Didymus the Blind

YEAR OF OUR LORD 398. DIDYMUS THE BLIND.—NOTICE.

(Bibliotheca Graeca of Fabricius, ed. Harles, vol. IX, p. 269.)

^A Didymus the Alexandrian, a grammarian and "chalcenterus" (brazen-guts) nearly four hundred years younger than the one of the same name, and not to be confused with the Egyptian monk Didymus (of whom Socrates IV, 33 speaks), lost his sight at a tender age—a mere four-year-old, while he was still ignorant of the very first rudiments of letters. Yet, kindled by an even greater desire for knowledge and the true light, he progressed so much by prayers and by his tireless zeal for listening and meditating, that he not only penetrated the inner sanctuaries of grammar, rhetoric, dialectic, geometry, arithmetic, music, astronomy, and the rest of philosophy, but, equipped with remarkable skill in the sacred scriptures, he proved himself an all the more eminent doctor of the Church, ^B the more he was also celebrated for his example of life and holiness of character. He was still living, serving in the office of catechist—that is, professor of theology—in Alexandria, when Jerome was composing his book *On Ecclesiastical Writers* in the year of our Lord 392; at which time he testifies that Didymus had passed his eighty-third year, which I interpret as his having attained it. For when he had passed his eighty-fifth year, (c) he died in the year 396, ten years after Jerome and Rufinus had been frequenting him: to say nothing now of Palladius, Ambrose, Alexander, Evagrius, Isidore, and countless others who flocked there for the sake of hearing him.

THE EXTANT WRITINGS OF DIDYMUS (d).

1. A notable book on the Holy Spirit. Indeed, he writes: "He lives, he says, even today, and has passed his eighty-third year." And Schroeckh, in *History of the Christian Church*, vol. VII, p. 74 sqq., notes among other things that, though Didymus is praised by Jerome—his disciple—he is nevertheless blamed in *Apology against Rufinus*, book I, p. 135, vol. II of the Works, and book II, p. 147, 148, for having been a follower and admirer of Origen regarding certain tenets. HARL.

^A is lost, but it exists in Greek from his version among the works of Jerome, in the edition of Martianay, vol. IV, split into three books contrary to the intention of the author and the translator. Augustine mentions it in book II *Quaestiones in Exodum*, chap. 25; Nicephorus IX, 17. It was published separately for the first time at Cologne in 1531 (8vo), then, after four copies were collated and corrected of many errors, under the editorship of Johannes Fuchte, at Helmstadt in 1614 (8vo). It also appears in certain editions of the *Bibliotheca Patrum*, Paris, 1589, 1654. Caspar Barthius elucidates several passages of this work in his *Adversaria*. For an analysis and summary of its main points, see, if you wish, Abraham Scultetus, vol. IV, *Medulla Patrum*, p. 428. FABR. — At Leiden, among the Scaliger codices, see the Library Catalogue of Leiden, p. 339, 2. HARL. — Excerpts from this book in the vernacular are found in Roesler, *Bibliothek der Kirchenväter*, VI, p. 384 ff.

2. With the same book *On the Holy Spirit*, the *Brief Expositions on the Canonical Epistles* by Didymus saw the light of day first, and likewise only in Latin, at Cologne in 1531 (8vo); for Cave is mistaken in writing that they were first published by Canisius. They also exist in the editions of the *Collectio Patrum*, Paris, year 1575, vol. VI; year 1589, 1644, 1654, vol. IX; Cologne 1618, and Lyon 1677, vol. IV. Cassiodorus arranged for these *Expositions* to be translated from Greek into Latin, as he himself narrates in chapter 8 of *De institutione divinarum litterarum*: "But when great concern weighed upon us regarding the remaining canonical Epistles, suddenly a codex of Didymus, written in the Greek style, was granted to us by the Lord's bounty for the exposition of the seven canonical Epistles, which was translated by Epiphanius, a most eloquent man, with the help of the Divinity." Labbe ^B testifies that he saw these *Expositions* of Didymus in manuscript in a certain ancient codex of the monastery of Ste. Marie du Mont-Dieu, along with the *Adumbrationes* of Clement of Alexandria on the same Epistles, of which Cassiodorus also makes mention in that same place.

3. A part of the book against the Manichaeans—for the whole of it does not seem to have reached us—some of it is lost. — At Vienna, in the Imperial codices, there is a book, or rather a fragment of a book, *Against the Manichaeans* in codex CV. Some miscellaneous fragments are in codex CLXIV, n. 6; other fragments in codices CLXVII and CLXVIII. See Lambecius, *Commentarii*, vol. IV, p. 50, and Kollar there; ibid., p. 364 ff., p. 392 ff., and 395. — At Munich in codex CCXXXVIII, there is a Didymus treatise, *On the Measurement of Stones and Various Woods*, from Anatolius; see the Catalogue of Greek codices in Bavaria, p. 82, and in the Paris codex MMCDLXXV, n. 2, and in the Catalogue of the Paris Public Library, II, p. 508, it is called an unpublished work: but it seems another Didymus of Alexandria was the author. At Venice in the Nani codex XXIII, there is a catena on the Psalms containing several passages of Didymus, all of which Mingarelli transcribed in *Codd. gr. mss. apud Nanios*, p. 19 ff., and in the fifth remark on the ancient testimonies regarding Didymus mentioned above. HARL.

4. Fabricius had listed among the lost works *On the Holy Trinity*, three books, and he had written regarding them: "It is uncertain whether these are the same as the two books *Against the Arians*, and counting with them the book *On the Holy Spirit* or the volume of *Sectae* (e)." Socrates mentions him in 4, 25, who testifies in the same place that Didymus was held by the Church of his age to be "a great advocate of its own faith." But Giovanni Aloysio Mingarelli discovered them in a certain Greek codex of an uncertain Father, and composed a work on the origin of these books in the Italian language, separately and in vol. XI of Calogera, *Nuova raccolta d'opuscoli scientifici*, etc. Brother Ferdinando Mingarelli followed in his footsteps in the work already cited above, *Veterum testimonia de Didymo Alexandrino*, etc. In the first remark, he demonstrates that this Didymus the Blind was a monk of Alexandria; in remark V, he takes pains to demonstrate that the books of Didymus *On the Trinity*, deemed lost by the opinion of others, are the very ones which his brother had recalled from the shadows, and he deems it most probable that the two books of Didymus *Against the Arians* are against Eunomius, and three *On the Trinity* are against Lucius.

[a] Cave, do not believe Élie du Pin, who writes that it is divided by Jerome into three books; for Jerome acknowledges one book in *De Viris Illustribus* c. 109, and book II *Against Rufinus*, and Ratramnus, who read the translation of Jerome, in his book II *Against the Greeks*, chap. 5. [b] Vol. 1 *De scriptoribus ecclesiasticis*, p. 250. FABR. — In the Coislin codex CCXXIV, fol. 112, *Catholic Epistles*, with commentaries by Chrysostom, Origen, Didymus and others. See Montfaucon, *Bibliotheca Coisliniana*, p. 275. HARL. [c] This small work, along with Greek fragments, is presented in *Quæstiones ac vindiciæ Didymianæ, sive Didymi Alex. enarratio in Epistolas catholicas Latina, Græco exemplari magnam partem e Græcis scholiis restituta*, ed. Lücke, Göttingen, 1829-32, in 4to. EDIT. [d] In Greek from Combefis's *Auctarium*, and in the Latin translation by Turrianus, in H. Canisius, *Lectiones antiquæ*, ed. J. Basnage, vol. I, p. 197 ff.; Gallandius in *Bibliotheca PP.*, vol. VI, p. 309 ff. Compare Lambecius, *Commentarii de bibliotheca Cæsarea* IV, p. 50 ff. on codex CV, and the notes of Kollar there. HARL. [e] Mingarelli maintains this last point in *Veterum testimonia*, remark iv, since all the heresies that arose before the Macedonian heresy are mentioned in that book *On the Trinity*.

^A Swiss. In his *Animadversions* he examines the remaining writings of Didymus of Alexandria, partly published and partly still unpublished. In an appendix, he replies to a certain anonymous Roman, who in the *Gazette littéraire de l'Europe*, year 1764, had endeavored to prove that this book was not written by Didymus the Blind. Consult the long reviews in *Novis act. eruditor.*, Leipzig, month of June 1768, p. 248 sqq.; and (Schroeckh) in *Nova bibl. theol.*, vol. VII, Leipzig 1766, 8, part iv, p. 303–312; and Schroeckh in *Hist. eccl. Christ.*, VII, p. 85. Didymus’s three books *On the Trinity* saw the light, edited by Giovanni Luigi Mingarelli, Gr. and Lat., Bonon., 1769, fol. V. Mauri Boni, *Degli autori classici, Bibliot. portatile, etc.*, part 1, Venice 1793, p. 287. Harl.

LOST WRITINGS OF DIDYMUS

*On Lot and David*. Cited by John of Damascus in the *Sacred Parallels*, p. 789, vol. II of his works. *Commentaries on Job*. Jerome, c. 109 of the *Catalogue*. Many fragments are in the catena of the Greek Fathers on the book of Job. *Discourse on Job*. Damascenus in *Parallels*, p. 789. *Commentaries on all the Psalms*. Jerome, c. 109 of the *Catalogue*, and ep. 89 to Augustine; Nicephorus IX, 17. Goodly many fragments exist in the Corderian catena on the Psalms; and in manuscript catenae on the Psalms. *On Proverbs*. Cassiodorus, c. 5 of the *Institutiones divinarum litterarum*; in which book we find that Didymus was an expositor in the Greek tongue, who was translated into the Latin language with the greatest diligence, with the Lord’s help, by our friend, the most learned Epiphanius. Fragments from this commentary are in the catena of the Fathers on Proverbs, which Theodorus Peltanus edited in Latin, and in the Corderian catena on Luke VIII, 5. *On Ecclesiastes*. John of Damascus in the *Sacred Parallels*, p. 685. *On the Song of Songs*. The catena edited by Meursius, p. 19. *On the latter chapters of Isaiah, from the fortieth onward*, 18 volumes. Jerome in his *Prologue to Isaiah*. Didymus, ^B whose friendships we have recently used, from that place where it is written (XXXIX, 13): "Comfort, comfort my people, O priests, speak to the heart of Jerusalem," up to the end of the volume, published eighteen tomes. He is mentioned also in c. 109 of the *Catalogue* and by Nicephorus IX, 17. Damascenus cites him in many places of the *Sacred Parallels*, p. 307, 341, 677, 721, 781. *On Jeremiah*. The Ghislerian catena cites him, vol. I, p. 39; vol. II, p. 704, 753. *On Hosea*, three books, written at Jerome’s request, as Jerome himself testifies in c. 109 *De S. E.* and in his final *Apology against Rufinus*, p. 164, and the *Proem to Hosea and Zechariah*. Damascenus cites him in the *Parallels*, p. 778. It is pleasing to transcribe Jerome’s words from the *Proem to Hosea*: “About twenty-two years ago, when I was in Alexandria, I saw Didymus and heard him frequently, a man most learned for his time, and I asked him that he might complete what Origen had not done, and write commentaries on Hosea: which he dictated in three books at my request, and five others on Zechariah.” *On Zechariah*, five books, written at Jerome’s request. The same author in his *Proem to Zechariah*: “Didymus dictated five books of explanations at my request, which, along with the other three on Hosea, he dedicated to me.” But their entire ^C exegesis was allegorical, and they touched very little on history. Tillemont also notes (vol. X of his *Memoirs*, p. 393) that Didymus wrote three books on Micah; but he was deceived by a corrupt passage in Jerome’s *Proem* to Zechariah: "which, with the other three on Hosea and Micah, he dedicated to me (cum ... Micha προσεφώνησεν)," instead of "and dedicated to me (et mihi προσεφώνησεν)," which Martianay correctly restored from manuscript codices. *On the Gospel of Matthew*. Jerome mentions him in c. 109 of the *Catalogue* and the *Proem to Matthew*; Nicephorus IX, 17. Damascenus cites him on p. 676 of the *Parallels*. In the catena published on Matthew, nowhere, which I wondered at, does the name of Didymus appear. *On the Gospel of John*. Jerome, c. 109 of the *Catalogue*; Nicephorus IX, 17. Damascenus cites him on p. 754, and the author of the catena of Greek Fathers published on John does so quite often. *On the Acts of the Apostles*. See J. Christoph. Wolf, *Anecdota Graeca*, vol. IV, p. 1 sqq., where, among extracts from a manuscript catena on the Acts of the Apostles and the Catholic Epistles, he brought forward many interpretations of Didymus from his commentary on the Acts of the Apostles, translated into Latin, and here and there explained. In Coislin codex XXV, which comprises the Acts of the Apostles and the Catholic Epistles with commentaries collected from Chrysostom, Ammonius the presbyter, Didymus, ^D and other Fathers and authors, and digested into order by Andrew the presbyter. See Montfaucon, *Bibl. Coislin.*, p. 75 sq. and p. 263, regarding codex CCII, which contains the Acts of the Apostles with the commentaries of Chrysostom, Didymus, and others, and p. 264, regarding codex CCIV, the catena on the Epistles of Paul. At Leiden, among the Vossian codices, Didymus on chapter I of the Acts of the Apostles, verses 19 and 21, Gr. V. Cat. bibl. Leid., p. 401, n. 4. — At Vienna, in Imperial codex CCLI, which contains the commonplaces of an anonymous author...

of ascetic rules regarding the interpretation of the divine precepts of the Lord, collected from various Fathers, folio 187, there exists a fragment of Didymus’ exposition on the Acts of the Apostles. See Lambecius, Commentaries, V, p. 524 ff. Harl.]

On the Epistle to the Galatians (or at any rate on that passage where mention is made of Peter being rebuked by Paul). Jerome, Epistle 89, to Augustine.

Brief commentaries on the Epistle to the Ephesians. Jerome, I in Rufinus, and the Preface to the Epistle to the Ephesians.

On the Epistle to the Corinthians. Jerome, Epistle 31, to Pammachius. Origen, Dionysius, Pierius, Eusebius of Caesarea, Didymus, and Apollinaris have interpreted this Epistle in the broadest manner. The Damascene cites him in the *Parallels*, page 721. ^B

On the uneven number, or the septenary. Jerome, *Apology for the books against Jovinianus*.

*On the Incorporeal*. Damascene, page 780, *Parallels*.

*Commentaries on Origen’s "On First Principles"*. In the apologetic commentaries on Origen’s books *On First Principles*, he argues against his adversaries—whom he accuses of slandering what they did not understand—as Socrates testifies (IV, 25). It was especially for these that the good Didymus brought upon himself the hatred and invectives of many; and it is due to these commentaries that, even after his death, he was proscribed along with Origen and Evagrius in more than one council. See Cardinal H. Noris, *Dissertation on the Fifth Synod*, chapter 7, where, against Hallois, he teaches that Evagrius and Didymus were indeed condemned by the fifth general synod in the year 555, and that the Lateran Council under Pope Martin in the year 649, the sixth synod in Trullo in 680, and the seventh, the Nicene, in 787, which followed that example of the fifth council, did not err in this. Joannes Garnerius could not overturn the arguments of Noris in his *Dissertation on the same Fifth Synod*, which he appended to the *Breviary* of Liberatus. Jerome, book II in Rufinus, page 148: "What defense will you provide for Didymus, who is certainly Catholic concerning the Trinity, the book of whom ‘On the Holy Spirit’ we even translated into the Latin tongue? Certainly, regarding those things which were added to Origen’s works by heretics (according to the opinion of Rufinus, of course), and regarding the books *On First Principles* themselves, which you interpreted, he dictated short commentaries in which he does not deny that what was written was written by Origen, but attempts to persuade us that we simple men cannot understand what is said, and in what sense they ought to be taken in a good light; this he attempts only concerning the Son and the Holy Spirit. But as for other dogmas, both Eusebius and Didymus very openly concede to Origen’s tenets, and defend as having been said in a Catholic and pious manner that which all the churches reprove." The same author, *Last Apology*, page 163: "In Didymus we proclaim his memory and his purity of faith concerning the Trinity. But in other matters, which he believed wrongly along with Origen, we withdraw from him. For the vices of masters are not to be imitated, but their virtues." ^C

The *Volume of Sects* (a). Didymus himself, in the book *On the Holy Spirit*, volume IX of the works of Jerome, page 323: "That the Holy Spirit is taken by others, yet does not take other things, we have expressed now, and in the *Volume of Sects*, as we were able." And page 328: "This very thing, that the Spirit subsists, is of wisdom, and His nature is nothing other than the Spirit of truth and the Spirit of God, concerning which we have already argued abundantly in the *Volume of Sects*." Heraclides also mentions, in *Paradise*, chapter 1, page 710, Didymus’ work against the sects. One should not distinguish from this the *Volume of Dogmas* which he mentions on page 532. From these it is shown that the Holy Spirit is a creator, as we briefly showed in the *Volume of Dogmas*. This is the *Book on Dogmas*, of which Jerome also makes mention in his *Catalogue*, chapter 109. And Theodoret, *History* IV, 29, testifies that at the same time Ephraem at Edessa, and Didymus at Alexandria, composed writings against the dogmas of the adversaries of the truth. But the things which Stobaeus, *Eclogae ethicae*, page 15, adduces from Didymus *On Heresy*, were taken from the book *On Pythagorean Philosophy* of another Didymus (b), an ethnic writer, whom Clement of Alexandria praises in *Stromata* I, page 309, and whose *On the Opinions of Plato* is praised by Eusebius in *Praeparatio* XI, 23, and whose *Epitome* is praised by Stobaeus in the *Florilegium*, sermon 101, page 557. See the dissertation of Joannes Christophorus Wolf, in which he argues against Christophorus Augustus Heumann that the *Philosophumena* which are circulated under Origen’s name cannot be held to be that *Volume of Sects* of Didymus, nor that Didymus of Alexandria’s *Volume of Dogmas* is different from the *Volume of Sects*. That dissertation was published together with the second efforts of the aforementioned Wolf on the author of the *Philosophumena* at Hamburg, 1714, 8vo. FABR. ^D

*Books against the Arians*, II. Jerome, chapter 109, *De S. E.*; Nicephorus, *History* X, 17. It seems that Didymus himself, at the very end, explained in his *Commentary on John*, touching upon the Arians. "Of these," he says, "they had individual examination, as was possible, in other works."

*To the Philosopher*. Damascene, page 643, *Parallels*.

*Book to Rufinus, why infants die, since they received bodies on account of sins*. Jerome, *Apology* to Rufinus, page 164: "The book of Didymus exists, addressed to you, in which, in response to your questioning, he replies that they did not sin much, and that therefore the prison of bodies was sufficient for them to have touched. My master and yours, at the time when you were seeking these things from him."

Add page 159.

Concerning the providence and judgment of God in this life, so that we might not err, Didymus commanded (c) that we carefully observe the variety of bodies and of things, by which the beauty of the world consists, and the reasons by which God leads us through hardships to virtue and wisdom. "Exercise yourself always," says the great and gnostic teacher Didymus, "in the arguments *On Providence* and *Judgment*, and attempt to keep the material of these through memory. For he argues the *On Judgment* [arguments] in the distinction of bodies [between those] of the Aristoxeneans and those of the Pythagoreans, as Ptolemy and Porphyry [did], as I said above, book II, chapter 13.

and in the parts of the world you will find. ^A Yet you will discern the discourses *Concerning Providence* in those ways by which we are led from vice and ignorance unto virtue and knowledge.

Jerome intended to signify the simplicity of the style, not to reproach a vice, when he wrote the Preface to Didymus’s book *On the Holy Spirit*: "He is unskilled in speech, but not in knowledge," describing an apostolic man by his very style, as much by the light of his sense as by the simplicity of his words.

DIDYMUS OF ALEXANDRIA

THREE BOOKS ON THE TRINITY

COMMENTARY UPON DIDYMUS

BOOK ONE.

ON DIDYMUS, THE AUTHOR OF THE THREE BOOKS WHICH WE NOW PUBLISH.

^B [I-X*] When I had accurately reviewed all the old parchments of the Passionei library, and the books written by hand—whether Greek or Latin—which were humanely entrusted to me by the most distinguished Cardinal Domenico Passionei, and indeed were sent gradually to my home in the year 1768, and when I was examining the review itself and the index I had prepared, I discovered that many treatises were contained therein which were worthy of the light; yet I adjudged that none was to be preferred to the three books *On the Trinity* which I now edit. And so, although I had copied with my own hand some of these—not only by the permission of the lord but almost even by his command—those which were Greek, or had arranged for the copying of those which were Latin, I deemed that these three books, even if mutilated at the beginning, were especially to be cultivated: for a desire immediately took hold of me, God the Best and Greatest granting aid, to publish them eventually. But I already foresaw in my mind how much labor this would prove to be. For after I had described another Greek work, which is itself also mutilated at the beginning, I discovered that it had been published later. It was therefore necessary to investigate first whether these had ever been published, so that I might not stumble twice against the same stone, as we are warned by the ancient proverb. It was then necessary that they be copied by my own hand, because there was no suitable amanuensis available to me; and furthermore, they had to be translated into Latin, and besides that, illustrated with annotations.

^A But that which troubled me above all else was that I did not know whose authorship they were. For it was wearisome to publish them without the name of the author, but it was far more wearisome to inscribe the name of an author on works which it did not yet seem certain to me had been written by him; for although I was led by many conjectures to attribute them to this one rather than another, yet I did not think one should trust these conjectures too much, because some things seemed to stand a little in the way of my opinion at that time, and I could find nowhere in the whole work a place which, on its own, would supply me with an irrefutable argument to uncover the name of the writer: for if anything occurred that seemed to be of this sort, I discovered upon more mature examination that it did not exceed the bounds of probability. I confess, therefore, that I doubted about the author of the work for as long—and only as long—as I had not finished the scholia, or annotations, on the whole work. But having brought these to their conclusion, and having diligently weighed the individual words of the author, I finally decided to rest in the opinion that the genuine author of the work is Didymus the Alexandrian. The argument on which I rely appears to be manifold, yet in reality it is one: and it seemed to me to have such force that I decided I could now safely inscribe the name of Didymus on the front of the work; yet I confess this, that I would hold firmly to this opinion only when it is approved by the learned and wise men with whom Italy and the remaining part of Europe abounds, whose learning and genius I greatly admire, and whom I look up to as teachers. Furthermore, I will pursue the argument I mentioned more fully in this book; for although it is but one, there are nevertheless so many things from which it as it were coalesces, that it demands a longer discourse. But the whole matter comes down to this: that it can by no means be the case that he is not Didymus, to whom all things are equal with Didymus. Didymus published a book *On the Holy Spirit*, and this author published one too: indeed, he speaks so often in these books that he appears to be supplementing those things which he had treated there less fully. Both flourished in the fourth century; both were Alexandrian; both were catechists; both fathered sons; both wrote three books *On the Trinity*; both were catholic regarding the Trinity; both always strove energetically against the Arians and Macedonians; both published *Logoi*, or books, against the Arians; neither speaks with sufficient caution regarding grace; both were conversant in the poets; both call God *amegethe*, that is, lacking in magnitude, or indeed (XI) lacking in quantity; both wrote on inequality of number; both were imitated by Ambrose and Jerome; both appear to have written about the sects of heretics; both think humbly of themselves; both were possessed of singular memory; yet both have the same *sphalmata mremonika*, or the same lapses due to a defect of memory; both cite some apocrypha; both incidentally refute the same heretics; both were students and imitators of Origen ^B and the follower of many: both read the same books of Scripture—even those whose authority was once doubted by many—as canonical; both have the same omissions, the same interpretations of Scripture, the same dullness, the same style, the same method of arguing, the same manner of speaking hesitantly, the same dogmas inculcated by both, the same formulas often used by both, the same changes in Scriptural texts, the same way of citing Scripture, the same morals, the same opinions, the same somewhat inaccurate forms of speech: in short, there are innumerable things in this work which, although they might fit others, are nevertheless most especially consonant with Didymus; nothing contrary to this is read in the whole work which would be discordant with him. What, then, remains, except that we should hold for certain that Didymus is the author of this work? I could indeed make an end of speaking here; for I have shown most of these things in the annotations: but since there are many who neglect to read the annotations, and since the labor should be lightened for the reader, I will, by collecting these very things as though they were so many outlines and notes at once, pursue them in such a way that I am not too long-winded, so that I neither recount everything nor send the reader continuously back to the notes themselves. I begin, however, from the point where I was first moved to attribute this work to Didymus, even though I later discovered the reasoning derived from it was not unassailable.

CAP. I. Our Theologian cites his own book *On the Holy Spirit* twice.

^C Our author therefore cites his own book *On the Holy Spirit* twice: first, namely, on page 574*, where he speaks as follows: "Souls and angels are... mortal, insofar as they are sometimes corrupted in mind: for it is from change that they sometimes fall into sin, from which death supervenes. According to which manner Paul writes: 'And she that liveth in pleasure, is dead' (1 Tim. v, 6): even though she has not yet departed from this life, as has already been explained in the *Logos* (that is, book or discourse) *On the Holy Spirit*..." Then on page 425, where we read these words: "and furthermore, in other oracles also, which are brought forward in the *Logos* *On the Holy Spirit*, etc." Now, the things which he cites exist in the book of Didymus *On the Holy Spirit*, which Jerome turned into Latin, as I noted in the annotations to those places.

^D The matter is concluded, you will say: and there is no more room to doubt that these three books were dictated by Didymus. I, too, at one time reasoned in this manner, I confess; but after I weighed everything more maturely, I discovered that this argument is liable to no moderate difficulties. Truly, the second book of the work which I am now producing is itself also entitled *On the Holy Spirit*. And so one might think that in the first passage, namely page 374, reference is made to section 67, while in the other, reference is made to chapter 15 of the second book, or some other chapter, if there be one, in which Biblical texts are brought forward by the Macedonians against the catholic Church. To this is added that the second

book is in three places mutilated, namely pages 225, 285, and 292. Why, therefore, should one not think that the author refers in these places to the second book, which we were just missing? ^A

To tell the truth, these things have made me anxious. But I finally came to the conclusion that in both places he is not citing the second book of this present work, but rather the book *On the Holy Spirit* translated into Latin by Jerome. I confirm this with three reasons.

First, it is highly doubtful whether the title of the second book was written by the author himself or by librarians. Indeed, I consider not only that title, but also the index of chapters which follows immediately after the title, and the arguments of the individual chapters, to have been added by them, and not by him. The author’s intention, however, was that these three books should be titled in this or some similar way: *On Theology* (or *On the Trinity*) Book I; *On the Trinity* Book II; *On the Trinity* Book III. ^B

For regarding the arguments inscribed at the beginning of the chapters, that they are not by the author but by a diligent amanuensis seems to be gathered both from those things which I said on page 1, note 3, and from the fact that he who placed them there at the beginning of the work, as if exhausted, omitted them from chapter 15 up to the end of the first book, and throughout the entire third book, and finally from the argument of chapter 18 of the first book: for there it is read *onoma legontai*, whereas the author would not have dictated *legontai* but *legetai*; for he was accustomed to speak this way consistently. But as to the sequences of arguments, or the indices of chapters, which are set before the second and third books, they are so carelessly and poorly arranged that they cannot be attributed to the author without doing him an injury. Since this is the case, I would not attribute even the title which appears on page 107 to the author, but to the librarian, especially since it is inscribed not to the second book, but to the index of chapters of the second book. However, whether this title was dictated by the author or added by a librarian, it is not to be understood as being the genuine title of the second book, but as it were its argument: for the true title, as I have said, is *On the Trinity, Book II*. Therefore, those words, *Second Book, On the Holy Spirit*, indicate only this: that in the second book there is a discourse on the Holy Spirit, just as in the first there was a discourse on the Son. Otherwise, it should have been written: *On the Holy Spirit, Book II*, and not: *Book II: On the Holy Spirit*. ^C

Second, let us grant that those things which the author has on page 374 might perhaps be referred both to the second book of this work and to the book *On the Holy Spirit*. But that which he says on page 425 can scarcely, if at all, be referred to the second book of this work. For after he brings forward three passages of Scripture there, which the heretics were abusing to debase the nature of the Holy Spirit, he adds that they had also abused other testimonies of this kind, and that he had brought these forward in his book *On the Holy Spirit*. But which ones are these, pray, that are brought forward? If you except that one, "Unless one," etc., which is brought forward in chapter 13, you will find scarcely any other in the second book. For in the second book the author primarily intends to bring forward arguments and testimonies by which the divinity of the Holy Spirit is demonstrated, just as in the third he primarily intends to bring forward those biblical passages by whose faulty explanation the heretics were attacking the dogma of the catholic Church. But, on the contrary, in the book *On the Holy Spirit* he brings forward many passages of Scripture similar to those which he brought forward on page 425 in this work, as I have shown in the notes.

Third, when our author cites his book *On the Holy Spirit* in two places, he calls it in both instances a *logos*, not a *biblion*. From this I gather that he is referring not to the second book of this work, but to the book *On the Holy Spirit* translated into Latin by Jerome; for these two names are not used so interchangeably that there is no distinction between them. The name *logos* indeed fits the book *On the Holy Spirit* perfectly, as I have already shown on page 574. But the second book *On the Trinity* is more properly called a *biblion* than a *logos*. For these three books are called *biblia*, not *logoi*, in the Passioneian codex: for which reason they are rightly also designated by Socrates, as I believe, by indicating them as *biblia*. Moreover, the author himself in book III, page 345, distinguishes *logos* from *biblion*, when he speaks thus: in the first *logos* chapter 10, and in this *biblion* chapter... [XIII] ...is to be considered to refer to something other than the first book of this work. That this may appear still more clearly, it must be noted that our theologian cites the first *logos* thirteen times in these books, but the first or second *biblion* eight times. Yet whatever he cites from the first or second *biblion*, all or nearly all of it is found in the first or one of these three books, if you except a few things that existed in the lost chapters. But, on the contrary, those thirteen places which he cites from the first *logos* are not to be found in the first book of this work, unless perhaps one or two, about which it is doubtful whether they are found in the first book. But who would believe that all thirteen of those places, or nearly all, existed in those few chapters of the first book that perished? It appears, therefore, that *logos* is not rashly distinguished by our theologian from *biblion*, and therefore when he cites the first *logos*, or when he cites the *logos On the Holy Spirit*, he is not to be thought to be alleging the first [XIII] or second book of this work, but other short works.

Cap. II. Our author cites *logoi* which he wrote against the Arians.

That Didymus published two *logoi*, that is, discourses against the Arians, is testified to by ancient writers, whose testimonies I have gathered together and exhibited for the reader in the Appendix. That this applies to our theologian is clear both from the things which I have said on page 435 and elsewhere, and also from these things which I am about to say.

CAP. III. Our theologian affirms that he has always fought against the Arians.

Moreover, our author on page 202, regarding himself as against the Arians...

and Macedonians, says that he has always resisted with all his might, and that he has always come forward to promote the Catholic doctrine of the Trinity, whether to provoke or to sustain a conflict. But who is the Greek writer of the fourth century, after the age of Athanasius, to whom we could more fittingly apply these things than Didymus the Alexandrian? Rufinus, Socrates, Sozomen, Jerome, and Theodoret proclaim him a strenuous champion of the Catholic doctrine of the Trinity; and he wrote explicitly both in his book *On the Holy Spirit*, and in his sermons against the Arians, and in his book or books *On the Sects*, and *On the Dogmas* against those heretics: and he, finally, in his explanations of the Catholic Epistles, and in his commentaries on Holy Scripture—fragments of which exist in the catenae—lets no occasion slip by without inculcating the Catholic dogmas of the Trinity, or refuting the Arians, Macedonians, and other heretics who held wrong opinions about it. A diligent reader will observe that this is the case in the catena on the Psalms at Psalm 17:22, and elsewhere in the catena on the Acts, Vol. IV of Wolf’s *Anecdota*, pages 6, 9, 14, 19, and in other catenae which have already been printed. For, lest I seem to have produced none of the countless examples that could be offered, omitting those which have already been edited, I shall transcribe only one from the manuscript catena on the Books of Kings, which exists in a Greek codex of the 16th century in the Venetian library of St. Mark. For there, at verse 22 of chapter 22 of the second book of Kings, which begins, "For I have kept the ways of the Lord," these things are written on page 129: "Didymus. 'For I have kept,' he says, 'the ways of the Lord.' He does not say these things arrogantly, as some think; but by attributing the cause of his achievements to God. He keeps the ways of the Lord who walks in His commandments; and he does not act impiously away from his God who has rightly understood the dogmas of the truth; who thinks blamelessly concerning God, and holds holy convictions concerning Christ; and who piously reflects upon the Holy Spirit; and who holds beliefs concerning other dogmas in the manner in which it is necessary to believe." Which I thus translate: "Didymus: 'Because I have kept,' he says, 'the ways of the Lord.' He does not say these things arrogantly, as some think; but recognizing God as the cause of those things which were done by him, and attributing them to Him. Moreover, he keeps the ways of the Lord who walks in His commandments; and he does not act impiously away from his God who discourses rightly concerning the dogmas of the truth, thinking irreprehensibly of God, and speaking holily of Christ, and thinking piously of the Holy Spirit, and thinking of other dogmas as it is proper to think." Who in these few words does not recognize a man most eager to inculcate the Catholic doctrine of the Trinity? But how much more so in the rest of his works and fragments which exist?

CAP. IV. Our author dictated three books on the Trinity, as did Didymus.

Indeed, that three books *On the Trinity* were dictated by Didymus is openly testified by Socrates, Cassiodorus, and Anselm of Havelberg in the testimonies brought by me in the Appendix. That such a work is aimed at by these things is seen to be held also by Jerome in his book *De scriptoribus ecclesiasticis*, cap. 120, when he says: "Apollinaris, Didymus, etc., answered him [namely, Eunomius]." That this, moreover, fits our author quite beautifully, I see, even if I were silent. And so I proceed at once to other things.

CAP. V. He wrote concerning the odd number, as did Didymus.

Jerome, in his epistle to Pammachius, as I said on page 268, note 5, lists eleven writers who had written concerning the odd number, the sixth of whom is Didymus. Now I draw a reason from this, not to be despised, by which I might confirm that these three books are by Didymus. For our theologian treats very extensively of the odd number, that is, of the septenary, in book II, chapter 14. Therefore, since it is very probable that this book was written after that epistle of Jerome, it is probable that these [books] are referred to by him; for our author treats much more extensively of the odd number here than do most of the other Fathers whom Jerome names: indeed, those eleven are Clement, Hippolytus, Origen, Dionysius, Eusebius, Didymus, Tertullian, Cyprian, Victorinus, Lactantius, Hilary: of whom none, in my opinion at least, published a work which he inscribed *concerning the odd number*, but all spoke of the same thing obiter in their own works. Jerome cites the work of no one except Cyprian; for he says: "The book of Cyprian to Fortunatus is a witness to his testimony concerning the septenary, that is, concerning the odd number, what and how great things he said." But now, what Cyprian wrote in his book, or epistle, to Fortunatus concerning the septenary, on page 522 of the Venetian edition of 1728, is much less copious than what our author discusses concerning the same number. But if you were to unfold the works of the others which exist, you will find that Tertullian also, Clement of Alexandria, and Origen in various places, Hilary in his tractate on Psalm 118, Vol. I, page 409, and Lactantius in *Institutions*, book VII, chapter 14, have spoken less fully about this matter than our theologian. But concerning Hippolytus, Dionysius, Eusebius, and Victorinus, I say nothing, because the works of some have certainly perished, while others, in the works which survive, either discourse little or nothing concerning the odd number, unless you except Eusebius of Caesarea, who, where he might have speech about it, I do not know, but he who has perused his commentaries on the Psalms and on Isaiah, edited by Montfaucon, or other works of his of the same kind, will easily find the place, I believe. For it is enough for me at present that it be very likely that these books of our author are indicated by Jerome.

CAP. VI. The things which the ancients testify concerning Didymus fit our author very well, namely, that he wrote also concerning the sects, and against the Manichaeans, and that he interpreted the first Epistle of Paul to the Corinthians most widely, and illustrated many other of the sacred books with commentaries or little commentaries.

Up to this point we have brought forward reasons sufficiently effective, and soon

^A we shall bring forward others still more valid. But before we come to these, it is well to add here some conjectures. Didymus mentions his own volume of *Sects* in his book *On the Holy Spirit*, nos. 5 and 21. Some, however, have opined that this work either wholly or at least in great part still exists, being the same as that which is inscribed *Philosophumena*. Some also have judged it not different from that which Didymus himself calls a volume of *Dogmas* in his book *On the Holy Spirit*, no. 32. Many have shown the former of these opinions to be liable to grave difficulties, while the latter rests only upon light conjectures. But if I were to acquiesce in such reasonings, perhaps I myself could contend that these three books *On the Trinity* are nothing other than the volume of *Sects*: for a suspicion of this kind could arise from the last two chapters of the third book. For in chapter 41, our author suddenly turns his discourse to the heresy of the Montanists, and not only refutes those things which they taught against the Catholic doctrine regarding the Trinity, but also other of their ravings: then he adds: "Thus we fight against other heresies as modestly and as wisely as we are able." And immediately afterward he proceeds to confute the Manichaeans in chapter 42, the last part of which I wish time had not deprived us of. However, I am not moved by a suspicion of this kind, but I judge these three books *On the Trinity* to be altogether different from the volume of *Sects*: both because what the author says regarding the sects of the Montanists, Manichaeans, and others seems to be spoken only by the way and [XV] as if in the place of an appendix; and also because the volume of *Sects* was dictated before the book *On the Holy Spirit*, whereas these three books were, in my judgment, dictated after it. I say only this, therefore: that it is highly fitting that the same person who wrote concerning heresies or sects should have dictated those last two chapters. For I have noted that it is the custom of Didymus to return to the same things, just as in one and the same work, so also in different works. That this is truly said by me will be acknowledged by one who has attentively weighed and compared with one another the individual parts of his works or fragments that exist.

Finally, so as not to dwell on individual points, I would wish you also to note that the passages of the Scriptures which are brought forward in these three books are explained here and there in such a way that you can easily recognize an author who is extremely experienced in the field of the Scriptures: such as Didymus certainly was; for he proves himself to be such not only in his commentaries on Scripture, but even in the very book *On the Holy Spirit*.

CAP. VII. Our author, like Didymus, was imitated by Ambrose, Jerome, and perhaps some others.

But let us now pass to the more significant notes of Didymus of Alexandria. The last of these is certainly not that the holy Fathers of the Church, Ambrose and Jerome, borrowed not a few things from his books, or imitated them. For as regards Ambrose, Rufinus of Aquileia openly confesses this, whose ^B words I have brought forward on page 51, note 5. The monks of St. Maur prove the same thing in Volume II of the works of Ambrose, page 597, in the *Admonition* regarding the books of this same Ambrose inscribed *On the Holy Spirit*. For there the very places indicate what Ambrose borrowed from the book of Didymus *On the Holy Spirit*. As for Jerome, he himself confesses often that he took many things from Didymus, whom he calls his teacher. If anyone will go through the *Testimonies of the Ancients* brought forward by me, he will discover this. This, of course, Jerome performed in his commentaries, especially on the Epistle to the Galatians, on the Epistle to the Ephesians, on Matthew, on Hosea, on Zechariah, on Isaiah, etc.

