BOOK V.

FROM THE DEATH OF CHARLEMAGNE TO THE DEPOSITION OF POPE GREGORY VI,

A.D. 814-1046.

 

CHAPTER III.

THE GREEK CHURCH—PHOTIUS. AD. 843-898.

 

 

Michael III, the son of Theophilus and Theodora, grew up under evil influences. His maternal uncle Bardas founded schemes of ambition on the corruption of the young prince’s character. He removed erne of the male guardians by death, and another by compelling him to retire into a monastery; and by means of a worthless tutor, as well as by his own discourse, he instilled into the emperor a jealous impatience of the control of his mother and sister. At the age of eighteen Michael threw of this yoke. Theodora called together the senate, showed them the treasures which her economy had amassed, in order that she might not be afterwards suspected of having left her son without ample provision, resigned her share in the regency, and withdrew from the palace.

Michael now gave the loose to his depraved tastes and appetites. His chosen associates were athletes, charioteers, musicians, buffoons, and dancing-girls. He himself entered the lists in the public chariot races, and insisted on receiving his prizes from the band of a consecrated image. He joined in the feasts and drinking bouts of his companions; he became sponsor for their children, and on such occasions bestowed lavish presents; he rewarded acts of disgusting buffoonery with costly gifts, and even encouraged his vile favourites to practise their gross and brutal jests on his mother. The wealth which he had inherited was soon dissipated; and after having endeavoured to supply his necessities by plundering churches of their ornaments, he was reduced to melt down his plate, and even the golden tissues of the imperial robes.

The most outrageous of Michael’s extravagances was his profane mimicry of religion. He organized a mock hierarchy, of which one Theophilus, who was known by the name of Gryllus, was the chief. Under this patriarch were twelve metropolitans, the emperor himself being one of the number. They went through a farcical ordination; they were arrayed in costly robes imitated from those of the church; they sang obscene songs to music composed in ridicule of the ecclesiastical chant; they burlesqued the trials, condemnations, and depositions of bishops; they had jewelled altar-vessels, with which they ad­ministered an Eucharist of mustard and vinegar. On one occasion this ribald crew encountered the venerable patriarch Ignatius at the head of a solemn procession, when Gryllus, who was mounted on an ass, rudely jostled him, and the attendant mummers twanged their harps in derision, insulted the patriarch with filthy language, and beat the clergy of his train. After the death of their patron, some of the wretches who had shared in these abominations were called to account before the great council of 869, when they pleaded that they had acted through fear of the emperor, and expressed contrition for their offences.

During the course of ages, a change had come over the characters which had formerly distinguished the Greek and the Latin churches respectively. Among the Greeks the fondness for speculation had been succeeded by a settled formalism, while the rigidity of the Latins had yielded to the new life infused by the accession of the barbarian nations to the church. But, although different from that of earlier times, a marked distinction still existed. The influence of Augustine, which had so largely moulded the western mind, and had given prominence to the doctrines of grace above all others, had not extended to the east. From the time of the Trullan council, the churches had been divided by a difference of usages, especially as to the marriage of the clergy; and, although the question as to the procession of the Holy Ghost had been laid to rest in the days of Charlemagne, it still remained as a doctrinal centre around which other causes of discord might array themselves. The see of Rome had gradually risen to a height far above its ancient rival; and while Constantinople could not but be dissatisfied with this change, there was on the Roman side a wish to make the superiority felt. Political jealousies also contributed to feed the smouldering ill-feeling which any accident might fan into a flame. And now a personal question produced a rupture which tended far towards the eventual separation of the churches.

Nicetas, a son of Michael Rhangabé, had, on his father’s deposition, been thrust into a cloister at the age of fourteen. He assumed the name of Ignatius, became a priest, and, having acquired a high character for piety, was, in 846, promoted by Theodora to the see of Constantinople, on the recommendation of a famous hermit. His predecessor, Methodius, had been engaged in differences with Gregory bishop of Syracuse, who, having been driven from his own diocese by the Saracens, usually lived at Constantinople, and the patriarch had uttered an anathema against the bishop. In Ignatius the feeling of religious antagonism could hardly fail to be stimulated by the fact that Gregory was a son of Leo the Armenian, by whom his own father, Michael, had been dethroned. He refused Gregory’s assistance at his consecration; in 851 he deposed and excommunicated him for having uncanonically ordained a person of another diocese; and at the patriarch’s request the sentence was confirmed by a Roman synod under Benedict III. The inhabitants of the capital were divided between Ignatius and Gregory; but, although the opposition to the patriarch was strong, he earned high and deserved credit by his conduct as a pastor.

