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Didymus the Blind
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Didymus the Blind (ca. 313 – ca.398) was an ecclesiastical writer of Alexandria whose famous catechetical school he led for about half a century.
Although he became blind at the age of four, before he had learned to read, he succeeded in mastering the whole gamut of the sciences then known. Upon entering the service of the Church he was placed at the head of the Catechetical School of Alexandria, where he lived and worked.
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Didymus the Blind (ca. 313 – ca.398) was an ecclesiastical writer of Alexandria whose famous catechetical school he led for about half a century.
Although he became blind at the age of four, before he had learned to read, he succeeded in mastering the whole gamut of the sciences then known. Upon entering the service of the Church he was placed at the head of the Catechetical School of Alexandria, where he lived and worked. He counted among his pupils Jerome and Rufinus.
He was a loyal student of Origen, though stoutly opposed to Arian and Macedonian teaching. Such of his writings as survive show a remarkable knowledge of scripture, and have distinct value as theological literature. Among them are the De Trinitate (On the Trinity), De Spiritu Sancto (On the Holy Spirit) (Jerome's Latin translation), Adversus Manichaeos (Against the Manichaeans), and notes and expositions of various books, especially the Psalms and the Catholic Epistles.
Like Origen, Didymus taught universal salvation, writing that "in the liberation of all no one remains a captive," and believing that divine punishment is remedial in nature. Jerome, who often spoke of Didymus not as the blind but as "the Seer," wrote that Didymus "surpassed all of his day in knowledge of the Scriptures" and Socrates of Constantinople later called him "the great bulwark of the true faith." Didymus was viewed as an orthodox Christian teacher and was greatly respected and admired up until at least 553 when the Second Council of Constantinople condemned his works but not his person. In the Third Council of Constantinople in 680, Didymus was again linked with and condemned with Origen. However, the doctrine of Origen and Didymus that was found to be the most "heretical" was not universalism, but the belief in the "Abominable doctrine of the transmigration of souls."
As a result of his condemnation many of his works were not copied during the Middle Ages and were subsequently lost. However, a group of 6th or 7th century papyrus codices discovered in 1941 near Toura, Egypt (south of Cairo) include his commentaries on Job, Zechariah, Genesis, and (of uncertain authenticity) on Ecclesiastes and Psalms 20-46.
Despite his blindness, Didymus excelled in scholarship because of his incredible memory. He found ways to help blind people to read, and experimented with carved wooden letters, a precursor to Braille systems used by the blind today.
Several Orthodox Churches refer to him as St. Didymus the Blind.
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