He himself surely published a special work *Against the Manichaeans*, which even now exists either in whole or at least in great part. But he also argues against them here and there in his *Enarrations on the Catholic Epistles*. And in order to refute them, he deviates slightly from his proposed subject in the book *On the Holy Spirit*, no. 45, having seized the occasion from those words of Isaiah: *Bringing to us according to his mercy*. To whom, therefore, shall we think it more fitting than to Didymus, what we observe in the author of these three books, that he confutes the Manichaeans not only by the way and in a few words on pages 383, 388, and 396; but also writes against them at greater length in chapter 42 of the third book, as we were just saying, and digresses from the proposed subject to confute them?

But since we are now indulging in conjectures, I think it also worthy of note that when, with many ^C if you weigh the Index of places of the holy Scripture alleged in these three books, you will find these things to be true: first, that from those books which Didymus interpreted with commentaries, such as the first Epistle to the Corinthians, Isaiah, the Psalms, etc., very many texts are brought forward by our author; second, that from those books which he illustrated with short commentaries, fewer are brought forward; and finally, from those which he did not interpret in any way, either no text or very few are alleged. For this reason, you will find in that index no place taken from the books of Maccabees, none from the book of Judith, none from the book of Esther, none from the book of Ruth; scarcely one or two, or at least very few, from the books of Joshua, Judges, Paralipomenon, Ezra, and, to say nothing of others, most from the prophets which they call minor.

Consequently, if it is evident that Ambrose and Jerome borrowed many things from our author as well, will that not also be an indication that these three books were dictated by Didymus? And yet I have already shown in the notes that Ambrose borrowed or imitated many things from this source. Read, I pray, what I have said on page 275, note 9: for you will see almost the entire book of Ambrose *On the Mysteries*, in the year

387 of Christ, written from chapter 14 of the second of these books. Read also, if you wish, what has been said by me on page 51, note 5; page 233, note 1; page 246, note 4; and page 357, note 5.

If, furthermore, we find in our author interpretations of Scriptural passages very similar to those we read in the aforementioned commentaries of Jerome, will this not also be an argument that they are those which Jerome himself frequently took—as was his custom, without naming the author—from Didymus? Not that he drew them from this work, as I judge, but because it is very credible that one and the same passage of Scripture was usually explained by Didymus in almost the same way in this work as in his commentaries on Scripture. But so that you may see how truly I have said that there is to be observed in Jerome and in our author no small similarity of interpretations, read what I have noted on page 233, note 3; page 177, note 4; page 98, note 9; page 270, note 3; page 271, note 3; and elsewhere.

^B But besides Ambrose and Jerome, others perhaps have also imitated our author; I shall, however, name here only one whose name adds some weight to my opinion: that he was an Alexandrian, as was Didymus, and that he wrote at Alexandria not many years after the death of the latter—namely, Cyril, patriarch of the Alexandrian Church. Whether he really imitated our author, let the reader judge after he has read what I have said on page 39, note 2, regarding the word ἀμεγέθης, and on page 301, note 8, and on page 303 in several notes. Furthermore, let him compare that which our theologian has on page 8, line 1 and following, with those things which Cyril wrote in book 1 *Against Julian*, page 31 of the Leipzig edition of the year 1696, which read as follows: "Right indeed; for the glory of the Lord hides the Word, according to that which is written, and every word concerning Him is weak; and it comes after the dignity: for it is beyond every concept; but we see through a glass, and in a riddle, the things concerning Him, as the all-wise Paul says." For anyone who compares them will detect no small similarity between such passages.

CHAPTER VIII. Our author was an Alexandrian, like Didymus.

We must now see who our theologian was; for if it were found that he himself was an Alexandrian, we shall be able to call him "Didymus" with much more confidence for this reason. But that our author was in reality such a man, seems to be sufficiently indicated to me by the conjectures which I submit; for it can scarcely happen that they all at once agree with someone other than an Alexandrian writer. And first, indeed, the author's speech makes him manifest. I shall say nothing now of his style, which I consider to be that of an Alexandrian man; nothing of the allegorical interpretations of Scripture which he repeatedly brings forward, in which the Alexandrian school was especially delighted; nothing of the Origenian phrases ^C employed by him, [XVII] and his great harmony with the Alexandrian writer; no study is apparent which he might have bestowed upon the poets; in short, nothing of certain of his dialectical subtleties, which, as no one is unaware, flourished most at Alexandria in the age of Didymus: for the learned reader will easily understand by himself how much weight all these things have. But the very words which our theologian uses also frequently point to an Alexandrian writer. The word περιποδία seems Alexandrian, also used by Athanasius to denote treatment, as I said on page 268, note 2: I have certainly found it in no other writer until now who was not an Alexandrian. Therefore, I shall continue to believe it is Alexandrian, as long as it is not found in other writers, and those neither Egyptians, nor alumni of the Alexandrian school, nor those close to Alexandria: which, however, I do not deny might be possible. In a similar way, as I think, the word ἀμεγέθης is Alexandrian; for I do not know if any other than Didymus, and after him Cyril of Alexandria, has attributed such an epithet to God, as I said on page 39, note 2. Perhaps the word ἀβεθεσία, used by our author and by the same Cyril in the places cited by Suicer, is Alexandrian. It is likely that the word οὐρανοί is Alexandrian in the sense in which it occurs on page 201, as I indicated in the same place. [XVII] I conjecture likewise that the word ἀθεία, which is read on page 32, and which I find used by Athanasius in the fragments of the commentaries on Matthew, page 310, tome II of the new Montfauconian Collection, is Alexandrian. Finally, not to pursue individual items, many of the words which I have noted in my index of Greek words, especially those which fastidious ears, accustomed to the style of the Attic and other more elegant writers, can scarcely bear, smack of a dialect that is in a certain way Alexandrian, that is to say, not very elegant.

Furthermore, there is a great congruence with an Alexandrian writer in what we read on page 201: "Nor does it irk them," he says, "to cross the pelagus (πέλαγος), and to complete a journey of many days thereafter." For as Strabo testifies, lib. XVII, p. 545, πέλαγος, or *pelagus*, was called both the Egyptian Sea and Lake Mareotis, of which the former washes the Alexandrian region from the North, the latter from the South: for which reason he calls the same region there ^D ἀμφίκλυστον δυσι πελάγεσι, that is, which is washed by two *pelagi*: but Josephus mentions the *paralion meros* (τὸ παράλιον μέρος) of the city of Alexandria, that is, the part situated on the seashore, in book II *Against Apion*, section 4. Indeed, what our author teaches on page 398 concerning the daily communion of the Body and Blood of the Lord, as I have noted there, fits the Alexandrian theologian excellently, as do those things which he writes concerning the daily administration of baptism, as may be seen on page 273, note 1; as well as what he touches upon concerning the dissensions of the ambitious, on page 308, and what he thought concerning the prayer of Manasses, which...

^A he cites as a part of Holy Scripture on page 399; then, furthermore, because on page 184 he calls Moses a cosmographer, referring, as I think, to the book of Genesis, which in the Alexandrian Codex, and by Philo and Clement of Alexandria, is inscribed *Genesis of the world*, that is, the origin of the world, as the most renowned Mazochius notes at the beginning of his *Spicilegium*.

To all these conjectures it must be added that I have observed that our theologian so often alleges the Scriptures that he reveals himself as an Alexandrian. I show this in many ways. For first, where the reading of the Greek edition is different from the reading of the Vulgate Latin translation, our author very often follows that reading which the Vulgate interpreter followed. But that the Alexandrian Codex very often agrees with the Vulgate is attested by Simon in his *Dissertation on the manuscripts of the New Testament*, page 61. Then, that the Alexandrian copies of the Holy Scriptures were not entirely corrected, but were augmented by certain additions, is evidenced by Jerome’s book XVI *On Isaiah*, vol. IV, page 696 of the Verona edition. For there, after he had cited the eleventh verse of chapter LVIII, as it was read in the corrected copies of the Septuagint, he adds this: “That which is added in the Alexandrian copies in the beginning of this chapter: *And still there shall be praise in me always*; and at the end: *And your bones shall arise like grass*, is not contained in the Hebrew, nor indeed in the corrected and true copies of the Septuagint.” There were, of course, three main editions of the Septuagint version in Didymus’s age, as Jerome himself teaches us in his Prologue to the *Paralipomena*, or his book *Against Rufinus*, segment 27, vol. II, page 521, where he writes: “If the edition of the Septuagint remained pure, and as it had been translated by them into Greek, you would superfluously urge me… that I should translate for you the Hebrew volumes into the Latin tongue… But now, indeed, since different copies are circulated according to the variety of regions… Alexandria and Egypt commend their own Hesychius as the author of the Septuagint, [and] Constantinople as far as Antioch approves the copies of the martyr Lucian. The provinces between these read the Palestinian codices, which Eusebius and Pamphilus published, having been edited by Origen: and the whole world struggles with this tripartite variety between them.” Thus Jerome. And in truth, in the Alexandrian Codex, which was written in the fourth, according to some, or at least the sixth century, according to others, it is attested by Mill in his *Prolegomena*, page 143, that there are to be found scholia introduced into the text, rare indeed themselves, and the text truly *exegetical*; but I do not doubt that Didymus followed the Alexandrian copies not always, to be sure, but for the most part. Thus, for example, in his *Enarrations* on the first chapter of the first Epistle of Peter, he cites Psalm XXXVII in this way: *A stranger* (for the reading of the edition is faulty, therefore) *in the earth*. The words, *in the earth*, are indeed read in the Alexandrian Codex, but are absent from the [XVIII] edition of the Greek Bible. In a similar way, Didymus himself, in a fragment which Jerome brings forward in epistle 119 to Minerius and Alexander, follows the reading of the Alexandrian Codex. For when in the first Epistle to the Corinthians, chapter 15, verse 51, the Greek Bibles have: *We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed*; but the Alexandrian codex, with which the Vulgate Latin translation agrees, has: *We shall all indeed sleep, but we shall not all be changed*: Didymus mentions both readings there, but he prefers the second to the first, and follows it. Since, therefore, our theologian also alleges the places of Scripture in such a way that both additions occur in his allegations, and he follows the readings of the Alexandrian membranes throughout, we recognize him as an Alexandrian writer in this matter also.

And as for what concerns the additions, I have warned the reader about them both in the notes and in the Index of subjects under the word *Additions*. But as for what pertains to the readings of the Alexandrian Codex, what I have said must be confirmed by several examples: if, however, it is burdensome to anyone, let him pass over these things and skip to the others which I shall add below. Therefore, first, in the Ep. to the Philippians III, 8, the Greek Bibles have, *Christ Jesus my Lord*; the Alexandrian codex, in place of *my*, has *our*, and our author follows this one, page 5. Second, in the Ep. to the Galatians II, 16, the Greek Bibles have, *because not shall be justified*; but the Alexandrian membranes, in place of *because*, have *that*, as the author reads, page 4. Third, in the same Ep. II, 14, the Greek Bibles have *Cephas*, the Alexandrian codex ^B *Cephas*, as our author does, pages 168 and 387. Fourth, in the Ep. to the Hebrews II, 9, the Greek Bibles have *you carry about*, our author page 6, and the Alexandrian codex *you might take away*. Fifth, in the first Ep. to the Corinthians VIII, 2, the Greek Bibles have, *he has not yet known nothing*, our author page 8, having omitted the word *nothing*, reads, *he has not yet known*; but in a similar way it is read in the Alexandrian codex, namely *has not yet known*. Sixth, in the first Ep. of John I, 3, the Greek Bibles have, *we announce to you*, our author page 21, and the Alexandrian codex, *we announce also to you*. Seventh, in John I, 18, the Greek Bibles have, *the only-begotten Son*, our author page 76 and elsewhere reads, *the only-begotten God*, in which way Origen the Alexandrian reads, as I noted on page 76, note 5. Eighth, in the Ep. of James IV, 12, the Greek Bibles lack the words *and judge*; but our author reads them on page 27, as does also the Alexandrian codex. Ninth, in the Ep. to the Hebrews I, 4, the Greek Bibles have *in the last*, our author page 33, and the Alex. cod. *in the last*. Tenth, in the Ep. to the Ephesians III, 14, the Greek Bibles have, *the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ*, the Alexandrian codex, and our author, page 49, omit all these words, *of our Lord Jesus Christ*. Eleventh, in Acts V, 32, the Greek Bibles have *of him witnesses*; our author page 55 omits the word *of him*, as does the Alexandrian codex. Twelfth, in the Ep. to the Philippians III, 3, the Greek Bibles have, *Spirit God* ^C our author contends that this reading is flawed on page 246, and reads *Spirit of God*, in which way it is also read in the Alexandrian codex. These, if I am not mistaken, suffice so that it may ^D

be apparent that our author made use of Alexandrian copies of the Scriptures.

Finally, to pass over other conjectures which might easily come to the mind of an erudite reader perusing this work, I will add only one place of his, by which my opinion concerning the homeland, or at least the domicile, of our author is reinforced more and more. It exists on page 308, in which, while nothing is read that does not befit an Alexandrian man, that is especially Alexandrian, that he prays to God, the Best and Greatest, one and the triune, that the flows of the Nile may be full, and that there may be the greatest abundance of grain. But lest I be forced to repeat those things which have been said elsewhere, read, I pray, my notes on that place. For I proceed immediately to other things.

Chapter IX. Our author was a catechist of the Alexandrian Church, as was Didymus.

Few are unaware ^A that Didymus was made catechist of the Alexandrian Church by St. Athanasius, given that he was placed in charge of the famous school founded by St. Mark the evangelist, as Jerome testifies, over which school great men presided: Pantaenus, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Heraclas, St. Dionysius, Athenodorus, Pierius, St. Peter the Martyr, St. Macarius, and others. But what the office of the Alexandrian catechist was, we learn [XIX] from Eusebius’ *Ecclesiastical History*, book VI, chapter 10. To him it pertained not only to imbue the ruder sort with the first elements of the faith, as the name "catechist" itself suggests, but also, in the first place, to interpret the sacred letters; for Eusebius calls that same school in that place *didaskaleion tōn hierōn logōn* (the school of sacred learning); next, to expound the treasures of divine dogmas, to use the words of Eusebius, partly by word of mouth, partly by writings to his hearers; finally, to refute the sophistries of heretics: for even if Eusebius does not openly record this, it is nonetheless not to be doubted that this was one of the foremost duties of that catechist. It is certain that this was egregiously performed by Didymus.

But who does not see that all these things ^B fit our theologian primarily? That fits first of all, that he was the catechist of the Alexandrian Church. For what, I ask, are those assemblies of alternating days, which he himself recalls on page 304, other than the assemblies in which he held his catechisms? For in those assemblies he says that he was accustomed, together with his own—that is, with his disciples—to make a commemoration of the Holy Trinity, and that he always celebrated the Trinity itself to the best of his ability, nor at any time did he fail to preach that those who neglect either to learn or to teach something excellent regarding the catholic faith concerning the Trinity, sin greatly to their own destruction. That these things fit the Alexandrian catechist most aptly, I have already shown in the notes on that place. For since at Alexandria, but not in the rest of Egypt, *synaxes* (assemblies) were actually held on alternating days, it seems it can hardly be doubted but that Didymus also held his *synousiai* (sessions), that is, his gatherings or assemblies, on alternating days.

But that our author calls these gatherings *synousiai* rather than *synaxes*, it seems that this happens because such a denomination fits those assemblies most ^C aptly, over which not a bishop, nor a presbyter presided, but a catechist not initiated into sacred orders. For it is one thing to teach in the church, and another to teach in catechisms, as I gather from these words of the bishop John of Jerusalem in his book against the same John, held by Jerome, segment 11, page 419: "Which... we teach in the church, and in the catechisms." That first thing was reserved in the Alexandrian church after the times of Arius to the bishop, if credit is to be given to Sozomen, who writes in book VII, chapter 19, that among the Alexandrians only the bishop of the city of Alexandria taught *ep' ekklēsias* (that is, in the church): which custom, he says, although it had not existed before, is said to have been introduced from the time when Arius the priest, discoursing on the doctrine of the faith, introduced new dogmas. Which words, even if perhaps they should not be taken in a strict sense, from them we seem able to conjecture that Didymus held his catechisms not in the church, but elsewhere, on the days of the *synaxes*, and for this reason, therefore, those assemblies were more properly called *synousiai* than *synaxes*.

But there are still other places in our author that indicate he was a catechist. For he more often mentions his sons, and the sons of his sons, for whom, he says, he works while alive; he also often mentions those who gathered together with him. Speaking of the former, he says: *hoi ex emou, kai paidia ha edōken moi Theos* (they are of me, and the children which God gave me); but of the others he speaks thus: *hoi syn hēmin, kai hoi syn emoi* (those with us, and those with me). And though I may conjecture ^D that those first ones were not the spiritual, but the carnal sons of the author, yet it is likely that the second ones, whom he calls *hoi syn emoi*, were those very people who flocked together with him in the assemblies or *synousiai*, which I mentioned, to hear him.

But as for the duties of the catechist, how splendidly our theologian performed them, it is superfluous to say. For from those things which I have said thus far, it is apparent that he was engaged to the utmost in the study and interpretation of the sacred Scriptures, and that he strenuously defended divine dogmas both by word of mouth and by writings, and vindicated them from the taunts and objections of heretics. Let us therefore linger for a little while on those formulas which I have just mentioned: that greater strength might thence come to my opinion, if it is possible.

Chapter X. Both our author and Didymus begat sons.

Therefore, nothing is more frequent in the prayers inserted into this work than that our author mentions his sons, as I have already said. [XX] He mentions them on pages 202, 203, 305, 507, 308, and finally 319. It could therefore be asked, first, whether our author or Didymus was a monk; then, whether those places are to be understood of spiritual sons or of carnal ones. But the first question is foreign to my purpose, nor is it at all necessary for solving the other. For it may be that Didymus first gave himself to children, and then, with his wife either deceased, or consenting, or even, as Theonas did, as mentioned by Cassian...

in conference XXI, chapter 4, withdrew himself into a monastery. Therefore, whether Didymus was a monk, as Victor of Tunnuna calls him, or whether he was not, the second of the proposed questions still remains to be solved. But I do not know if there are any records remaining to us by which this can be so resolved that we might fully satisfy a reader who is unwilling to be content with probable conjectures. Two things, however, I think I can establish: first, that whether the passages I have indicated are to be taken as referring to spiritual children or to carnal ones, they are most fitting for Didymus; second, that it is more probable that our author is speaking of carnal children.

But to start with the first point: if these passages are understood as being about spiritual children—born through catechesis, as Cyril of Jerusalem speaks—no one can fail to see how well they fit Didymus. For he was the catechist of the Church of Alexandria, as Clement truly says in the beginning of the first *Stromata*: ^A *We call them fathers who instruct us.* But if we interpret the words of our theologian concerning carnal children, to whom, I ask, of all the Alexandrian Fathers of the fourth century can they correspond more aptly than to Didymus? Who, since he was blind, could not have been initiated into any holy orders. For although some at that time are alleged not to have been without a wife, even while presbyters and bishops, such as Synesius of Ptolemais, or St. Hilary of Poitiers, or St. Pacian, bishops of Barcelona, nevertheless this work cannot be attributed to any of these. Nor do I know of any other Father from all antiquity, whether presbyter or bishop, who so often made mention of his carnal children and pointed to them, as it were, as our author does; for they thought it unbecoming, I suppose, for one initiated into holy orders to conduct himself in such a way. To this is added that our author commemorates not only his own children, but also his grandchildren, ^B or the children of his children. But that also squares precisely with Didymus, since he lived for a very long time, and it seems that he dictated these books after about the seventy-third year of his life, if he truly did dictate them, as I think.

That the passages I have enumerated from our author are much more likely to be taken as referring to carnal children than to spiritual ones can be confirmed by many conjectures, though they are not all of the same strength. I shall first bring forward the lighter ones, then I shall come to the weightier.

Indeed, firstly, in the commentaries on the Psalms on verse 157 of Psalm CXVIII, page 502 of the Corderius catena, Didymus seems to speak in such a way as if he had a wife and children; for thus he says: "Adversary powers tempt us through our household, through a quarrelsome, gossiping, and irritable wife, that we might sin..." *For the hidden things belong to the Lord our God, but the manifest things to us and to our children.* ^C And in a similar way in the book *Against the Manichaeans*, page 213: "We see," he says, "that these things always happen within us ourselves; for when we teach children, as we wish to instruct them according to discipline so that they might make use of that discipline, they are not yet nourished in the way they have been instructed by us."

Secondly, in the cited passages, our author not only has nothing at all that would indicate he is speaking of spiritual children, but on the contrary, he speaks in such a way that, in my judgment at least, he designates carnal children. For although spiritual children or disciples are often called by the Fathers *paidia*, *uioi*, or *tekna*, that is, children, I do not know if any of them, when speaking of his own disciples, ever used this phrasing: *ex emou*, that is, "who are from me," meaning, who have sprung from me. But our author often uses it, as can be seen in the passages alleged above.

Thirdly, he mentions not only children, saying they are from him (that is, born of him) and given to him by the Lord, but he also commemorates the children of these people, calling them in one place ^D *tous ap' auton ontas*, that is, "those who are from them," meaning those who have been born of them; but in another place *paidia ton paidion*, that is, "children of children." Furthermore, he even prays for grandchildren not yet born, but who will arise in the future, when he says: *tous ap' auton esomenous*. In summary, he commends to God not only himself and his children, but also those born of his descendants and those who will be born from them. But if all these things were understood of spiritual children and grandchildren, or of disciples, and disciples of disciples, and finally of those whom the disciples of his disciples were to teach, the allegory would be too extensive, in my judgment, and without any necessity. And indeed, what other writer ever called the disciples of his disciples the "children of his children," especially in those places where the discourse is simple and not laden with metaphors?

Fourthly, our theologian mentions those whom he calls *tous ex emou*, those whom he calls *tous syn hemin* or *tous syn emoi*, meaning he mentions both his children and those whom he says are with him himself. These things seem to be explained conveniently enough if we say that the former formula designates the carnal children of Didymus, and the second those who were gathering for catecheses along with him; or that the first are the same as the second, because the children of Didymus were living their life along with Didymus himself.

Fifthly, our author says on page 319: "Together with the children whom (God) gave me, and the children of my children, for whom we also labor while living." But on page 307 he asks that same thing of the Holy Trinity, that they might all be able to bestow of their own resources upon those who are in need, beginning with their relatives, and those of the same blood, and those of the household. All these things are most aptly attributed to one who has carnal children, nor can everything be probably understood of disciples; for if he were speaking of them in the first place, he would have commemorated children only, not also the children of children; for he could say that he labored while living for the sake of his children, but not for the sake of those who were not his disciples, but the disciples of his disciples, for whom, consequently, Didymus himself was not laboring, but the disciples themselves were.

Sixthly, just as Tillemont wishes that one letter from the epistles of Isidore of Pelusium, which is addressed to Evagrius, was written to the famous Evagrius, a disciple of Didymus

^A regarding whom, in volume X, he speaks in his work *On Evagrius*; and he judges that epistle 125 of book I, sent to Gregory of Nyssa, is the same, where he deals with St. Isidore of Pelusium; and finally, that epistle 109 of book I, inscribed to the monk Marathonius, seems to have been given to that Marathonius who was created bishop of Nicomedia. Thus, since there are also three epistles of the same St. Isidore, as I noted on page 477, of which two are inscribed to Didymus—namely 330 and 331 of the first book—and the third to Didymus the Scholastic—namely 206 of the sixth book—these also seem to have been written to our Didymus. For as regards the first two, in each of them St. Isidore deals with certain words of David, but in the second he praises the Didymus to whom he writes, for the reason that, since he is endowed with a keen intellect and sagely investigates the meaning of the Scriptures, there is nothing that can escape him: for, he says, "since you have gathered all things excellently in your youth, you have rest in your old age." But all these things fit our Didymus wonderfully. Why, therefore, should we not suspect that the third was also written to the same Didymus? I would not indeed dare to assert this. However, the title of Scholastic, regarding which one should read the Glossary of du Cange, could rightly be attributed to him, who both presided over the Alexandrian school and was learned in many sciences. But if this letter was sent to him himself, he undoubtedly had children, and several of them, as the words of our theologian also brought forward indicate. For thus the epistle begins: "They say that your eldest son and your youngest differ, and that you are aware of this matter, yet you feign as if you know nothing." ^B How wonderfully these things agree with our author: for that he was a most lover of quiet, and gentle, and far removed from such contentions, many places in this work *On the Trinity* manifest.

Finally, Libanius, in epistle 321 to Sebastian the Manichaean, Duke of Egypt, recommends Rhetorius, whom he calls both his own disciple, and a man not greedy for money, and versed in orators and poets, but the son of Didymus. "God," he says, "before all things makes me well-disposed to him (Rhetorius). For since he is my disciple, he is also the son of a *didaskalos*, that is, of a doctor or teacher." You certainly do not not know Didymus, unless you also do not know the great city in which he himself provided a wealth of his doctrine to others, flowing by night and by day. And in epistle 320, "That Rhetorius has associated with us; I, however, have used the discipline of his father; and to me, indeed, it happened to know the poets through him, but to him, through me, the rhetoricians... He has now come to Egypt to occupy a paternal estate that is not large: for he has his father there." Thus far Libanius. Whether he is speaking about our Didymus, let the judgment rest with the reader. ^C Certainly, all the things that Libanius says about him agree perfectly with our Didymus: for it fits our Didymus very well that he is called *didaskalos*, that is, doctor; that he took care that his son should be versed and educated in the reading of orators and poets; that he himself was also exceedingly versed in the poets; that he could not have been unknown to Sebastian; and that he was known to all those who were not ignorant of the great city of Egypt, namely Alexandria; that he was an Egyptian; that he provided a wealth of his doctrine to others; that he taught by night and by day; that he had a son not greedy for money. Therefore, it is permissible to believe that discourse is held concerning our Didymus by Libanius for as long as either another Didymus has not been discovered who flourished in Alexandria in the age of Libanius and was more, or at least equally, known than our Didymus, or some reason is brought forth on account of which Libanius cannot be understood as referring to our Didymus. But you will say, Libanius calls that Didymus his master and teacher: but this hardly, and even with great difficulty, fits our Didymus: for neither does Libanius seem ever to have traveled to Alexandria, nor is it likely that our Didymus, being blind, traveled to Antioch, or Athens, or Nicomedia, or Constantinople, ^D or Nicaea, in which cities it is established that Libanius dwelled. But to this is added that Libanius was a contemporary of our Didymus: for he was born in the year of Christ 314, but Didymus was born about the year 310. But these things of such a kind are not such as to render my conjecture empty. For Libanius, being a little younger, could have been a disciple of our Didymus, and perhaps was at Alexandria at some time, since in the oration *To those who called him troublesome*, segment 7, he speaks thus: "In Egypt to many, at Athens to three I caused fear, being an advocate from the council in both places." Nay, rather, if Libanius designated Alexandria above by the name of the great city, as it seems, it can scarcely be called into doubt that in the same city he attended/studied poetry in the school of Didymus as a youth. But let us now return to our theologian, and let us investigate in what century he wrote.

Cap. XI. Our author flourished in the fourth century just as Didymus.

It is clearly evident from page 406 that these books *On the Trinity* were written after the year of the Lord 379: for there the author cites Basil the Great as already deceased. But the time itself at which these were dictated is nowhere clearly designated in this work. Yet there are so many conjectures that indicate that he lived in the fourth century that it does not seem to be doubted that he truly wrote in the fourth century just as Didymus; for first, although he deals officially with the Son, he never mentions either the Nestorian or the Eutychian heresy, although he makes mention of most of the older heresies. Second, he reproaches the Arians, page 227, because they arranged for Marathonius to be created bishop of the Nicomedians: and since that happened in the fourth century, it indicates the writer of the fourth century; for the name of Marathonius seems hardly to have been known to anyone a few years after his age. Third, he uses certain Origenian expressions which, it is established, became suspicious after the death of Didymus, about the beginning of the fifth century: but our author would not have used these if he had written at that time, when they had already been stirred up by Jerome and condemned by Theophilus of Alexandria; which happened at the very beginning of the fifth century. Fourth, where he [speaks] of the Macedonians...

he speaks in such a way that he appears not to be refuting their heresy as an old one, but as a recent one, and to be attacking its first defenders. Finally, whether one look at the dogmas he inculcates, or the peculiar opinions to which he adhered, or the ecclesiastical discipline which he touches upon here and there—such as the discipline of the secret, the turning of those praying toward the east, the use and construction of oratories, the decoration of churches with gold, silver, and ivory (which Jerome also mentions in Epist. 130, sec. 14), the continuous administration of baptism, the very frequent reception of the Eucharist, and other matters similar to these—nothing will be found in this work which does not correspond to an author of the fourth century. Since these things are so, I have no doubt that he flourished in the same age as Didymus.

Cap. XII. Our author calls God [i]ἀμεγέθη[/i], as Didymus does.

But I am pleased to add another argument here, which I consider to be of no small weight. I derive it from the fact that our author more frequently in this work says that God is [i]ἀμεγέθη[/i] (without magnitude). When I had mentioned this word in a letter to the most illustrious prelate, John Archinto, then legate at Bologna, and had translated it "devoid of quantity," a certain French writer made pronouncements concerning this term which cannot be approved by me. But toward him I have already replied sufficiently and more than enough on page 39, note 2, and page 112, note 1. Now, therefore, nothing else remains but to expound my argument in a few words. It is certain, first, that magnitude is attributed to God by the Fathers, as I have said in the cited passages: and indeed not only that magnitude which is called in Greek [greek]μεγαλωσύνη[/greek], or [greek]μεγαλειότης[/greek], but also [greek]μέγεθος[/greek]. Thus Chrysostom, Vol. I of the Montfaucon edition, page 457, writes: [greek]τοῦ μεγέθους καὶ τῆς ἰσχύος τοῦ πεποιηκότος αὐτά[/greek]; and Basil calls God [greek]ἀόριστον μέγεθος[/greek] in Fabricius, [i]Bibl. Græc.[/i], Vol. VIII, page 400; by Josephus, however, in [i]Contra Apionem[/i], Book II, sec. 22, God himself is called [greek]τὴν μορφὴν καὶ μέγεθος ἡμῖν ἀφανέστατος[/greek], or, as others read, [greek]ἀφάτος[/greek]. It is certain, second, that in Holy Scripture, though God’s [greek]μεγαλωσύνη[/greek] or [greek]μεγαλειότης[/greek] is recorded, yet, if I am not mistaken, God is nowhere called by the term [greek]μέγεθος[/greek] or [greek]μέγαλος[/greek]. Third, I have not yet found any Father earlier than Didymus by whom God has been called [greek]ἀμεγέθης[/greek]. Finally, it is certain that God was called [greek]ἀμεγέθη[/greek] by Didymus the Alexandrian in his [i]Commentaries on the Psalms[/i], as I noted in note 4, page 112. And this perhaps happened because he, as a most diligent interpreter, searcher, and investigator of the Scriptures, observed that [greek]μέγεθος[/greek] is nowhere attributed to God in the Scriptures. Having premised these things, since our author also often says in this work that God is [greek]ἀμεγέθη[/greek], not without reason do I seem to be able to conclude from this as well that he is one and the same person as Didymus the Alexandrian. I confess that another Alexandrian writer, namely St. Cyril, also spoke of God in the same way later, as I noted in note 2, page 39, since he too openly called God [greek]ἀμεγέθη[/greek], but ^D that he might have borrowed such an expression from Didymus, one may conjecture, since I have said above that he appears to have imitated Didymus himself. And enough on this matter: let us therefore pass to another line of reasoning.

Cap. XIII. Our author was versed in the poets, as was Didymus.

Since very many of the Greek Fathers, older than or contemporary with Didymus, cite profane writers and especially poets, as is apparent from their works, it is not strange if our theologian also not infrequently alleges external—that is, profane—authors. It ought rather to seem a wonder that anyone could conclude from this that our work is much more recent than the age of Didymus: and though I have already sufficiently met this in the notes, I now seem to myself, conversely, to be able to derive from this very thing a contrary conjecture, which confirms all the more that Didymus is the author of the work. For that Didymus was indeed well-versed in the works of the poets, and also in those of the rhetoricians, is testified by Sozomen, Theodoret, and Nicephorus in the [i]Testimonies[/i] which I have brought forward in the Appendix. And Didymus himself, in the [i]Commentaries on the Acts of the Apostles[/i] at chapter 7 (Wolf’s [i]Anecdota[/i], Vol. IV, page 23), teaches that external learning is not to be completely despised; for it is placed to Moses’s credit that he was instructed in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, just as it is proclaimed of Daniel and his Jewish companions that they surpassed all the philosophers and kindred sciences of the Chaldeans. Furthermore, it is certain that all the Alexandrian catechists who preceded Didymus—Pantaenus, Clement, Origen, Dionysius, Ammonius, and others—devoted effort to external wisdom as well; among whom no one ignores [XXIV] how much Clement and Origen excelled not only in sacred, but also in profane erudition. For the works of Clement are everywhere filled with allegations from profane poets and philosophers. And the other, Origen, not only in the books written against Celsus in defense of the Christian religion cites Euripides, Homer, and others, as is evident from Vol. I, pages 349, 393, and 730 of the Paris edition of the year 1733, but he also exhorts his disciple St. Gregory Thaumaturgus (page 3 of the same volume) to apply himself to geometry and astronomy, because sciences of this kind can contribute to a Christian man's understanding and explaining the Holy Scriptures. Since these things are so, we conclude this argument in a few words. Our theologian quite often cites the verses of Pindar, Homer, Sophocles, Orpheus, Diagoras, Plato the Comic, the Sibylline oracles, and other poets whose names he keeps silent; he also alleges Plato, Aristotle, Porphyry, and Hermes Trismegistus, whose books inscribed under his name were held at that time to be genuine. Yet this highly befits him who is known to have been versed in the poets and other heathen writers, as was the case with Didymus. Therefore, so far is this from hindering our opinion that, rather, this line of reasoning—not taken in isolation, but...

joined with other conjectures and arguments—makes our opinion more probable.

Cap. XIV. Our theologian uses Origenian turns of speech, as does Didymus.

Jerome calls Didymus a most manifest defender of Origen. In what sense this is to be taken, or what Origen’s opinions are to which Didymus clung, I shall not inquire at present. It suffices for me now that, just as in Didymus, so also in our theologian, many such locutions occur as were attacked as Origenian by Jerome himself, Theophilus of Alexandria, and other Fathers, in Rufinus of Aquileia, in John the Bishop of Jerusalem, and others. These, in fact, are initially those concerning the image of God lost by man through sin, which our author teaches on page 255; then those he writes quite often concerning *apatheia*, that is, imperturbability or immunity from the disturbances of the soul, which are commonly called passions; and finally, what he affirms on pages 32 and 151, when in the former he says: "Whoever wishes to propose a beginning, they also confess an end"; and in the latter: "For in truth, whatever has received a beginning will also have an end."

I acknowledge that these three expressions of our theologian, and others of this kind, can be received in a right sense, and were indeed used by other Fathers. But perhaps there is not, in the works of Didymus which are extant, any Origenian locution that we are unable to explain in a catholic sense. Yet I have shown in my notes that those we find in our theologian, redolent of Origenism, were for the most part regarded by Jerome and others as infected by the Origenian stain, so that nothing else remains now but to add something concerning the proposition which I said exists on pages 32 and 151; for nothing was said about it in the notes. I have learned that this, too, was criticized among the Origenists from St. Anastasius Sinaita, who in the *Hodegos* (apud Gretserum, Vol. XIV, p. 149) wrote thus: "Saint Basil says in his sermon on the *Hexaemeron*: 'Everything that has a beginning also has an end.' ... Which statement the extremely vain Origenists often object to us, so as to establish from it the pre-existence of souls in the heavens before bodies." Thus Anastasius. But for my part, since I have not found the words he attributes to Basil in Basil’s homilies on the *Hexaemeron*, I do not know whether they are Basil’s. But it is certain that the same words exist in our theologian.

What I have said thus far concerning Origenian locutions, I wish to be said also of those which, after the death of Didymus, began to be called Pelagian or Semipelagian, and which were used by our theologian just as they were by Didymus: of which kind is that by which our author says on page 270 that faith begins from us. For these, too, can be reckoned among the Origenian ones, insofar as our author derived them from Origen, as I have noted in note 1, page 270.

[XXV]

Cap. XV. The same lapses of memory occur in our theologian and in Didymus.

Nor should that which I have observed both in our writer and in Didymus be considered of little importance, ^B that more often than not both of them falter when citing passages of Scripture. And as regards our theologian, I have diligently noted each of these errors in the margins of the pages myself; many are also indicated in the Subject Index under the entry for "Memory."

As for Didymus, although most or all of his extant works are shorter than these three books on the Trinity, such lapses have nevertheless been detected in them as well. For example, in the book *Against the Manichaeans*, page 207, after he has brought forward these words from Paul, "That it may be holy, and so forth," which exist in the First Epistle to the Corinthians, he immediately adds: "Indeed, also in the Epistle to the Corinthians, etc." And directly after these words he lapses again; for he says: "And a little later he speaks to the same (Corinthians), etc."; for the words which he cites are not a little later, but a little earlier, indeed they exist immediately above in Paul. In a similar manner, in the commentaries on the Acts of the Apostles (of which commentaries Wolf published a few fragments), Peter is named in place of Paul on page 23, Vol. IV of the *Anecdota* of the same Wolf. In the book *On the Holy Spirit* I have also found more of such errors, and I have warned the reader of them on page 3, note 2, and page 62, note 2. Finally, in his *Enarrations on the Catholic Epistles*, he certainly offers very many testimonies of Scripture, but in barely two or three places does he name the books from which they were taken, as if he feared he might fall into such errors. But he could not avoid all lapses of memory; for, in explaining the fourth chapter of the first epistle of Peter, he cites the eighth verse of the fifth chapter of the Epistle to the Romans, then adds this: "And soon he says: 'For the ungodly.'" As if these words, "for the ungodly," followed after the eighth verse, when they exist in the sixth verse of the same chapter.

But it pleases me to add another observation, which is still to be held of higher value; for I have found that some of these errors are not only similar, but exactly the same in both authors. Thus, for example, our theologian, on page 160, says that Paul's words, "That it may be holy in body and in spirit," are to be found in the Epistle to the Hebrews, when they exist in the first to the Corinthians. Didymus, however, in his book *Against the Manichaeans*, brings forward the same words in such a way that he affirms they do not exist in the first to the Corinthians, but in another place, as I have noted on page 160, note 10. A similar thing has been observed on page 388, note 9, and elsewhere.

Cap. XVI. Our theologian, however, possessed a singular memory, like Didymus.

But since, as Flaccus says, it is permitted that drowsiness may creep into a long work, it should seem strange to no one that our author's memory sometimes failed him while citing innumerable passages of Scripture: rather, all will wonder that he possesses such a memory, that he always has so many testimonies of the Bible at hand. But this same thing applies highly to Didymus of Alexandria, because the ancients testify with one voice that he excelled in memory, both...

in his works—most of all in his book *On the Holy Spirit*, his *Enarrations on the Catholic Epistles*, and the surviving fragments of his commentaries on the Sacred Scriptures—since we could scarcely conceive that books of this kind could be dictated by a blind man, unless it were established by indisputable records that he had dictated not only these but many other things far beyond them, or rather, as Jerome says, ^A innumerable works. I certainly know that in the first centuries of the Church there were many Christians who, as they handled the divine volumes by night and by day, learned them by heart. I will not deny that there were even many more who could faithfully recite the whole Bible without a text, as the author of *Antiquitates Critices*, vol. I, and John Liron, a monk of St. Maur, vol. III of *Rerum singularium ad litteras, historiamque spectantium* (cited by the distinguished Casto Innocente Ansaldi, p. 76, and elsewhere), maintain. But our theologian seems not only to have held the sacred books in his memory at least for the most part, but also to have kept before his eyes all the passages of Scripture which could be useful, as often as they were to be used [XXVI]. Now it is one thing, for example, to keep the Psalms or the whole Bible in one's memory so that one could recite them by heart in church or even while drowsy; but it is another thing to have them always at hand from the countless other testimonies of the Scriptures and to bring them forward as the subject requires. The former is a sign of an excellent memory; but the latter, as I indeed believe, is a sign of a most excellent one. And that Didymus was able to do the former is sufficiently probable; but that our theologian, or Didymus himself, did the latter is certain and manifest.

