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| Of Didymus of Alexandria and Ephraim the Syrian.
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Chapter
XXVI.—Of Didymus of Alexandria and
Ephraim the Syrian.
At that
period at Edessa flourished the admirable Ephraim, and at Alexandria
Didymus,792
| 792 Flourished c. 309–399. Blind from the age of four, he
educated himself with marvellous patience, and was placed by Athanasius
at the head of the catechetical school of Alexandria. Jerome called him
his teacher and seer and translated his Treatise on the Holy Spirit.
Jer. de Vir. Illust. 109. | both writers against the doctrines
that are at variance with the truth. Ephraim, employing the Syrian
language, shed beams of spiritual grace. Totally untainted as he was by
heathen education793
| 793 “παιδείας
῾Ελληνικῆς.” His ignorance of languages weakens the force of
his dialectic and illustrations. Vid. Dict. Christ. Biog.
s.v. | he was able to
expose the niceties of heathen error, and lay bare the weakness of all
heretical artifices. Harmonius794
| 794 Harmonius wrote about the end of the 2nd century, both in Greek
and in Syriac. cf. Theod. Hæret. Fabul. Compend. i. 22, where he
is said to have learned Greek at Athens. | the son of
Bardesanes795
| 795 Bardesanes, or Bar Daisan, the great Syrian gnostic, was born in
155. cf. the prologue to the “Dialogues.” | had once composed certain songs and
by mixing sweetness of melody with his impiety beguiled the hearers,
and led them to their destruction. Ephraim adopted the music of the
songs, but set them to piety, and so gave the hearers at once great
delight and a healing medicine. These songs are still used to enliven
the festivals of our victorious martyrs.
Didymus, however, who from a
child had been deprived of the sense of sight, had been educated in
poetry, rhetoric, arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, the logic of
Aristotle, and the eloquence of Plato. Instruction in all these
subjects he received by the sense of hearing alone,—not indeed as
conveying the truth, but as likely to be weapons for the truth against
falsehood. Of holy scriptures he learnt not only the sound but the
sense. So among livers of ascetic lives and students of virtue, these
men at that time were conspicuous. E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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