Category: Announcements

Agapius now begins the events of the reign of the emperor Maurice.  This chunk ends with an oriental tale, with which authors of histories of that period evidently were obliged to lace their narratives. 

17. Then Justin the Younger, King of Rum, died.  After him there reigned over Rum Tiberius, for four years.  This happened in the third year of the reign of Hurmuz, son of Anushirwān, king of the Persians.  In the first year of the reign of Tiberius, King of Rum, there was made patriarch of Constantinople Cyriacus.  He held the office for sixteen years and died.  In the second year of his reign there was made patriarch of Jerusalem Anus.  He held the office for eight years and died.

18. Tiberius, King of Rum, died.  After him there reigned over Rum Maurice, for twenty years.  This happened in the seventh year of the reign of Hurmuz, son of Anushirwān, king of the Persians.  In the time of Maurice, King of Rum, there lived a monk named Marun, who claimed that Christ, our Lord, has two natures, one will, one operation and only one person, so corrupting the doctrine of the people.  Most of those who followed this doctrine and became his disciples were inhabitants of the city of Hamah, of Qinnisrīn, al-‘Awāsim and a large number of the people of the land of Rum.  His followers and those who professed the doctrine were called Maronites, named after Marun.  After the death of Marun, the inhabitants of Hamah constructed at Hamah a monastery, calling it “Dayr Marun”, and they embraced the religion of Marun.

19. In the fifth year of the reign of Maurice, there was at Antioch a terrible and violent earthquake.  A great part of the city of Antioch was destroyed and the inhabitants perished.  In the nineteenth year of his reign there was another violent earthquake in the land of Rum and in Syria, about the third hour of the day.  Many cities in Syria and in the land of ​​Rum were destroyed, and many people died because of the earthquake.  In the seventh year of the reign of Maurice, king of Rum, there was made patriarch of Jerusalem Isaac.  He held the office for eight years and died.  That same year died Gregory, Patriarch of Antioch.  The inhabitants of Antioch then went to Jerusalem to look for a man to designate as their patriarch.  Isaac, patriarch of Jerusalem, said to them: “For my part I would suggest this old sexton who serves at the Church of the Resurrection”.  They found him easily, and they undertook to bring him to Antioch.  Then [the old man] said to them: “Do you not recognize me?”  They answered no.  And he said to them: “I am Anastasius, and I was your patriarch.  But having been accused of fornication, I fled away from you and since then I have looked after the Church of the Resurrection service, after I buried my garments in such a place in Antioch.”  He led them to Antioch, took them to the place where he had buried his clothes, unearthed them and was restored to office.  He was their patriarch for nine years and died.

20. In the seventeenth year of the reign of Maurice another Anastasius was made patriarch of Antioch.  He held the office for six years and died.  After the death of Anastasius the see of Antioch remained without a Patriarch for twenty-two years.  In the fifteenth year of the reign of Maurice there was made patriarch of Jerusalem Zechariah.  He held the office for seven years and was exiled.  In the fifth year of the reign of Maurice there was made patriarch of Rome Gregory.  He held the office for thirteen years and died.  In the eighteenth year of his reign there was made patriarch of Rome Sabinianus.  He held the office for a year and died.  In the nineteenth year of the reign of Maurice there was made patriarch of Rome Boniface.  He held the office for six years and died.  In the fourteenth year of his reign there was made patriarch of Constantinople Thomas.  He held the office for fourteen years and died.  In the second year of his reign there was made patriarch of Alexandria Eulogius.  He held the office for twenty years and died (In another text it says “for two years”).

