Who Was St. John of Damascus? The Theologian Who Defended Icons

Every icon in an Orthodox church claims that the invisible God became visible in Jesus Christ, and that what has been seen may be painted. The man who first set out that argument at length was a Christian from Damascus, writing in Arabic-ruled Syria against a Christian emperor in Constantinople. Within about a quarter-century an imperial council had cursed him by his family name, and a generation after that another council praised him as a herald of the truth.

The Orthodox Church honors St John of Damascus as a teacher, hymn-writer and defender of icons; Catholics count him a Doctor of the Church; historians of Islam know him as the probable author of one of the earliest Christian descriptions of Islam. This article tells his life as the Church remembers it, then asks what the sources can actually verify and lets his main writings speak for themselves.

In brief

John, called Mansur, came from a Christian family that served the Umayyad caliphs in Damascus. His grandfather Mansur was an official in Damascus and his father Sergius held financial office under the caliph; John probably did too before becoming a monk near Jerusalem, traditionally at the monastery of Mar Saba. Around 730 he wrote three treatises defending the veneration of icons against the policy of Emperor Leo III. Later he compiled the Fount of Knowledge, which its translator Frederic Chase called "the first great Summa of theology to appear in either the East or the West." Its final part is the Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith; its middle part, On Heresies, ends with a chapter on the "heresy of the Ishmaelites," a polemic against Islam whose authorship has been doubted but which its modern editors and specialists attribute to him wholly or in part. The iconoclast council of 754 anathematized him, apparently after his death; the Second Council of Nicaea in 787 reversed the verdict and proclaimed his memory eternal. Little of his biography is securely documented; the famous story of his severed hand comes from a Life written about three centuries later. The Orthodox Church keeps his feast on 4 December.

Thesis: The outline of John's life is thin but real, anchored in his own writings and in two eighth-century councils, while most of the vivid detail comes from late hagiography; his lasting importance lies in his writings, above all his argument that the Incarnation makes the holy image possible.

The life as the Church remembers it

The familiar account, given in the Orthodox Church in America's life for 4 December, runs as follows. John was born into a Christian family in Damascus. His father, Sergius Mansur, was treasurer at the caliph's court and took into his home an orphan named Cosmas. He ransomed a learned captive monk, also called Cosmas, to teach the two boys. After his father's death John held high office at court.¹

When Emperor Leo III began to move against icons, John wrote three treatises in their defense. Leo, unable to reach a subject of the caliph, forged a letter in John's handwriting offering to betray Damascus. The caliph had John's right hand cut off. That night John prayed before an icon of the Mother of God, fell asleep, and woke to find his hand restored. In thanks he attached a silver hand to the icon, which became known as the icon "Of the Three Hands."²

Refusing to return to office, John gave away his wealth and entered the Lavra of St Sabbas near Jerusalem with his foster brother Cosmas. His elder forbade him to do anything by his own will. When John composed funeral verses for a grieving monk, the elder made him clean the monastery latrines with his bare hands, until the Theotokos told the elder in a vision to let John write. The funeral hymns attributed to him, beginning "What earthly delight," are still sung at Orthodox funerals.³ The OCA life adds that he was ordained priest, attended the iconoclast council of 754 to denounce it, was imprisoned and tortured, and died "in about the year 780, more than 100 years old."⁴

Other retellings differ. Pope Benedict XVI said that John entered Mar Saba "around the year 700" and "never again left the monastery."⁵ Both accounts cannot be right, which shows how loosely the details are held.

The primary historical evidence

What the eighth and ninth centuries tell us

The earliest evidence is John's own work. The Fount of Knowledge is dedicated to his friend Cosmas as bishop of Maiuma, which places it in or after 743, the date usually given for Cosmas's consecration.⁶ The treatises on images refer to events in Constantinople up to about 730.⁷

The iconoclast council of Constantine V, held at Hieria and closed on 8 August 754, ended its definition with acclamations against three defenders of icons:⁸

Anathema to Mansur, who has an evil name and Saracen opinions! To the betrayer of Christ and the enemy of the Empire, to the teacher of impiety, the perverter of Scripture, Mansur, anathema!⁹

