He is further to be distinguished from Zosimas of Babylon (June 4), the Cilician who became bishop of Babylon in Egypt and reposed in peace on Sinai, and from the hermits Zosimas of Palestine (April 4) and Zosimas of Solovki (April 17).
- The two Antiochs. The trial belongs to Antioch of Pisidia, as the Greek and Slavonic notices specify. English lists that shorten the title to "Zosimas of Antioch" invite confusion with the Syrian city and with the martyrs of its persecutions; the qualification is therefore kept in the official name here.
- Century. The Russian calendar assigns him to the second century, which the reign of Trajan requires (he died in 117); the round date "c. 116" is the calendars' own and should be read as an approximation.