gregate, has passed through all the vicissitudes of war and conquest that have affected Syria, of which it is the natural capital. It was the royal city of the Syrian kings in their wars with Israel. David "put garrisons" in it, and in his days and those of his son Syria was subject to Israel. Solomon's magnificence reached beyond the plain of Damascus into the Persian desert, where he built Tadmor in the Wilderness. In those days the road between Damascus and Jerusalem was plain and easy to follow; as was likewise the way from Damascus to Tyre, its ancient seaport, round by the southern extremities of the two great Syrian mountain-ranges. After the Greek conquest, the Seleucidæ built Antioch, and Damascus, not being sufficiently near Greek interests, falls out of sight, and remains what it is by nature, a pleasant place of the earth, an emporium of caravans between the coast and the far East, and a border city that is ever and again held for a brief space by some of the unsubdued Arab tribes of the desert. So it continued when the Roman took up what the Greek could not hold. "Aretas the King," when S. Paul escaped from Damascus by a window in the walls, was probably the Emir of some Arab clan or confederation that, in defiance or by favour of Roman power, held temporary sway over the Ager Damascenus. In the history of the Church Damascus plays no conspicuous part after the days of S. Paul. Peter fixed his see at Antioch. It would perhaps have been a boon to perplexed Protestants if Paul had fixed his at Damascus. The wide desert which stretched out eastward from its very walls prevented it from ever becoming, to the countries that rest on the Euphrates and the Tigris, a centre of faith, of learning, or of error, such as Edessa was fitted to become. Still, Damascus was a great and important see. The memory of S. Paul contributed to make it a place of pilgrimage. Anchorites found their way into the desert that shuts it in. Justinian built a church there, and the size of the mosque that was once the Christian cathedral shows the scale on which its Christian establishment must have been.

In the year 622 Mahomet fled to Mecca, and in the same year Sergius of Constantinople published the pretended letter of Mennas to Pope Vigilius, which may be said to have inaugurated the heresy of the Monothelites. During the next eleven years all the great sees of the East were agitated by the discussions that ensued. How Damascus acted in the contest we do not know; but when Antioch and Jerusalem, Edessa and the Arabian frontier are mentioned over and over again, it is quite certain that the Church of Damascus was not far from the hottest of the battle. But during these eleven

years a different enemy from the heretic was whetting his sword against the pearl of the East. In the very year in which Sergius wrote his too celebrated letter to Pope Honorius (633), Abu Obeidah and his terrible lieutenant Kaled, surnamed the Sword of God, having stormed Bostra, crossed the Arabian boundaries and advanced to the conquest of Syria. Damascus was the first city that was attacked. To save it, the armies of Heraclius fought their first pitched battle against the Moslems. The Roman army was defeated, with immense slaughter, and Damascus, after a prolonged struggle, in which the siege of Troy seemed to have been played over again on its plains, surrendered to the infidels.

It was perhaps about sixty years after the conquest of Damascus by the Saracens, that is, about the year 690, that was born John of Damascus, or Damascene, the last of the Greek Fathers. His family was of the very first rank, and indeed was closely mixed up with the public life of the city. Its name was Mansur, and its founder, El Mansur, was therefore in all probability an Arab chief whose descendants had held to the city and submitted to Greek civilization. There is a story, which there is no reasan to reject entirely, of a Mansur who, at the time of the Arab conquest of Damascus, was of no small assistance to the Moslems. One version affirms that he took the money of the Arab commander, and delivered up the city by treachery. If he did, it would only be what too many of the Christian governors were in those days accustomed to do. But we may believe, with another version of the story, that this Mansur did his best for Heraclius until defeats and blunders had destroyed all chance of successful resistance, and that he finally surrendered to save useless bloodshed. In any case he must have been a leading man among the Christians. It is certain, moreover, that, owing to some cause or other, the Christians of Damascus obtained very favourable terms from the Saracens. For instance, they were allowed the free exercise of their religion, contrary to the invariable practice of the infidels, and were even, for a time, left in possession of their cathedral. The parents of S. John, sixty years after the conquest, had not lost the faith of their fathers. In the midst

The facts of the life of S. John Damascene are not very plentiful, and not always very certain. The principal account of him is one in Greek, which professes to have been translated, with embellishments, from various Arabic sources. It seems to be the work of John, Patriarch of Jerusalem, who was burnt alive by the Saracens in the latter years of Nicephorus Phocas, and to be therefore about the date of 969. It doubtless gives the traditions of the Church of Syria. The Church of Constantinople seems to have differed from it in one or two points of the Saint's history.

of the thorns, we are told, they preserved the flower of godliness and the good odour of the knowledge of Christ. Where many were faithless, they were faithful, and among the great and rich families their race was almost solitary in their unswerving attachment to their religion. Their constancy and their virtue were so remarkable that the very infidels had come to honour it. The father of S. John was very rich. Both in the city and throughout Judæa and Palestine he had great possessions. But the most curious fact in his history is that he was chief minister of the Saracen prince. The caliphs of the dynasty of the Ommaiades had made Damascus the seat of their empire very shortly before the period of which we speak, and it seems that the Saint's father was nothing less than the grand vizier of the reigning caliph. The author of the Life that we chiefly follow lays great stress on this remarkable circumstance, finding fitting parallels only in Daniel and Joseph, and extolling the power of virtue and of the fear of God. The Christian minister used his great power and wealth in doing good wherever his hand found it to do, redeeming Christian captives, helping them in their wants, securing them toleration from the infidels, or assisting them to find a home in other lands.