His conscientious zeal for the duties of his office induced him to remonstrate with Bardas on the subject of a scandalous imputation—that the minister, after having divorced his wife on some trivial pretext, lived in an incestuous intercourse with the widow of his son; and finding remonstrance ineffectual, the patriarch proceeded so far as to refuse the holy Eucharist to him at Epiphany, 857. Bardas, whose influence over his nephew was continually increasing, resolved on vengeance. He persuaded Michael that, in order to the security of his power, it would be expedient to compel Theodora and her daughters to become nuns, and Ignatius was summoned to officiate at their profession. The patriarch refused, on the ground that it would be a violation of his duty towards the empress and one of her daughter who had been appointed regents, by the will of Theophilus. On this Bardas accused him of treason, adding a charge of connection with the interest of a crazy pretender to the throne, named Gebon; and Ignatius was banished to the island of Terebinthus.

Bardas resolved to fill the vacant throne with a man whose brilliant reputation might overpower the murmurs excited by the deprivation of Ignatius. Photius was a member of a distinguished Byzantine family, a great nephew of the patriarch Tarasius, and connected with the imperial house by the marriage of his uncle to a sister of Theodora. He had lived in the enjoyment of wealth and splendour, he had been ambassador to the caliph of Bagdad, and was now secretary of state and protospathary and in the midst of his occupations he had acquired an amount of learning so far surpassing that of his contemporaries that his enemies even referred it to unhallowed sources. He had been accustomed to carry on a part of his studies in company with his brother Tarasius, and, on taking leave of him when about to set out on the embassy to Bagdad, presented him with another companion, in the shape of a summary of books which Photius had read by himself. This work—the Myriobiblon or Bibliotheca—contains notices of two hundred and eighty books in classical and ecclesiastical literature, with summaries of the contents, abridgments, extracts, and comments; and, in addition to its value as a treasury of much which would otherwise have perished, it is remarkable in the history of literature as the prototype of our modern critical reviews. Among his other writings are a Dictionary; a book of discussions on questions from Scripture; a considerable number of letters; and a collection of ecclesiastical laws.

With the exception of such information as may be gathered from his own works, our knowledge of Photius comes almost exclusively from his adversaries. The enmity of these in his own time was bitter; and his name has since been pursued by writers in the papal interest with a rancour which can perhaps only be paralleled by their treatment of the protestant reformers. The biographer of Ignatius tells us that the intruding patriarch took part in Michael’s drinking bouts, and made no scruple of associating with Gryllus and his gang; and another Greek writer states that on one occasion, when the emperor was overcome by fifty cups, Photius swallowed sixty without any appearance of intoxication. The second of these charges, however, is accompanied by fables so gross as altogether to destroy the credit of the author’s evidence against Photius; and such tales are utterly inconsistent with the admission of his enemies, that he had succeeded (although, as they think, undeservedly) in gaining a character for sanctity. Nor was his orthodoxy as yet impeached, although he was afterwards called in question for having taught that man has a reasonable and also a spiritual soul—an opinion countenanced by the authority of many among the earlier fathers. Like Ignatius, he was a supporter of the cause of images, for which he states that his parents had suffered in the times of persecution.

Attempts were made to induce Ignatius to resign his dignity; but, as such a step would have involved an acknowledgment of guilt, he steadfastly withstood both entreaties and severities. At length, however, he was drawn into something which the court could regard as a compliance; and Photius, after having been ordained by Gregory of Syracuse through all the degrees of the ministry on six successive days, was enthroned as patriarch on Christmas-day. He repeatedly declares, even in letters to Bardas himself, that the promotion was forced on him, and tells the pope that he had allowed himself to be imprisoned before he would accept it. Nor need we suppose his reluctance insincere; for even an ambitious man (as Photius certainly was) might well have hesitated to encounter the difficulties of a position which was to be held to the exclusion of such a prelate as Ignatius, and by the favour of such patrons as Bardas and Michael; while, in mitigation of the unseemliness of intruding into the place of a patriarch who was still alive, and whose resignation was only constructive, it is to be considered that Photius had belonged to the party of Gregory, and therefore could have had little personal scruple as to the rights of Ignatius.

It is said that he was required by the metropolitans of his patriarchate to swear that he would honour the deprived patriarch as a father, and that he obtained from Bardas a promise that Ignatius should be kindly treated. But he very soon had the mortification of finding that this promise was disregarded. Ignatius, in the hope of forcing him to a more explicit resignation, was exposed to cold and nakedness, was scourged, chained in a gloomy dungeon, and deprived of the consolation which he might have received from the visits of his friends, while many of his partisans were beaten, imprisoned, and mutilated with the usual Byzantine cruelty; and Photius had to bear the odium of outrages committed in violation of the pledge which he had required, and in contempt of his earnest remonstrances and entreaties.