Chapter XVII: The same readings of certain Scripture texts in our theologian and in Didymus.

That in Didymus’s age there was a great variety of either readings or translations in the Greek copies of the Scriptures, no one is unaware, as I was saying above in Chapter VIII. Let us see, therefore, whether our theologian and Didymus followed the same readings of the Biblical texts; for if we discover the same ones in both, this will be no light indication that supports our opinion. But not all variations, even those of small moment, are to be attended to; for it often happens that they read one and the same passage of Scripture now in one way, now in another, either because they cite them from memory, or because they neglect the smallest and most worthless discrepancies, or finally because they prefer to follow one reading at one time and another at another. However, there were certain variations in the codices of the Bible at that time which I consider worthy of special note. Thus, for example, firstly in the *Epistle to the Thessalonians*, ch. II, v. 13, the Greek edition has *ἀπ’ ἀρχῆς*, that is, *from the beginning*; but Didymus in his book *On the Holy Spirit* reads *ἀπαρχήν*, that is, *first fruits*; and our author also reads *first fruits*, as I said on page 123, note 4. Secondly, in the *Epistle to the Romans*, ch. VIII, v. 11, the Alexandrian codex and the Greek edition have: *through him who indwells*, etc.; but our theologian not only reads *through him who indwells*, but he also rejects the other reading, as did the Macedonians; yet Didymus, in his book *On the Holy Spirit*, also reads *through him who indwells*, as I said on page 180, note 5. Thirdly, our author on ^B page 247 refutes the heretics because they removed the word *I* from a certain place in the book of the prophet Amos in the copies of the Scriptures; but Didymus, when citing the same text of the prophet in the book *On the Holy Spirit*, nos. 14 and 59, is careful not to omit the word *I*. Fourthly, in the Gospel of John, chap. I, v. 18, when all the editions, both Greek and Latin—indeed, even the Alexandrian codex—have *The Only-Begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him*; our theologian nevertheless, and elsewhere in place of *The Only-Begotten Son*, reads *The Only-Begotten God*; although I cannot prove with certainty that Didymus read *Only-Begotten God*, because no passage occurs now in which he cites this text, yet I think that he also read it in this way, since his predecessor Origen the Alexandrian catechist also read it in the same manner, as I said on page 76, note 5. Finally, I ask the reader to see what I wrote on page 246, note 1, regarding the words of Paul, *serving the Spirit of God*; and elsewhere regarding other texts: for I, fearing that I might be too long, refrain from bringing forward other examples of this kind here.

And rather I add this: that scriptural passages are indeed brought forward by our author in such a way that he sticks more to the meaning than to the words; and anyone who compares the biblical texts cited by him with the Greek Bibles will find that Didymus acted in the same way. Nevertheless, since we see that this very thing is not rarely done by others, it cannot be held as a certain mark by which Didymus is distinguished from the remaining Fathers.

Chapter XVIII: Both offer the same interpretations of certain Scripture texts.

Theologians know that the Alexandrian catechists were accustomed to delight in allegories when interpreting the Scriptures. But regarding our Didymus ^C, I surely believe that, having before my eyes what I remember observing in his works or fragments, I can assert these three things. I. That where he refutes heretics, ^D he was not accustomed to follow allegories, but to seek arguments to refute them from the literal sense of Scripture. II. That while he was explaining the books or texts of the Old Testament, he indulged in allegories: because, as I think, all things happened to the Hebrews as a figure. III. That in the words of the New Testament he rarely sought out allegories, but for the most part, or almost always, adhered to the literal sense.

And I have observed these three very things in our theologian as well. For just as Didymus in his book *On the Holy Spirit* refutes the Macedonians with the most powerful arguments derived from the literal sense of Scripture, so also our writer refutes the Arians, Eunomians, and Macedonians in such a way that he derives almost all his arguments from the Scriptures literally explained. And just as ...

Didymus dictated five books of Explanations on Zechariah, as Jerome bears witness, ^A so that their entire exposition was allegorical, and they touched upon the history in only a few places, so too our theologian in book II, chapter 14, while citing many texts of Zechariah himself together in a certain digression, interprets them all allegorically, and perhaps distills into an epitome those things which he had treated more fully in those explanations; in other places, however, he more often expounds other locations of the Old Testament allegorically. Finally, as in Didymus, so also in our author, very few, if I am not mistaken, are the locations of the New Testament explained allegorically.

^B But what is to be noted more is that there occur in these books *On the Trinity* many interpretations of scriptural texts which, if we compare them with those that are read in Didymus, we find to be the same, as I have pointed out in many notes. For I, the words of Joel, for example, "I will pour out of my Spirit upon all flesh," are explained in the same way by Didymus in his book *On the Holy Spirit* no. 11, and by our theologian on page 117. II, the words of the Psalmist, "The light of thy countenance, O Lord, is signed upon us," our author expounds concerning the Holy Spirit on page 278, and Didymus accepted them in the same manner in many places, as I have said in the same note 6. III, where the writers of the Old Testament name the arm of God or the right hand of God, Didymus interprets it as the Son of God, as I have said in note 6 on page 13; our theologian truly does the same on the same page. IV, the words of Christ, "I came not to send peace, but a sword," our author understands thus on page 147, so that the name of the sword signifies the wisdom by which the Holy Spirit cuts through hardened hearts. In a similar manner Didymus in the *Enarrations* on chapter iv of the Epistle of James: "Jesus coming," he says, "sent a sword upon the earth." For His word and doctrine divides and separates from earthly and material things. V, the words of Paul, "He chose us in him before the foundation of the world," our theologian expounds concerning the foreknowledge of God on page 341; Didymus understands them in the same way in the *Enarrations*, as I have indicated in that same place. Finally, lest I bring up single instances, one should read what I have written on page 50, note 2, page 28, note 3, page 127, n. 3, page 177, note 2, page 185, note 6, p. 252, note 3, page 277, note 6, page 252, note 7, and elsewhere throughout.

Chap. XIX. Certain rather frigid or at least lighter things which either author has.

^D Although our author is accustomed, for the most part, or rather almost always, to refute heretics with valid arguments, and to write things that befit a serious theologian, nonetheless there are read in him some few things which, in my own judgment, are rather frigid, or at least rather trivial. I think those of this sort are what he writes on page 264 about the name *peristera* [dove], and the number 801, which he observes to be derived from that name, just as also from the letters *alpha* and *omega* major. Those things also seem frigid which exist on page 18 concerning the Latin words, *Plus quam perfectus*. Moreover, the interpretation of the words of John the Baptist, "Art thou he that is to come?" which he has on page 21, I do not know if it can please many. Indeed, things which occur on page 345, concerning the words of John the Theologian: "And the Word was with God," will seem rather trivial to many. Truly we do not judge some other things of the same kind, because it can happen easily that things which are light to us are held to be weighty by others. But no one can deny that at least two from the apocryphal books of the Old Testament are cited by him: the book of II Esdras, p. 294, and the prayer of Manasseh, p. 399 and 434.

But I have found similar things clearly in Didymus also. In the book *On the Holy Spirit*, indeed, he refutes the Macedonians with very grave reasoning, and thus expounds the scriptural locations almost everywhere as befits a theologian. [XXVIII] But the explanation which he employs in no. 50 on the words of Isaiah, "Leading Moses by his right hand," in which he says that by the name of Moses one can also understand the Mosaic law, I do not know if it is of the same gravity as the other interpretations. And that also will seem not firm enough to anyone which he says in the commentaries on ch. v of the Acts, in volume IV of the *Anecdota* of Wolf, namely that the words of Solomon which exist in the Greek translation of Proverbs, ch. v, "Be not much with a strange woman," cannot be accepted as referring to a wife joined to a husband, but must be accepted as referring to the wisdom of the heathens. That explanation indeed of the words, "Who shows us good things?" is rather trivial; which, although he brings it forth from the opinion of others, he does not reject, however, in the fragment which I edited on page 278, note 6. That which I read in the manuscript *Catena* on Job of Nicetas Heracleensis at chapter 1, verse 2, can also appear rather trivial. For since the holy writer narrates there that Job had seven sons and three daughters, Didymus, having taken these two numbers mystically, says that the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit and the trinity of divine persons are signified, ἵνα μάθωμεν τὴν ἐν Τριάδι πίστιν τῆς ἑβδόμης χάριτος εἶναι δημιουργόν, that is, that we may learn that the faith by which we believe in the Trinity is the creator of the sevenfold grace. Finally, to pass over some other things, what we shall soon bring forth from the *Enarrations* is also rather trivial, if I am not mistaken.

That indeed apocryphal works of the Old or New Testament have also sometimes been cited by Didymus, I show by three examples. For I, in the *Catena of the Greek Fathers on Job* by Nicetas, edited at London in the year 1637, he cites the book of the *Shepherd* on page 202: which, however, had been cited by Athanasius also in vol. I, page 895, and elsewhere. II, In the *Enarrations* on the chapter of the 1st Epistle of John, he cites an apocryphal book which was called *Leptogenesis* or *mikrogenesis*, that is, *the small Genesis*: for these things are read there: "For also in the book which is called *Leptogenesis*, it is read thus, that because Cain struck Abel with a stone or a piece of wood: whence it is not to be reckoned that by a striking only a wound is made, but absolutely every blow which causes a laceration in the body." III, In the commentaries on chapter VIII of the Acts, in volume IV of the *Anecdota*...

Wolfius, page 35: "Because it is true," he says, "that it is not expressed in the canonical books what became of Enoch, he is remembered in the apocrypha as having been taken up into paradise."

Chapter XX: Our theologian has many passages and arguments very similar to those found in the published works of Didymus.

That there are very many places in our theologian, and arguments very similar to them, which occur in the minor works of Didymus, and especially in his book *On the Holy Spirit*, is placed beyond all controversy. For I have demonstrated this throughout the notes. But lest I be forced to repeat what I have already written, I ask the reader to run through them, especially those which exist from page 460 to 470. And indeed, I believe that so great a similarity is an indication not to be despised, by which the author of our work is designated, and is indicated to be one and the same as Didymus. But you might say, "That theologian could have imitated Didymus." I do not deny it. But first, the question now is not what could possibly have happened, but what is more probable. Furthermore, some places in our theologian are so similar to certain places in Didymus that often the same readings are found in both, the same texts of Scripture with the same additions, the same lapses of memory, and finally the same style and mode of reasoning: all of which, being so similar in two authors, seems to be something that could hardly happen.

Chapter XXI: The writings of both reveal an author endowed with the same character.

We must now also see with what character each author shows himself to be endowed; for it is possible that these things may also provide us with some indication. In our theologian, I have noted these especially: I. The highest zeal for the Catholic faith regarding the Trinity shines through the whole work, especially on page 202, where he professes himself to be prepared to undergo any labor, and danger, if need be, for this faith. II. Throughout the whole course of his life, as it seems to us, it was his care that we should pronounce nothing out of hatred toward anyone, and we have avoided any reproach whatsoever, even if it were not unjust. III. He feels and speaks humbly and modestly of himself, while he calls himself unlearned and a sinner on page 319, and unworthy on page 104. IV. He teaches on page 105 that for one who wishes to discourse on the divinity, not only erudition is necessary, but also piety, good works, and meditation.

Let us now compare Didymus with such an author as we have described. I. That he was inflamed with the greatest zeal for the Catholic doctrine of the Trinity, it is not necessary to show: the matter is so manifest both from all his works and from the testimonies of the ancients. II. He so abhorred any reproach which might be unworthy of a good man that, in the book *On the Holy Spirit*, he does not even once name Macedonius and the Macedonians, against whom he is writing by design, as I remarked at page 175, note 1. III. That he himself also felt and spoke humbly of himself is evident from numbers 38 and 63 of the same book: for in both places he confesses himself to be unlearned and far removed from the grace and rhetorical eloquence ^A of speech. Finally, he asks in the same place, number 63, that one who wishes to read his volume should cleanse himself from every evil work and from most wicked thoughts. Can a greater similarity between the two exist even in this regard?

Chapter XXII: The style of both is entirely the same.

Another argument, deduced from the style of our author and of Didymus, must now be added. But before I do that, it is necessary to ask whether Didymus can be called eloquent and fluent. In this matter, I will say candidly what I feel. Indeed, I willingly concede that he was most learned, and as well-versed as anyone in the study and interpretation of Scripture; indeed, no one can justly deny that through him, heretics were refuted by many and weighty reasons. But if we are speaking of that eloquence which we admire in Isocrates, in Demosthenes, in Aeschines, and indeed in Basil, in John Chrysostom, and in Gregory Nazianzen, I believe he is far from it. For although the Greek exemplar of the book *On the Holy Spirit* and of the *Enarrations* has perished, nevertheless, from the Latin interpretation of these works, and from the Greek excerpts and fragments of his that remain, we understand the matter to be so. Such, of course, is the oratory of Didymus that appears to me, as it is in our author. For he too is most learned, and in the field of the Scriptures, practiced in a wondrous way; he contends strenuously against his adversaries, and with the most weighty arguments, as for the most part, he convicts and routs them. But he cannot, in my judgment, be called fluent, eloquent, or charming.

But you might say, "Jerome, a man of refined taste, in Epistle 84 to Pammachius and Oceanus, says, 'Who is more prudent, more learned, more eloquent than Eusebius and Didymus?'" Socrates, indeed, in book IV, chapter 25, calls Didymus himself *ellogimon*, that is, as Valesius translates it, "most eloquent."

I confess it. But Rufinus also, in his *Ecclesiastical History*, has testified these things about Didymus. "Even now, his works are held in great admiration. We, however, who were in some part his listeners, and who read those things which were recorded by some as he spoke, recognized a far greater grace and a certain divine something, sounding above human voice, in those sermons which were delivered from his own mouth." Since, therefore, we often see it happen that some who are endowed with genius appear eloquent while they speak—nay, sometimes they are so in reality—yet when they take up the pen, they write in a lackluster or even inept manner; so it is possible that while Didymus was speaking, the power of his genius and spirit might have so inflamed him that he seemed and actually was eloquent; but when he was writing, or rather dictating, that ardor of spirit would fail him, and for that reason, his oratory would lose its vigor.

Moreover, as regards Jerome's judgment of Didymus, he ought to be considered as attributing eloquence to Eusebius alone, not to Didymus, or rather it should be said that Didymus is called eloquent by him, not because his writings [can be compared] with the writings的 of eloquent men,

but rather because he is among those ^A [eλλογιμωτέρους] of the bishops. Shall we think those bishops were summoned by Athanasius who would be more eloquent, or those who were more distinguished, or more excellent in doctrine? Origen also, in volume I, page 30, says: [eλλογίμων αἱρέσεων], that is, of distinguished sects; and Celsus himself, page 338, has [eλλογίμοις ἀνδράσι], that is, learned men. Therefore, [eλλογιμος] in Suidas is indeed [τίμιος] (honored), [σεβάσμιος] (venerable); but to the author of the Lexicon, which exists in manuscript in the 140 Nanian codex, [eλλόγιμος] is explained as [λόγιος], [ἀξιόλογος] (learned, estimable).

What I said a little earlier, [which] can be compared, not only on account of the reason brought forward from Rufinus, but because what Didymus proposes to himself, he is accustomed to demonstrate through much doctrine, through many ways and arguments, and those robust and effective ones, and to persuade his readers. For Jerome himself, in the preface to his book *On the Holy Spirit*, calls the author of that work, Didymus, unskilled in speech, but not in knowledge. Indeed, Didymus himself, because of the modesty with which he was endowed, candidly confesses this at the end of the same book, where the printed copies have: "For just as we boldly claim the sense of piety for ourselves according to our conscience; so as far as concerns speaking about it, we simply confess that rhetorical grace and fluency, according to the sequence and text of the discourse, are far from us." ^B It was indeed our study to understand the things that are written about the Holy Scriptures differently and piously, and not to be ignorant of the measure and skill of our own speech. But I think it should be read from our manuscript codex, often praised by me in the notes: "For just as we boldly claim the sense of piety for ourselves according to our conscience; so as far as concerns the grace of eloquence, and rhetorical fluency, and the sequence and text of the discourse, we simply confess that they are far from us," and the rest, as above.

I have said these things that I had to say concerning the eloquence of Didymus. But if anyone contends that he is articulate, I, for my part, for the sake of avoiding contention, will not object, provided that he himself also concedes to me that the same eloquence, which he admires in the book *On the Holy Spirit*, in his *Narrations*, [and] in the book *Against the Manichaeans*, shines forth also in the work of our theologian.

Having spoken thus generally about the style of both, now one must treat the same matter more clearly, and some things must be considered individually, so that the similarity we are looking for may better appear.

First, therefore, that our author's speech is not very elegant, no one will deny who knows elegance, so to speak, by sight. Indeed, there are some places in him that are very tangled, some even with harsh vocabulary, some likewise that are solecisms, or [i] ὑπόσολοικα [/i]. It is inelegant, I think, for example, the word [åγιτριο- σολογῆσαι], and other things not a few from those which I have reviewed in the Index of Greek words, as was also said a little above. A solecism indeed is [oἱ ὀνειδοι], for [τὰ ὀνείδη], or for [oἱ ὀνειδισμοί]. It is a solecism also which is read on page 30, [Τριάδι ὀνειδιζούσης], etc., for [ὀνειδίζουσαν].

But do we not find similar things in Didymus? A solecism is what is read in the book *Against the Manichaeans* at the beginning: [Oὗτοι μεταβάλλειν [XXXI] δύναντες]. A solecism likewise which one may read on the same page: [Ὑπὸ τοῦ Σωτῆρος... λέγων], for [λέγοντος]. But we find things akin to these in the fragments of Didymus edited in volume IV of the *Anecdota* of Wolf, and among the authors of the Catenae.

But if anyone should think that we are ill-served by Didymus, while we recognize the lack of skill in speech in him, let him know that no small praise is bestowed upon him by us, when we number him among those whom the Psalmist calls "taught in heart in wisdom": ^C for Didymus himself explains this in the Corderian Catena, vol. II, page 865, in this manner: "Moreover, he is taught in heart in wisdom who has become wise according to the mind and reason, even if he wanders in prolatitious speech; so that he may even truly say: 'Although unskilled in speech, yet not in knowledge'." Let him also know that not only is Victorinus the martyr called unskilled in speech by Jerome, vol. IV, page 6, Veronese edition, but also concerning the prophet he speaks thus in vol. VI, page 222: "Of this number of shepherds was Amos the prophet, unskilled in speech, but not in knowledge." Why more? Paul himself in II Cor., chap. xi, verse 6, says he is unskilled in speech, but not in knowledge, because he would not use the persuasive words of human wisdom, as he himself says, and despised Greek fluency, but pursued another much more sublime: for which reason Dionysius Longinus, an ethnic man, deservedly numbers him among those who excelled in the sublime style of speaking.

As for what concerns Socrates, he indeed calls Didymus [eλλόγιμον], but I fear that Valesius did not correctly interpret it there as "most fluent"; for that word denotes not only fluent, but also distinguished and learned, as I think. Theodoretus, indeed, in *Hist. eccl.* lib. IV, cap. 2, [speaks of] Athanasius about to send an exposition of faith to the emperor Jovian, gathering ^D the most distinguished of the bishops.

But if you reply that these things can be attributed to the unskillfulness or carelessness of the scribes, who transcribed [λέγων] for [λέγοντος], and [δύναντες] for [δύνανται], and so on; you will say things that are consistent with fairness; but let these [errors] occurring in our theologian be attributed to the scribe, who wrote wrongly, e.g., [oἱ ὀνειδοι] for [oἱ ὀνειδισμοί], and [ὀνειδιζούσης] for [ὀνειδίζουσαν].

II. From the things he has at hand, Didymus sometimes digresses in his arguments to a matter clearly foreign to the point. Thus in the book *On the Holy Spirit*, not to run through all his works, after he had brought forward at number 43 a very long place of Isaiah, in which only a few things pertaining to the purpose are found, he illustrates the whole place, as if forgetting the argument, with a very ample commentary: and not content with that, he suddenly inserts another digression at number 45, in

[LATIN COLUMN]

refuting the Manichaeans, who imagine one God is good and another is just. Indeed, a reader will find digressions of this sort in our theologian as well. For on page 295, for example, he interprets Marcus's text, which is not brief, in such a way that he explains even those things that have no bearing on the proposed argument. And something similar occurs on page 260 and the following, where you will see the passage from Zechariah explained in such a way that you would think you were reading an interpreter explaining the Scriptures rather than a theologian dealing with the divinity of the Holy Spirit. This also happens to the reader on page 345 and several others.

III. Didymus reasons dialectically and subtly in his book *On the Holy Spirit*, even though he offers arguments there drawn only from the Scriptures. Our author does the same thing.

IV. Both use terms that are most appropriate for explaining, or rather designating, things that concern the mystery of the Trinity.

V. Both our theologian and Didymus accept those passages of Scripture from which they refute the blasphemies of the heretics in a sense that is almost always literal rather than mystical, natural rather than forced.

VI. Didymus is not excessively subtle, even though he argues subtly and dialectically. The same praise is due to our theologian.

VII. Our theologian cites himself not infrequently, just as Didymus does. Both, when citing writers or naming certain others, add a brief eulogy of them here and there. Both sometimes incite readers to look for other testimonies of Scripture besides those they provide; our author, for example, on pages 227 and 344, and Didymus, in the places I have cited on page 227.

VIII. Some things are inculcated a second and third time, both in the book *On the Holy Spirit* and in this work.

IX. Didymus sometimes transcribes quite long passages of Scripture, and that without great necessity, as I noted on page 347. It is evident that the same is done by our author, as shown on that same page 317, as well as on pages 36, 37, 44, 58, 194, 238, and 383.

Finally, Didymus likes to speak hesitantly, in such a way that he does not wish to define what he himself thinks, but proposes certain things for the reader to examine. You will find examples of this in the *Enarrations* on pages 50, 54, 55, 71, and 88 of the *Bibliotheca Patrum* of the 1644 Paris edition; and in the book *On the Holy Spirit* on pages 160, 161, 162, and 164 of the Verona edition. Similar examples occur in our theologian on pages 198, 261, 271, 344, and 417.

CHAPTER XXIII. Certain notable omissions in both writers.

We have already drawn enough conjectures and reasons from those things our author has written. Why should we not also argue from those things he himself passed over in silence? For these too significantly aid my cause. Nowhere, therefore, in these three books (which might seem strange to some in relation to the old Fathers, among whom Didymus might seem less well-versed) does he ever, I say, object to the heretics the famous chapter of John, *There are three that bear witness in heaven* [1 Joan. v, 7 sqq.], and the rest, nor the definitions of the Council of Nicaea, nor of Constantinople, and much less those of any other synod. Furthermore, he touches upon an argument drawn from tradition here and there [XXXII], but he does not press it, content only to reproach the heretics, as it were in passing, that their doctrine is new, and that they themselves have departed from the unshaken house, as he himself says on page 174—namely, from the Church. Moreover, although he cites almost all the books of Scripture, he never alleges the books of the Maccabees, the book of Judith, or the book of Esther. Also, while he brings forth passages from Scripture or other books, he often omits the names of the authors or the books from whence they were taken. But what seems more worthy of remark is that he names the Arians, Macedonians, and Eunomians, but never uses the terms Semi-Arians, Anomoeans, and other similar designations, even though vocabulary of this sort was prevalent in the fourth century of the Church, as is evident from Epiphanius and other Fathers. Lastly, he spares the names of Aetius, Apollinaris, and Marcellus of Ancyra; for even though he refutes Aetius on page 14—indeed, he brings forward his very words—and mentions the heresy of Apollinaris on pages 393 and 396, and refutes Marcellus, as is likely, in Book I, chapter 51, he does not commemorate the names of Aetius, Apollinaris, and Marcellus even once.

Thus indeed our theologian behaved. But what of Didymus? Did he not proceed in a similar way? I believe indeed he did, and precisely so. Not even he ever brings forward the testimony of John, *There are three*, and the rest, neither in his *Enarrations* on the first Epistle of John itself, nor in his book *On the Holy Spirit*, nor elsewhere. I do not doubt that this happened because that text was lacking in the Alexandrian copies of the Scriptures: since it was never objected to even by Athanasius against the Arians, nor is it read in the Alexandrian codex that survives. Nor does Didymus make any mention of any synod; judging it better, I suppose, to argue from the Scriptures, whose authority the heretics accepted, than from synods, which they despised. For this same reason, ^D if I am not mistaken, he does not greatly urge tradition, but touches on it only in passing: as when he speaks thus at the beginning of the book *On the Holy Spirit*: "These things they boast of regarding the Holy Spirit, which are neither read in the Scriptures nor used by any of the ancient ecclesiastics." For it would have been superfluous to object to them the testimonies of the ancient Fathers, as they did not wish to even listen to anyone other than Arius, Eunomius, and Macedonius, as our theologian says on page 260, and who, since they were not ignorant that their own opinions were contrary to the faith and doctrine of the Fathers, provoked the Catholics to Scripture alone, just as the wicked apostates Luther and Calvin did many centuries later; for not yet to anyone

^A had that intolerable and most absurd opinion come into their minds, that the Fathers older than the Nicene Council might not have thought about the divinity of the Son or the Holy Spirit in the same way as the Catholic Church has felt.

Didymus, as far as I know, does not cite the books of the Maccabees, Judith, and Esther in any of his published works; whether because no occasion was offered to him to cite them, or because, being historical works, he had neither committed them to memory nor illustrated them in commentaries.

As for what concerns the remaining omissions, Didymus also often brings forward testimonies without naming the books or authors from whom they were taken. And as I have either read long ago or at least perused almost all of his works published thus far, I do not remember ever finding in them the names of the Semarians, the Anomoeans, or of Aetius, Apollinaris, and Marcellus, even though he commemorates the heresies of all of them. Therefore, one may now rightly and deservedly conclude that there is a great similarity between the one theologian and the other, even in their omissions.

I confess, indeed, that the argument drawn from the writings of the heathens, and especially from those things attributed to Orpheus and Hermes Trismegistus, is cast by our theologian against his adversaries, but is completely passed over by Didymus in his book *On the Holy Spirit*. But Didymus there does not refute heathens, but only heretics, by whom the authority of Orpheus and Mercury was held of no account. Our theologian, however, wished to refute the heathens as well, as is manifestly clear from chapter 24 of the third book. These men, however, valued the works of Orpheus and Mercury so highly that Theon of Alexandria, who flourished at Alexandria in the age of Didymus, interpreted them publicly, as was mentioned on page 301.

[XXXIII]

CAP. XXIV. Nothing is found in our theologian that does not suit Didymus.

Finally, it is not of small moment that, after long consideration, I truly believe I can affirm about our theologian that there is nothing in him at all that does not fit Didymus perfectly. This is how the matter stands, kind reader. No author is cited or named in this work who is more recent than Didymus; no heresy is mentioned that did not precede him; no Catholic dogma is inculcated that other Fathers, either older or contemporary, did not also inculcate; no book is praised as canonical that others among the Alexandrian Fathers especially had not already cited as such; finally, no diction is found in it, nor any thought, that is not perfectly suited to the age, customs, style, and doctrine of Didymus.

Nor is it irrelevant to our purpose that hardly any transcript of the work survives; and that the work itself has not been commemorated by any of the Greek writers of the Middle Ages, especially those who wrote after the times of Justinian. For one cannot conceive of any more probable cause for this than that its author, Didymus, was in bad odor because of Origenism; ^B for which reason it has come to pass, if I am not mistaken, that the only manuscript copies of his *Enarrationes* on the Catholic Epistles and of his book against the Manichaeans—though it contains orthodox doctrine—were found from which they might be printed; whereas the Greek text of both the book *On the Holy Spirit* and the *Enarrationes* has perished entirely, as it seems. So much, clearly, did the monks and copyists loathe those who were suspected of a violated faith, or who were condemned, that they would refuse to transcribe their works, even if they were untainted by error, or refuse to see to their transcription. Hence I think it followed that, like the works of many others whom it is not necessary to enumerate, the works of Didymus also either perished or remained unknown to most people; so much so that the Egyptian writer Cosmas Indicopleustes, whom I cited on p. 483, clearly indicates that the *Enarrationes* of our Egyptian theologian were unknown to him when he says that no one among those who published commentaries on the divine Scriptures had taken any account of the Catholic Epistles. Furthermore, Photius himself, although he was of no less erudition than he was of villainy, did not mention in his *Bibliotheca* any of the many works of Didymus; and in his first book against the Manichaeans he enumerates many who had written against those heretics, but passes over Didymus.

CHAPTER XXV. Conclusion.

And these are mostly the things I have judged should be brought forward in favor of my opinion. Nothing else now remains, therefore, but that I should finally gather two arguments from these things that I have said so far, the strength of which it will be for the reader to judge. The first is of this kind, as I said at the beginning: it is impossible that someone other than Didymus could be that author in whom we discover the greatest similarity in all things compared to Didymus. But our theologian is such a one, as has been shown. Therefore, it is no one other than Didymus. The second is as follows: this work must be attributed to Didymus if no Egyptian theologian be found at all, other than Didymus, in whom the things I have reviewed above universally agree. And yet, he will find no other, if I am not mistaken, who wishes to examine this matter more attentively and compare each of the Egyptian or Alexandrian Fathers with our theologian. Therefore, not without cause do we affirm that these three books *On the Trinity* belong to Didymus. Which was to be demonstrated.

CAPUT POSTREMUM. Some points are indicated which could be objected to us.

I shall therefore finally put an end to this book, most kind reader. For whatever objections I have suspected could be raised against my opinion, however light, we are about to re-examine in the second book, or have already diluted elsewhere: namely, on pages 18, 94, 124, 238, and 356. What, however, were objected to in the *Litteraria ephemeride* of Paris, must be commemorated here separately, [XXXIV] not mixed with the rest, lest I appear to make light of my adversary; but I shall dispatch this in a few words, because I have already met these arguments elsewhere, and my discourse already hastens to its end.

Sunt ergo hujusmodi. 1. Didymus by Socrates is called *alogimos*, that is to say, not eloquent; but our theologian is not of that sort. 2. This author calls God *amegethe* and *aneideon*, that is, devoid of magnitude and form. But this is an expression of Peter Lombard, or some other theologian equal to Lombard. 3. The word *anebelesia*, which the author here employs, is one of those that the Scholastics coined long after the age of Didymus; for it signifies non-willing, or unwillingness. 4. Didymus, according to the testimony of Socrates, was versed *en pase paideusei*, that is, in all learning; but this theologian here does not even know the elements of geography; for he calls the Mount Golgotha the center of the earth. Finally, since he cites Orpheus, Hermes Trismegistus, Pindar, and other heathens, and that too while disputing about the most holy mystery of the Trinity, ^A it seems he is some monk of the Middle Ages; for no Father of the fourth century would have conducted himself in such a way. Such is his argument. But the first argument was solved a little earlier. That the second is weak is manifest: for the word *amegethes* had been used by Longinus in his book *On the Sublime* in a different, indeed a contrary, sense, but we have already shown above in chapter 12, as well as on pages 39, 84, and 112, that it was used by Didymus in the same sense as it is in these books *On the Trinity*. The third we refuted a little earlier in chapter 8, and on page 131, and again on page 148; the fourth, on page 33; the fifth, finally, on page 69, and in the notes to the 27th chapter of the second book. I pray you, read all these passages that I have indicated; for it will appear, as I trust, that my judgment is not weakened, but confirmed, by the arguments brought forward by the adversary. ^B

BOOK TWO. ON THE DOGMAS AND OPINIONS OF DIDYMUS.

Since it has been sufficiently shown, if I am not mistaken, in the previous book that Didymus was the author of the three works which we are now publishing for the first time; I deem it worthwhile, most excellent prelate Francis Carafa, to speak now for a while about the opinions of this man, and it is highly consonant with my purpose. For although many have treated his life and writings with great diligence, yet no one, so far as I know, has followed his opinions with sufficient accuracy. Therefore, I myself, omitting those earlier matters, shall treat only of these latter ones, not because I think that we can now walk safely everywhere and as it were plant our feet (for most other works of this theologian, from which greater light might have shone, have perished), but because I seem to be able to bring forward new things, and I trust that they will not be entirely unpleasant to you, a lover of truth. For my intention in writing about these matters is not to show favor to Didymus in general, nor to oppose him, but briefly to set forth and embrace only those things which shall seem true, or more probable, to me; and to leave in the middle those things which are more obscure and uncertain. And lest I detain you now with many words to no purpose, I begin immediately in this manner.

Chapter I. On the lighter accusations of Jacques Basnage against Didymus.

The heterodox man Jacob Basnage, in the volume of Canisius’s *Lectiones Antiquae*, page 199, affirms that Didymus taught many things in his *Enarrationes*, and in the book *against the Manichaeans*, that are less consistent with the truth, where he commemorates all those things for which he thinks he may justly be rebuked. However, since accusations of this kind are some lighter and others more serious; I shall speak briefly here of the lighter ones, and of the more serious ones later.

First, therefore, he accuses him thus. He says he carps at I know not which evangelists in 1 John [XXXV] as if, being too addicted to the Old Law, they rejected the new precepts. But indeed I marvel that such things are objected to Didymus, to say what the matter is. Didymus himself cites there these words of the Epistle which he explains: "My dearly beloved, I write no new commandment to you," etc. Then he proceeds to explain them as follows: Because perhaps some evangelists were detracting from the doctrine at that time, as if it were started yesterday and recently, he teaches that he is writing a commandment not then first given to men. Who indeed does not see that the word "evangelist" here is not the nominative plural case (I am ashamed, reader, to recall you to grammar), but is the genitive singular, by which John himself, the author of that Epistle, is designated?

Basnage says secondly: "He believed that wicked men, and those already condemned to eternal punishment, would one day perform penance, as also demons..." Yea, he seems to speak of the conversion of the devil ^C as if it had already happened (in Ep. Judae, p. 88): "For it is shown from that common sense which we have concerning all souls, that since they are of free will, and the conversion of the devil has taken place, that he is not evil." But here too I marvel at you, Basnage, for you have neither understood the word "conversion," and, what is worse, you recite Didymus’s words so unfaithfully. They stand as follows: "The devil is not a terrestrial substance; for he once possessed divine glory, and the holy knowledge of God, although he fell by being converted [turned away] from such great magnitude. It is shown, therefore, from the common sense which we have regarding all rational beings, that, since they are of free will, and a turning [conversion] has taken place..."

^A with regard to the devil, he is not evil by nature. Why, I ask, did you add the little word "that," which disturbed the whole meaning, and why did you introduce a new barbarism into the Latin translation of Didymus’s *Enarrations*, which in other respects is quite inelegant enough on its own? Why, in place of the word "rational [beings]," which denotes natural creatures not devoid of reason, do you substitute the word "living creatures"? Finally, why did you omit the word "nature," which under no circumstances should have been omitted? It is indeed false that the devil is not an evil thing; but it is true that the devil is not evil by nature. You falsely attribute the former to Didymus; the latter is what Didymus truly said. For he denies that the devil is evil by nature in that sense in which the Manichaeans called him evil by nature—whom our theologian refutes in that place. He means, therefore, that he is evil in such a way that he became evil by choice, and not that he is evil by necessity of his nature.

As for what concerns the conversion of the devil, Didymus quite rightly admits it, both in the passage cited and in the work I am now editing, on page 150 and following, and finally in the book *On the Holy Spirit*, number 12, and elsewhere. For the conversion, which Didymus calls *tropen* in Greek, does not merely signify repentance, as you think—you who have either not read or not understood the ancient Fathers—but any change of mind or will whatsoever, whether it be that one becomes evil from good, or conversely that one becomes good from evil. Didymus, therefore, means nothing else there but that the devil was not created evil, but was first good, and then became evil, and therefore not necessarily, but freely.

Thirdly, Basnage reproves Didymus with these words: "He proved that Judas was excellent when he was chosen by Christ, but that afterwards he swerved from the straight path, from the fact that Christ sent sheep among wolves. For the Jews were those ravening wolves; but the sheep were the apostles. Judas was a sheep; therefore he ought to have been numbered among the good." So says Basnage. But so that we might understand better, if possible, what it is that displeases him, Didymus’s words must be written out. In his book *Against the Manichaeans*, chapter 11, he speaks thus: "And concerning Judas it is written that he was the son of perdition. For the Lord said this about him: 'None of my disciples perished, except the son of perdition' (John XVII, 12). He called him the son of perdition because he did things that were worthy of destruction. For when he was one of the apostles ^B and was ministering to the Savior together with them, he was not like that; but when he became a traitor to the Son of God and to the Master, loving silver, he became the son of perdition. And because he was not evil by nature, he heard, along with all the other disciples: 'Behold, I send you as sheep in the midst of wolves' (Matt. X, 16). If he calls those who sin wolves; and those who devote themselves to virtue sheep; yet Judas was not evil by nature, [if he] was not a sheep of Christ, because he who is evil by nature is not apt for leisure for virtue." I ask you, Basnage, what do you think is worthy of blame in these words? If you count it a crime in Didymus that he said Judas [XXXVI] was good when he was one of the apostles and before he betrayed the Lord—that he said this of Di- ^C dymus, I not only do not deny, but I even add that it is affirmed by him twice in these books *On the Trinity* as well, on page 187, and following 67 or page 181, note. It will therefore be your task to show that this is asserted falsely; indeed, I do not see by what reason you can prove this. But if it is not the meaning of Didymus that you refute, but the line of reasoning, then you are refuting what you do not understand. For Didymus does not argue, as you think, in this manner: Judas was a sheep of Christ; therefore he was not evil. But rather thus: Judas was a sheep of Christ; therefore he was not evil by nature, in the Manichaean sense; but he was made evil afterwards by the change of his free will. This argument can be despised only by one who is ignorant of the Manichaean system. However, it is not my task to explain that now.

Fourthly, Basnage picks at Didymus in this way: "Among those opinions which St. Maximus reports from Didymus, there is read one that is scarcely to be admitted, which nevertheless Maximus makes his own: 'The law pardons sins not from [the] will, and God almost ignores them, as He who is clement and merciful, and not an unrelenting avenger even of those things which are voluntary.'" So far Basnage. But before I say what I think, I bring forward the Greek words of Didymus from Sermon 55 of Maximus, page 660 [sic]. *Sygchorei*, and God ignores them, being philanthropic, and not *apaene* and of voluntary [sins]... The rest is missing. John of Damascus brings forward the same opinion in the same way from Didymus in the *Parallels*, title 21, page 520, except that for the adjective *ekousion* [voluntary], the adverb *ekousios* is read there, that is, voluntarily.

