John VII was
Patriarch of Jerusalem from 964 to 966. He was among the
bishop
A bishop is an ordained clergy member who is entrusted with a position of authority and oversight in a religious institution.
In Christianity, bishops are normally responsible for the governance of dioceses. The role or office of bishop is c ...
s of
Jerusalem
Jerusalem (; he, יְרוּשָׁלַיִם ; ar, القُدس ) (combining the Biblical and common usage Arabic names); grc, Ἱερουσαλήμ/Ἰεροσόλυμα, Hierousalḗm/Hierosóluma; hy, Երուսաղեմ, Erusałēm. i ...
who suffered a
martyr
A martyr (, ''mártys'', "witness", or , ''marturia'', stem , ''martyr-'') is someone who suffers persecution and death for advocating, renouncing, or refusing to renounce or advocate, a religious belief or other cause as demanded by an externa ...
's death at the hands of
Muslim mobs.
John VII was elected
patriarch
The highest-ranking bishops in Eastern Orthodoxy, Oriental Orthodoxy, the Catholic Church (above major archbishop and primate), the Hussite Church, Church of the East, and some Independent Catholic Churches are termed patriarchs (and in certai ...
after the death of his predecessor Agathon in 964. Two versions of his martyrdom have come down to us. The first involved revenge by the ruling governor.
John became patriarch during the rule of the
Ikhshidid
The Ikhshidid dynasty (, ) was a Turkic mamluk dynasty who ruled Egypt and the Levant from 935 to 969. Muhammad ibn Tughj al-Ikhshid, a Turkic mamluk soldier, was appointed governor by the Abbasid Caliph al-Radi. The dynasty carried the Arabic t ...
governor
Muhammad Ismail ibn al-Sanaji in Jerusalem. Muhammad was one who demanded gifts be made to him on every occasion, gifts that were a major expense on the patriarchate. About this demand, Patriarch John complained to El Hasan, governor of
Ramleh
Ramla or Ramle ( he, רַמְלָה, ''Ramlā''; ar, الرملة, ''ar-Ramleh'') is a city in the Central District of Israel. Today, Ramle is one of Israel's mixed cities, with both a significant Jewish and Arab populations.
The city was f ...
. In 966, after having complained several times, Muhammad took revenge on John by stirring up the Muslim mobs against the patriarch. On a rampage, the mob descended on the
Church of the Holy Sepulchre, setting it on fire, and causing its cupola to collapse. Then, the mob turned to the church on
Mount Zion, which they also burned. The next day the mob continued its reign of destruction during which they found John hiding in the oil cistern of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, and murdered him. Following his murder the mob took his corpse to the yard of the Church where they burned it.
A second version of his martyrdom maintains John was
burned at the stake
Death by burning (also known as immolation) is an execution and murder method involving combustion or exposure to extreme heat. It has a long history as a form of public capital punishment, and many societies have employed it as a punishment f ...
by a Muslim mob after writing to the
Byzantine
The Byzantine Empire, also referred to as the Eastern Roman Empire or Byzantium, was the continuation of the Roman Empire primarily in its eastern provinces during Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, when its capital city was Constantinopl ...
Emperor
Nikephoros II Phokas
Nikephoros II Phokas (; – 11 December 969), Latinized Nicephorus II Phocas, was Byzantine emperor from 963 to 969. His career, not uniformly successful in matters of statecraft or of war, nonetheless included brilliant military exploits whi ...
, pleading with him to hasten to
Palestine and retake it from the
Fatimid
The Fatimid Caliphate was an Ismaili Shi'a caliphate extant from the tenth to the twelfth centuries AD. Spanning a large area of North Africa, it ranged from the Atlantic Ocean in the west to the Red Sea in the east. The Fatimids, a dyna ...
caliphs,
[Steven Runciman, ''A History of the Crusades'', vol. 1 ''The First Crusade'' (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 30.] who, however, did not take control of Palestine until the 970s.
References
Sources
The History of the Church of Jerusalem*
10th-century patriarchs of Jerusalem
966 deaths
People executed by burning
Executed priests
Victims of anti-Christian violence
Persecution of Christians by Muslims
Year of birth unknown
People of the Ikhshidid dynasty
{{Bishop-stub