Life
John of Damascus (c. 675–749) served, like his family, in the administration of the Umayyad caliphate before becoming a monk near Jerusalem. His Fount of Knowledge gave Eastern Christianity its first great systematic theology, and his treatises defending the veneration of icons were pivotal in the Iconoclast controversy — safely composed beyond the reach of the Byzantine emperor. A hymnographer as well as theologian, he is honored as a Doctor of the Church and the last of the Greek Fathers.