Broken by persecution, he was sent to the monastery of Ubeda, where he died in 1591; his Obras espirituales were published posthumously in 1618. He was beatified in 1674 and canonized on the 27th of December 1726. The lofty symbolism of his prose is frequently obscure, but his lyrical verses are distinguished for their rapturous ecstasy and beauty of expression.
Some of his poems have been translated with great success by Arthur Symons in Images of Good and Evil; the most convenient edition of his works, which have been frequently reprinted, is that contained in vol. xvi. of the Biblioteca de autores españoles.
JOHN OF ASIA (or of Ephesus), a leader of the Monophysite
Syriac-speaking Church in the 6th century, and one of the earliest
and most important of Syriac historians. Born at Āmid (Diarbekr)
about 505, he was there ordained as a deacon in 529: but in 534
we find him in Palestine, and in 535 he passed to Constantinople.
The cause of his leaving Āmid was probably either the great
pestilence which broke out there in 534 or the furious persecution
directed against the Monophysites by Ephraim (patriarch of
Antioch 529–544) and Abraham (bishop of Āmid c. 520–541).
In Constantinople he seems to have early won the notice of
Justinian, one of the main objects of whose policy was the consolidation
of Eastern Christianity as a bulwark against the
heathen power of Persia. John is said by Barhebraeus (Chron.
eccl. i. 195) to have succeeded Anthimus as Monophysite bishop
of Constantinople, but this is probably a mistake.[1] Anyhow he
enjoyed the emperor’s favour until the death of the latter in 565
and (as he himself tells us) was entrusted with the administration
of the entire revenues of the Monophysite Church. He was also
sent, with the rank of bishop, on a mission for the conversion of
such heathen as remained in Asia Minor, and informs us that the
number of those whom he baptized amounted to 70,000. He also
built a large monastery at Tralles on the hills skirting the valley
of the Meander, and more than 90 other monasteries. Of the
mission to the Nubians which he promoted, though he did not
himself visit their country, an interesting account is given in
the 4th book of the 3rd part of his History.[2] In 546 the emperor
entrusted him with the task of rooting out the secret practice of
idolatry in Constantinople and its neighbourhood. But his
fortunes changed soon after the accession of Justin II. About
571 Paul of Asia, the orthodox or Chalcedonian patriarch, began
(with the sanction of the emperor) a rigorous persecution of the
Monophysite Church leaders, and John was among those who
suffered most. He gives us a detailed account of his sufferings
in prison, his loss of civil rights, &c., in the third part of his
History. The latest events recorded are of the date 585, and the
author cannot have lived much longer; but of the circumstances
of his death nothing is known.
John’s main work was his Ecclesiastical History, which covered more than six centuries, from the time of Julius Caesar to 585. It was composed in three parts, each containing six books. The first part seems to have wholly perished. The second, which extended from Theodosius II. to the 6th or 7th year of Justin II., was (as F. Nau has recently proved)[3] reproduced in full or almost in full, in John’s own words, in the third part of the Chronicle which was till lately attributed to the patriarch Dionysius Telmaharensis, but is really the work of an unknown compiler. Of this second division of John’s History, in which he had probably incorporated the so-called Chronicle of Joshua the Stylite, considerable portions are found in the British Museum MSS. Add. 14647 and 14650, and these have been published in the second volume of Land’s Anecdota Syriaca. But the whole is more completely presented in the Vatican MS. (clxii.), which contains the third part of the Chronicle of pseudo-Dionysius. The third part of John’s history, which is a detailed account of the ecclesiastical events which happened in 571–585, as well as of some earlier occurrences, survives in a fairly complete state in Add. 14640, a British Museum MS. of the 7th century. It forms a contemporary record of great value to the historian. Its somewhat disordered state, the want of chronological arrangement, and the occasional repetition of accounts of the same events are due, as the author himself informs us (ii. 50), to the work being almost entirely composed during the times of persecution. The same cause may account for the somewhat slovenly Syriac style. The writer claims to have treated his subject impartially, and though written from the narrow point of view of one to whom Monophysite “orthodoxy” was all-important, it is evidently a faithful reproduction of events as they occurred. This third part was edited by Cureton (Oxford, 1853), and was translated into English by R. Payne-Smith (Oxford, 1860) and into German by J. M. Schönfelder (Munich, 1862).
