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You make a good point. But as you rightly acknowledge examining events of a thousand years ago through a present historical lens does not lead to uniform results. Even among those who admit to the Conciliabulum Oecumenicum Pseudooctavum there is more than anecdotal evidence to show that Photias’ motives were not so pure as the Orthodox would like to claim.

Here’s point of view (footnotes to this research have been omitted) from a Catholic Professor of Philosophy who has carefully examined the Orthodox claims. This may come as an eye-opener to many. My apologies for this lengthy elucidation but since you have been vigorously pressing this issue, I think you are owed a reasonably comprehensive explanation.

Photius sent the Acts of his council to Rome for the Pope’s ratification, Pope John VIII (872-82)instead responded by excommunicating him, solemnly condemning him in 881, and permanently reinstating the ban on him in 882. The decrees by which John VIII struck down the earlier censures of Photius by the synod of 869 fails to omit the false pretenses under which Photius convened his council of 879-880.

Photius petitioned Pope John VIII to send legates; and he is altogether mute about John VIII’s refusal to confirm the Acts of the Photian council and excommunication of Photius after his discovery of Photius’s true intentions in the council of 879-880.

The fact that Rome later called the Photian council “Conciliabrulum Oecumenicum Pseudooctavum” is hardly an acknowledgement of its canonical legitimacy. What part of “Pseudo” is not clear in “Pseudooctavum”?

Photius was truly one of the most remarkable characters in all Church history; but he was also the chief architect of the great Eastern Schism.

There is far more to Photius than meets the eye in Anti-Western Orthodox accounts of him, however, and those who have not appraised themselves of “the rest of the story” would do well to investigate it for themselves.

Certainly no well-informed Christian can help remembering Photius with mixed feelings. While it is true that there is no shadow of suspicion against his private life, he is also well-known for his insatiable and unscrupulous ambition—hardly qualities one typically finds in a saint—which more than anything else was responsible for the greatest schism in Church history.

And schism, it will be recalled, was regarded by the Church Fathers as a sin worse than homicide. The conclusion of a detailed entry on “Photius of Constantinople” in the Catholic Encyclopedia reads as follows:

... His insatiable ambition, his determination to obtain and keep the patriarchal see, led him to the extreme of dishonesty. His claim was worthless. That Ignatius was the rightful patriarch as long as he lived, and Photius an intruder, cannot be denied by any one who does not conceive the Church as merely the slave of a civil government. And to keep this place Photius descended to the lowest depth of deceit. At the very time he was protesting his obedience to the Pope he was dictating to the emperor insolent letters that denied all papal jurisdiction. He misrepresented the story of Ignatius’s deposition with unblushing lies, and he at least connived at Ignatius’s ill-treatment in banishment. He proclaimed openly his entire subservience to the State in the whole question of his intrusion. He stops at nothing in his war against the Latins. He heaps up accusations against them that he must have known were lies.

His effrontery on occasions is almost incredible. For instance, as one more grievance against Rome, he never tires of inveighing against the fact that Pope Marinus I (882-84) [pictured left], John VIII’s successor, was translated from another see, instead of being ordained from the Roman clergy. He describes this as an atrocious breach of canon law, quoting against it the first and second canons of Sardica; and at the same time he himself continually transferred bishops in his patriarchate.

The whole Photian Council was an exercise in colossal bamboozlement, an art honed to masterful perfection in the Byzantine Photius.

Photius rose to prominence when the Partriarch of Constantinople, Ignatius (846-57), was deposed and banished by Emperor Michael III (842-67) in 857 for refusing communion to Bardas, a chief State official, for having incestuous relations with his daughter-in-law, and the more pliant Photius was intruded into his place.

Photius was hurried through Holy Orders in six days. On Christmas Day, 857, Gregory Asbestas of Syracuse, a bishop who had been excommunicated for insubordination, illicitly ordained Photius patriarch. The emperor tried in vain to make Ignatius resign his See. Photius also did all he could to get the Pope to ratify their expulsion of Ignatius, the legitimate occupant of the Partriarchal See.