The adherents of Ignatius were zealous and resolute. They held a synod, at which Photius was excommunicated; whereupon the patriarch, who appears from the bitterness of his letters to have been a man of very irritable temper, retaliated by assembling another synod, and uttering a like sentence against Ignatius. In order to strengthen his position, he now sent a notice of his consecration to Rome, with a request that the pope would depute legates to a council which was to be held at Constantinople for the suppression of the iconoclast party, which had again attempted to make head. His letter was accompanied by one from the emperor, with splendid gifts to the apostolic see. The application for aid against the iconoclasts appears to have been merely a pretext—the real object being to draw the pope into the interest of Photius. In the meantime renewed attempts were made to obtain the resignation of Ignatius, at first by an increase of severity against him and his party, and afterwards by allowing him to return to Constantinople, and offering the restoration of his property.

Nicolas, who had just been raised to the papal chair, was no doubt better informed as to the late events at Constantinople than the patriarch or the emperor imagined he saw in their application to him an opportunity of extending his influence, and affected to regard it as a reference of the case to his decision. He wrote to the emperor in the style of an independent sovereign, and, as a hint of the price which he set on his co-operation, he insisted on the restoration of the provinces which had been withdrawn from his jurisdiction, and of the patrimony of the church in Calabria and Sicily. He expressed surprise that the case of Ignatius should have been decided without the concurrence of Rome, and on evidence of a kind which was forbidden by the laws of the church; nor did he fail to remark on the inconsistency, that, while Photius represented his predecessor as having resigned from age and infirmity, the emperor spoke of him as having been deposed. Two bishops, Rodoald of Portus, and Zacharias of Anagni, were sent to Constantinople as legates, with instructions to inquire into the matter, and not to admit Photius to communion except as a layman. They were charged with a short letter to the patriarch, in which the pope remarked on his hasty ordination, but told him that, if the legates should make a favourable report, he would gladly own him as a brother.

Michael, provoked by the tone of the pope’s reply, received the legates with dishonour. They were detained at Constantinople for months, and were plied with threats and with bribery, which did not fail of their effect. At length a synod, styled by the Greeks the First and Second, and consisting, like the Nicene council, of three hundred and eighteen bishops, met in 861. By this assembly Photius was acknowledged as patriarch. The letter from the pope was read, but with the omission of such parts as were likely to give offence—whether it were that the legates had consented to the suppression, or that advantage was taken of their ignorance of Greek. Ignatius was brought before the assembly, and was required to subscribe his own condemnation. He behaved with inflexible spirit, desired the legates to remove the “adulterer”, if they wished to appear as judges, and told them to their faces that they had been bribed. Seventy-two witnesses—a few of them senators and patricians, but for the most part persons of low condition, farriers, ostlers, needle-makers, and the like, while some are described as heretics— were brought forward to sign a paper asserting that he had been promoted by imperial favour, and without canonical election. He was stripped of the patriarchal robes, in which, as the matter was left to his own judgment, he had thought it his duty to appear; he was beaten, and, at last, when exhausted by ill treatment for more than a fortnight, was made, by forcibly holding his hand, to sign with a cross a confession that he had obtained his office irregularly and had administered it tyrannically. It was then announced to him that he must read this document publicly at Whitsuntide, and threats of losing his eyes and his hands were uttered; but he contrived to escape in the disguise of a slave, and found a refuge among the monks of the islands from the search which Bardas caused to be made for him. An earthquake was interpreted as a witness from heaven in his favour, while Photius, by offering another explanation of it, drew on himself a charge of impiety. Bardas, in deference to the general feeling, now permitted the deposed patriarch to return to a monastery in the capital, while Michael jested on the state of affairs by saying that Gryllus was his own patriarch, Ignatius the patriarch of the Christians, and Photius the patriarch of Bardas.

The acts of the council were sent to Nicolas, with a request from the emperor that he would confirm them, and at the same time Photius addressed to the pope a letter which, by the skill displayed in its composition, has extorted the unwilling admiration of Baronius. He professes to deplore in a pathetic strain the elevation which he represents as having been forced on him; the pope, he says, ought rather to pity than to blame him for having exchanged a life of peace, content, and general esteem, for a post of danger, anxiety, unpopularity, and envy. As for the ecclesiastical laws which Nicolas had spoken of in his letters, they were not known at Constantinople. The rule which forbade such ordinations as his was not binding, inasmuch as it had not been sanctioned by a general council; he defends his ordination by the parallel cases of his predecessors Nicephorus and Tarasius, who had been promoted from among the laity, and by the stronger cases of Ambrose in the west and of Nectarius in the east, who had been chosen to the episcopate while yet unbaptised. He had, he says, sanctioned in the late synod a canon against the elevation of a layman to a bishopric except by regular degrees; and he expresses a wish that the church of Constantinople had before observed the rule, as in that case he would have escaped the troubles which had come on him. The patriarch’s tone throughout, although respectful, is that of an equal. In conclusion he reflects with bitter irony on the morals of the Romans, and prays that Rome may no longer continue to be a harbour for worthless persons such as those whom it had lately received without letters of communion—adulterers, thieves, drunkards, oppressors, murderers, and votaries of all uncleanness, who had run away from Constantinople in fear of the punishment for their vices. By this description were intended the refugees of the Ignatian party.

