THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG
to Rome and sought aid from Pope Nicholas I. (q.v.). At first Photius ignored this move, but ultimately he sent a particularly impressive legation to Nicholas with a notification of his enthronization which completely concealed the real situation. A letter from the emperor went with it asking for recognition of Photius and requesting that legates be sent to a council in Constantinople to settle the few remaining problems connected with the iconoclastic disorders. At the same time Photius wrote to the Eastern patriarchs concealing the facts even more than in his letter to the pope and evidently wishing to secure recognition from them before the pope's legates should arrive in Constantinople. The council (called " first-second " — prima-secunda) met in May, 861, and from the very first the papal legates, Rodoald of Porto and Zacharias of Anagni, espoused Photius' side. Ignatius was very summarily treated and his deposition was confirmed, although he received more support from the assembled bishops than the emperor and Photius had expected.
Nicholas seems to have hoped that Photius would recognize the primacy of jurisdiction, which he had assumed from the first. But Photius had no such intention, however much he may have been willing to flatter. The pope proceeded slowly, but on Mar. 18, 862, he issued an encyclical to the Eastern bishops in which he disavowed the acts of his legates at the council and declared: " We do not consider Ignatius deposed nor do we recognize Photius as in episcopal orders." He wrote to the emperor and to Photius to the same effect, and a year later (Apr., 863), when it had become evident that writing accomplished nothing, he had his judgment confirmed by a synod in Rome and threatened Photius and his adherents with excommunication. Meanwhile Photius found unexpected support from certain Western bishops who had fallen out with Nicholas over the divorce of Lothair II. (see Nicholas I). He drew up a reply from the emperor to the pope in which he adopted a very lofty tone, even addressing Nicholas as the emperor's subject. The document is lost, though its tenor is evident from certain letters of Nicholas. The pope answered with spirit, but he failed to measure public opinion in Constantinople. The new Rome looked down with scorn on the old and its " barbarians' tongue," and Photius all his life disdained to learn Latin (see below, II., § 1). Constantinople regarded the connection of the papacy with the Carolingian empire as a manifestation of revolt. There was a firm determination to insist that the pope should at least respect ecclesiastical boundaries, and feeling on this point was excited at the time by the case of the Bulgarians, who, converted by eastern missionaries and placed under the jurisdiction of the ecumenical patriarch by the Council of Chalcedon, were showing some disposition to go over to Rome (see Bulgarians, Conversion of the). Photius, apparently in 865, addressed a long letter to the newly converted Bulgarian Bogoris; but the latter, doubtless for political reasons, turned to the pope, who sent two legates and a number of priests, as well as a voluminous pastoral epistle to the prince. At the same time Nicholas sent three messengers with no
less than eight letters addressed to the emperor, Bardas, Photius, and all concerned, even the senators of Constantinople, requiring the execution of his judgment. The emperor, however, turned the pope's envoys back at the border, and the letters were not delivered.
Photius now executed the master stroke which really separated East and West. As the pope had attacked the validity of his ordination and position, so he called in question the pope's own position, declaring the pontiff to be a patron of heresy. The encyclical to the patriarchs of the East in which Photius made the charge and sought to prove it is rightly regarded as the magna charta of 3. Decisive the Orient in all its subsequent attitude Break with and conduct toward the Occident. Rome. Leaving personal matters quite out of account, and not hinting at the relations between Nicholas and himself, Photius spoke only of the danger which threatened from Rome, making the sending of Roman priests to the Bulgarians his starting-point and ending with an attack on the Filioque (see Filioque Controversy), concerning which he wrote a minute theological discussion with fourteen arguments against the doctrine of double procession. He wished to hold a synod in Constantinople to counteract the work of the West, and it actually met in the summer of 867. The acts are lost, but Photius secured the decrees which he wished, and he then allowed his personal resentment to appear when he retaliated for his own excommunication by Nicholas with anathematizing the pope. He seems even to have attempted to exalt the new Rome over the old and to have thought of claiming the primacy for Constantinople. Photius' triumph was short-lived. Bardas had been murdered in 866, and Basil the Macedonian had succeeded him as joint ruler with Michael. In Sept., 867, Basil had Michael murdered 4. Years and became sole ruler. He thought it of Retire- would strengthen his position if Igment. natius were restored. Accordingly, Photius was expelled from his palace a few days after Basil's accession, and on the anniversary of his deposition, Nov. 23, 867, Ignatius was reenthroned, ten days after the death of Nicholas I. Basil deemed a break with the West inopportune, and, after negotiating for a year with Rome, he called a council (the Fourth Constantinople, Oct. 5, 869-Feb. 28, 870; the eighth general council of the West) which brought about the full restitution of Ignatius, at the same time officially deposing and condemning Photius. It was dominated by the Pope Adrian II. (q.v.), but his triumph was more apparent than real. In the West this council is regarded as the settlement of the controversy over images; but Photius could claim with reason that he had finally allayed this strife by the council of 861 ; and when the papal legates at the council demanded recognition of the claims of Rome concerning the Bulgarians, the Orientals protested in words which showed how the alliance of the pope with the West rather than with the East burned in all Greek souls.
Photius lived at Stenos, on the European side of the Bosphorus, under strict surveillance and de-