John of Damascus

Lived

c. 675–c. 749

Era

Medieval

Where

Damascus and Jerusalem

Tradition

The apostolic communities

The defence of icons, written from outside the empire

A Christian civil servant in the Umayyad administration at Damascus who became a monk near Jerusalem, and wrote the definitive defence of images while the emperor in Constantinople was destroying them.

Why it matters

Living under Muslim rule put him beyond the reach of the iconoclast emperors, which is much of why the defence could be written at all. His argument is that the incarnation changed what may be depicted — God took matter, so matter can carry his image — and that veneration passes to the person, not the paint. The council of 787 followed him. His Fount of Knowledge was the first real systematic theology in Greek and reached the west in translation, where Aquinas used it heavily.

In the record

1. 787 AD Council

   Second Council of Nicaea

   Died before it; the council followed the defence of images he had written from outside the empire

All the figures, from the apostolic age to the present, or the timeline they stand in.