These things having been premised, I indeed confess that Didymus was accustomed to extol the divine clemency greatly, as can be known from these books *On the Trinity* as well. But that the opinion brought forward by Maximus can be justly reproved, I deny. For it has two parts. The first one is to be translated literally as follows: "The law pardons involuntary sins, and God ignores them, being benign, not cruel." But who would accuse Didymus for these things? When he is speaking of sins which are simply involuntary, not of those which theologians call voluntary in their cause. But as for the other part of the opinion, who would dare either to approve or disapprove of it, since it is ^D mutilated and lacking in sense? Combefis indeed, whose translation Basnage uses, has completed the opinion as it pleased him. I, by the same right, could complete it differently, and read, for example: *Kai ton ekousion timoros estin*, that is, "and He is the avenger of voluntary [sins]." But whatever it is that needs to be supplied, I think I can hold it for certain that, since this opinion of Didymus was approved by Maximus and by the Damascene—who it is likely read it in its entirety—it is of no great importance if it is not approved by Basnage. But having now been freed from these trifles, let us pass on to graver matters, intending to recall the remaining accusations of Basnage against Didymus in their place.

CHAPTER II. On the Visibility of God.

That God is seen intuitively by blessed minds, both angelic and human, through the light of glory; and that for those souls which do not require purification, such a vision is granted before the last day of judgment: these are two dogmas of the Catholic Church, concerning which we must see what Didymus has taught.

^A But I pass over those things which he discusses most copiously and fully in chapter IV of the same Epistle, expounding the words of John: *No man hath seen God at any time.* For I do not adduce these things for the sake of brevity.

As to the first point, I will not now pursue again those things which I have said at length elsewhere in my letter to the most illustrious prelate John Archintus, but I will summarize the matter briefly, recalling whatever I have noted in Didymus to nine heads. I. He teaches that God cannot be comprehended by any created intelligence in *Enarrationes in Ep. 1 Joan. cap. 1*, and *libro 1 De Trin.*, p. 26, and elsewhere. II. He refutes the most foolish Eunomians at length in his *Enarratio in Ep. 1 Joan. cap. 2*, because they affirmed that they knew God perfectly. III. He teaches that God cannot be seen with bodily eyes in his *Enarr. ad cap. 4 Ep. 1 Joannis*, and *lib. 2 De Trin. cap. 16*. IV. He proves in many words at chapter 4 of the Epistle of John that God was not seen by Moses, Abraham, or Isaiah in this life, drawing the argument chiefly from this: that God cannot be sensibly seen at all. V. According to Didymus, it is one thing to see and another to gaze upon, even though sometimes the one is taken for the other; and it is one thing to perceive God sensibly, and another intellectually. For he speaks thus at chapter 3 of the First Epistle of John: "But because the term for gazing upon signifies intellectual perception, those words also manifest this: *Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.* Therefore, this difference between seeing and gazing upon remains, just as both are simultaneous. For sometimes intellectual inspection is signified by the word for vision; as is that saying: *He who sees me, sees also the Father*, not because anyone has seen the Father with the eyes of flesh; for everyone who is of God sees God." VI. He says many times that God is called *aoratos* in the Scriptures, that is, invisible, and that He cannot be seen by any creature, whether angelic or human: as in *lib. 1 De Trin.* p. 26, *lib. 2*, p. 191, and elsewhere. But that these things are said by him in a Catholic sense, will soon appear. VII. He refutes the impious opinion of the Manichaeans at chapter 1 of the First Epistle of John, in that they imagined two gods, one the visible god of the Old Testament, the other the invisible god of the New Testament. VIII. He teaches that the Son was invisible to the angels before the Incarnation, just as the Father was; but that after the Incarnation He was seen by them, in *lib. 1 De Trin.* p. 84, on the testimony of the apostle Paul. Which things I believe should be understood in such a way that the angels are said by Didymus to have seen the Son incarnate either with bodily eyes, or in the manner which I explained in the letter cited to Archintus. IX. He delivers the Catholic dogma so clearly in many places, teaching that God is seen by blessed minds, that no place for doubt seems to me to remain. Read, I pray, what he has on this matter in *lib. 2 De Trin.* p. 171 and 216, and at chapter 1 of 1 John. ^B

But as regards the other dogma, I remember reading no place in Didymus thus far where it is clearly confirmed. For although he quite clearly admits that created intelligences, both angelic and human, are already blessed, and to whom therefore it is credible that the beatific vision is attributed by him, yet I do not know if in any place he clearly affirms that such blessedness consists in the actual intuitive vision of God, which they already enjoy. I only know this, that in reading his works I have encountered no testimony thus far that would be contrary to this Catholic dogma. Wherefore nothing else remains, except that I present to the reader the principal passages I have noted in Didymus concerning the state of the just after death. I. Therefore, he openly rejects the opinion of the Millenarians in *Enarr. ad cap. 1 Ep. 1 Petri*. "If, therefore," he says, "this inheritance is reserved for the faithful in the heavens, some bring forward certain frivolous and tepid ideas, thinking that they will receive it in the terrestrial Jerusalem. They think that they will receive the rewards of delights for a thousand years in property, and the rest." II. He says in the same place, and in *lib. 1 De Trinitate*, p. 425, that all who die in Christ go to the bosom of Abraham. III. He seems to call this bosom an ethereal place in a fragment which I have transcribed from page 92 of ^C the MS codex 23 of the Greek library of St. Mark in Venice, bearing this title: *Exlogai hermēneiōn eis tas Paroimias Solomōntos ek diaphorōn Paterōn*, that is, *Select interpretations on the Proverbs of Solomon excerpted from various Fathers.* For Didymus, explaining there the passage of Solomon, *hoti eutheis kataskēnōsousi gēn*, that is, "because the righteous shall pitch their tents in the land," which exists in verse 21 of chapter 11 of Proverbs, and looking to the words of Christ in Matthew, saying: *Blessed are the meek, for they shall possess the land*, speaks thus: "The place of the meek, being ethereal with respect to the heaven above, is the land of those who dwell there. In it, therefore, the meek shall pitch their tents, awaiting for the heaven to appear to the face of God. For not yet having attained the promises, they do not dwell; but they pitch their tents." That is, while the place of the meek is ethereal, with respect to the superior heaven, it is the land of those who dwell there. In it, therefore, the meek shall pitch their tents, waiting until they appear in heaven itself before the face of God; for because they have not yet attained the promises, they do not dwell in it, but have tents. IV. He teaches that the elect attain first salvation, then the crown of glory, in the book *De Spiritu sancto*, no. 8. V. He admits those who are already blessed in his *Enarrationibus ad caput 1, vers. 12, Epist. 1 Petri*, when he writes to those words, *In which the angels desire to look*, as follows: "It is not unreasonable that this also be understood of the holy angels, and simply of all [XXXVIII] the blessed."

A love not for Didymus, but for the truth, prevents me. For who would say that he has wrongly opined on servile fear, who recognizes even such fear as useful, and recommends it, and holds it as a sort of pedagogue by which we are led to charity? He who, furthermore, rejects only that fear of punishment—and indeed temporal punishment—by which one is deterred from his duty; who, finally, deems charity to be more perfect and excellent than servile fear? Yet to these points, if I am not mistaken, are all things reduced that Didymus has taught concerning servile fear, or at least those which I myself have observed in Didymus thus far.

For, first, he recognizes the utility of this fear in his book *Against the Manichaeans*, cap. 17, where he has the following: "For whoever repents of having sinned, repents to the end that he may flee from the wrath to come upon sinners, by sinning no more." ^A

VI. In another fragment, which I copied from page 99 of the aforementioned codex, he seems to place those who already enjoy the vision of God, where he explains these words: *Χρηστοὶ ἔσονται οἰκήτορες γῆς, ἄκακοι δὲ ὑποληφθήσονται ἐν αὐτῇ*, that is, "Good shall be the inhabitants of the earth, but the guileless shall be left behind in it"—which words are not read in the Latin Bibles, but exist in the Greek Frankfurt edition, Proverbs cap. 2, verse 20. Didymus therefore has this there: "By 'the good' and 'the guileless' is signified he who possesses practical virtue; the contemplative life is represented by righteousness and holiness. And not in vain has it been said concerning such as these that they shall be left behind in the divine land; for those who are contained by the aforementioned virtues have not been transplanted from it. For our city, he says, exists in the heavens. ^B Concerning this mentioned land, the Psalmist also said: *I believe that I shall see the good things of the Lord in the land of the living*," that is, by the "good and guileless" is denoted he who has practical virtue; by "righteousness and holiness" is signified the contemplative life. And not in vain has it been said of such men that they shall be left behind in the divine land, for men adhering to the aforementioned virtues have not been translated away from it. For Paul says: *Our conversation is in heaven*. Concerning the aforementioned land, the Psalmist also said: *I believe that I shall see the good things of the Lord in the land of the living*. VII. He says the inheritance of the blessed shall endure forever at cap. 1 of 1 Ep. Peter. Finally, he teaches that we shall reign with Christ after the resurrection, in lib. 1 *De Trinitate* page 95, and in lib. II page 258.

From all these places, collected and collated together, we seem able to infer that this was Didymus’s opinion regarding the state of the upright after death. Namely, that their souls, if they stand in no need of purification, are detained in a certain heavenly or ethereal place, and there either enjoy the vision of God, or are at least blessed with some beatitude; but that they, whether before the resurrection or rather after it, are to ascend into the higher heaven: and that once they have been rejoined to their bodies in the resurrection, we all—that is, the Elect—shall reign with Christ in eternity and fully enjoy the beatific vision of God. ^C

Chapter III. De timore servili.

Didymus is thought by the author of the notes—which are read added to the Enarrationes in the margin of the Parisian edition of the *Bibliotheca Patrum* published in 1644—to have held a wrong opinion concerning servile fear. For at chapter 4 of the 1 Ep. of Peter, page 57, he noted this: "Read cautiously; for he seems to condemn the fear of punishment, or servile fear, as irrational, when nevertheless it is in itself good and useful, in the way that St. Thomas explains it in *Summa* 2-2, q. 19, art. 4. See the Council of Trent, sess. vi, c. 6 and canon 8." Thus the author of the notes accuses Didymus. But he does so clearly without cause, unless I am mistaken. ^D

He recommends the same in that *Enarration* which the aforementioned author of the notes carps at. For at chapter 4, page 66, explaining these words: *But if the beginning be from us, what will be the end of them that believe not the Gospel of God?* he speaks as follows: "By this, he brings much struggle and fear upon the faithful, so that they may cautiously learn of the Judge, to whom they will without doubt be able to render an account. Exhorting them, therefore, he invites them to his fear, saying that those who do not believe in the divine doctrine shall receive unavoidable and inexorable punishment—which he named their 'end'."

But he describes this fear [XXXIX] as a certain pedagogue, by which we are led to the love of God, in a fragment which I long ago copied from page 92 of the parchment codex 23 of the Venetian Library of St. Mark, mentioned a little earlier. For he interprets the words of Solomon, *φόβου δὲ τὸν Κύριον*, that is, *Fear the Lord*, which exist in Prov. 111, 7, in this way: "He who despises the fear of the Lord before perfect charity—which casts out fear—will not attain this; nor will he reach perfection if he has not been schooled by the fear that prevents the action of evil. After which, charity leads one to the higher and good." He says, "He who despises the fear of God before he has perfect charity, which casts out fear, will not attain it; nor will he arrive at perfection, unless fear, as a kind of pedagogue, prohibits him from perpetrating evil; after fear, however, charity leads [him] to that which is more excellent [or, to God], and to the good." ^D Didymus here looks to verse 18 of chapter iv of the 1 Ep. of John: *Perfect charity casteth out fear*.

Then, where Didymus minimizes servile fear, he either sets charity before it, as in the book *On the Holy Spirit*, num. 42, where we read this: "Again refreshing them, and consoling them, and provoking them to hope for better things; to whom he was speaking, he says: *For you have not received the spirit of bondage again in fear*—that is, you do not abstain from vices by a resemblance to slaves, out of fear and terror of punishments, because you have the Spirit of adoption given to you by the Father, that is, the Holy Spirit." Or he speaks of the fear that unjustly...

^A is cast upon men, so as to deter us from duty. Thus, in the same Commentary, to which that note is appended, chap. 3, p. 64, where he explains the words of Peter: "Whose daughters you are, doing well, and not fearing any perturbation," in this manner: "He invites women, through good works, to have Sarah as their mother, and above all to persevere, and not to have that fear which perfectly rational charity casts out; since it is rather of punishment, and not of God. For divine Scripture forbids this in all things, saying in one place: 'Who are you, that you should fear a mortal man?' and in another: 'Do not fear those who kill the body'; and other things near to these." And in John of Damascus, in the *Parallels*, p. 307, the same Didymus speaks thus: "It is impossible for one who truly fears God to be timid, since it has been said: 'Fear no one except Him.'"

These things being so, it now appears, as I believe, that Didymus has most rightly spoken of servile fear. But you will say, he does not speak in that way in the place which the author of the notes criticizes. Before I reply, and bring forward the passage itself, it is necessary to observe two things: first, that those Commentaries are not only inelegantly translated from the Greek, but are also filled with errors, whether through the carelessness of an ancient scribe or of the printers, or for some other reason: therefore, I ask for indulgence from the reader that he may allow that passage to be brought forward corrected by me, not for the sake of ostentation, but because necessity so demands. Secondly, it is to be noted that it often happens in ancient manuscripts that the words *Deus* (God) and *Dominus* (Lord) are interchanged, as those who are versed in them know; indeed, it has often happened that where the manuscripts had *Dominus*, printers have printed *Deus*, and vice versa: because they did not properly distinguish the abbreviated scripts of both words from one another. Having noted these things, I will transcribe the passage of Didymus. Therefore, the words of Peter having been set forth: "Servants, obey with all fear your masters," etc., our theologian speaks thus: "He does not command servants to have a passible fear before their masters; for this is irrational, and is constituted for irrational things; but that which consists with discipline and right reason; the property of which is reverence. For whoever fears because of Christ and His doctrine God (I think that 'Lord,' that is, master, was written in the manuscripts instead of 'God'), is subjected to Him with reverence: whereas he who fears God because of (either a barbarian interpreter or an unlearned scribe placed *per* for *propter*) stripes and other torments (here also I think 'Lord' should be read for 'God'), seems to have a passible fear (for *videt*, I read *videtur*)." In this sense, he uses this also after other things regarding women, saying: "Considering your chaste conversation in fear." And often Scripture speaks of such fear in this manner. Such is the passage of Didymus criticized by the censor. But I do not see what in these words is worthy of the censor's mark: especially since ^B [XL] Didymus at least disapproves of the passible [fear], or is speaking only of that fear with which servants ought, according to the Apostle, to fear or not to fear their masters: for in truth servants ought to fear their masters not because of stripes, but because of Christ.

Cap. IV.—Of the human spirit as distinct from the soul.

Gennadius refutes Didymus in the book *On Ecclesiastical Dogmas*, because he admitted a third [substance] in the substance of man, the spirit: but he says, "The spirit is the soul itself, called spirit on account of its spiritual nature, or because it breathes in the body." In reality, however, although Didymus taught in the book *Against the Manichaeans*, as well as in the book *On the Holy Spirit*, num. 54, that the soul is sometimes signified by the word "spirit"; yet it cannot be doubted that he himself distinguished three things in man: body, soul, and spirit. For, to pass over book II *On the Trinity*, chapter 31, where he indicates rather than embraces an opinion of this kind; he most openly fights for it in the book *On the Holy Spirit*, num. 54, 55, and 59, and manifestly admits the same in Corderius in the *Catena* on verse 14 of Psalm 50, p. 1002: for in the Psalter's words, "Confirm me with a principal spirit," he says it can be understood by the name "spirit" either the Holy Spirit, ^C or the human spirit [πνεῦμα], which is in him, other than the soul of man, that is, the spirit of man, which is in him, distinct from the soul of man.

But an opinion of this kind displeased not only Gennadius, but also the holy doctor Thomas, who, in the *Explanation of the First Epistle of Paul to the Thessalonians*, speaks thus to these words: "May your whole spirit, and soul, and body... be preserved": "On the occasion of these words, some have said that in man the spirit is one thing and the soul another; positing two souls in man: one which animates, another which reasons. And these things have been reprobated in Ecclesiastical Dogmas. Whence it is to be known that these do not differ according to essence, but according to power. For in our soul there are certain powers, which are acts of corporeal organs, just as are the powers of the sensitive part. Others are those which are not acts of corporeal organs, but are abstract from them, as are the powers of the intellectual part: and these are called spirit, as it were immaterial, and separated in some way from the body, in that they are not acts of the body: and they are also called mind... But insofar as it animates, it is called soul, because this is proper to it." Thus far St. Thomas.

Now, although we may concede that Didymus adhered to this opinion, which cannot be denied by anyone who acts sincerely; nevertheless, the love of equity and of truth demands of us that we do not refrain from noting here some things which are able to excuse him somewhat. For first, he was very far from that heresy which Apollinarius, abusing almost the same opinion, devised: who, when he himself also distinguished three things in man, body, soul,

and ^A *logos*, that is, mind or reason; he confessed that the two former were assumed by the Word, but contended that Christ lacked a mind, and called his soul irrational, that is, destitute of reason. And perhaps Michael Glycas had this opinion of Apollinarius in view when, in *Biblical Questions* (not yet published), question 20, page 262 of the Nanian codex, he wrote: "The heresy which says that man is composed of three things, to wit, body, irrational soul, and rational soul," that is, a heresy which says that man coalesces from three things, namely, a body, an irrational soul, and an intelligent soul.

Then Didymus never clearly explains his own opinion. For he says that the spirit of man is mentioned very often by Scripture, and he contends that this same spirit is a third thing in man, beyond the soul and body, relying chiefly on two testimonies of Paul, the first of which, in 1 Ep. Thess. ch. v, v. 23, stands so: *That your whole spirit, and soul, and body... be preserved*; the second, in 1 Ep. Cor. ch. ii, v. 11, and is as follows: *For what man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him?* But he does not declare what he wishes to be understood by the term "spirit." Now if he had thought that man consists of three substances—body, rational soul, and spirit—such an opinion would indeed have to be rejected; but whether one can safely affirm that this was his way of thinking, I do not know. For by the term "spirit" he could have intended to distinguish the mind from the soul that is devoid of reason. If this was his opinion, it does not seem to be so confidently condemned as Gennadius condemns it. Lactantius, to be sure, in his book *On the Workmanship of God*, ch. 18, did not consider the question so easy to solve, where it is asked whether the *animus* (mind) is the same as the soul (*anima*). "There follows," he says, "another, and it too an inextricable question: is the soul and the *animus* the same, or is that by which we live one thing, and that by which we feel and know another?" Arguments are not lacking on either side. Didymus could also have understood by the word "spirit" not some third substance, but the *logos*, that is, the mind, or something else distinct from the soul—not by that distinction through which one substance is distinguished from another, but by which a mode is distinguished from a substance, or by which the mode of a thing is distinguished from the thing itself of which it is the mode.

However, whatever may have been the opinion of our theologian, Augustine and Jerome spoke in the same way he himself did. For the former, in his treatise *On the Creed*, distinguishes three things in man: spirit, soul, and body. The latter, however, in Book II of his *Commentary on Amos*, ch. 5, page 279, speaks thus: *"He who creates the spirit;"* which in this passage we understand not as the Holy Spirit, as heretics suspect, but as wind, or the spirit of man; because *"no man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him,"* or at least we ought to accept it as spirit or soul. And in his *Commentary on the Epistle to the Ephesians*, book 3, cap. 4, page 632: *But we have been sealed with the Holy Spirit of God,* so that both our spirit and soul may be impressed with the seal of God. And ch. 5 of the same book, page 648: "Moreover, this also must be discussed, how it is said to one and the same person, as if he were living, *Awake thou that sleepest*, and as if he were dead, *Arise from the dead*. Therefore, since there is both a spirit of man, which we always remember in a good sense, and a soul, whose infirmities and deaths we read of—the deaths of sinners; that which is now said, *Awake thou that sleepest*, should be referred to the spirit, and what follows, *Arise from the dead*, should be adapted to the soul. For the soul that hath sinned, it shall die. But we never read of the spirit dying at all." Finally, in Epistle 120, to Hedibia, Jerome himself, expounding the word of Paul cited, *That your whole spirit, and soul, and body*, etc., after exploding the interpretation of the heretics, brings forward four other interpretations, and among others, Didymus' opinion as well. That one, which Jerome himself embraces, consists in this: that by the name "spirit," Paul does not designate the Holy Spirit, as the heretics wanted, but the gifts of the Holy Spirit. Truly, what Didymus approved is one of the three which the holy doctor explains in these words: "Many simply understand this passage concerning the resurrection; so that both spirit, and soul, and body might be preserved whole at the coming of the Lord. Others from this passage wish to affirm a triple substance in man: spirit, by which we feel; soul, by which we live; body, by which we walk. There are those who, arguing that man subsists from soul and body only, do not wish the spirit in him to be understood as a third substance, but as an efficiency through which both the *mens* (mind) in us, and the *sensus* (senses), and the *cogitatio* (thought), and the *animus* (soul/mind) are named, and certainly there are not as many substances as there are names." And when that is objected to them, *"Bless the spirits and souls of the righteous to the Lord,"* they do not receive the Scripture, saying it is not held in the Hebrew. But we, in the present passage, as we said above, understand "spirit"—which is preserved whole with the soul and body—not as the substance of the Holy Spirit, which cannot perish, but as his graces and gifts which we receive, which are either kindled or extinguished in us by our virtue or vice.

CHAPTER V. On the procession of the Holy Spirit.

That Didymus held in a Catholic manner regarding the procession of the Holy Spirit, in that he taught that he proceeds not only from the Father, but also from the Son, is as certain as can be. For what is clearer, and more contrary to the blasphemy of the Photians, than what we read on this matter in his book *On the Holy Spirit*? In number 34 of his book, he introduces the Son speaking thus concerning the Holy Spirit: *He is from the Father and me: for this very thing which subsists and speaks is from the Father and from me.* And in number 37, he speaks thus: *For the Son is nothing else, except those things which are given to him by*

the Father; nor is there any other substance of the Holy Spirit, beyond that which is given to him by the Son.*

But in the books *De Trinitate*, you will say, Didymus ^A often says that the Holy Spirit proceeds indeed from the Father, but remains in the Son or with the Son. But these sayings, like others of the same kind that one might bring forward, have already been sufficiently treated and explained by me in the letter to the most illustrious prelate John Archintus. Indeed, when Didymus says that the Son remains with the Father, he intends nothing else but to indicate what theologians call the circuminsession of the divine persons. And it is permitted to confirm this from the fact that in book II, page 300, he openly says that the Holy Spirit remains with the Father; for he does not truly remain with the Father in such a way that he does not proceed from the Father himself.

CHAPTER VI. De divina gratia.

Since Didymus died before the heresies of the Pelagians and Semipelagians had arisen and been condemned, it should seem a wonder to no one if he did not everywhere speak of divine grace as warily as those who wrote after the Pelagian times. I candidly confess that there are indeed some things found in him which, had they been dictated in the fifth or sixth century of the Church, could scarcely, if at all, be seen by a sincere theologian as free from the stain of Semipelagianism. But it often happens that one and the same form of speech does not always have the same force and meaning, but is received in a different manner in different times. Why, therefore, should we wonder if Didymus, while he was most anxious to assert liberty of will, defended it in such a way that he did not always expressly name the necessity of divine grace, but sometimes left it to the reader to understand; since he flourished at a time when the Manichaeans were vexing the Church by removing freedom of choice from the middle, while Pelagius, by extolling the freedom of choice too much, had not yet destroyed the necessity of divine grace for performing good and salutary works?

Since these things are so, no place of Didymus, I think, will seem to a theologian who loves fairness to be such that it can persuade us that Didymus succumbed to the errors which were later condemned in Pelagius or in the Semipelagians. And that there is nothing of the sort in these books *De Trinitate*, I think I have sufficiently shown, both in the letter ^D which I mentioned a little earlier, and in the annotations on pages 11 and 270. But as for the other works of Didymus, that same point must now be briefly demonstrated. But before I carry this out, I wish to put forward four statements, or dogmas, which I have observed are most inculcated by him.

First, he teaches that faith is from divine grace. He openly declares this both in the book *De Spiritu sancto*, no. 9, with these words: *The effect of faith is a partaker, which comes from the Holy Spirit*; and then in the passage which I shall soon bring forward from page 189 of the catena on John. But under the name of faith, who would deny that he also meant the beginning of faith? That the Semipelagians separated the beginning of faith from mature faith, so to speak, and attributed this—not that—to divine grace: it cannot legitimately be demanded that he say in open words that not only the beginning but also the advanced faith is from divine grace.

Secondly, he teaches that grace cooperates with us. For in the chapter of the *Enarrationis in Epist. Jacobi*: *He who enjoys*, he says, *the crown of delights, and he who has the grace of God cooperating, receives the crown of graces.* And in a similar way in the Corderian catena on verse 11 of Psalm L, page 993: he recognizes ^B τὴν θεοῦ συνέργειαν, that is, the cooperation of God, or cooperating grace, from which virtue arises, as will be clear from the words soon to be brought forward.

Thirdly, he teaches that it is to be attributed not to our own powers, but to divine grace, if we do not sin. For in the cited place of the Corderian catena he speaks thus: *Lest, if they were not sinning, they might attribute the virtue to their own powers, but not really to θεοῦ συνεργεία, that is, to the cooperation of God.* And in chapter 5 of the *Enarrationis in Ep. 1 Joannis*, explaining these words, *He who is born of God, keeps himself, and the evil one does not touch him*, he openly says that a man does not keep himself from sin by his own powers alone, but through grace; for he affirms that it is necessary that divine custody be added to our custody; for he speaks thus: *But if anyone keeps himself, he prays to be kept divinely, so that he may remain untouched by the evil one.* For the precept of guarding, which is done by our effort, is this which he says: *Guard your heart*; and after a few things: *Keep yourselves from idols.* But the example of divine guarding is what he says: *O Lord, you will preserve us, and you will guard us.* And that: *Under the shadow of your wings protect me.* And that: *Holy Father, guard them.*

Finally, he asserts in many places that all works whatsoever which contribute to salvation, and therefore also the beginning of faith, are from divine grace. Thus in the Corderian catena on verse 20 of Psalm LXXXIX, page 936: *You have care of us, O Lord. Whence if any good is present to us, we know that it itself, however much it is, also exists from you.* And book II *De Trin.*, page 167, has this: *Namely, that without the advent of the Holy Spirit there is no power or hope for us to God.* And page 282 he affirms that no creature has any good without the Holy Spirit. And finally, in the book *De Spiritu sancto*, no. 44, he dictated these things: *Our Lord, namely, and Savior imports to us according to his mercy all things which lead us to salvation.* Who then will deny that Didymus rightly felt regarding the necessity of divine grace? It must be seen, however, what things may yet seem to be reproached against him, or may have already been reproached by some. There are four such things, if I am not mistaken, which are these.

The first exists in the catena on John, page 189, where, explaining the words of the Lord, *Everyone who has heard from the Father, and has learned, comes to me*, which exist in John ch. 6, vers. 45, he speaks thus: *According to the image and*

simile of God, and because of this very thing, the human being having been created a rational creature, there have been implanted in him by God concepts concerning praiseworthy actions, as well as those of the knowledge of the truth. He, therefore, who according to the common notions has heard and has learned from the Father, comes through faith to the Lord.* This the interpreter renders thus: *To his own image and likeness, and to man who has been endowed with reason by this very fact, as if certain seeds and dictates for the right conduct of affairs have been implanted by God, and of the cognition of truth. Whoever, therefore, hears those common instincts and learns from the Father, comes through faith to Christ.* Such is the interpreter: why he rendered the first as *dictates*, and thereafter *instincts*, I do not know; for he designates notions, or, as philosophers commonly speak, ideas. And I do not even know why he omitted the little word *κατὰ*, that is, *juxta* [according to], in the second place in the Latin translation. We shall, therefore, render the text of Didymus word for word: for it is not fair that we use a translation which does not reflect the mind of Didymus accurately. *Since man has been made according to the image and likeness, and by this very fact has been made rational, there have been inserted in him by God notions concerning laudable actions, and even concerning the cognition of the truth. He, therefore, who according to common notions ‹has heard and has learned from the Father, comes› through faith to the Lord.* Now, I contend that there is nothing in these words that is not orthodox; for he does not say: *Common notions of the right and the good alone suffice for one to come to the Lord:* but he says that those come to the Lord through faith who have not only heard according to common notions, but have also learned from the Father: and it is not to be doubted that divine grace is indicated by these words in the cited passage of Christ the Lord, as Augustine teaches, and also here by Didymus. That this may appear more manifest, one must read what he wrote in his book *On the Holy Spirit*, ^B num. 31; there, in fact, he teaches that it must be attributed to divine grace that one is *taught of God*, that is, that he hears from the Father and learns. But as regarding common notions of the right and the true implanted in man by God, which Didymus admits, let others see whether they are to be called innate or not: I only add this, that they are recognized by other Fathers, and also by Prosper, a most weighty defender of divine grace, who says: *Acknowledge the law born with you.*

Another passage of our theologian exists in the fragments published by Christoph Wolf, at ch. v, vers. 32. He explains in this manner these words of Acts, *And the Holy Spirit, whom God gave to those who obey him*: *Not only in this, he says, but also in other places of Scripture it is signified that the Holy Spirit is given, if we ourselves provide the occasion and cause for receiving that. For to obey God is a matter of our own will, just as [it is a matter of our own will] to believe, to which [persons], of course, the Holy Spirit is given conveniently, as if [these were] gifts affected by His grace.* Allied to this is that: *He will give the Holy Spirit to those who ask from Him.* ^C Pelagianism, indeed, would these things taste of, if they denoted that a person could merit, without the aid of grace, that he might receive the Holy Spirit, or any grace. But I do not concede that this is the meaning of the words of Didymus. Rather, since they were dictated by one who, it is established, often taught that faith is from grace, and that there is no good by which we are advanced toward salvation without grace; and furthermore [by one] who always looked toward that, while he was explaining the Scriptures in order to refute the Manichaeans, and was demonstrating, whenever the opportunity arose, that no rational creature is by nature and necessarily evil; for that reason, I would believe he meant nothing else here than to assert the liberty of man in obeying God and not rejecting divine grace: but that Didymus thought in any way to exclude the necessity of grace preventing salutary works, is not the case.

What? That the passage, of which we are treating, seems a little perplexed, so that one may not rashly doubt whether Didymus truly dictated thus, as Wolf reads. For the Greek reads thus: *Τὸ γὰρ πειθαρχεῖν Θεῷ προαιρετικὸν, ὥσπερ τὸ πιστεύειν, οἷς κατὰ ἀναλογίαν δέδοται τὸ Πνεῦμα, τοῖς τῶν χαρισμάτων αὐτοῦ τυγ ^D χάνουσιν.* Which, turned word for word, sound thus: *For to obey God is a matter of choice [or, is free], just as to believe [is a matter of choice], to those to whom according to analogy the Spirit is given, who obtain the gifts of Him.* When, however, it irks me to spend time in a grammatical examination of words, leaving this aside, I argue thus. Either the reading which Wolf exhibits is corrupt, or it is genuine. If one claims it is corrupt, then so long is the sentiment and mind of Didymus in this place uncertain, as long as it is not established how this passage must be emended. But if you say it is genuine, then that interpretation alone must be applied to the words of Didymus which they can bear. Therefore, the little word *οἷς*, that is, *to those to whom*, is to be referred to the word *προαιρετικόν*, that is, *free*; for it cannot be referred to the word *πιστεύειν*, that is, *to believe*: otherwise Didymus would not be speaking of the theological faith by which we believe in God, but of the faith which we have in men gifted with sanctifying grace: which is absurd. But if the word *οἷς* is to be referred to the word *προαιρετικόν*, who does not see that the words of Didymus are immune from any suspicion of Pelagianism? For the meaning of the passage is this: it is free for those to obey God and to believe, who obtain the gifts of the Holy Spirit.

It would be superfluous to dwell on the explaining of other such passages, in which Didymus says that the Holy Spirit is conferred upon those, or dwells in those, who have proved themselves worthy of His advent, as he speaks in num. 28 of the book *On the Holy Spirit*, or who have prepared themselves worthy of His gift, as he says in the same place in num. 37. For with these formulas, which he also does not rarely have in his books *On the Trinity*, it is clear that those are called worthy of the advent of the Holy Spirit who have not rejected the preceding graces, but with the help of divine grace, from vices

^A they have departed, pursue the choir of virtues, and live according to them and through them in the faith of Christ.

The third passage appears in Book I of *On the Trinity*, p. 51. The creature, he says, has goodness by participation, expressing by imitation, according to its own powers, if it is permissible to speak thus, the innate and perfect goodness of God, and being made safe through it. But not by chance, but deliberately, Didymus adds: "made safe through it (God's goodness), and, if it is permissible to speak thus." The human powers, therefore, which he mentions are not merely natural, but cooperate with divine grace. In this sense, he also says in the book *On the Holy Spirit*, no. 22: "But since the Son is the image of the invisible God, and the form of his substance; whoever imagines and is formed toward this image, or form, shall be brought into the likeness of God, yet according to the powers of human progress, attaining such form and image." Furthermore, I believe these words, "according to its own powers," and "according to the powers of human progress," have equal value as those, "as much as is possible for a man."

The final passage is in the *Enarrations* on ch. 1 of the First Epistle of Peter. There he explains the words of Peter, "To the elect... according to the foreknowledge of God the Father," as follows: ^B To these correspond the things said by Paul in this way: "As He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love, predestinating us unto the adoption of sons." For although some may say that the nature of reasonable creatures has always existed, even before the world; nevertheless, God foreseeing faith and the actions of men, which [I think one should read "which," though the text has "who"] are carried out through evangelical doctrine, foreknowingly chose them in Christ before the foundation of the world, even then predestining them to be sons at the beginning of the adoption of sons. For foreknowledge is to be thought of as nothing else than the contemplation of future things: which is not then foreknowledge afterwards, but knowledge, while those things which were primarily contemplated come to effect. Although, therefore, they were chosen according to foreknowledge to whom Peter writes; nevertheless, Peter speaks to them as already existing. He therefore rejects the fable of the Manichaeans concerning natures and the present intellect.

These things, however, please little that censor who has placed brief notes in the margin of the *Enarrations*; for he thinks, as I suppose, or at least suspects, that Didymus is here speaking of predestination ^C which follows the foreseeing of natural merits, or at least of predestination to glory. But, unless I am mistaken, Didymus speaks neither of predestination to glory, nor of predestination to grace from foreseen natural merits—for he makes mention of neither glory nor natural merits; for his discourse is concerning predestination to the grace of adoption, or sanctifying grace, which predestination follows the foreknowledge of merits acquired through grace, namely, faith most of all and of saving works. For as Didymus himself says in the same *Enarrations* at chapter 3 of the First Epistle of John: "We are children of God even from the present age... while the adoption of sons is established in us, as is possible, in the present life."

CAP. VII. On Apatheia

The word *apatheia*, which, when its origin is considered, signifies "impassibility" or "immunity from passion," became highly suspect to Catholics after the death of Didymus, because the Pelagians had foully abused it. Since therefore Didymus himself used it, let us see now whether he accepted it in a wrong or a right sense. Before I weigh this, it must be noted that this word has been used in three main ways in the past. For first, it is called *apathes*, or ^D impassible, absolutely and simply. And in this sense Didymus, in *On the Trinity*, Lib. II, p. 211, says: "But He who is impassible is God." In the book *On the Holy Spirit*, no. 9, he calls the Holy Spirit impassible. Secondly, he is called *apathes* who, to use the words of Jerome writing to Ctesiphon, when he has come to the summit of virtues by meditation and the assiduous practice of these very virtues, has so rooted out passions, or perturbations, from the mind that no fiber or root of vices remains within him; so that not even in the night does he suffer what are human things, nor is he tickled by any thought of vices. In this sense, the Pelagians taught that some holy men become impassible. But in order that their opinion might be the more absurd, they added that at least sometimes it is possible for a man to arrive at such a state by the powers of nature alone. To this, Augustine, in his book *On the Gift of Perseverance*, ch. 2, opposes this dogma of the Church: "In whatever great justice, no one lives in this corruptible body without any sins whatsoever"—namely, with ordinary grace, as I interpret it. Finally, *apatheia*, or impassibility, is also taken for that state, says Cotelerius in Vol. I of the *Apostolic Fathers*, p. 548, in which a holy man is placed, who by the grace of God is less liable to frequent and smaller temptations, and does not succumb to more serious sins. And indeed, St. Maximus defines *apatheia* thus in *Century 1 on Charity*, ch. 36, so that it is a peaceful state of the soul, according to which the soul is moved with difficulty toward malice. But the holy Isaac the Syrian, in Book II of his *Sermons*, sermon 34, p. 200 of the Nanian codex containing these same sermons: "What," he says, "is human *apatheia*? *Apatheia* is not the not feeling of passions; but the not receiving of passions; for from many and varied virtues which they have acquired, both manifest and hidden, the passions have become weak in them and cannot easily rise up against the soul," i.e., What is human impassibility? Impassibility [XLVI] does not consist in this, that passions are not felt, but in this, that passions are not received; for by many and varied virtues, both manifest and hidden, which they have acquired, they have become weak

^A to their passions, and these [passions] cannot easily rise up against the soul. In this sense, the passages of Irenaeus, Justin, Clement of Alexandria, Basil, and others, in which the [637/638] [apatheia] of the righteous is mentioned, are generally understood. For my part, I not only do not dare to reject this explanation, but I willingly embrace it, and I add only this: that upon reading the passages of those Fathers, it has seemed to me that they themselves at times wished, by the name of [apatheia], to designate nothing other than that state in which a man is cleansed from every stain of sin, either through baptism or through repentance; so much so that [pathos] often signifies not so much a passion as a sin, and therefore the [apatheis] is sometimes called not so much the one who is exempt from passion or passions, but the one who has been exempt from actual sin.

But now it is time to inquire what Didymus thought concerning this matter. The passages, therefore, in which he commemorates human [apatheia] are those I have found most especially. The first occurs in Book I [De Trin.], page 71, where he affirms that those who are partakers of Christ are partakers of Christ’s own [apatheia] [or impassibility]. A second exists in Book III [De Trin.], page 367, where our theologian speaks thus: “[Christ the Lord], making them conformable to himself, brought them into [apatheia] [or impassibility].” The third is read in the book [De Spiritu Sancto], no. 11: “God, however [our codex: for God], the giver of good things, will restore [our codex more correctly: restores] the hope which He promised in the virtue of the Holy Spirit to those who possess Him; and with joy [our codex: and with joy], and peace, He fills those who, possessing an imperturbable and calm reflection, have joyful minds, and [minds] tranquil from every tempest of perturbations.”

