DIADOCHUS OF PHOTICEA, Saint. - The life of St. D., bishop of Photice, in ancient Epirus, has come down to us only through three texts: a mention by Photius, who names D. among the opponents of the Monophysites at the Council of Chalcedon (451); the letter addressed to the emperor Leo I on the occasion of the death of Proterius of Alexandria (458), a letter of which D. is one of the signatories, perhaps even the author; finally, the prologue of the Historia persecutionis Africanae Provinciae written by Victor of Vita in 486, where D. is praised for his defense of Catholic dogma.
This last text has recently led to the supposition that he had been torn by the Vandals from his episcopal city (identified, on the basis of two inscriptions, with Limboni, northwest of Paranythia, today Adonat, in Thesprotia) and taken to Carthage; did he perhaps die in Africa? In any case, his work reflects the life of the monasteries of the East; in the 5th century there were still in Greece cenobites, hermits and solitaries; but it was above all in Egypt that he was able to become acquainted with monasticism: his teacher, Evagrius Ponticus, had lived in the desert of Scetis.
The following works of D. survive: Capita centum de perfectione spirituali or Capita gnostica centum, a kind of spiritual guide, a path of perfection. Main themes: God and Grace; the discernment of spirits, the spiritual life; Visio, a collection of aporiae on a conversation of St. John the Baptist: praise of the desert, and discussion on the nature of divine apparitions; Sermo de ascensione D. N. Iesu Christi, in which at the end he rejects Monophysitism.
The polemic, thus represented at the end of the Sermo, is even more evident in the Capita centum, in which D. constantly attacks the Messalianism of the pseudo-Macarian homilies. This heresy, a crude materialism of historical origin, considered continuous prayer as the only way of exorcising the presence of Satan, cohabiting together with Grace in the soul of the Christian. D. does not deny the efficacy of prayer; on the contrary, he recommends the repeated invocation of the name of Jesus (monologist prayer); but he forbids the repetition of Baptism, which fills the soul with grace and drives out the demon. Such a polemic, however, did not by itself explain the success of the Capita centum; the influence they exercised on the monasteries of Greece and the East derives from the balance of their spiritual doctrine; moreover, with the parts consecrated to the discernment of spirits, they prepared the teaching of St. Ignatius of Loyola and of St. Teresa of the Child Jesus.
Bibliography6 works
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