John of Jerusalem

Holy Martyr John of Jerusalem was a Byzantine soldier and is counted among the ten soldiers beheaded at Jerusalem with Callinicus around the year 637. The sources show that two martyrs bore this name, and the present record covers both.

The soldiers' story is preserved in an account of their passion (a passio), published by Hippolyte Delehaye in 1904. The Byzantine garrison of Gaza surrendered to the Arabs, was forced to renounce the Christian faith and, when it refused, was taken to Jerusalem, where Patriarch Sophronius visited them. After some months ten of them, led by Callinicus, were beheaded and buried on 11 November; the other fifty were taken to Eleutheropolis and put to death on 17 December.

The Roman Martyrology names them all on 6 November and 17 December. John is honored on 6 November as a saint of the undivided Church. The sources do not show an Orthodox synodal canonization.