The council seems to treat him as already dead, which is why his death is usually dated before 754.¹⁰ Thirty-three years later the Second Council of Nicaea had this text read aloud and answered it. Its reply praised "John, who by them has been contemptuously styled Mansur," as one who, like the tax-collector Matthew, "left all and followed Christ, counting the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures of Arabia." At its seventh session the council cried, "Eternal be the memory of John and George."¹¹

The Chronicle of Theophanes, written in the early ninth century, supplies the family: John's father Sergius was the son of Mansur and served the caliph Abd al-Malik (685 to 705). Theophanes calls John "Chrysorrhoas," "golden-flowing," a name also borne by the river that watered Damascus.¹²

The late Lives

The full biography comes from a Greek Life attributed to a Patriarch John of Jerusalem, based on an Arabic Life probably written by Michael, an eleventh-century monk near Antioch. Frederic Chase, introducing his 1958 translation of John's works, judged it "quite unreliable" and said that "Much of the Life must be rejected, particularly the story of the severed hand."¹³ Its chronology also seems wrong: it has John write against Leo while still a court official, though the treatises appear to date from after his ordination.

What can we actually verify?

(a) Contemporary or near-contemporary documentary evidence

We can be confident that John wrote in defense of icons around 730 and was still writing after 743. {{very-strong: John was condemned by name at the iconoclast council of 754 and vindicated at the Second Council of Nicaea in 787.}} Theophanes, writing within about sixty years of his death, gives his father's name and office.

His birth date is unknown. Estimates range from 650 to about 680: Peter Schadler says simply that he "was born between 650 and 675."¹⁴ Chase called 4 December 749 "the generally accepted date" of his death, though the evidence for the year is indirect.¹⁵ The OCA's "about 780" does not fit the councils, which treat him as dead by 754.

(b) Later hagiographical tradition

The tutor Cosmas, the forged letter, the penances, the foster brother and John's high rank at court all come from the eleventh-century Lives. Chase found "no evidence" that Cosmas was John's adopted brother, only that they were friends.¹⁶ Even Mar Saba is less secure than it looks. Chase cited an early ninth-century Life of Stephen the Sabaite, which says that Stephen was brought to the monastery in 735 by his uncle John. Schadler, following the scholar Vassa Conticello, argues that there is "really no positive evidence for John's move to St. Sabas" from his lifetime or shortly after, and that he may instead have worked in Jerusalem as an adviser to the patriarch.¹⁷ {{debated: John lived as a monk at Mar Saba.}}

(c) Reported miracles

The one great miracle of his life, the restoring of his hand by the Mother of God, is first recorded about three centuries after his death. The Church does not require anyone to accept it as history. It expresses, in the Church's memory, that the hand which wrote for the honor of Christ and his Mother was given back for that work. The icon of the Three Hands is still honored on its own feast days.¹⁸

His writings

Three Treatises on the Divine Images

John's case for icons begins with the commandment that seemed to forbid them: "You shall not make for yourself a carved image" (Exodus 20:4, NKJV). He agreed that God, invisible and uncircumscribed, cannot be depicted. But the Incarnation changed what could be seen. In Mary Allies's 1898 translation:

Of old, God the incorporeal and uncircumscribed was never depicted. Now, however, when God is seen clothed in flesh, and conversing with men, I make an image of the God whom I see. I do not worship matter, I worship the God of matter, who became matter for my sake, and deigned to inhabit matter, who worked out my salvation through matter.¹⁹

The Cross, the tomb, the Gospel book and the Body and Blood of the Lord are all matter, he continues: "Do not despise matter, for it is not despicable."²⁰ Allies uses "worship" for two Greek words that John carefully distinguishes: latreia, adoration due to God alone, and the honor or veneration given to saints, holy places and images. "The worship of latreia is one thing," he writes, "and the worship which is given to merit another."²¹ He also said that images teach: "What a book is to the literate, that an image is to the illiterate."²²

The treatises also refuse the emperor's right to settle doctrine. "Christ did not give to kings the power to bind and to loose," he wrote, "but to the apostles, and to their successors and pastors and teachers." And in the second treatise: "If an angel or an emperor teaches you anything contrary to what you have received, shut your ears."²³

