Date: 2026-08-15T00:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Conciliar

The Acts of the Council of Constantinople (879–880)

The Council of Constantinople (879–880)

Royal Archives

2026

Copyright

The modern English translation and the cover design are © 2026 Royal Archives. All rights reserved.

The underlying source text is in the public domain.

Published by Royal Archives

First published 2026

Translated by Royal Archives

Source: Πρακτικὰ τῆς ἐν Κωνσταντινουπόλει Συνόδου τοῦ ωοθʹ–ωπʹ ἔτους

Cover: Santa Sofia (1891) by John Singer Sargent (American, 1856–1925), The Met (Open Access), which is in the public domain.

Edition identifier: urn:royalarchives:council_879_880:en:1

Introduction

The Assembled Council and Its President

The book before you is not the work of a single hand. It is the record of a great assembly—the proceedings, letters, speeches, and decrees of a council of the whole Church gathered at Constantinople in the winter of 879 and the spring of 880. Its author, in the only sense that a conciliar act has an author, is the council itself: the bishops who deliberated, the legates who spoke for the four elder patriarchates and for Rome, the emperors who ratified, and above all the man who presided over them and around whom the whole gathering turned—Photios, Patriarch of Constantinople, whom the Eastern Church honors with the title “the Great.”

Photios was, by the common judgment of friend and adversary alike, the most learned man of his century. Born into a distinguished and pious family in Constantinople around 810 to 815, he rose through the imperial civil service to become chief secretary of state and imperial ambassador, and he was already famous as a teacher and a scholar of encyclopedic range—theology, philosophy, grammar, law, the natural sciences, and medicine all lay within his competence. His great literary monuments belong to this world of learning: the Bibliotheca (or Myriobiblon), his critical review of some two hundred and eighty books he had read, many of them now lost to us except through his summaries; the Amphilochia, a collection of nearly three hundred questions and answers on hard places in Scripture, addressed to Amphilochius, archbishop of Cyzicus; and the Mystagogy of the Holy Spirit, his sustained treatise on the procession of the Holy Spirit. He was also a churchman of missionary vision, deeply involved in the evangelization of the Slavs and the instruction of the newly baptized nations, including the Bulgarians—a concern that, as the reader will see, presses upon the council itself.

In 858 Photios, then still a layman, was raised to the patriarchal throne of Constantinople in the place of Ignatius, who had been deposed amid the political storms of the reign of Michael III. The elevation opened a long and painful dispute. Pope Nicholas I of Rome declined to recognize the new patriarch and, in a Roman synod of 863, pronounced against him. In 867 the winds of imperial politics shifted again: the Emperor Basil I came to power, Photios was removed, and Ignatius was restored to the see. Yet the two rivals were in the end reconciled, and when Ignatius died in 877 Photios succeeded him a second time, now with the acceptance of the greater part of the Church. It was to seal and to celebrate this restored peace, and to close the long “Photian” division for good, that the council whose acts fill this volume was summoned. Photios served as patriarch from 858 to 867 and again from 877 to 886; the tradition remembers his repose on the sixth of February, most commonly placed in the year 893, and commemorates him on that day. (The precise year of his death is given variously in the sources, and a few place it a little earlier or later.)

By the received custom of the Church—Eastern and Western alike—a council is named and honored by the fathers who sat in it, and this edition follows that custom. The work is titled for the council, not for any individual; Photios stands within it as president, not as its solitary composer.

Occasion and Purpose

The immediate occasion was reconciliation. For roughly two decades the Church of Constantinople had been troubled by the schism that grew up around the rival claims of Ignatius and Photios, and the estrangement had drawn in Rome and the Eastern patriarchates as well. By the late 870s the principal obstacles had fallen away: Ignatius was dead, Photios had been peaceably restored, and the reigning emperors—Basil I and his sons Leo and Alexander—were eager to see the wound in the Church healed and publicly declared healed. They wrote to Rome, and to Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem, asking that the peace already achieved be confirmed by a general assembly.

Pope John VIII responded. He recognized Photios as the lawful patriarch and sent legates—the cardinal-priest Peter, together with Paul, bishop of Ancona, and Eugenius, bishop of Ostia—to take part in the council and to carry his letters and instructions. The three ancient Eastern thrones sent their representatives as well: Elias for Jerusalem, Basil, metropolitan of Martyropolis, for Antioch, and Kosmas for Alexandria. With the metropolitans and bishops of the patriarchate of Constantinople, the assembly that gathered was very large; the acts open with a roll of well over three hundred prelates, a number traditionally reckoned at around three hundred and eighty. All five of the great sees of the Christian world were represented, and the council understood itself, and was for a time received, as an ecumenical gathering of the one Church.

Its purposes were several and interlocking. First and most practically, it aimed to ratify the reinstatement of Photios and to draw back into communion those who had held out against him, offering the repentant a gentle return and reserving sanction only for the obstinate. Second, it sought to settle outstanding questions of order between the churches—the discipline of clergy, the manner of choosing bishops, and, delicately, the jurisdiction over the newly converted Bulgarians, which both Rome and Constantinople claimed. Third, and most weighty for later ages, it took up the integrity of the Church’s confession of faith: the assembly resolved to proclaim once more the Creed as it had been handed down, and to forbid, under anathema, any tampering with it. These three strands—the healing of a schism, the ordering of church life, and the guarding of the Creed—run together through the whole record.

Argument and Structure

The acts are arranged as the minutes of a series of formal sessions, and they read as living transcript: names are given, speeches recorded, letters read aloud into the record, acclamations preserved. The reader should approach the book as a witness in a great chamber rather than as the follower of a single argument, for the “argument” of a council unfolds through its procedure.

