Peter of Damascus: Byzantine Monk and Spiritual Theologian (review)

In this book Greg Peters introduces us to a Byzantine monk and spiritual theologian who, although highly regarded by the tradition—second only to St. Maximos the Confessor in the space allotted him in the Philokalia—has been all but ignored in modern scholarship. The two works included in the Philokalia Peters calls the “Admonition to His Own Soul” and the “Spiritual Alphabet” in his table of contents; St. Nikodimos, in the Philokalia, has simply “book I and “book II,” but Peters’s titles are apt. Although tradition clearly held Peter in high regard, nothing much seems to have been known about him; Nikodimos in his preface was most likely guessing, and guessing wrongly.

Peters begins his book with some serious detective work and argues convincingly that Peter Damascene belongs the middle/late twelfth century. He argues, too, that we cannot deduce from the epithet Damascene that he came from Damascus and tries to identify our Peter, with no very secure result; we do learn a good deal about attributions of treatises to people who may or may not have been Peter. In the course of these early chapters we learn about the slight scholarship on Peter, which has been mostly dismissive. Peters then presents his own understanding of Peter, by way of a discussion, chapter by chapter, of the two works. He wants us to see Peter as a more original spiritual theologian than most maintain and a clearer thinker. In particular, he rejects the notion that Peter can be assigned to the “Evagrian-Maximian” tradition of Byzantine spirituality and tries to persuade us that his works are more carefully structured than is usually maintained. Whether this is at all successful is an open question. The Evagrian-Maximian tradition is a pretty broad one; it is not clear why Peter should be regarded as belonging elsewhere. Over the question of structure, taking us through these works chapter-by-chapter is not an entirely helpful way of approaching the issue. Peter seems typical of the Byzantine spiritual tradition in presenting his teaching as a series of lists and lists within lists. Like virtually all monastic literature, it is not intended to be read through, but taken piece by piece and pondered. It would have been more enlightening to compare and contrast Peter with other examples of monastic literature and to note similarities and differences. Arguing that Peter stands apart from the Evagrian-Maximian tradition, which is the Byzantine spiritual tradition, is a distraction. One striking, and unusual, feature of Peter’s works is his frequent citations of earlier writers. Peters addresses this in his final chapter on intertextuality, but it would have been much more enlightening had it been woven more tightly into his exposition. An appendix gives the verses that precede each chapter in the “Spiritual Alphabet,” omitted in the English translation of the Philokalia as probably secondary. This is valuable and brings out more clearly the alphabetical structure of the work. However, in his discussion each chapter is called after its letter with ´ added; the diacritical instructs us to read the letter as a number, so “Logos O´” should mean “chapter 70.” It is, however, chapter 15; the diacritical should have been omitted. Peters also argues that Peter envisages an audience now wholly monastic, but that is true of many Byzantine spiritual writers and is not peculiar to Peter Damascene. Nevertheless, if this book serves to draw attention to Peter Damascene, it will have achieved a worthy end.