But the Ignatians had also conveyed to the pope their version of the late events, and Nicolas wrote in a lofty strain both to the emperor and to the patriarch. The Roman church, he says, is the head of all, and on it all depend. He sets aside the parallels which Photius had alleged for his consecration, on the ground that the persons in question had not intruded into the room of wrongfully ejected orthodox Bishops, and tells Photius that, if he did not know the laws of the church, it was because they made against his cause. At a synod held in 863, the pope deposed and excommunicated Zacharias for misconduct in his legation, reserving the case of Rodoald, who was then employed on a mission in France; he declared Photius to be deprived of all spiritual office and dignity, and threatened that, in case of his disobedience, he should be excommunicated without hope of restoration until on his deathbed; he annulled all orders conferred by him, and threatened his consecrators and abettors with excommunication. All proceedings against Ignatius were declared to be void, and it was required that he should be acknowledged as patriarch. The pope embodied the resolutions of this council in a letter to the emperor; and he desired the patriarchs of Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem to make it known that the Roman church in no way consented to the usurpation of Photius.

Michael replied in violent indignation, that by his application to the pope he had not intended to acknowledge him as a judge, or to imply that his own clergy were not sufficient for the decision of the case; he scoffed at Rome as antiquated, and at the Latin language as a barbarous jargon. Nicolas, who was elated by his recent triumph over Lothair, met the emperor with no less haughtiness. He taxes him with disrespect towards God’s priests, and, as Michael had spoken of having “ordered” him to send legates to the council, he tells him that such language is not to be used to the successors of St. Peter. To the reflections on the Latin tongue, he answers that such words, uttered in the “excess of madness”, were injurious to Him who made all languages, and were ridiculous as coming from one who styled himself emperor of the Romans. He insists at great length on the privileges of the Roman see, derived not from councils, but from the chief of the apostles He utters many threats against all who shall take part against Ignatius He proposes that the rival patriarchs, or their representatives, should appear at Rome for a trial of the cause. He warns the emperor to abstain from interfering with spiritual things, and desires him to burn his late letter, threatening that otherwise he will himself suspend it to a stake, and, to the disgrace of the writer, will burn it in the sight of all the nations which are at Rome; and he invokes curses on the person who is to read his letters to the emperor, if he should in any respect mutilate or mistranslate them. He sent the acts of the Roman council to the clergy of Constantinople, with a long detail of the affair; and at the same time he wrote to Photius, Ignatius, Bardas, Theodora, and the empress Eudoxia.

Michael, provoked by the opposition of Nicolas, and by the manner in which it was carried on, looked out for some means of annoying the pope. Although Charlemagne’s imperial title had been acknowledged at Constantinople, it was as emperor of the Franks, not of Rome; and his successors had not obtained from the east any higher title than that of king. Michael now offered to recognize Louis II as emperor, on condition of his acknowledging the council which was so offensive to the pope; and Louis appeared willing to accept the terms. But events soon occurred which rendered this negotiation abortive.

A new question arose to complicate the differences between the Greek and the Latin churches. The Bulgarians, who are supposed to have been a people of Asiatic origin, of the same stock with the Huns, and at one time seated near the sea of Azov, had, about the year 680, occupied a territory in Moesia and Dardania, where, in consequence of intermarriages with the native Slaves, they had gradually exchanged their original language for a dialect of the Slavonics. They had been engaged in continual hostilities with the Byzantine empire; Nicephorus had lost his life in war with them, and they had endangered the throne of Michael Rhangabé. In the early part of the ninth century, Christianity had been introduced among them by some captives, but with little effect. During the regency of Theodora, however, circumstances occurred which gave a new impulse to the progress of the Gospel among the Bulgarians. A monk named Cupharas, in whom the empress took an interest, fell into the hands of their prince Bogoris; and the empress proposed that he should be exchanged for a sister of Bogoris, who was then a captive at Constantinople. The Bulgarian princess, who had been converted to the Gospel during her captivity, zealously attempted, after returning to her own country, to carry on the work which Cupharas had begun. Bogoris himself held out, until, during a famine, after having in vain addressed himself to other deities, he had recourse to the God of the Christians: the success of his prayer resulted in his conversion; and he was baptized by the patriarch of Constantinople, changing his name for that of the emperor Michael, who by proxy acted as his god­father. The convert requested Michael to supply him with a painter for the decoration of his palace; and a monk named Methodius (for art was then confined to the monasteries) was sent into Bulgaria. Bogoris employed him to paint a hall with subjects of a terrible character, intending that these should be taken from the perils of hunting; whereupon the monk depicted the Last Judgment, as being the most terrible of all scenes. The representation of hell, which was explained as setting forth the future lot of the heathen, alarmed the prince into abandoning the idols which he had until then retained; and many of his subjects were moved by the sight of the picture to seek admis­sion into the church. A rebellion, which soon after broke out in consequence of the prince's conversion, was put down by him with a cruelty which accorded ill with his new profession.

