DIDYMUS THE BLIND (ca. AD 313-ca. AD 398)

Alexandrian theologian and scholar

According to Palladius, Didymus the Blind (not to be confused with an earlier scholar of the same name [63 BC-AD 10]) lost his sight from “ophthalmia” when he was about four years old. However, thanks to his superhuman diligence, he obtained the highest scientific education possible at the time and became a famous scholar and a most prolific writer. The fifth-century writer Sozomen says that, while attending schools and learning through listening, he first learned letters of the alphabet through touch by means of shapes engraved in depth on wooden planks, and he went on to learn syllables and names through listening and memory. This information is repeated by the fourteenth- century Byzantine scholar Nicephorus Callistus.

Didymus had a profound command of the philosophical, theological, and scientific theories of his time and was chiefly indebted to Platonic, Aristotelian, Stoic, and Neoplatonic thought. In addition, his learning embraced poetry, rhetoric, astronomy, grammar, music, mathematics, and medicine, in the last of which he was influenced chiefly by Hippocrates and Galen.

He was a pupil of Origen, and the condemnation of the latter by the second Council of Constantinople in 553 for favoring preexistence and apokatastasis of the human soul discouraged the preservation of Didymus' prolific writings. Manuscripts containing some of his writings were discovered at Tura in Egypt in 1941, but their authenticity has been debated. Didymus wrote both dogmatic and interpretative works, the latter consisting mainly of commentaries on the Old and New Testaments. He also defended the doctrine of the Holy Trinity against Arianism.

In spite of his considerable theological learning and asceticism, Didymus remained a layman. In recognition of his achievements, Bishop Athanasius appointed him director of the theological school of Alexandria, a post he held until his death more than 50 years later. His students included such famous Christian authors as Jerome, Rufinus of Aquileia, and Palladius Bishop of Helenopolis.