FILOPONO, GIOVANNI. — Monophysite philosopher and theologian of the 6th century, also known as John the Grammarian, born in Alexandria toward the end of the 5th century and died after the year 566. The appellation of F. (ἐν ὀνλόπους) corresponds to the name given to members of certain associations of ascetics and zealous Christians that flourished in the early centuries (cf. S. Petridès, Spondosi et Philopones, in Echos d'Orient, 7 [1904], pp. 341–48, and also 4 [1901], pp. 225–31). As a young man, John almost certainly belonged to one of these associations.
A disciple of the Neoplatonist Ammonius, son of Hermias, he distinguished himself above all as a philosopher and commented on the following works of Aristotle: the Categories, the two Analytics, the Physics, the Meteorology, De generatione et corruptione, De Anima, and the Metaphysics. These commentaries have come down to us, having been published by various authors from the 16th century onward. They were included in the Corpus of commentaries on Aristotle published in Berlin (1887–1901), and occupy volumes XIII–XVIII. In them F. demonstrates himself to be an eclectic philosopher; at times he even goes so far as to abandon Aristotle in order to follow Plato or historical theories, especially in physics.
As a theologian, F. had enormous importance in the Christological controversies of the 6th century. He was the first to introduce into these controversies the notion of an abstract or universal nature, that is, one common to all individuals of the same species: Ἰώσια or the φύσις ἑστῆρα of Aristotle; and this terminology was used by F. to place the Catholics, who upheld the definition of Chalcedon concerning the two φύσις of Christ, in contradiction, to sow confusion among the Monophysites themselves, and to give rise to new sects. The controversy went beyond the Christological field and extended to the theology of the Trinity.
By giving the word φύσις the same meaning as the words hypostasis and person (ὑπόσωπους, πρόσωπον), F. logically arrived at attributing to the Trinity three φύσεις or οὐσίαν μαρτυαί. For this reason he was accused of tritheism. In reality, F. did not deny the numerical unity of the divine essence, but wished to affirm the trinity of the persons or hypostases, each of which is really identified with the divine essence (v. TRITEISMO).
In addition to his commentaries on Aristotle, F. wrote many treatises on grammar, philosophy, the sciences, and theology. The latter are the most important. The following may be mentioned: 1) The Diaitetes (ὁ διαιτητής), that is, the “Arbiter,” in which the author sets forth his Christological terminology. This work, preserved in a Syriac translation, was published in Latin together with other theological opuscula by A. Sanda, Opuscula monophysitica Ioannis Philiponi (Beirut 1930). St. John Damascene quotes a long passage from it in the original text in De Intersibus liber, VII: PG 94, 745–53; 2) The Hexaemeron, a work edited by G. Reichardt, Ioannis Philiponi de opificio mundi libri VII (Leipzig 1897); 3) Against Proclus on the eternity of the world, published by H. Rabe, Ioannes Philiponnes, de aeternitate mundi contra Proclus (ibid. 1899), a work in which the author refutes Proclus’s eighteen arguments in support of the thesis of the eternity of the world; 4) On the renewal, a lost work in which F. denied the identity of the resurrected bodies with our present bodies, on the basis of Aristotelian philosophy; 5) A short work on Easter, edited by C. Walter (Jena 1899). The author maintains that Jesus instituted the Eucharist on the 13th of Nisan, with leavened bread, and that he did not celebrate the Jewish Passover; 6) Against the Fourth Ecumenical Council, a lost work divided into four parts, according to what Photius reports in his Bibliotheca, cod. 55 (PG 103, 97): Michael the Syrian nevertheless preserved some excerpts from it in his Chronicle, published by G. B. Chabot, Paris 1899–1910, I. VIII, chap. 13 (French trans., II, pp. 101–102). F. violently attacks St. Leo the Great, accusing him of Nestorianism, and denies that the Roman primacy is of divine right (cf. M. Jugie, La primauté romaine d'après les premiers théologiens monophysites, in Echos d'Orient, 33 [1934], pp. 187–89).