Photius was probably the patriarch who had gone into Bulgaria for the baptism of Bogoris; and he had addressed to him a long letter, or rather treatise, on Christian doctrine and practice, and particularly on the duties of a sovereign. But soon after this we find that the Bulgarian prince made an application to Nicolas, accompanied by valuable presents, for the purpose of obtaining the pope’s counsel and assistance towards the conversion of his people. It would seem that he had been perplexed between the claims of rival forms of Christianity—Greek, Roman, and Armenian; and he may very naturally have wished for some instruction better adapted to the state of his knowledge than the somewhat too refined treatise which he had received from the patriarch of Constantinople. But in addition to this, it is most likely that Bogoris was actuated by a jealous dread of the empire which bordered so closely on him, and by an apprehension of the consequences which might result from a religious connection with his ancient enemies. Nicolas replied by sending into Bulgaria two bishops, Paul of Populonia, and Formosus of Portus, with a letter in which the questions proposed to him were answered under 106 heads. This document, while it displays the usual lofty pretensions of Rome, is in other respects highly creditable to the good sense and to the Christian feeling of the writer. He sets aside many frivolous questions, and answers others with a wise treatment of their indifference, and with care to abstain from laying down minutely rigid rules. He rebukes the harshness which had been shown to a Greek who had pretended to the character of a priest; he censures the king for the cruelty which he had used in the suppression of the late rebellion, but tells him that, as he had acted in zeal for the faith, and had erred rather from ignorance than from wickedness, he may hope for forgiveness if he repent; and he exhorts him to refrain from the use of force against those who continue in their idolatry—to hold no communion with them indeed, but to deal with them by the weapons of reason only. He advises that torture should no longer be used to discover the guilt of criminals, and that such persons should be treated with a gentleness becoming the faith which the Bulgarians had adopted. The cross is to be substituted for the horse’s tail which had hitherto been the national standard. Idolatrous practices, charms, and arts of divination are to be forsaken. Those who, as heathens, had married two wives must put away the second, and do penance—polygamy being no less contrary to the original condition of man than to the law of Christ. In answer to the request that a patriarch might be appointed for the country, the pope says that he must wait for the report of his envoys as to the number of Christians; in the meantime he sends a bishop, and undertakes to send more if required; and he promises that, when the church is organized, one with the title of archbishop, if not of patriarch, shall be placed at its head. There are, he says, properly only three patriarchal sees—those of Constantinople and Jerusalem, although so styled, being of inferior honour, because they were not of apostolical foundation; and he concludes by exhorting the Bulgarians, amidst the claims of conflicting teachers, to cleave to the holy Roman church, which had always been without spot or wrinkle.

Bogoris had also applied to Louis of Germany, who sent him a bishop; but it is said that this bishop, on arriving in Bulgaria, found the country sufficiently provided with clergy from Rome, and returned home without having attempted to aid or to disturb their labours.

But at Constantinople the pope’s intervention aroused great indignation. Nicolas claimed Bulgaria on the ground that it had belonged to the Roman jurisdiction while it was a province of the empire—that the people had voluntarily placed themselves under him, and that he had provided them with churches and clergy; while Photius insisted on his own right as derived from the conversion of the nation. The patriarch summoned a council to meet at Constantinople, and, in a letter addressed to the patriarchs of Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem, denounced the invasion of Bulgaria. Within the last two years, he says, men from the west, the region of darkness, had intruded into this portion of his fold, corrupting the Gospel with pernicious novelties. They taught a difference of usages as to fasting; they forbade the clergy to marry; they denied the right of presbyters to confirm; and their bishops, in opposition to apostles, fathers, and councils, administered a second unction to persons who had already been confirmed according to the Greek rite. But above all, they adulterated the creed with spurious additions, affirming that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Son. Photius reprobates this doctrine with all his force, as a denial of the unity of principle in the Godhead, unheard of by Athanasius, Gregory, and Basil—as a blasphemy against the Holy Ghost, or rather against the whole Trinity, such as cannot be exceeded, and is deserving of ten thousand anathemas. He denounces the Romans as apostate and servants of Antichrist; and he invites the oriental patriarchs to send envoys to Constantinople for the purpose of combining with him in resistance to them. Although Photius had great reason to complain both of the interference with his converts, and of the manner in which the pope had depreciated his dignity, and had set aside all but the Roman customs, he appears to be open to the charge of swelling his personal quarrel with Rome into a schism between the churches; and the tone in which he now enlarged on the difference of usages was very unlike that in which he had some years before adverted to them in his elaborate letter to Nicolas. The synod summoned by Photius was held in 867. It replied to the Roman anathemas by pronouncing a like sentence against Nicolas himself; and the patriarch, in the hope of drawing the western emperor into his interest, contrived that acclamations in honour of Louis II and Ingilberga should be mixed with those in honour of the Byzantine rulers.

