Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire vol 6 (1897).djvu/390

 368 THE DECLINE AND FALL Variety of ecclesiastical discipline Ambitions quarrels of PhotiU5, patriarch of Constantino- ple, with the Popes. A.D. 857-886 Vatican. The Nicene and Athanasian creeds are held as the Cathohc faith, without which none can be saved ; and both Papists and Protestants must now sustain and return the anathemas of the Greeks, who deny the procession of the Holy Ghost from the Son, as well as from the Father. Such articles of faith are not susceptible of treaty ; but the rules of discipline will vary in remote and independent churches ; and the reason, even of divines, might allow that the difference is inevitable and harmless. The craft or superstition of Rome has imposed on her priests and deacons the rigid obligation of celibacy ; among the Greeks, it is confined to the bishops ; the loss is compensated by dignity or annihilated by age ; and the parochial clergy, the papas, enjoy the conjugal society of the wives whom they have married before their entrance into holy orders. A question concerning the Azyms Avas fiercely debated in the eleventh century, and the essence of the Eucharist was supposed, in the East and West, to depend on the use of leavened or unleavened bread. Shall I mention in a serious history the furious reproaches that were urged against the Latins, who, for a long while, remained on the defensive } They neglected to abstain, according to the apostolical decree, from things strangled and fi-om blood ; they fasted, a Jewish observance ! on the Saturday of each week ; during the first week of Lent they permitted the use of milk and cheese ; '^ their infii*m monks were indulged in the taste of flesh ; and animal grease was substituted for the want of vegetable oil ; the holy chrism or unction in baptism was reserved to the episcopal order ; the bishops, as the bridegrooms of their churches, were decorated with rings ; their priests shaved their faces, and baptized by a single immersion. Such were the crimes which provoked the zeal of the patriarchs of Constantinople ; and which were justi- fied with equal zeal by the doctors of the Latin church." Bigotrjr and national aversion are powerful magnifiers of every object of dispute ; but the immediate cause of the schism of the •> In France, after some harsher laws, the ecclesiastical discipline is now relaxed ; milk, cheese and butter are become a perpetual, and eggs an annual, indulgence in Lent (Vie priv6o des Fran9ois, torn. ii. p. 27-38). 7 The original monuments of the schism, of the charges of the Greeks against the Latins, are deposited in the Epistles of Photius (Epist. Encyclica, ii. p. 47-61 [Ep. 4 in the ed. of Valettas, p. 165 st]tj.' and of Michael (jerularius (Canisii Antiq. Lectiones, torn. iii. p. i. p. 281-324, edit. Basnage, with the prolix answer of Cardinal Humbert [in C. Will, Acta et scripta quae de controversiis ecclesiae graecae et latinae seculo xi. composita extant, p. 172 sqq. ; and in Migne, P; G. vol. 120, 752 S(jq.').