The proceedings open with the convening of the council under Photios and a long enrollment of the bishops present—a roster that, for all its length, is itself a theological statement: the visible breadth of the assembled Church. The first session is given over to the reception of the Roman legates. Photios greets them warmly; the cardinal Peter conveys the greetings and the good will of Pope John, and presents the vestments the pope has sent as a token of communion. The tone is set at once—this is a council of embrace and restored brotherhood, in which Rome and Constantinople address one another as father and brother, fellow-ministers in one Church.

The second and third sessions are dominated by the reading of letters. Pope John’s letter to the emperors and his letter to Photios are read into the record; both accept Photios as the true patriarch, appeal to the ancient canons and to precedents in which one synod loosed the acts of another for the sake of peace, and urge the whole Church to receive him without pretext. Letters from the patriarchs of Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem follow, testifying that the East had never broken communion with Photios. A “commonitorium”—the pope’s detailed set of instructions to his legates—is read in eleven chapters. Woven through these documents are the practical terms of peace, including the sensitive matter of Bulgaria, which the pope asks be left to Rome.

The fourth and fifth sessions turn to matters of order and to the standing of earlier councils. Here the assembly, with the concord of the Roman and Eastern legates, solemnly receives the Second Council of Nicaea (787) as the holy and ecumenical Seventh Council, numbering it with the six before it and anathematizing those who would reject it. Disciplinary canons are enacted: a canon binding Rome and Constantinople in a common bond of ecclesiastical judgment, so that each honors the sentences of the other while the ancient prerogatives of the Roman see are expressly left undiminished; a canon forbidding a bishop who has descended to the monastic life to reclaim the office he laid down; and a canon protecting bishops from violent assault by laymen. The legates and the fathers subscribe.

The sixth and seventh sessions bring the council to its dogmatic summit. In the presence of the emperors, and at the emperor Basil’s own proposal that “no other definition be devised” but the ancient one, the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed is proclaimed and confirmed. The council declares that it holds the faith handed down from the fathers “taking nothing away, adding nothing, altering nothing, falsifying nothing,” and it lays an anathema upon anyone who would dare set forth another symbol, or make “an addition or subtraction” to the one first defined at Nicaea. The emperors subscribe with their own hands; the definition is read again in the final session for the benefit of those absent the day before, and the council closes with acclamations and thanksgiving.

Theological and Spiritual Significance

Three achievements give this council its lasting weight, and they should be stated plainly, as the acts themselves state them.

The first is the healing of a schism. The dominant note of the whole record is not controversy but reconciliation—the restoration of one flock under one shepherd, the re-knitting of Rome and Constantinople and the Eastern patriarchates into a single communion, the tender welcome held out even to those who had opposed the patriarch. In an age of hardening divisions, the council presents a model of how the Church sought to close a rupture: through the exchange of letters, the sending of legates, the appeal to shared canons, and the public declaration of a peace already inwardly attained.

The second is the council’s confirmation of the Seventh Ecumenical Council and, in it, of the veneration of the holy icons. By numbering Second Nicaea among the ecumenical councils and anathematizing its rejectors, the assembly set its seal on the definitive close of the iconoclast controversy, joining the whole conciliar tradition into an unbroken series.

The third, and the one that has resounded most through later history, is the council’s decree on the Creed. The assembly reaffirmed the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed and forbade, under penalty of deposition for clergy and anathema for laity, any addition to or subtraction from it. In the tradition of the Eastern Church this decree is received as a conciliar condemnation of the Filioque — the Latin insertion into the Creed of the words “and the Son,” so that the Holy Spirit is confessed to proceed “from the Father and the Son.” The question of the Spirit’s procession was the great theological concern of Photios’s own life; his Mystagogy of the Holy Spirit is a sustained argument that the Spirit proceeds from the Father alone, and the Church of the East has long read this council’s guarding of the Creed in the light of that concern.

It is worth being precise about what the acts themselves contain, for here East and West have read the council differently, and an honest introduction should say so without taking sides. The definition proclaimed in the sixth session does not name the Filioque, nor do the sessions record a formal debate on the doctrine of the procession as such; the decree speaks generally, forbidding any alteration of the received Creed. The Roman legates subscribed to it, and Pope John VIII’s letters, read into the acts, everywhere confess Photios as a brother and the peace as genuine. Whether the council thereby condemned the Latin doctrine of the Filioque, or only reaffirmed the shared and undisputed text of 381 against additions in the abstract, is precisely the point on which the two traditions have long divided. The Orthodox Church answers the first way and reveres the council for it; the Roman Catholic Church, which came in a later age to number the earlier council of 869–870 as the Fourth Council of Constantinople, has answered otherwise. This edition records the decree as the council issued it and as the Eastern Church has received it, and leaves the larger dispute where it belongs—to the reader and to the continuing conversation of the churches.

Reception and Influence

The afterlife of this council is itself a chapter in the history of the estrangement between the Christian East and West, and it deserves to be told even-handedly, for the same assembly is remembered very differently on the two sides of what became a lasting divide.

In the East, the council of 879–880 has been received with growing honor. It closed the Photian troubles, and Photios himself was in time numbered among the saints, commemorated on the sixth of February as “the Great.” Over the following centuries a strong current of Orthodox tradition came to regard this council as the Eighth Ecumenical Council of the undivided Church—a reckoning voiced by influential theologians and given notable expression in the Encyclical of the Eastern Patriarchs of 1848. On this reading the council stands as the Church’s authoritative guard set over the Creed, and its decree against additions is invoked wherever the Filioque is discussed.

The Western reception took a different course. The council was at first accepted by Rome, whose legates had taken part and whose pope had sent them; but in the changed climate of the eleventh century and after, the Latin Church ceased to count it among the ecumenical councils. Instead the earlier anti-Photian council of 869–870—the very assembly whose acts against Photios this later council set aside—came in the West to be numbered as the Fourth Council of Constantinople and the eighth ecumenical council. Later Roman authors, following the tone of a still older polemic, sometimes styled the gathering of 879–880 the “Photian pseudo-synod,” and the standard Catholic reference works of the modern period both use that label and frankly note that the Orthodox count the same council as their Eighth General Council. Where the East sees a council of healing and of the Creed’s defense, the later West saw an assembly it could no longer own—and the two judgments have travelled down the centuries side by side.

