Description
Book SynopsisFor more than five hundred years the life and work of John of Damascus (c. 655-c.745) have been the subject of a very extensive literature, scholarly and popular, in which it is often difficult to get one's bearings. Through the studies included here (of which 6 appear in a translation into English made specially for this volume), Vassa Kontouma provides a critical review of this literature and attempts to answer several open questions: the author and date of composition of the official Life of John, the philosophical significance of the Dialectica (a study which has its first publication here), the original structure of the Exposition of the Orthodox faith, the identity of ps.-Cyril, the authenticity of the Letter on Great Lent, and questions of Mariology. She also opens new vistas for research along four main lines: the life of John of Damascus and its sources, Neochalcedonian philosophy, systematic theology in Byzantium, and Christian practices under the Umayyads.
Table of ContentsContents: Introduction; The Life of John of Damascus and its Sources: John of Damascus (c.655-c.745); John III of Antioch (996-1021) and the Life of John of Damascus (BHG 884). Neochalcedonian Philosophy: Remarques sur la situation de la philosophie byzantine du concile de Chalcédoine à Jean Damascène. Systematic Theology: Pseudo-Cyril’s De SS. Trinitate: a compilation of Joseph the Philosopher; The Fount of knowledge between conservation and creation; At the origins of Byzantine systematic dogmatics: the Exposition of the Orthodox faith of St John of Damascus. Christian Practices under the Umayyads: Lent in Jerusalem according to John of Damascus’s De sacris ieiuniis; Un florilège sur le Grand Carême attribué à Jean Damascène; Le florilège sur le Grand Carême et la Lettre de Jean Damascène à Comètas; Byzantine celebrations of the infancy of Mary and the question of Immaculate Conception in the 19th and 20th centuries. Index.
