MODESTO di GERUSALEMME. – Patriarch of Jerusalem, d. in 634. Rebuilder of the holy places in Jerusalem after the Persian invasion (614).
Photius (Bibl., cod. 275) attributes homilies to M.: one on the women who brought the ointments, one on the Presentation in the Temple, and one on the Assumption of the Madonna, which until recently was regarded as the oldest homily in honor of the Assumption; but M. Jugie has proved that the text is not a homily and that it is more recent (7th century or beginning of the 8th), because it presupposes the Monothelite controversy.
BIBL.: edd.: PG 86, II, 3277-2217; M. Jugie, La mort et l'Assumption de la Ste Vierge (Studi e testi, 114), Città del Vaticano 1944, p. 216 ff. On M.’s building activity, V. H. Vincent-M. Abel, Jérusalem, Parigi 1926, V. index. Erik Peterson