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Rome and Constantinople, which Photius had widened and deepened, was gradually enlarged, and after the final rent (in the middle of the eleventh century), which no subsequent attempts at union could repair, the reputation of Photius became brighter than ever, and his council of 861, which the Pope had stigmatized as a pirate synod, was boldly described by Balsamon as ecumenical. It was recognized that Photius was the first great champion of the independence of the see of Constantinople, and of the national development of the Greek Church, against the interference of Rome. He formulated the points of difference between the two Churches which were to furnish the pretext for the schism; he first brought into the foreground, as an essential point of doctrine, the mystery of the procession of the Holy Ghost.1

The members of the Latin and the Greek Churches are compelled, at the risk of incurring the penalties of a damnable heresy, to affirm or to deny that the Holy Ghost proceeds from the Son as well as from the Father. The historian, who is not concerned, even if he were qualified, to examine the mutual relations which exist among the august persons of the Trinity, will yet note with some interest that on this question the Greeks adhered to the official doctrine of the Church so far as it had been expressed by the authority of Ecumenical Councils. The theologians of the Second Council at Constantinople (A.D. 381) had distinctly declared the procession from the Father, and against this pronouncement it could only be argued that they had not denied the procession from the Son. It was not till A.D. 589 that a council in Spain added the words "and the Son" to the creed of Nicaea, and this addition was quickly adopted in Gaul. It corresponded to the private opinions of most western theologians, including Augustine and Pope Leo I. But the Greek Fathers generally held another doctrine, which the layman may find it difficult

1 His chief work on the subject, "On the Mystagogia of the Holy Spirit," was not written till 885-886. In it he seems to have taken account of the most important contemporary vindication of the Latin doctrine, written (probably after 867) by Bishop Ratramnus of Corbie (Contra Grae

corum opposita, etc., in Migne, P.L. 121, 228 sqq.), for which see Dräseke's article, Ratramnus und Photios, in B.Z. 18, 396 sqq. (1909), where it is suggested that though Photius did not read the treatise itself, its points were communicated to him by Greek friends.

to distinguish. They maintained that the Third person proceeded not from, but through the Second. In the ninth century, the Popes, though they repudiated the opposite dogma, hesitated to introduce the Spanish interpolation into the Creed, and perhaps it was not adopted till the beginning of the eleventh. The Reformed Churches have accepted the formula of the Creed, as it was revised in Spain, though they acknowledge only the authority of the first four Ecumenical Councils. It can hardly make much difference to the mass of believers; since we may venture to suspect that the majority of those who profess a firm belief in the double procession attach as little significance to the formula which they pronounce as if they declared their faith in a fourth dimension of space.

The beginnings of the antagonism and mutual dislike between the Greeks and Latins, which are so conspicuous at a later stage of history, may be detected in the Ignatian controversy. In the correspondence between Pope and Emperor, we can discern the Latin distrust of the Greeks, the Greek contempt for the Latins. The Emperor, probably prompted by Photius, describes Latin as a "barbarous and Scythian language.1 He has quite forgotten that it was the tongue of Constantine and Justinian, and the Pope has to remind him that his own title is "Emperor of the Romans" and that in the ceremonies of his own court Latin words are daily pronounced. But this childish and ignorant attack on the language of Roman law shows how the wind was blowing, and it well illustrates how the Byzantines, in the intense conviction of the superiority of their own civilization—for which indeed they had many excellent reasons-already considered the Latin-speaking peoples as belonging to the barbarian world. It was not to be expected that the Greeks, animated by this spirit, would accept such claims of ecclesiastical supremacy as were put forward by Nicolas, or that the Church of Constantinople would permit or invite a Pope's interference, except as a temporary expedient. Photius aroused into consciousness the Greek feeling of nationality, which throughout the Middle Ages drew strength and nourishment from bitter antagonism to Roman Christianity, and the modern 1 See Nicol. Ep. 8.

Hellenes have reason to regard him, as they do, with veneration as a champion of their nationality.1

The Ignatian affair has another aspect as a conspicuous example of the Caesaropapism which was an essential feature in the system of the Byzantine state. Ignatius was removed, because he offended the Emperor, just as any minister might be deprived of his office. It may be said that the Ignatian party represented a feeling in the Church against such an exertion of the secular power; and it is doubtless true that the party included, among its active members, some who inherited the traditions of the opposition to the Patriarchs Tarasius and Nicephorus and considered the influence of the Emperors in ecclesiastical affairs excessive. But we may

hesitate to believe that the party as a whole supposed that they were protesting on principle against the authority of the autocrat over the Church. It is more probable that they were guided by personal ties and considerations, by sympathy with Ignatius who seemed to have been most unjustly treated, and by dislike of Photius. It is to be observed that the Emperor made his will prevail, and though the policy of Michael was reversed by Basil, this was simply a change in policy, it was not a change in principle. It was a concession to public opinion and to Rome, it was not a capitulation of the State to the Church. It was a new act of the autocrat as head of the ecclesiastical organization, it was not an abdication of the Caesar-pope.

