Sophia. This name occurs frequenth- in the cata- logues of saints and martyrs of the ancient Church, but in no instance with historical authentication.
1. A Christian widow, living at Rome under Hadrian, about A.D. 120, with her daughters Fides, Spes, and Charitas. Accused before the pnefect Antiochus. they made joj'ous confession of their faith. The daughters were condemned to be thrown into a fire of pitch and sulphur, but as they remained uninjured in the tire, they were taken out and beheaded. The mother was tem- porarily released, and buried her children, but after three days she, too, sealed her faith with lier blood. Her day is Sept. 30, or, according to other authorities, Aug. 1. The legend is found in Simeon Metaphrastes and later collections (ap. Lipom. torn, vi ; ap. Sur. torn, iv; Jlombrit, tom. ii; Acta iSS. ad 30 Sept.).
2. A virgin martyred under Decius at Fermo, in Picenum, April 30, and buried in the church of that town. The Fusli \Vestphuli(f, however, commemorate a Sophia on the same day at Minden (^ilartyr. Rom. [ed. Baron.]; Ferrarlus, in Catul. iSiS.; comp. .4c^a iS'-S'. ad 30 April).
3. Mentioned in Roman {Mmiyrol. Rom. [ed. Baron.]) and Greek {Menolog. Sirktian.) lists as having been be- headed at Milan, Sept. 18.
4. An Egyptian, whose daughters were named Diba- mona and Bistamona [Fasli llubcssinorum), and with whom were associated a St. Varsenopha and her mother. Their natalities are assigned to June 4 (^Ada ISS.), their time is uncertain.
5. Sophia Senulrix, a nun of ^nos, in Thrace, the widow of a senator at Constantinople, who returned to Thrace after the death of her six children in order to devote herself exclusively to works of Christian love. She died June 4, in the lOtii or 11th century. The Ada SS. ad h. d. furnish a brief description of her life in Greek, taken from a Synaxarium Dicionense. — Her- zog, Real-Eiicyklop. s. v.
Sophists is a title given to the leading public teachers in ancient Greece during the 5th and 4th cen- turies B.C. The most noted of these were Gorgias of Leontium and Protagoras of Abdera. The foundation of their doctrine was laid in scepticism, absolute truth being denied, and only relative truths being admitted as existing for man. (iorgias attacked the existence of the finite, but at the same time he maintained that all notion of the infinite is unattainable by the human understanding. He expressed his nihilism in three jirincipal propositions: («) nothing exists; (J) if any- thing existed, it would be unknowable; (c) if anything existed and were knowablc, the knowledge of it coukl,
nevertheless, not be communicated to others. The doc- trine of Protagoras was that the phenomena both of ex- ternal nature and of the processes of mind are so fluctu- ating and variable that certain knowledge is unattain- able. He held that nothing at any time exists, but is always in a state of becoming. Man, he declared, is the measure of all things. Just as each thing appears to each man, so it is for him. All truth is relative. The existence of the gods, even, is uncertain. Thus this leading sophist succeeded in annihilating both existence and knowledge. He founded virtue on a sense of shame and a feeling of justice seated in the human con!*titu- tit)n. The sophists made use of their dialectic subtle- ties as a source of amusement, as well as intellectual ex- ercise, to the youth of Greece. They were opposed by Socrates (q. v.) and Plato, and Aristotle defines a sophist as " an imposturous pretender to knowledge — a man who employs what he knows to be fallacy for the jnirpose of deceit and of getting money." Mr. Grote contends that, so far from this being true, the morality of the Athenian public was greath- improved at the end of the 5th cen- tury as compared with the beginning of the century.
Sophoni'as (Sop/wnias), a Greek (or rather Latin) form (2 Esdr. i, 40) of the name of the prophet Zepha- NIAH (q. v.).
Sophronius, 1. A contemporary and friend of Jerome in Palestine about the close of the 4th century. He would seem to have been a Greek, who composed original works, and also translated a portion of , Jerome's Latin version of the Scriptures into Greek. He is men- tioned in the De I'iris JUiistr. c. 134. See Cave, Be Script. Eccl. p. 236; Fabric. Bibl. Eccl. p. 11 ; Vallarsii 0pp. Ilieron. (ed. Alt,), II, ii, 818; Fabric. Bibl. Grac. (ed. Harl.), ix, 158; Schrockh, Kirchengesck. ii. 132.
2. A monk of Damascus, who was termed a scholar or sophist, and who became patriarch of Jerusalem in A.D. 634. He opposed the endeavors of Cyrus, pa- triarch of Alexandria, to secure the general acceptance of Monothelite views, and though temporaril}- induced, in a conference with Sergius, patriarch of Constantino- ple, and with Cyrus, to consent to the phrase BearSpiKi) ivipyua without insisting further on the consequences therefrom in favor of a ilnal nature in Christ, he refused to be intimidated after he became patriarch. In a cir- cular letter addressed to Sergius and Honorius of Rome, he gave a detailed exposition of the doctrine of Christ's person, and demanded that no further concessions should be made to INIonothelitism. The emperor Heraclius is- sued his edict Ecthenis (q. v.) in 638 with the design of putting an end to the discussion; and as Jerusalem had fallen into the possession of the Saracens two years earlier, Sophronius was no longer able to bring any considerable influence to the support of his cause. The epistold en- cyclica referred to above is given in Hardouin, A eta Cone. iii, 1258, 1315 {Cone. (Ecumen. vi, 11 et Ada 12). The work by Joannes Moschus, Pratum Spirituale ( Atipilji' IlvfvpaTiKoc), is frequently cited under the name of Sophronius. It was perhaps dedicated to Moschus, or composed by Sophronius and Moschus together. Sev- eral additional writings by Sophronius exist in !JIS. or in Latin editions (comp. Cave, De Script. Eccl. p. 451 ; Walch, Gesch. d. Ketzereien, ix, 17, 37, 115 sq. ; Nean- der, Kirchengesck. iii, 248). The Menologium Grwcornm (Urbini, 1727) cites this Sophronius as a saint, and fixes his day on IMarch 1 1 .