Encyclopedia of Medieval Philosophy

Abstract

Photios, together with Arethas and Leo the Mathematician, is a representative of the “first Byzantine Renaissance” and a major figure in the transitional period of Byzantine intellectual history in the ninth and tenth centuries. He revived classical education in Byzantium, and through his activities humanism became a constitutive element of Byzantine thought. Photios’ Amphilochia (composed between 867 and 877) is one of the most important Byzantine philosophical documents, in which he deals with philosophical and theological topics. It contains the first known commentary on Aristotle’s Categories of the ninth century (qu. 137–147), in which he discusses various topics of Aristotle’s philosophy (theory of predication, the concept of substance, species and genera, categories).