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Life of St Porphyry, Bishop of Gaza
Mark the Deacon, tr. Hill, 1913
Chapter 65
Thus much concerning the Gazaeans. Being commanded, therefore, the soldiers with the Christians of the city and of the part of it that is by the sea went forth against the idols. And desiring first to overthrow the Marneion, they were set back; for the priests of that idol, having heard beforehand, did bar the doors of the inner temple within with great stones, and taking down into the place called the sanctuary that none may enter whatsoever precious vessels were in the temple, and moreover the very images of the gods themselves, they hid them there, and escaped through the same sanctuary by other ways up; for it was said that from the afore-mentioned sanctuary there were many ways going up into divers places. Being therefore set back, as I said before, they turned against the other places of idols, and some they overthrew, and others they gave unto the fire, having seized all the precious vessels that were therein. But Saint Porphyry had laid a curse in the church upon every Christian citizen that should take aught from the places of the idols unto his own profit; no man, therefore, of the citizens that believed took aught, save only the soldiers, and such strangers as were sojourning there. Therefore there went about with the lay-folk devout men of the clergy and the holy bishop Porphyry himself, restraining them that they should take nothing for themselves.