John’s other known work was a series of Biographies of Eastern Saints, compiled about 569. These have been edited by Land in Anecdota Syriaca, ii. 1–288, and translated into Latin by Douwen and Land (Amsterdam, 1889). An interesting estimate of John as an ecclesiastic and author was given by the Abbé Duchesne in a memoir read before the five French Academies on the 25th of October 1892.
JOHN OF DAMASCUS (Johannes Damascenus) (d. before
754), an eminent theologian of the Eastern Church, derives his
surname from Damascus, where he was born about the close of
the 7th century. His Arabic name was Mansur (the victor), and
he received the epithet Chrysorrhoas (gold-pouring) on account
of his eloquence. The principal account of his life is contained
in a narrative of the 10th century, much of which is obviously
legendary. His father Sergius was a Christian, but notwithstanding
held a high office under the Saracen caliph, in which he was
succeeded by his son. John is said to have owed his education
in philosophy, mathematics and theology to an Italian monk
named Cosmas, whom Sergius had redeemed from a band of
captive slaves. About the year 730 he wrote several treatises
in defence of image-worship, which the emperor, Leo the Isaurian,
was making strenuous efforts to suppress.
Various pieces of evidence go to show that it was shortly after this date that he resolved to forsake the world, divided his fortune among his friends and the poor, and betook himself to the monastery of St Sabas, near Jerusalem, where he spent the rest of his life. After the customary probation he was ordained priest by the patriarch of Jerusalem. In his last years he travelled through Syria contending against the iconoclasts, and in the same cause he visited Constantinople at the imminent risk of his life during the reign of Constantine Copronymus. With him the “mysteries,” the entire ritual, are an integral part of the Orthodox system, and all dogma culminates in image-worship. The date of his death is uncertain; it is probably about 752. John Damascenus is a saint both in the Greek and in the Latin Churches, his festival being observed in the former on the 29th of November and on the 4th of December, and in the latter on the 6th of May.
The works of Damascenus give him a foremost place among the theologians of the early Eastern Church, and, according to Dorner, he “remains in later times the highest authority in the theological literature of the Greeks.” This is not because he is an original thinker but because he compiled into systematic form the scattered teaching of his theological predecessors. Several treatises attributed to him are probably spurious, but his undoubted works are numerous and embrace a wide range. The most important contains three parts under the general title Πηγὴ γνώσεως (“The Fountain of Knowledge”). The first part, entitled Κεφάλαια φιλοσοφικά, is an exposition and application of theology of Aristotle’s Dialectic. The second, entitled Περὶ αίρέσεων (“Of Heresies”), is a reproduction of the earlier work of Epiphanius, with a continuation giving an account of the heresies that arose after the time of that writer. The third part, entitled Ἔκδοσις ἀκριβὴς τῆς ὀρθοδόξου πίστεως (“An Accurate Exposition of the Orthodox Faith”), is much the most important, containing as it does a complete system of theology founded on the teaching of the fathers and church councils, from the 4th to the 7th century. It thus embodies the finished result of the theological thought of the early Greek Church. Through a Latin translation made by Burgundio of Pisa in the 12th century, it was well known to Peter Lombard and Aquinas, and in this way it influenced the scholastic theology of the West. Another well-known work is the Sacra parallela, a collection of biblical passages followed by illustrations drawn from other scriptural sources and from the fathers. There is much merit in his hymns and “canons”; one of the latter is very familiar as the hymn “The Day of Resurrection, Earth tell it out abroad.” John of Damascus has sometimes been called the “Father of Scholasticism,” and the “Lombard of the Greeks,” but these epithets are appropriate only in a limited sense.
The Christological position of John may be summed up in the following description:[4] “He tries to secure the unity of the two
- ↑ See Land, Joannes Bischof von Ephesos, pp. 57 seq.
- ↑ Cf. Land’s Appendix (op. cit. 172–193).
- ↑ See Bulletin critique, 15th June and 25th Aug. 1896, and 25th Jan. 1897; Journal asiatique, 9th series, vol. viii. (1896) pp. 346 sqq. and vol. ix. (1897) p. 529; also Revue de l’Orient chrétien, Suppl. trimestriel (1897), pp. 41–54, 455–493; and compare Nöldeke in Vienna Oriental Journal (1896), pp. 160 sqq. The facts are briefly stated in Duval’s Littérature syriaque, p. 192. A full analysis of this second part of John’s history has been given by M. Nau.
- ↑ G. P. Fisher, Hist. of Chr. Doctrine, 159 seq. More fully in R. L. Ottley, The Doctrine of the Incarnation, ii. 138–146.
