Nicolas, in a Roman Synod (863), decided in favor of the innocent Ignatius, and pronouncedsentence of deposition against Photius with a threat of excommunication in case of disobedience.^307
Photius, enraged by this conduct and the Bulgarian interference, held a counter-synod, and deposed
in turn the successor of St. Peter (867). In his famous Encyclical Letter of invitation to the Eastern
patriarchs, he charged the whole Western church with heresy and schism for interfering with the
jurisdiction over the Bulgarians, for fasting on Saturday, for abridging the time of Lent by a week,
for taking milk-food (milk, cheese, and butter) during the quadragesimal fast, for enforcing clerical
celibacy, and despising priests who lived in virtuous matrimony, and, most of all, for corrupting
the Nicene Creed by the insertion of the Filioque, and thereby introducing two principles into the
Holy Trinity.^308
This letter clearly indicates all the doctrinal and ritual differences which caused and
perpetuated the schism to this day. The subsequent history is only a renewal of the same charges
aggravated by the misfortunes of the Greek church, and the arrogance and intolerance of old Rome.
Photius fell with the murder of his imperial patron, Michael III. (Sept. 23, 867). He was
imprisoned in a convent, and deprived of society, even of books. He bore his misfortune with great
dignity, and nearly all the Greek bishops remained faithful to him. Ignatius was restored after ten
years of exile by the emperor Basil, the Macedonian (867–886), and entered into communication
with Pope Hadrian II. (Dec. 867). He convened a general council in the church of St. Sophia
(October, 869), which is numbered by the Latins as the Eighth Oecumenical Council. The pontifical
legates presided and presented a formula of union which every bishop was required to sign before
taking part in the proceedings, and which contained an anathema against all heresies, and against
Photius and his adherents. But the council was poorly attended (the number of bishops being at
first only eighteen). Photius was forced to appear in the fifth session (Oct. 20), but on being
questioned he either kept silence, or answered in the words of Christ before Caiaphas and Pilate.
In the tenth and last session, attended by the emperor and his sons, and one hundred and two bishops,
the decrees of the pope against Photius and in favor of Ignatius were confirmed, and the anathemas
against the Monothelites and Iconoclasts renewed. The papal delegates signed "with reservation
of the revision of the pope."
But the peace was artificial, and broken up again immediately, after the Synod by the
Bulgarian question, which involved the political as well as the ecclesiastical power of Constantinople.
Ignatius himself was unwilling to surrender that point, and refused to obey when the imperious
Pope John VIII. commanded, on pain of suspension and excommunication, that he should recall
all the Greek bishops and priests from Bulgaria. But death freed him from further controversy (Oct.
23, 877).
(^307) The Synod, claiming to be the infallible organ of the Holy Spirit, compared Photius with a robber and adulterer for
obtruding himself into the see of Constantinople during the lifetime of Ignatius, deprived him of all priestly honors and functions
"by authority of Almighty God, St. Peter and St. Paul, the princes of the apostles, of all saints, of the six [why not seven?]
ecumenical councils, as also by the judgment of the Holy Ghost," and threatened him and all his adherents with the anathema
and excommunication from the eucharist till the moment of death, "that no one may dare hereafter from the state of the laity to
break into the camp of the Lord, as has often been the case in the church of Constantinople." See on this Synod Hergenröther,
Phot. I. 519 sqq., and Hefele IV. 269 sqq.
(^308) See the Encyclica ad Patriarchas Orientales in the original Greek in Photius, Opera II. 722-742 (ed. Migne), also in
Gieseler II. 216 sq. Baronius (ad ann. 863 no. 34 sq.) gives it in Latin.