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

:
"
"
"
"
"
"
"
"
"
v
70 ST. JOHN OF DAMASCUS.
The third and longest of the series, the De Fide
Orthodoxa," is
perhaps the most important of all
John s writings, and, in some respects one of the
most important works that have come down to us
from Christian antiquity. For it is the first
complete
Body of Divinity that we possess, and, as such,
has had an influence that cannot easily be measured
r on the theology of the West. It was made known to
7
the Latin Church by the version of Burgundio of
Pisa. John of Brompton fixes the date with pre
cision, by saying that the translation was made the
same year that the Thames was frozen over/, e.,
"Vin
the Great Frost of uso. 1 The statement that
Peter Lombard had this version before him when
preparing his Book of the Sentences thus becomes
quite probable. Without, therefore, taking account
of Aquinas, later on, whose indebtedness to the work
of Damascenus is admittedly great, we have here
v a visible link of connection between the Eastern
Church and the Western. In fact, the common
division into four books, which the De Fide pre
sents, is thought, not without good reason, to have
been the work of transcribers seeking to make it
harmonise more closely, even in outward form, with
the popular textbook of Lombardus. The division
into four books seems to have been a favourite one
Histoire Generale (1752), torn, xviii., p. 117, seems to draw
an inference from the equivalence of the Latin words by which
these two are rendered, and which he quotes
: "Nous devons
adorer et honorer (car il met ces deux termescomme synonymes)
la tres-sainte Mere de Dieu."
1
Twysden s "Decem Scriptores," p. 1036.