During the Byzantine period a large church complex was gradually built over the house of Cleopas, venerated by Christians as the place of the breaking of the bread by the risen Christ. This church complex consisted of two Basilicas and a baptistery (the complex was unearthed during the archaeological excavations in the late 19^th - the beginning of the 20^th c.). Emmaus-Nicopolis was a large city, a regional center, and a bishopric. The name of the bishop of Nicopolis, Peter, is mentioned in the list of the Fathers of the Nicaean Council of 325 A.D. The second bishop of the city known to us, Ruphus, was present at the Council of Constantinople in 381. The third one, Zenobius, signed a decree of the Jerusalem Synod of 536 (see: H. Gelzer, ed., Patrum Nicaenorum nomina, Leipzig, 1898, p. 123 (see here); M. Le Quien, Oriens Christianus, Paris, 1740, v. III, 594, see here).

 Emmaus-Nicopolis upon the Madaba map (Jordan, 6^th c.)

 Stylized image of Nicopolis found at Ma'in near Madaba ( 8^th c. mosaic).

  Emmaus was situated on the pilgrims’ route from the port of Jaffa (Joppa) to Jerusalem. Throughout this period, Nicopolis was the only place in the Holy Land, venerated as the New Testament Emmaus, in continuation of the tradition that had already existed during the Roman period. Nicopolis was identified both as Emmaus mentioned in the 1^st Book of Maccabees, ch. 3-4 (the place of the Maccabee’s battle with the Syrian army) and as Emmaus of the Gospel of Luke. This is illustrated by the following texts: 
Hesychius of Jerusalem, Quaestiones, difficultas 57 (text of the beginning of the 5^th c.):
  Question: How could John say that Christ manifested himself to all his disciples, except Thomas, on Sunday evening (John, 20:19-24), while Luke says that he appeared only to Peter, when Cleopas and his companion came back the evening of that same day to Jerusalem after having seen the Lord at Emmaus ( Luke 24:33-34)?  
Solution: After the (holy) women, it is to Peter that Christ first appeared, then to the Apostles, according to what Paul says: “He was seen by Cephas and then by the Twelve” (1st Letter to the Corinthians, 15:5), not counting Thomas, who was absent, but Matthias and Justus (Acts of the Apostles 1:22-23).  Furthermore, it is while Cleopas and his companion were on the way back from Emmaus that Christ appeared to Peter.  When they had returned from Emmaus and had recounted to the Apostles how they had recognized him in the breaking of the bread, then Christ showed himself to all of them on Zion, as Luke asserts (Luke, 24:35-36).  One must not be surprised if in the same day they went from Jerusalem to Emmaus and from Emmaus to Jerusalem.  It is not written that it was evening when they approached Emmaus, but that it was towards evening (Luke 24:29), and that the day was declining, as if it were, for example, the eighth or the ninth hour (2 or 3 p. m.).  From the seventh hour (1 p. m.), the sun seems to incline towards the west.  Without counting the fact that the joy of announcing the miracle had to hasten their journey and that they would have arrived very late.  We have, in effect, the habit of calling evening (“opsias”, see John 20:19) the time which extends until a late hour in the night.  Here, still, Christ appeared to them as well as to the others. (PG XCIII, 1444, see here). The text of Hesychius supposes a significant distance between Jerusalem and Emmaus, which is not easy to cover twice on the same day. The disciples left Emmaus, perhaps, about 3 p.m. and came to Jerusalem very late (10-11 p.m.?). Their journey took thus 6 to 8 hours, which corresponds to the distance of approximately 30 km (19 miles).

  St. Cyril of Alexandria, Commentary upon the Gospel of Luke, ch. 24, text from the early 5^th c. (quoted in: J. A. Cramer, Catenae Graecorum Patrum, Oxford, 1844, v. 2, p.172, see here, see also: Vincent & Abel, Emmaüs, Paris, 1932,  p. 411, footnote 2): 
  “Having risen at the same moment, they returned to Jerusalem” and so on: that is to say that at the very moment that their master, Christ, made himself invisible to their eyes, they returned, not seeing him any longer.  It was not at this hour that they found the Eleven gathered and that they gave them the news of the Lord Jesus, but this was after a few hours, after the hours necessary for someone walking to cover the distance of one hundred and sixty stadia, also during which the Master appeared to Simon; “and they recounted what had happened on the road”...