The emperor sought to obtain from Pope Nicholas I (858-67) recognition of Photius by a letter grossly misrepresenting the facts and requesting legates to be sent to settle the issue in a synod.

The Pope sent two legates, Rodoald of Porto and Zachary of Anagni, with cautious instructions to hear both sides and report back to him. The synod occurred in St. Sophia’s in May, 861. The legates were bribed, agreed to Ignatius’s deposition and Photius’s succession, and returned to Rome with letters for the Pope. The emperor’s Secretary of State, Leo, followed the legates to Rome with further assurances and letters, in which both the emperor and Photius emphatically acknowledged Papal Primacy and categorically (and conveniently!) invoke the Pope’s jurisdiction to confirm what has happened.

Meanwhile Ignatius, in exile, sent his friend the Archimandrite Theognostus to Rome in 862 with an urgent letter setting forth his own case. Nicholas, having heard both sides, decided for Ignatius and answered the letters from Emperor Michael III and Photius by insisting that Ignatius must be restored and the usurpation of his See must cease.

Rome never wavered from this position, and this is what set the stage for the Photian schism. In 863 the Pope held a synod at the Lateran in which the two legates were tried and excommunicated. Nicholas’s decision reinstating Ignatius as lawful Patriarch of Constantinople was reiterated. Photius was to be excommunicated unless he relinquished his usurpation at once.

However, instead of obeying the Pope, to whom he had just appealed, Photius resolved, with the emperor’s backing, to deny Rome’s authority altogether. Ignatius was not restored to his See, but kept in prison, and the Pope’s letters were kept from publication.

Photius collaborated with the emperor in notifying Rome that the Eastern Patriarchs were in support of Photius, in questioning the propriety of the Pope’s excommunication of the legates, and threatening Rome with imperial military action unless the Pope altered his decision and gave his support to Photius. In 867, Photius went on the offensive by declaring his excommunication of the Pope and the Western churches.

The pretexts given were that the Latin churches (1) fast on Saturday, (2) do not begin Lent until Ash Wednesday, (3) do not allow priest to marry, (4) do not allow priests to administer confirmation, and (5) have added the filioque clause to the creed (indeed, Photius’s discovery of utility of the filioque grievance as a political weapon vastly disproportionate to its theological value seems to have been original with him).

For these reasons, Photius’s encyclical declared, the Latins are “forerunners of apostasy, servants of Antichrist who deserve a thousand deaths, liars, fighters against God.”

Later in the same year (867), Emperor Michael III was murdered, and Basil I (867-86) succeeded him. Phot

ius was ejected from the patriarchate, and Ignatius restored. Pope Adrian (867-72), who succeeded Nicholas, answered Ignatius’s appeal for legates to attend a synod designed to examine the whole matter. The legates arrived in Constantinople in September of 869, and in October the synod was convened, which Catholics recognize as the Eighth Ecumenical Council (the Fourth Council of Constantinople). This council tried Photius, confirmed his deposition, and, since he refused to renounce his claim, excommunicated him. He was banished to a monastery at Stenos on the Bosphorus, where he spent seven years, writing letters to supporters, organizing his party, and biding his time for another chance.

Photius ingratiated himself with the emperor, who recalled him in 876 to the court. He feigned reconciliation with Ignatius and ingratiated himself within the Patriarch’s circle to such an extent that when Ignatius died, a strong party demanded that Photius should succeed him. An imperial embassy was sent to Rome to explain that everyone at Constantinople wanted Photius to be patriarch. Pope John VIII, wishing to avoid provoking yet another conflict with Constantinople, agreed, absolved Photius from all censure, and acknowledged him as partriarch. A more fateful judgment cannot be imagined.