21. In the time of King Maurice there lived a robber from the city of Ifrīqiyah, the head of a gang of robbers, who preyed on and killed anyone who came into his hands.  The ways were so unsafe that no-one dared to walk the streets of the city of Ifrīqiyah for fear of this robber.  Under intense pressure, the patrician of Ifrīqiyah resorted to every means and even ruses  to catch the robber, but his efforts were in vain.  Hearing about this, the king Maurice sent one of his men to offer the robber a safe conduct.  He accepted it and went to the king Maurice who was very generous towards him, filled him with honors and gave him a high position.  After a short time the robber fell ill and was admitted into the sanatorium which was in the city of Constantinople.  One night, prostrate with grief that afflicted him, and convinced that he was about to die and appear before his Lord, gracious and merciful to his worshipers, he began to cry and to raise supplication, saying: “My Lord, as you received the tears of Peter and forgave him, as you have received the tears of Hezekiah, and as you received the thief who was crucified with you, so also receive my tears and erases with them my sins.  Please, in your great mercy receive my prayer!”  So he is saying he wiped his eyes with the cloth that he had on his face.  For hours the robber continued to invoke his Lord and to confess his sins.  Then he gave up his spirit.  There was a man in Constantinople, who was among the most distinguished, charitable and virtuous doctors, who used to visit the sick every day in the sanatorium.  Now, while he was sleeping in his house, he saw in a dream, at the same time as when the robber died, a troop of negroes approach the bed of the robber, carrying with them several sheets on which were written in detail the sins that he had committed.  Then he saw two men, whose faces shone white as snow and as beautiful as the sun, who carried with them a set of scales.  The negroes came forward, and they laid on the balance all the sheets so that one side rose and the other went down under the weight.  Then one of the white men said to his companion: “We have nothing to do here.”  And the other replied: “What can we do, in fact, if it is not even ten days since he stopped robbing?”  But then they began to rummage in his bed, and they found the cloth with which he wiped his eyes, and they threw it on the plate.  The empty plate sank down and the other rose, on which were the sheets, and they were all scattered.  Then they cried out, and said: “He won the mercy of God!” and so saying, they took the soul [of that robber] and took him away with them, while the negroes, confused and sad, fled.  The doctor awoke, immediately went to the robber and found him dead with a cloth over his eyes.  Those who slept next to the robber reported that they had heard his crying out and his prayers.  The doctor then took the cloth, was received by the King, showed it to him and told him about what he had seen in his dream and what he had heard from those who slept next to the robber.  Then the doctor said to the king: “Praise be to God who welcomed the robber, thanks to your good offices, and forgave his sins, just as he did with the first thief on the cross.  This in fact was the first, and that the second.”

The reign of Justinian continues, and after him Justin II.  We have two extracts from the lost Sassanid Persian chronicle that Eutychius has in Arabic translation.  The Persian chronicler was plainly very well-disposed towards the next Sassanid Persian king, Anūshirwān.

13. Qabād died.The years when Qabād reigned, together with the years in which Rāmāsf reigned, were around forty.  After him reigned his son Kisra, son of Qabād, called Anūshirwān.  He reigned for forty-seven years and six months.  This happened in the fourth year of the reign of Justinian, king of Rum.  Kisra ordered that the leaders of the Mazdeans should be expelled from his realm.  He confiscated the goods, which they had illegally seized, and returned them to their owners, preserving for himself the goods of those who had no heirs, and repaired what they had damaged and rebuilt what had been destroyed.  He interested himself in those whose houses and farms had beene extorted from them, and gave them back their own.  To those who had taken a woman by force he ordered them give her twice her dowry, unless, being fully satisfied, he took her as his wife.  And if she had a husband, he was to give him the equivalent of the dowry that the woman had at the time of the wedding.  If necessary he made him marry the woman.  What prompted him to set aside the punishment for those who had been guilty of crimes was the fact that he had at heart the good of the people and he did not like to treat anyone in a way that rendered them hostile.  He ordered a census of the families of nobles and aristocrats who, having lost those who supported them, had fallen into poverty; gave to their orphans and their widows what they needed,   to teach their children the arts for which they were fit and to give their daughters in marriage to rich people equal to them.  Also he showed interest in houses and land whose owners were no longer able to maintain them, for lack of means, and dug irrigation canals and waterways, so as to make the water flow in the rivers, and provided their owners the money needed to purchase seeds and livestock.  He went visiting the villages that had been destroyed and built formidable fortresses.  Then he chose ministers, prefects and judges and transferred them into the provinces.  He published the books of Azdashīr which contained the teachings which had inspired his own conduct, and urged the people to do the same, sending letters in this regard into all the provinces.  In the ninth year of his reign, in the twelfth year of the reign of Justinian, king of Rum, he went to Antioch at the head of his soldiers.  At Antioch he found the soldiers of Justinian, king of the Rum.  He fought against them and captured the city.  He then ordered a map of the city to be made, respecting the measure, the number of dwellings, in height and depth, of the streets and all that was there.  He sent a copy to his lieutenant of Ctesiphon, and ordered him to build him a city of the same shape and construction so that the eye would not notice any difference between it and Antioch.  The city was built, called ar-Rūmiyah, and he transfered the population of Antioch to live there.  When they arrived and passed the gate of the city, each family found a house very similar to the one left, and they all had the feeling of simply being returned to the Antioch that they had left.