An introduction is not the place to arbitrate between them. It is enough to observe that this single winter’s work at Constantinople became, by the strange providence of history, both a monument of reconciliation and a marker of the fault line along which Christendom would later part—and that Christians of good will in every communion may read its acts with profit, honoring the desire for peace that fills them and pondering the questions they leave open.

The Text and This Edition

The acts of the council were composed and preserved in Greek, and it is from the Greek that the present translation has been made. The base text is the Greek of the council as printed in the great conciliar collection of Giovanni Domenico Mansi, Sacrorum Conciliorum nova et amplissima collectio, volume seventeen (Venice, 1772), where the acts occupy the columns numbered roughly 373 to 524, with a facing Latin version. Mansi’s edition is in the public domain. Its Latin running heads, it should be noted, carry the older Western polemical title “Pseudo-synodus Photiana”; this edition does not reproduce that label, but presents the work under the neutral and descriptive title The Acts of the Council of Constantinople (879–880), in keeping with the practice of naming a council for the assembly that held it.

This is a fresh English translation, made by hand for the present corpus for the sake of study and accessibility, and checked throughout against a fixed glossary of the council’s technical and dogmatic vocabulary. It is not a reprint of any earlier published version. The English is rendered directly from the Greek of Mansi’s text; the edition is offered as a readable modern English translation, not as a parallel-column or bilingual edition, and it does not set the English against the original on the page. Following the conventions of this corpus, the council is credited as the author of its own acts, and the modern translator is credited as translator, never as author; traditional titles of honor are preserved as the acts themselves give them.

A word about the state of the text will help the reader. Mansi’s pages were recovered by careful optical scanning of the printed Greek column and then corrected by hand against the page images; a few passages in the printed source are damaged, illegible, or run across a page break in mid-sentence, and these are marked in the translation with editorial brackets or with a plain notice of a gap, so that nothing is silently supplied. In particular, where the sixth session records the solemn recitation of the Creed, the acts as printed give only the incipit and the direction that the Symbol be recited in full; the translation preserves this exactly, noting in a bracket that the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed was recited in its entirety. At the very close of the acts stands a notice that a letter of the pope to Photios followed in the manuscripts; that letter is a separate document and is not included here. Readers who wish to weigh the whole dossier of the council, including the texts that circulated in its train, will want to consult the critical scholarship; what this volume offers is the body of the acts themselves, in clear English, so that the voice of the council—its greetings and its anathemas, its letters and its acclamations—may be heard again.

The Acts of the Holy Council Under St. Photios

1 THE ACTS OF THE HOLY COUNCIL convened at Constantinople under Photios, the most holy and ecumenical patriarch, for the union of the holy and apostolic Church of God.

The Council Convenes: List of Those Present

1 Photios, the most holy and ecumenical patriarch, presiding in the great secretum of the catechumena; and seated together with him were Elias, the most God-fearing presbyter and locum tenens of Jerusalem, together with the most God-beloved metropolitans—that is to say: Prokopios, archbishop of Caesarea in Cappadocia; Gregorios, archbishop of Ephesus; Ioannes of Herakleia; another Ioannes of Herakleia; Gregorios of Kyzikos; Gregorios of Nicaea; Daniel of Ankyra; Theophylaktos of Sardis; Georgios of Nikomedeia; Markos of Side; Zacharias of Chalcedon; Kyprianos of Klaudioupolis; Zacharias of Antioch; Georgios of Antioch; Ignatios of Hierapolis; Eustratios of Pessinous; Sabas of Patras; Theodosios of Myra; Philippos of Adrianople; Paulos of Laodicea; Nikolaos of Gangra; Petros of Synada; Symeon of Laodicea; Theophilos of Ikonion; Niketas of Smyrna; Anthimos of Kotyaion; Nikolaos of Philippi; Bessarion of Amorion; Nikephoros of Traianoupolis; Basileios of Larissa; Gregorios of Selge; Akylas of Nakoleia; Niketas of Brysis; Philippos of Messene; Theodoros of Nike; Leon of Rhegion; Loukas of Bosporos; Paulos of Cherson; Basileios of Mystia; Athanasios of Leontopolis; Samouel of Chonai; Basileios of Arkadioupolis; Eudokimos of Amastris; Neophytos of Derkos; Photios the patriarch; Basileios of Garella; Ioannes of Ainos; Ioannes of Corinth; Theodosios of Pompeioupolis; ⟦…⟧ of Mytilene; Leontios of Rhodes; Stephanos of Kypsella; Sabas of Athens; Antonios of Naupaktos; Agathon of the Moravians; Loukianos of Dyrrhachion; Markos of Hydrous; Arsenios of Lemnos; Sabas of Apros; Timotheos of Mesembria; Philippos of Karpathos; Niketas of Germia; Symeon of Selymbria; Konstantinos of Koloneia; Leon of Neapolis; Niketas of Maroneia; Epiphanios of Kios; Sophronios of Apameia; Ignatios of Prokonnesos; Tryphon of Rhousion; Stephanos of Germe; Ioannes of Rhizaion; Georgios of Keltzene; Euphemianos of Euchaita; Leontios of Tyana; Petros of Ilias; Ignatios of Miletos; Makarios of Derkos; Petros of Bizye; Theodoros of Thessalonike; Nikephoros of Limyra; Konstantinos of Kade; Gregorios of Metra; Michael of Pisia; Nikephoros of Aspona; Theophylaktos of Euripos; Gregorios of Zetounion; Stephanos of Pharsala; Klemes of Bae; Basileios of Apameia; Antonios of Daphnousia; Ignatios of Sozopolis; Petros of Etzinon; Methodios of Erymna; Ignatios of Kassandreia; Thomas of Kedison; Basileios of Bae; Ga-

