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302 had sacrificed the ancient Catholic doctrine to its own ambitious dreams, and now availed itself of every circumstance to establish a spiritual autocracy as contrary to Scripture as it was to the teachings of the Fathers and the councils.

Strong in the ancient canons, Photius looked upon the excommunications of Nicholas as null, and continued to discharge his episcopal duties with a zeal and devotion that his enemies distort with remarkable dishonesty. They will only see in him a beast of prey, combining the most consummate hypocrisy with cruelty carried to extravagance, and do not even take the trouble to reconcile two such characters in one and the same man, and with facts which completely contradict them.

But Nicholas could not bear this contempt of his sovereign authority, and he availed himself of the conversion of the Bulgarians to renew the war against Photius.

The first seeds of Christianity had been cast among the Bulgarians about the year 845. In 864 Photius contributed powerfully to the conversion of the King Bogoris, which was followed by that of all his people. He even addressed to this king a beautiful treatise upon the duties of princes. Bogoris, at war with the Germans and their Emperor Louis, thought he might appease him by asking for some Latin priests to instruct