Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 1, Vol. 3 (Augustine: On the Trinity)

While still in his swaddling bands, the little Theodoret began to receive training appropriate to his high career,¹ and—as he himself tells us with the pardonable exaggeration of enthusiasm—no sooner was he weaned than he began to learn the apostolic teaching. Among his earliest impressions were the lessons and exhortations of Peter of Galatia, to whom his mother owed so much, and of Macedonius, "the barley eater," who had helped to save the Antiochenes during the troubles that arose over the statues.² Of the latter,³ Theodoret quotes the earnest charges to lead a holy life, and in his modesty expresses his sorrow that he had not profited more from the hermit’s solemn entreaties. However, if Macedonius was indeed quite ignorant of the Scriptures,⁴ it may have been for the best that the boy’s education was not entirely in his hands. It is not impossible that he may have had a childish recollection of Chrysostom, who left Antioch in 398. He used to pay a weekly visit to Peter, and records⁵ how the holy man would take him on his knees and feed him with bread and raisins. A treasure long preserved in the household of Theodoret’s parents was half of Peter’s girdle, woven of coarse linen, which the old man had one day wound around the boy's waist. Because it frequently proved an unfailing remedy for various family ailments, its very reputation led to its loss, for all the neighbors used to borrow it to cure their own complaints, and at last an unkind or careless friend failed to return it.⁶

When a young man, Theodoret was blessed by the right hand of the monk Aphraates, of whom he relates an anecdote in his Ecclesiastical History,⁷ and when his beard was just beginning to grow, he was also blessed by the ascetic Zeno.⁸ At this period, he was already a lector⁹ and was therefore likely over the age of eighteen. By this time, his general education would have been considered more or less complete, and to these earlier years may be traced the acquaintance he shows with the writings of Homer, Thucydides, Plato, Euripides, and other Greek classics. Lighter literature, too, would not have been excluded from his reading, if we accept the genuineness of the famous letter on the death of Cyril,¹⁰ and may infer that the dialogues of Lucian were more likely to have amused the leisure hours of a student at school and college than to have intruded on the genuine piety and marvelous industry of the Bishop of Cyrus.

Theodoret was familiar with Greek, Syriac, and Hebrew, but is said to have been unacquainted with Latin.¹¹ I presume this to be an inference from a passage in one of his works¹² in which he tells us: "The Romans indeed had poets, orators, and historians, and we are informed by those who are skilled in both languages that their reasonings are tighter than the Greeks' and their sentences more concise. In saying this, I have not the least intention of disparaging the Greek language, which is in a sense mine,¹³ or of making an ungrateful return to it for my education, but I speak so that I may to some extent close the lips and lower the brows of those who boast too much about it, and may teach them not to ridicule a language which is illuminated by the truth." However, it is not clear from these words that Theodoret had no acquaintance with Latin. His admiration for orthodox Western theology, as well as his natural literary and social curiosity, would lead him to learn it. In the Ecclesiastical History (III. 16), there is a possible reference to Horace.

Theodoret’s chief instructor in theology was the great light of the school of Antioch, Theodorus, known from the name of the see to which he was appointed in 392, "Mopsuestia," or "the hearth of Mopsus," in Cilicia Secunda. He also refers to his obligations...

¹ Ep. LXXXI.
² Ecc. Hist. v. 19. p. 146.
³ Relig. Hist. 1215.
⁴ cf. Ecc. Hist. p. 146.
⁵ Relig. Hist. 1188.
⁶ Theodoret's confidence in the wonder-working power of half of Peter’s girdle may be taken as a crucial instance of what detractors of the individual and of the age would call his foolish credulity. But an unsound process of reasoning from post hoc (after this) to propter hoc (because of this) is not confined to any particular period, and it is not impossible that the scientists of the thirty-fourth century may smile benevolently at some of the cherished remedies of the nineteenth.
⁷ Cf. p. 127.
⁸ Relig. Hist. 1203.
⁹ See note p. 34.
¹⁰ See p. 346. To what is said there may be added the following remarks from Dr. Salmon’s Infallibility of the Church, p. 303: "The letter from which these passages are taken was read as Theodoret’s at the Fifth General Council (Fifth Session) and there accepted as his. But on questions of this kind, Councils are not infallible; and the letter contains a note of spuriousness in purporting to be addressed to John, bishop of Antioch, who died before Cyril. I own that the suggestion that for ‘John’ we ought to read ‘Domnus’ does not suffice to remove suspicion from my mind... Newman’s opinion that it is incredible Theodoret could have written so ‘atrocious’ a letter is one which it is amazing should be held by anyone familiar with the controversial amenities of the time. Our modern urbanity is willing to bury party animosities in the grave; but in the fifth century, Swift’s translation would be thought the only proper one of the maxim De mortuis nil nisi bonum ('of the dead, say nothing but good'): 'when scoundrels die, let all bemoan them.'"
Glubokowski, whose great work on Theodoret is now in progress—unfortunately a sealed volume to the majority of readers because it is written in the author’s native Russian—is of the opinion that the letter is spurious. See also Schröckh, Kircheges. xviii. 370. I am myself unable to see the force of the internal evidence of spuriousness. It may have been half-playful and never meant for publication.
¹¹ Cf. Can. Venables, Dict. Christ. Biog. iv. 906.
¹² Graecarum affectionum curatio 843.
¹³ To a Syrian, it would not literally be the mother tongue, but was possibly acquired in infancy.