By 878 Photius had achieved lawfully the patriarchate that he had formerly usurped. Rome acknowledged him as Patriarch of Constantinople and restored him to her communion. There was no possible legitimate reason now for a fresh quarrel.

But Photius used his new position to re-open his personal long-festering political vendetta against Rome. Accordingly, he applied to Rome for legates to come to another synod. There was no legitimate reason for a synod, but he persuaded Pope John VIII that it would clear up the last remains of the earlier schism, and bring healing and restore solidarity between East and West. His real motive, in cannot be doubted, was to undo the effect of the Eighth Ecumenical Council of 869 that had deposed him.

The Pope sent three legates, Cardinal Peter of St. Chysogonus, Paul, Bishop of Ancona, and Eugene, Bishop of Ostia. The synod was opened in St. Sophia’s in November of 879. This is the the council that has come to be known to Catholics as the Pseudosynodus Photiana (Photian Pseudo-Synod) or Conciliabulum Oecumenicum Pseudooctavum (Pseudo-Eighth Ecumenical Council) which the Anti-Western Orthodox count as the Eighth Ecumnical Council.

Photius had his own way throughout the council. He altered the letters sent to him, to the Emperor Basil, and to the Byzantine Church by Pope John VIII, which were read at the Council of 879-80 convoked to clear his name (Francis Dvornik attests to this in Byzantium and the Roman Primacy.

Photius revoked the acts of the former synod (of 869), repeated all his accusations against the Western churches, focusing especially on the filioque grievance, anathematized all who added anything to the creed, and claimed Bulgaria as part of the Byzantine Pariarchate.

Photius had rigged his council. He had garnered John VIII’s support under the false pretense that he meant to heal the remains of the earlier schism by restoring Eastern dissenters to the one true fold of Rome. But the fact that there was a great majority for all of Photius’s defiant measures in the synod shows the extent to which he had prepared for the synod by building up his Anti-Western party in the East.

The legates, like their predecessors in 861, agreed to everything the majority desired, pending the ratification of the Pope. As soon as they had returned to Rome, Photius sent the Acts to the Pope for his confirmation. Instead, however, Pope John VIII naturally again excommunicated him, solemnly condemning him in 881 and reinstating the ban against him in 882. The successor of John VIII, Pope Marinus I (882-884), who had presided over the Fourth Council of Constantinople in 869 as one of the legates of Adrian II, vigorously renewed John VIII’s condemnation of Photius, rescinding the Acts of the Photian Council of 879 and formally reinstating the Fourth Council of Constantinople of 869 as the official Eighth Ecumenical Council of the Church.

So the Photian Schism broke out in full force for several years until the death of Emperor Basil I in 886.

Emperor Basil was succeeded by his son, Leo VI (886-912), who intensely disliked Photius, accused him of treason and embezzlement of public money, and immediately deposed him and banished him. Photius’s place as patriarch was then taken by Leo’s younger brother, Stephen (886-93). Stephen’s intrusion was no less a violation of canon law than that of Photius in 857, so Rome refused to recognize him. It was only under his successor Antony II (893-95) that a synod restored reunion for a century and a half, until the time of Michael Cerularius (1045-58).

At this point, Photius disappears from history. Not even the Armenian monastery in which he spent his last years is certainly known, although historical research shows that Photius (despite his liturgical and doctrinal quarrels with the Latin Franks in Bulgaria) died in communion with the Holy See (see James Likoudis, “History of the Byzantine Greco-Slav Schism: Basic Facts and Events Giving Rise to the Eastern Orthodox Churches”). The date of his death is generally given as February 6, 897.

But Photius had left a large and influential anti-Roman party, eager to repudiate the Pope’s primacy and embrace schism. It was this party, to which Cerularius belonged, which triumphed in Constantinople, so that Photius is rightly considered the architect of the the Great Schism—or as I prefer to call it, the Anti-Western Orthodox Schism—which still endures. A proud and obstinate Cerelarius was excommunicated by Rome in 1054, along with all the Eastern churches that followed him into Anti-Western schism. But the greatest credit for this fatal breach in Christendom must go to the brilliant and scheming Photius, who broke faith with Sacred Tradition by denying Peter in the office of his successors by means of his proud and obstinate “non serviam!”