Yet neither by these, nor by others of this kind, if there are any in Didymus, is it shown that he admitted human [apatheia] in a perverse sense. But it is a matter of our fairness to interpret the word [apatheia] in Didymus in a right sense, as we do in other Fathers, until certain arguments are brought forward which show that he thought wrongly. For: I. St. Jerome, both in his Letter to Ctesiphon and in the Preface to the fourth book on Jeremiah, names several defenders of Pelagian [apatheia]: Origen, Rufinus, Evagrius, Jovinian, and others; yet he never censures Didymus on this matter, even though, by accusing him in many other places and for other causes, he did not spare his name. II. The word [empathes] in Didymus denotes not a man who is liable to passions, but one who succumbs to passions. Therefore, by the contrary term, [apathes], one must not think him to designate one who is subject to no passions, or who never succumbs to them, but one who is not accustomed to succumbing to passions. That the word [empathes] is thus taken by Didymus was shown by me in the note to page 129, and it is possible to confirm this from his words which we read in the [Enarrationes] to chapter III of the Epistle of James. “The peace,” he says, “which [the world] gives, invites lovers of concupiscence to bodily acts, and makes them passible: but Jesus, offering peace, ^B makes them friends of God.” Nor do I doubt that [empathes] is what Didymus meant in Greek, which Epiphanius the Scholastic, or whoever may have been the interpreter of those [Enarrationes], calls [passibiles]; that is, those who succumb to passions. III. The word [pathos], that is, passion, seems to be so taken by Didymus in Book II [De Trin.], page 129, as to signify sin; and the word [empathes] so as to signify him who sins. It ought not, therefore, to be a marvel if I also interpret [apathes] as one who, through sanctifying grace by God, has been cleansed from sins. IV. That by the word [aphtharsia]—which signifies the same as [apatheia]—virtue is sometimes denoted, Didymus teaches in the catena on the Psalms, which exists in a Greek codex of the XVIth of the Venetian Library of St. Mark; for on page 22, explaining these words of the ninth Psalm, [The nations are fixed in the corruption which they have made], he speaks thus: Kai mēn kai tēs aretēs aphtharsias legomenēs en tō: Hē charis meta tōn agapōntōn ton Kyrion hēmōn en aphtharsia; hē enantiōs echousa kakia legoit' an eikotōs diaphthora kai phthora, that is: “And indeed, since virtue is also called [aphtharsia] [incorruption] in that text (Eph. vi, 24): [Grace be with those who love our Lord in incorruption]; meritably, wickedness, which is contrary to virtue, is called [diaphthora] [corruption] and [phthora] [destruction].” V. I conclude from Book III [De Trin.], page 316, that human [apatheia] taken in a strict sense was rejected by Didymus; for he does not say that the body itself is rendered [apathes] by the soul [XLVII] which holds the body subject to itself and is filled with the thoughts of God, but that it strives to render it as if [apathes]. VI. If we weigh one by one the previously cited passages of Didymus, it will manifestly appear that that supreme height of virtues and [apatheia] which we described from Jerome is by no means indicated by him; and much less can a man, by Didymus’s opinion, arrive at that state without divine grace; for he speaks everywhere of all those who have been gifted with sanctifying grace.

Finally, Didymus himself removes every scruple when he openly rejects Pelagian [apatheia]: for both in the place which I cited, page 255, he teaches that it is impossible for a man to fulfill his life according to the perfect norm of the Law; and he writes similar things in Book II [De Trin.], pages 168 and 192.

But Didymus, one might say, in Book II [De Trin.], page 255, says that those who are baptized [anhamartētoi]—that is, impeccable—become so. But who does not see that the word [anamartētos] is not taken there in the sense which Jerome censures in his letter to Ctesiphon, nor is anything else signified there by Didymus than that all sins are destroyed in baptism? Otherwise, one would have to say that he attributed Pelagian [anamartēsia] to all the baptized: which is not even probable. ^D Since matters stand thus, it would be possible to conclude already that Didymus was immune from the Pelagian error, if a certain passage still remained that could cause trouble: concerning which, therefore, a few things must be said. It exists in Volume IV of Wolf’s [Anecdota], where Didymus, explaining those words of Acts [Act. ix, 36], [This woman was full of good works and alms], speaks thus:

^A Since some who labor negligently in the study of virtue deny that it is possible for a man to lead a blameless life, they can be refuted by the present passage of Scripture, where Dorcas is said to have been full of all good works, and to have distributed alms to the poor. For it follows that he who so orders his life lives without defilement.

Nor do I deem these things worthy of censure. For it is said by him who openly taught, as I have already noted, that a man’s life cannot be measured by the perfect standard of the law. Therefore, when he speaks here of a man leading a blameless life, he does not mean, in my opinion, one who never falls into any, even venial or very slight, sin, but one who never sins gravely, and who commits venial sins far more rarely than other men generally do. Although ^B even Augustine himself does not deny that a just man, by extraordinary grace, can avoid all sins, even venial ones. Those who say, he writes in book II *On the Merits and Remission of Sins*, ch. 6, sect. 7, that it is possible for a man in this life to be without sin, are not immediately to be resisted with incautious temerity. For if we deny that it is possible, we shall detract both from the human free will, which desires this by its own volition, and from the virtue or mercy of God, which brings it about by helping. ... If it is asked of me whether a man can be without sin in this life, I shall confess that he can by the grace of God and his own free will. Indeed, he does not dare to deny confidently that some have been or are just men without sin, apart from Christ the Lord and the Blessed Virgin, in book *On the Perfection of Justice*, ch. 21, sect. ... I do not dare to call into question their opinion on this matter, although I am unable to defend it.

Chapter VIII. De coelis.

^C That the heavens are endowed with soul and intelligence is so openly denied by Didymus in *De Trin.*, book I, p. 97, and book II, p. 192, that I believe it can rightly be established that he by no means agreed with the Origenists in this matter. What then, you will say, does he mean when he says in book II, p. 114, that the heavens were strengthened and sanctified by the Holy Spirit? He refers there, and indeed explains, that saying of the Psalmist: *By the word of the Lord the heavens were established* (Ps. XXXII, 6), etc. That this passage can be understood of the substance of the heavens, and then of the angels, the inhabitants of the heavens, he himself teaches in book II, p. 174. And so, when he calls the heavens inanimate things and irrational creatures, he is speaking of the substance of the heavens; but when he says they were sanctified by the Spirit, he is following another interpretation. Read, I pray you, what I have written in the notes on pages 87 and 114.

[XLVIII]

Chapter IX. On original sin.

Among other errors which Jacob Basnage suspects Didymus to have taught in his *Enarrationes* and in his book *adv. Manichæos*, he also counts this one: that he appears to have denied original sin. But that such an accusation is clearly unjust and false was shown by me in the note to page 257. And who would not be surprised that an error is attributed to Didymus by Basnage, which Didymus himself openly explodes both in his book *adv. Manichæos*, as I have already noted on the cited page, and in chapter 5, 19, of his *Enarrationis in Epistolam primam Joannis*, where he explains these words: *The whole world is seated in wickedness*. He begins his interpretation of these words thus: “The world, that is, the lovers of the world, are subject to the wicked origin. The whole, he says, because we are all born under sin, since the origin itself is in vice.” What more can be demanded of him who was dictating these things at a time when the Pelagians had not yet denied original sin?

But I do not consider these things worthy of censure either. For they are said by one who openly taught, as I have already noted, that a man’s life cannot be measured by the perfect standard of the law. ^D But let us examine for a moment the argument of Basnage, which he brings forward in this way. Paul’s words, *We were by nature children of wrath* (Ephes. II, 3), Didymus accepts in his book *adv. Manichæos*, so as to say that the word *nature* signifies *truly*. “But *phusei*,” he says, “by no means signifies *truly*. And the Apostle intended that we deserve God’s vengeance on account of original sin; which, however, Didymus does not mention there, and therefore he appears to have denied original sin.” But Jerome also, in book I of his *Commentary on the Epistle to the Ephesians*, ch. II, explains those words of Paul in such a way that he makes no mention of original sin and affirms that the word *phusei* is ambiguous, so that it could also be translated as *altogether* or *entirely*. Shall we therefore count Jerome also among those who erred so shamefully as to have failed to acknowledge original sin?

Chapter X. On the pre-existence of souls.

That Didymus was infected by the Origenist error concerning the pre-existence of souls is so clearly attested by Jerome in many places that it is impossible to doubt that he was held by that holy doctor to be a patron of that corrupt doctrine. For to pass over what he wrote about Didymus in book I *adv. Rufinum*, sect. 6, and book II, sect. 16, and book III, sect. 12, what is clearer than what we read in section 28 of the third book? He addresses Rufinus there as follows: “Hence also is that secret interrogation of yours, why infants die, since they received bodies on account of their sins. There exists a book of Didymus addressed to you, in which he answered you when you asked, that they had not sinned much, and that it was sufficient that the prisons of bodies had merely fallen to them.” Wherefore no one can defend Didymus from the stain of Origenism without proving either that the writings of Didymus, for which Jerome accuses him, were corrupted or forged by Origenists, and that Jerome was ignorant of this; or that Jerome’s purpose was to slander Didymus; or finally that he did not properly grasp Didymus’s meaning and thought those things to be said in the Origenist sense which Didymus had dictated in a Catholic sense. Of these, the first does not even seem probable; the second cannot be said without rashly inflicting an injury upon a very great doctor and a most holy man; the third, however, can now be confirmed by no reason at all, because most of Didymus’s...

writings have perished, and about the time of the fifth synod, and after that synod, very many, to whom it was perhaps granted to read them, branded them with the same mark that Jerome had fixed upon Didymus. Since this is so, it cannot be called into doubt that at least some of Didymus’s writings, which have perished, had been stained by the Origenian taint; and it is only left for us to inquire whether those which survive are of this same kind.

Therefore, to stop at the pre-existence of souls: I do not remember observing any trace of it either in the book *Against the Manichaeans*, or in the book *On the Holy Spirit*, or in the fragments which are attributed to Didymus in the Catenae. In the books *On the Trinity*, however, some expressions do occur which could be referred to this Origenian error, of which kind is that which is read on page 248: "For the earth, He gives back the heaven"; but I have shown, if I am not mistaken, that these can each be conveniently accepted in a catholic sense, as can be seen in the notes on pages 87, 114, 314, and 248, and in other places indicated there. Indeed, even Augustine himself, after Origenism had already been condemned by the Church, when he had used one of these sorts of expressions, indicates in his *Retractations* (book 1, chapter 1) that it did not entirely please him, but he does not reject it as absurd; for he retracts it thus: "In another place, when I was treating of the soul, I said, 'It is safer to return to heaven.' But I should have said 'to go' more safely than 'to return,' on account of those who think that human souls, for the merits of their sins, have fallen or been cast down from heaven, and are thrust into these bodies. But I did not hesitate on that account to say, since I did so say, 'into heaven,' as if I were saying, 'to God.' ... And it is written in the book of Ecclesiastes: 'And the spirit shall return unto God, who gave it' (Eccl. XII, 7)." ^B

It remains, then, for us to contract this whole question to the *Enarrationes*: for in these, some have thought they detected the error of which we are speaking. The passage, however, which they criticize exists at the beginning of the *Enarration on the First Epistle of Peter*, where, having explained literally these words, "to the strangers of the dispersion of Pontus," he proceeds in this manner: "If, however, anything can be understood here above the text, it must be noted that it is regarding the nature of the soul, as if he wishes it to be recognized as a stranger. Whence it also seems to have been said: 'I am a stranger in the earth, and a sojourner, as all my fathers' (Ps. cxix, 5). And again: 'Woe is me, that my sojourning is prolonged!' For souls of men become strangers when they are yoked to bodies, while they are established as being in them temporarily. For if they were from that substance, true bodies would be inhabitants of the earth. Finally, souls having compassion of the flesh are said to be in a fleshly habitation and covering, although they are strangers in the earth, but are more assimilated to the natives. Whence also terrors are brought ^D upon the inhabitants of the earth: grasping indeed those things which are earthly, and clothed in the image of the earthly." Thus Didymus. But he who added the notes in the margin says: "Read cautiously, for he seems to insinuate subtly the heresy of Origen concerning the pre-existence of souls before bodies, and the visible world."

But truly, to confess the truth, I do not see why these things cannot be accepted in a catholic sense. For there is no mention here of pre-existence, no mention of previous sins, but only of the temporary habitation of souls in bodies: nor does Didymus seem to me to look to anything else, except to warn that souls are not of earthly substance; otherwise they would be called not strangers, but inhabitants of the earth; but that those souls which have compassion of the flesh—that is, those that follow carnal desires and passions—are assimilated to the natives rather than to the strangers.

What? That Didymus, openly commemorating in the same place, after a few words, the absurd opinion of Origen concerning pre-existence, attributes it to certain ones in such a way that he seems to indicate that it does not please him, or certainly that he does not embrace it there. For as we said a little above, bringing forward the words of Paul, "As He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy" (Ephes. 1, 4), he expounds them thus: "For although some may say that the substance of rational beings exists always and before the world; nevertheless, God, foreseeing the faith and the acts of men, foreknowingly chose them in Christ before the foundation of the world."

But if these things are so, why, you ask, does Jerome attribute the Origenian error concerning pre-existence to Didymus? Indeed, Jerome looks to those writings of Didymus which are now non-existent; but we look only to those which still exist.

Chapter XI. On the resurrection of the flesh.

Let us now pass to the resurrection of the flesh; for regarding this also the Origenists thought wrongly. But I state regarding Didymus: that there exists no place, or at least none known to me, in which he taught about the resurrection those things which Origen is said to have taught. For when in the canons, or anathematisms, composed against Origen in the sixth century, Origen himself, or at least the Origenists, is accused because they held that the body of the Lord after the resurrection became ethereal and spherical, and likewise that our bodies after the resurrection would be ethereal and spherical, nay, that the substance of the bodies would eventually pass into nothing; I have never been able to find anything of the kind in any of Didymus’s works: but on the contrary, I have fallen upon many places where he quite openly indicates that he follows the doctrine of the catholic Church. I offer one instance for the sake of example from the Corderian Catena on John. It exists, indeed, on page 159, where verse 29 of the fifth chapter is expounded, which is of this kind: "And shall come forth, they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of judgment." But the words of Didymus, translated into Latin by Corderius, are thus: That,

^A “All who are in the graves,” is the same as if it said: “All the dead.” Otherwise, the bodies of those consumed by beasts or fire would not rise again. But since there is to be a resurrection of all mortals, they too, who are in the graves, must be reckoned in that number. But if anyone should contradict this more contentiously, they must know that just as for those who have committed good or evil deeds, the bodies are not those which are hidden in the graves, so the Word will not prevent them from resuming their own bodies, even though they may have been consumed by fire or in any other way whatsoever. What could be clearer? He does not say that we will assume ethereal or spherical bodies, but [Greek: τὰ πυρὶ ἢ ἄλλως ἀναλωθέντα,]—that is, those very bodies which we had before death, even if they happened to be consumed by fire or by any other means.

It remains, therefore, only that I should present to the reader some better passages from Didymus, so that he may judge whether they be orthodox or not.

But Didymus continues speaking in this manner: “If anyone, however, thinks that these things are said in the person of David, let him cease to oppose the opinion of the simpler folk concerning the resurrection. For although these people may not be able to demonstrate to the eye what they believe, yet they behave piously when they say that the flesh rises again, so that it may be a spiritual and incorruptible body. For just as a dead man who rises again is alive after the resurrection, and not in fact dead, so the flesh, resurrected after the resurrection, is a spiritual and incorruptible body.” And to this passage, another is not unlike it, which is read in his final expositions, and is of this kind: “For ^B it is written concerning such righteous ones (Dan. XII, 3): ‘They shall shine like the brightness of the firmament, and they that are wise shall be as the stars.’ For this reason, the saints, rising from the dead with an incorruptible and spiritual body, are compared to the glory of the sun and the moon and the stars.” Now in these places, while he calls the bodies of those rising spiritual and incorruptible, he looks without doubt to the words of Paul: “It is sown an animal body, it shall rise a spiritual body.” And likewise those words: “And the dead shall rise incorruptible.”

The first I take from Nicetas’s Catena on Job, page 187, omitting the Greek words, however, for the sake of brevity, and bringing forward ^C what I have translated from them into Latin, but faithfully and word for word. Didymus explains there the nineteenth verse of the seventh chapter, where the Greek translation has this: “For if a man shall have descended into Hades, he shall no longer ascend, nor shall he return to his own house, nor shall his place know him any more.” While he expounds these things, he speaks thus: “Others, however, say: (Job) does not say this to deny the resurrection: but he speaks thus, first indeed to show that men are frail and weak: then because he who has once died does not return to this corruptible life, nor will anyone see him doing the things which he was accustomed to do.” Therefore, to those words, “He shall no longer ascend out of Hades,” must be joined these words, “He shall not return to his own house,” so that the meaning may be: He will indeed rise, yet he will not return to his home. But this interpretation is indeed probable; but the former is the truer, that is, that the righteous sufferer (Job) was ignorant of what pertains to the resurrection. So Didymus, asserting nothing, as I believe, that is contrary to the doctrine of the Church concerning the resurrection of bodies; even if, of the two interpretations which he indicates, he seems to embrace the one which is less probable.

The other passage is read in volume IV of the Anecdota of Wolf. There Didymus brings forward from verse 26 of chapter II of Acts the words of the Psalmist: “Moreover also my flesh shall rest (or dwell) in hope”: then he subjoins these things, which I bring forward following the translation of Wolf, faithfully amended by me in some places. “Since Jesus, in so far as He underwent death, put aside the flesh which He had assumed for the sake of our salvation, in order that He might raise it up from death on the third day; He rightly says that this His own flesh rested in hope; that is, on account of the expectation [or hope] of the resurrection.” Thus far Didymus says nothing ^D unorthodox: there is no mention here of an ethereal or spherical body, but only of the one and same flesh which was first assumed by the Lord, and then in a certain way laid aside, and finally assumed again in the resurrection.

However, let it not be hidden, a suspicion might move someone because Didymus seems to distinguish the flesh from the body, when he says that the flesh rises again, so that it may be a spiritual and incorruptible body. For Jerome refutes John of Jerusalem, because in speaking of the resurrection of the dead, he had used the term “body,” not “flesh”: from which he infers that he held the same opinion concerning the resurrection as Origen. “There is,” he says, “one definition of flesh, another of the body: every flesh is a body, but not every body is flesh. Flesh is properly that which is held together by blood, veins, bones, and sinews. The body, although it is also called flesh, is sometimes, however, called ethereal or airy.... You see that we understand your subtleties, and the mysteries which you speak of in corners and among the perfect... It is clear why you spoke of the resurrection of the body and not of the flesh: namely, that we, the unlearned, might think that you deny the flesh in the body, and that those who are perfect would understand that the flesh is denied in the body... In the Symbol of faith... every sacrament of the Christian dogma is concluded with the resurrection of the flesh. And you, in so much, dwell upon the body, and again the body, and a third time the body, and up to nine times the body, either in speech or in number, and not once naming the flesh.” These things Jerome wrote against John, which one might consider could also apply to Didymus.

But before you condemn Didymus, reader, it is fair that you should also observe these things: first, that here and elsewhere, so far as I know, he does not call the bodies of those restored to life either airy or ethereal or spherical; second, that Didymus wrote these things long before Jerome had exposed that subtle distinction of the flesh from the body and had rendered the word “body” suspect; third, that perhaps for this reason [he spoke] of the body rather than of the flesh.

Our theologian used that name, as Paul says in the cited passage, [that] the spiritual body shall rise. Finally, the opinion of the simpler folk is defended here by Didymus; but it was the custom of the Origenists not to designate themselves, but Catholics, with the title of “simple,” as Jerome indicates hundreds of times.

Now, in place of a conclusion, I could transcribe two other fragments of Didymus on the resurrection furnished by Jerome in *Epistle 119, to Minervius and Alexander*. But since they are very long, and nothing is said in them that is not fundamentally sound, I think it better to omit them; for it seems sufficiently clear from what I have said hitherto whether Didymus thought correctly or otherwise regarding the resurrection of the flesh.

Cap. XII. On the eternity of the punishments inflicted upon the reprobate.

As for the eternity of the punishments inflicted upon demons and the reprobate, it is not necessary to add anything to them beyond what I have already said on page 131, in the notes, and in other notes indicated in the same place. For while I have indeed found many other passages in the writings of Didymus in which he speaks of the eternal torments of hell, I have not yet found even one where he denied that they would be everlasting.

Cap. XIII. On the angels.

Since there are not a few passages in Didymus concerning the angels, and they seem worthy of notice or censure, it will be worth the effort to indicate them all here at once, or at least the most important ones, in order to enable the reader more easily to understand his opinions on this whole subject.

First, therefore, I suspect that he held the opinion that angels are not entirely destitute of all body, but are called incorporeal only when compared to us. But I have said enough about this in the letter to the most illustrious prelate John Archintus (a).

Second, he teaches that good angels are the guardians of upright men, but that wicked ones are the guardians of the wicked, if he is indeed the author of the fragment which I found written under his name in the Nanian codex, mentioned by me elsewhere among the notes on page 277. For on page 328 of that codex I read this: ^A Διδύμου. [LI] «Τοὺς μὲν ἁγίους φωταγωγοὶ φυλάττουσιν ἄγγελοι· τοὺς δὲ φαύλους σκοτεινοί», that is: Of Didymus. The holy ones are guarded by angels of light, but the wicked by angels of darkness.

Regarding those who were troubled, one reads in Wolfius, *Anecdota*, Vol. IV, p. 26 (ad verse 38 of chapter VII of the Acts of the Apostles, infra): “When,” he says (meaning in heaven), “the apostate angels were still there, they were attached to an earthly affection, from which it followed that they were cast down from heaven to earth.” In a similar way, Irenæus, *Book IV, cap. 16*: “The angels, having transgressed,” he says, “fell to the earth.” And, to omit others, Pantaleon the deacon and Chartophylax [write] in the 32nd Nanian codex, p. 187: «Κατὰ τοῦ ἀποστάτου (ait) καὶ πονηροῦ Σατανᾶ· τοῦ ὡς ἀστραπὴ ἐκ τοῦ οὐρανοῦ πρὸς τὴν γῆν κατασπασθέντος σὺν τοῖς ἀκαθάρτοις καὶ πονηροῖς αὐτοῦ πνεύμασιν», that is: Against the apostate and evil Satan, who was cast down like lightning from heaven to earth along with his unclean and evil spirits. But when Didymus, as well as others speaking in this way, expressed this, I believe ^B they had in view nothing other than what Isaiah says in chapter XIV, verse 12: *How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer? ... thou art fallen to the earth.* Where, however, the prophet immediately subjoins: *Yet thou shalt be brought down to hell into the depth of the pit.* For that all these things were understood by Didymus of the devil is evident from those things which can be read in the *Catena on John* at chapter II, verse 13, p. 94.

Third, I suspect that a certain order of angels was admitted by him, which are called *Æones*, or Ages in Scripture, as I said on page 133, in the notes. Regarding this opinion, one should read what Cotelerius wrote in Volume I of the *Apostolic Fathers*, p. 403, note 18, and p. 406.

Fourth, he seems to distinguish ^C demons from unclean spirits in the book *On the Holy Spirit*, no. 56. For there he first states that “spirit” is a name for the supernal and rational powers, that is, the holy angels; then that other rational creatures, flowing spontaneously from good to evil, are also called “evil spirits” and “unclean spirits.” Then he finally subjoins that spirits are also called demons in the Gospels.

Fifth, he seems to speak of apostate angels being cast from heaven to earth.

Sixth, he appears at times to speak not quite correctly regarding the rebel angels, while treating of them as if they once existed in the way. For in the *Enarrationes*, on verse 9 of the Epistle of Jude, we read this: *Nor is the devil a terrestrial substance; for he once had divine glory and holy knowledge of God, although he fell, having turned from such greatness.* But in the book *On the Holy Spirit*, no. 12, after he affirmed that the holy angels are of a mutable nature, he adds these words: *Although they persevere in blessedness and holiness.* And a little later he subjoins that if we ^D show that at least one angel is of a “convertible,” that is, changeable nature, it could deservedly be said that all angels without exception are of a changeable nature, even if, he says, they have not turned [away] but persevere in blessedness. But if, according to Didymus, the angels who did not sin persevered in blessedness, it seems to follow that he believed that those who sinned fell from blessedness, and therefore he attributed blessedness to the angels while they were still in the way.

However, to confess the truth, I can scarcely bring myself to believe that Didymus held the opinion that the reprobate angels at one time possessed the beatific vision of God, of which they were afterward deprived. For I think the cited passages can be quite conveniently explained in a straightforward sense, nor do I know of any other place where he has followed such an opinion.

So far as the first passage is concerned, indeed, since I see that the edition of the *Enarrationes* is full of errors, as I was saying earlier—whether due to the carelessness of the printers or because that sole manuscript codex from which they were first printed was faulty—I conjecture that the Latin translator of those same *Enarrationes* did not write “divine glory,” but “divine grace”; then, instead of the dictio...

^A n “grace,” the word “glory” slipped in: nothing is easier, given that in ancient manuscripts the shorthand writing of both words differs little, so to speak, and they are very similar. But if anyone wishes to retain the word “glory” entirely, I shall reply that by the name of divine glory, Didymus did not designate the beatific vision, but the splendor of grace and supernatural gifts bestowed upon Satan by the Creator. For the word δόξα, or glory, is often taken by Didymus in such a way as to signify brightness and splendor, as I have noted elsewhere: for it is not properly said that the holy angels [LIII] possess divine glory, that is, the beatific vision, but that they enjoy divine glory, or, more familiarly, heavenly glory.

In the other place, which I touched upon above, ^B he says that the holy angels persevere in beatitude, I think, either because it concerns them insofar as they are in their fatherland, not in the way, or he calls it beatitude by anticipation, referring to that state in which they were while they were still in the way; or finally because they were created in imperfect beatitude, as St. Thomas teaches. Certainly, in the same book *De Spiritu Sancto*, no. 61, explaining the state from which Satan fell, Didymus says: “Whence also he (Satan) became convertible and mutable, and fell from holiness and virtue.” And in his *Enarrationes* on chapter 1 of the First Epistle of Peter: “The inheritance of the blessed shall remain forever.” And finally, in the book against the Manichaeans, chapter 1, he calls the devil the prince of evils and the first who failed from virtue; ^C but in chapter 12: “Made, he says, to be good, he (the devil) kept an imperfect and maimed power of acquiring virtue; but the power of receiving vice he actually brought into act.”

Seventh, regarding the incarnation of the Word, he teaches in Book 1 *De Trin.*, page 392, that it was not made known to the angels before us, but rather that it became known to the angels through us. Yet anyone can see that this needs some explanation, lest it follow that Didymus wished the incarnation to have been known to the Blessed Virgin and the shepherds, to whom the Savior’s birth was announced by the angels, before it was known to Gabriel the Archangel and to the angels who announced the Savior’s coming to Mary herself and to the shepherds. St. Thomas certainly ^D teaches that the angels knew the mystery of the incarnation from the beginning of their beatitude, yet only in its substance, not regarding all its circumstances. This opinion can easily be reconciled with the words of Didymus.

Eighth, speaking of the fallen angels in two places, Didymus mentions the repentance, amendment, and salvation obtained by some of them through Christ. The first place exists in chapter 1 of the *Enarrationis* on the First Epistle of Peter, and is refuted by Basnage (vol. 1 of *Lectiones Antiquae* of Canisius, page 199) thus: “He (Didymus) believed that wicked men, even those already condemned to eternal punishment, would one day perform penance, as he also believed of the demons. For, he says, although some angels are wicked, yet being detained by punishment, they turn back to whence they fell.” Such is Basnage. But it is worth the effort to transcribe the entire passage of Didymus. There, the commentator explains verses 10, 11, and 12 of the first chapter, in which, among other things, the following is read: *Of which salvation the prophets have inquired and searched diligently... to whom it was revealed, that not unto themselves, but unto us they did minister the things, which are now reported unto you... which things the angels desire to look into.* He interprets these last words thus: “This is the exposition, if anyone should think that the salvation sought by the prophets belongs to the end of the world: which is in the desire of all, and at its peak; since, while all other things are done for its sake, it itself, for whose sake all things are done, is done for no other.” [It is clear that the reading here is corrupt: should the word “whose” be deleted? (a)] “It is not absurd that this should also be understood of the holy angels, and simply of all blessed rational beings, since they all have the desire to look into those things which are to be done at the end of the age. But if they made some other state blessed (by those things which have been revealed by the Holy Spirit to those who have received the Gospel) besides that which was led [I read, ‘is called’]; it must be said that the angels, who were found in a certain transgression, also desire to look into it. For although some of them are wicked, yet, being detained by punishment, they, turning back to whence they fell (which is also promised to diligent men), shall have the desire to look back at these things even through the windows.” I have brought forward this whole passage so that the reader might see that it is in some place very obscure, whether this must be attributed to the barbarity of the Latin translator, or to the faults of ancient scribes, or to printer’s errors. In any case, I am with difficulty led to believe that the word “turning back” is the genuine reading. Would not the sense be much more elegant if we read: “looking back to whence they fell”? Who ever heard of such an expression, “turning back to whence they fell?” Or what, in the end, does it mean? Furthermore, whether one should read [LIV] “looking back” or “turning back,” what Basnage says is altogether false. For Didymus does not speak of reprobate men, nor of demons, but of certain fallen angels to whom God granted a place for penance, because they sinned less, or were found in a certain transgression.

For he seems to affirm the same thing much more clearly in the other place which exists in the same *Enarratione*, chapter III, concerning these words of Peter: *Who is on the right hand of God, swallowing up death, that we might be made heirs of eternal life, having gone into heaven, with angels, and authorities, and powers being made subject unto him.* For he explains it thus: “Just as through the Son of God, who is the Word or Reason, all rational things had their essence, and their existence; so through him the salvation of all of them was brought about. Since those who have holiness not substantially, but acquisitively, since they are creatures [it seems one should read, ‘since they are’], the purgation was rightly done.”

^A Thus far Didymus. He speaks here so clearly that it can no longer be denied that he believed some angels, guilty of voluntary faults, had been saved, purified, and corrected through Jesus Christ.

However, one cannot rightly infer from this passage alone, as I think, that he approved of the entire absurdity of the Origenian system. For first, he is not dealing with demons, but with fallen angels—and indeed, not with all fallen angels, but only with some. Second, he does not seem to speak of mortal sins for which they deserved the punishments of hell, but of venial faults; so that he seems to have admitted a third kind of angel, intermediate between the holy angels and the reprobate angels or demons. Certainly, in the writings that survive today, and which I myself have read, he nowhere indicates, if I am not mistaken, that any of the reprobate creatures have been or will be freed from the punishments of hell; indeed, on the contrary, he often teaches, as I said above, that the torments of the reprobate will be eternal. I conjecture, therefore, that Didymus arrived at this opinion concerning the correction of certain angels in order to oppose himself more and more to the Manichæans; for to me, reading his *Enarrations*, it seems he composed that work for scarcely any other reason than to confute the pestiferous heresy of those people. And so, since the Manichæans did not cease to object and clamor to the Catholics that demons are evil by nature, and Didymus wished to show that this was false, he was led to say that some of the fallen angels, because they had sinned less or venially, were not damned, but that room for repentance was left to them; whereas others, because they had sinned mortally and had become, as he himself states in Book II *De Trin.*, cap. 6, p. 148, "unapproved and profane out of their own volition," would be tortured with eternal punishments.

Chapter XIV: De Origenismo generatim spectato.

There are few theologians who do not know that several Fathers of the fourth century were accused of Origenism. St. Gregory of Nyssa was accused, whom St. Germanus, Patriarch of Constantinople, defends against this stigma, as Photius attests in *Bibliotheca*, cod. 232. ^B St. Isidore of Pelusium was accused, for whom Stephen Gobar the Tritheite—in order to repel this crime from him, as Photius affirms in the same place, cod. 232—is said to have written. St. John Chrysostom was accused by Theophilus of Alexandria. The book of Theophilus written against Chrysostom was translated into Latin by St. Jerome, and a fragment of that translation is brought forward by Facundus of Hermiane, lib. VI, cap. 5. Finally, not to enumerate them all, St. Hilary of Poitiers was accused.

Since, therefore, no one now doubts that all these were unjustly accused of Origenism, one might perhaps suspect that Didymus, too, was accused of the same thing without merit; for before the sixth century of the Church, no writer at all, except St. Jerome, branded him with this mark, if I am not mistaken: but on the contrary, many praised him with the highest encomiums, such as Socrates, Sozomen, and Theodoret. It may, however, seem strange that that great adversary of the Origenists, St. Epiphanius, never censured him—neither in his *Epistle to John, Bishop of Jerusalem* (though in it, speaking of the Origenists, he incriminates Rufinus and Palladius), nor in the *Panarion*, where he treats of all heresies and their chief patrons, nor in any other work. Moreover, it can also cause some wonder that Augustine does not mention Didymus in his book *De Haeresibus*, nor does Gelasius, when reviewing apocryphal works, name any work of Didymus, nor does Theophilus of Alexandria, the denouncer of the Origenists and of the Origenian system, ever make mention of Didymus in his letters written against Origen and the Origenists—and although he inveighs against the monks in Nitria, he does not mention anyone whom he asserts was imbued with Origenian errors by Didymus. Indeed, not even in the synod which Theophilus himself held in Nitria to condemn the Origenists was any mention of Didymus made: from which I infer that Jerome, in epistle 133 to Ctesiphon, page 1023 and following, when enumerating and naming many who were condemned in that council, does not mention Didymus.

^C But although these things stand in this way, if it could nevertheless be proven—as Baronius and Natalis Alexander assert—that Melania the Elder was imbued with Origenian errors by Didymus, there would remain no room to doubt Didymus's Origenism. But whether this can be confirmed by any effective argument, I do not know.

What, therefore, must be decided at last, you will ask? Was Didymus an Origenist or not? Perhaps I have sufficiently indicated elsewhere what is proven to me. Indeed, I think only those things should be taken as certain which are substantiated by the testimonies of the ancients, which I have edited in this final volume. First, Didymus admired the learning of Origen to a supreme degree; but who indeed would not admire it? Secondly, in all things that pertain to the most holy Trinity, he was undoubtedly orthodox, as even Jerome admits, but Orige-

yet, however, as far as these matters are concerned, he was not the most open defender, as he should have contended that he felt about the Trinity in a Catholic manner. Thirdly, in the writings that survive, he employs several locutions which Origen had previously usurped, and which, even though they might have a Catholic meaning, became suspect after Didymus’s death—namely, when it was discovered that some of them were being used by the Pelagians, and others by the patrons of the Origenian errors in a twisted sense. Finally, since in the fifth century a man of the greatest authority, Jerome, and from the sixth century—or from the time of the fifth synod up to this age—many others, whose words can be read in the Testimonies of the ancients of which I was just speaking, held Didymus as an Origenist, nay, even struck him with anathema, it cannot justly be doubted that he himself must be numbered among the Origenists. ^B

But in what sense, so to speak, he was an Origenist—that is, among so many errors attributed to Origen, to which ones Didymus adhered—I do not know if it can be safely defined. For in the writings that survive, hardly any other definitely Origenian opinion appears, apart from that which I brought up in the previous chapter concerning certain angels whose fall was of such a nature that they were not immediately condemned to eternal punishments with the reprobate angels, but a place for repentance was granted to them. But of all the ancient writers who accused Didymus of Origenism, there is not a single one who has left us any passages taken from Didymus and containing the blasphemies of the Origenists, ^C nay, there is not even one (if you except Jerome, of whom I shall speak presently) who has at least named those books of Didymus in which he imagined that the same blasphemies were taught by him.

I confess, indeed, that in the Latin translation of Evagrius Scholasticus, lib. IV, cap. 38, I read: "The same Fathers also reported many other blasphemies of Didymus, Evagrius, and Theodore, which they had very diligently excerpted from their books." But these words, "from their books," were added by the Latin translator on his own authority, since they are not read in the Greek source, from which I brought the passage on page 485; for it has: *Ta peri touton eklexamenois*, and not *para touton*, and therefore it should rather be translated: "who very diligently selected things that related to this matter [or, things that related to these men]: or, what they reported about these (namely, either about Didymus, Evagrius, and Theodore of Mopsuestia, or about these blasphemies: for the Greek word is ambiguous) they had selected." ^D I also confess that many centuries after the time of Evagrius, Nicephorus wrote things that are consistent with this Latin interpretation of Evagrius’s own words. For in the testimony that he brought on page 496 from book XVII, cap. 27, Nicephorus speaks thus: *Para ton kakos syngraphenton ekeinois apolexamenoi*, that is: "When they had collected the very blasphemies from those things which had been wrongly written by them (namely, Didymus, Evagrius, and Theodore)." But Nicephorus seems to have had the cited words of Evagrius before his eyes here, or rather, almost to have copied them, as can be conjectured from comparing the places of both. But that, if it is so, is of great moment regarding Nicephorus’s authority in this matter. For in Evagrius one ought truly to read *ta peri touton*, and not *para touton*, or *ta para touton*. For if anyone wishes to read *para touton*, or *ta para touton*, he will render Nicephorus’s oration either gaping or inelegant there.

Therefore, Jerome alone now remains for us, who is certainly known not to have relied on the faith or narrative of others, nor on fragments excerpted from Didymus, from which the true opinion of the author can often not be gathered, but to have drawn his accusation from the very works of Didymus, and those genuine ones (for there is no reason why we should doubt this). For although as long as Didymus lived, he extolled him with great praises, and called him a seeing prophet, and Didymus the seer, and the eyes of the bride from the Song of Songs, and his own master, and a few years after his death called holy Didymus himself, and even several years after writing his books against Rufinus, remembering Didymus, he boasted as it were that he had been his friend with these words: "Whose friendships we have recently used": yet in the books edited against Rufinus, not only does he affirm that Didymus was imbued with the Origenian system of the pre-existence of souls, but he also indicates the books in which Didymus himself had followed such a system, namely, the commentaries on Origen’s books *On First Principles*, which are also mentioned by Socrates, and the book to Rufinus *On the Death of Infants*. Who, moreover, would dare to deny that Jerome is a most copious witness, and one endowed with the greatest authority?

But, you will say, Rufinus of Aquileia, in book II of his Invectives or Apology, num. 43, clearly indicates that Didymus is undeservedly placed by Jerome among those who teach things contrary to the Churches. I confess it. But Rufinus wrote these things before Origen was condemned by the solemn judgment of Alexandria and Rome, because he was of such an opinion at that time that he believed the question of the pre-existence of souls did not belong to the faith, but was indifferent. For he openly affirms this not only elsewhere, but especially in his Apology, or Letter to Pope Anastasius, where, speaking of the errors in Origen rebuked by Jerome, he professes that the dogmas of the Catholic Church are both the true resurrection of the true flesh, and the eternity of the punishments of hell; but as for the origin of souls, he says there are three opinions which can be defended with a safe faith: the first, namely, concerning the diffusion of the soul through traducianism; the second, that God daily makes and infuses souls into bodies formed in the womb; the third, that of Origen, that having been created long ago, that is, then when God created all things out of nothing, He now dispenses them into the body by His own judgment. He subjoins, moreover, that he does not know which of these three opinions he ought to follow. Therefore, it is not a marvel if Rufinus says that Didymus never taught things contrary to the dogmas of the Catholic Church [LVII], even if Didymus himself held the opinion of Origen.

Furthermore, he judged that those who were infected with Origenism should be denounced to the faithful, so that they might the more easily guard themselves from error. Third, Rufinus is to be excused in this: that he took it ill that one should be so openly condemned as a heretic who had not openly preached Origenism, but had indeed most openly rejected many chapters of Origenian doctrine. Finally, we shall not even marvel at the fact that some—though they were strangers to Origenian doctrine—praised Didymus highly, while others, conversely, disparaged him.

CHAPTER XV. On marriage.

James Basnage, in his *Animadversiones* (p. 199), attributes this further error to Didymus—that he taught that marriages in the time of the Old Testament were evil. In truth, however, in his book *Against the Manichaeans* (ch. 9), our theologian speaks of marriage in such a way that, if that passage is read carelessly, it might appear he held the view that Basnage desires. But to me, as I weigh his words—for that is what is incumbent upon a theologian who wishes to pass judgment on theological works, and much more so upon one who wishes to criticize them—it seems that Didymus is unjustly accused by Basnage. It will be for you, reader, to judge which of us has apprehended Didymus’ mind: Basnage or I. But the matter must be taken up from a higher point [LVIII] so that what we are about to say may be clearer.