2 briel of Achrida; Philippos of Lylos; Konstantinos of Boulgarophygon; Methodios of Medaion; Nikephoros of Didymoteichon; Klemes of Daonion; Nikephoros of Poimaninon; Stephanos of Bagoneiteia; Eusebios of Praigeton; Antonios of Andrapa; Konstantinos of Trachylon; Ioannes of Podaleia; Georgios of Xantheia; Gregorios of Herakleia of Latros; Eustratios of Koridalla; Nikephoros of Kadara; Theodoros of Orykandos; Eusebios of Lournaia; Xenophon of Demetrias; Damianos of Ezeros; Leon of Neai Patrai; Petros of Drougoubiteia; Athanasios of Selinaia; Symeon of Arkadioupolis; Basileios of Adriane; Basileios of Herakleia; Gregorios of Kamouliana; Ioulianos of Palia; Damianos of Daphnoution; Antonios of Kephalonia; Kerykos of Neapolis; Philippos of Chrysopolis; Konstantinos of Kos; Antonios of Naupaktos; Theognostos of Apameia; Methodios of Hexamilion; Ioannes of Mexopolis; Leon of Helenopolis; Konstantinos of Madyta; Methodios of Kaisaropolis; Nikephoros of Poroi; Eustratios of Elezoi; Iakobos of Peritheorion; Theodoros of Bechaba; Ioannes of Theodoroupolis; Konstantinos of Trokmada; Theoktistos of Tiberioupolis; Gregorios of Gedadeis; Isaak of Stabaroton; Nikolaos of Nikopolis; Stephanos of Gangra; Petros of Pamphilon; Niketas of Autedon; Elisaios of Lagineia; Demetrios of Skylakion; Agathon of Kerasion; Theodoros of Apameia; Nikephoros of Basada; Nikolaos of Rhaidestos; Theodoros of Spore; Sabas of Knepolis; Sisinios of Synne; Theodoros of Kaberkion; Theoktistos of Akron; Sabas of Tergallon; Konstantinos of Akarasle; Ioannes of Amplada; Basileios of Thyateira; Nikephoros of Orakon; Eusebios of Synne; Demetrios of Polystylon; Basileios of Synne; Theodoros of Orykandos; Nikolaos of Sozopolis; Ignatios of Indos; Theodoulos of Paranaia; Sisinios of Tripolis; Athanasios of Mothone; Philippos of Satyla; Nikolaos of Adraneia; Gregorios of Hypaipa; Georgios of Aleai; Theophanes of Lesser Antioch; Eustathios of Tychais; Theodosios of Eleutheropolis; Nikephoros of Hermokapelia; Basileios of Linoe; Ignatios of Nyssa; Ioannes of Zalicha; Basileios of Tzouroulos; Christophoros of Dadybra; Petros of Meloe; Konstantinos of Phellos; Makarios of Kotene; Paulos of Zela; Basileios of Aminaia; Leon of Sagalassos; Basileios of Germanikopolis; Theodoros of Etea; Marianos of Anastasioupolis; Sisinios of Berinoupolis; Thomas of Hypsos; Michael of Troas; Eustolios of Auldelos; Paulos of Dometioupolis; Euschemon of Eirenoupolis; Symeon of Kerasous; Antonios of Lakedaimonia; Konstantinos of Trakela; Theopemptos of Tralleis; Ioannes of Palaimonion; Leontios of Probanda; Strategios of […]; Leontios of Basileioupolis; Basileios of Kadibe; Ioannes of Alabanda; Konstantinos of Lysias; Konstantinos of Neapolis; Philotheos of Athanasos; Michael of Ooion; Stephanos of Pyrgion; Theophilos of Alinda in Maeonia; Philippos of Mylasa; Ioannes of Bargyla; Ioseph of Laryma; Photios of Klera; Symeon of Keramos; Paulos of Mele; Bardanios of Skopelos; Konstantinos of Trapobizye; Ioannes of Boukelos; Symeon of Laike; Israel of Tzokos; Manouel of Probaton; Paulos of Mosynopolis; Niketas of Pryse; Symeon of Attaleia; Ioseph of Tyraion; Theoktistos of Caesarea in Bithynia; Philippos of Andros; Nikolaos of Makre; Nikolaos of Anchia-