It is hardly necessary to speak of the canonical irregularities of which so much was made in the indictment of the Pope and the Ignatian synods against Photius. In regard to the one fact which we know fully, the sudden elevation of a layman to the episcopal office, we may observe that the Pope's reply to the case which Photius made out is unsatisfactory and imperfect. The instances of Tarasius and Nicephorus were sufficient for the purpose of vindication. In regard to

1 The Photian spirit was curiously caricatured in the recent struggle between the two language parties in Greece. The advocates of the literary language ( ka@apevovoa), who, headed by Professor Mistriotes, carried the day and secured the ultimate doom of the popular language, asserted that

foreign influence was behind their opponents, the vindicators of the vulgar tongue (known as οἱ μαλλιαροί), and that the object was to undermine the Hellenic nationality and the Orthodox Church. Foreigners can only gape with wonder.

Tarasius, it is urged by Nicolas that Pope Hadrian protested against his elevation, in a message addressed to the Seventh Ecumenical Council. But the Council had not hesitated to accept Tarasius, and it did not concern the Church of Constantinople, what the Bishop of Rome, apart from the Council, chose to think or say about the matter. In regard to Nicephorus, the Pope said nothing because he had nothing to say. Nicephorus was in communion with Rome; the Popes of his day raised no protest against his elevation. We have seen that if the first overtures of Nicolas to Constantinople had met with a different reception, the canonical molehills would never have been metamorphosed into mountains. The real value of the objections may be measured by the fact that when Photius reascended the patriarchal throne after the death of his rival, he was recognized by Pope John III. The death of Ignatius had indeed removed one obstacle, but nevertheless on the showing of Nicolas he was not a bishop at all. Pope John recognized him simply because it suited the papal policy at the moment.

In the stormy ecclesiastical history of our period the monks had played a conspicuous part, first as champions of the worship of icons and then of the cause of Ignatius, who was himself a typical monk. In the earlier controversies over the mystery of the incarnation, gangs of monks had been the authors of scandal in those turbulent assemblies at Ephesus, of which one is extolled as an Ecumenical Council and the other branded as a synod of brigands; at Constantinople, they led an insurrection which shook the throne of Anastasius. The Emperor Constantine V. recognized that the monks were his most influential and implacable opponents and declared war upon monasticism. But monasticism was an instinct too deeply rooted in Byzantine society to be suppressed or exterminated; the monastic order rested on as firm foundations, secured by public opinion, as the Church itself. The reaction under Irene revived and confirmed the power of the cloister; and at the same time the Studite movement of reform, under the guidance of Plato and Theodore, exerted a certain influence beyond the walls of Studion and tended to augment the prestige of the monastic life, though it was far from being generally accepted. The programme of the abbot Theodore

to render the authority of the Church independent of the autocrat was a revolutionary project which had no body of public opinion behind it and led to no consequences. The iconoclastic Emperors did their will, and the restoration of image-worship, while it was a triumph for the monks, was not a victory of the Church over the State. But within the State-Church monasticism flourished with as little check as it could have done if the Church had been an independent institution, and produced its full crop of economic evils. Hundreds of monasteries, some indeed with but few tenants, existed in Constantinople and its immediate neighbourhood in the ninth century, and the number was being continually increased by new foundations. For it was a cherished ambition of ordinary men of means to found a monastery, and they had only to obtain the licence of a bishop, who consecrated the site by planting a cross, and to furnish the capital for the upkeep of the buildings and the maintenance of three monks. It was a regular custom for high dignitaries, who had spent their lives in the service of the State, to retire in old age to cloisters which they had built themselves.2 It is too little to say that this was an ideal of respectability; it was also probably for the Byzantine man a realization of happiness in the present, enhanced as it was by the prospect of bliss in the future. But the State paid heavily for the indulgence of its members in the life of the cloister and the cell.

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the significant τοὺς ἀπὸ μαγίστρων μοναδικούς in Philotheos, 17615

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