Traditional Accounts
Tradition relates that a priest and a deacon named Sozon had quarreled, and that the priest died before the two could be reconciled. Grieving over the unresolved breach, the deacon sought the counsel of an experienced elder, who gave him a letter and instructed him to deliver it at midnight to the first person he met at the church of Hagia Sophia.
The account states that Nicetas the chartularius appeared and received the letter. After reading it he wept, saying that the task was beyond his strength but that, through the prayers of the elder who had sent Sozon, he would attempt it. According to the tradition, the doors of Hagia Sophia, and afterward those of the Church of the Mother of God at Blachernae, opened of themselves, and within Sozon beheld the deceased priest among an assembly of clergy and witnessed his reconciliation. Nicetas then attributed the event to the elder's prayers and faith in God and vanished from sight, his hidden holiness having thereby been disclosed.