Joannes Damascenus. John Chrysorras ('the golden-flowing') of Damascus, a great theologian and hymn-writer of the Eastern Church, was born at Damascus, it is said, in 676, but certainly before the end of the 7th century, of a Christian family of distinction in this city, known by the Arabic surname of Mansour. He was carefully educated, together with his adopted brother Cosmas, by the learned Italian monk Cosmas, who had been brought a slave to Damascus, and is said to have been called to the office of vizier to the reigning calif. He replied in quick succession to the iconoclastic measures of Leo the Isaurian with two memorable addresses in which he vigorously defended the practice of image-worship. His biographer John, patriarch of Jerusalem (10th century), tells us that Leo, unable to reach his formidable antagonist by open means, caused a treasonable letter to be forged, in consequence of which John's hand was struck off by order of the calif, but after a night of prayer to the Virgin miraculously restored. It is certain that his later years were spent in a monastery, that of St Sabas near Jerusalem, where we are told he mortified his flesh with ascetic practices of unusual severity. Here he found leisure and inspiration to write his learned works and his religious poetry, was ordained a priest, and died soon after 754.
His chief Greek works are Fons Scientiae, a group of three works, together forming an encyclopædia of Christian theology; De Imaginibus Orationes III.; De Recta Sententia Liber, a formal profession of faith; Contra Jacobitas; Dialogus contra Manichaeos; Disputatio Christiani et Saraceni; De Draconibus et Strygibus, in which he combats popular superstitions; De Duabus in Christo Voluntatibus, an attack on Monophysite and Monothelete heresy; Adversus Nestorianos; Loca Selecta in Epistolas S. Pauli, mostly from the homilies of St Chrysostom; Saera Parallela, consisting of passages from Holy Writ illustrated by parallel passages from Scripture and the Fathers; Homiliae, thirteen in number; Carmina, including both canons or prose hymns and metrical hymns; and Vita Barlaam et Joasaph, his most famous work, now known to be a disguised version of the life of Buddha. Of John's Canons the noblest is that for Easter, beginning, in Neale's translation, 'Tis the day of Resurrection; Earth, tell it out abroad.' Other hymns known to Englishmen through the same translator are 'Those eternal bowers,' 'Take the last kiss, the last for ever,' and 'Come ye faithful, raise the strain.' The first adequate edition of the works of Joannes Damascenus was that of the Dominican Michael Le Quien (2 vols. folio, Paris, 1712). This was reprinted at Venice in 1748, and is the basis of the edition in Migne's Patrologia (3 vols. 1864).
See the articles BARLAAM AND JOSAPHAT, and HYMNS; also Dr Neale's Hymns of the Eastern Church (1870), and Dr Joseph Langen's admirable book, Johannes von Damascus (Gotha, 1879); also the Rev. J. H. Lupton's St John of Damascus (1882), in the 'Fathers for English Readers.'