  St. Jerome, Commentary upon the Book of Daniel, ch. 8, verse 14 (text of ca. 407 AD): 
And he answered him, ‘Until the evening and the morning, until two thousand three hundred days; and then the sanctuary shall be cleansed.' If we read the Books of Maccabees and the history of Josephus, we shall find it there recorded that in the one hundred and forty- third year after the Seleucus who first reigned in Syria after the death of Alexander, Antiochus entered Jerusalem, and after wreaking a general devastation he returned again in the third year and set up the statue of Jupiter in the Temple. Up until the time of Judas the Maccabee, that is, up until the one hundred and eighth year, Jerusalem lay waste over a period of six years, and for three [of those] years the Temple lay defiled; making up a total of two thousand three hundred days plus three months. At the end of the period the Temple was purged. Some authorities read two hundred instead of two thousand three hundred, in order to avoid the apparent excess involved in six years and three months. Most of our commentators refer this passage to the Antichrist, and hold that the things which occurred under Antiochus was only by way of a type which shall be fulfilled under Antichrist. And as for the statement, The sanctuary shall be cleansed, this refers to the time of Judas the Maccabee, who came from the village of Modin, and who being aided by the efforts of his brothers and relatives and many of the Jewish people [defeated?] the generals of Antiochus not far above Emmaus (which is now called Nicopolis).  (PL XXV, 537, see here).
 St. Jerome, op. cit., ch. 11, verses 44-45::
  And tidings from the East and from the North shall trouble him. And he shall come thither with a great host to destroy and slay very many. And he shall pitch his tent in Apedno between the two seas, upon the famous and holy mountain; and he shall come even unto its summit, and none shall help him. 
 Those of our party… explain the final chapter of this vision as relating to the Antichrist, and stating that during his war against the Egyptians, Libyans, and Ethiopians, in which he shall lose three of his ten horns, he is going to hear that war has been stirred up against him in the regions of the North and East. Then he shall come with a great host to crush and slay many people, and shall pitch his tent in Apedno near Nicopolis, which was formerly called Emmaus, at the beginning of the mountainous region in the province of Judea. Finally he shall make his way thence to go up to the Mount of Olives and ascend to the area of Jerusalem; and this is what the Scripture means here: And when he has pitched his tent.... at the foothills of the mountainous province between two seas. These are, of course, that which is now called the Dead Sea on the east, and the Great Sea on the shore of which lie Caesarea, Joppa, Ascalon, and Gaza. Then he shall come up to the summit thereof, that is of the mountainous province, or the apex of the Mount of Olives, which of course is called famous because our Lord and Saviour ascended from it to the Father. And no one shall be able to assist the Antichrist as the Lord vents his fury upon him. (PL XXV, 574, see here). 

←  St. Jerome

Tthe first traveller known to mention his visit to Nicopolis in the Byzantine period, is the Anonymous pilgrim of Bordeaux of 333 AD:
From Jerusalem as follows:  City of Nicopolis - miles XXII.
City of Lydda - miles X.
Change at Antipatris - miles X.
Change at Betthar - miles X.
City of Caesarea - miles XVI...
Through Nicopolis to Caesarea – miles LXXIII
(The Library of the Palestine Pilgrims' Text Society, London 1885-97, p.28; see the original Latin text here) 
  The distances indicated by the pilgrim of Bordeaux require corrections: the total distance from Jerusalem to Caesarea - 73 miles – does not correspond to the sum of the specified interurban distances: 68 miles.  Vincent and Abel  (Vincent & Abel, op. cit., p. 300-301) propose the following corrections: from Jerusalem to Nicopolis - XX miles, from Nicopolis to Lydda - XII miles, from Betthar to Caesarea - XXI mile, which gives a total amount of  73 miles. The distance of 20 miles between Jerusalem and Nicopolis corresponds to 160 stadia (about 30 km). 