The Fount of Knowledge and the Exact Exposition

In the preface to Cosmas, John described his method modestly: "I shall add nothing of my own, but shall gather together into one those things which have been worked out by the most eminent of teachers."²⁴ The work has three parts: philosophical definitions, a catalogue of heresies, and the Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith in one hundred chapters. Chase thought the familiar Western division into four books was "probably" made to match Peter Lombard's Sentences.²⁵

The Exposition opens with God's incomprehensibility: "The Deity, therefore, is ineffable and incomprehensible." On the Holy Spirit he writes that "we do not speak of the Spirit as from the Son: but yet we call Him the Spirit of the Son," and elsewhere that the Spirit proceeds "from the Father through the Son."²⁶ On human destiny he says man "becomes deified by merely inclining himself towards God; becoming deified, in the way of participating in the divine glory and not in that of a change into the divine being."²⁷ That is a precise statement of theosis: union with God by grace, never by nature. The Exposition also restates the argument for images in a single chapter, citing St Basil that "the honour given to the image passes over to the prototype."²⁸

The chapter on the "heresy of the Ishmaelites"

On Heresies begins with four "parents and archetypes" of all error, including Hellenism and Judaism, so John's "heresy" covers far more than Christian deviations.²⁹ Its last chapter, numbered 101 in older editions and 100 in Bonifatius Kotter's critical edition, opens:

There is also the superstition of the Ishmaelites which to this day prevails and keeps people in error, being a forerunner of the Antichrist.³⁰

The chapter knows the Qur'an's teaching about Christ: that he is "the Word of God and His Spirit, but a creature and a servant," born of Mary without seed, and not crucified. Its most serious argument answers the charge that Christians "associate" a partner with God: if the Word is in God, the Word is God; if not, "God is without word and without spirit." Then comes the barb: "we retort by calling you Mutilators of God."³¹ Other parts are mocking and unreliable. He calls the Black Stone of the Ka'ba a head of Aphrodite and ridicules a story of "the camel of God." In fairness, the she-camel of God sent to Salih, and her share of the water, are in the Qur'an (7:73, 26:155, 91:13); the tale of her offspring taken up to God is not.³² For the earliest evidence about Muhammad himself, see Who Was Muhammad?

Is the chapter his? In 1963 Armand Abel argued that it was a late extract from the Treasury of Orthodoxy of Niketas Choniates, a thirteenth-century writer. Raymond Le Coz's 1992 edition answered that Kotter had found ninth-century manuscripts attributing the text to John, and that a shorter form appears in a manuscript of the Doctrina Patrum, a florilegium, which Le Coz dates to the eighth century (Schadler: eighth or ninth). Le Coz concluded that the chapter can be attributed to John "sinon avec certitude... du moins avec une très grande probabilité" (if not with certainty, at least with very great probability), while allowing for later interpolations.³³ Schadler, writing in 2018, holds that John at minimum "took the text and supplemented it, and at most wrote the full text himself."³⁴ {{moderate: John wrote, or substantially shaped, the chapter on Islam in On Heresies.}}

The Orthodox position

What is dogma here is the teaching John defended, not his biography. The Second Council of Nicaea defined that holy images receive "due salutation and honourable reverence," "not indeed that true worship of faith (latreia) which pertains alone to the divine nature," because "the honour which is paid to the image passes on to that which the image represents."³⁵ That decree, received as the seventh of the Ecumenical Councils, follows John's distinction closely.

As common tradition, the Church venerates him as a saint, sings hymns attributed to him, and keeps his feast on 4 December. The OCA's troparion calls him "Champion of Orthodoxy, teacher of purity and of true worship."³⁶ Tradition credits him with the Oktoechos, the book of the eight tones; Chase judged that he wrote a large part of it, though "probably not" all.³⁷

As pious opinion, Orthodox Christians may hold the traditional story of the hand and the details of the Life, but none of these is a matter of faith. A believer who accepts the councils' teaching on icons and doubts the eleventh-century Life is not at odds with the Church.

