DIDYMUS
784
DIDYMUS
Didymus the Blind, of Alexandria, b. about 310
or 313; d. about 39o or 398, at the age of eighty-five.
Didymus lost the use of his eyes when four years old,
yet he became one of the most learned men of his
period. lie prayed earnestly in his youth, we are
told by Rufinus, not for the sight of his bodily eyes,
but for illumination of the heart. He admitted to St.
Anthony that the loss of his sight was a grief to him ;
the saint replied that he wondered how a wise man
could regret the loss of that which he had in common
with ants and flies and gnats, and not rather rejoice
that he possessed a spiritual sight like that of the
saints and Apostles. St. Jerome indeed habitually
spoke of him not as "the blind" but as "the Seer".
Didymus studied with ardour, and his vigils were long
and frequent, not for reading but for listening, that he
might gain by hearing what others obtain by seeing.
When the reader fell asleep from weariness, Didymus
did not repose, but as it were chewed the cud (says
Rufinus) of what he had heard, until he seemed to
have inscribed it on the pages of his mind. Thus in a
short time he amassed vast knowledge of grammar,
rhetoric, logic, music, arithmetic, and geometrj', and a
perfect familiarity with Holy Scripture. He was
early placed at the head of the famous catechetical
school of Alexandria, over which he presided for about
half a century. St. Athanasius highly esteemed him.
The orator Libanius wrote to an official in Egypt:
" You cannot surely be ignorant of Didymus, unless
you are ignorant of the great city wherein he has night
and day been pouring out his learning for the good of
others." He is similarly extolled by his contempora-
ries and by the historians of the following century.
Rufinus was six years his pupil. Palladius visited
him four times in ten years (probably .388-398).
Jerome came to him for a month, in order to have his
doubts resolved with regard to difficult passages of
Scripture. Later ages have neglected this remarka-
ble man. He was a follower of Origen, and adopted
many of his errors. Consequently, when St. Jerome
quarrelled with Rufinus and made war on Origenism,
he ceased to boast of being a disciple of Didymus and
was ashamed of the praise he had formerly given to
the "Seer". When Origen was condemned by Jus-
tinian and then by the Fifth General Council, Didy-
mus was not mentioned. But he was anathematized
together with Evagrius Ponticus in the edict by which
the Patriarch Eutychius of Constantinople gave effect
to the decree of the council; and he was (perhaps in
consequence of this) included in the condemnation of
Origenists by the sixth and seventh councils. But
this censure is to be taken as applying to his doctrine
and not to his person. It has had the unfortunate
effect of causing the loss to us of most of his very
numerous writings, which, as the works of a supposed
heretic, were not copied in the Middle Ages.
Didymus always remained a layman. The idea that he was married rests on a mistaken identification of him with a Didymus to whom one of the letters of St. Isidore of Pelusium is addressed. He seems on the contrary to have lived the life of an ascetic, although in the city and not in the desert. A curious story was told by him to Palladius. One day, when dwell- ing on the thought of Julian as a persecutor, and on this account having taken no food, he fell asleep in his chair and saw white horses nmning in different direc- tions, while their riders cried out: "Tell Didymus, to-day at the seventh hour Julian died; arise and eat, and inform Athanasius, the bishop, that he also may know it." Didymus noteil the hour and the month and the week, and it was even so.
Doctrine. — Didymus was one of the principal oppo- nents of Arianisra. His Trinitarian and Christolog- ical doctrine is perfectly orthodox; one may even say that he is more explicit than .St. .\lhanasius as to the Unity in Trinity and tlie Divinity of tlie Holy Oho.st. He has combined the theological vocabulary of St.