Among the other arguments which the execrable Manichaeans used, there was one drawn from those places of Scripture in which "flesh of sin" or "body of sin" is named. From this they inferred that flesh must be admitted to be, by nature and of necessity, evil. To refute this reasoning, Didymus shows that it is called "flesh of sin" not because it is evil by nature, but because man abuses that very flesh to sin. Having demonstrated this, he brings forward the passage of Paul where it is said that God sent his own Son in the *likeness of sinful flesh* (Rom. VIII, 3). He says that Christ’s flesh is called the "likeness of sinful flesh" because, although it was true flesh—not simulated, as the Manichaeans wished—it was nevertheless not from intercourse. For if the Savior had taken a body conceived from intercourse, he would, he says, have been thought to be subject to original sin himself.

Having premised these things, he adds what I provide from Turrianus’ translation: "If, however, they shall say: 'If the flesh of sin is that which is born from the conjunction of man and woman, then marriages are evil,' let them hear that, before the advent of the Savior who took away the sin of the world, if all men, just as they did other things with sin, so also had marriage with sin—whence the same is to be understood regarding bodies born from wedlock, because after the sin the conjunction of Adam with Eve was made, therefore it was called 'flesh of sin' [I would prefer to translate: 'they were called flesh of sin']... Nevertheless, through the advent of Christ, just as sin was taken away from other things, so also from marriage. Therefore, now those who live according to the Gospel can have honorable marriage and the undefiled bed... From which it follows that neither

^A in Abraham or other saints, because of the merits of the Christ who was to come, did Didymus add those words for any other reason, as I believe, except to refute another error of the Manichaeans, who taught that all marriages were evil, whether in the Old or New Testament. Having set this forth, let the reader judge whether this passage cited from Didymus deserves to be attacked by Basnage.

CAP. XVI. Regarding the Second Epistle of Peter.

Theologians know that the Second Epistle of Peter is numbered among the deuterocanonical Scriptures. Therefore, if Didymus had only said this regarding it, that it was not in the Canon, he would be worthy of excuse; for it had not yet been brought into the Canon of Scriptures by all, nor by a solemn decree of the universal Church. But he further claims that it was falsified. For he concludes his commentary on this epistle with these words: "One must not, therefore, be ignorant that the present epistle has been falsified; which, although it is published, is not, however, in the Canon."

Basnage suspects that this clause was added by someone else. I would gladly embrace his opinion, if I knew by what reasoning it could be confirmed with certainty. But since I am ignorant of that, I feel I can only safely establish this in this matter: that this epistle was acknowledged by Didymus as a book, or part, of the sacred Scriptures. For in his books *On the Trinity*, he frequently attributes it to Peter and cites it like other books of Scripture; and in his *Enarrations*, he interprets it along with other Catholic epistles; and finally, in the words cited, he calls it a "published" work. But what he designates by the term "published books" can be understood from those things which he dictated in his commentaries on Acts, at verse 39 of chapter VIII. For there, after he said that Enoch had been "translated," that is, carried from one place to another, he adds: "Since, however, in the ^B *denemosieumenais biblois*, that is, in the published books, it is not expressed to where he arrived; in the apocrypha it is said that he was translated into paradise."

But what Didymus means when he affirms that this Epistle was falsified, I confess I do not know. Indeed, he himself reproaches heretics in his book *On the Trinity* because they tried to deprave many passages of Scripture, or because they complained that falsified copies had come into the hands of the Orthodox; yet neither he nor any other of the ancient Fathers ever wrote that the Church had been deprived of sincere copies of the Scriptures. It does not seem credible, therefore, that this is the mind of Didymus, that he meant the genuine copies of the Second Epistle of Peter had been lost to the Church. But if he had really meant that, his opinion would be clearly absurd.

CAP. XVII. Regarding the reputation of Didymus, which was greatly obscured after his death.

We have now sufficiently pursued those things which, whether justly or unjustly, have been criticized in the writings of Didymus. It only remains now that we speak of his standing and reputation, which were greatly obscured after his death;

^A for that he was condemned by many and struck with anathema after the fifth century, no one is ignorant. But since I see that an argument and controversy of this kind is full of danger, and I recognize that my own powers are unequal to treating it as its dignity requires, I shall do nothing else than touch briefly, but sincerely, upon whatever I think can be brought forward both against Didymus and in his defense, so that when all these things have been weighed against one another, the reader may be able to form a judgment. I shall begin, however, from the first points, that is, from those which have obscured the good reputation of Didymus.

[LX] Although it is not necessary to dwell in describing these matters at length, since they are commonly known, and have been indicated by us above, and can be read set forth more fully in the Testimonies of the ancients collected by me. Yet all things are reduced to these two main points. 1. That Jerome affirmed Didymus had been infected with the perverse opinions of the Origenists. II. That even though we do not read that Didymus was mentioned even once in the Acts of the fifth ecumenical synod, yet many have asserted that either he himself, or the dogmas which he followed, were condemned by that synod, and they have condemned him themselves, namely, Cyril of Scythopolis, Evagrius Scholasticus, St. Sophronius, Emperor Heraclius, the Lateran Council held under Martin I, St. Anastasius Sinaita, the sixth general synod, Emperor Constantine Pogonatus, Pope Leo II, the Quinisext Council, the Liber Diurnus of the Roman Pontiffs, Theodorus Patriarch of Jerusalem, Tarasius Patriarch of Constantinople, the seventh general synod, St. Nicephorus Patriarch of Constantinople, and certain others. For it is not necessary to number them one by one, since I have named ^B the majority, and indeed all those whose authority is great.

However, the points which I consider can be brought forward in favor of Didymus are primarily these. I. Although Jerome attacked Didymus as an Origenist in his books against Rufinus, written some years after the death of Didymus himself; yet he had always commended him before, and in Epistle 71 to Lucinius, he called the same "holy Didymus," as one who had already died in the peace and communion of the Church. I know indeed that the word "holy" was expunged there by the Veronese editor: but since I myself have read it in an ancient parchment codex of our Bologna library containing the epistles of Jerome, and it is known to be read in other ancient parchments, and indeed even in printed copies, I do not doubt therefore that it should be retained. To this is added the fact that Jerome himself boasted of being a friend of Didymus many years after he had published his books against Rufinus, as was said above. From all of which it follows that he did not regard the memory of Didymus as that of a man who was heterodox and condemned. II. No other writer ever denounced Didymus as a heterodox man up until the sixth century, that I know of, whereas many, on the contrary, commended him highly. III. In the Nitrian synod assembled to condemn Origenism under Theophilus, Bishop of Alexandria, after the death of Didymus, although many Origenists were condemned by name, yet no mention of Didymus was made. Therefore, someone may perhaps suspect that either some writings of Didymus were later corrupted by the Origenists, or that some spurious offspring published under his name ^C by them did the greatest harm to his good reputation. IV. In the acts of the fifth synod, the name of Didymus nowhere appears, as I have said. V. Not even Emperor Justinian names Didymus in any of the writings he published against Origen. VI. There exists no ancient monument which might teach us when the works of Didymus were meticulously, as is proper, and canonically examined; nor any, likewise, in which those works of Didymus are named which were deemed worthy of condemnation or declared so by the fifth synod. From which it follows that some defender of Didymus might suspect that those who affirmed him to have been condemned by the fifth synod did not speak thus because they believed him to have been condemned by name, but because they judged that he himself, or at least some of his works, had been proscribed at that time by the fifth synod, when it condemned Origen and his errors: namely, for the reason that in Canon XI it added these words: "And those who have held, and do hold, views similar to the aforesaid heretics." VII. Emperor Justinian, in an epistle recently published by the illustrious Bandini, says that the authors of heresies must be struck by anathema by name; but those who have followed the authors of heresies should be condemned with their names suppressed, and by a general formula, using namely these words: "All also who think with him." And so, indeed, the fifth synod acted in Canon XI, as has just been said. It does not seem likely, therefore, that the fifth synod itself, held at Constantinople under Justinian, or another Constantinopolitan [LXI] council, which some think was summoned shortly before it under the same emperor to condemn Origen, pronounced an anathema against Didymus by name; but it is credible that the synod was content to strike Origen with anathema: for those Fathers complied with Justinian as far as they were able. VIII. Cyril of Scythopolis, who wrote the Life of St. Sabas shortly after the fifth council was held, after he said in it that Origen was condemned by the fifth synod, does not add that Didymus was also condemned, but that those things which were said by Didymus concerning pre-existence and restitution were condemned. And in a similar way, some others have expressed themselves. IX. Gregory the Great, who testifies that he had the Acts of the synod in his hands (Book XII, Epist. 7), writes (Book I, Epist. 36) that only three chapters, and one person, namely Theodorus of Mopsuestia, were condemned in the same council. Therefore, the condemnation of Didymus was unknown to him. X. Tarasius Patriarch of Constantinople in the synodical letter, which

stands in Act 3 of the Seventh Synod, affirms that Arius, Aetius, Eunomius, etc., were condemned by the Nicene Council; yet neither Aetius nor Eunomius are mentioned by the Nicene Council; therefore, they can only be said to have been condemned by it implicitly. In like manner, the *Liber Diurnus* of the Roman Pontiffs, the pseudo-seventh synod, and Photius say that Diodorus was condemned by the Fifth Synod, even though Diodorus is nowhere named by the Fifth Synod. And Jerome writes in his letter to Pammachius and Avitus concerning the Nicene Fathers: "They secretly struck down Origen, the source of Arius." Why then could it not be understood that many of those who say Didymus was condemned by the Fifth Synod meant that he was condemned by it implicitly and secretly, rather than explicitly and by name? XI. Liberatus the Deacon in his *Breviary* (chap. 23), Cassiodorus in his *Divine Readings* (chap. 1), Nicholas I in his letter to the Emperor Michael, and Eustratius in the *Life of Saint Eutychius* (in the Bollandists, Vol. I of April, p. 554, or chap. 3, no. 19), and others report that Origen was indeed condemned by the Fifth Synod, but they do not mention Didymus. Indeed, Cassiodorus pursues him with no small praise. XII. This history of the condemnation of Didymus is so obscure that nothing certain can seemingly be defined regarding its time, its manner, or its authors: for some hold he was condemned at the end of the Fifth Council, others at the beginning; others hold it was not Didymus, but the writings of Didymus; others hold he was not condemned by the Fifth Synod, but by another Constantinopolitan council held before the Fifth; others suspect he was not condemned by a council, but by Justinian himself, who caused his edict to be approved by the subscription of many bishops who were, however, not gathered in council. XIII. It is so far from being certain that Didymus was condemned by the Fifth Synod that Halloix and Fabrius believe that not even Origen himself was condemned by it: I shall not now embrace their opinion, but I will record these notes from Fabrius: 1, That the Emperor Justinian, in letters given to the Fifth Synod on the fourth of the Nones of May—that is, on the very day the synod began—did indeed exhort the Fathers to condemn the Three Chapters, but said nothing of Origen and the Origenists; 2, That the letter of Justinian to the Constantinopolitan synod concerning Origen and his followers was given in the 25th year of Justinian’s reign, while the Fifth Synod [was in his] 27th year; [and] that the letter addressed to Menas, to whom the letter attached to the treatise written by Justinian against Origen was written, had perished before the beginning of the Fifth Synod. However, I did not note this to imply that I think Origen was not condemned at the Fifth Synod, and that in canon xi one should read "Dioscorus" instead of "Origen," as Halloix opines; but because there appear to be proofs that Didymus was not condemned by the Fifth Ecumenical Synod, or if he was condemned, that it was by another council. XIV. Fabrius in his *Prodromus Velitaris* contends that the Roman Pontiffs Vigilius, Pelagius I and II, and St. Gregory the Great approved the acts of the Fifth Synod only insofar as the condemnation of the Three Chapters was concerned. Finally, St. Maximus, St. John Damascene, St. Nilo, Theodulfus of Orleans, St. Thomas Aquinas, and many others cite Didymus as [LXII] a doctor; John de Columna calls him a holy doctor, and Guido Terrena calls him the greatest doctor of the Greeks, as is evident from their words which I cited on page 497. Trithemius indeed calls him "most distinguished in life"; nay, in the Acts of the holy and ecumenical Council of Florence, he is not only alleged, but he is even called "the great Didymus." ^C These are the principal points I deemed should be briefly touched upon both against and for Didymus. Let the reader judge from these; for I myself feel so weighed down by the great authority of those who have opposed Didymus in this obscure and difficult question that I dare not even mutter. Accordingly, I finally put an end to these books. If, however, I seem to have spoken anything in them not cautiously or truly enough, being taught by someone, I shall easily and gladly, to use the words of Marcus Tullius, change my opinion. For it is not shameful to have known little, but to have persisted foolishly and for a long time in what is little known: because the former is attributed to the common infirmity of men, the latter to the singular vice of each individual. But I desire that these, as well as everything else I have published, be subject to the judgment of the Roman Church, the teacher of all churches, first and foremost. But you, most excellent prelate, receive this small gift kindly, as a monument of my respect for you and a pledge of our old friendship; for if I know that these things, whatever they may be, have not displeased you, there will be no reason for me to regret the labor I have undertaken.

TESTIMONIES OF THE ANCIENTS CONCERNING DIDYMUS

I. Didymus himself, in the book *On the Holy Spirit*, no. 5: "That the Holy Spirit is grasped by others and does not grasp other things, we have expressed now, and in the volume of the *Sects*, as best we could."

And no. 21.

"The Holy Spirit ... is called the Spirit of wisdom ... and His nature is nothing else but the Spirit of truth and the Spirit of God: concerning which we have already disputed abundantly in the volume of the *Sects*."

^A From which it is shown that the Holy Spirit is the Creator, as we have already briefly demonstrated in our volume on Dogmas.

And no. 58. These things, meanwhile, according to the capacity of our ability, we have touched upon insofar as they signify the Spirit; as for what each thing signifies in its own time, we shall discuss it, if Christ grants.

*And in the commentary on the 1st Epistle of John, ch. v.* The true Son of God is Jesus Christ, existing as true God. And consider how, according to Sabellius, the Son is consubstantial with the Father, and not the same in number, etc... Therefore, these things each received their examination (as far as was possible) in other places. *And in the books On the Trinity, he speaks of himself not rarely. Read especially page 202, 235, 263, 305, and 319.*

II. Libanius (born in the year 314 and died in the year about 384) in epistle 321 to Sebastianus, page 155 of the Amsterdam edition of the year 1738, perhaps speaks of our Didymus, when he writes these things: "This Rhetorius will not be a slight consolation to you, a man who has traveled through many rhetoricians and no fewer poets, and who is good in both respects. Therefore, may both my letters and the fact that he has been on intimate terms with your close associates make you a friend to him. But two things in particular make me well-disposed toward him. For since he is my pupil, he is moreover the son of my teacher. You certainly do not ignore Didymus, unless you also ignore that great city in which he offered the abundance of his learning to others, night and day, flowing [with instruction]. Act, therefore, so that he may hold the estates for which he comes. They are indeed small, but yet a consolation to a poor man. Now Rhetorius is not among the wealthy. And you have power in Egypt, through which others have acquired money, but you have acquired a good reputation for yourself by your alignment with justice."

III. *S. Ambrose, in his books On the Holy Spirit (written in the year 381), and in the book On the Mysteries, seems to have taken much from Didymus. Read what I have written on page 51, note 5, and page 275, note 9.*

IV. Evagrius Ponticus, first archdeacon of Constantinople, then monk and abbas (born in the year 345 and died in the year 399), in his book *On the Contemplative Life*, as Cassiodorus testifies in the passage shortly to be cited, wrote this, which we cite from Socrates, *Eccl. Hist.* lib. iv, cap. 23: "Constantly exercise yourself, according to yourself, in the discourses concerning Providence and Judgment," says the great and gnostic teacher Didymus, "and endeavor to carry the materials of these in your memory. For almost everyone stumbles in these. You will find the discourses concerning Judgment in the distinction of bodies and throughout the world; but you will discover the discourses concerning Providence in those ways by which we are led from vice and ignorance to virtue or to knowledge." So much we have here quoted from the works of Evagrius; there was also another wonderful man among the monks, whose name was Ammonius.

V. *S. Jerome, in the Chronicle (which was published in the year 380), vol. VIII ed. Veron. page 812, to the year of the Lord 376.* Didymus the Alexandrian comments on much of our doctrine through scribes, who, having been bereft of his eyesight after the fifth year of his birth, was also ignorant of the elements.

*In the prologue to the translation of the homilies of Origen on Jeremiah and Ezekiel to Vincentius the presbyter (written about the year 381) vol. V page 742.* It is indeed a great thing, my friend, that you ask, that I should make Origen Latin, and that I should give to Roman ears a man who, according to the opinion of Didymus the Seer, is the second teacher of the Churches after the apostles (others say, after the apostles).

*In epistle 36 to Damasus (written in the year 384) vol. I page 159.* And to speak more truthfully, I have in my hands the book of Didymus On the Holy Spirit, which I desire to dedicate to you, when it is translated, lest you think that I am merely dozing, you who think that reading without a stylus is just sleep.

*In the preface to Paulinianus in the book of Didymus On the Holy Spirit (edited about the year 387) vol. II page 106.* When I was tarrying in Babylon... I wanted to chatter a little about the Holy Spirit, and to dedicate the work I had begun to the pontiff of that city... Therefore, my brother Paulinianus, because the aforementioned pontiff Damasus, who had first urged me to this work, now sleeps in Christ... the song which I could not sing in a foreign land, here, prompted by you in Judea, I murmur... and that I might acknowledge the author by his title, I preferred to be an interpreter of another's work than, as some do, to adorn myself with borrowed colors... But my Didymus, having the eye of the Bride from the Song of Songs, and those lights which are raised into the glowing standing-grain of Jesus...

^A he gazes far more deeply; and he has restored to us the ancient custom, that the Seer might be called a prophet. Certainly, whoever reads him will recognize the thefts of the Latins, and will despise the rivulets, once he begins to draw from the springs. He is unskilled in speech, but not in knowledge: expressing the apostolic man through his very speech, as much by the light of his senses as by the simplicity of his words.

*In the Prologue of the commentaries on the Epistle to the Galatians* (written in the year 387), vol. VII, p. 370. I have followed the commentaries of Origen... I pass over my Didymus the Seer, and the Laodicean... who themselves also left behind some small commentaries on this matter. If I were to pluck even a few things from these, it would become something not entirely to be despised. Therefore, to speak simply, I read all these things, and having gathered many into my mind, and having called a scribe, I dictated either my own things or others', not retaining the memory of the order, nor the words at times, nor the senses.

*In the Prologue of the commentaries on the Epistle to the Ephesians* (written in the year 387), vol. VII, p. 539. Not that from adolescence I ever ceased to read or to ask learned men about those things which I did not know, and to have only myself, as many do, as a teacher. In short, recently for this reason most of all I went to Alexandria, that I might see Didymus, and might inquire from him about all the doubtful things I had in the Scriptures... I also advise this in the Preface, that you may know... that Apollinaris and Didymus also published certain commentaries, from which, although we have plucked a few things, and have added or subtracted some which seemed appropriate to us, so that the studious reader may immediately at the beginning recognize whether this work is another's or our own.

*In the book On Ecclesiastical Writers* (which was written in the year 392), vol. II, p. 925, chap. 109. ^B Didymus the Alexandrian, struck in his eyes from a young age, and on that account ignorant even of the elements, provided such a miracle to all, that he learned even dialectic and geometry, which most especially requires sight, to the highest degree. He composed many and manifest things, that is, commentaries on all the Psalms; commentaries on Matthew and John, and *On Dogmas*; and two discourses *Against the Arians*; and one treatise *On the Holy Spirit*, which I translated into Latin; and eighteen volumes *On Isaiah*; and *On Hosea*, writing three books of commentaries for me; and *On Zechariah*, at my request, five books; and commentaries *On Job*; and infinite other things, which it is the task of a personal index to arrange. He lives even today, and has completed his eighty-third year.

*And in chapter 120 of the same book, p. 931.* Apollinaris, Didymus, Basil of Caesarea, etc., answered him [Eunomius].

*And in chapter 126 of the same book, p. 935.* Ambrose the Alexandrian, a hearer of Didymus, wrote against Apollinaris, etc.

*And in chapter 135, of the same book, p. 939.* Jerome... I have written these things... one book of Didymus, *On the Holy Spirit*, which I translated into Latin.

*In epistle 48, to Pammachius, for the books Against Jovinianus* (written in the year 393), vol. I, p. 230. Now I must enumerate those who have discussed the unequal number of the ecclesiastics: Clement, Hippolytus, Origen, Dionysius, Eusebius, Didymus, etc.

*In epistle 49, to Pammachius* (written in the year 393), vol. I, p. 233. Origen, Dionysius, Pierius, Eusebius of Caesarea, Didymus, and Apollinaris have interpreted this epistle (namely, the first to the Corinthians) most extensively... Revolve the commentaries of all whom I have mentioned above, and enjoy the libraries of the Churches, and you will arrive at your desired and begun goals with a more rapid step.

*In epistle 50, to Domnio* (written in the year 393), vol. I, p. 235, he speaks ironically thus: In vain, therefore, did I translate the commentaries of Alexander... and, to pass over human matters, without cause did I have Gregory Nazianzen and Didymus as catechists in the holy Scriptures... A man was found perfect without a teacher... who in eloquence surpasses Tully, in arguments Aristotle, in prudence Plato, in erudition Aristarchus, in the multitude of his books the Bronze-guts (Chalcenterum), in the knowledge of the Scriptures Didymus, and all the commentators of his time.

*In epistle 68, to Castrutius* (written in the year 397), vol. I, p. 408. I shall relate to you a brief story that happened in the times of my childhood. When the blessed Anthony, having been summoned to the city of Alexandria by the holy Athanasius, bishop of Alexandria, to refute the heretics, had gone to him, Didymus, a most erudite man, blinded in his eyes, was with him. Among other conversations which they had about the holy Scriptures, when Anthony was admiring his genius and praising the sharpness of his mind, he asked, saying: "Are you sad that you lack the eyes of the flesh?" When he, with modesty, kept silent; questioning him a second and a third time, he finally elicited that he should simply confess the sorrow of his mind. To whom Anthony said: "I wonder," he said, "that a prudent man should grieve over the loss of that thing which ants, and flies, and gnats have, and not rejoice in the possession of that which the saints alone and the apostles have merited." From this you perceive that it is much better to see with the spirit than with the flesh; and to possess those eyes into which the speck of sin cannot fall.

*In epistle 71, to Lucinius* (written in the year 398), vol. I, p. 432. We have translated a few things from Origen and the holy Didymus, wishing to show to our own people, in part, what Greek doctrine contained.

TESTIMONIES OF THE ANCIENTS

^A *From the Prologue to the Commentary on Matthew* (written in the year 398), vol. VII, p. 6. I confess to having read, many years ago, the twenty-five volumes of Origen on Matthew... and also the commentaries of Theophilus, bishop of the city of Antioch: and also those of Hippolytus the martyr... and of Didymus the Alexandrian... from whom, even if I were to cull but a small amount, something worthy of remembrance might be written.

*From Epistle 73, to Evangelus* (written in the year 398), p. 439. (See also Bede in *Questions on Genesis*.) He (Origen) descended to the point that he said he (Melchisedech) was an angel... I passed on to Didymus, his follower (that is, of Origen), and I saw a man who walked in the footsteps of his master’s opinion.

*From Epistle 84, to Pammachius and Oceanus* (written in the year 400), p. 520. I have heard the Apollinarian of Laodicea frequently in Antioch, and I honored him... My hair was already beginning to turn grey, and he was more befitting of being a master than a student. I continued, however, to Alexandria, I heard Didymus: for many things I give him thanks. What I did not know, I learned; what I did know, under his teaching, I did not lose... Of all these things I frequently make mention in my books. Certainly the dogma of Apollinaris and Didymus is contrary between them. Let both camps, therefore, seize me from opposite sides, because I confess that both are my masters... And a certain man dares to bring forward my letters to Didymus, as if to a master. A great crime of a student, if I called a learned man, and an old man, a master. And yet I wish to look at the letter itself, which for so long a time has been reserved for calumny. It contains nothing beyond honor and a greeting.

*And p. 527.* Who is more prudent, more learned, more eloquent than Eusebius and Didymus, the champions of Origen? One of whom confirms in six volumes of his *Apology* that he thought as he did; the other so attempts to excuse his errors as to admit nonetheless that they belong to him: not denying what was written, but explaining the sense of the writer. It is one thing if certain things have been added by heretics, and another if someone defends what are ostensibly well-spoken words.

*And p. 528.* The sixth book of Eusebius’s defense of Origen, from the beginning up to nearly a thousand lines, contains this book which is called Pamphilus’s; and in the remaining portions the writer of the same work brings forward testimonies by which he strives to prove that Origen was a Catholic... From which it is shown that it is either the work of Didymus, or of someone else who, with the head of the sixth book cut off, joined the rest of the limbs together.

*From the first book against Rufinus* (written in the year 402), vol. II, p. 462, no. 6. When I had read these things, and compared them with the Greek, I immediately noticed that the things which Origen had impiously stated concerning the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and which Roman ears could not bear, had been changed for the better by the interpreter. But the other dogmas—concerning the fall of the angels, concerning the lapse of souls, concerning the deceits of the resurrection, concerning the world or the intermundia of Epicurus, concerning the restitution of all things to an equal state, and many things worse than these, which it would take long to elaborate—he either translated just as he had found them in the Greek, or, from the commentaries of Didymus, who is a most overt champion of Origen, he exaggerated them, and placed them more firmly, so that one who had read that (Origen) was a Catholic concerning the Trinity would not be on guard against him being a heretic in other matters.

*And no. 13.* Is an injury done to you because I followed Apollinaris and Didymus for your sake?

*And no. 16.* For I have followed Origen, and Didymus, and Apollinaris in my commentaries on the Ephesians in such a way (who certainly have dogmas contrary among themselves), that I did not lose the truth of my own faith. What purpose do commentaries have? They explain the words of another.

*And no. 21.* Origen wrote three volumes on the epistle of Paul to the Ephesians. Didymus also, and Apollinaris, composed their own works. In regard to them, I will append what I wrote in the Prologue to the same work, whether translating or imitating: "I also caution in the Preface so that you may know that Origen wrote three volumes on this epistle... Apollinaris also, and Didymus, published certain commentaries from which," etc. as above col. 217.

*And in the second book against Rufinus, no. 11, p. 502.* In the first book *On First Principles*, where Origen blasphemed with a sacrilegious tongue that the Son does not see the Father, you even supply reasons, as if from the person of him who wrote, and you interpret a *scholy* of Didymus, in which he labors in vain to defend the error of another, which Origen indeed said well; but we simple men, and 'the Ennian tame ones,' can understand neither his wisdom nor yours, you who have interpreted it.

*And no. 16.* But perhaps he here, like an Arian, drew in what was added by heretics as an occasion for his own error, so that he might not be thought to have held a wrong opinion against the Church alone. What will you answer for Didymus, who certainly is Catholic concerning the Trinity? Whose book *On the Holy Spirit* we have even translated into the Latin tongue. Certainly in this he could not have consented to those things which were added by heretics to the works of Origen; and in his own *On First Principles*, books which you have interpreted, he dictated brief commentaries by which he might not deny that what was written was written, but strives to persuade us simple men that we cannot understand what is said, and in what sense they ought to be accepted for the better. This only concerning the Son and the Holy Spirit. Otherwise, in other dogmas, both Eusebius and Didymus concede most openly to the tenets of Origen, and defend as having been spoken in a Catholic and pious manner what all the Churches reject.

*And no. 34.* Your Origen... in all his books, after the LXX, explains and discusses the translations of the Jews. Eusebius also, and Didymus, do the same.

*And book III, no. 12, p. 541.* In the library at Caesarea, I found the six volumes of Eusebius, *An Apology for Origen*, which when I had read, I discovered it to be the first book, which you alone published under the name of the martyr, concerning the Son and the Holy Spirit.

^C into a good sense, with most of the blasphemies altered: and I know not whether Didymus, or you, or someone else did this, which you are convicted of having done most openly in the books *De Principiis*.

**And num. 13.** If, therefore, there are those of Apollinaris and Origen, which you have placed under the name of others; why do you level a charge against me in your books, when I write: "One person says this: another surmises thus, another that," and I am someone else? Between Apollinaris and Didymus there is a great difference in explanation, style, and doctrine. When I place different opinions in one chapter, is it to be believed that I am following contradictory meanings?

**And num. 27.** In my praise and disparagement, because you have been inconsistent, you have argued with marvelous sharpness, so that it is permissible for you to speak both well and ill of me, just as it was permissible for me to criticize Origen and Didymus, whom I had previously praised.... In Origen we admire the knowledge of the Scriptures, and yet we do not accept the falsehood of his doctrines. In Didymus, however, we both praise his memory and the purity of his faith concerning the Trinity; but in the other things in which he wrongly believed with Origen, we withdraw from him. For it is not the vices of masters that should be imitated, but their virtues.

**And num. 28.** Hence also is that arcane question of yours: why do infants die, since they received bodies on account of sins? There exists a book of Didymus to you, in which he replied to you as you questioned him, that they had not committed many sins, and therefore it was sufficient for them merely to have touched the prisons of the body. My master and yours, at the time you were asking him these things, dictated to me—at my request—three books of Explanations on the prophet Hosea. From which it appears what he taught me, and what he taught you.

*In epist. 112, to Augustine (written in the year 404), num. 4, tom. 1, p. 733.* To which I first reply, that your prudence ought to have remembered the preface to my commentaries which says in my own person.... I pass over my Didymus the Seer, etc., as above col. 217.

*And num. 20, p. 747.* Most notably in the explanation of the Psalms, which have been interpreted by the Greeks in many volumes, Origen was the first... Didymus the Alexandrian the sixth. There are also miscellaneous opuscula of different people on a few Psalms: but now we speak about the entire body of the Psalms.

*In epist. 119, to Minervius and Alexander (written in the year 406), num. 1 and 5, pp. 794 and 795.* And so I too, restricted by time, have brought forward the opinions of each of you who have left behind short commentaries on the Holy Scripture, and I have translated most things word for word; so that I might free myself from the question, and the authority of the ancient commentators might be sent to you... Didymus does not go on foot, but by transitioning the feeling of Origen into words, he walks by a contrary path. "Behold, I tell you a mystery: We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed." ^D Which he discussed thus.... Then Jerome brings forward a fragment of Didymus: then he adds: "And what follows according to the Greeks *en atomo*... the same Didymus has explained thus." Then he brings forward another quite long fragment of Didymus.

*In the Preface to the prophet Hosea (written in the year 406), tom. VI, p. 23.* Whence about twenty-two years ago, when, at the request of your holy and venerable mother-in-law, or rather mother, Paula (for that is the name of the flesh, this is of the spirit: who always burned with a love for monasteries and the Scriptures), I was in Alexandria, I saw Didymus and heard him frequently, a man most learned in his own time, and I asked him to complete himself what Origen had not done, and write commentaries on Hosea: which, at my request, he dictated in three books; and also five others on Zechariah... I say this so that you may know whom I had as precursors in the field of this prophet: whom, however, as I confess to your prudence simply and not proudly (as certain of my friends always whisper), I have not followed in all things, so that I might exist as the judge of their work rather than their interpreter, and might say what seemed to me in each individual case.

*In the Preface to the prophet Zechariah (written in the year 406), tom. VI, p. 778.* Origen wrote two volumes on this prophet, up to the third part of the book from the beginning. Hippolytus also published commentaries, and Didymus dictated five books of Explanations, at my request, which with the other three on Hosea, the interpretation of all of them was allegorical for me; and they touched on history only slightly. Therefore, wishing to imitate that master of a household, who brings forth from his treasure new things and old; and the Spouse from the Song of Songs, who says: "New things with old, my kinsman, I have kept for you," I mingled the tropology of the Hebrews with that of our own.

*In epistola 121, to Algasia (written in the year 407), num. 6, p. 862.* I could not find the explanation of Origen and Didymus on this parable; and whether it has been destroyed by the antiquity of time, or they did not write it, I hold to be uncertain.

*In the commentaries on Daniel (written in the year 407), ch. 3, tom. V, p. 641, Jerome, looking especially at Didymus in my opinion, writes these things:* And from the present place, and from that which follows: "Bless, spirits and souls of the just, the Lord"; and in the Psalms: "A sacrifice to God is a contrite spirit; a contrite and humbled heart God does not despise," there are some who would wish the spirit in man to be one thing, except for the Holy Spirit, and the soul to be another. But it will be a labor for them, how, without flesh and the grace of the Holy Spirit, two substances and two interior men can be said to exist in one man.

*In epistola 120, to Hedibia (written in the year 407), num. 12, p. 842.* Some from this place, namely from 1 Thessal. v, 23, wish to affirm a triple substance in man; the spirit, by which we feel; the soul, by which we live; the body, by which we walk.

^A In the Preface, or Prologue, to the commentaries on Isaiah (written in the year 410), vol. IV, p. 6. Didymus, whose friendships we have recently enjoyed, from that place where it is written (Isa. xl, 1): "Comfort, comfort my people, you priests: speak to the heart of Jerusalem," until the end of the volume (of Isaiah) published eighteen tomes.

VI. St. Isidore of Pelusium (who died about the year 449) inscribed seven epistles to Didymus, which exist in the first book of his Epistles, numbers 199, 201, 204, 205, 281, 530, and 531. I conjecture that these were written to our Didymus. The last indeed begins thus: Didymo. ^B

To Didymus.

The same St. Isidore inscribed three epistles to Didymus the Scholastic, namely 205 of the fourth book, and 206 and 207 of the fifth book. Whether indeed these also were written to our Didymus, let the reader judge. We submit here the two hundred and sixth of the fifth book.

To Didymus the Scholastic.

^C

To Didymus the Scholastic.

VII. Heraclides the Cypriot (who was ordained a deacon at Constantinople in the year 399) in the work which is inscribed *Paradise*, in Rosweyde in the *Lives of the Fathers*, page 944, of the Antwerp edition of the year 1628, wrote these things concerning Didymus, according to the ancient translation of his work: if indeed that work is to be attributed to Heraclides, at least in part as Fabricius opines, and not to Palladius. "But many worthy men worthy of the dwelling of the blessed, and women also, died at that time in the city of the Church of Alexandria: among whom was Didymus, indeed deprived of the light of his eyes, yet powerful in the knowledge of the divine Scriptures: whom I remember having seen four times at different times within ten years, and who ended the term of his life after eighty-five years. This man, therefore, of whom I speak, was taken of his eyes, as he himself related to me, when he was in the fourth year of his age: he, neither given to masters of letters, nor ever knowing the first elements, had an innate good always intact, the natural master of his own conscience. He was adorned with such grace of spiritual knowledge, that that which was written might most evidently be fulfilled in him: 'The Lord makes the blind wise.' He interpreted both the Old and New Testament word for word: but he discussed all the sects so subtly and firmly, having set forth the reason upon them, that he surpassed the knowledge and experience of all the ancients. Who, when he was once compelling me to make an oration in his cell, and I nevertheless did not acquiesce to his command, he said, reporting this: 'To this hospitality,' said he, 'the thrice-blessed Anthony, while he deigns to visit me, has entered; and having been asked by me to bend his knees in this place, and pour out a prayer, he did it immediately, and a second time he did not want to be asked; teaching me by the very things to obey the wills of the saints.' Wherefore, if you follow his footsteps, he said, and live as a monk, and as a stranger for the sake of acquiring virtues, I do not want you to contend. ^D This also the same man reported to me: 'When,' said he, 'I was being wearied with a certain great solicitude and sadness on account of the most unhappy life of the Emperor Julian, so that on a certain day I did not even touch bread until the evening hours of deep night, overcome by anxiety; it happened by chance that, resting in sleep, I was occupied, and in a certain transmigration of soul I saw such a revelation: Four horsemen with white horses running to and fro through various places and crying out: Tell Didymus: Today at the seventh hour Julian is dead: rise therefore, and take food, and send to the house of Athanasius the bishop, so that he himself also may know this.' He noted therefore, as he himself said, both the month, and the week, and the day, and the hour: and so he approved everything just as he had heard. He related also to me about a certain maiden, etc."

VIII. Rufinus of Aquileia in book II of the *Ecclesiastical History* (which he wrote about the year 400), chapter 7, page 276, vol. 1, of the Works ed. Verona, of the year 1745. "But when the thick darkness of perfidy was overwhelming the peoples of Alexandria and its city, the Lord ignited Didymus, shining with divine light like a lamp. Concerning whose life and ways, since he is believed to have been granted by the gift of God for the glory of the Church, although in passing, nevertheless it seems to us necessary that a few things be commemorated. For he, in tender age, when he was still even ignorant of the first elements of letters, being deprived of his eyes, is inflamed with a greater desire for the knowledge of the true light: nor did he suffer despair of attaining what was desired, when he had heard it written in the Gospel: 'What is impossible before men, is possible before God.' Confiding therefore in this divine promise, he incessantly prayed to the Lord, not that he might receive the sight of carnal eyes, but that he might receive the illumination of the heart. He nevertheless mixed studies with his prayers, and labor, and continuous and unceasing vigils; he applied them not to read, but to listen, so that what was sight to others, hearing might confer upon him. But when, after the labor of study, sleep, as is wont to happen to those reading, had come upon him, Didymus, holding that silence not given for rest or leisure, like an animal chewing the cud, was recalling the food he had taken from the whole, and the things which he had long ago known from the reading of books, while others were running through them, he was reweaving them with his memory and mind, so that it seemed not so much that he had heard the things which had been read, as that he had written them upon the pages of his mind. And so, in a short time, God being the teacher, to such a depth of divine and human things..."

he arrived in learning and knowledge that he became a doctor of the ecclesiastical school, highly approved by Bishop Athanasius and the other wise men in the Church. Moreover, he was so prepared in the other disciplines—whether dialectic, geometry, astronomy, or arithmetic—that no philosopher proposing questions in any of these arts could ever overcome him or corner him; rather, as soon as he received his responses, he would believe them to be the master even of the discipline about which he had proposed the question. Some of his statements, whether disputed commonly or in response to those proposing them, were recorded by scribes; these are even now held in great admiration. We, however, who were in some part auditors of his living voice, and who have read those things which were recorded by some while he was speaking, have recognized far greater grace and a certain divine quality in those discourses which were brought forth from his own mouth, sounding above the human voice. When the blessed Antony had come down from the Thebaid to Alexandria to bear witness to the faith of Athanasius against the Arians, he consoled this man with magnificent words: "Let it not offend you, O Didymus, that you are seen to be deprived of carnal eyes. For you lack those eyes which mice, and flies, and lizards possess. But rejoice because you have the eyes which the angels have, and by which God is seen, through which a great light of knowledge is kindled for you." Egypt therefore flourished at that time not only in men learned in Christian philosophy, but also in those who, dwelling throughout the vast desert, performed signs and wonders with apostolic simplicity of life and sincerity of heart.

*Book I of the Apology against Jerome, no. 4 (page 552, vol. I, Works of Rufinus)*. Rufinus himself represents Jerome as speaking thus: If Origen has suspected something concerning the deeper secrets of divine dispensation, let no one accept it… even if that Pontic Gregory, a man of apostolic virtues; even if that other, the Nazianzen, and Didymus the seeing prophet, both my masters, than whom the world has had nothing wiser in the faith of Christ. All these have erred like Origen.

*Book II of the same Apology (written around the year 401), no. 8, page 361, vol. I, Works of Rufinus.* Shall we imitate him, who condemns the accused without either questioning them or their answering, and not only those not answering, but not even present; and not only not present, but even the dead; and not only the dead, but also those he had always praised before; and not only those he had praised, but also those he had followed and had as masters?

