DIDYMUS THE BLIND. - Ancient ecclesiastical writer, b. around 313 in Alexandria, where he spent his whole life, d. there between 395 and 399. At the age of four he became blind; he nevertheless succeeded in acquiring a very extensive culture, especially in sacred learning, so that he was placed at the head of the Didaskaleion, the Alexandrian catechetical school. During his long teaching career he counted among his disciples Rufinus and St. Jerome. He remained a layman, but he devoted himself to an ascetic life and imbued his doctrinal activity with deep piety.
His works, so numerous that St. Jerome (De vir. ill., 109) gives up listing them, are exegetical and dogmatic. Of the Old Testament he commented at least the Psalms, Job, Isaiah, Hosea, Zechariah, and Proverbs; of the New Testament, the Gospels of St. Matthew and St. John, the Acts of the Apostles, the First Epistle to the Corinthians, and those to the Galatians and Ephesians; of these only scanty remains survive in the biblical Catenae. The attribution to D. of an Enarratio in epistolas canonicas, mentioned by Cassiodorus (Inst. div. litt., 8) and preserved for us in the Latin version of Epiphanius Scholasticus, encounters difficulties. In exegesis D. follows Origen, taking care over the establishment of the critical text, but above all indulging in a pronounced allegorism. Of the dogmatic works there remains the De Spiritu Sancto, earlier than 381, in the Latin version of St. Jerome; the De Trinitate, in three books, written between 381 and 392; and, mutilated, the little treatise Contra Manichaeos. Some of his writings must have come down to us under another name: among these the πρῶτος λόγος (first discourse), which D. mentions in the De Trinitate, probably identical with the De dogmatibus et contra Arianos, attested by St. Jerome, would be preserved in books IV and V of the Contra Eunomium, falsely attributed to St. Basil, the author of the first three books. Also the Ps.-Athanasius: Contra Macedonianos dial., would be a work of D. But the attribution of the Ps.-Jerome on Is. 6, 1-7 (L. G. Morin, Anecdota Maredsolana, III, III, p. 1030) to D., attempted by W. Dietsch (Didymus v. Alexandria als Verfasser der Schrift über die Seraphen-Vision, Freiburg 1942) has not remained without contradiction. Other dogmatic works are lost.
D.'s Trinitarian doctrine, fully in conformity with the Nicene faith, is inspired by St. Athanasius and the Cappadocians. As for Basil, his formula is: μία οὐσία, τρεῖς ὑποστάσεις (one essence, three persons); the Son is consubstantial (ὁμοούσιος) with the Father, and so is the Holy Spirit with the Father and the Son. The three Persons have a single will and operation. The Son comes from the Father by generation, the Spirit by procession (ἐκπόρευσις). His admiration for Origen, whom he undertook to defend, led him to risky and erroneous theories on other points, such as the pre-existence of souls and apocatastasis. For this reason D. was involved in the repeated condemnations of Origenism and his works were for the most part lost.
As a writer, D. shows that he did not care for elegance of form, content to express himself with precision; he also suffers from the disadvantage of having to rely solely on dictation. His style, limp, colorless, and prolix, is sometimes enlivened under the influence of the fervent piety with which he discusses theological subjects.
Bibliography9 works
Michele Pellegrino