Primary source · Greek (surviving in Jerome's Latin)
On the Holy Spirit
Didymus the Blind · c. AD 360–370
What this text is
The blind master of Alexandria's catechetical school on the Spirit's full divinity — translated by Jerome partly to show, he said, where Ambrose had found his ideas.
Profile of Didymus the Blind →
Public-domain translations
Literal gloss of Jerome's Latin
The Holy Spirit, being unchangeable and incapable of loss, the sanctifier and enlightener of souls, cannot himself be a creature: for he is of the same nature with the Son and the Father, and what sanctifies cannot be ranked with what is sanctified.
Manuscript witnesses
Jerome's Latin version
c. AD 387 (medieval copies)The Greek perished with its author's condemnation; Jerome's translation preserves the work Ambrose leaned on.
Provenance
Alexandria, c. AD 375 — the blind master's treatise, surviving in Jerome's Latin
Editions & scholarship
Critical editions and standard translations behind the text above.
- Didyme l'Aveugle: Traité du Saint-Esprit (SC 386)Louis Doutreleau, 1992Critical edition with French translation.
- Works on the Spirit (Popular Patristics 43)DelCogliano, Radde-Gallwitz & Ayres, 2011English translation with Basil's treatise.