The life of St Zachariah of Jerusalem
For some fourteen years Zacharias and the Cross remained in Persian hands, until the emperor Heraclius, having rebuilt his army, broke Chosroes's forces at Nineveh and compelled the return of both the relic and the surviving captives. Heraclius is remembered as having carried the Cross back into Jerusalem on his own shoulders.
Zacharias lived out his remaining years in peace after this long captivity, and reposed in 632. His story is preserved both in the Church's own memory of him and in the wider record of the age, including the account of the Armenian historian Sebeos, whose narrative of the Persian conquest and Heraclius's recovery of the Cross confirms the same central events from outside the Church's own telling.
He is remembered as a shepherd who bore captivity together with his flock, and returned to it at the last.