14. In the thirtieth year of the reign of Justinian, king of Rum, there was made patriarch of Rome Pelagius.  He held the office for four years and died.  In the thirty-fifth year of his reign there was made patriarch of Rome, John.  He held the office for twelve years and died.  In the thirtieth year of his reign there was made patriarch of Antioch Anastasius the Great.  He had held the seat for six years when the inhabitants of Antioch accused him of fornication.  Anastasius fled, he took his clothes that he used to wear to celebrate mass and buried them.  In disguise he went to Jerusalem and took refuge in the Church of the Resurrection, where he had the task of lighting the candlesticks.  He remained as sacristan at the Church of the Resurrection, with the task of lighting the candlesticks, for twenty-four years, and no one ever knew that he was a patriarch.  In his place there was made Patriarch of Antioch Gregory.  He held the office for twenty-four years and died.  In the twenty-ninth year of the reign of Justinian there was made patriarch of Jerusalem, Macarius II.  He held the office for four years and died.  In the thirty-third year of his reign there was made Patriarch of Jerusalem John.  He held the office for ten years and he died.  In twenty-eighth year of his reign he was told that Eutychius, Patriarch of Constantinople, had denied the truth and had become a Jacobite.  He deposed him, and made patriarch of Constantinople, in his place, John.  He held the office for seven years and died.  After Eutychius, the patriarch of Constantinople who had been removed, the ministers and generals of the king were commissioned to plead his case to the king, and to ask him to reinstate him in his office, because what had been said about him were simply lies.  The king then reinstated him in the patriarchal office and he ruled for four years until he died.  In the thirty-ninth year of his reign there was made patriarch of Constantinople John.  He held the office for thirteen years and died.  Also Apollinaris, Patriarch of Alexandria, was patriarch for nineteen years and died.  In his thirteenth year in office he had a place on the Fifth Council.  After him there was made patriarch of Alexandria John.  He was a Manichaean.  He held the office for three years and died.  In the thirty-seventh year of the reign of Justinian there was made patriarch of Alexandria Peter. He was a Jacobite.  He held the office for two years and died.  King Justinian was of the Orthodox faith, loving the good, hater of the doctrine of the Jacobites and a tenacious advocate of the doctrine of the Melkites.

15. The king Justinian died after a reign of thirty-nine years.  After him reigned over Rum, for thirteen years, Justin the Younger.  This happened in the thirty-seventh year of the reign of Kisra, son of Qabād, king of the Persians.  Justin the Younger was also of the Orthodox faith, a champion of good, hater of the doctrine of the Jacobites and Nestorians and lover of the doctrine of the Melkites.  In the first year of his reign there was made patriarch of Alexandria Athanasius.  He was a Manichaean.  He held the office for five years and he died.  In the sixth year of his reign there was made patriarch of Alexandria John the Just.  He held the office for eleven years and died.  In the eighth year of his reign there was made patriarch of Rome Benedict.  He held the office for four years and died.  In the twelfth year of his reign there was made patriarch of Rome Pelagius.  He held the office for six years and died.

16. As for Kisra, son of Qabād, king of the Persians, called Anūshirwān, he moved with his troops against the Hayātilah to avenge his grandfather Firuz.  As he was already related by marriage to the Khaqan, Kisra, son of Qabād, wrote him a letter to inform him of his coming, and to tell him that he would march over the Hayātilah territory before he arrived.  Then he swooped down on him and the king killed him.  Balkh and the lands of Khurasan who were around it went over to Anūshirwān, who encamped his hosts in Farghānah, and married the daughter of the Great Khaqan.  In Khurasan, Sayf b. Du Yazan the Himyarite, head of the Yemeni population, presented himself to him, and asked for help against the Abyssinians.  He sent with him one of his generals at the head of an army from Deylaman, and they occupied Yemen and settled there.  Wherever he sent his troops Anushirwān obtained huge success and victories which rendered the condition of his subjects  prosperous.  Feeling the approach of death, he invested his son Hurmuz with power and died.  Anushirwān reigned forty-seven years and six months.  After him reigned his son Hurmuz, son of Anushirwān, for eleven years and six months.  This happened in the twelfth year of the reign of Justin, king of Rum.