A miraculous spring of water was venerated at Emmaus, where, according to a tradition, Jesus had washed his feet during his earthly life. This spring was filled up around 362 AD on the orders of the Emperor Julian the Apostate. The spring was later reopened and mentioned by pilgrims in their accounts over the centuries:

  ← Julian the Apostate

From Jerusalem it is nine miles to Shilo (Kiryat Yearim), where was the ark of the covenant of the Lord. From Shilo to Emmaus, which is now called Nicopolis it is nine miles. In this Emmaus Saint Cleopas 'knew the Lord in the breaking of the bread', and there too he suffered martyrdom. From Emmaus to Diospolis it is twelve miles…  (Theodosius, De situ Terrae Sanctae, 139, Palestine Pilgrims' Text Society, London, 1897, p.91, see the original text here).

  We receive similar information from the 9^th c. Archbishop of Vienne in Lotharingia Ado, who compiled a Martyrology based upon ancient traditions and who places the memory of St. Cleopas on September 25: 
September 25, Nativity (Anniversary of Martyrdom) of Cleopas, one of the 70 disciples of Christ. The Lord appeared to him after his Resurrection while he was walking with another disciple towards the village of Emmaus, which is called Nicopolis nowadays. According to tradition, in the same town and in the same house, where Cleopas had received the Lord as a pilgrim at his table, he was killed by Jews for his confession of Him whom he had recognized at the breaking of the bread. There also he is buried in glorious memory.  (PL CXXIII, 193, see here) .

  St. Cleopas is mentioned as a martyr also in the list of the 70 disciples of Christ composed by Jacob Bar-Salibi, and transmitted by Michael the Syrian:
Cleopas preached in Loud (Lydda) and was killed (Michael the Syrian, Chronicle, written in 1195 AD; Vincent & Abel, op. cit., p. 348) 
The relics of St. Cleopas were most likely kept at Emmaus for a period of time. Ca. 570 A.D., the Anonymous pilgrim of Piacenza mentions their location upon the Mount of Olives. The relics were probably transferred there for safe keeping in the context of the Samaritan revolt of 529. (see below).

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Starting with the 4^th century AD we witness the development of monasticism in the Holy Land, including the area of Emmaus. A famous monk called Abba Gelasios lived here in the middle of the 5^th century::

 A cell surrounded by a plot of land had been left to Abba Gelasios by an old man, also a monk, who had his dwelling near Nicopolis. Now a peasant farmer under Batacos, who was then living at Nicopolis in Palestine, went to find Batacos, asking to receive the plot of land, because, according to the law, it ought to return to him. Batacos was a violent man and he tried to take the field from Abba Gelasios by force. But our Abba Gelasios, not wishing that a monastic cell should be ceded to a secular, would not give up the land. Batacos, noticing that Abba Gelasios' beasts of burden were carrying olives from the field that had been left to him, turned them by force from their course and took the olives for himself; scarcely did he return the animals with their drivers, having caused them to suffer outrages. The blessed old man did not reclaim the fruit, but he did not cede possession of the land for the reason we have given above. Furious with him, Batacos, who had other matters to deal with also (for he loved lawsuits), betook himself to Constantinople, making the journey on foot. When he came near to Antioch, where Saint Symeon's fame was shining with great brilliance, he heard tell of him (he was indeed an eminent man) and, as a Christian, he desired to see the saint. Blessed Symeon, from the top of his column, saw him as soon as he entered the monastery and asked him, 'Where do you come from and where are you going?' He replied, 'I am from Palestine and I am going to Constantinople.'  He continued, 'and for what reasons?' Batacos replied, 'About many matters. I hope, thanks to the prayers of your holiness, to return and bow before your holy footprints.' Then Saint Symeon said to him, 'Wretch, you don't want to say that you are going to act against the man of God. But your way is not favourable for you and you will not see your house again. If you will follow my advice, leave these parts and hurry to him and ask his pardon, if you are still alive when you reach that place.' Immediately Batacos was seized with fever. His fellow  travelers put him into a litter and he hastened, according to the word of Saint Symeon, to reach Abba Gelasios and to ask his pardon. But when he came to Beirut, he died without seeing his house again, according to the old man's prophecy. It is his son, also called Batacos, who has told this to many trustworthy men, at the same time as he gave the account of his father's death. ( The Sayings of the Desert Fathers (Apophthegmata Patrum) , ed. Mowbray, London, 1975, text written in the 5^th c., events of  ca. 450 AD, see the Greek text here)

