ABSTRACT
Anyone interested in what is customarily called 'iconoclasm' will encounter Palestine along the way: the Palestinians John of Damascus and Theodore Abu-Qurrah had developed a defence of icons as early as the eighth century, before the Constantinopolitans, patriarch Nicephorus and Theodore the Studite, take the reins in the ninth century. The Greek dossier of the Lavra in the eighth century is well documented: it contains a major text, the Life of Stephen the Sabaite, accompanied by another important text, the Passion of the XX Sabaite martyrs, both known until now thanks to a single manuscript, Coislin 303. John of Damascus is an enigma for the historian: we know his works, which are considerable and make him the last Father of the Church, but we know barely anything of the man himself, for whom only late and fictionalized Lives remain. Christian oriental chronicles, whether Melkite or Jacobite, sing a different tune: they are unanimously hostile to the family.
