SOFRONIO, bishop of POMPEIOPOLI. - Homoiousian bishop of the fourth century. According to the catalogues known to Michele Le Quien, S. would be the first known bishop of Pompeiopoli.
Already in 341, during the Council of Antioch, he had distinguished himself by his ardent defense of the term ἐκουσάτος to designate the consubstantiality of the Son with the Father. He is also said to have written a pamphlet which he sent to the emperor Costanzo. The history of the councils recalls his name among the champions of semi-Arianism or alongside that of Silvano of Tarso, with whom he led the delegation
that disputed against the Acacians before the emperor Costanzo; he subscribed the letter to the delegates at Rimini and was deposed at the Synod of Constantinople (560; Teodoreto, Hist. eccl., II, 23). His exclamation is known, uttered during the Council of Seleucia (359), against the assertions of Acacio: “If the strengthening of the faith consisted in allowing each person to express a personal opinion every day, all certainty in the truth would collapse.” He returned to his see after the death of Costanzo and took part in several synods of the Homoiousians, whose doctrine he extolled as the only true one amid the excesses of the Westerners, who, with their “consubstantiality,” would have confused the persons of the Most Holy Trinity, and of the Easterners, who taught that the Son was unlike the Father (Socrate, Hist. eccl., V, 14).