Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire vol 6 (1897).djvu/392

 370 THE DECLINE AXD FALL The popes escommtmi- cate the patriarch of Constantino- ple and the Greeks. AD. 1054, July 16 bishops was always prepared to hail the triumph, or to stigma- tize the fall, of the holy or the execrable Photius,^^ By a delusive promise of succour or reward, the popes were tempted to countenance these various proceedings, and the synods of Constantinople were ratified by their epistles or legates. But the court and the people, Ignatius and Photius, were equally advei-se to their claims ; their ministers were insulted or im- prisoned ; the procession of the Holy Ghost was forgotten ; Bulgaria was for ever annexed to the Byzantine throne ; and the schism was prolonged by the rigid censure of all the multi- plied ordinations of an irregular patriarch. The darkness and corruption of the tenth century suspended the intercourse, with- out reconciling the minds, of the two nations. But, when the Norman sword restored the churches of Apulia to the juris- diction of Rome, the departing flock was warned, by a petulant epistle of the Grecian patriarch, to avoid and abhor the errors of the Latins. The rising majesty of Rome could no longer brook the insolence of a rebel ; and Michael Cerularius was excommunicated in the heart of Constantinople by the pope's legates. Shaking the dust from their feet, they deposited on the altar of St. Sophia a direful anathema,^^ which enumerates the seven mortal heresies of the Greeks, and devotes the guilty teachers, and their unhappy sectaries, to the eternal society of the devil and his angels. According to the emergencies of the church and state a friendly correspondence was sometimes re- sumed ; the language of charity and concord was sometimes af- fected ; but the Greeks have never recanted their errors ; the popes have never repealed their sentence ; and from this thunderbolt we may date the consummation of the schism. It was enlarged by each ambitious step of the Roman pontiffs ; the emperors blushed and trembled at the ignominious fate of their royal brethren of Germany ; and the people was scan- dalized by the temporal power and military life of the Latin clergy.i^ 11 The synod of Constantinople, held in the year 869, is the viiith of the general councils, the last assembly of the East which is recognised by the Roman church. She rejects the synods of Constantinople of the years 867 and 879, which were, however, equally numerous and noisy ; but they were favourable to Photius. 12 See this anathema in the Councils, tom. xi. p. 1457-1460. [See Hergenrother, Photius, vol. iii. p. 730 sqq. for the conflict under Cerularius. Cp. Gfrorer, Byzantinische Geschichten, vol. iii. cap. 23, p. 514 sqq.' 1^ Anna Comnena (Alexiad, 1. i. p. 31-33 [c. 13]) represents the abhorrence, not only of the church, but of the palace, for Gregory VII., the popes, and the Latin communion. The style of Cinnamus and Nicetas is still more vehement. Yet how calm is the voice of history compared with that of polemics !