Simon
22. Of THEBES. Allatius (
De Simeon. p. 202) speaks of Simon Constantinopolitanus, or Simon of Constantinople, an ecclesiastic of the order of preachers, as having, in three treatises, strenuously maintained the doctrine of the Western Church of the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Son as well as from the Father, in opposition to the divines of the Greek church.
The treatises were inscribed respectively, 1. To Manuel Holobelus, or Holobolus, a different person from Manuel Holobolus mentioned elsewhere. [MANUEL, literary and ecclesiastical, No. 8.] 2. To Sophonias. 3. To Joannes Nomophylax. From the last of these treatises Allatius has given long extracts (
Adv. Hottinger. p. 334 and 502;
De Octava Synodo Photiana, p. 453.) Allatius identifies the writer with the " Simon Hieromonachus ex ordine Praedicatorum." mentioned by Georgius Trapezuntius, or George of Trebizond [GEORGIUS, literary and ecclesiastical, No. 48], as being a native of Crete, ardent for the divine doctrines (sc. those of the Western Church), who went to Rome, and obtained of the Pope the office of Inquisitor and Judge of Heretics in Crete (Georg. Trapezunt.
ad Cretenses Epistola, apud Allat.
Graecia Orthodoxa, vol. i. p. 537). Allatius supposes that he got his name Constantinopolitanus from the circumstance of his family having belonged to that city, just as Georgius, who mentions him, was called Trapezuntius, for a similar reason. Allatius (
De Simeon. p. 202) further identifies him with the Simon Iatumaeus (Possevino, in his
Apparatus Sacer, misquotes the name as Iacumaeus, and Allatius (
l.c.) further misquotes it as Tacumaeus) mentioned by Sixtas of Sena (
Biblioth. Sancta, lib. iv.), as having been first bishop of Gyracium, and afterwards archbishop of Thebes, and as having flourished about A. D. 1400.
It is to be observed that Sixtus says Simon Iatumaeus was born at Constantinople ; but perhaps Sixtus was misled by the epithet Constantinopolitanus.
He speaks of him as versed in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew literature, and as an assiduous student of the Bible : and states that he prepared a revision of the Greek text of the New Testament; translated it most faithfully, word for word (verbum de verbo) into Hebrew and into Latin; and formed a triglott Testament, by arranging the Greek text and the two versions in three parallel columns on the same page, so that line corresponded to line, and word to word. (Sixtus Senens.
l.c.) Allatius (
l.c. p. 203) says he had read some poems addressed to Joannes Cantacuzenus, with the inscription
Σίμωνος ἀρχιεπισκόπου Θηβῶν, " Simonis Archiepiscopi Thebarum." Of these poems he quotes a few lines : from which they appear to have been addressed to Cantacuzenus about the time of his abdication, in the middle of the fourteenth century. If, therefore, Simon flourished, as Sixtus of Sena states, in A. D. 1400, he must have attained a considerable age. Cave inclines to the opinion that the Simon who wrote the three treatises on the Holy Spirit was a distinct person from the Simon Jacumaeus (he adds `alias Sacumaeus'), of Sixtus of Sena.
He thinks that if they were the same, the date given by Sixtus, A. D. 1400, is incorrect. (Allatius,
l.c. ; Fabricius,
Bibl. Graec. vol. xi. pp. 301, 334; Cave,
Hist. Litt. ad ann. 1276 and 1400, vol. ii. p. 322; and
Appendix, p. 87, ed. Oxford, 1740-1743.)