In the meantime important political changes were in progress. Bardas had gradually acquired a more and more complete ascendency over his nephew, while the emperor sank continually deeper into degrading pleasures. In 862 Bardas was advanced to the dignity of Caesar; and, although his rule was oppressive and unpopular, it is acknowledged that he exhibited much talent for government, and that he exerted himself for the revival of learning, which had long been neglected at Constantinople. But in no long time his influence was disturbed by that of a rival, Basil the Macedonian. Basil, although his pedigree was afterwards deduced by flatterers from the Persian Arsacids, from Alexander the Great, and from Constantine, was really of Slavonic race. His birth was humble, and his first appearance at Constantinople was as a needy adventurer, seeking shelter for a night in the porch of a monastery, where the abbot, it is said, was thrice warned in visions by the patron, St. Diomede, to open the gate and admit him. Basil found employment as servant to a kinsman of the emperor, and after a time was introduced to the notice of Michael, who, in reward of his accomplishments as a wrestler, a jockey, and a toper, raised him to the dignity of the patriciate, and bestowed on him one of his own mistresses in marriage. Bardas began to take alarm at the rapid rise of the new favourite; but Michael and Basil gave him a solemn assurance of safety, signed by the emperor’s own hand. Soon after, however, the murder of the Caesar was concerted while he was engaged with the emperor on a military expedition. The assassins, to whom the signal was given by the sign of the cross, hesitated to strike him in the imperial presence; but Basil gave the first blow from behind, and the victim was dispatched while embracing the emperor’s feet. After a short interval, during which the vigour of Bardas was missed in the government, and complaints of the general discontent reached even the ears of Michael, Basil was nominated Caesar, and on Whitsunday 867 he was crowned by the emperor’s hands with a diadem which had been blessed by Photius. He immediately began to display talents of a different order from those which had won for him the imperial favour, and endeavoured to put some restraint on the increasing grossness of his patron’s debaucheries; but the attempt provoked Michael to such a degree that he is said in his drunken frenzy to have given orders for the Caesar’s death, and to have announced an intention of promoting a boatman in his room. Basil felt that he must sacrifice the emperor’s life or his own, and by his command Michael, after having stupefied himself with wine at supper, in the Caesar’s company, was murdered on the 24th of September, 867. The Greek historians can discover no other redeeming fact in the life of this wretched prince than that he bestowed a chalice and a splendid chandelier on the church of St. Sophia. Basil found an exhausted treasury, but exerted himself with vigour and success to replenish it and to restore the empire.

Two days after the death of Michael, Photius was deposed. He had formerly been on friendly terms with Basil, and contradictory accounts are given of the reason for his deposition. By some it is explained in a manner discreditable to him, while others say that he provoked the emperor by refusing the Eucharist to him as a murderer and an usurper.

Nicolas had written to Hincmar, detailing the history of the Bulgarian affair, and requesting the assistance of the Frankish clergy, whose character stood highest for learning among the clergy of the west, to combat the attacks which had been made by the Greeks on the Christianity of the Latins. In consequence of this invitation, Hincmar desired Odo, bishop of Beauvais, and other divines to collect materials for a general defence; and the result was the production of treatises by Odo, Aeneas of Paris, and Ratramn. Of these, the work of Ratramn is regarded as the most valuable. The first three books of it are devoted to the question of the Holy Spirit’s procession, while the fourth and last discusses the controversy as to rites and discipline. It is remarkable that, in opposition to the line usually taken by Nicolas, the monk of Corbie dwells on the sufficiency of uniting in faith, and censures the Greeks, not for varying from the Roman usages, but for insisting on their own as exclusively correct and necessary. The Greek doctrine as to the Holy Spirit was also condemned by a synod of bishops from the dominions of Louis of Germany, which met at Worms in 868.

Basil reinstated Ignatius in the patriarchate with great pomp, and sent a member of each party to Rome, accompanied by one of his own officers, for the purpose of representing the state of 372 affairs; but the envoy of Photius was shipwrecked and died on the journey, so that his cause was left without an advocate. The representative of Ignatius was charged with a letter from the patriarch, in which the authority of St. Peter’s successors was acknowledged in terms such as had not been usual at Constantinople. Adrian, who had now succeeded Nicolas, assembled a synod, which renewed the former sentence against Photius. It was ordered that the copy of the Byzantine synod’s acts which had been transmitted to Rome should be burnt, and that those at Constantinople should share the same fate.

A council, which is regarded in the Roman church as the eighth general council, met at Constantinople in October 869. It was attended by two bishops and a deacon from Rome; Antioch was represented by the metropolitan of Tyre, Jerusalem by a presbyter; and to these a representative of the Alexandrian see was added at the ninth session. Some high civil officers were present, but the number of bishops was at first exceedingly small and, although afterwards gradually increased, it did not rise beyond 60 at the ninth session, and 102 or 109 at the tenth and last.