The child that was the reward of this pious life was baptized in his infancy. It is noticeable that this, according to the Life, was a difficult and dangerous proceeding. As it is impossible that private baptism can be here meant, for there could be neither difficulty nor danger in that, we must infer that the minister was bold enough to have his child baptized with all the solemnities of the Church. His education was the next concern. His father had higher views for him than to make him a soldier or a hunter; he did not teach him to ride (like an Arab), to throw the spear or shoot the arrow (like the sons of the desert), or to hunt beasts and turn his natural kindliness into sanguinary ferocity (like the hunters of the Syrian mountains). And it so happened that he found a tutor for him that left him nothing to desire. One day a band of Saracens brought into the city a troop of captives, whom they were proceeding to sell or to execute. We are told that they had brought them from the "sea-coast," and it is probable, therefore, that they had landed with them at Beyrout after some piratical expedition; for the Saracens began to infest the Mediterranean about 699 or 700. Among these captives was a Greek monk, called Cosmas, who had been brought from Italy (that is, from Calabria, which was full of Greek conventual settlements). His face was grave and beautiful to look upon; his mind, the Life assures us, was still graver

and more beautiful than his face. His fellow captives seemed to have extraordinary veneration for him, for they flung themselves at his feet and begged his prayers. The Saracens, seeing this, asked him what he was. He told them he was

nothing but a priest, except a useless monk, and a poor student of philosophy. And as he spoke they saw the tears in his eyes. The father of S. John was present at this scene. He spoke to the monk, and asked him how it was that he, who by his garb was dead to the world, seemed to feel his lot so deeply. The monk's answer reads like a genuine voice of the time, and though it is rather a long one, we must translate it; for it is such utterances that repay the labours of a searcher in the past. The exact words of our Greek biographer, however, need not be scrupulously followed, for much of his version is evidently only what he thinks (erroneously) to be embellishment. The monk replied :—“ The loss of this life I do not grieve, for, as you say, I am dead to the world. But my regret is this. I have searched human wisdom from end to end, and have made myself skilled in the circle of the sciences. I have practised my tongue in rhetoric; I have mastered logic and demonstration; in ethics I have learnt all that is delivered by the Stagirite or Aristo's son; arithmetic I know; geometry is familiar to me; I am at home with the rhythms and the harmonies of music; all that concerns the movements of the heavens and the courses of the stars I have carefully studied, that from the greatness and beauty of the creature, I might rise by analogy to the contemplation of the Creator. Then I have penetrated into the mysteries of theology, both the natural theology of the children of the Greeks, and that which is the theme of our Christian writers. And my grief is this. I have studied and learnt, but as yet I have not imparted what I know. I have begotten no children of my mind to rejoice me when I myself must pass away. My talent has been given me by my Master, but I have not delivered it to the bankers. Lo! here it is still laid up in a napkin. I had set my heart upon being reckoned in the number of the faithful servants, and my prayer was that I might give freely what I had received; and because this is denied me, therefore I am filled with sorrow and my eyes run down with tears." This seems a singular speech. But consider the situation. A man, whom a life of long and painful study has made the heir of the civilization and culture of Greek learning and Christian knowledge, stands bound in the hands of barbarians. What strikes him is the "pity of it "the folly, the waste, that is involved in the ignorant exertion of the brute force that is about to cut

him off! To a thoughtful mind, the Greek monk before the Saracen prince is an image of the whole Greek civilization of that time in presence of the unaccountable brute strength of Islamism. The new power was burning libraries and slaying the men that read them, and the thought that, it seems, may have often filled with sad tears the eyes of the races that had to bow to it, would be one of impotent sorrow that the work of centuries should be erased from the face of the earth, so wilfully, and so wastefully.

In the instance of Cosmas himself, however, that which he lamented was not to be. The father of S. John Damascene listened with much interest to his words, and then resolved that he was the very man he had been longing for to be tutor to his boy. "Forbear, holy man," he said to him, "be of better cheer; for perchance the Lord will give thee the petitions of thy heart." He hastened to the caliph (chronologists have found that it would be either Abdul Melek, or his son Walid) and obtained the captive for himself. Cosmas was instantly made free, and whatever the minister's house contained was placed at his service. The monk set about his grateful task with willing love. Besides his benefactor's son, he had another disciple, a young orphan called Cosmas, like himself, whom the good rich man had adopted in one of his visits to Jerusalem. What the course of their studies was, is sufficiently indicated in the speech of the monk just given. What the progress of the two scholars was, the compiler of the Life finds it difficult to convey. If John was like an eagle cleaving the skies, the young Cosmas was like a ship well laden, with every sail set and the west wind prosperously sending it through the waters. Indeed, it is certain that this first preceptor of S. John Damascene exerted a very great influence over his genius, as we shall see when we come to consider his writings. When the two boys had been trained in all human science and Divine truth, and had progressed so far as to excel (so the monk humbly said), their master himself, Cosmas resigned his charge and retired, with the gifts and blessings of the father, to spend the rest of his days in the laura of S. Sabas, near Jerusalem. Soon afterwards the father also died, and S. John, succeeding to his wealth and honours, was installed by the caliph, though much against his will, in the same post as his father. In the absence of exact certainty as to dates, we may put down these occurrences to the year 720 or thereabouts.

The remainder of S. John's life at Damascus is intimately connected with one important religious and political movement -the Iconoclast heresy. Leo the Isaurian (714-741) was