3 los of Anchialos; Sabas of Betounion; Georgios of Armenia; Sabas of Laranda; Antonios of Kinnada; Arsenios of Atron; Daniel of Kogeon; Anthimos of Basinoupolis; Basileios of Krateia; Eustratios of Phobos; Sophronios of Adrianople; Konstantinos of Tyraion; Paulos of Eumeia; Basileios of Adada; Baanes of Mastraba; Nikolaos of Chomatine; Tarasios of Eriste; Epiphanios of Dalde; Basileios of Siniandos; Ioannes of Sergentzion; Michael of Metelloupolis; Methodios of Dadaleia; Germanos of Kitros; Leontios of Gordia; Theodegetos of Phytia; Michael of Anatron; Nikolaos of Heliodoris; Nikolaos of Ougandos; Germanos of Philetealion; Eustathios of Lounde; Konstantinos of Komba; Michael of Ankyra; Konstantinos of Mosyna; Nikephoros of Kleros; Anastasios of Tyraion; Zacharias of Ioannina; Andreas of Tlos; Nikephoros of Symeonion; Methodios of Pergamon; Konstantinos of Eukarpia; Eustathios of Lemonia; Symeon of Debeltos; Germanos of Mousbada; Paulos of Dorylaion; Leontios of Harpasos; Nikolaos of Ibora; Basileios of Oreanitai; Ioulianos of Mizion; Theodoros of Mylomna; Ignatios of Sykai; Nikolaos of Kalymne; Konstantinos of Sora; Nikephoros of Syblaia; Eustratios of Traianoupolis; Michael of Philadelpheia; Epiphanios of Eumeneia; Konstantinos of Antandros; Theophanes of Azane; Kosmas of Stephaniakon; Konstantinos of Laodicea; Stephanos of Bindaie; Konstantinos of Sebasteia; Germanos of Lizikion; Nikolaos of Tepetze; Theodoros of Hierokaisareia; Michael of Nyssa; Nikolaos of Pappa; Theodosios of Tymbrias; Ioannesios of Ioannitze; Methodios of Klepa; Germanos of Daskylion; Menas of Hagioupolis; Basileios of Lagina; Gregorios of Ionopolis; Ioannes of Barbella; Theophanes of Makrochome; Euthymios of Philomelion; Samouel of Saint Kornelios; Anthimos of Parlab; Ephraim of Gargara; Michael of Morka; Theophanes of Melitopolis; Stephanos of Gordoserre; Ioannes of Bindaia; Paulos of Zechlia; Kyrillos of Lyde; Antonios of Daphnousia; Samouel of Parsakoute; Athanasios of Pinara; Niketas of Zenope; Ignatios of Basileioupolis; Gregorios of Phassa; Georgios of Baraton; Theotimos of Argos; Michael of Apollonias; Euschemon of Tityos; Nikephoros of Peira; Paulos of Strymon; Antiochos of Makre; Makarios of Kotene; Nikolaos of Nikopolis; Symeon of Kredame; Konstantinos of Kabra; Basileios of Ebae; Symeon of Chairetopa; Demetrios of Polyphylon; Germanos of Leukas; Andreas of Nauplion; Symeon of Tribonadon; Kosmas of Charioupolis; Theodosios of Sinope; Meletios of Herakleia in Pontos; Konstantinos of Tios; Michael of the Holy City; Michael of Ankyrosynadon; Athanasios of Anea; Eustathios of Alande; Samouel of Lipara; Loukas of Azara; Thomas of Agine; Ioannes of Dardanos; Leon of Plousias; Basileios of Lystra; Eustathios of Phlogena; Michael of Saint Agapetos; Methodios of Iktra; Eustratios of Moukdos; Theophilos of Magnesia; Strategios of Oike; Symeon of Saint Doulas; Germanos of Stektorion; Symeon of Keramos; Loukas of ⟦Anelion⟧ Magnesia; David of Rheon; Ioannes of Nazianzos; Gregorios of Adrianotherai; Eustathios of Dermocholka; Platon of Esba; Aetios of Domna; Stephanos of Byreos; Paulos of Phoke; Ioannes of Dokimeion.

Peter the Protonotary Opens the Proceedings

1 When silence had been made, Peter, the most God-beloved deacon and protonotary, stood before the council.

First Session

1 ACTION ONE [heading from the Latin ACTIO PRIMA; not visible in the extant Greek column margin]

2 Peter, the most God-fearing presbyter, cardinal, and legate of the most holy Pope John of elder Rome, together with those who were with him, Paul and Eugenios, had arrived; of whom the most illustrious Peter, having now also arrived in person, brought with him the sacred letters of the most holy Pope John.

3 Photios, the most holy patriarch, said: Thanksgiving be to our good God, who has preserved him and restored him to us in peace and health. Let them enter. And when they had entered, Photios, the most holy and ecumenical patriarch, said: Glory to our God, the consubstantial and life-originating Trinity, always, now and ever and unto the ages of ages. The holy council acclaimed: Amen. And when the prayer had been offered according to custom, Photios, our most holy master and ecumenical patriarch, embraced and greeted Peter, the most God-fearing presbyter, and those with him, saying: God has brought you here well. May the Lord accept your labor; may He bless and sanctify your souls and your bodies; and may He accept the care and solicitude of our most holy brother and fellow-minister and spiritual father, the most blessed Pope John.

4 Peter, the most illustrious presbyter, cardinal, and legate of the most holy Pope John, said: Blessed be God, that we have found your holiness in health. Saint Peter watches over you. Photios, the most holy patriarch, said: May Christ our God—He whose chief disciple was Peter, whose memory and zeal He rendered free of grief—have mercy on us all, and show us worthy of His kingdom.

5 Peter, the most God-fearing presbyter and cardinal, said: The most holy and ecumenical Pope John makes reverence to your holiness. Photios, the most holy patriarch, said: He is reverenced in return by us with heartfelt longing; and we ask God to grant us his holy prayers unto the completion of our whole life; and may there be granted him, from the common Master Christ our true God, a recompense for his genuine love and sincere disposition toward us.

6 Peter, the most illustrious presbyter and cardinal of the apostolic throne, said: I wish to have your honored self as brother and fellow-minister and father. Photios, our most holy master and ecumenical patriarch, said: May Christ our God, the fulfiller of all good things, accomplish his will by heavenly counsel; and we too inscribe him as our brother and fellow-minister and spiritual father.

