was occupied by Juvenal (420–458). He appeared at the council, and made a great attempt to have his see recognized as independent. But this first time he did not succeed. St. Cyril of Alexandria opposed him, and Pope Leo the Great blamed his ambition in a letter to Maximus of Antioch.[1] However, he got the Emperor Theodosius II (408–450) on his side. Theodosius—it is one of the endless number of cases in which the Emperors usurped jurisdiction in ecclesiastical matters—pretended to cut all Palestine, Phœnicia, and Arabia off from Antioch, and to give them to the Bishop of Jerusalem, to make up a new patriarchate for him. Of course the Patriarch of Antioch, whose territory was thus very considerably reduced, protested against the Emperor's action, and the dispute lasted for twenty years, till the next general council in 451 at Chalcedon. Here the Fathers in the seventh and eighth sessions at last arranged a compromise. Jerusalem was made a patriarchate, but only a very small one; Phoenicia was to remain under the jurisdiction of Antioch, Jerusalem was to have only Palestine and Arabia.[2] The Council "in Trullo" (Quinisextum, 692) counted Jerusalem as the fifth see, that is, as the fifth and last of the patriarchates.[3]
The bishops of the Holy City counted several great names among those of their predecessors since St. James; Macarius (313–333) found the true cross with St. Helen, St. Cyril of Jerusalem (351–386) was a Father of the Church whose Catechism is the most famous of its kind, Juvenal, as we have seen, succeeded in turning his see into a patriarchate, Sophronius (634–638) was a staunch upholder of the faith of Chalcedon, and the witness of the capture of his city by the Saracens. But Monophysism spread very rapidly in Palestine, as in Syria, and cut off many of the Christians of this little patriarchate from the communion of the Catholic Church. And then, in 637, came Omar the Khalifah (634–644). After the battle of Ajnadin, Jerusalem had no chance of holding out any longer against the
