Sergius determined to kill him and the mother at once; only they said, "You cannot prevent what God has ordained." Others, apparently with a rather confused recollection of the book of Genesis, compared his mother to Eve bringing forth the serpent.[1] All these stories are, of course, the calumnies of his enemies. There is no evidence that he was illegitimate. It is true that he was afterwards continually called a bastard, just as he was called a parricide, adulterer and murderer, but these are only the amenities of theological controversy. All that we know of his kin is that they were a great and lordly house, who had been distinguished for orthodoxy and had even suffered persecution in Iconoclast days. Photius was some relation of the Patriarch Tarasius (784–806), in whose time the seventh general council had been held (p. 80). He had had no intention of receiving Holy Orders: his career was to be that of a rhetorician and statesman. We know nothing about his teachers; but very soon he began to develop his extraordinary talent. All his contemporaries speak of his astounding memory and untiring power of work. He sat up for long nights reading, and he had read everything. So great an impression did he make on his pupils that they told stories of a contract made by him with the Devil—he had sold his soul for knowledge.[2] He was a sort of universal genius, philosopher, philologist, theologian, lawyer, mathematician, natural scientist, orator, poet. His extant works fill five volumes of Migne;[3] Hergenröther has published a collection of addenda.[4] His most important work is the Myriobiblion ("Thousand Books," the Bibliotheca Photii). It is an incomplete list of books he had read (only 280 out of 1,000), with descriptions of their contents, often long quotations and critical notes about their authors. All kinds of books on philosophy, rhetoric, history, grammar, medicine, &c., are quoted without any order. The Myriobiblion is the only
- ↑ Cf. Hergenröther, i. pp. 317, seq.
- ↑ This is an exact parallel to the legend of a great Western scholar, Gerbert (Sylvester II, 999–1003).
- ↑ P.G. ci.–cv.
- ↑ Monumenta græca ad Photium eiusque historiam pertinentia, Regensburg, 1869. Cf. Krumbacher: Byz. Litt. 73–78, 515–524.
