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Rh two Churches were in communion. The Pope's name was restored to the Byzantine diptychs, and the many Latin monasteries in the East celebrated their Mass in communion with the local bishops. But the cleft was never completely healed after Photius. The Latins had always the profoundest distrust for Greek shiftiness, and the Byzantines were equally suspicious of Roman interference. Then came another imperial disturbance, in which the positions were reversed. The Emperor, Leo VI, married for the fourth time. A fourth marriage is forbidden by Byzantine Canon Law. So the Patriarch, Nicholas I (895–906), forbade the marriage. Leo, as usual, deposed the Patriarch. The Latin Church has never limited the number of wives a man may have, as long as all the others are properly dead; so Pope Sergius III (904–911) allowed the marriage and approved of the deposition. The Latin custom is undoubtedly more in accordance with Scripture (1 Cor. vii. 39, which applies also to men); on the other hand Leo ought to have obeyed the Canon Law of his own Church. Perhaps he thought that as Cæsar Augustus and Lord of the World he could use the privilege of any part of the Empire left to him by his predecessor, Octavian Augustus. But it was certainly hard on the Patriarch to be deposed for having judged according to his own law. If only the Pope had taken the opposite line, the situation of Ignatius would have been exactly repeated.

However, Leo VI died in 912, and his successor, Constantine VII (Porphyrogennetos, 912-958) at once restored the Patriarch, and so this trouble blew over too. The Emperor Basil II (the Bulgar-slayer, 963–1025) sent Pope John XIX (1024–1033) a sum of money in 1024 to persuade him at last to acknowledge the title "Œcumenical Patriarch." John took the money, and seems to have been ready to do so. But a wave of indignation over the West (the title had so long been the watchword of the anti-Latin party in the East) and a stern letter from Abbot William of Dijon made him change his mind.

The union, then, during this interval between Photius and Cerularius was not a very firm one, and all the time there was a strong anti-papal party in the East, which had inherited all Photius's ideas, which already looked upon him as its chief hero