The strongest objections

"Images break the second commandment"

John Calvin argued that God's majesty "is defiled by an absurd and indecorous fiction, when he who is incorporeal is assimilated to corporeal matter," and he answered directly the old claim that images are the books of the unlearned.³⁸ Many Protestants share this concern, and our guide to whether icons are idols takes it seriously. John agrees that the invisible God cannot be imaged. His question is whether the Word made flesh may be depicted: a picture of Christ's human face is not a picture of the divine essence. The same Law that forbade images commanded carved cherubim over the ark, which John cites; and he finds the distinction between adoration and honor in Scripture itself, where Abraham, Jacob and Joshua bow before men and angels without adoring them. Whether early Christians used images is a separate historical question, treated in Icons and the Early Church.

"He is a Catholic Doctor, and he taught the Filioque in all but name"

Catholics honor John as a Doctor of the Church, a title given under Pope Leo XIII.³⁹ Some Catholic theologians read his "through the Son" as compatible with the Western "and the Son"; the Council of Florence in 1439 said that those who used the two formulas "were aiming at the same meaning in different words."⁴⁰ That reading deserves respect, since John does say the Spirit is "communicated through the Son." The Orthodox reply is that he also says plainly, "we do not speak of the Spirit as from the Son," keeping the Father as the one source of the Spirit. The Orthodox Churches did not receive the Council of Florence.

"His chapter on Islam is hostile and unfair"

A Muslim reader is right that parts of it are mocking and some of its claims inaccurate. Le Coz still judged the text moderate compared with later Byzantine polemic and suggested that John knew Islam better than his successors.⁴¹ His theological point, that God's Word cannot be outside God, remains a serious argument, and it can be made with courtesy.

"His courage is a legend; he was safe under the caliph"

Chase recorded this objection and answered that John also lived among Muslims who opposed images and wrote just as sharply against Islam, in a period when a caliph had the tongue of Peter, Metropolitan of Damascus, cut out for preaching against Muslims and Manichaeans.⁴² In truth we do not know what risks John faced. The case for his holiness rests on his work and the Church's judgment, not on a dramatic biography.

What we can say confidently

• John, called Mansur, came from a Damascene Christian family that served the Umayyad caliphs in financial office.
• He wrote three treatises defending icons around 730 and was alive and writing after 743.
• The iconoclast council of 754 anathematized him by name; the Second Council of Nicaea reversed this in 787 and proclaimed his memory eternal.
• His Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith gathers earlier Greek patristic teaching, including a clear statement of deification by grace.
• The Orthodox Church keeps his feast on 4 December.

What remains disputed

• His dates of birth and death, and whether he held office himself or only his father did.
• Whether he lived at Mar Saba or worked mainly in Jerusalem.
• How much of the chapter on Islam he wrote himself.
• Which hymns attributed to him are his.
• Whether "through the Son" can be reconciled with the Western Filioque.

Conclusion

St John of Damascus asked to be read for the tradition he passed on, not for his own originality. His biography is thin, and the stories that filled it in came centuries later. What survives from his own time is a body of writing and two councils that argued over it: one cursed him, and the other, received by the Church, honored him.

His argument still stands at the center of Orthodox worship. Because the Word became flesh, matter can carry grace, a face can be painted, and the honor given to an image passes to the One it shows. To stand before an icon is to confess that God has truly come near. To place him among the other teachers of the Church, see our Church Fathers explorer and the Lives of the Saints.