*And no. 9, and elsewhere, he cites the words of Jerome in which there is mention of Didymus: but these we omit, as they have already been brought forward above.*

*And no. 12, page 366.* But that man who in all his life did not spend a full thirty days in Alexandria, where Didymus was, boasts far and wide throughout nearly all his little books that he was the disciple of Didymus the seer, and had Didymus as a *kathēgētēs*, that is, a preceptor, in the holy Scriptures. And all this bragging was sought in one month. I, who for the sake of God spent six years there, and again after an interval another two, where Didymus, of whom you alone boast, and where others were—none the less not inferior to him, whom you do not even know by face—Serapion, and Menites, men of natural gifts, and character, and learning, close brothers: where Paul the elder, disciple of Peter the martyr: and, that I may come to the masters of the desert, whom we frequented more attentively and more often, where Macarius the disciple of Antony, and the other Macarius, and Isidorus, and Pambas, all friends of God, who taught us these things which they themselves learned from God: how much material for boasting could I, if it were proper or expedient, have concerning all these? But I am ashamed even as I recount these things, while I am wishing to show you, not, as you say, that masters lacked our genius, but, which I regret more, that our genius lacked the masters. But what a fool am I to enumerate holy Christian men?

*And no. 23, page 377.* But since we have promised to prove how he (Jerome) lacerates a man worthy of the admiration of all, Bishop Ambrose… we shall still set forth one of his Prefaces, from which you may see either how foully and unworthily he lacerates so great a man, or again how he raises Didymus to the heavens with praises, whom he again casts down to the infernal regions.

*And no. 25, page 378.* Even if (St. Ambrose) followed the Greek Catholic writers of our own, and presumed something from their writings, this did not immediately have to be your highest care, this labor, this study, that for this cause you would translate the book of Didymus *On the Holy Spirit*, so that his thefts might be known, he who perhaps also suffered the necessity of writing so that he might answer the heretics then raging... If you rightly make Origen, whom you call second after the apostles, imitate you, why do you cut down him who followed Didymus, whom you nevertheless also call a prophet and designate as an apostolic man? If, therefore, you have not spared so great and such a man as Ambrose... and this very Didymus, whom you now designate as a seeing prophet, and possessing the eye of the Bride from the Song of Songs, and an apostolic man in the name of the senses, you again accuse as a perverse doctor, and segregate him by your censorial rod, as you say, among the companies of heretics... if, I say, you again condemn with your own mouth all those whom you have praised with your own mouth, what shall I, a flea compared to them, complain about myself if you should now lacerate me?

*And no. 26, page 380.* But however these things may be, whatever you have with these writers, whether ancient or modern, whether you call them apostles or venerable writers, whether you call them prophets or perverse doctors, what do these things have to do with me? You, for these shifts of yours, for the insults and lacerations of good men, would rightly have done penance, if indeed you have done so.

*And no. 35, page 390.* What wonder, therefore, if he lacerates me, a man of little and no account, if he cuts down Ambrose, if he reprehends Hilary, if he does so to Lactantius, if he reprehends Didymus?

*And no. 43, page 598.* I have also shown how unworthily he (Jerome) lacerated the ministers and priests of Christ... Didymus also, whom he had long since placed among the seeing prophets and apostles, he has now placed among those who teach things other than the Churches.

IX. Rufinus the Palestinian, in the book *De fide*, no. 52 (page 610, appendix to vol. 1, of the Works of Rufinus of Aquileia), refers to a certain argument of the Arians in exactly the same way as Didymus does in this work, *De Trinitate*, book 1, page 8.

X. St. Augustine, in Epistle 82 (written in the year 405), chap. 3, no. 23, p. 199, vol. II. "Since you have mentioned by name so many who preceded you in what you maintain, I ask that if I take you to task for erring, you suffer yourself to err with such men; though I confess I have read none of them. But while they are some six or seven, you yourself infringe upon the authority of four of them. For you speak of the Laodicene, whose name you suppress, as having recently departed from the Church; you call Alexander an ancient heretic; and I read in your more recent short works that you take Didymus and Origen to task—and not in minor matters, nor from minor questions—although you had previously praised Origen marvelously."

And in book 11 of the *Questions on the Heptateuch* (written around the year 419), quest. 25, p. 429, part 1, vol. III. "The finger of God, as the Gospel most clearly speaks, is understood as the Holy Spirit... For who of such madness would say that the finger of God could have hindered the attempts of the magi in this sign, but was unable to do so in the previous ones? Therefore, there is surely a certain reason why these things were permitted to be done up to this point. For the Trinity is perhaps commended, and what is true is that the highest philosophers of the Gentiles, as far as can be investigated in their writings, philosophized without the Holy Spirit, although they did not keep silent about the Father and the Son; a fact which Didymus also mentions in his book which he wrote *On the Holy Spirit*."

XI. Philippus Sidetes, or the Sidonian (who flourished not long after the beginning of the fifth century, and is cited by Socrates, *Hist. eccl.*, book VII, chap. 27), spoke of Didymus in a work which no longer exists, as is gathered from a fragment which Henry Dodwell edited from Cod. Baroccianus 142 at Oxford in the year 1689, at the end of his *Dissertations on St. Irenaeus*, p. 488. For these things, among others, are read in that fragment: "And Philippus the Sidetes says in sermon 24: Athenagoras was the first to preside over the school in Alexandria... Origen was the fourth to preside over the Christian school; after Origen, Heraclas; after him, Dionysius; after him, Pierius; after Pierius, Theognostus; after him, Serapion; after him, Peter the great bishop, who became a martyr; after Peter, Macarius, whom the locals called 'the Politician'; after him, Didymus; after Didymus, Rhodon, who—according to Philippus—transferred the school in that same city [I suspect 'his' should be read] to Side during the times of the great Theodosius; Philippus says that he was a disciple of this Rhodon."

XII. Palladius in the *Lausiac History* (written around the year 420), chap. 4, vol. XIII, *Bibl. Patrum*, p. 904, Paris edition of the year 1644. I have collated the passage with the Nanian manuscript codex.

"There was then a very large company of holy men and women perfected in the Church of the Alexandrians, who were found worthy of the land of the meek. Among them is perfected also the blessed writer Didymus, who was blind; with whom I had four meetings, going to him at intervals of ten years. He was perfected at the age of eighty-five. He was blind from the time he was four years old, as he himself told me, having lost his sight, and neither having learned letters nor attended teachers (for he had a teacher according to nature, firm and strong—his own conscience). He was adorned with such great grace of spiritual knowledge that the scripture was fulfilled in him: *The Lord enlighteneth the blind* [Ps. CXLV, 8]. For he interpreted the Old and New Testaments word for word. And he expounded the dogmas so subtly and so vigorously that he surpassed all the ancients in knowledge. Once, when he compelled me to offer a prayer in his house, and I was unwilling, he said to me, telling me: 'The blessed Antony came into this cell three times to visit me, and when asked by me to offer a prayer, he immediately knelt in this cell and did not cause me to repeat the request, teaching me by action in obedience. So, if you too are following the footsteps of his [Nan. cod. 'his'] way of life, and as a monk, and a stranger for the sake of virtue, lay aside all contention.' He himself also told me this: 'One day,' he said, 'when I was anxious about the life of the wretched emperor Julian, as he was a persecutor, and was troubled in my soul, it happened that because of'"

this anxiety I tasted nothing until late evening. And as I sat on my chair and sleep overcame me, I saw in an ecstasy white horses running with riders who announced: "Tell Didymus, today at the seventh hour Julian died. Rise therefore, eat; and send word of what you know to bishop Athanasius, so that he may know it too." And I noted,' he said, 'the hour, the day, the week, and the month; and thus it was found to be.' ^B

Ibidem, ch. 4, page 905. The author Didymus also related to me regarding a certain maidservant named Alexandra, who, etc.

Ibidem, ch. 12, page 914. He knew the Old and New Testament by heart; and he was so well-versed in the writings of learned men—Origen, Didymus, Pierius, and Stephen—that he could recite six hundred myriad verses.

In Rosweyd’s *Vitae Patrum*, since there is a double edition of the *Historia Lausiaca*, one longer and one shorter, in the shorter one we read these things on page 986: "Among the holy Fathers was Didymus, an expositor of the sacred books, who explained many books from the divine Scriptures. He was without sight, someone I myself knew. He died at the age of seventy-five. This blind man, as he himself told me, had lost his sight at the age of four in his infancy, and he knew no letters, nor was he ever among teachers. Yet he had a most robust natural teacher: his own conscience. He was gifted with such grace of knowledge that he interpreted the Old and New Testament to the very letter. He pursued liberal study so subtly and explained the text in such detail that he surpassed all the ancients in knowledge. He used to urge me to pray in his cell. And when I did not agree, he would say to me, recounting: 'Because the blessed Anthony entered this little cell three times, visiting me and begging me to pray, he immediately bowed his knees in this dwelling, and did not compel me to repeat the saying, teaching me obedience.' He also told me this: 'Once, when I was anxious about the life of the wretched emperor Julian, and was excessively troubled, one day I did not taste bread until the next evening because of my worry. And it happened that as I sat on a chair, sleep overcame me, and I saw in an ecstasy white horses running, with riders saying: "Tell Didymus that today at the seventh hour of the day, Julian died: rise therefore, eat, and send and proclaim this to bishop Athanasius, so that he too may know." And I noted immediately the hour, the month, the week, and the day: and it was found to be just as it appeared when sleep overcame me.'" He also related to me about the maidservant of a certain person, etc.

XIII.

XIV.

XV.

XVI.

to the end that the faith might be strengthened by his testimony and affirmation. For Didymus, a man truly admirable and most learned, flourished at that same time, excelling in every kind of learning. ^A While he was still a very young boy, and had mastered the first elements of letters, he fell into an affection of the eyes; and being severely afflicted, he lost his power of sight. But God, in place of bodily eyes, granted him spiritual ones; for what he could not perceive by the sight of the eyes, he learned by hearing. For being of a fine natural disposition from childhood, and possessed of a keen soul, he surpassed those who were gifted and could see most sharply. ^B He mastered the rules of grammar with ease, and obtained the grasp of rhetoric yet more quickly. Afterward, proceeding to philosophy, he learned dialectic, arithmetic, and music with incredible facility, and stored the other subjects of the philosophers in his mind, so that he could readily match himself against those who had mastered these things through the benefit of their eyes. Moreover, he knew the divine oracles of the Old and New Testaments so perfectly, that he published many books; he dictated three books *On the Trinity*; and he interpreted Origen's books *On Principles*, issuing commentaries on them, by which he maintains that they were very well written. And they labor in vain who strive to accuse the man and to disparage his books; for he says that they cannot even grasp the man's wisdom. ^C If, therefore, anyone desires to know the varied learning and the ardent soul of Didymus, he will learn this by perusing the books that have been elaborated by him. It is also said that Anthony the monk, long before the time of Valens, when he came down from the desert to Alexandria on account of the Arians, met with Didymus, and having learned the man’s wisdom, said to him: "Let not the loss of bodily eyes trouble you, O Didymus; for you are deprived of such eyes as even flies and gnats can see with, but rejoice rather that you possess eyes with which even angels see, through which God is also beheld, and His light apprehended." ^D These things were said by the God-beloved Anthony to Didymus long before these times. But then Didymus appeared as a most mighty advocate of his own faith, meeting the Arians, and dissolving their sophistries, and refuting their counterfeit and treacherous arguments. And indeed, divine providence set Didymus against the Arians who were in Alexandria; but in other cities, Basil the Caesarean and Gregory the Nazianzen.

XVII. Sozomen (who died about the year 450), *Ecclesiastical History*, Book III, Ch. 15.

At this same time, Didymus, an ecclesiastical writer, also flourished, presiding over the sacred school of holy learning in Alexandria. In him there dwelt wisdom of every kind: poets and orators, astronomy and geometry, and numbers, and the opinions of the philosophers. He had acquired knowledge of all these things by his mind alone, and by hearing. For while still a boy, he became blind at the first attempt at learning his letters. But when he was entering his teenage years, he desired learning and education; and attending those who taught these things, he would listen only; and he reached such a degree of wisdom as to attain even to the difficult theorems in mathematics. It is said that he learned the characters of letters, which were carved deeply into a tablet, by touching them with his fingers; and syllables and names and the rest in succession, he perceived by the apprehension of his mind, and by constant listening, and by remembering the things he had heard. This was no common miracle; and many, spurred by the fame of the man, traveled to Alexandria, some to hear him, and others only to see him. But he troubled the followers of Arius not a little, standing firm for the doctrine of the Council of Nicaea. For he persuaded others easily, not by [force]—

the violence of his speech, but by the faculty of persuasion which he possessed, establishing each one of them as if they were the judge of the controversy. ^A All the Catholics embraced him with singular benevolence. And the companies of monks living in Egypt praised him greatly, as did that great Antony. They say indeed that when he had come to Alexandria at that time to testify to the faith of Athanasius, he said these things to him: ^B "It is not a grievous thing, nor is it worthy of sorrow, O Didymus, that you lack those eyes with which lizards, mice, and the most vile animals are endowed. But it is rather blessed and pleasant that, just as the angels, you possess eyes by which you clearly perceive the divine, and apprehend true knowledge exactly." ^C

*And book vi, chapter 2.*

On the same day, Didymus the ecclesiastical philosopher, also dwelling in Alexandria, being in great sorrow—as the emperor was sinning against religion—both on account of him being deceived by vain error, and on account of the insult to the Churches, he gave himself to fastings and prayers. And since, through excessive anxiety, he had not even taken food when night came on, he was overcome by sleep while sitting in his chair. And as if placed in an ecstasy, he thought he saw white horses running through the air, and men seated upon them crying out: "Announce to Didymus that today, at this very hour, Julian has been killed; and let him signify this to Bishop Athanasius, and arise and eat." And I learned that these things were seen at that time both by a familiar of Julian and by the philosopher Didymus. And neither of them erred in what they saw from the truth, as was later revealed.

XVIII. *Theodoret in his Ecclesiastical History (written in the year 450), book IV, chapter 26, page 70 of volume III of the works in the edition of the year 1642.*

At the same time, the admirable Ephrem was flourishing in Edessa, and Didymus in Alexandria; both writing books against dogmas contrary to the truth. And Ephrem indeed, using the Syrian tongue, diffused the rays of spiritual grace. ... Didymus, however, although he had been deprived of his sight from childhood, nevertheless learned the poetic and rhetorical art. Furthermore, he perceived arithmetic, geometry, and astronomy, the syllogisms of Aristotle, and the eloquence of Plato, through the sense of hearing—not as disciplines that would teach the truth, but as weapons which the truth can use against falsehood. He learned not only the letters of the Holy Scripture, but also their meanings. Therefore, among the monks and the studious cultivators of virtue, those whom we have mentioned shone forth at that time. Among the bishops, etc.

XIX. *Faustus of Riez (who was ordained bishop in the year 455), epistle 16, volume I. Lectiones Antiquae of Canisius, page 364 of the Basnage edition.*

For we read in a certain most well-received treatise of the Fathers: "To enter," he says, "and to fill all things is possible for the Trinity alone."

XX. *Gennadius (either of Marseille, who died in the year 492, or, according to Ratramnus, the Bishop of Constantinople, who succeeded Anatolius in the year 458) in his book On Ecclesiastical Dogmas, chapter 20, volume VIII of the Works of St. Augustine, page 78 of the Appendix.*

There is no third spirit in the substance of man, as Didymus contends; but the spirit is the soul itself, called spirit on account of its spiritual nature, or because it breathes in the body. It is called soul (*anima*) from the fact that it animates the body for living, or for quickening it. But the third thing, which is brought in by the Apostle along with the soul and body, we should understand to be the spirit of the grace of the Holy Spirit, for which the Apostle prays that it may remain whole in us, lest it either be diminished by our fault, or driven away from us; because the Holy Spirit will flee from a malicious soul.

XXI. *The ancient author of the Life of St. Jerome (whom Mabillon, Martianay, and Vallarsi consider to be Gennadius)*

thinks he flourished in the eighth or ninth century) vol. XI of the Works of St. Jerome, Verona edition, page 248. Just as also he (Jerome) translated into the Latin tongue Didymus the Seer’s book on the Holy Spirit. ^B XXII. St. Gelasius (elected pope in the year 496) in the chapter *Sancta Romana*, dist. 15. We hold those things which we know the aforementioned blessed Jerome to hold: and not only concerning Rufinus, but also concerning all those whom the man often mentioned reproves from zeal for God and the religion of the faith. ^C XXIII. John Procopius of Gaza (who lived at the end of the fifth century and the beginning of the sixth, famous around the year 520) composed a work in which the passages of Didymus are brought forward, and which is inscribed thus in Greek codex 22 of the Library of St. Mark in Venice:

On the Ecclesiastes. An epitome of exegetical excerpts of Procopius the Christian sophist, from the voice of Gregory of Nyssa, and Dionysius of Alexandria, Origen, Evagrius, Didymus, Nilus, and Olympiodorus.

[XXVI] The fifth ecumenical synod (held in the year 553), in the Acts which survive, nowhere mentions Didymus: only in the eighth collation, canon xi, are these things read: If any one does not anathematize Arius . . . and Origen . . . and all other heretics . . . and those who have thought or do think the things similar to the aforementioned heretics, and have remained in their impiety until death, let such a one be anathema.

[XXVII] Barsanuphius (who wrote about the year 550), or rather the author of the little work edited by Montfaucon in the *Bibliotheca Coisliniana*, page [blank], which is thus inscribed:

*The Doctrine of Saint Barsanuphius, under Aurelian, Bishop of Gaza, concerning the opinions of Origen, Evagrius, and Didymus.*

[XXVIII] Cyril of Scythopolis in the *Life of Saint Sabas* (written shortly after the year 554), volume III of the *Monumenta Ecclesiæ Græcæ* edited by Cotelier, Paris 1686, page 274. Agapetus, having assumed the government of the New Laura, found four monks . . . who were whispering in secret the Origenist dogmas. The leader of whom was a certain Palestinian man, called Nonnus, who, while pretending to follow Christianity and feigning piety, held in his mind the dogmas of the godless Greeks, Jews, and Manichaeans, which were mythically put forth by Origen, Evagrius, and Didymus concerning pre-existence. And on page 374 of the same *Life* (or Acts of the second Council of Nicaea, volume VIII of the *Concilia*, page 729): And so, when the holy and universal fifth synod was gathered at Constantinople, Origen and Theodore of Mopsuestia were submitted to a common and general anathema, together with those things which were said by Evagrius and Didymus concerning pre-existence and restitution.

[XXIX] Victor of Tunnuna (who wrote about the year 565) in his *Chronicle*, volume I of the *Lectiones Antiquæ* of Basnage, page 333. In the 39th year of his reign, Justinian sent into exile Eutychius, bishop of Constantinople, a condemner of the Three Chapters, and Evagrius the hermit/deacon, and Didymus the monk and confessor of Alexandria, whose praises we have recounted above by the authority of illustrious men.

[XXX] Eustratius, presbyter of the Church of Constantinople, in his *Laudation of Saint Eutychius, Patriarch of Constantinople*, which he delivered in the year 582, among the Bollandists on the 1st of April, page 67 and 557, number 34. But those who taught these things were those who defended and professed the execrable dogmas of the insane Origen, Evagrius, and Didymus.

[XXXI] Evagrius Scholasticus in his *Ecclesiastical History* (which he wrote in the year 593), book iv, chapter 38, page 418, Cambridge edition of 1720. There were sent to Constantinople by Eustochius: Rufus, abbot of the monastery of Theodosius, and Conon, abbot of the monastery of Sabas . . . And these men indeed began to agitate the matters concerning Origen, and Evagrius, and Didymus.

^A And from the petitions presented by Eulogius, Conon, Cyriacus, and Pancratius, monks, against the dogmas of Origen, who is also called Adamantius, and against those who follow his impiety and error, Justinian inquires of the gathered synod concerning these matters... A report, therefore, was made to Justinian by the synod after the outcries made by it against Origen and those who held the same errors as he... There were also brought to them other numerous blasphemies of Didymus, and Evagrius, and Theodore, which they had very diligently selected (from their books).

XXXII. *John Moschus, surnamed Eucrata (who flourished under Emperor Maurice, and then at the beginning of the seventh century) in the chapters of the Spiritual Meadow, which Cotelerius published in volume two of the Ecclesiastical Monuments of Greece, chapter 14, page 349.* The brother sees someone standing by him, terrible in appearance, and saying to him: "Come and see the truth." And having taken him, he leads him away to a dark and foul-smelling place with fire; and he shows him in that very fire Nestorius... Evagrius and Didymus. ^B

XXXIII. *St. Sophronius, Bishop of Jerusalem (who died about the year 636 or 638) in a synodical letter to Sergius, Patriarch of Constantinople, which is inserted into the eleventh session of the sixth ecumenical council, volume VII of the Venetian edition of the Councils, year 1729, page 915.* But not for this reason, because the souls of men, by the grace of God, repelled the corruption which naturally resides in all created things, shall we therefore suspect that they existed before their bodies, or that they were put into a certain eternal life before the production and construction of this visible world, and say that they had a heavenly life, living an eternal life without flesh and without a body in heaven, once not existing, as the delirious Origen wishes, and his fellow-mystics and like-minded associates, Didymus and Evagrius, and the rest of their myth-burdened cohort; who indeed not only err in asserting this while being immersed in Hellenic dogmas and sullying the nobility of Christians, but they also senselessly destroy the resurrection of these bodies, with which we are now clothed, babbling ten thousand terrible things, worthy of their impious myth-making. ^C

*And in the same letter, page 918.* I also accept the fifth holy... ecumenical council... It destroys and casts into ruin primarily the insane Origen... and with him the dogmas of Evagrius and Didymus; and all their Hellenic and monstrous, and indeed their myth-like ravings.

*And in the same letter, page 923.* Anathema, therefore, in perpetuity... let them be, first of all, Simon Magus... another, Origen, who is also Adamantius... Didymus and Evagrius, the most filthy high-priests of the Origenist vanity.

*The three preceding passages of Sophronius from another old Latin version exist also on pages 1258 and 1261 of the same seventh volume.*

XXXIV. *Emperor Heraclius in the Ecthesis (published in the year 639, and inserted into the Acts of the Lateran Council held under Pope St. Martin) in the third secretariate, page 208 of volume VII of the Councils.* And following these [five ecumenical councils] in all things... we anathematize... Origen, Evagrius, and Didymus. ^D

XXXV. *Authors, or one of the authors, of the Paschal Chronicle, or Alexandrian [Chronicle], proceeding from the creation of the world to the twentieth year of the Emperor Heraclius (which work seems to Ducange to have been written up to the year 354 by one author, and from there to the end by another who lived while Heraclius was emperor) has this at Olympiad 331, page 344 of the Paris edition, year 1688.* In this year of the reign of Justinian... the fifth synod was held in Constantinople against the impious, execrable...

and unclean pagan dogmas, alien to the Christian religion, of Origen, Didymus, and Evagrius, the fighters against God, and of Theodore, etc.

XXXVI. S. Antiochus the abbot (who wrote around the year 641) in his homily 130 of the Pandects, tom. XII of the Bibliotheca Patrum, Paris edition, year 1644, pag. 251. So far the holy Epiphanius has set forth the heretics, whose heresies are expounded. But after these there were Evagrius and Didymus, who followed Origen with regard to pre-existence and restitution. ^B

XXXVII. Lateran Synod (held in the year 649), in the 5th session, can. 18, pag. 364 of tom. VII of the Councils. If anyone ... does not reject and anathematize ... Sabellius, Arius ... Origen, Didymus, Evagrius, and simply all other heretics ... such a man shall be condemned. ^C

XXXVIII. S. Maximus the abbot, theologian and confessor (who took part in the Lateran Synod in the year 649) in his Commonplaces, tom. II of the Combefis edition of his works, brings forward passages from the Works of Didymus on pages 531, 549, 579, 583, 600, 606, 649, 651, 660, 662, 672. One should also see the Coislin codex, about which Montfaucon speaks in the *Bibliotheca Coisliniana*, pag. 574, et seqq. And furthermore, one should see the codex of the seventh shelf of the Medicean Laurentian library, about which Bandinius speaks in his Catalogue, pag. 253.

XXXIX. S. Anastasius Sinaita in the *Hodegos* (which book was written by him between the years 677 and 686), chap. 5, pag. 44, tom. XIV of the Gretser edition of his works, Ratisbon, year 1740. One hundred years after the Council of Chalcedon, under the emperor Justinian, the Fifth Ecumenical Council was held against Origen, Didymus, and Evagrius, who held foolish opinions, in that they said our souls fell from heaven along with the demons into our bodies: and that the punishment (of the damned) has an end; and that the devil shall be restored again to his ancient angelic state. The same holy synod also condemned Severus, etc. The same S. Anastasius in Oration 1 on the Trinity, tom. I of the *Lectiones Antiquae* of Canisius, Basnage edition, pag. 446, writes several things in which ^D one may see that he imitated what Didymus had written both in his book *On the Holy Spirit*, num. 6, and in his book *On the Trinity*, chap. 4, pag. 135 and following.

XL. Macarius, Bishop of Theopolis, namely Antioch, a heretical man (in his profession of faith, which was inserted into the 8th session of the Sixth Synod of the year 680, and which Macarius himself claims to have written long before), tom. VII of the Councils, pag. 777, and again pag. 1208. Whatever (the five ecumenical synods) rejected, we also anathematize, and ... especially Arius ... and also Origen, and Didymus, and Evagrius, and their fabled nonsense.

XLI. The Sixth General Synod of the year 680, sess. 18, tom. VII, pag. 1055, and again pag. 1303. This holy and ecumenical council of ours ... has piously agreed in all things with the five holy and ecumenical synods: namely ... and with the last of these, the Fifth Holy Synod, which was gathered here against Theodore of Mopsuestia, Origen, Didymus, and Evagrius.

XLII. Constantine Pogonatus the emperor in his edict of the year 681, which exists at the end of the Acts of the Sixth General Council, tom. VII, pag. 1133, and again pag. 1320, which seems to Baronius to be spurious or suspect. We also accept that synod which, in the times of Justinian ... was gathered against the fighters against God, Origen, Didymus, and Evagrius.

XLIII. Leo II in his Epistle to Constantine Pogonatus (written in the year 683), which seems to Baronius to be spurious, tom. VII of the Councils, pag. 1153. We likewise anathematize all heresies ... that is, Arius ... Origen, who is also called Adamantius, Didymus, and Evagrius.

^A

XLIV.

XLV.

XLVI.

XLVII.

XLVIII.

XLIX.

L.

LI.

LII.

LIII.

Basilius also, and Gregory, and Didymus, and Rufinus likewise in their own works, [say that] all souls are of one substance, and immortal and rational, and possessed of free choice and will, and that they are to be judged for the things they did in this life; yet that they were created by God who created and fashioned all things. But when they were created—long ago all together, or now one by one as each is born—they say what danger there is in holding either of the two opinions?

LIV. *An uncertain author of the Profession of Faith, which exists in Joann. Alb. Fabricius vol. XI Bibl. Græc. pag. 173.* I accept the seven holy and ecumenical synods... But the fifth... [I accept] as having plucked up and cut away the doctrines of Origen, Didymus, and Evagrius, who were steeped in the opinions of the Gentiles, and who, by an imprudent and inept opinion, had fallen into the final abyss of impiety. For they imagined and devised degrees and substructures of the Godhead, and, establishing within themselves the pre-existence of souls—as well as their effusions and falls, [according to the inclination of their own divinity]—they wanted to transfer them into diverse and multi-form bodies and have them thrust into such, and they vomited forth—as it is said—the end of punishments and the restitution of the demons to their former state, speaking from their belly; and they babbled and rhapsodized these things in empty air, with loose mouths.

LV. *An uncertain author of the opuscule, which is inscribed: Renunciation of the Armenian heretics, edited by Cotelerius in the notes to book v of the Apostolic Constitutions, ch. 13, pag. 317, tom. I, edit. Amstelæd. of the year 1724. The heresy of the Armenians, however, began or flourished around the seventh century.* I accept the fifth Constantinopolitan synod again, which was convened against the writings of the mad Origen, Evagrius, and Didymus.

LVI. *St. Nicephorus, bishop of Constantinople, in his Synodal Letter to Leo III, Roman bishop (written in the year 811), tom. IX of the Concilia, edit. Ven. of the year 1729, pag. 312.* Furthermore, I accept the holy fifth synod of our 165 holy Fathers; which cut away the impious doctrines of Theodore and Nestorius, and also of Origen, Didymus, and Evagrius, and of those around them, which were heretical and, though hidden for a time from the many, had then burst forth and sprouted bitterly. For through these things which they themselves dripped out in their myth-making, they followed Jewish and Greek notions rather than the Christian faith.

LVII. *St. Theophanes (who died in the year 818) in his Chronographia to the year of the world 6045, tom. VI of the Hist. Byzantinæ, edit. Venetæ, pag. 154.* In this year the holy and ecumenical fifth council was celebrated against the mad Origen, Didymus the blind [literally: deprived of the light of the eyes], and Evagrius, and their delirious babblings that inclined toward the mind of the Gentiles.

LVIII. *Freculphus, bishop of Lisieux (who flourished around the year 840) in his Chronicles, tom. II, lib. iv, cap. 21, pag. 247, taken from tom. XVI of the Bibl. Patr. edit. Paris. of the year 1634.* At that time, Didymus of Alexandria, having lost his sight at a young age and being on that account ignorant of the elements [of learning], still provided such a miracle of himself to all that he learned even dialectic and geometry, which require sight most of all, to perfection. He wrote many noble things: commentaries on all the Psalms, commentaries on the Gospel of Matthew, and on John, and *On Dogmas*, and two books *Against the Arians*, and one book *On the Holy Spirit*, which Jerome translated into Latin, and eighteen commentaries on Isaiah, and three books of commentaries on Hosea, and five books on the prophet Zechariah, and commentaries on Job, and infinite other things, which it is [the task] of one’s own judgment—or perhaps index—to organize.

*The same Freculphus in the same tom. II, lib. v, cap. 3, pag. 255.* Apollinaris, Didymus, and Basil of Caesarea answered [Eunomius]... Ambrose of Alexandria, a student of Didymus, wrote against Apollinaris... Jerome wrote these things... one book of Didymus *On the Holy Spirit*, which he translated into Latin.

LIX. *Rabanus Maurus (who died in the year 856), if we believe Thomas Waldensis, whose words will soon be brought forward, produces a certain chapter from Didymus in book iv of his De naturis rerum: which book, however, does not exist among the published works of Rabanus. There does exist, indeed, in the volume of the Works of Bede, the book On the Nature of Things; but in it are not those things which Waldensis brings forward.*

LX. *Photius (who in the year 857 invaded the Constantinopolitan see) in his Letter to Michael, prince of Bulgaria,*

the fifth synod further condemned and anathematized Origen, Didymus, and Evagrius, those ancient distempers of the faithful, who strove to introduce the fables of the pagans into the Church of God. For they raved that souls pre-existed before their bodies, and that one and the same soul enters into many bodies; an impious tenet, worthy only of being spat upon, and befitting none but its own authors. They also voted for an end and limit to interminable punishment, which is the greatest incitement to all sin and a precipice leading to ruin. They even bestowed upon the wicked demons their former standing and dignity, for they taught that their return to that celestial glory from which they once fell would be opened to them. Nor did they imagine that bodies would be resurrected in union with their souls; rather, they supposed that souls rise naked, without bodies—I know not what sort of thing they invented in the meantime as a resurrection; if indeed a resurrection belongs to that which had fallen and died, and not to that which always stood and remained in incorruption, as is the state of the soul. Nor were the wretches shamed by this, nor did they revere how great an injustice toward the righteous Judge they were committing the while through such ravings. For how do they not testify to His extreme injustice, who blasphemously declare that those bodies which struggled together with souls in the stadium of virtue are to be deprived of the common rewards for their labors, or that, having sinned together, they are to be released from all liability and penalty for their deeds, while the souls alone and solitary, separated from the bodies that worked alongside them, either suffer a double punishment or are deemed worthy of a double reward?

LXI. Aeneas, Bishop of Paris (who flourished about the year 867), in the book *Against the Greeks*, ch. 29 and following (vol. I of the *Spicilegium Acheryanum*, Paris edition, 1723, p. 124). Jerome, in the book of Didymus which he translated from Greek into Latin, teaches thus concerning the fact that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and is sent by the Son—not according to the ministry of angels, prophets, and apostles, but as it beseems the Spirit of God to be sent by the Wisdom of God—whence he confesses that He proceeds from the Son just as He does from the Father. So far Aeneas, who immediately subjoins six passages taken from Didymus’s book *On the Holy Spirit*, but with some variation in the readings.

LXII. Ratramnus, monk of Corbie, an equal of Aeneas of Paris, in the second book *Against the Oppositions of the Greeks*, ch. 5 (vol. I of the *Spicilegium Acheryanum*, p. 76). Didymus the Alexandrian, though deprived of his bodily eyes from boyhood, was yet sufficiently illustrious in spiritual vision; in the book which he wrote *On the Holy Spirit*, he speaks thus: "Therefore, whosoever," etc. So Ratramnus, who thereafter, having brought forward numerous testimonies from Didymus, proves at length that the Holy Spirit, according to Didymus’s doctrine, proceeds not only from the Father but also from the Son; and at last he concludes that fifth chapter with these words: "These things, briefly collected from the book of Didymus, are sufficient. While he thought and wrote such things concerning the Holy Spirit situated at Alexandria, he was neither reproved by the Greeks nor suspended from communion by the emperors of the Greeks... Now you, modern emperors, who institute a new sect of error... are proved not to be disciples of those who were your predecessors, who strengthened the Catholic faith, and who always conquered the inventions of perverse dogma." And ch. 6 of the same book, p. 79. Paschasius, an ancient doctor of the Roman See and deacon, in the little book he wrote *On the Holy Spirit*, following the footsteps of Didymus the Alexandrian, speaks thus: "I do not inquire," etc.

LXIII. Anastasius the Librarian (who in the year 869 attended the eighth synod) in his *Ecclesiastical History*, to the year of the world 6046, of Christ 546, or rather to the 26th year of Justinian, p. 34 (Venice edition). In the twenty-sixth year of the reign of Justinian, the fifth holy and universal synod was held against the insane Origen, and Didymus the blind, and Evagrius, and the ravings of their gentile disposition; and again against the Chapters.

LXIV. St. Ado of Vienne (who died about the year 874), in his *Chronicle* to the year 385 (vol. XVI of the *Bibliotheca Patrum*, Lyons edition, 1677, p. 795). Didymus the Alexandrian, deprived of his eyes and on that account also ignorant of the elements, provided such a miracle for all to behold that he learned even dialectic and geometry, which require sight most of all, to perfection.

[LXV.] Auctor of the manuscript catena on John, which exists in a tenth-century codex of the Coislin Library, mentioned by Montfaucon in *Bibl. Coislin.*, p. 64. "For this book has been compiled from many and diverse not only holy Fathers, but also from rejected heretics; I mean John, Bishop of Constantinople... Eusebius and Severus... also Apollinaris and Origen... and Athanasius of Alexandria; sometimes also Basil the Great, and Gregory the Theologian, and Gregory of Nyssa, and Isidore, and Epiphanius of Cyprus, and Methodius of Patara, Anastasius of Antioch, and Didymus the Blind, and many others whose names are not found. Having, therefore, gathered this book from all of these, I have inserted nothing of those things which were spoken wickedly and shamefully in the scholia of the heretics, etc." [LXVI.] The author of the scholia, or catena on the Psalms, which exists in a tenth-century Greek codex mentioned by Montfaucon in *Biblioth. Coislin.*, p. 137, brings forward many things from Didymus; and once he says: "From Didymus the monk." [LXVII.] The author of the opuscule, which is entitled: "Definitions of the Orthodox Faith" (*Όροι πίστεως ὀρθοδοξίας*), which was edited by Montfaucon in *Bibl. Coislin.*, p. 265, from a codex of about the eleventh century. "And again the other [synod] at Constantinople under Justinian... (held) against Origen, Evagrius, and Didymus... And I anathematize every heresy from Simon Magus... and especially: 1) Arius, 2) Eunomius... 15) Origen, Evagrius, 17) Didymus." [LXVIII.] Hermannus Contractus in his *Chronicon* (which was written in the year 1054), tom. III *Lect. antiqq.* of Canisius, Basnage's edition, part 1, p. 214. (Year 371). Didymus the Blind of Alexandria flourished. [LXIX.] St. Nicon (who flourished about the year 1060 under Constantine Ducas) in an unpublished work titled *Pandectes*, brings forward sentences or fragments from Didymus, as Montfaucon testifies in *Bibl. Coislin.*, p. 111 and 491. This work exists also in Venice in the Nanian Library; but the codex is very mutilated and imperfect. See also Montfaucon’s *Bibliotheca bibliothecarum*, p. 1051. [LXX.] Nicetas, Metropolitan of Heraclea (who flourished about the year 1077), author or collector of a catena on Job, brings forward passages from Didymus here and there, as for example at p. 14, 17, 28, etc., of the Junian edition. [LXXI.] Antonius, nicknamed Melissa, that is, the Bee (who flourished, as Oudin thinks, about the year 1080), in his *Sententiæ*, book I, brings forward five passages from Didymus. [LXXII.] The author of the manuscript catena on the Acts of the Apostles, which exists in a codex of the library of New College, Oxford, brings forward passages culled from Didymus here and there. Johann Christoph Wolf published many of these fragments in volumes III and IV of his *Anecdota*; in the preface to volume III, he praises the exquisite sharpness of judgment of the collector, whoever he may be, in selecting the most excellent thoughts of the doctors. Wolf says he has nothing certain to say about his age; but he says this alone is certain, that this collector is at least more recent than the sixth century. [LXXIII.] Theophylactus, Archbishop of the Bulgarians (who flourished in the eleventh and early twelfth centuries), brings forward Didymus' fragments twice in his commentary on the Acts of the Apostles, ch. 1, p. 18, and ch. 3, p. 42 of the third volume of his *Works*, Venetian edition of the year 1758. [LXXIV.] Other catenae of uncertain authors in which fragments from Didymus are brought forward. However, the reader should note that not all these catenae are different from one another. But it is for those who can consult the codices in which they are transcribed to show which ones differ among themselves. They therefore allege or mention Didymus. I. The catenae of five authors on Genesis, the first of which is mentioned by Lambecius, tom. I, p. 20. The second was edited by Aloysius Lippomanus, who alleges Didymus on pages 29, 92, 103, 141, etc. The third exists in the codex of the Royal Library of Paris, as is evident from tom. II of the Catalog of codices of that library, p. 20. The fourth is in codex 161, of the 13th century, of the same library. The fifth is in the Passionaean codex of the 15th century, p. 44. II. The author of the catena on Exodus, which exists in a codex of the Royal Library of Paris. III. The author of the Greek catena on the Pentateuch, about which Fabricius writes in *Bibl. Gr.*, vol. VII, p. 729, and which has been edited only in Latin.

