39 John Damascene

John Damascene

John Damascene was a personage of prime importance in the history of Byzantine theology and a great doctor in the history of the universal Church. Above all, he was an eyewitness of the passage from the Greek and Syrian Christian cultures shared by the Eastern part of the Byzantine Empire to the Islamic culture, which spread through its military conquests in the territory commonly known as the Middle or Near East…

Taken from Great Christian Thinkers by Pope Benedict XVI