Notes

1. Orthodox Church in America, "Venerable John of Damascus," Lives of the Saints, commemorated 4 December, oca.org. ↩
2. OCA, "Venerable John of Damascus." The OCA notes that the icon of the Three Hands is commemorated on 28 June and 12 July. ↩
3. OCA, "Venerable John of Damascus." On the funeral idiomela still sung in Byzantine-rite funerals, see Frederic H. Chase Jr., trans., Saint John of Damascus: Writings, Fathers of the Church 37 (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1958), viii n. 5. ↩
4. OCA, "Venerable John of Damascus." ↩
5. Benedict XVI, General Audience, 6 May 2009, "John Damascene," vatican.va. ↩
6. Chase, introduction, xvi-xvii and xxv. Chase gives 743 for Cosmas's appointment as bishop of Maiuma. ↩
7. Peter Schadler, John of Damascus and Islam: Christian Heresiology and the Intellectual Background to Earliest Christian-Muslim Relations, History of Christian-Muslim Relations 34 (Leiden: Brill, 2018), 4, citing B. Kotter, Die Schriften des Johannes von Damaskos, vol. 3, 103. Chase (xviii) dates the first treatise before 729 and the second and third to 729-730 on internal evidence. ↩
8. Prosopography of the Byzantine Empire (King's College London), entry "Konstantinos 4": the new patriarch was announced "in Blachernae on 8 August 754, the last day of the Council of Hieria." ↩
9. Definition of the iconoclast council of 754, as read at the sixth session of Nicaea II, trans. Henry Percival, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, 2nd series, vol. 14 (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1900), newadvent.org/fathers/3819.htm. ↩
10. Schadler, John of Damascus and Islam, 4-5; Chase, introduction, xiv and xvii (arguing from the past tense of the anathema). ↩
11. The Seventh General Council, the Second of Nicaea, Held A.D. 787, trans. John Mendham (London: W. E. Painter, 1850), session 6, 428, and session 7, 442. ↩
12. Chase, introduction, ix-x and xiv-xv, citing Theophanes, Chronographia (PG 108). Schadler (3 n. 10) notes that the term Theophanes uses for Sergius's office is "somewhat unclear." ↩
13. Chase, introduction, v-ix. ↩
14. Schadler, John of Damascus and Islam, 3. The OCA gives "about the year 680"; the 1910 Catholic Encyclopedia gives "about 676." ↩
15. Chase, introduction, xvii; Schadler, 4-5 ("around the year 750"). ↩
16. Chase, introduction, xvii. ↩
17. Chase, introduction, xvii, citing Leontius's Life of Stephen the Wonderworker; Schadler, John of Damascus and Islam, 4 and n. 12, citing V. S. Conticello, "Jean Damascène," in R. Goulet, ed., Dictionnaire des philosophes antiques (Paris: CNRS, 2000), 989-1012. ↩
18. OCA, "Venerable John of Damascus." ↩
19. John of Damascus, Against Those Who Decry Holy Images 1 (ch. 16 in Kotter's edition), in St John Damascene on Holy Images, trans. Mary H. Allies (London: Thomas Baker, 1898), Project Gutenberg ebook 49917. The chapter number follows Benedict XVI's citation of Kotter (note 5). ↩
20. Allies trans., treatise 1. ↩
21. Allies trans., treatise 1. ↩
22. Allies trans., treatise 1. ↩
23. Allies trans., treatise 1 (kings) and treatise 2 (angel or emperor). ↩
24. John of Damascus, Fount of Knowledge, preface, in Chase, Writings, 6. ↩
25. Chase, introduction, xxxii. ↩
26. John of Damascus, Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith 1.1 and 1.8, trans. S. D. F. Salmond, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, 2nd series, vol. 9 (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1899), as revised at newadvent.org (New Advent credits E. W. Watson and L. Pullan; CCEL's edition of the volume credits Salmond). ↩
27. Exact Exposition 2.12, Salmond trans. ↩
28. Exact Exposition 4.16, Salmond trans. ↩
29. John of Damascus, On Heresies, opening, in Chase, Writings, 111; on the first eighty heresies taken from Epiphanius's Panarion, Chase, introduction, xxix. ↩
30. On Heresies 101, in Chase, Writings, 153. Kotter's edition numbers it 100: B. Kotter, ed., Die Schriften des Johannes von Damaskos, vol. 4, Patristische Texte und Studien 22 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1981), 60-67. ↩
31. On Heresies 101, Chase trans., 153-156. ↩
32. On Heresies 101, Chase trans., 156-158; Qur'an 7:73, 26:155 and 91:13, Saheeh International translation, quran.com. Chase's note "Not in the Koran" (n. 112) refers to the title: there is no sura called "The Camel of God." On the offspring story as absent from the Qur'an, Le Coz, Écrits sur l'Islam, 190. ↩
33. Raymond Le Coz, ed. and trans., Jean Damascène: Écrits sur l'Islam, Sources chrétiennes 383 (Paris: Cerf, 1992), 183-195 (manuscript dating at 191); Schadler, John of Damascus and Islam, 10 n. 41; discussing A. Abel, "Le chapitre CI du Livre des Hérésies de Jean Damascène: son inauthenticité," Studia Islamica 19 (1963): 5-25. Quotation at 194; translation ours. ↩
34. Schadler, John of Damascus and Islam, 10-11. ↩
35. Second Council of Nicaea, Decree, trans. Percival, NPNF2 14. ↩
36. OCA, "Venerable John of Damascus: Troparion and Kontakion" (Troparion, Tone 8), oca.org. ↩
37. Chase, introduction, xxiv. ↩
38. John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion 1.11.2 and 1.11.5, trans. Henry Beveridge (1845), ccel.org. ↩
39. J. B. O'Connor, "St. John Damascene," The Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. 8 (New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1910), newadvent.org; Benedict XVI, General Audience, 6 May 2009 (1890). ↩
40. Council of Florence, Session 6 (6 July 1439), Laetentur caeli, in N. P. Tanner, ed., Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils (1990), as reproduced at papalencyclicals.net; Exact Exposition 1.8, Salmond trans. ↩
41. Le Coz, Écrits sur l'Islam, 193. ↩
42. Chase, introduction, xiv. ↩

