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Rh tween the Papacy and Photius, the Eastern Church was none the less separated from Rome; for there was now a radical divergency between them. Peace would not have existed even outwardly between them if the letters of Pope John had been read to the last council as they were written. In the assembly of 869 the partisans of Ignatius and Ignatius himself declared against the Papal sovereignty almost as energetically as Photius and his friends. On her side, Rome no longer did any thing without asserting her pretended sovereignty, and without setting herself up as the necessary centre of unity.

The controversies between the Papacy and Photius, like their reconciliation, would have remained as unimportant as a thousand others of the same kind in the history of the Church, if a radical division had not been worked out from that time in consequence of the institution of the Papacy. In following out these relations of the East with Rome, we shall meet with many attempts to reconcile the two churches at different periods. But Rome insisting upon a recognition of her sovereignty as a condition precedent, and the Eastern Church always appealing to the doctrine of the first eight centuries, unity could never be reëstablished. It would now only be possible on condition that the Papacy should abandon its unlawful pretensions, or the Eastern Church the primitive doctrine. Now, the Eastern Church well knows that the renunciation of that doctrine would not only be criminal in itself, but would result in subjection to an autocracy condemned by the Gospel and by Catholic doctrine; hence she cannot yield without incurring guilt and without committing suicide. And the Papacy, on its side, knows that it annihilates itself by returning to the Catholic unity with the simple character of the ancient Roman episcopate. It will not, therefore, yield any of the prerogatives which it has grown to consider as emanating from a divine source. For this cause