Page:Russian Church and Russian Dissent.djvu/20

Rh and Church, affected both. Photius and Ignatius were alternately deposed and reinstated. A submissive clergy bent to the nod of the sovereign, and venal bishops hailed or condemned one prelate after another at command. The pope was appealed to in turn by the contending factions, and flattered by delusive hopes; in reality his pretensions were hateful to them all, and he was but a tool in the hands of the astute Greeks, to be availed of when needed, and to be denied when he claimed his reward.

Amid these internal dissensions, these alternate appeals to, and rejection of, Romish intervention, a species of armed neutrality, of impending, yet deferred hostility, seemed to pervade the Churches, and the final catastrophe, though ever threatening, was ever postponed.

A fresh subject of theological discussion arose early in the eleventh century, regarding the use of leavened or unleavened bread in the Eucharist. The Greeks adhered to the custom of the primitive Church and condemned the Latins, who, in the eighth century, had substituted unleavened for leavened bread.

Michael Cerularius, the patriarch, was a prelate as bigoted as he was zealous. Chafing against the pretensions of the pope, and resenting his oft-renewed assump tion of superiority, he seized upon this occasion to make a violent attack upon the Latin Church and its chief. He proclaimed their apostasy from the true faith, ordered their churches and monasteries in Constantinople to be closed, and prohibited the celebration of their service. Retaliatory measures followed in the West. A final effort was made by the emperor, Constantine Monomachus, to restore harmony. At his request. Pope Leo IX. sent delegates to Constantinople with power to adjust all matters of controversy; but the haughty patriarch, in-