The Origenist disputes of the time of Justinian now make an appearance in the chronicle.  But was the bishop of “Manbig” (Arabic) / Mabbug (Syriac) / Hierapolis (Greek) really named Origen?  The Persian chronicle records plots against a weak king by the Zoroastrian priests.

10. In the time of king Justinian lived Origen, Bishop of Manbiğ, who argued for the doctrine of transmigration of souls and denied the resurrection [of the body].  With him were Iniya, Bishop of ar-Ruha, Thaddeus, bishop of al-Masīsah and Theodoret, bishop of the city of Ankara.  These bishops claimed that the body of Christ, our Lord, was a “fantasiya”, that is a shadow without any reality.  On learning of their doctrine, the king sent to them to say to present themselves in Constantinople, and Eutychius, Patriarch of Constantinople arranged a meeting with them.  The patriarch said to them: “If the body of Christ, our Lord, was, as you assert, a”fantasiya”, then his actions were a ‘fantasiya” too, his words were a “fantasiya” as well.  The same would be true of the body, the actions or words of any [other] man.”  Addressing the Bishop of Manbiğ he said: “Christ our Lord, is truly risen from the dead and has taught us that in the same way we will be resurrected from the dead on the day of judgment.  In fact, he told us in his holy gospel that will be a time when all those lying in tombs will live when they hear the voice of the Son of God.  How then can you say that there is no resurrection?”.  Therefore he interdicted them, and excommunicated them.  The king, in turn, ordered that a council should be held against them at which they could be publicly excommunicated.  Then the king wrote to the four patriarchs summoning them to the council, i.e. to Apollinaris, Patriarch of Alexandria, Domnus, patriarch of Antioch, to Eutychius, Patriarch of Jerusalem and Vigilius, patriarch of Rome, telling them to go to Constantinople, so that they were present at the excommunication of the bishops.  They presented themselves.  At that council Eutychius, Patriarch of Constantinople, personally took part.  The Patriarch of Jerusalem was not personally present but sent some of his legates.  So too the Patriarch of Rome was not present, who did not send any legate but who agreed with them, and accepted the judgment.  The number of bishops who gathered in the Fifth Council was one hundred and sixty.  They excommunicated the bishops and all those who professed the doctrine, i.e. Origen, Bishop of Manbiğ, Thaddeus, bishop of al-Masīsah, Iniya, Bishop of ar-Ruha and Theodoret, bishop of Ankara.  They established that the Body of our Lord was a real body and not a shadow, and that He is perfect God and perfect man, with two natures, two wills and two operations, and only one person.  They also confirmed the doctrine of the four councils that were held before them, that life on earth is transient, that without doubt there will be the resurrection and that Christ, our Lord, will come with great glory to judge the living and the dead, as already the three hundred and eighteen had said.  Then the honoured ones returned, each to his own home.

11. From the fourth council of six hundred who gathered at Chalcedon and had excommunicated the Jacobites, to this fifth council of one hundred and sixty bishops who gathered in Constantinople, there passed one hundred and three years.  This happened in the twenty-seventh year of the reign of Justinian, king of Rum.

12. As for Qabād, son of Firuz, king of the Persians, he incurred the disapproval of his people and they decided to kill him, but refrained from doing so for fear of his minister Suwākhar.  So they did their best to bring Suwākhar into disgrace in the eyes of the king, in order to kill him.  After the killing, a man named Marzīq and his followers confronted him and said, “God has distributed his blessings on earth equally among men, so that no one has more than another.  But men act unjustly to each other and each one puts his own interests ahead of those of his brother.  In view of this, we will take what belongs to the rich and give it to the poor, we will remove from those who have a lot and we will return to those who have little, and those with more assets, more women, more servants and furnishings than others, we will remove them, and distribute them equally between him and the others, so that no one has more goods than another of a certain thing.”  So they began to seize the houses, women and the goods of the people and their position was strengthened.  Then they kidnapped Qabād, son of Firuz, hid him in an inaccessible place and put in place his uncle, named Mārāsf.  On seeing this Bzarmihr rose up against them with a group of Persian noblemen, killed a large number of the men of Marzīq, put Qabād, son of Firuz, back in his place, restoring the kingdom, and drove away Mārāsf.  The Mazdeans who remained started to stir up Qabād  against Bzarmihr until he was killed.  His reign was convulsed and in every part rebels rose up against him.  Seeing the state to which he was reduced Qabād repented that he had killed Sūkhar and his son.

