St. John of Damascus, also called Saint John Damascene, Latin Johannes Damascenus, (born c. 675, Damascus—died December 4, 749, near Jerusalem; Eastern and Western feast day December 4), Eastern monk and theological doctor of the Greek and Latin churches whose treatises on the veneration of sacred images placed him in the forefront of the 8th-century Iconoclastic Controversy and whose theological synthesis made him a preeminent intermediary between Greek and medieval Latin culture.

John of Damascus succeeded his father as one of the Muslim caliph’s tax officials, and while still a government minister he wrote three Discourses on Sacred Images, c. 730, defending their veneration against the Byzantine emperor Leo III and the Iconoclasts. The Iconoclasts obtained a condemnation of John at the Council of Hieria in 754 that was reversed at the Second Council of Nicaea in 787.

Soon after 730, John became a monk at Mar Saba, near Jerusalem, and there passed the rest of his life studying, writing, and preaching, acquiring the name “the Golden Orator” (Greek: Chrysorrhoas, literally “the Golden Stream”). Among his approximately 150 written works the most significant is Pēgē gnōseōs (“The Source of Knowledge”), a synthesis of Christian philosophy and doctrine that was influential in directing the course of medieval Latin thought and that became the principal textbook of Greek Orthodox theology.

свернуть