other · 345–395 · Alexandria
He lost his sight at four or five, before he had learned his letters, and was taught entirely by ear; the accounts describe him having books read aloud and holding the whole of scripture in his head, and Jerome, who did not hand out compliments, calls him his teacher. Sozomen names him an ecclesiastical writer and president of the school of sacred learning in Alexandria. He is also the reason this page needs care: he was an Origenist, and the anathemas of the sixth century name him with Origen and Evagrius, so a man whom Athanasius had trusted with the school and Jerome with his own instruction ends up condemned by an ecumenical council a century and a half after his death. The span is a placing — Sozomen sets him among those who flourished about the same period and gives no years — and the claim that Athanasius appointed him comes from an 1892 editorial footnote rather than from any ancient text.
To teach, in a school that had had Clement and Origen before him, without ever having read a book.
Half a century of the Alexandrian school, and pupils who carried it to Latin — Jerome and Rufinus both sat under him.