Greek authors besides would provide a field of Hellenic literature sufficient for the wants of that
generation. In having so provided it, and having thus become the initiator of a warlike but ill-taught
race into the mysteries of an earlier civilization, Damascenus is entitled to the praise that the elder
Lenormant awarded him of being in the front rank of the master spirits from whom the genius of
the Arabs drew its inspiration."^905
One other interesting fact deserves mention. It was to John of Damascus that the Old
Catholics and Oriental and Anglo-Catholics turned for a definition of the relation of the Holy Spirit
to the Father and Son which should afford a solid basis of union.^906 "He restored unity to the Triad,
by following the ancient theory of the Greek church, representing God the Father as the , and
in this view, the being of the Holy Spirit no less than the being of the Son as grounded in and derived
from the Father. The Holy Spirit is from the Father, and the Spirit of the Father; not from the Son,
but still the Spirit of the Son. He proceeds from the Father the one ajrchv of all being, and he is
communicated through the Son; through the Son the whole creation shares in the Spirit’s work; by
himself he creates, moulds, sanctifies all and binds all together."^907
§ 145. Photius, Patriarch of Constantinople.
I. Photius: Opera omnia, in Migne, "Patrol. Gr." Tom. CI.-CIV. (1860). Also Monumenta Graeca
ad Photium ejusgue historiam pertinentia, ed. Hergenröther. Regensburg, 1869.
II. David Nicetas: Vita Ignatii, in Migne, CV., 488–573. The part which relates to Photius begins
with col. 509; partly quoted in CI. iii. P. De H. E. (anonymous): Histoire de Photius. Paris,
- Jager: Histoire de Photius. Paris, 1845, 2d ed., 1854. L. Tosti: Storia dell’ origine dello
scisma greco. Florence, 1856, 2 vols. A. Pichler: Geschichte der kirchlichen Trennung zwischen
Orient und Occident. Munich, 1864–65, 2 vols. J. Hergenröther: Photius, Patriarch von
Constantinopel. Sein Leben, seine Schriften und das griechische Schisma. Regensburg, 1867–69,
3 vols. (The Monumenta mentioned above forms part of the third vol.) Cf. Du Pin, VII., 105–110;
Ceillier, XII., 719–734.
Photius was born in Constantinople in the first decade of the ninth century. He belonged to a
rich and distinguished family. He had an insatiable thirst for learning, and included theology among
his studies, but he was not originally a theologian. Rather he was a courtier and a diplomate. When
Bardas chose him to succeed Ignatius as Patriarch of Constantinople he was captain of the Emperor’s
body-guard. Gregory of Syracuse, a bitter enemy of Ignatius, in five days hurried him through the
five orders of monk, lector, sub-deacon, deacon, and presbyter, and on the sixth consecrated him
patriarch. He died an exile in an Armenian monastery, 891.
As the history of Photius after his elevation to the patriarchate has been already treated,^908this section will be confined to a brief recital of his services to literature, sacred and secular.^909
(^905) Lupton, p. 212.
(^906) Schaff, Creeds, vol. ii., pp. 552-54.
(^907) Neander, vol. iii., p. 554. Comp. above, p. 307 sqq.
(^908) Cf. chapter V.§ 70.
(^909) Cf. the exhaustive analysis of his works by Hergenröther (vol. iii. pp. 3260.