Philotheos Bryennios

Philotheos Bryennios around 1885

Philotheos Bryennios ( Greek Φιλόθεος Βρυέννιος , secular name Theodoros , Greek Θεόδωρος ; * March 26th ^July / April 7th  1833 ^greg. In Istanbul ; † November 5th ^July / November 18th  1917 ^greg. Ibid) was an Orthodox clergyman, Theologian and Metropolitan of Nicomedia . He discovered a handwriting of the Didache , which was believed to be lost .

Life

Philotheos Bryennios began his studies in 1856 at the Chalki seminary and then continued at the universities of Leipzig , Berlin and Munich . In 1861 he became professor of church history and exegesis at the seminary of Chalki and in 1863 its director. In 1873 he was appointed head of the Great School in Phanar . In 1875 the Holy Synod of the Patriarchate of Constantinople sent him to Bonn to attend the Union Conference initiated by Ignaz von Döllinger , where he received a letter from the Patriarchate calling him Metropolitan of Serre in Macedonia . In 1877 he became Metropolitan of Nicomedia and in 1880 he was a member of a commission investigating the looting of Orthodox monasteries in Moldova and Wallachia . In 1882 he wrote on behalf of the Patriarch of Constantinople Joachim III. an answer to the encyclical Grande Munus on the Slav apostles Cyril and Method by Pope Leo XIII.

Philotheos Bryennios died on November 5th ^jul. / November 18, 1917 ^greg. in his hometown and was buried on the premises of the school he ran.

Services

His most important achievement is the discovery of the Codex Hierosolymitanus , which he found in 1873 in the library of the Monastery of the Holy Sepulcher in Constantinople. It contains a copy of the Didache , an early Christian script that was thought to be lost for centuries. He also published the first complete texts of Clement's letters from the same manuscript.

literature

• Philip Schaff: Bryennios, Philotelos. In: The New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge. Vol. II: Basilica - Chambers. 1908-1914.

Web links

• Philip Schaff: Bryennios, Philotelos. In: The New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge. October 5, 2004, accessed December 6, 2015 . 
• Dimitrios Stamatopoulos: Φιλόθεος Νικομηδείας / Philotheos Nicomedeias. In: Εγκυκλοπαίδεια Μείζονος Ελληνισμού, Μ. Ασία. July 23, 2002, accessed December 6, 2015 (Greek).