Holy Hierarch Sophronius the Patriarch of Jerusalem

Sophronius was born in Damascus and was so well educated that he was called the Sophist. With the monk John Moschus he travelled for years among the monasteries of Palestine, Syria and Egypt, collecting the sayings and stories of the monks that became the book called The Spiritual Meadow. In Alexandria the two helped Patriarch John the Merciful, and there Sophronius became a monk.

Chosen patriarch of Jerusalem in 634, he opposed the teaching of a single will in Christ (Monothelitism) and set out his position in a synodal letter later read at the Sixth Ecumenical Council. Tradition also credits him with the Life of Mary of Egypt. After a long siege he negotiated the surrender of Jerusalem to the caliph Umar in 637–638, and died soon afterwards, c. 638.