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

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44 ST. JOHN OF DAMASCUS.
widely-spread
acquaintance with the writings of Aris
totle, and the increased practice to which it was put
in the monophysite and monothelete controversies,
were made subservient to a formal orthodoxy, to
enunciating articles of a creed. The ignorant crowd
might be goaded to fury by party cries in the church
or the amphitheatre but to clamour for or
;
against an
addition to the Trisagion could afford little
presump
tion that the clamourer was in earnest about the
realities of Christian life. At the same time these
miserable circus-fights of the sixth century,"
of
which Maurice indignantly complains, these windy
controversies of "who
people had talked about the
divine and human nature till
they had lost all faith in
God and man,"
were far from devoid of effects, even
lasting effects, on the political world. It is not easy
to measure the importance of the step taken by the
Roman pontiff in 484, when, solely on the ground
of monophysite opposition, Felix II. issued his
anathema against the patriarch of Constantinople,
and communion was broken off between the Eastern
and Western churches. Who can calculate what
might have been the condition of Russia, of Europe,
of the Turkish Empire, at this day, had the union of
the Eastern and Western churches not been severed ?
The outline thus briefly sketched of the two great
controversies which harassed the Eastern Church
during the fifth, sixth, and seventh centuries, seemed
necessary as an introduction to the state of that Church
in John of Damascus s own day. The latter of the two,
indeed, the monothelete, lingered on into the eighth
century, and John s writings are coloured by allusions