APPENDIX 499 Another younger opponent of Monotheletism was Anastasius of the monastery of Mount Sinai. He travelled about in Syria and Egypt, fighting with heresies (second half of seventh century). Three essays of his are extant (irepl roii /cot' (iKSva) on Monotheletism ; the third gives a history of the controversy. ["Works in Migne, Patr. Gr. vol. Ixxxix.] John or D.'^mascus was the most important opponent of Iconoclasm in the reigns of Leo III. and Constantine V. The son of a Syrian who was known by the Arabic name of Mansur, and held a financial post under the Saracen government at Damascus, he was born towards the end of the seventh century. He was educated bj- a Sicilian monk named Cosmas. He withdrew to the monastery of St. Sabas before a.d. 73(5 ** and died before a.d. 753. What we know of his life is derived from a Biography of the tenth centurj^ by John of Jerusalem, who de- rived his facts from an earlier Arabic biograjjliy. (The life is printed in Sligne, Patr. Gr. xciv. p. 429 sqq. ) The great theological work of John is the Tlriyri yvdaeoos, " Fountain of Knowledge," a s3-stematical theology founded on the concepts of Aristotelian metaj)hysics (here John owed much to Leontius of Byzantium). But the works which concern us are the essays against the Iconoclasts, three in number, composed between a.d. 726 and 736. The first Diatribe was written and published between the edict of Leo and the deposition of the Patriarch Germanus three years later. The second seems to have been written immediately after the news of this deposition reached Palestine ; for John, referring to this, makes no reference to the installation of Anastasius which took place a fortnight later (see c. 12 ; Migne, Patr. Gr. xciv. p. 12()7)- The object of this dissertation was to elucidate the propositions of the first, which had excited much discussion and criticism. The third contains much that is in the first and second, and develops a doctrine as to the use of images. *• The gi-eat edition (1712) of Lequien, with valuable prolegomena, is reprinted in Migne's Patr. Gr. xciv.-xcvi. [Monographs : J. Langen, Johannes von D. , 1879 ; J. H. Lupton, St. John of D., 1884.] The defence of image-worship addressed " to all Christians and to the Emjieror Constantine Kaballinos and to all heretics," included in John's works (Migne, vol. xcv. p. 309 sqq.), is not genuine. It contains much abuse of Leo and Con- stantine. When the Paschal Chronicle deserts us in a.d. 627, we have no contemporary historians or chroniclers for the general course of the Imperial history until we reach the end of the eighth century. There is a gap of more than a century and a half in our series of Byzantine history. The two writers on whom we dejiend for the reigns of the Heracliad dynastj- and of the early Iconoclast sovereigns lived at the end of the eighth and the beginning of the ninth centur3' : the Patriarch Nice- phorus and the monk Theophanes. Thej- both used a common source, of which we have no record. NicEPHORus, Patriarch of Constantinople A.n. 806-815, has his place in history as well as in literature. At the time of the second council of Nicaea, a.d. 787, he was an imperial secretary. In a.d. 806 he succeeded Tarasius in the Patriarchate (see above, p. 192) and stood forth as the opponent of the monastic party. Deposed by Leo V. he was, under this and the following Emperor, the most prominent champion of image-worship. He died in exile a.d. 829. He was greater as a theological than as an historical writer. His important works on the iconoclastic question were written during exile : (1) the Apologeticus minor, a short treatise defending image-worship ; (2) in a.d. 817, the Apologeticus major, which is speci- ally important as containing a number of quotations from an iconoclastic work by 8 John perhaps held his father's post for a while. For the legend of his right hand see above, p. 255, note. 9 Its genuineness has been questioned on insufficient grounds by the Oxford scholar H. Hody.
