Theophilos Corydalleus

Theophilos Corydalleus (1574 to 1646) was a Greek Neo-Aristotelian philosopher who began the movement known as Korydalism, and also an Eastern Orthodox cleric, physician, astronomer, mathematician, educator and geographer. Born in Korydallos in Attica, he studied in Rome at the Saint Athanasius college, then medicine and philosophy at Padua, where he took his doctorate in 1613 and was influenced by Cesare Cremonini. He tried to free Aristotelian thought from ecclesiastical control while avoiding conflict with Orthodox doctrine, and analysed the conflict between the Christian idea of Creation and the Aristotelian eternity of substance. He taught in Venice, Athens, Cephalonia, Zakynthos and Constantinople, directed the Patriarchal Academy of Constantinople under Patriarch Cyril Lucaris, where he reorganised the curriculum on Neo-Aristotelian lines, and served as archbishop of Arta and Naupactus from 1640 to 1642. His textbooks were used into the nineteenth century, and Korydalism shaped Greek education until the Greek revolution.