st. john of damascus (676-749 - Cristo Raul

26 ST. JOHN OF DAMASCUS.
captives one day brought in to the slave market at
Damascus was an Italian l monk. His reverend air
and bearing made even his fellow-prisoners throw
themselves at his feet, to beg a blessing in their
distress. No wonder then that his captors were
impressed. The father of John was standing by, a
spectator of the scene. Moved by the captive s tears,
he drew near and questioned him. His name was
Cosmas, a simple monk ;
he feared not death for its
own sake, but for the loss it would bring of all the
learning he had painfully acquired. The wisdom of
the Stagirite, the philosophy of Plato all the stores
of Grecian learning and theology were as an in
heritance he had laboriously won, and would now be
lost by his death for want of an heir to succeed to it.
Such an heir, such an intellectual son, he had not yet
ha,d the opportunity of finding.
Here, it was evident,
was the very tutor for whom the father had so long
searched. He hastened with all speed to the Caliph, 2
1
The conquest of Sicily by the Saracens (on which occasion
they might easily have ravaged the adjacent coast of Italy) was
not till the year 827. But Lequien inclines to place this
occurrence about the year 699, when the Arabs, having con
quered the north coast of Africa, were infesting the adjacent
shores of the Mediterranean. He quotes indeed a statement of
Theophanes to show that part of Sicily was overrun, and its
inhabitants conveyed to Damascus, as early as the twentysecond
year of Constans II. (A.D. 663), but this seems to lack
confirmation. The point would not be worth discussion, but
for the light it
might throw, if cleared up, on the date of John
Damascene s birth.
2
Here again the writer mentions no caliph s name. Abd al
Malek (685-705), or his successor Walid I. (705-714), are
naturally thought of as the most likely.