Legacy and Reception

How St. John of Damascus (c. 675–749) came to be received as “the last of the Greek Fathers” and the seal of the patristic age — his standing as the supreme Byzantine dogmatic authority, his second career as a textbook of the Latin schools through Burgundio of Pisa’s translation and Thomas Aquinas’s Summa, his 1890 declaration as a Doctor of the Church, his Orthodox feast on December 4, and the iconoclast anathema against “Mansur” that the Seventh Ecumenical Council reversed. It also takes honest stock of the attribution problems — Barlaam and Ioasaph, the Octoechos, the severed-hand legend, and the tenth-century vita on which his whole biography rests.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (Church Father)

This section turns from John’s own works to his afterlife in the Church and in the academy. Two complementary stories are told.

The first is the story of veneration and authority: how a monk of Mar Saba, anathematized in his absence by the iconoclast Council of Hieria (754) under his Arabic family name “Mansur,” became within a generation the very type of orthodoxy — his Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith the standard Byzantine handbook of dogma, his treatises On the Divine Images the charter vindicated at Nicaea II (787), his hymns sung across the Orthodox world. The same authority gave him an unexpected second life in the Latin West: translated by Burgundio of Pisa in the twelfth century, he became a constant auctoritas of the schoolmen, cited by Peter Lombard and Thomas Aquinas, and in 1890 declared a Doctor of the Church by Pope Leo XIII.

The second is the story of scholarship’s honest reckoning. John’s prestige, like that of every great Father, drew works to his name that are not his — most famously the Barlaam and Ioasaph romance, a christianized life of the Buddha now generally credited to the Georgian Euthymios the Athonite. The Octoechos, the De his qui in fide dormierunt, and the celebrated Tricherousa legend each raise their own questions; and the entire received life depends on a vita written some two centuries after his death. This collection holds the saint and the scholarship together rather than choosing between them, following the repository’s hagiography-vs-history method.

Section Contents

• Last of the Fathers — the “last of the Greek Fathers” framing and its limits (Symeon and Palamas are Fathers too); his Byzantine authority; the Western career (Burgundio, Aquinas, the Summa’s debt); the 1890 Doctor of the Church declaration; the December 4 feast (with St. Barbara); and the iconoclast “Mansur” anathema reversed at Nicaea II.
• Attributions and Legends — the attribution problems catalogued honestly: Barlaam and Ioasaph and Euthymios the Georgian; the Octoechos (contributor, not creator); the disputed De his qui in fide dormierunt; the severed-hand / Tricherousa legend and the icon’s Hilandar veneration; and the tenth-century vita problem.

See Also

• The Exposition — the dogmatic handbook that grounded both Byzantine and Western reception
• Three Treatises — the icon writings vindicated at Nicaea II
• Canons and Octoechos — the hymnographic legacy whose attribution this section weighs
• Methodology: The Xenia Case — the repository’s source-critical method for hagiography
• The Ecumenical Councils — Nicaea II in the conciliar tradition

References

• Louth, Andrew. St John Damascene: Tradition and Originality in Byzantine Theology. Oxford Early Christian Studies. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002.
• St. John of Damascus. Writings (The Fount of Knowledge). Trans. Frederic H. Chase, Jr. Fathers of the Church 37. Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1958.
• Orthodox Church in America. “Venerable John of Damascus” (December 4). oca.org.
• “Second Council of Nicaea (787).” In Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, ed. Norman P. Tanner. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 1990.