The life of St Sozon of Cilicia
Tradition holds that he was warned in a vision, while resting by a spring, of the martyrdom that awaited him, and afterward he left his flock in another's care and went to the city of Pompeiopolis, grieved by the idolatry he found there.
Entering a pagan temple in secret, Sozon broke the hand from a golden idol and gave the metal to the poor; when the resulting uproar led to the arrest and torture of innocent people, he came forward and confessed what he had done rather than let others suffer for it. The governor Maximian had him tortured at length and finally beaten until he died, around the year 304. Christians recovered his body that night, guided, tradition says, by a light from heaven, and buried him near the spring of his vision, where a church was later raised in his memory.