Athanasius with that of the younger generation, Basil
and Gregory Nazianzen. He continually uses the
formula rpth vToaraffui, jxla ovaia, which St. Atha-
nasius admitted in his later years, and which has
become the Catholic watchword. Didymus has been
credited with the invention of this formula, and Lei-
poldt is in favour of the attribution, whereas K. Holl
rejects it. Until the fourth century the Greek-speak-
ing Church had no means of expressing the doctrine of
of the Trinity. The use of vTrdaraa-is to express the
Latin persomi was in itself a clumsy device, for Didy-
mus agrees with St. Jerome (who rejected the ex-
pression) that philosophically oii<rla and inrbsTixaii are
synonyms. Diilymus, however, carefully safeguarded
his doctrine from any wrong interpretation. His
work on the Holy Spirit is preser\'ed only in the Latin
translation made by St. Jerome. It is free from the
reproach of "economy" which attaches to the more
famous work of St. Basil, who avoided (as he himself
admits) caUing the Holy Ghost "God". A yet more
important work is the " De Trinitate ", the three books
of which are preser\-ed almost entire ; it was composed
after 379. A treatise against the Manichreans is also
nearly complete. Of the exegetical fragments, those
on the Psalms are the most important. A commen-
tary on the Catholic Epistles is knomi to us through
the Latin translation made by a certain Epiphanius
for Cassiodorus. Didymus comments on II Peter,
and elsewhere frequently quotes that Epistle, although
in one place he declares it to be spurious (Jalsata — the
Greek is lost). In his commentaries Didymus shows
himself to be much mfluenced by Origen, both in his
care for the text and the grammar, and in his wide
allegorizing, but of Origenistic heresies the traces in
extant works are slight. He seems to have held the
pre-existence of the soul. The doctrine of the "re-
stitution of all things" is attributed to him by St.
Jerome; but he speaks very often of eternal punish-
ment, though he seems to teach that the fallen angels
and even Satan himself are saved by t lirist. He is
fond of explaining that God's pimishments are reme-
dial. He deliberately rejects some of Origen's views,
and in his Trinitarian and Christological teaching is
wholly uninfluenced by his great predecessor. The
style of Didymus is poor and careless. He is gentle in
controversy. His earnestness and piety sometimes
supply the place of the eloquence and energy which he
lacks.
Didymi in omnes Epistolas canonicas enarratio (Cologne, 1531): MiN'GARELLlus, Veterum testimonia de Didymo Ales. Cwco (Rome, 1764), reprinted in Didymi Alex, libri ires de Trinitate. first edited by J. A. Ming.\relij, brother of the pre- ceding (Bologna, 1769); Lucre, Quw^tiones et vindicitB Didy- mianw. giving Greek fragments of the Comm. on Cath. Epp. by the side of the Latin (Gottingen, 1S29-32); the exegetical frag- ments are found in Mai. Xova Patrum Bibl., IV; in the Catena: of CoRDERius and Cramer; in ^A'oLF's Anecdota Grwca, IV; in J. A. MiNGARELu's ed. of De Trinitate (above); in Junius (Patrick Young), Catena Gr. in Job (London, 1637); and in the Cateim of Nicephorus. The only complete collection of Didymus's works is that of Mione, P. G., XXXIX, 1863, in which the prefatory matter of the two Mingarellu is reprinted. There is a good life in Tillemont, X. The best account, with full catalogue of writings, extant and lost, is by Leipoldt, Didymus der Blinde in Texte und Vnters., N. F., XIV, 3, vol. X.XVIII. 3, of the whole series (Leipzig, 1905). The materials for a judgment on the theology of Didymus have been indus- triously collected in this study unore completely than by Min- GARELLi), but the decision uf the writer is not always quite to be trusted. Holl in Zeilsrhr. far Kirehgeschichte. XXV. 3 (1904), has shown that the work Contra .\rium et Sabellium. which goes under the name of Gregory of Nyssa, is probably by Didy- mus. Funk in Kirchengesch. Abhandlungen, II. x\-, p. 291 (Paderborn. 1S99). ascribes to Didymus the fourth and fifth books of Basil. .\dv. Eunomium (which are certanily not by Basil), and has been followed by KRiJoER, Jl'licher, and VoN Schubert, but Holl and Leipoldt are not convinced. Dr-aseke, Alhanamurui in his Ge.'!amm,lte Palrist. Vntersuchun- gen (.\ltoona and Leipzig, 1SS9), reprinted from titudicn und Kritikrn. LXII (1889), attributes to Didymus the former of the two books De im-jimatione d. n. J. C. contra .iixillinarium, the latter being possibly by his scholar .\mbrosiu.h; against this view Stiicklen, Athana.'iiatia in Texte und I'nters.. N. F., IV, 4 1899), and Leipoldt, loc. cit. On the authenticity of the Com- meniary on the Cath. Epp. see Klostermann, Ueber des Didy- mus von .Atejr. in Epp. Canon, enarratio in Texte und Vnters., N.
v., XIII, 2 (1915). John Ch.u-man.
