THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG
tius. Of theologians the dogmaticians proper are preferred. The poets hardly appear, and the great philosophers of ancient Greece are scarcely mentioned, perhaps from an evident intention to treat only less-known works. Thucydides, Polybius, Plutarch, and writers like Hippocrates and Pausanias are also left out of account, and the more famous theologians are treated briefly. Athanasius, Chrysostom, Gregory Nazianzen, and Basil are often mentioned, but only their rarer works receive extended notice. The summaries are often excellent, and Photius' remarks on the style of his authors show good and cultivated taste. For his biographical notices he used an abridgment of a work of Hesychius of Miletus. Latin writers he knew only in translation.
The Arnphilochia is so called because it is dedicated to Amphilochius of Cyzicus, one of the truest friends and oldest disciples of Photius, who had propounded certain questions to his teacher and who is often mentioned in the work. It consists of a series of questions and answers (300
2. Amphi- in number according to the prologue; lochia. in existing manuscripts and editions
the number is greater and variable, and the order is not the same), chiefly relating tb Biblical topics, but including some which belong to dogmatics and philosophy and some which hardly appertain to theology at all. The Bible questions generally relate to passages which appear to be contradictory, the so-called enantiophanies of Scripture, and some of the answers are merely exegetical expositions. Many passages are treated more than once. As in the Bibliotheca, the answers vary greatly in length, some being mere notes, others almost treatises, and there is no apparent plan. Most of the answers evidently belong to the time of the first exile of Photius, and may have been communicated by letter. It is possible that Photius collected them later, and probably the work was expanded with time. The author shows little originality, excerpting whole sections from Chrysostom, Polychronius, Germanus of Constantinople, John of Damascus, and others, and elsewhere being dependent on Athanasius, Basil, Gregory Nazianzen, Dionysius the Areopagite, Maximus Confessor, and others without directly copying them. In no less than thirty-two passages he repeats Theodoret almost verbally. The long, minute, and keen first answer addressed to Amphilochius may, however, be original.
The best-known of Photius' polemical works is the " Treatise on the Mystagogy of the Holy Spirit," written against the Filioque. It was an incident of the renewed strife with Rome begun by Marinus (see above, I., § 5) and belongs to the years 885 or 886.
It is throughout an independent prod-
3. Polem- uct of Photius. It was he who gave ical Works, the doctrine of the procession of the
Holy Spirit the sharp and precise definition which it ever afterward had in dogmatics. It is significant that the doctrine is not mentioned in the Arnphilochia; it had no immediate interest for Photius, and only the need of points of attack upon the West led him to elaborate it. After a brief introduction he fixes on John xv. 26, as the locus
classicus of the doctrine, where Christ says that the Spirit proceeds " from the Father." To add that he proceeds also from the Son is held to lead to absurdities; it makes the Spirit a " product of the Son," and it destroys the unity of the three Persons of the Trinity (hi., iv.). The latter argument remained the leading one of all Eastern polemics against the West in the Filioque controversy. The consequences of the addition are further considered in chaps, vi.-xix., xxxi.-xlvii., and lxi.-lxiv. Such passages as John xvi. 14 and Gal. iv. 6 are declared to be invalid arguments against the position of Photius (xx.-xxx., xlviii.-lx., xc.-xciv.). In chap. v. he asserts that the Fathers and councils are unanimous against the addition; and in chaps, lxv.-lxxxix. he examines the utterances of such western authorities as Ambrose, Augustine, and Jerome, and the popes from Damasus to Adrian III., and maintains that they support the contention of the East. The " Dissertation on the (New) Sprouting of the Manicheans " is a work against the Paulicians (q.v.). It consists of four books, of which the first gives a historical account of the Paulicians as New Manicheans, and the remainder a dogmatic and Biblical refutation of their doctrines. Books ii.-iv. do not fully accord with the plan as laid down in book i., and it has been suggested that they are a working-over of twelve lectures against the Manicheans. The fourth book appears to be an independent work and later than ii. and iii. If genuine, it probably belongs to the time of the first exile, since in it the author complains of being deprived of his books. The first book is closely related to the Historia Manichmorum ascribed to Petrus Siculus (MPG, civ. 1240 sqq.). The " Precise Conclusions and Proofs," in the form of questions and answers, furnishes a compendium of historical documents (acts of synods, etc.) relating to metropolitans, bishops, and the like; and it has been held that Photius wrote it as an indirect defense of his elevation and his opposition to Rome, as well as a refutation of the arguments advanced by his opponents against his legitimacy.
Hergenrother knew of twenty-two addresses by Photius, of which only two were printed (MPG, cii. 548 sqq.). Eighty-three " addresses and homilies " are now offered by Aristarches (see below, § 5), but the greater number of these are compositions of the editor rather than of Photius. No doubt Photius' works contain passages 4. Other which were originally parts of spoken Writings, discourses; but it may well be questioned whether it is possible to select these fragments and put them together so as properly to reproduce the original addresses. At the same time, the collection offers some important inedita which are attested by manuscript evidence as real specimens of Photius' homiletic manner and skill. In general his thought follows the old and familiar channels of his Church. He is fluent and figurative, soars not seldom in a real flight, but more often shows mere floridity and phrasing. Photius' letters are the most important source for his character and type of thought. Migne arranges them in three books: political letters to popes, patriarchs, bishops, emperors, and other princes (24 numbers);