7 Peter, the most God-fearing presbyter and cardinal, said: He has sent a letter to your holiness, that through it all may know what care and diligence he holds for the holy Church of God that is among us, and what love and faith he has toward your holiness. Photios, the most holy patriarch, said: Even before the letters, through the very deeds themselves we received, as it were, the fullest assurance; that which now becomes teaching and letters is also a prior addition and confirmation. For this reason it falls to us as a duty to hold his hierarchical perfection in the place of father and provider—he who lays down such great and so considerable diligence and care, that not once but twice already he has sent his faithful hierarchs and priests to your moderation; who has undertaken so great a struggle for the holy Church of God,

8 so as to receive, in return for such fitting struggles and cares, [their] goodwill and pure disposition [and not ingratitude]. For in this he has truly imitated Christ the true God, the first and great high priest. For just as He was not content with the heavenly orders that ministered to Him, which preserved their love pure and inviolate, but, emptying Himself and submitting to emptiness even to the form of a slave, drew to Himself our wandering [nature], estranged as it was from men—so also that imitator of His, our spiritual father, was not content that the Church should hold her peace within herself alone; but through his own honored legates—first through the most holy Paul and Eugenios, and then also through your priestly perfection—he resolved to visit those, if any there be, who disobey the truth, and to bring in the fitting admonition; so that, lifted out of the schismatic error that had previously held them fast, they might all be joined to Christ our true God, the common head, and be perfected into His complete body. It is right to give thanks: first to God, who roused that man’s hierarchical perfection to such zeal; and second to that wondrous man himself, the servant who without excuse prepared himself for the decrees from above. Therefore we embrace and honor his honored person. As for the soul of that divine man, we know that it is well and nobly disposed; concerning his honored little body, however, we inquire in what condition it continues.

9 Peter, the most illustrious presbyter and cardinal, answered: Well, through your holy prayers. Photios, our most holy master, said: The holy Church of God under him, and all the hierarchs and priests—how do they fare? Peter, the most illustrious presbyter and cardinal, said: All are in health, through your holy prayers. But the love and faith which the most holy Pope has toward your holiness—who shall recount it? Nevertheless, from his letters all shall know his goodwill toward you. Photios, the most holy and ecumenical patriarch, said: The strength of words is made manifest in the splendor of deeds; and the most holy Pope, our spiritual father, set down the deeds before the words. To as many as have understanding, his inspired zeal for the Church has already become manifest, and his sincere disposition toward us, the lowly, and his perfect love.

10 Peter, the most illustrious presbyter and cardinal, said: Brothers and fellow-ministers, the most holy Pope proclaims much to us and watches over us. The holy council said: And we also embrace him with reverence. Peter, the most God-fearing presbyter and legate of elder Rome, said: Brothers and fellow-ministers, in the manner in which a loving father seeks out his own children, and the good shepherd his own sheep, so also the most holy Pope John, loving you, does not cease,

11 through his letters and with earnest entreaty, to watch over you, wishing that the whole holy Church of God be united and become one flock and one shepherd. Ioannes, the most God-beloved metropolitan of Herakleia, said: By his holy prayers there goes before us one flock, and we have one true shepherd, holy and guileless: Photios, our most holy master and ecumenical patriarch.

12 Zacharias, the most God-beloved metropolitan of Chalcedon, said: The matter of peace is so august that even God Himself is called and reckoned “peace”—just as men are accustomed, by the other names likewise, to call Him and conceive Him as God. Yet this matter, august though it be to such a degree, has now for a very long time, ever since, suffered injury within the Church among us; nor was it free of faction before, by the simplicity of the one who held power. Then, indeed, when the evil burst forth most violently and the flame was raised to such a height—what was the cause? For you all demand to learn it. We will tell it: paradoxical though it be, it is nonetheless true. The knowledge of a divine man—as much as pertains to the sacred and divine Scriptures, and as much as pertains to the encyclical studies; a purity surpassing even human nature; consummate understanding; sagacity joined with strength; gentleness, and in all things what is equitable and moderate; to be seen superior to all pleasures; an almsgiving outrunning all who were ever renowned for it; the humility that points to Christ, which it befits every Christian to have, but most of all the hierarchs—which you see us too possessing, as is fitting, lest we belie our calling by our deeds; a kindly bearing toward sinners, out of boundless love for mankind; freedom from possessions; the turning of many from among the heretics and many from among the unbelievers—and why do I say these things? rather, whole nations he made ready to turn to our blameless faith of Christians; and, to put it simply, every virtue that is by nature to be seen among men. But who is the one who practiced so great and so considerable a virtue? And how, again, did virtue, being a good thing, become a contributing cause of evil—of the enmity within the Church? This too you all long to learn. The virtue this our most holy patriarch practiced, whom you see; and it, being a good thing, became a contributing cause of evil by turning envy upon itself, which proved to be the cause of all the things that have come upon us. You have, as an example of what is said, the first and great high priest, Christ, against whom envy roused the Jewish madness, so that it did not cease even unto the cross and death. Some such thing happened, and was brought down upon this throne. I suffered things of which it is good to be silent, and surely the silence concerning them profits you as well. The virtue of our most pious emperor redeems the defeat—in all things showing that he has his mind governed by God, but most clearly having made this plain in the present case. For he makes manifest to all that the fabrications falsely said to come from the East are exposed, and that nothing sound comes from there. And he considers well also the mind of the most holy Pope John, that he in no way abides in the things contrived for the ruin and dissolution of the Church. He looks to this, and to the canon itself, and holds the ancient order of doctrine that is decreed

13 and sung by all. Apart from these things, whatever should arise is shown to be rotten and stale; and the Church, being restored to her own, receives back her proper bridegroom; and all the things done against him are reckoned long nonsense and idle prattle. When this had come about, many at once assented to what had been done, and many also after a little while; but a few—very few indeed, and easily numbered—envying the peace of the Church and mastered by the passion of self-love, were utterly taken captive. And if anyone asks them the cause, and for what reason they cut themselves off from the common body of the Church, their ready defense is: that the Church of the Romans also wills it so. Which is just as the murderer, accused of his deeds, said: “As a deputy of the Romans I do the evil.” And this Church, at peace with herself—and, if she could, [wishing the same] for others—has now become the occasion of disturbance and of enmity and of scandals, and, simply, of all the evils that have overtaken our Church: the cause, if not in truth, yet by their words she is so called and named. For this reason our most reverent emperor summoned you, and you came, that you might free yourselves from the charges and reproaches which, in some small measure, you bear among all, on account of the things which (as those men say) have been committed against us; so that, if the truth must be spoken to you, the present council is on your behalf—on your behalf, brothers and fathers, and on behalf of the most holy Church of the Romans; on behalf of your honor; that you may not be dragged about by the remnants of the schismatics as the authors of the factions and the disturbances. Since, indeed, by the grace of God, and by service rendered to our Christ-loving emperor, and moreover by the prayers of our master the most holy patriarch, and by the concord and like-mindedness of the equally ranked hierarchical thrones of the East, and before all these by the continual supplications and prayers to God of the most holy Pope John, all things are well and need nothing toward correction—and that this is not my word, but the common voice of this whole numerous council, I implore you to hear.

