Saint Sophronius of Jerusalem

Saint Sophronius was a monk, theologian, and poet, and from 634 the bishop of Jerusalem. He defended the faith in the true humanity of Christ and led his people through the Arab siege of the city. The Church commemorates him on March 11.

He came from Damascus. The year of his birth is not known; dates around 550 or 560 are given. Most scholars identify him with the Sophronius known as the Sophist, a teacher of rhetoric. At the Monastery of Saint Theodosius near Jerusalem he met the monk John Moschus. The Roman Martyrology calls Moschus his teacher and friend.

For many years they together visited monks and hermits in Egypt, on Sinai, and in Palestine, and Sophronius himself became a monk. In Alexandria they assisted the patriarch, Saint John the Almsgiver. There too, as the Lives relate, Sophronius was healed of a disease of the eyes at the tomb of the holy martyrs Cyrus and John, and in gratitude he wrote an account of their miracles. When the Persians captured Jerusalem in 614, the two friends made their way to Rome. Moschus dedicated to Sophronius the “Spiritual Meadow” (Pratum spirituale), a collection of stories about the monks of the East. After his master’s death Sophronius buried him at the Monastery of Saint Theodosius.

In 633, in Alexandria, he opposed the formula of Patriarch Cyrus, which, for the sake of reconciliation with the Monophysites, spoke of only one operation in Christ. He pleaded in vain for its withdrawal with Sergius, Patriarch of Constantinople. In 634 he was elected bishop of Jerusalem after Modestus. In his synodical letter to the other patriarchs he set out the teaching on two operations and two wills in Christ, the divine and the human. On Calvary he made Bishop Stephen of Dora swear to go to Rome and ask the Apostolic See to settle the dispute.

His years as bishop coincided with the Arab invasion of Palestine. In his sermon for Christmas 634 he lamented that the faithful could not go to Bethlehem as usual, since it was cut off by the Saracens. When, after a long siege, the defense of Jerusalem became impossible, he negotiated with Caliph Umar the surrender of the city in exchange for the safety of its inhabitants and freedom of worship for Christians. The sources most often date this to 637 or 638. Sophronius died soon afterward, most probably on March 11, 638, although some works give the year 639.

He left lives of saints, odes for the Christian feasts, and sermons, passages of which the Church still reads in the Liturgy of the Hours, among other days on the feast of the Presentation of the Lord. In 649 the teaching of a single will in Christ, known as Monothelitism, was condemned by the Lateran synod presided over by Pope Saint Martin I. The Third Council of Constantinople, meeting in 680 and 681, recognized the synodical letter of Sophronius as in accord with the apostolic faith and ordered his name to be inscribed in the diptychs. Sophronius lived long before the canonization process came into being and has been venerated as a saint for long centuries in both East and West.