IV. Authors of the five catenae on the Octateuch, the first of which is in the Greek codex 50 of the Royal Library of Turin, as is evident from volume I of the Catalogue of that same library, page 154. The second is in Greek codex 15 of the library of St. Mark at Venice. This one is said to contain fragments from Didymus: I have found none in it; but since I ran through it in haste, perhaps they escaped my eyes. Montfaucon says that he saw a third at Venice in a codex of the eleventh century, in *Diarium Italicum*, page 433. The fourth is in codex 128 of the Royal Library of Paris. The fifth is in the same place, in codex 129. ^A

V. Authors of the catenae on the Books of Kings, the first of which I saw at Venice in the library of St. Mark, in Greek codex 16, and Didymus is cited there on pages 46, 68, 79, 129 et seqq., 150, 195, and 199. The second exists in a codex of the tenth century, which Montfaucon discusses in *Bibliotheca Coisliniana*, page 44. The third is in codex 133 of the Royal Library of Paris. Finally, John Rudolph of Cordoba cites Didymus in a catena on the Books of Kings.

VI. Authors of the catenae on Job, the first of which is mentioned by Montfaucon in *Bibliotheca Coisliniana*, page 57, and is said to differ hardly at all from the catena of Nicetas already edited. The second exists in the Passionei codex of the fourteenth century, page 76: I formerly collated it with the catena of Nicetas, and found it to be indeed similar, but in some part different. The third is in the Greek Nanian codex. The fourth is in the Medicean Laurentian codex 27 of shelf 5, which was written at the beginning of the fourteenth century, as the illustrious Bandini testifies, page 52 of his Catalogue, who says that it differs not a little from the catena of Nicetas. Fifth, one must also see codex 19 of shelf 10 of the same library. The sixth exists in codex 134 of the Royal Library of Paris. The seventh and eighth are in codices 138 and 151 of the same library. Ninth, in codex 162 of the tenth century, which exists in the same place, scholia on John are read, in which Didymus is cited. The tenth is in a codex of the Escorial Library, which Corderius mentions on page XXIII of his Index of that Library, published by Corderius himself together with nineteen homilies of Cyril of Alexandria on Jeremiah. ^B

VII. Authors of the catenae on the Psalms, the first of which was edited by Corderius. I saw the second at Venice in the library of St. Mark in Greek codex 17, and it is different from the Corderian one. The third exists in the Medicean Laurentian Library, as Bandini testifies on page 34. The fourth and fifth are in codices 79 and 221 of the Royal Library of Turin. I saw the sixth, different from the previous ones, at Venice in a Greek codex of the Nanian Library. The seventh is in codex 188 of the Coislin library, which is of the tenth century, as Montfaucon testifies in *Bibl. Coisl.*, page 244. The eighth is in a codex of the tenth century of the same library, mentioned by Montfaucon on page 57. From the catalog of the Fathers cited in this catena, however, I gather that it differs from the Corderian one. The ninth is in the same place, in codex 80, in which Didymus is also once called a monk, as I said a little earlier on page 490. Tenth, others exist in codices 139, 140, 141, 146, 148, 163, 164, 166, and 167 of the Royal Library of Paris. Eleventh, in the codices which are mentioned in volume I of the *Manuscripts of England*, part 1, pages 20 and 121. Finally, Montfaucon certifies in *Bibliotheca bibliothecarum*, page 256, that in the catena which exists in codex 3 of shelf 6 of the Medicean Laurentian library, Didymus is cited. But the illustrious Bandini, in reviewing that codex and enumerating the Fathers from whom the catena is woven, makes no mention of Didymus. ^C

VIII. Authors of the catenae on the Canticles of the Old and New Testaments. Fabricius mentions the first in *Bibl. Gr.*, vol. VII, page 729. The second exists in codex 159 of the Vienna Library, as Nessel testifies in volume I, page 235. The third is in codex 81 of the Coislin Library of the eleventh century, as Montfaucon testifies in *Bibl. Coisl.*, page 138. The fourth is in codex 274 of the same library, as Montfaucon testifies ibid., page 389.

IX. Authors of the catenae extant on the Proverbs of Solomon. First, in codex 31 of the Bavarian library of Munich, in the possession of the most serene Elector. Codex 8 of the same library should also be seen. Second, in Peltanus's Latin edition of a catena of this kind. Third, in codex 22 of the library of St. Mark at Venice. Fourth, in codex 23 of the same library, which I saw: in it, however, the catena is inscribed thus: *Ἐκλογαὶ ἑρμηνειῶν εἰς τὰς Παροιμίας Σολομῶντος ἐκ διαφόρων Πατέρων*, that is, *Selected Interpretations on the Proverbs of Solomon from diverse Fathers*. Fifth, in the Passionei codex, which is 23 for me. Sixth, in the Coislin codex 194 of the sixteenth century, as Montfaucon testifies, page 247 of *Bibl. Coisl.* Seventh, in the paper codex 31 of the library of the most serene Elector of Bavaria, as the illustrious Francis Topsl, provost of the regular canons of Polling, advised me. Eighth, in codex 8 of the same library, as Montfaucon testifies in *Bibliotheca bibliothecarum*, page 587. Ninth, in codices 151, 154, 172, and 174 of the Royal Library of Paris. Tenth, in a codex of the Escorial, as is evident from page 23 of the Corderian Index already cited.

X. Authors of the catenae on Ecclesiastes, the first of which I saw at Venice in Greek codex 22 of the library of St. Mark. The second exists in codex 176 of the Royal Library of Paris. Three others, however, exist at Oxford in the Bodleian library, as Fabricius testifies, vol. VII *Bibl. Gr.*, page 751.

XI. Authors of the catenae on the Song of Solomon, the first of which exists in Greek codex 95 of the Royal Library of Turin, as I learn from volume I of the Catalogue of the codices of that library, page 184. The second was edited by Meursius, and cites Didymus, page 19. The third exists in codex 153 of the Royal Library of Paris. ^D

XII. Author of the catena on Isaiah, which exists in a codex of the Escorial, as is evident from the Corderian Index already cited.

XIII. Authors of the catenae on Jeremiah: the first of which was edited by Ghislerius, and cites Didymus in vol. I, page 34, and vol. II, pages 704 and 753. The second exists in codex 4 of shelf X of the Medicean Laurentian library. See Bandini, page 500 of the Catalogue. The third is in codex 159 of the Royal Library of Paris.

XIV. Author of the scholia on Daniel, which exist in codex 159 of the Royal Library of Paris.

XV. Author of the catena on Matthew, Luke, and John, which exists in codex 187 of the Royal Library of Paris.

XVI. Author of the catena on Luke, which Corderius edited in a Latin translation; he cites Didymus at chapter 8, section 5.

XVII. Authors of the catenae on John. The first of which was edited by Corderius, and cites Didymus eleven times. The second exists in codex 33 of shelf 6 of the Medicean Laurentian library. The third is in the Coislin codex 23, as Montfaucon testifies, page 67 of *Bibl. Coisl.* Fourth, one must see codex 195 of the same library, and what Montfaucon writes about it in the same place, page 248. The fifth is in codex 209 of the Royal Library of Paris. Sixth, St. Thomas in his catena on the Gospels cites Didymus.

XVIII. Authors of the catenae on the Acts: Richard Simon testifies in Fabricius, vol. VII *Bibl. Gr.*, page 789, that the first exists in a codex of the Royal Library of Paris written 600 years ago. The second is mentioned below, page 490. The third was collected by Andrew the presbyter, and exists in the Coislin codex 25, of the tenth century. See Montfaucon, *Bibl. Coisl.*, pages 76 and 77. The fourth exists in codex 202, formerly 94 Coislinian, of the eleventh century. See Montfaucon, ibid., page 263. The fifth is in codex 216 of the Royal Library of Paris.

XIX. Authors of the catenae on the Epistles of St. Paul: the first of which exists in the Bodleian library, as Fabricius testifies, vol. VII *Bibl. Gr.*, page 790. The second in codex 204, Coislinian of about the eleventh century. See Montfaucon, *Bibl. Coisl.*, page 264. The third is in codex 216 of the Royal Library of Paris.

The fifth is in a codex of the eleventh century in the Laurentian Library of the Medici, according to Bandini, page [entry] of the Catalogue.

XXI. Authors of Eclogae, or Excerpts from Scripture and the Fathers. Such Eclogae exist, firstly, in a Coislinian codex of the twelfth century, according to Montfaucon, *Bibl. Coisl.*, page 412. Secondly, in a Coislinian codex of the twelfth century, as the same author testifies, *ibid.*, page 414.

XXII. Finally, Montfaucon himself writes as follows in his *Palaeographia*, page 347: "Errors have been very frequent, especially in catenae, where... for example, Athanasius appears instead of Didymus, because since the letters Δ and Α in codices are very similar, a double Δ was taken for a double Α, and thus was read 'Athanasius'."

LXXV. Sigebert of Gembloux (who flourished around the year 1113) in his *Chronicle*, which runs from the year 381 to the year 1113, has this to say for the year 396: Didymus, deprived of his eyes, died at Alexandria at the age of 85.

LXXVI. John Zonaras the Schismatic (who flourished around the year 1118) in his *Annals*, Book XIII, Vol. II, Venice edition of 1729, page 53: The reason for the calling of this council (the fifth) was Origen and his perverse opinions, and his followers Didymus and Evagrius: whose dogma was that souls existed before bodies, that there would be an end to punishment, that demons would recover their original dignity, and many other things. The same Zonaras, in his *Canon on the Mother of God*, which exists in Vol. III of the *Monuments of the Greek Church* edited by Cotelier, page 468:

Didymus, Evagrius. Together with Didymus, Evagrius teaches again the pre-existence of souls, having accepted that absurd opinion from Origen. The same. It is the dogma of the same men, again, that demons and those humans who have committed impious acts are destined to receive restoration, and that after completing the unity with the angels—which they invent with a wicked mind. ^A

LXXVII. Honorius of Autun (who flourished around the year 1120) in his book *On Ecclesiastical Writers*, Chapter 110: Didymus the Alexandrian, having lost his sight at a tender age—and because of this being also entirely ignorant of his letters—offered himself as such a wonder to all that he learned logic and geometry, which requires sight above all else, to perfection. He wrote very many noble works: commentaries on the Psalms; commentaries on the Gospel of Matthew and John; two books *On Dogmas* and *Against the Arians*; one book *On the Holy Spirit*; eighteen books on Isaiah; three books on Hosea; five on Zechariah; and commentaries on Job, and many other things. And Chapter 127 of the same book: Ambrose the Alexandrian, a disciple of Didymus. And Chapter 136: Jerome... wrote... one book *On the Holy Spirit*.

LXXVIII. George Cedrenus (who flourished around the year 1150) in his *Compendium of Histories*, Vol. I, page 236, Venice edition of 1729: In that year (namely the sixth of Constantius), a certain Didymus, a famous man, became known, having been deprived of his eyes. The great Anthony, coming to Alexandria, met him and said to him: "Do not let the loss of your eyes trouble you. For you have lost such eyes as even flies and gnats can injure; rather, rejoice that you possess eyes by which even angels see." And page 297: In the twenty-fifth year of the reign of Justinian, the holy and ecumenical fifth synod was held... against Severus... but also against the mad Origen, and those who adopted his impious dogmas, Didymus the blind and Evagrius, who had flourished long before, and against the chapters put forth by them, in which they rhapsodized—taking the pretext of Greek opinions—concerning the transition of souls into one body after another, pretending that souls [were pre-existent] to bodies...

the end of punishments, and that our bodies would not be the same ones resurrected in the resurrection, and [advocating for] the restoration of demons to their original state; they also allegorized paradise, saying it was not created by God to be perceived by the senses, and that Adam was not fashioned in the flesh. These doctrines were for a time mostly hidden, but when they spread to the multitude and corrupted many in the Church, they were then denounced and anathematized. ^A

LXXIX. Petrus Diaconus (who died after the year 1140) in the book *De viris illustribus Casinensibus*, ch. 36, or page 187 of the *Bibliotheca ecclesiastica* edited by Jo. Alb. Fabricius. "Paulus, born in Liguria, a province of the Romans, having been deprived of light from his very infancy by the hidden judgment of God, and on this account being ignorant of letters and philosophical studies, offered himself as such a miracle to the present day that he is called by all a second Didymus." After he wrote, etc.

LXXX. Anselmus of Havelberg (who wrote in the year 1145) in book II of the *Dialogues*, ch. 24, or page 189 of volume I of the *Spicilegium* of d'Achery. "Didymus is also a teacher of the Greeks of no small account, who published many books, and made three books *On the Holy Trinity*, and commented on the work of Origen *On First Principles*, that is περὶ ἀρχῶν, leaving behind excellent explanations: he, I say, Didymus, though deprived of sight by an affliction of the eyes, was yet perfectly illuminated within, and in the book *On the Holy Spirit*, which our Jerome—learned in the Greek, Latin, and Hebrew tongues—translated, he patently shows that the Holy Spirit also proceeds from the Son, saying: 'The Holy Spirit, who is the Spirit of truth,' etc.... Thus Didymus."

LXXXI. Gratianus in the *Decretum* (which he published in the year circa 1151) part III, *De consecr.*, dist. 5, ch. 40, page 2414, Venetian edition of the year 1604, brings forward a long testimony from Didymus, so that he may prove the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son. But the editors of the Decretum inscribed as a title for this chapter: "Item Didymus in book II *On the Holy Spirit* against the errors of the Greeks."

LXXXII. Alcherus, a Cistercian monk (who flourished in the middle of about the 12th century, and to whom the Maurist monks attribute the book *De spiritu et anima*), in chapter 49 of his book, or vol. VI of the *Works of Augustine* in the Appendix page 55, mentions Didymus: but he does nothing other than copy out the words of Gennadius already cited on page 482 from the book *De dogmatibus ecclesiasticis*.

LXXXIII. The author of the chronicle of Weingarten (who wrote about the year 1200) in vol. III of the *Lectiones antiquae* of Canisius, part II, page 594, Basnage edition. "Valens... reigned for eleven years; Ambrosius, Maximus, and Jerome flourished." Thus indeed the printed copies have it: but I think that for Maximus, we should read Didymus.

LXXXIV. Vincent of Beauvais, Order of Preachers (who died in the year 1264) in the *Speculum Historiale*, book xiv, ch. 55, page 190, Venetian edition of the year 1591. "Jerome in the *Chronicon*, in the eighth year of Valentinian: 'Didymus the Alexandrian [wrote] many things about our dogma,' etc. Rufinus, in the second book: 'Didymus, while still a boy, with the rudiments,' etc." And chapter 56 of the same book. "Jerome in the book *De viris illustribus*: 'Didymus the Alexandrian, taken by the eyes from a young age,' etc." Then, after the testimony of Jerome was cited, Vincent of Beauvais adds this: "Of all the books of Didymus, I have found none in the libraries which are among us, except the book *On the Holy Spirit*; which Jerome testifies he translated into Latin, saying, etc." It should be noted concerning the passages of Jerome and Rufinus brought forward by the Beauvaisian, that if they are compared with their printed works, some variations of readings are detected.

LXXXV. Joannes de Columna, Roman, Order of Preachers (who in the year 1255 was made archbishop of Messina, and in 1263, vicar of Rome) has these things in a book not yet edited *De viris illustribus*, divided into two parts, which he seems to have written after the year 1263, part II, page 59, of the parchment codex which is preserved in Venice in the library of the Saints John and Paul, and from which I have copied these things. The most learned man Bernard de Rubeis shows that the same codex was interpolated, or rather augmented, in the 14th century regarding more recent writers. See his preliminary admonition to volume I of the *Works of St. Thomas*. "Didymus the Alexandrian was, by race, a man of—I do not know whether it should be read 'moral' or 'of morals' or 'in morals'—remarkable skill and doctrine. For he, as Rufinus says, when at a young age he was still ignorant even of the first elements of letters, being blinded of light, was inflamed with a greater desire for the true light; and not suffering despair of the study he desired, when he had heard it written in the Gospel, 'What is impossible among men is possible with God' [*], trusting in this promise in the Lord, he prayed more obnoxiously, that he might receive the illumination of his heart; yet he mixed studies with prayers, and labor, and employed constant and continuous vigils not for reading, but for hearing, so that what to others was sight, to him might be supplied by hearing. When after the labors of night-study, as is wont to happen, sleep had come upon those who read, Didymus, not considering that sleep given for rest or leisure, like a clean animal ruminating the food which it had taken, would bring it back in its entirety, so that he seemed not so much to have heard what had been read as to have inscribed it upon the pages of his mind. And so—

[*] Matt. xix, 26; Luke xviii, 27.

^A by the teaching of God, he arrived at such erudition and knowledge of both divine and human things that he became a Doctor of the ecclesiastical school, being highly approved by Bishop Athanasius and other wise men in the Church of God. But in other disciplines, whether dialectic, geometry, astronomy, or arithmetic, he was so expert that no philosopher ever proposing to overcome him in any of these arts was able to refute him. But as soon as he received a response, he would seek out the master of the very discipline about which he had proposed the question. His writings, too, are held in great admiration today. He wrote, as Jerome says, many noble works: namely, commentaries on all the Psalms, commentaries on the Gospels of John and Matthew. Item, ^B *On Dogmas against the Arians*, one book; item, *On the Holy Spirit*, one book, which Jerome converted from Greek into Latin; on Isaiah, eighteen tomes; on Hosea, three books; on Zechariah, seven books. Item, commentaries on the books of Holy Job. But regarding the books of this holy doctor, very little is found among the Latins, except for the book *On the Holy Spirit* which Jerome translated, as has been said. In the prologue to which he says: “Wishing to chatter something about the Holy Spirit, I preferred to be an interpreter of another’s work than, as some do, to adorn myself with borrowed colors like the unsightly crow.” I read the booklets *On the Holy Spirit* a long time ago, and according to the comic’s saying, I saw no good Latin from good Greek: there was nothing manly, nothing rigorous, but everything was flaccid, soft, and polished. But my Didymus, having the eyes of the Bride, and those lights which Jesus commands to be lifted up into the glowing fields, ^C looking far more deeply, restores to us the ancient custom, so that he is called a prophet who sees. Certainly whoever reads this will recognize the thefts of the Latins and will scorn to draw from streams when he can drink from the fountains. And when the blessed Antony had descended from the Thebaid to Alexandria, intending to bring testimony of Athanasius’s faith against the Arians, he consoled him with magnificent words: “Let it not offend you, O Didymus,” he said, “that you are seen to be deprived of carnal eyes; you lack those eyes which mice, flies, and lizards possess. But rejoice that you have the eyes which the angels possess, through which the light of knowledge is kindled in you as a teacher.” And Eusebius also speaks thus of him: “We who were auditors of his living voice and in some part of the things which were written down by some while he was teaching, recognized a far greater grace and a certain divine quality sounding above human voice in those discourses which were brought forth from his very mouth.” He lived for ninety years. He flourished under the Emperor Valentinian.

LXXXVI

The uncertain author of the *Imperfect Synopsis of the General Councils of the Ancients*, in a fragment which is cited in *Tom. VI of the Councils*, Venetian edition of the year 1729, page 417. I have placed this testimony here because it seems the same as the one immediately following, or that one was transcribed from the other.

The holy synod (the fifth) also rejected and anathematized in the first place the demented Origen and all his impious dogmas and writings, then Evagrius and Didymus, as his fellow-mystics and followers, and those teeming with pagan dogmas. For even the bodies which we now bear, they foolishly said, were not fashioned by God; nor that Adam existed and was not fashioned in the flesh; and that there is an end to punishments; and the restoration of demons to their former state. And not only these things, but also other things beyond these, which were kept like mysteries, were not entirely brought forth in the synod, even if some of the holy Fathers held them, for those three heretics were older than this holy synod. But when those perverse sprouts had deceived the common people, then that holy synod gathered and anathematized them and their followers together with their blasphemies.

LXXXVII

The author of the *Treatise against the Greeks* (which is said to have been published at Constantinople in the year 1252), *Tom. XXVII of the Bibliotheca Patrum*, Lyons edition of the year 1677, page 612. But Combefis and Fabricius say it was written by Pantaleon of the Order of Preachers.

The same holy synod (the fifth) excommunicated Origen and all his impious writings, Evagrius and Didymus, and those like them, and those who were equally wise; and they who were scornful of the doctrines of the Gentiles (perhaps it should be read: those straining after, or consenting to). For they themselves said that the bodies, in which we now exist, would not be resurrected, as if they were without intellect and stupid; and that the sensible paradise was not made by God, nor does it exist; and that Adam was not formed by God in the flesh; and that the punishment of the reprobate has an end; and that demons will be returned to the original state which they had, clearly, before they fell. And not only this, but gathering other infinite blasphemies, they plunged themselves into the deep. These things, however, they did not preach in public or make manifest, but they were kept in secret among some, and said dogmas could not be perfectly appraised by the holy synod. Because when the said three heretics were much older than the aforementioned fifth council, they drew many in different parts of the world to themselves. And when they had begun to corrupt a great many people with such impious dogmas, the fifth council was immediately celebrated by the will of God, where, reprobating them and their blasphemies, it struck them and all who followed such things with the sword of anathema. In addition, [it also condemned] Theodore, etc.

LXXXVIII

St. Thomas Aquinas in his *Continuous Exposition*, or *Catena Aurea* on the evangelists (which work he wrote shortly after the year 1262, and says that he compiled it from the various books of the doctors), frequently cites passages of Didymus from the book *On the Holy Spirit*: which, if they are compared with the editions of his book, some variety of the readings will be detected. Namely, at chapter XXVIII of Matthew, or *Tom. IV* of the Venice edition of the year 1715, page 495, we read: “Didymus in the book *On the Holy Spirit*: ‘Although one may be of a stony heart, so to speak,’ etc.” And at chapter XIV of John, or *Tom. V*, page 609: “Didymus *On the Holy Spirit*: ‘But he called the Holy Spirit another Paraclete,’ etc.” He also cites Didymus...

S. Thomas, and he alleges his words at chapter XV of John, page 624, and again page 625. And at chapter XVI, page 630; and again twice, page 631; and likewise page 632. And in the *Summa Theologica* (which he began to write in the year 1265), part III, question 66, article 6, or vol. XXIV, page 416. But to the contrary is what Pope Pelagius writes.... Didymus also says in the second book *On the Holy Spirit*: "Although one may be able to exist," etc. But that word, "second," has crept into the Venetian edition. Elsewhere, too, he seems to cite Didymus under the name of S. Jerome: as in part I, question 31, article 2, page 188, where it is read: "Because heresy is incurred from words spoken inordinately, as Jerome says, therefore when we speak about the Trinity, we should proceed with caution and modesty." He brings forward the same words shortly after, namely question 39, article 7, page 227, where the editors note these things: "It is referred to by the Master of the Sentences, book 1, dist. 13, at the end; but it occurs nowhere in Jerome." So they say. But I, for my part, would believe that the beginning of Didymus's book *On the Holy Spirit* is being referred to, both by the Master and by S. Thomas. Read also question 33, article 4, page 201.

LXXXIX. Ptolemy of Lucca, Bishop of Torcello, of the Order of Preachers (he died shortly after the year 1325), in *Ecclesiastical History*, book V, chapter 27, or vol. XI of the *Rerum Italicarum Scriptores*, page 838. About these times also was Didymus of Alexandria, who, having been taken from a young age and deprived of his sight, as Jerome writes, and for this reason ignorant of letters, provided such a miracle of himself to all that he learned dialectic and grammar to perfection with the very greatest effort. This man wrote many volumes, namely, *Commentaries on all the Psalms*, as the same doctor writes: *Commentaries on the Gospel of Matthew and John*; and two books *On Dogmas Against the Arians*: one book *On the Holy Spirit*, which the same doctor says he translated from Greek into Latin; eighteen tomes *On Isaiah*; and in writing to Jerome, three books *On Hosea*. For he lived for a long time, and his life extended even to the times of the aforementioned doctor, on account of which Jerome himself asked him to write a commentary on Zechariah, and he made five books. He also made commentaries on Job, and many other things, not without great admiration for the divine illumination within him. Rufinus in book XI handed down his history more diffusely than anyone else.

XC. Nicephorus Callistus, son of Callistus, in *Ecclesiastical History* (which he wrote around the year 1320), book IX, chapter 17, or vol. I, page 715, of the Parisian edition of the year 1630.

At those times also, the ecclesiastical writer Didymus was known, presiding over the sacred studies of the school in Alexandria. And he had acquired the reputation of being proficient not only in this, but he also possessed all other kinds of wisdom in great detail. For he had been trained to the highest degree in the poets and rhetoricians; and as for astronomy, geometry, and the ratios of numbers, nothing escaped his notice. He had mastered the different opinions of the philosophers to such an extent that he seemed to know nothing else. He had acquired all these things through his mind and his hearing. For in infancy, having been born altogether blind, he lived only by the experience of the elements; but when he reached adolescence, he began to love the cultivation of learning. And indeed, attending the schools, he only listened; yet he reached such a level of wisdom in a short time, through the greatness and quickness of his nature, that he learned the scholastic discussions of the disciplines and the secrets of the theorems to the highest degree. But it is said that, being blind, he learned letters by the touch of his hand. For he came to know the forms of the letters, which were carved deeply into a board, by touching them; but the other things, syllables, combinations, and what follows, he grasped by the sharpness of his mind through his hearing. And he was an extraordinary wonder both when heard and when seen. Many therefore came even to Alexandria, some merely to see the man, others to hear the grace that resided in his words. Surviving the glory of Nicaea, he stood firm against the Arians. And he throttled them with the persuasion of his arguments, which he did not seem to effect by force. And for those who were doubtful, he set forth the arguments and deferred the judgment to those who were contending (and he was the most persuasive); but for those who held the correct belief, he was on that account especially lovable. Nor was he honored only by these, but he was also held in honor by the monks in Egypt. And the famous Antony in asceticism admired him as a miracle. They say that he, having arrived in Alexandria, bearing witness to the certainty of the faith of Athanasius, spoke such words to Didymus: "It is not fitting, O Didymus, that you should consume yourself with grief, being deprived of eyes, which mice, lizards, and base creeping things possess; but rather you should rejoice and be glad, because you see with those eyes which are within, similar to the angels; through which you clearly perceive divine and incorruptible knowledge, and look upon the truth with precision." And he...

left behind these books: various commentaries on the entire book of the Psalms; five books on Hosea and Zechariah; eighteen books on Isaiah; not a few commentaries on the Gospel according to Matthew and according to John. Furthermore, he composed many other writings, ^A including against the Arians, and on the Holy Spirit.

Et libro x, cap. 35, seu tom. II, pag. 82.

But Didymus, the philosopher of the Church, inhabiting Alexandria, was in the greatest grief, both because of the emperor, who chose to follow such an impious religion, and because he saw the Churches being so greatly despised. Wherefore, macerating himself with fasts, and invoking God with prayers, when out of intense anxiety he had not even taken any food at night, while sitting in his chair he was overcome by sleep; then, being caught up in an ecstasy, he seemed to see white horses running through the air, and the riders who were sitting upon them and restraining them were calling out with a loud voice: "Announce to Didymus that at this very hour Julian has been slain; and let this be announced to the great Athanasius, and let him rise and take food." ... Such are the things that the monk Julian and the ecclesiastical philosopher Didymus of Alexandria saw. Nor did any one of them deviate from the truth, which the slaughter subsequently reported confirmed.

Et lib. XI, cap. 37, tom. II, pag. 187.

(Ammonius the monk) was also a great lover of letters and learning, so that he would read the writings of Origen, Didymus, and Evagrius diligently and successfully.

Et cap. 42 ejusdem libri, seu tom. II, pag. 196.

After Ephraim the Syrian, Didymus the Alexandrian ^B and Evagrius the Egyptian were most celebrated in both philosophies. But concerning Didymus, who he was, and what writings he left behind him, has been stated by me in the ninth book of this history; concerning Evagrius, however, etc... Both of these men limped in the sound doctrine of the faith, even though they threw very many shafts of words against the enemies of the truth.

Et libro eodem cap. 43, seu tom. II, pag. et seq.

Evagrius writes this word for word in the book which is inscribed *Practicus*. But let us hear what he also sets forth in his *Gnostic*... "Constantly meditate within yourself on the discourses concerning Providence and Judgment," says that great doctor and teacher instructed in spiritual science, Didymus, "and endeavor to carry the subjects of these discourses in your memory; for almost everyone errs in these matters. And you will find the discourses concerning judgment in the difference of bodies and of the world. But you will perceive the discourses concerning Providence in those ways by which we are led from vice and ignorance to virtue and knowledge." These things, for the sake of an example, we have set before you, taken from the books of Evagrius.

Et libro XVII, cap. 27, seu tom. II, pag. 774 et seq.

The Emperor Justinian gathered the holy fifth ecumenical synod... when many who professed the dogmas of Origen were flourishing in Palestine... After the Fathers (of the fifth synod) had gathered together in one place, they brought forward for discussion the case of Origen, Didymus, and Evagrius in the first instance, namely, because they had wrongly mixed the opinions of the Greeks into the correct doctrines of the Church: and they judged that these opinions should be removed.

Et eodem capite 27, pag. 776 et seq.

But in the second session, petitions were offered and read by Eulogius, Conon, Cyriacus, and Pancratius, monks of Jerusalem, against the impious dogmas of Origen—who is also called Adamantius—and against the followers of his impiety and deception; Justinian once again asked the synod to pronounce judgment concerning them.

^A ...The same monks also very diligently collected other, more numerous blasphemies of Didymus, Evagrius, and Theodore from their incorrectly written books, and brought them to the synod; all of which they condemned with anathema, and they set them all out in order.

*In the same book, chapter 29.*

Not much time, as has been said, had passed since the fifth synod... for once the doctrines of Severus had been driven out of the Church, along with those who held his views, and furthermore, the strange and absurd dogmas of Origen, Didymus, Evagrius, and others had been consigned to anathema, etc.

*And page 783, in the same chapter.*

When Macarius had been restored to his throne at Jerusalem (for Justinian had reinstated him, after he had subjected Origen, Didymus, and Evagrius to anathema), and after the deposition of Eustochius (for he had deposed him as he was unwilling to yield to his dogmas), the same emperor wrote an edict (for that is the Latin term).

XCI. Guido Terrena, Perpinianus, of the Carmelite order (died in the year 1342), in his *Summa on Heresies*, chapter i, *On the Heresies of the Greeks*, or page 31 of the Cologne edition of 1631.

Whence Didymus, the greatest doctor of the Greeks, says in his book *On the Holy Spirit* that the Holy Spirit is called the Spirit of Truth because He proceeds from the Truth, which is the very thing that is meant by saying He is "from the Son," that is, proceeding.

XCII. Guillelmus Pastrengus of Verona, tutor of Petrarch, famous around the year 1330, in his book *On Illustrious Men*. This book was once printed at Venice in the year 1547 by Michael Angelo Blondo, as Montfaucon testifies in Vol. XIII of the Works of Chrysostom, page 291; but since I did not have the printed copy at hand, I transcribed his words from a manuscript codex in the Venetian Library of the Saints John and Paul, in which there are pages... [text breaks off; the word "causidicus" is an isolated fragment here].

Didymus of Alexandria, having been blind from early childhood and therefore ignorant of letters, still proved such a miracle of himself that he learned dialectic and arithmetic to the full. He published many distinguished works: commentaries on all the Psalms, and on the Gospels of Matthew and John. Also, two books *On Dogmas against the Arians*, and the book *On the Holy Spirit*, which the blessed Jerome reports that he translated from Greek into Latin. Eighteen books on Isaiah. Also, writing to Jerome, two books of commentaries on Hosea. On Zechariah, through the encouragement of the same Jerome, five books. Commentaries on Job. And many other things which he himself was able to indicate. He died in his eighty-third year, his life already completed.

XCIII. Andreas Dandulus (Doges of Venice in the year 1345) in his *Chronicle*, book v, chapter 10, part xvi, or Vol. XII of *Scriptores Rerum Italicarum*, page 90.

Pope Vigilius... at Constantinople... celebrated the fifth universal synod against Theodore... and against Origen, Evagrius, and Didymus, and against other heresies.

XCIV. Gobelinus Persona (who died around the year 1420), in his *Cosmodromium*, age vi, chapter 18, or Vol. 1 of *Rerum Germanicarum*, Leipzig edition of 1688, page 208.

In the sixth year of his (Valentinian's) reign, Eusebius, Bishop of Vercelli, died. At that time, Didymus of Alexandria composed many books through scribes, even though he had been blinded five years after his birth and was ignorant of the elements. When St. Antony had descended from the Thebaid to Alexandria to bear witness to the faith of Athanasius against the Arians, he consoled this Didymus with these words: "Let it not offend you, O Didymus, that you seem to be deprived of carnal eyes; for you lack those eyes which mice, flies, and lizards possess; but rejoice that you have the eyes which angels have, by which God is seen; through which a great light of knowledge is kindled for you." And Jerome, in his book *On Illustrious Men*, writes of that same Didymus, saying: that that very Didymus, at the time when Jerome wrote the aforementioned book, was already exceeding the eighty-third year of his life. At the same time flourished Epiphanius, etc.

XCV. Thomas Valdensis (who died in 1431), in *Doctrinale Fidei*, book 1, chapter 31, or Vol. 1 of the Works, Venetian edition of 1757, page 171.

But let us proceed to show the patrons of this school, in which Wycliffe posits a trinity of natures in one suppositum of man: spirit, soul, and flesh. For I have found one of the ancients, Didymus, reproved for this opinion. Whence Augustine, *On the Definitions of the Right Faith*, chapter 19; and Rabanus assumes this in *On the Natures of Things*, book iv, chapter 10. Augustine: "Man consists of two substances," he says... "The spirit is not a third thing in the substance of man, as Didymus contends," etc.

Then, having brought forward the words of Gennadius, which he attributes to Augustine, and which I have cited above on page 482, Valdensis adds:

The aforementioned Rabanus, and Augustine. Behold how clearly and in serial order the trinity of Wycliffe was condemned in Didymus: because he assigned a third nature, the spirit, apart from the soul and the flesh.

[XCVI.] In a manuscript codex, which is preserved in our library of St. Savior in Bologna, and was copied in the fifteenth century, page 21, where Didymus's book *On the Holy Spirit* begins, this title is read: "The book of the blessed Didymus the Alexandrian *On the Holy Spirit*, interpreted by St. Jerome." Montfaucon, indeed, in his *Bibliotheca bibliothecarum*, page 127, reviewing the Vatican codices, writes these things: "Codex 314, written in the fourteenth century. St. Didymus *On the Holy Spirit*." The same, page 685, reviewing the Irish codices in the Jacobite house, says: "7883. Certain minor works of Didymus." And on page 922, reviewing the Colbertine codices, he says: "Codex 6... The book of Didymus the Seer, *On the Holy Spirit*, interpreted by St. Jerome." On page 1286, speaking of the Dijon codices, he says: "Regarding Didymus *On the Holy Spirit* (codex) 157." Finally, to pass over other things of this nature, in the *Catalogus librorum manuscriptorum Angliæ et Hiberniæ*, volume 1, part 3, page 109, where the manuscript codices preserved in the college of Gonville and Caius in Cambridge are listed, we read these things: "Codex 755, Didymus the Greek *On the Holy Spirit*." How these words are to be understood, I do not know. At my request, two Englishmen saw to it that this codex 755 be sought at Cambridge: but they found that it no longer exists in the library of the college just mentioned.

[XCVII.] The Acts of the Ecumenical Council of Florence, part 1, session 22, which was held in the year 1439. We have, among the Latins, the book of the great Didymus *On the Holy Spirit* translated by the blessed Jerome. This Didymus was the teacher of Jerome, and Jerome himself says of himself in a letter that his hair was already turning gray, and it was more fitting for him to be a master than a disciple; yet he traveled to Alexandria so that he might hear Didymus: and your historians, namely Theodoret and Socrates, speak of him with immense praise for his knowledge. This one says thus: "The Holy Spirit also," etc. Then certain testimonies of Didymus are brought forward from the book *On the Holy Spirit*.

[XCVIII.] Joannes Trithemius, in the book *De scriptoribus ecclesiasticis* (which he published in the year 1492), chapter 75. Didymus the Alexandrian, struck by blindness from an early age, and for this reason utterly ignorant of the basic elements [of learning], furnished such a miracle of himself that he learned dialectic and geometry, which require sight most of all, to perfection. Yet in divine Scriptures he was most learned, the teacher of the blessed Jerome, and an intimate friend of St. Anthony, sharp in wit and illustrious in life. He wrote, in the Greek tongue, the following: *Against the Arians*, 2 books; *On Dogmas*, 1 book; *On the Canonical Epistles*, 6 books, *James, etc. As custom*; *On the Holy Spirit*, 1 book: "Indeed all things that are divine"; *On the book of blessed Job*, 1 book; *On the prophet Isaiah*, 10 books; *On Hosea*, to Jerome, 1 book; *On Zechariah*, to the same, 5 books; *On the Gospel of Matthew*, 1 book; *On the Gospel of John*, 1 book; *On the Psalter*, 1 book; and certain other things. He flourished as an octogenarian under the Emperor Theodosius, in the year of our Lord 395. And chapter 87: Ambrosius the presbyter, an Alexandrian by race, was at one time a student and disciple of Didymus the Blind, by whose explanation he learned the divine Scriptures magnificently, and he composed various explanations upon them, etc.

[XCIX.] Jacobus Merlinus Victurniensis in his *Apology for Origen to the Fathers of the Royal College of Navarre* (published in Paris in the year 1542, from the Venetian edition of 1513, made by the Venetian printer Lazarus Soardus). All these things, in my opinion, sufficiently indicate and demonstrate that Origen's doctrine... is entirely alien to heretical depravity, and he who is not able to persuade himself by the testimonies of such great and solemn Fathers, let him inquire into the apology of Pamphilus the Martyr, the sentiments of Didymus, Mirandula, Rufinus, and many others... Mammæa, indeed, with Eusebius, Didymus, and Orosius as authorities, the mother of the Emperor Alexander, when she had heard everywhere of the magnificent and most celebrated doctrine of Origen, began with the highest effort to desire that his presence might be made known to her... I conclude that it is far better to hold a correct opinion concerning the doctrine of Origen with Pamphilus the Martyr, Didymus, Aymon, Rufinus, and many others, than an unjust one: nor is it right to reject this, which the greatest men once labored with the highest study to acquire.

[C.] Cælius Rhodiginus (born in the year 1450, and died in the year 1520), *Lectionum Antiquarum* book 3, chapter 3, page 112: Does not Jerome write that Didymus the Alexandrian, blinded from his early youth, attempted the more secret thresholds of the sciences with a lofty spirit, and attained them most happily? But what is more, and cannot be sufficiently wondered at, did he not also grasp geometric theorems excellently? These are not the fruits of mortal nature; they savor of a celestial majesty. And book 20, chapter 9, page 1058: Jerome names the *Ἔκθεσις* of Didymus against Rufinus, and it seems that the commentaries on Exodus are understood. So says Rhodiginus: but what he cites from Jerome's books against Rufinus, I for my part have not found in them.

[CI.] The author of the *Catalogus librorum manuscriptorum bibliothecæ Sfortianæ* (which Montfaucon published in his *Bibliotheca bibliothecarum* from the manuscript codex 1555 of the Chisian Library), page 706, column 2, speaks in this way about that very Passioneian codex, formerly Sfortian, from which I copied the three books which I am editing: "Cyril's *On the Holy Spirit*, three books, imperfect, without the beginning of the first, and without the end of the third."

DIDYMUS THE ALEXANDRIAN ON THE TRINITY THREE BOOKS

Didymus is certainly orthodox on the Trinity. S. JEROME, *Book ii against Rufinus.*

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BOOK ONE

*The index of chapters of this book and the first six chapters are missing.*

^A CHAPTER VII. Those, therefore, who believe in the Son, ought not to fear that they may be accused of offering honor to created gods. ^A [1 a]

CHAPTER VII