“Didymus the Blind (c.313 – 398) warrants recognition and commemoration because, even though he lost his eyesight at an early age, he was able to enlighten the minds generations by his thought and knowledge.”
These words belong to Egyptian sculptor Girgis al-Gawly, professor of sculpture at Minya University, who recently sculpted a statue of St Didymus the Blind (313 – 398). Watani talked to Dr Gawly about the statue.
“This statue,” Dr Gawly noted, “serves as an artistic and humane honour for a unique figure in the history of human and Christian thought. St Didymus was a man who lived during a time when blinds were doomed to darkness and need, yet he was able to overcame his disability and the darkness that engulfed him, to lead generations upon generations to the light of knowledge.”
Cultural blend
Dr Gawly said that the statue he sculpted of St Didymus features lines of a classical character that lived in Egypt during Greco-Roman times. The sculpture follows the distinctive Alexandrian style that was the outcome of intertwined Pharaonic, Hellenistic, Roman, and Christian Coptic art. The statue, he said, emulates the amazing cultural blend that enveloped Egypt throughout these eras that were rich in knowledge, art, and spirituality.
The two-metre-high Didymus statue is made of Aswan clay, a material sourced out of Egyptian soil. Dr Gawly said that the work depicts St Didymus as a man of determination and courage, reflecting his amazing character that transcended visual impairment to revolutionise the way blind people were taught reading and writing through raised relief letters, a method that paralleled the Braille concept but predated it by some 15 centuries. Dr Gawly sculpted Didymus standing tall, his eyes blindfolded and his hands holding a wooden tablet, the means through which he read and wrote.
Didymus the Seer
The Coptic Orthodox Church commemorates
St Didymus the Blind on 13 June as a writer, ascetic, theologian, and polymath. The synaxarium describes him as “a wonderful model of holy perseverance and discipline who went on to become the Dean of the Catechetical School of Alexandria.
“He was born in Alexandria in 313AD and was named Didymus which is Greek for Thomas. When only four, he contracted a disease that led to loss of his sight. He never went to school because he was blind, but his great love for knowledge led him to overcome that obstacle by learning the alphabet through running his fingers over carved wooden letters. That was 15 centuries before the Braille system was used.”
Didymus learned language and grammar, rhetoric, philosophy, logic, theology, arithmetic and music, excelling in them to the point of debating scholars. The fame of his knowledge became well known everywhere. St Jerome called him “Didymus the Seer”.
In 346, Pope Athanasius entrusted to Didymus the management of the Theological School of Alexandria which flourished under him and grew to attract some of the great learned men of the time, including Palladius, Rufinus and Jerome.
St Jerome said that Didymus bore the characteristics of an apostolic person; Rufinus called him a prophet; and Sozomin the historian said that the way Didymus defended the teachings of the Council of Nicaea against the Arians was incomparable.
Didymus was a pious ascetic who prayed for the Christians persecuted by Julian the Infidel. He saw in a vision that Julian was killed in war and it was fulfilled on the exact day and hour.
St Anthony visited him in his cell; they prayed together and talked about the Holy Scriptures. When he saw him sorrowful for the loss of his vision, the father of all monks told him: “How can you be sorrowful for losing something shared with the least of animals and not rejoice in that God has given you a spiritual vision which He does not grant except to those whom He loves? He gave you eyes with which you see spiritual things and perceive the mysteries of God Himself.” Didymus was greatly comforted by these words.
St Didymus wrote many books in theology, dogma, and exegesis on both testaments of the Bible.
He departed the world in peace in 398. He had lived 85 years, 52 of them as Dean of the Theological School of Alexandria. He was a contemporary of four Coptic patriarchs: Pope Athanasius the Apostolic, Pope Peter II, Pope Timothy I, and Pope Theophilus.
When Pope Shenouda III (Patriarch in 1971 – 2012) inaugurated the Institute for Coptic Church Cantors, many of whom had been traditionally chosen from among the blind but the tradition no longer holds, he named it St Didymus Institute in honour of this great theologian and saint.
