Zosimas of Palestine

Zosimas of Palestine was a monk commemorated as a Palestinian saint, born in the second half of the fifth century during the reign of the Byzantine emperor Theodosius II. He entered a monastery in Palestine while still very young and became known as a great elder and ascetic; at the age of fifty three, then a hieromonk, he moved to a strict monastery in the wilderness near the Jordan River, where he spent the rest of his life. He is best known for his encounter with Mary of Egypt: it was the custom of his monastery for the brethren to withdraw into the desert each year for the forty days of Great Lent, and while wandering there Zosimas met Mary, who told him her life story and asked him to bring her Holy Communion on the banks of the Jordan the following year. He did so, and returning a third year found that she had died, and buried her. Zosimas is reported to have lived to nearly a hundred years old. Everything known of his life comes from the Life of Saint Mary of Egypt, recorded by Sophronius, Patriarch of Jerusalem from 634 to 638, based on oral tradition he had heard from monks in Palestine; the account is traditionally read as part of the Matins of the Great Canon of Andrew of Crete during Lent, and a closely similar story was told in the Western church of Mary Magdalene, with Zosimas renamed Maximin.