14 The holy council cried out: We, who from the beginning alone have been of one accord with our most holy master and ecumenical patriarch, have never separated from him; but we have even stood ready to pour out our own blood gladly on his behalf, against any who might wish to seek such a thing. And as many of us as once took up any faction against him, many of us, having condemned our former opinion and disposition, now with whole soul and unbending mind inscribe him as our hierarch and master and shepherd; and those who waver on these matters we now hold to be enemies of the Church and cast out.

15 Zacharias, the most God-beloved metropolitan of Chalcedon, said: Worthily, then, are they cast out who till now have remained left over from the schismatic error. For—to say nothing of the other accusations of which those men were the authors—what strange thing is this that they do, which even to consider distresses me? What, then, is it? They presume to drag the very Church of the Romans, honored from many years past with freedom and renowned for the dignity of its power,

16 into slavery, and to bring it down to the lowliness of bought slaves. How, in what manner? “We accept the acts of Pope Nicholas, and the acts of Adrian likewise please us; but the acts of the most holy and most blessed Pope John we do not accept.” And for what reason? Because those Popes followed our will, but this one does not do what we wish; rather, he disputes that we too should follow the things which he wills. And what else is this, than that they themselves not only do not follow the hierarchical wills of the Romans, but even compel those great and admirable hierarchs to follow their own private wills? For if they accept those of your wills which they themselves had previously willed, but those which they do not wish—even if you should will it ten thousand times, even if you should have the canons in agreement, even if you should have the inspiration that shines from above—then against all these they vaunt that their own will prevails: what excess of madness is left to them? Hasten, therefore, beloved, and contend, and free the holy Church of God of the Romans from this monstrous and barbarous-tongued slavery; and, scattering away the dishonor and reproach heaped upon you until now, exchange them for glory and good repute through the concord of the common peace of the churches.

17 Peter, the most God-fearing presbyter and cardinal, said: We ought to give thanks to our almighty God for all things; and He Himself will do what is profitable for all. Ioannes, the most God-beloved metropolitan of Herakleia in Thrace, said: Much have we given thanks, and still we give thanks to Him, that the scandals and tares that formerly sprang up in the Church of God have been taken out of the midst, and a deep peace has been bestowed upon her—through the concord of your holiness and of the hierarchical thrones of the East, and through the prayers of our most holy master and hierarch.

18 Prokopios, the most God-beloved archbishop of Caesarea in Cappadocia, said: Let the whole world rejoice today, and let the Church also leap for joy; for the Lord has spoken good things into the heart of two of our holy emperors, and has stirred up their God-ratified power to summon honored legates from the four patriarchal thrones. And now we see both your honored selves arrived and fulfilling the figure of the most holy Pope John, our spiritual father, and those likewise come from the East agreeing with our concord, and with one mind driving away the schismatic error together with us; and now, in truth, it is fitting to speak the prophetic word: “The Lord has reigned; He has clothed Himself with majesty.” For the Church has, through him, clothed herself with power and girded herself.

19 Elias, the most God-fearing presbyter and locum tenens of Jerusalem, said: And now it is right to give thanks to God, that we see all united. And I, the lowly one, rejoice the more, that this schismatic error we never received in our holy Church of God of Jerusalem; but always and continually, from the time when our most holy master Photios took possession of this hierarchical throne and sent the libellus of his faith to Theodosios, the most holy patriarch of Jerusalem,

20 we have remained in agreement with him and unsevered until now; and those who cried out anything, holding [false] notions concerning his high-priesthood, we never received.

21 Daniel, the most God-beloved metropolitan of Ankyra, said: Our most holy master and ecumenical patriarch imitates Christ the true God in this: those who came about the eleventh hour he makes equal in rank with the first, and now grants them to enjoy honor of the first dignity; and he makes all things one, opening to all his common and fatherly heart.

22 Peter, the most illustrious presbyter and cardinal, said: May our Lord Jesus Christ preserve you all. And indeed our lord the apostolic and ecumenical Pope John has sent us to the most holy patriarch, Lord Photios, that we might root out the scandals springing up in his Church; and just as there is one God over all, and one baptism, and one faith, so also may there come to be one flock and one shepherd. And that our lord the apostolic Pope holds this Lord Photios, the most holy patriarch, as his own soul, and is with him one spirit and one body, and holds him as brother and fellow-minister—this the very priestly vestment sent by him bears witness. For he sent it to him for this very reason: that every man might be assured that he holds him as brother and fellow-minister. And having said this, he rose and delivered to our master the hierarchical [vestments] sent by the most holy Pope John: the ⟦pallium⟧, the omophorion, the ⟦epigonation⟧, the phelonion, the sandals.

23 The holy council said: If your holiness commands, let us see them. And so Peter, the most illustrious presbyter and cardinal, together with the most God-beloved bishops with him and the rest of the Romans, spread them out before the present council. Photios, the most holy and ecumenical patriarch, said: May Christ our God—He who wraps the heaven with clouds, and who, that He might reform and purify our nature, clothed Himself with it—may He Himself clothe the God-pleasing fellow-minister and our spiritual father: in the present life, with inviolable protection and sure salvation; and in the age to come, may He show him worthy of the nuptial robe of that blessed bridal chamber.