  St. Sabbas, one of the Fathers of the monasticism in the Holy Land, founded a monastery at Nicopolis in 508: 

  On returning to his own Laura, the sanctified Sabas found that the forty mentioned above, those prone to share in evil, had suborned others and become sixty. He was distressed and wept copiously at the damage inflicted on his community, and was amazed how envious and prompt is wickedness in effortlessly drawing the lax to itself. At first he opposed patience to their irascibility and love to their hate, controlling his speech with spiritual understanding and integrity. Subsequently, however, when he saw them grow bold in wickedness and resort to shamelessness, not bearing to walk in the humble path of Christ but alleging excuses for their sins and inventing reasons to justify their passions, he left scope for divine anger and withdrew to the region of Nicopolis, where he lived as a solitary for many days under a single carob-tree, living on carobs. On learning this, the bailiff of the place came out to see him and built him a cell in this very place; this cell, by the help and favour of Christ, became in a short time a coenobium.  (Cyril of Scythopolis, Life of St. Sabas, ch. 35, text of ca. 558 AD; Cyril of Scythopolis, The lives of the Monks of Palestine, Michigan, 1991, p.p. 129 - 130, see the original Greek text here)

  Special attention can be paid to the marble slab discovered in a field west of the church complex, bearing an inscription in Greek: In the Name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, beautiful the city of Christians is (today in the museum of  St. Anne’s Monastery in Jerusalem, see: Germer-Durand, RB 1894, p.255 (see here); L.-H. Vincent, Inscription grecque chrétienne d'Amwas, RB 1913, p.100-101 (see here)). 

 A Byzantine period tombstone with a Hebrew inscription: Mekom menuhato shel Elazar ben Yehoshua. Shalom me-Emmaus (אמאוס ), shalom – The resting place of Elazar, the son of Joshua, peace from Emmaus, peace was discovered nearby during the excavations of the late 19^th c. (Currently displayed in Jaffa Archaeological Museum).

(A detailed analysis of archaeological finds in Emmaus can be found in the following sources: Charles Clermont-Ganneau, Archaeological Researches in Palestine during years 1873-74, p.483-493;  L.-H. Vincent & F.-M. Abel, op. cit., p.p. 19-274; Dictionnaire d'archéologie chrétienne et de liturgie, v. 12, article Nicopolis, Paris, 1935; The New Encyclopaedia of Archaeological Excavations in the Holy Land, E. Stern ed., Jerusalem, 1993, article Emmaus, v. 2, p.p. 385-389; V. Michel, Le complexe ecclésiastique d'Emmaüs-Nicopolis, Paris, Sorbonne, 1996-1997 (thesis); K.-H. Fleckenstein, M. Louhivuori, R. Riesner, Emmaus in Judäa, Basel, 2003, p.212-310; K.-H. & Louisa Fleckenstein, Emmaüs-Nicopolis Ausgrabungen 2001-2005, Novum publishing, 2010).

 It is unknown what happened in Nicopolis during the Persian invasion of Palestine in 614 A.D. Perhaps, the Southern Byzantine basilica was destroyed at that time. We find a distant echo to these events in Rabbi Isaac Helo’s account of his visit to Emmaus in 1334:

There is an ancient sepulchral monument at Emmaus, it is said to be the tomb of a Christian lord, who fell in the war of the king of Persia.

(I. D. Eisenstein אוצר מסעות, A Compendium of Jewish Travels, NY 1926, p. 74, Les chemins de Jérusalem, Bruxelles, 1847, E. Carmoly, trad., p. 245, see the Hebrew text here). 

  The Byzantine period in the history of the Holy Land and of Emmaus ends with the arrival of the Arab conquerors in 637 A.D.