The reign of Justinian continues: but we get the first mention of Islam. 

4. After completing this, he returned to the king.  The king said to him: “Describe how you built the Bethlehem church.”  After hearing the description, the king did not find it to his liking and was not at all satisfied.  Great was his anger against him and he said:  “You took the money and you used it for yourself, you built a small building, you made the church dark, and you have not built it as I would have liked it to be, nor have you followed my advice.”  And so saying he commanded them to lop off his head.

5. King Justinian built in Constantinople the beautiful church of St. Sophia.  Mar Saba died at the age of ninety-four.  Having been informed of the favourable attitude of the King Justinian and his predilection for building churches and monasteries, the monks of Tur Sīnā came to him and complained of the fact that the Arab Ishmaelites harassed them, ate their food, destroyed their sites, broke into their cells, grabbing everything that was there, and entered into the church during the Eucharist.  King Justinian said to them: “What do you want [me to do]?”.  They answered: “We ask you, O king, to build us a monastery in which we can feel safe.”  Before that, in fact, there was no monastery on Mount Sinai where the monks could gather, but they were just scattered here and there in the valleys around the bush from which God – Powerful is his name – spoke to Moses.  Above the bush they had a large tower, which still exists today, in which was the church of Martmaryam.  In that tower the monks were accustomed to assemble, and immediately repaired there when any threat hung over them.  The king sent with them one of his men, to whom he gave much money, and he wrote to his prefect in Egypt to give the messenger all the money he asked, to provide men and to send him food from Egypt.  The messenger ordered the building of a church near the Red Sea, the erection of the monastery of Rayah, and the building of the monastery of Mount Sinai, fortifying it so that there was none more protected and more secure, and that there was nowhere above the monastery from which harm to the monastery itself, and the monks, could come.

6. Once he reached the Red Sea, the messenger erected near the Red Sea the church of Mar Athanasius, and built the monastery of Rayah, and he continued to the Mountain of Tur Sīnā where he found the bush in a gorge between two mountains, the tower built on it, in the vicinity of the bush, as well as sources of water that flowed near the bush, and the monks scattered in the valleys.  He thought of erecting the monastery at the top of the mountain, leaving out the site of the tower and the burning bush, but discarded the idea because of the water; because there was no water in the upper part of the mountain.  So he built the monastery above the bush, on the site of the tower, so that the tower itself was inside it.  Thus the monastery found itself between two mountains in a gorge.  If someone climbed to the top of the mountain, to the north, and he threw down a stone, it would fall in the middle of the monastery and could cause damage to the monks.  And yet he built the monastery in that narrow place only because of the bush, the famous ruins and the water.  Then he built a church on top of the mountain, at the place where Moses received the Torah.  The superior of the monastery was called Dula.  When he returned to king Justinian, the messenger spoke of the churches and monasteries that he had built and described how he had built the monastery of Mount Sinai.  The king said to him: “You were wrong, and you have compromised the safety of the monks in exposing them to the mercy of their enemies.  Why did you not build the monastery on top of the mountain?”.  The messenger replied, “I built the monastery above the bush and near the water simply in consideration of the fact that if I built the monastery on top of the mountain, the monks would have remained without water, and that if the people besieged them, and prevented access to water, they would die of thirst.  And also in consideration of the fact that the bush would be away from them.”  The king said to him: “Then you should have broken down the northern slope overlooking the monastery so that the monks could suffer no damage.”  The messenger replied, “Even if we had spent the riches of the land of Rum, Egypt and Syria, we could not achieve what you ask.” The king was enraged with him and ordered them to lop off his head.

7. Then he sent another messenger together with a hundred men chosen from among the slaves of Rum, with their wives and their children, ordering him to take from Egypt another hundred men with their wives and their children, chosen from among the slaves, and to build them houses, out by Tur Sīnā, so that they could establish themselves and guard the monastery and the monks, making sure that they had the necessary means of livelihood, bringing to them and to the monastery enough food from Egypt.  When he arrived at Tur Sīnā, the messenger built, outside the monastery to the east, many homes, the walls of a fortress and settled the slaves there.  They began to protect the monastery and to defend it.  The place is called today “the monastery of the slaves.”  They increased and multiplied over time and during the caliphate of ‘Abd al-Malik b.Marwan Islam was imposed on them, so they attacked each other and fought among themselves; some of them were killed, others fled, others were converted to Islam.  Their descendants still present today in those places, are the Muslims called Banu Salih, also called Ghulmān ad-Dayr  [= servants of the monastery], from which come the Lakhmids.  Following their conversion to Islam, the monks destroyed the houses.

