United States or Japan ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Should no one have the courage to do that, what hope would there be, O Decius, for that most glorious liberty, the liberty of the mind? The listener bent his head abashed. Then Simplicius began to read from the manuscript, and Decius, who knew Greek fairly well he had lately completed certain translations from Plato, left unfinished by Boethius gave reverent attention.
To appreciate this letter, it must be borne in mind that it was written by Pope Simplicius a year after the western empire was extinguished; that the writer had seen nine western emperors deposed, and most of them murdered, in twenty-one years; that it was addressed to the eastern and now only Roman emperor; and that the writer was living under the absolute rule of the condottiere chief who had succeeded Ricimer, and is called by Pope Gelasius a few years afterwards "Odoacer, barbarian and heretic".
The result was that Pope Hormisdas held a council at Rome in 518, at which all that had been done by his predecessors, the Popes Simplicius, Felix, Gelasius, and Symmachus, was carefully reviewed, and all present decreed that the eastern Church should be received into communion with the Apostolic See, if they condemned the schismatic Acacius, entirely effacing his name, and also expunged from the diptychs Euphemius and Macedonius, as involved in the same guilt of schism.
Pope Hilarus was succeeded in 468 by Simplicius, and in 474 the emperor Leo died, leaving the throne to an infant grandson of the same name, the son of his daughter Ariadne, by an Isaurian officer Zeno, who reigned at first as the guardian of his son, and a few months afterwards came by that son's death to sole power as emperor. The worst character is given to Zeno by the national historians.
Leo and his successors; but yet not events at Rome alone the whole condition of things in East and West which Pope Simplicius had to look upon outside of his own city, despotic emperors in the East, with bishops bending to their will, allowing the apostolic hierarchy to be displaced, and the apostolic doctrine determined by secular masters; Teuton settlements in the West ruled by the heresy most inimical to the Church; the Catholic population reduced in numbers and lowered in social position; whole countries seized by pagans, and forced at once into barbarism and infidelity in the midst of all these the Pope stood: his generals were the several bishops of captured cities, whose places were assaulted by heretical rivals, supported by their kings.
I was much pleased to find that this very respectable prelate is a great admirer of Aristotle, and that extracts from the Commentaries of Simplicius and Ammonius on the Categories of that philosopher, are read by his orders in the college of which he is the head. But whatever may be my errors, I will not fly to calamity for an apology.
We are informed by Simplicius that Callisthenes, who accompanied Alexander to Babylon, sent to Aristotle from that capital a series of astronomical observations, which he had found preserved there, extending back to a period of 1903 years from Alexander's conquest of the city.
Acacius seized the favourable opportunity, after the example of Anatolius, to advance himself, and appointed Stephen III. Emperor and patriarch both applied to Pope Simplicius to excuse this violation of the rights of the Syrian bishops, alleging the pressure of circumstances, and promising that the example should not occur again.
Opening it at the title-page, I read: Epictetus his ENCHIRIDION with Simplicius his COMMENT. Made English from the Greek By George Stanhope, late Fellow Of King's College in Camb. LONDON Printed for Richard Sare at Gray's Inn Gate in Holborn And Joseph Hindmarsh against the Exchange in Cornhill. 1649. "You've read Epictetus, perhaps?" inquired the Tinker. "I have." "Not in the Greek, of course."
Simplicius was one of the last philosophers who taught in Athens, one of the seven who were driven forth when Justinian, in his zeal for Christianity, closed the schools. Guided by a rumour that supreme wisdom was to be found in Persia, the sages journeyed to that kingdom, where disappointment awaited them.
Word Of The Day