Philip the Solitary

Philip The Solitary a Greek monk, flourished in the time of the emperor Alexius I. Comnenus. Nothing further seems to be known than what mav be gleaned from the titles and introductions of his extant works. He wrote, Διόπτρα, Dioptra, s. Amussis Fidei et Vitae Christianae, written in the kind of measure called "versus politici," and in the form of a dialogue between the soul and the body. It is addressed to another monk, Callinicus, and begins with these two lines:

Πῶς κάθη; πῶς ἀμεριμνεῖς; πῶς ἀμελεῖς, ψψχγ῎ μον; ῾Ο χρόνος σου πεπλίρωται· ἔξελθε τοῦ σαρκίου.

The work, in its complete state, consisted of five books; but most of the MSS. are mutilated or otherwise defective, and want the first book. Some of them have been interpolated by a later hand. Michael Psellus, not the older writer of that name, who died about A.D. 1078, but one of later date, wrote a preface and notes to the Dioptra of Philip. A Latin prose translation of the Dioptra by the Jesuit Jacobus Pontanus, with notes by another Jesuit, Jacobus Gretserus, was published (Ingolstadt, 1604, 4to); but it was made from a mutilated copy, and consisted of only four books, and these, as the translator admits in his Prtefitio ad Lectorem, interpolated and transposed ad libitum. Philip wrote also, Τῷ κατὰ πνεῦμα υἱῷ καὶ ἱερεῖ Κωνσταντινῳ περὶ πρεσβείας καὶ προστασίας ἀπόλογος, Epistola Apologetica ad Constantinum Filium Spiritualem et Sacerdotem, de Differentia inter Intercessionem et Auxilium Sanctorum: — Versus Politici, in the beginning of which he states with great exactness the time of his finishing the Dioptro, 12th May, A.M. 6603, aera Constantinop. in the third indiction, in the tenth year of the lunar cycleA.D. 1095, not 1105, as has been incorrectly stated. Cave has, without sufficient authority, ascribed to our Philip two other works, which are indeed given in a Vienna MS. (Codex 213, apud Lambec.) as Appendices to the Dioptra. One of these works (Appendix secunda), ῞Οτι οὐκ ἔφαγε τὸ νομικὸν πάσχα ὁ Χριστὸς ἐν τῷ δείπνῳ, ἀλλὰ τὸ ἀληθινόν, Demonstratio quod Christus in Sacra Coena non legale sed verum comederit Pascha, may have been written by Philip. Its arguments are derived from Scripture and Epiphanius. The other work, consisting of five chapters, De Fide et Coeremoniis Armeniorum, Jacobitarum, Chatzitzacriorum et Romanorum seu Francorum, was published, with a Latin version, but without an author's name, in the Auctarium Novum of Combefis (Par. 1648, volume 2, col. 261, etc.), but was, on the authority of MSS., assigned by Combefis, in a note, to Demetrius of Cyzicus, to whom it appears rightly to belong (comp. Cave, Hist. Litt. Dissertatio I, page 6; Fabricius, Bibl. Graec. 11:414). The Chatzitzarii (Χατζιζάριοι) were a sect who paid religious homage to the image of the cross, but employed no other images in their worship. The work of Demetrius appears under the name of Philip in the fourteenth (posthumous) volume of the Bibliotheca Patrum of Galland; but the editors, in their Prolegomena to the volume, c. 15, observe that they knew not on what authority Galland had assigned it to Philip. Among the pieces given as Appendices to the Dioptra, are some verses in praise of the work and its author, by one Constantine, perhaps the person addressed in No. 2, and by Bestus, or Vestus, a grammarian, Στίχοι κυριου Κωνσταντίνου καὶ Βέστου τὂυ γραμματικοῦ, Versus Dosnini Constantini et Vesti Gramnmatici. See Lambecius, Comnentar. de

Biblioth. Caesarea, lib. s. volume 5. col. 7697, and 141, cod. 213, 214, 215, and 232, ed. Kollar; Cave, Hist. Litt. ad ann. 1095, 2:163; Oudin, De Scriptor. Eccles. volume 2, col. 851.