St Sophronius of Jerusalem

Biography

Born at Damascus about 560, Sophronius the Sophist spent decades in the monasteries of Palestine and Egypt as the companion of John Moschos, who dedicated the Spiritual Meadow to him. When Cyrus of Alexandria proclaimed the Pact of Union of 633 with its formula of one energy in Christ, the aged monk alone pressed the objection, travelling to Alexandria and to Constantinople to plead with Cyrus and with Patriarch Sergius.

Elected Patriarch of Jerusalem in 634, he issued his great Synodical Letter confessing two natural energies in the one Christ, and commissioned Stephen of Dor to carry the appeal to Rome. He shepherded the Holy City through the siege, treated with the Caliph Umar for its surrender in 638, and reposed the same year, before the council that would vindicate him met.

The controversy

• Monoenergism and Monothelitism at their birth: an error not yet named by any council, promoted by the great sees and the court, which Sophronius identified from the received faith and resisted at once.

Position taken

• That the one Christ acts in two natural energies, divine and human, and that the new formula renewed condemned error in fresh words; his Synodical Letter is the first conciliar grade document against it.
• In his pastoral answers he holds the two truths this library holds together: knowing communion with impiety defiles, and the repentant who fell through fear are received back with penance, by arrangement, for their gain.