1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Philoponus, Joannes

PHILOPONUS, JOANNES, Greek philosopher of Alexandria, lived in the later part of the 5th and the beginning of the 6th century of our era. The surname Grammaticus he assumed in virtue of his lectures on language and literature; that of Philoponus owing to the large number of treatises he composed. He was a pupil of Ammonius Hermiae, and is supposed to have written the life of Aristotle sometimes attributed to his master. To Philoponus are attributed a large number of works on theology and philosophy. It is said that, though he was a pupil of Ammonius, he was at first a Christian, and he has been credited with the authorship of a commentary on the Mosaic Cosmogony in eight books, dedicated to Sergius, patriarch of Constantinople, and edited by Balthasar Corderius in 1630. Other authorities maintain that this, as well as the Disputatio de paschale, was the work of another author, John the Tritheist. It was perhaps this Philoponus who tried to save the Alexandrian library from the caliph Omar after Amu’s victory in 639.