DAMIANITES. - A sect of the 6th–7th centuries, so called from the Monophysite patriarch of Alexandria, DAMIAN (578–604), who drew his inspiration from Severian Monophysitism. The error for which he was reproached, and which caused a schism between the Monophysites of Egypt and those of Antiochia, concerned the Trinity.
Damian already drew the distinction that would later be made by our Latin scholastics between the *conceptus in* and the *conceptus ad* in defining the divine person. He taught that the divine person, considered as a person, is constituted by the hypostatic property, that is to say, the opposed relation, the *conceptus ad* of Cajetan. United to the divine nature, with which it is in fact identical in reality, the hypostatic property becomes the concrete person, which is God. God the Father is the relation of paternity with the divine nature. God the Son is the relation of filiation with the same divine nature. There is nothing in all this that is not orthodox.
Polemic spirit, combined with personal issues, confused everything. The disputes were about words; yet, despite the logomachy, the Copts and Syrians ended by understanding one another, and at the Synod of Alexandria in 616 they sealed their union.
The Damianites were also called “tetradites” because Damian seemed to wish to introduce a fourth hypostasis into the Trinity, saying that each person participated in the common essence of the Godhead.