St. John of Damascus

John was born into the Mansur family, Christian Arabs who served as chief financial officers of the Umayyad Caliphate at Damascus. He inherited the post from his father and held it under the caliph Abd al-Malik before resigning all worldly office to enter the Lavra of St. Sabbas in the Judean desert.

When the Byzantine emperor Leo III issued the edicts of iconoclasm in 726 and 730, John, safely beyond Leo's reach in the caliphate, wrote three Apologies in defense of the holy images. He argued that since the invisible God had become visible flesh in Christ, the matter of the image was now itself sanctified.

Tradition holds that the iconoclast emperor procured a forged letter in John's hand and sent it to the caliph, who ordered John's right hand cut off. John prayed before an icon of the Theotokos; in the morning the hand was restored. The Theotokos icon called 'Tricheirousa', 'of the Three Hands', still stands at Hilandar Monastery on Mount Athos in memory of the miracle.

He spent the rest of his life at St. Sabbas writing hymns, the Paschal Canon among them, and his Fountain of Knowledge, whose third part, the Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, became the East's standard summa.