8. In the second year of the reign of Justinian, there was made patriarch of Rome Boniface.  He held the office for two years and died.  In the fourth year of his reign, there was made patriarch of Rome, John.  He held the office for two years and died.  In the sixth year of his reign, there was made patriarch of Rome Aghābiyūs.  He held the office for a year and died.  In the seventh year of his reign, there was made patriarch of Rome Bīlīnariyus.  He held the office for five years and he died.  In the thirteenth year of his reign, there was made patriarch of Rome Vigilius.  He held the office for eighteen years and died.  In his fifteenth year in office there was the Fifth Council.  In the tenth year of his reign, that is, of the reign of Justinian, there was made patriarch of Constantinople Epiphanius.  He was a Jacobite.  He held the office for six years and died.

9. King Justinian wrote a voluminous treatise containing many rulings and laws.  In the seventeenth year of his reign, there was made patriarch of Constantinople Eutychius.  He held the office for twelve years and was deposed.  In his eleventh year in office there was the Fifth Council.  In the fourteenth year of the reign of Justinian, there was made patriarch of Jerusalem, Macarius.  He held the office for two years and died.  In the seventeenth year of his reign, there was made patriarch of Jerusalem Eutychius.  He held the office for twelve years and died.  In his eleventh year in office there was the Fifth Council.  In the fifteenth year of his reign, there was made patriarch of Antioch Domnus.  He held the office for fourteen years and died.  In his thirteenth year in office there was the Fifth Council.  In the time of king Justinian there appeared in the sky a big star that remained there for forty days.  Then there appeared in the sky a spear of fire which remained there for several days.

A revolt of the Samaritans is put down – Mar Saba requests a reduction in the land tax from Justinian, because Palestine was ruined – Justinian orders that the church of the Nativity in Jerusalem is rebuilt.

3. From the time when Proterius, patriarch of Alexandria, was killed and burned, to the time when Apollinaris killed the Jacobites and the doctrine of the Melkites triumphed, was thirty-five years (In another text it says “eighty-five years”).  [All this happened] because the doctrine of the Jacobites had conquered in Alexandria and throughout Egypt.  The successive patriarchs in Alexandria were in fact Jacobites, and also Jacobites were the kings in the land of Rum, including Leo the less, Zeno, Anastasius and others that we spoke of earlier.  In the twenty-first year of the reign of Justinian the inhabitants of Samaria in Palestine revolted, destroyed and burned all the churches, killed many Christians subjecting them to serious afflictions and put to death the bishop of Nablus.  Hearing of this, the king Justinian sent an great army and many Samaritans were killed.  Then Peter, patriarch of Jerusalem, asked the holy Mar Saba to travel to Constantinople in order to ask the king to lighten the kharāğ<ref>The kharaj or kharatch was the Islamic land-tax, here used for whatever Byzantine tax was its equivalent. kharāğ is apparently the Egyptian form of the word. – RP</ref> on the population of Palestine in view of the damage that the Samaritans had done there.  Mar Saba then went to Constantinople, and great was the joy with which the king received him.  He delivered the letter of the Patriarch of Jerusalem and was asked what he wanted.  Mar Saba said: “I ask you to lighten the kharāğ on Palestine because the Samaritans have exterminated the inhabitants, and have sown destruction.  I would also ask that the king orders the rebuilding of the churches that the Samaritans gave to the fire, that a  hospice for strangers is erected in Jerusalem, and that Eleona, the church begun by Elias, Patriarch of Jerusalem is completed”.  The king granted him this and all he had asked for, he sent with him one of [his] messengers to deal with that everything was done as requested, providing a lot of money.  He then wrote to his prefect in Palestine and ordered him to hand over to the messenger the proceeds of the kharāğ of Palestine, with which to build what the king had ordered.  The king ordered the messenger to demolish the church of Bethlehem, which was small, and to rebuild it more  impressive, big and beautiful, so that there was none more beautiful in Jerusalem.  When the messenger came to Jerusalem he erected a hospice for strangers.  He completed the construction of the church of Eleona, rebuilt the churches which the Samaritans had burned, he built many monasteries, demolished the church of Bethlehem and rebuilt it, just as we see it today.