Bibliography

Primary sources

• John of Damascus. St John Damascene on Holy Images, Followed by Three Sermons on the Assumption. Translated by Mary H. Allies. London: Thomas Baker, 1898. Project Gutenberg ebook 49917.
• John of Damascus. Saint John of Damascus: Writings (The Fount of Knowledge: Philosophical Chapters, On Heresies, The Orthodox Faith). Translated by Frederic H. Chase Jr. The Fathers of the Church 37. Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1958.
• John of Damascus. An Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith. Translated by S. D. F. Salmond. Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, 2nd series, vol. 9. Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1899.
• Kotter, Bonifatius, ed. Die Schriften des Johannes von Damaskos. Vol. 4, Liber de haeresibus. Opera polemica. Patristische Texte und Studien 22. Berlin: De Gruyter, 1981.
• The Seventh General Council, the Second of Nicaea, Held A.D. 787. Translated by John Mendham. London: W. E. Painter, 1850.
• Percival, Henry R., ed. The Seven Ecumenical Councils. Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, 2nd series, vol. 14. Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1900.
• Council of Florence. Session 6, Laetentur caeli (1439). In Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, edited by Norman P. Tanner. London: Sheed & Ward; Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 1990.
• The Holy Bible, New King James Version. Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1982.

Orthodox and patristic sources

• Orthodox Church in America. "Venerable John of Damascus" (4 December), with Troparion and Kontakion. Lives of the Saints, oca.org.

Other scholarship (including scholars who disagree)

• Abel, Armand. "Le chapitre CI du Livre des Hérésies de Jean Damascène: son inauthenticité." Studia Islamica 19 (1963): 5-25.
• Benedict XVI. General Audience, 6 May 2009: "John Damascene." vatican.va.
• Le Coz, Raymond, ed. and trans. Jean Damascène: Écrits sur l'Islam. Sources chrétiennes 383. Paris: Cerf, 1992.
• O'Connor, J. B. "St. John Damascene." The Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. 8. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1910.
• Prosopography of the Byzantine Empire. "Konstantinos 4." King's College London, pbe.kcl.ac.uk.
• Sahas, Daniel J. John of Damascus on Islam: The "Heresy of the Ishmaelites". Leiden: Brill, 1972.
• Schadler, Peter. John of Damascus and Islam: Christian Heresiology and the Intellectual Background to Earliest Christian-Muslim Relations. History of Christian-Muslim Relations 34. Leiden: Brill, 2018.

Sources from the traditions discussed (Protestant and Islamic)

• Calvin, John. Institutes of the Christian Religion. Translated by Henry Beveridge (1845). ccel.org.
• The Qur'an. Saheeh International translation. quran.com.