On Holy Images
John of Damascus, Apologia Against Those Who Decry Holy Images
John of Damascus, monk of Mar Saba
Written from outside the empire, by the one man the emperor could not silence.
- Catch rate
- 53 / 255
- Base research
- 164
- Stat total
- 280
Base stats
Every stat is a checkable fact about the actual book, not a designer's mood. Bars are drawn against the highest value any book reaches.
Why these numbers
The game's own explanation, as a reader sees it in the backpack.
John does not argue about art. He argues about the Incarnation, and then asks what follows — which is why the case is hard to answer at the level it was made.
Three treatises, transmitted entire, and a council behind them within sixty years of his death.
Read in the East for twelve centuries and barely opened in the West.
Cited for this book
Leo III began pulling images out of the churches around 726, and the man who answered him was beyond his reach: John was at Mar Saba in the Judaean desert, outside the empire, under the caliph, and had worked in the caliph’s own administration. His argument is Christological before it is anything else — if matter cannot carry holiness, what was the Incarnation? THE GAME DOES NOT FOLLOW HIM. Nicaea II settled the question in 787 in a direction this game’s own confession does not take, and the second commandment is where the disagreement sits. The case is here at its full strength because a reader who has not met it has not met the question.
Development
A book develops as it is read — the fragment becomes the work, the work becomes the corpus.
Moves learned
By levelling up. A book that develops keeps what it knew and learns the rest on its new schedule.
| Lv | Move | Type | Cat. | Pwr | Acc | PP |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | The Image of the Invisible | Christology | Argument | 84 | 100% | 10 |
| 1 | Random Verse | Bible | Argument | 10 | 100% | 30 |
| 34 | Chapter… | Bible | Scripture | — | — | 12 |
| 38 | A Book to the Unlettered | Ecclesiology | Argument | 70 | 100% | 15 |
| 42 | The God of Matter | Christology | Argument | 74 | 95% | 10 |
| 46 | Stronger Than Kings | Faith | Argument | 78 | 100% | 10 |