On the first day the sentence of the late Roman council against Photius was adopted, and all bishops who afterwards joined the assembly were required to sign it. The second, third, and fourth sessions were chiefly occupied in dealing with bishops and clergy who, after having been ordained by Ignatius or his predecessor, had submitted to Photius. These presented a confession of their offences, alleging that they had been forced or deceived into them ; and they were admitted to communion on condition of performing some penitential exercises. At the fourth session there was a sharp discussion with a bishop named Theophilus, who was firm in his adherence to Photius. The patriarch himself was brought forward on the fifth day, and met the questions addressed to him by a dignified silence. When urged to speak, he replied that God would hear him although he said nothing. “You will not”, said the Roman legates, “by your silence escape a greater condemnation”. “Neither”, he replied, “did Jesus by holding his peace escape condemnation”; and he resumed his former silence. When the lay president of the council, Baanes, who treated him with a courtesy unlike the behaviour of the ecclesiastics, afterwards asked him what he could allege in his justification, Photius answered, “My justifications are not in this world”.

The emperor appeared at the sixth session, and told the council that he had absented himself from its earlier meetings lest he should be supposed to influence its decision as to Photius. But the affair of the patriarch was not yet concluded. He was cited before the council on the seventh day, and entered leaning on a staff;—“Take away his staff”, said the Roman legate Marinus, “it is an ensign of pastoral dignity”. The bishops of his party in vain appealed to the canons. Anathemas were pronounced against Photius and his adherents, the most odious epithets being attached to their names; the writings and documents on his side were burnt; and, in token of the exasperation by which the council was animated, it is said that the condemnation of the patriarch was subscribed in the wine of the eucharistic cup.

In the course of the council’s proceedings, however, it appeared that the personal question as to the patriarchate was not the only subject of difference between Rome and Constantinople. The Romans complained that the pope’s letter had been mutilated in the reading; the Greeks told Ignatius that his church had been made the servant of Rome; and Ignatius himself was as resolute as Photius to assert the jurisdiction of his see over Bulgaria. Some ambassadors from that country were at Constantinople, and their master—by what influence is unknown—had been again induced to waver in his religious allegiance. The ambassadors, on being summoned into the emperor’s presence, with Ignatius, the Roman legates, and the representatives of the eastern patriarchs, inquired to which church they must consider their country to belong. The Orientals asked to which church it had belonged while a province of the empire, and whether the clergy at the time of the Bulgarian conquest had been Greeks or Latins. It was answered that the province had been subject to Constantinople, and that the clergy found in it were Greeks; and on these grounds it was adjudged that Bulgaria ought to belong to the patriarchate of Constantinople. The Roman legates, however, disputed the alleged facts, and handed to Ignatius a letter from the pope, charging him not to interfere, which the patriarch received in a respectful manner, but did not further regard. The emperor dismissed the legates with coolness. Ignatius in the same year consecrated an archbishop for Bulgaria, and within a short time all the Latin clergy were ejected from that country.

John VIII wrote to the Bulgarians, exhorting them to return to the communion of his church, which they had formerly chosen, and warning them as to the danger of a connection with the Greeks, who, he said, were always in one heresy or another. The pope also wrote to Ignatius, telling him that, as he was indebted to the apostolic see for his dignity, so he should lose it if he kept possession of Bulgaria. The Greek clergy, who were already excommunicate for introducing their errors into a church planted by the holy see, must be withdrawn within thirty days; and Ignatius is threatened with excommunication and deposition if he should neglect the order. Letters in a like tone were written to the Bulgarian king, and to the Greek clergy in that country; and a violent collision would probably have ensued, but for the death of Ignatius, which took place in October, 877.

Photius, after his deprivation, had at first been treated with extreme severity. He complains in his letters that he is strictly guarded by soldiers; that he is deprived of all intercourse with relations, friends, monks, and clergy; that his property is confiscated, that he is allowed no attendance of servants, and in his sickness can obtain no medicines. He suffers from hunger, and yet more from “a famine of the word of God”; he is separated from all books—a cruelty unexampled in the persecutions of the orthodox by heretics or by pagans; and in the meantime his adherents are cruelly treated, churches are destroyed, holy things are profaned, the poor, whom he had tended for the benefit of his soul, are left friendless and helpless. He inveighs against the synod of 869 as having neglected all the forms of justice in its dealings with him—as worse than anything that had been known among the most lawless and savage heathens.

