ON SAINT JOHN,
SEVENTH BISHOP OF JERUSALEM.
YEAR 116.
Historical Compilation about his age, virtue, cult.
John, VII Bishop of Jerusalem (S.)
D. P.
The Chronological History of the Bishops and Patriarchs of Jerusalem, collected by me and prefixed to Tome III of May, after S. Justus, third Bishop of Jerusalem (whose three years of possessed See Eusebius ends in the 14th year of Trajan the Emperor, He lived to the 19th year of Trajan: of Christ 111) we have listed four successors, all Saints, Zacchaeus, Tobias, Benjamin, and John, who held the same See one after another, only for five years; for S. Epiphanius brings the last of them down only to the 19th year of Trajan, which is the 116th of the Christian common era. So rapid a succession of many we must not impute to the persecution, which Trajan, moved by the letters of Pliny, had caused to cease: but rather because those alone were elected, whose age was so great, that they had still seen Christ in the flesh, or touched Him by some kinship.
[2] Theodoric Pauli, from the monuments of that Church received I know not whence, his praise in Theodoric Pauli. in his Ms. Chronicle with us so praises him: "John the Saint, seventh Patriarch, substituted for Saint Benjamin, governing happily the helm of the Church of Jerusalem, augmented the divine cult through all Judea, most constantly preaching the Gospel openly to all. At length full of virtues, and bright with the glory of miracles, he rested in Christ. Whose feast is venerated …" The day unknown to Theodoric, the Author of the Florarium Ms. attempting to supply, fixes August 23 but as if uncertain of his opinion, in the Index of Saints he notes May 10.
[3] A more certain leader and witness here shows himself to us, the Anonymous Abyssinian, from the Calendars of the Alexandrian Church, in his Metric Hagiology thus saluting the same John. "I bid salutation to John the perfect, Cult day preserved among the Abyssinians, Bishop of Jerusalem: who leaving the greatness and glory of this world, without measure and limit distributed alms to the poor; so that at the time of his death, not even a single drachma was found with him."
[4] Then only 44 years had passed from the destruction of the city, accomplished by Titus; from which those disciples of Christ who had withdrawn, with the Romans departed, returning to the sad ruins of their fatherland, profuse liberality toward the poor commended. established indeed a sufficiently numerous Church, but nearly poor; in which yet that there were some more wealthy, and among these this John or his parents, nothing prohibits believing; that he could and did rather from his own resources than from the Church's beneficently do good to the needy Brethren, and could even on that account have been judged worthy of the Episcopate, like by name so also by deed about to give a famous example to that one too, called also "the Almsgiver" John, Patriarch of the Alexandrian Church, almost 500 years after his death; whose Life Henschenius illustrated on the 23rd of January; and in which no. 90 is read that, about to make a Testament, he blessed God, that of eighty hundredweights of gold, found when he undertook the Episcopate, only one tremissis was found remaining, just as he had long ago wished.