Page:Select historical documents of the Middle Ages.djvu/494

474 euctus, the patriarch of Constantinople, wrote a privilege for the bishop of Hydronto to this effect: that he should by his authority have permission to consecrate bishops in Acerenza, Tursi, Gravina, Matera and Tricarico: which, however, evidently belong to the diocese of the lord pope. But why need I say this when, indeed, the church of Constantinople itself is rightly subject to our holy catholic and apostolic church of Rome. We know—nay, we have seen—that the bishop of Constantinople did not use the pallium except with the permission of our holy father. But when that most godless Alberic,—whom cupidity, not by drops, but, as it were, by torrents, had filled—usurped for himself the Roman city, and held the lord pope like his own slave in his dwelling, the emperor Romanus made his own son, the eunuch Theophylactus, patriarch. And since the cupidity of Alberic was not hidden from him, he sent to him very great gifts, bringing it about that, in the name of the pope, letters were sent to the patriarch Theophylactus, by the authority of which he and his successors alike might use the pallium without permission from the popes. From which vile transaction the shameful custom arose that not only the patriarchs but also the bishops of all Greece should use the pallium. How absurd this is, I do not need to make clear. It is therefore my plan that a sacred synod be held, and Polyeuctus be summoned to it. But if he be unwilling to come and to amend the faults that have been mentioned above, then let that be done which the holy canons shall decree. Do ye in the meantime, most potent emperors, continue to labour as ye have done; bring it about that, if Nicephorus be unwilling to obey us when we arrange to proceed against him canonically, he will hear ye, whose forces this half-corpse will not dare to meet. This, I say, is what the apostles, our masters and fellow fighters, wish us to do. Rome is not to be despised by the Greeks because Constantine went away from it; but rather to be the more cherished, venerated and adored for the reason that the apostles, the holy teachers Peter and Paul, came thither. But may what I have written concerning this suffice until, being snatched from the hands of the Greeks, through the grace of God and the prayers of the most holy apostles I may come to