A.D. 730-1060.]
Photius and Nicolaus.
173
Bibliotheca, in two hundred and eighty divisions, is a vast repository of erudition, containing notices of classical and ecclesiastical authors and works-in fact, a" prototype of our modern critical reviews." 1 Amongst the epistles of Photius is an encyclical, on various theological topics, particularly the procession of the Holy Ghost-the great question in dispute between the Eastern and Western Churches. A production entitled A mplzilochia is admitted, even by an unfriendly censor, to be "a work filled with vast and varied learning, and very needful for theologians and expositors of Scripture." But it would seem that the contributions made to theological literature by this extraordinary person, who wonderfully combined industry as an author with activity as an ecclesiastic, amounted to little if anything more than a repetition of old Greek formularies of thought touching the Trinitarian and the Monothelite controversies. As to the latter subject, it is handled in the seventh question of the Amphilochia, entitled, in the Latin version, De Christi Volzmtatibus Gnomicis. Photius distinguishes between different kinds of wills, and places the human will of our Lord in absolute subjection to His Divine nature. 2 NICOLAUS OF METHONE, in the Peloponnesus, where he was archbishop, and lived probably in the twelfth century, entered into controversy with the Latin Church, and is also mentioned as an opponent of N eo-Platonism ; but he appears to have stepped over the limits of theological dissertation usually observed by Eastern divines, and to have taken up questions chiefly discussed in 1 Robertson, vol. III. p. 42 l. The Myriobiblion was published by Immanuel Becker, 2 vols., Berlin, 1824 and 1825. 2 The A mphilochia has been published in fragments at different times. See Smith's Dictionary, art." Photius."