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Rh of the three Patriarchal sees of the East, with a host of bishops, priests, and monks, the two Emperors, and the senate, took part in that assembly.

The letters of Nicholas were there read, and by a unanimous vote he was held unworthy of the episcopate, and excommunication and anathema were pronounced against him. This decision was forwarded to Nicholas by Zacharias, Metropolitan of Chalcedon, and Theodore of Cyzicus. Anastasius the Librarian declares that but twenty-one among upward of a thousand signatures with which this document was covered, were authentic. We know what this man's testimony is worth. Certain it is that the document was well known in the East, and that the Council of Constantinople, which afterward annulled it, did not consider the signatures as forged. This fact speaks louder than any one mendacious writer. The sentence of the council against Nicholas was more canonical than that pronounced by Nicholas against Photius, for it was only an excom-