John of Damascus
John of Damascus (Arabic: يوحنا الدمشقي, romanized: Yūḥana ad-Dimashqī; Greek: Ἰωάννης ὁ Δαμασκηνός, romanized: Ioánnēs ho Damaskēnós, IPA: [ioˈanis o ðamasciˈnos]; Latin: Ioannes Damascenus; born Yūḥana ibn Manṣūr ibn Sarjūn, يوحنا إبن منصور إبن سرجون) or John Damascene was an Arab Christian monk, priest, hymnographer, and apologist. He was born and raised in Damascus c. 675 or 676; the precise date and place of his death is not known, though tradition places it at his monastery, Mar Saba, near Jerusalem on 4 December 749.[5]
"Chrysorrhoas" redirects here. For the river in Syria, see Barada. For the river in Turkey, see Pactolus.
John of Damascus
c. 675 or 676
Damascus, Bilad al-Sham, Umayyad Caliphate
4 December 749 (aged c. 72–74)
Mar Saba, Jerusalem, Bilad al-Sham, Umayyad Caliphate
4 December
27 March (General Roman Calendar, 1890–1969)
Severed hand, icon
Pharmacists, Iconographers, theology students
Philosophy career
The Fountain of Knowledge
Philosophical Chapters
Concerning Heresy
An Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith
A polymath whose fields of interest and contribution included law, theology, philosophy, and music, he was given the by-name of Chrysorroas (Χρυσορρόας, literally "streaming with gold", i.e. "the golden speaker").
He wrote works expounding the Christian faith, and composed hymns which are still used both liturgically in Eastern Christian practice throughout the world as well as in western Lutheranism at Easter.[6]
He is one of the Fathers of the Eastern Orthodox Church and is best known for his strong defence of icons.[7] The Catholic Church regards him as a Doctor of the Church, often referred to as the Doctor of the Assumption due to his writings on the Assumption of Mary.[8]
He was also a prominent exponent of perichoresis, and employed the concept as a technical term to describe both the interpenetration of the divine and human natures of Christ and the relationship between the hypostases of the Trinity.[9] John is at the end of the Patristic period of dogmatic development, and his contribution is less one of theological innovation than one of a summary of the developments of the centuries before him. In Catholic theology, he is therefore known as the "last of the Greek Fathers".[10]
The main source of information for the life of John of Damascus is a work attributed to one John of Jerusalem, identified therein as the Patriarch of Jerusalem.[11] This is an excerpted translation into Greek of an earlier Arabic text. The Arabic original contains a prologue not found in most other translations, and was written by an Arab monk, Michael, who explained that he decided to write his biography in 1084 because none was available in his day. However, the main Arabic text seems to have been written by an unknown earlier author sometime between the early 9th and late 10th century.[11]
Written from a hagiographical point of view and prone to exaggeration and some legendary details, it is not the best historical source for his life, but is widely reproduced and considered to contain elements of some value.[12] The hagiographic novel Barlaam and Josaphat, is a work of the 10th century[13] attributed to a monk named John. It was only considerably later that the tradition arose that this was John of Damascus, but most scholars no longer accept this attribution. Instead much evidence points to Euthymius of Athos, a Georgian who died in 1028.[14]
Family background[edit]
John was born in Damascus, in 675 or 676, to a prominent Damascene Christian Arab family.[15][16]
His father, Sarjun ibn Mansur, served as an official of the early Umayyad Caliphate. His grandfather, Mansur ibn Sarjun, was a prominent Byzantine official of Damascus, who had been responsible for the taxes of the region during the reign of Emperor Heraclius and also served under Emperor Maurice.[17][18]
Mansur seems to have played a role in the capitulation of Damascus to the troops of Khalid ibn al-Walid in 635 after securing favorable conditions of surrender.[17][18] Eutychius, a 10th-century Melkite patriarch, mentions him as one high-ranking official involved in the surrender of the city to the Muslims.[19]
The tribal background of Mansur ibn Sarjun, John's grandfather, is unknown, but biographer Daniel Sahas has speculated that the name Mansur could have implied descent from the Arab Christian tribes of Kalb or Taghlib.[20]
The name was common among Syrian Christians of Arab origins, and Eutychius noted that the governor of Damascus, who was likely Mansur ibn Sarjun, was an Arab.[20] However, Sahas also asserts that the name does not necessarily imply an Arab background and could have been used by non-Arab, Semitic Syrians.[20] While Sahas and biographers F. H. Chase and Andrew Louth assert that Mansūr was an Arabic name, Raymond le Coz asserts that the "family was without doubt of Syrian origin";[21] indeed, according to historian Daniel J. Janosik, "Both aspects could be true, for if his family ancestry were indeed Syrian, his grandfather [Mansur] could have been given an Arabic name when the Arabs took over the government."[22]
When Syria was conquered by the Muslim Arabs in the 630s, the court at Damascus retained its large complement of Christian civil servants, John's grandfather among them.[17][19] John's father, Sarjun (Sergius), went on to serve the Umayyad caliphs.[17] John of Jerusalem claims that he also served as a senior official in the fiscal administration of the Umayyad Caliphate under Abd al-Malik before leaving Damascus and his position around 705 to go to Jerusalem and become a monk. However, this point is debated within the academic community as there is no trace of him in the Umayyad archives, unlike his father and grandfather. Some researchers, such as Robert G. Hoyland,[23] deny such an affiliation, while others, like Daniel Sahas or the Orthodox historian Jean Meyendorff, suppose that he might have been a lower-level tax administrator, a local tax collector who would not have needed to be mentioned in the archives, but who might not have necessarily been part of the court either.[24][25] In addition, John's own writings never refer to any experience in a Muslim court. It is believed that John became a monk at Mar Saba, and that he was ordained as a priest in 735.[17][26]
Veneration[edit]
When the name of John of Damascus was inserted in the General Roman Calendar in 1890, it was assigned to 27 March. The feast day was moved in 1969 to the day of John's death, 4 December, the day on which his feast day is celebrated also in the Byzantine Rite calendar,[41] Lutheran Commemorations,[42] and the Anglican Communion and Episcopal Church.[43]
John of Damascus is honored in the Church of England and in the Episcopal Church on 4 December.[44][45]
In 1890, he was declared a Doctor of the Church by Pope Leo XIII.
Two translations exist of the 10th-century hagiographic novel Barlaam and Josaphat, traditionally attributed to John: