St. John of Damascus: Three Treatises on the Divine Images Translation and Introduction

160 Pages·2003·79.853 MB·English

by  John of Damascus, Andrew Louth

ST JOHN OF DAMASCUS
Three Treatises
on the Vivine 7mages
Translation and
Introduction by
ANDREW LOUTH
First Edition
ST VLADIMIR'S SEMINARY PRESS
CRESTWOOD, NEW YORK 10707
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
John, of Damascus, Saint.
[On the divine images. English]
Three treatises on the divine images I St. John of Damascus; translation and
introduction by Andrew Louth. -1st ed.
p. cm. - (St. Vladimir's Seminary Press "popular patristics" series)
Includes bibliographical references (p. ).
ISBN 0-88141-245-7
1. Icons--Cult. 2. Iconoclasm. I. Louth, Andrew. II. Title. III. Series.
BR65.J6305132003
246' .53--dC21
2002031920
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Table of Contents
Introduction 7
Treatise I 19
Treatise II 59
Treatise III 81
Bibliography 159

Introduction
In AD 726 the Byzantine Emperor Leo III ordered the destruction of
icons, or religious images, throughout the Byzantine Empire. The
reasons for this policy are not clear, for lack of firm evidence, though
it seems that justification was sought in the allegation that the
veneration of icons amounted to idolatry, in contravention of the
second commandment. In 730 the Emperor took his policy of icono
clasm still further, issuing a formal edict and, when opposed by the
Patriarch of Constantinople, Germanus I, requiring him to resign.
Thus was inaugurated a period in which icons were subject to an
imperial ban throughout the Byzantine Empire that was to last, with
a brief remission from 786 to 815, until 843, when iconoclasm was
finally rejected as imperial policy and the restoration of the venera
tion of icons hailed as the "Triumph of Orthodoxy" in a ceremony
that became annual, and still continues to be celebrated in the
Orthodox Church on the First Sunday of Lent.
The period of iconoclasm coincided with a time of dramatic
change for the Byzantine Empire. These changes were principally
caused by the events of the seventh century, during which the Byzan
tine Empire suffered the loss of its provinces in the east and south of
the Empire-from Syria, down through Palestine to Egypt, and
eventually along the Mediterranean coast of Africa-to the emer
gent Islam of the Arabs, and loss of control of the Balkan provinces
south of the Danube, which were largely settled by Slavs from the
Central European Plain in the early years of that century. The Byzan
tine Empire--or the Roman Empire, as it thought of itself-shrank
to little more than Constantinople and Asia Minor, which suffered
7
8 JOHN OF DAMASCUS
yearly invasion from the Arabs, together with Thessaloniki and
Thrace, which were under constant threat from the Slavs and the
more warlike Avars, and later, Bulgarsj contact between the capital
and the provinces in southern Italy was rendered fragile. A proud,
worldwide empire became an embattled Eastern Mediterranean
state hemmed in between the vast might of an Islamic Empire to the
east and the growing power of the Carolingian Empire to the west,
though the latter was only in the course of development in the eighth
century. Iconoclasm was probably, from one point of view, part of
the Byzantine Empire's response to this catastrophic situation, along
with administrative changes, as a result of which the Byzantine
Empire lost its provincial structure and was organized into regions
called "themes;' administered by a military commander and a stand
ing army. Both the administrative changes and iconoclasm facili
tated the centralization of power on the military leadership of the
Emperor.
Iconoclasm meant the destruction of icons and the forbidding
of their veneration. By "icons" is to be understood in this context any
form of religious art, whether mosaics, frescos, decoration of sacred
vessels, garments and books, even statues, as well as paintings on
board, which is what the word tends to mean nowadays (the word
"icon" is simply a transliteration of the Greek word for an image,
eikon). By the beginning of the eighth century, icons were a promi
nent feature of Byzantine society, both in public and in private.
Scholars differ as to whether the place of visual imagery in Chris
tianity was an alien incursion in the course of the fourth century, in
the wake of Constantine's conversion and the gradual "Christian
ization" of the Empire, or something that had much deeper roots.
Whatever its origins, the role of the icon increased enormously from
the sixth century onwards. The veneration of saints through their
images, or icons, became an important part of Christian devotion,
both in church and in private houses, and such sacred imagery came
to be used to reinforce the Emperor's claims to supreme earthly
authority that had long been expressed through visual imagery,
Introduction 9
including the statues of the Emperor found throughout the Empire.
The successful defense of the cities of the Empire against the con
stant threat from invading forces-Slavs and Avars, Arabs, and
before them the Persians-was widely attributed to the saints: for
example, the Mother of God in the case of Constantinople, and St
Demetrius in the case of Thessaloniki. When Leo III banned icons
in 726, he was attacking a popular and well-established practice.
John ofD amascus
Among the defenders of icons and their veneration at the outbreak
of iconoclasm, the most distinguished was Saint John Damascene.
A native of Damascus, he was by then a monk in the region of
Jerusalem (by tradition, though a late one, the Monastery of Mar
Saba, known as the Great Lavra, in the Judrean Desert). Almost cer
tainly he never in his life set foot on territory ruled by the Byzantine
Emperor. On the contrary, he had spent the first part of his life in the
service of the Muslim Caliph at Damascus (the capital of the
Umayyad Empire, which lasted from 661-750), following the exam
ple of his father and grandfather, who had been responsible for the
fiscal administration run from Damascus for about a century, and
had served the Byzantine Emperors and the Persian Shah before the
Arab conquest in 635. Probably about 706, when the Caliph al-Walid
made his administration more thoroughly Muslim, John left
Damascus and became a monk. We are not sure how old John was
by this time-anywhere between 30 and 55-but he spent the rest of
his life as monk near Jerusalem. He died probably about 750, since,
at the Byzantine synod held in Hiereia in Chalcedon in 754 to declare
support for iconoclasm, he was condemned, under his Arab name
Mansur (rather than his monastic name, John), as someone already
dead. It was certainly because John was beyond the reach of the
Byzantine Emperor that he was able to criticize the Emperor and his
policy of iconoclasm so freely.
10 JOHN OF DAMASCUS
The Treatises against the Iconoclasts
John wrote three treatises against "those who attack the holy
images;' or it might be more accurate to say that he wrote against the
iconoclasts three times, for the three treatises are not at all inde
pendent: the second treatise makes use of large parts of the first, and
is explicitly a simplified version of it; the third treatise follows the
second quite closely to begin with, and then develops a systematic
theological section, based largely on the first treatise. From that the
order of the treatises is clear. The second treatise was evidently writ
ten when the news of the deposition of Patriarch Germanus reached
Jerusalem, therefore shortly after 730; the first knows nothing of this,
and so must be between 726 and 730. The third treatise is more of a
cool treatise than an impassioned tract and, given that the flori
legium attached to it is very much longer than the earlier florilegia,
it is likely that it was composed somewhat later, say in the early 740S
(but not late enough for John to have learnt about the way Leo Ill's
son, Constantine V, was seeking to justify iconoclasm in the late
740s). Despite their overlap, they are very different treatises.
The first is an immediate response to the news of iconoclasm.
John declares his reluctance to get involved in controversy, but
quickly gets into his stride with an impassioned defense of icons and
their veneration. Much of the argument turns on the meaning of the
key terms: icon and veneration. In the case of icon, or image, John
sets out the centrality of this term in Christian theology, illustrating
the different roles this key term plays, from characterizing the rela
tionships within the Trinity-the Son as image ot the Father, for
instance-to describing the way in which God relates to the created
order through his divine intentions, images of which are brought
into effect through providence, the way in which visual images give
us some inkling of invisible realities, the way in which the Old Tes
tament contains images that foreshadow the New, and the way in
which images, both in writing and in painting, remind us of past
events and people. Attacking images, John seems to be saying, is not
Introduction
11
just to attack the actual icons, but more seriously to threaten some
thing central to the whole fabric of Christian theology. The other key
term, veneration, is then subject to the same drawing of distinctions.
The Greek word I have translated "veneration" (following what seems
to be the established custom among English-speaking Orthodox) is
proskynesis, which properly speaking refers to an action, the action
of bowing down to the ground. In drawing his distinctions, John
points out that we make such an act of veneration for several rea
sons: in relation to God, we bow down to express our exclusive wor
ship (as I have translated the Greek latreia) of God, but we also bow
down, and venerate, other things, people and sacred things, out of
respect (Greek: time). In fact, these two meanings of veneration are
related: we venerate things, places and people associated with God,
as a way of showing respect to what belongs to God; but God alone
is the object of our worship, which we also express through venera
tion, or bowing down. These two arguments make clear two funda
mental points: first, the importance of the image as a way of
discerning anything at all about God and his purposes, and secondly
the difference between the veneration of icons, which is a matter of
expressing honor, time, and idolatry, which is offering latreia to
something other than God, something forbidden by the second
commandment (apparently, as already noticed, the justification
given for iconoclasm). In this treatise John also appeals to the wor
ship of the Old Testament, in which acts of veneration were offered
to all sorts of things, such as the ark of the covenant and Aaron's rod,
as well as the images of the cherubim, made of bronze, and further
more grounds his argument on the fact that matter is created, and
so not to be despised, as iconoclasm would seem to imply, but even
more on the fact that the Son of God himself assumed a material
form in the Incarnation. John dwells on the value and beauty of mat
ter' and suggests that the iconoclast despising of matter betrays an
inclination towards Manichreism. But for John the strongest argu
ment of all, introduced early on in the treatise, is based on the Incar
nation: even if the veneration of images was forbidden in the Old
12 JOHN OF DAMASCUS
Testament (which, he maintains, it is not), because God has no vis
ible form, this situation has changed as a result of the Incarnation,
in which the invisible and incomprehensible God has taken on him
self a material form. The first treatise continues with an appeal to
unwritten tradition, in which he invokes a famous passage from St
Basil's On the Holy Spirit, rejects the appeal made by the iconoclasts
to passages allegedly from St Epiphanius, and then continues by cit
ing a collection of patristic texts (a florilegium), on which he pro
vides a running commentary. He concludes by taking the emperor
to task in no uncertain terms, accusing him of piracy in usurping the
role of the bishops in seeking to define Christian belief.
What is amazing about this first treatise, apparently written in
the heat of the moment, is the confidence of the argument and its
theological depth. Part of the reason for this emerges in the flori
legium, the collection of patristic quotations, with which it con
cludes, for there we find, not only John's sure-footed appeal to
authority, but also some hints of earlier controversy in which Chris
tians had already been forced to defend the veneration of icons (and
the Cross and the relics of the saints). Most striking, in this respect,
are the long extracts from Leontius, bishop of Neapolis in Cyprus.
John's quotations are from a treatise against the Jews, that is other
wise lost (other works of Leontius survive, mainly works of hagiog
raphy). Clearly Leontius, in the middle of the seventh century (he
was one of the signatories of the Synod of Lateran in 649, which con
demned the Christological heresies of monenergism and monothe
litism), had found himself required to defend Christian practice
against Je'\ovs, v{ho accused Christians of idolatry because of their
veneration of the Cross and icons and relics of the saints. This pre
sumably reflects a situation in which, after the rise of Islam, many
Christians found themselves deprived of imperial support and hav
ing to defend themselves against religious groups-heretics, Jews,
maybe even Samaritans and Manichees-they could have safely
ignored in the sixth century. Leontius is clear that the actual practice
of worship under the Old Covenant was much richer than that of his