Three Treatises on the Divine Images

Both accurate and readable, this first complete rendition of the treatises on the divine images was translated by Andrew Louth, the preeminent scholar on St John of Damascus. In AD 726 the Byzantine emperor ordered the destruction of all icons, or religious images. Thus was inaugurated a period in which icons were subject to an imperial ban that was to last, with a brief remission, until 843. Only then was iconoclasm finally rejected as imperial policy and the veneration of icons restored - an event hailed as the "Triumph of Orthodoxy." The most distinguished defender of icons, Saint John of Damascus, differentiates between the veneration of icons, which is a matter of expressing honor, and idolatry, which is offering worship to something other than God. Other books on Patristics published by St Vladimir's Seminary Press include: On Ascetical Life (St Isaac of Nineveh), introduction and translation by Mary Hansbury; and On the Christian Sacraments: The Procatechesis and the Five Mystagogical Catecheses (St Cyril of Jerusalem), Ed. F.L. Cross.St. John of Damascus is the author of 'Three Treatises on the Divine Images' with ISBN 9780881412451 and ISBN 0881412457.