John of Damascus defended icons from a monastery near Jerusalem
Born Yūḥana ibn Manṣūr ibn Sarjūn in Damascus around 675 or 676, John of Damascus became a monk, priest, hymn writer and apologist. Tradition places his death at Mar Saba on 4 December 749. He is remembered as Orthodoxy’s great defender of icons.
John came from a leading Syrian Christian family that served whoever ruled Damascus. His grandfather Mansur ibn Sarjun collected the region's taxes for the Byzantine emperors Maurice and Heraclius and appears to have helped negotiate the city's surrender to Khalid ibn al-Walid's Muslim army in 635. Christian civil servants kept their posts under the new rulers, and Sarjun, John's father, later worked for the Umayyad court. Whether the family was of Arab descent is debated among his biographers.
His father reportedly wanted him to learn the books of both the Muslims and the Greeks, and John shows familiarity with the Quran, which he attacked sharply. One account says his tutor was Cosmas, a Sicilian monk captured by Arabs whom Sarjun ransomed at great cost. Folklore pairs the young John with the future caliph Yazid I and the Christian court poet al-Akhtal. He may have held a government post before leaving Damascus, perhaps around 706 as the administration became more Islamic, though that date is uncertain, to become a monk and priest at Mar Saba.
The fight that made his name began in 726, when Emperor Leo III issued his first edict against venerating images. From his monastery, beyond the emperor's reach, John wrote three treatises defending icons in a plain style ordinary believers could follow. A legend claims Leo forged letters framing him for treason, the caliph had his right hand cut off, and the Virgin restored it after he prayed before her icon.
The iconoclast Council of Hieria anathematised him in 754; the Second Council of Nicaea rehabilitated him in 787. In his survey of 103 heresies, he labels Islam the heresy of the Ishmaelites, making him one of the first Christians known to discuss and criticise it. Pope Leo XIII declared him a Doctor of the Church in 1890.
Source: John of Damascus