Note:

The ecumenical status of the Fourth Council of Constantinople of 869-870 has long been contested by the Anti-Western Orthodox. During the ecumenically-charged milieu leading up to and following the Second Vatican Council, many Roman Catholic scholars and ecumenists, eager to mend relations with their Eastern Orthodox brethren, have been back-pedaling and down-playing their former criticisms of Photius, amending and revising their accounts of the Photian Schism.

In this process, some further details have been brought to light, but in some instances earlier details have been obfuscated and covered over. One of the most prominent Catholic scholars during this period has been Francis Dvornik (or Dvornic), whose books, The Photian Schism: History and Legend (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1948; rpt. 1970) and Byzantium and the Roman Primacy (New York: Fordham University Press, 1966; rpt. 1979) have been viewed by Anti-Western Orthodox scholars as having come a significant way towards accommodating some of their interpretations. To their delight, Dvornik accepts, for example, their claim that the belief that the successors of John VIII—Marinus I, Stephen V, and Formosus—had broken with Photius is a legendary invention. It must be conceded, in fact, that Photius did die in communion with Rome. Dvornik’s claim that Photius never actually questioned Roman primacy seems well-attested.

However, the notion that the ecumenical status of the Fourth Council of Constantinople in 869-870 is fundamentally compromised by the acts of the Photian Council of 879-880 cannot be seriously maintained.

First, the matter is ultimately a question of authority, and whether the matter was immediately settled in the ninth century or not is in the final analysis irrelevant.

Second, the Council claimed for itself an ecumenical status by calling itself the universalis octava synodus; and it had at least the necessary geographical characteristics because of the authority of all the heads of the Church who were either present or represented.

Was it recognized as ecumenical by the Holy See?

Three facts are certain and incontestable.

First, Adrian II had already approved it in his letter of Nov. 10, 871, as well as in his letter to the faithful of Salerno and Amalfi in 875; and John VIII called it sancta octava synodus, thereby formally recognizing its ecumenical status.

Second, the Council has been listed among the ecumenical councils recognized by the Roman Catholic Church since the beginning of the 12th century. Third, the Byzantine Church itself accepted the Council as ecumenical until the Photian Synod of 879-880, which is thought to have abrogated its Acts; and those portions of the Byzantine Church that reunited with Rome since that time have considered it as ecumenical.

The crux of debate is reducible to the question whether Pope John VIII, by means of his supreme power of binding and loosing, actually annulled the acts of the Council of 869-870, thus depriving it of ecumenical status.

This is of course what is claimed by Anti-Western Orthodox scholars, who have a curious (if convenient) interest at this point in the Roman primacy of John VIII.

The answer is affirmative if the Greek text of the last two sessions of the Photian Synod are considered authentic, which may be doubted, not least because of Photius’s history of altering the letters sent to him, to the Emperor Basil, and to the Byzantine Church by Pope John VIII, before having them read at the Photian Synod of 879-880.

The answer is negative if takes into consideration other documents, such as the letter of Pope Stephen V to Emperor Basil I in 885-886. This letter states, in fact, that 20 years after the Fourth Council of Constantinople (869-870), Photius was still trying to have it annulled, a step that would be inexplicable if prior to this time John VIII had already taken the initiative in this matter.

While ecumenically-minded scholars such as Dvornik have written irenically in support of the thesis of abrogation by John VIII, others such as Venance Grumel and Martin Jugie have defended the thesis of non-abrogation and ecumenicity of the Fourth Council of Constantinople (869-870) as the Eighth Ecumenical Council of the Church. Ultimately, however, the issue is one of ecclesiastical authority, in testimony of which stands the record of decrees of the Holy See.