But after a time he found means to recover the favour of Basil. According to the biographer of Ignatius, he drew up an imaginary pedigree, tracing the emperor’s ancestry to the Persian kings; this was written in antique letters on parchment of corresponding appearance, and, having been bound in the cover of an old manuscript, it was introduced into the library of the palace by the keeper, who took an opportunity of showing it to Basil, and suggested that Photius was the only man capable of explaining it. A still more unlikely tale asserts that the emperor’s love was won by charms administered in his food and drink. But it would seem that in truth Basil, out of regard for the unequalled learning of Photius, and perhaps also from a wish to conciliate his partisans, whose constancy to the ejected patriarch may have raised some apprehensions, recalled him from banishment, and appointed him tutor to Leo, the heir apparent of the crown. While thus employed he was reconciled with Ignatius, and from that time lived on good terms with him, steadily refusing to become the head of a party in opposition to the aged patriarch.

Photius was now raised to the see as successor of Ignatius, October 878, and announced his promotion to John VIII, with a request that the pope would send legates to a new synod which was to be held at Constantinople. The chief object of this application was to secure the assistance of Rome for the purpose of quieting the Ignatian party; but John seized on it as an acknowledgment that the title of Photius to the patriarchal throne depended on the papal judgment, and supposed that the Byzantines would be willing to bear anything for the sake of obtaining his countenance. Two bishops and a priest were sent as legates, with letters and instructions in which it was said that Photius might be restored if he would make satisfaction for his offences and would ask mercy of the synod; and it was insisted on that he should resign all pretensions to Bulgaria. The ensigns of the patriarchal dignity were transmitted in the same manner which had been usual in bestowing the pall on metropolitans.

The synod—the eighth general council according to the Greek reckoning—was imposing as to numbers, consisting of 380 bishops from the empire, with the three Roman legates, and three deputies from the oriental patriarchs. The precedent set by the second council of Nicaea, of having representatives from the eastern thrones, had been followed in the council under Photius in 861, and in that under Ignatius in 869. But at the latter of these, the representatives of the east had declared that the Orientals who had taken part in the synod under Photius were impostors, with forged credentials. Photius, however, asserted that those who made that declaration were themselves not only impostors, but agents of the Saracens; and letters were now produced from Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem, in which the patriarchs disavowed the persons who had acted in their names, and disowned all connection with the proceedings against Photius.

The Roman legates found that matters were conducted in a very different way from what the courteous behaviour of Photius had led them to expect. Instead of submitting himself to their judgment, he assumed the presidency of the council from the beginning, declaring that both his first and his second elevation had been forced on him—that he had committed no wrong, and did not need any mercy. The pope’s letters were read, but with omissions of the more violent pretensions, and with insertions to the honour of the patriarch. The demand of Bulgaria was, with great professions of respect for Rome, evaded as being foreign to the question in hand. The Greek bishops all supported the patriarch, and acted as if in entire independence of Rome; yet the legates allowed all these things to pass without a protest, and joined in anathematizing the council of 869, by which Photius had been deposed.

It was only by degrees that John became acquainted with the result of the council. At first he declared himself willing to confirm its restoration of Photius, if he should find that the legates had not disobeyed their instructions. Misconstruing the polite phrases of the Greeks, he supposed that Bulgaria had been given up to him, and wrote to thank the emperor for the concession; while in a letter to Photius he expressed surprise that in some respects his directions had not been followed by the council.1When, however, he discovered the real state of the matter, his exasperation was unbounded. He ascended the pulpit of a church, and, holding the book of the Gospels in his hand, threatened to anathematize all who should not regard Photius as one condemned by God’s judgment, according to the sentences of Nicolas and Adrian; and he sent Marinus, one of the legates who had attended the council under Ignatius, to insist that matters should be restored to the state which had been established by that council. But the legate was treated with indignity, was imprisoned for a month at Constantinople, and returned without any success. On the death of John, Marinus was raised to the papacy, and the sentence against Photius was renewed by him, by Adrian III, and by Stephen V, who held an angry correspondence on the subject with Basil and his son Leo VI.

Leo, formerly the pupil of Photius, on his accession in 886, deposed the patriarch, confined him in a monastery, and filled the see with his own brother Stephen, a boy of sixteen. The reasons of this step are unknown; the Greek writers in general trace it to a suspicion that Photius was implicated with a monk named Theodore Santabarenus, who is said to have gained an influence over the late emperor by magical arts, and had endeavoured by a double treachery to alienate him from his son. An inquiry into the conduct of Photius took place; but, although no evidence could be found against him, he did not recover his see, and he died in exile in the year 891. The two parties which had divided the church of Constantinople were reconciled within a few years; but Pope John IX made difficulties as to recognizing the clergy who had been ordained by Photius. At length, however, the churches resumed communion, and the name of Photius himself was among those of the patriarchs acknowledged by Rome. But political jealousies, and the retention of Bulgaria by the Byzantine patriarchate, together with the differences as to rites and doctrine, continued to keep up a coolness between the sees, until at a later time they again broke out into open discord.

 

 

CHAPTER IV.

SPAIN—ENGLAND—MISSIONS OF THE NINTH CENTURY.