St. John Damascene

Biography

St. John Damascene (c. 675–c. 749) was born in Damascus, Syria, to a prominent Christian family, the Mansur, who served in the financial administration of the city under its Muslim rulers, the Umayyad caliphs. John himself held a high post there before leaving public life, probably in the early eighth century, to become a monk at the monastery of St. Sabas, near Jerusalem, where he was ordained a priest. When the Byzantine Emperor Leo III began to forbid the veneration of icons around 726, John, living outside the empire, wrote three treatises in their defense. He explained that because the invisible God became visible in Jesus Christ, it is right to depict Him, and that honor shown to an image passes to the one it represents, while worship belongs to God alone. His greatest work, The Fount of Knowledge, includes On the Orthodox Faith, a clear summary of the teaching of the Greek Fathers that influenced later theologians, including St. Thomas Aquinas. He also wrote homilies on the Dormition of Mary and many hymns still sung in the Eastern Churches. A legend tells that the Virgin Mary healed his hand after he was falsely accused. He died at St. Sabas around 749. The Second Council of Nicaea in 787 upheld his teaching on images, and Pope Leo XIII declared him a Doctor of the Church in 1890.

Patronages

Symbols