<After the fifth oecumenical council, Justinian sent to Jerusalem a decree of condemnation, in which he anathemized Origen and all Origenistic doctrines.> When all the bishops of Palestine had comfirmed and sanctioned (this decree) by their signature and verbal consent - except for Alexander, bishop of Abila, who was thereupon deposed from his bishopry and later died buried in an earthquake in Constantinople - then the Neolaurites separated themselves from the Catholic communion. The patriarch Eustochius dealt with them with particular consideration, and for eight months tried persuasion and exhortation, but having been unable to persuade them to join the communion of the Catholic Church, he made use of the imperial orders and expelled them from the New Laura through Anastasius, the military governor of Palestine, and so freed the whole province from their contagion. However (the patriarch) was unwilling to leave the place uninhabited, so he chose 120 monks to be planted there. sixty from the Great Laura among which was one John, a former imperial guard whom he appointed as hegumen - and the other sixty were from the other orthodox monasteries of the desert. I was one of them, having been sent for by the fathers of the Great laura from the monastery of Saint Euthymius, by the advice and permission of the divine John, the bishop and hesychast. Thus we gathered in the holy city, went out with the patriarch and the new hegumen to the village of Thecoa, and when the Origenists had been driven away by the commander Anastasius, we occupied the New Laura, on February 21 of the second indiction, twenty-two years after blessed Sabas’ death <554 AD>.
(transl. Leah Di Segni)