24 Eugenios, the most God-beloved bishop and legate of elder Rome, said: Brothers and fellow-ministers, what we told you long ago, you now behold: that the soul of the most holy Pope John is united with the soul of Photios the most holy patriarch, and the two are one. And just as you desire to be with God, so also the apostolic Pope John desires to be with the most holy patriarch. What is it? Is it as we said? Yes. The holy council answered: Through the very deeds themselves we have been plainly assured.

25 Peter, the most illustrious presbyter and cardinal, said: You all know, hierarchs and priests, that for the sake of the peace and concord of the Church our lord the apostolic Pope and president of the Church of the Romans sent us, bearing letters also; and one letter he left for the most holy patriarch, Lord Photios, another for your holiness, and yet another for those who

26 unsettle the Church. The letter sent in the meantime to your assembly we have not now brought, because you are not all gathered together; but on whatever day you should be assembled, God willing, all of you, we too will come, delivering to you the letter of the most holy Pope.

27 Prokopios, the most God-beloved archbishop of Caesarea in Cappadocia, said: Let the day also be appointed, if you command. Peter, the most illustrious presbyter and cardinal, said: If the holiness of the most holy patriarch should so command, on the second day, that we may all come together in one place. The holy council said: Be it agreeable. Photios, the most holy patriarch, said: The most honored legates, our brothers and fellow-ministers, have undergone no ordinary labor and have need of rest. For even now, while they suppose they are relieving the toil of their journey, they are spending no small further labor upon discussions not yet in accord. It is therefore better now for the council to be dissolved, and afterward to be gathered together for what follows.

28 Peter, the most illustrious presbyter and cardinal, said: Let the holy council hear once more. We today hold the figure of the most holy and ecumenical Pope, and we say to you: if there is in your midst any man contentious and a maker of scandal, misleading the Church, let him be set apart from you, and let him declare the cause of the division. The holy council said: Out of this numerous multitude which you see, there is not one who has guile or contentiousness in his heart. We all accept Photios the most holy patriarch; and those who do not accept him—even as the three patriarchal thrones of the East have accepted him, and before these, even as the most holy Pope John accepted him—we cast out as enemies of the Church and strangers to the faith.

29 Peter, the most illustrious presbyter and cardinal, said: Even if they are not present here, if there are still any who are factious against the Church, admonish them, that they may flee for refuge to the heart of the most holy patriarch, and that he may receive them as a loving father. The holy council said: They are few, altogether beyond numbering for the present, whom we know; and we admonish them, as you have enjoined. But you also, if their persons should present themselves to you, admonish them.

30 Peter, the most God-fearing presbyter and cardinal, said: Hear, all of you, what Felix, the most holy Pope who was of the Church of the Romans, says: If anyone is seen setting himself in opposition to the holy Church of God, let such a one, when proven and made manifest, first be admonished by his president and by his bishops; and if he is not persuaded, then let the holy council give sentence against him. So therefore we too, having authority to do this from the apostolic throne, have first to admonish them and to exhort them; and if they will not consent to hearken to us, then we have to cut them off as putrid members, lest through them the sound body also perish.

31 Elias, the most God-fearing presbyter and locum tenens of Jerusalem, said: Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above,

32 as we hear it said; and when God shall glorify someone, no one is able to harm him with dishonors […]; but whom God holds in dishonor, the glory of men profits nothing. God has honored Photios the most holy patriarch, and has opened, according to His will, the heart of the most holy Pope John and of the remaining three great hierarchs of the East. And they loved him, and proclaimed his God-decreed high-priesthood; and we know with certainty that thus it is pleasing to God. Therefore shall his name be magnified in heaven and on earth, from generation to generation. But those who oppose him, if any there be—setting themselves against God and against His peace—unless they repent and be united to the Church, in this present age shall be brought to nothing, and in the age to come shall be ranked among those estranged from God.

33 The holy council cried out: Thus we all receive, thus we all believe. May the Lord seal our prayers according to His will. Many be the years of the emperors! Of Basil, Leo, and Alexander, the great emperors and autocrats, many be the years! Of Stephen the Porphyrogennetos, and of Eudokia the most pious Augusta, many be the years! Of the God-appointed synkellos, many be the years! Of John and Photios, the most holy patriarchs, many be the years!

Second Session

1 SESSION II.

Opening of the Second Session

1 The 17th of the month of November, in the thirteenth indiction, on the third day of the week. Photios, our most holy patriarch, presiding in the right-hand part of the gallery of the Great Church; the holy Gospel having also been set forth upon the lectern; and there sitting with him Eugenios and Paul, the most holy vicars of Elder Rome, together with Peter, the most God-fearing presbyter and cardinal; and Elias, the most God-fearing presbyter and vicar of Jerusalem; and likewise Kosmas, presbyter and apocrisiary of Alexandria; and there also sitting with them the most God-beloved metropolitans, Prokopios of Caesarea, Gregory of Ephesus, John of Heraclea, and thereafter all the rest:

2 Photios, the most holy patriarch of Constantinople, said: Glory and thanksgiving and majesty be to the Godhead, three in hypostasis, the source of life and indivisible, now and ever and unto the ages of ages. And when the holy synod had responded the Amen, the most holy vicars sang certain things in the language of the Romans.

3 When the chanting had been completed, Peter, the most God-fearing presbyter and cardinal of the apostolic throne, spoke as follows through Leo, the imperial protospatharios and interpreter: Let the Church, rooted in God, having received peace by the grace of the Holy Spirit and by the mediation of our pious and Christ-loving emperors, hear the things spoken by us. Basil, Leo, and Alexander, our most pious emperors, on account of the present peace and concord of the Church of Constantinople, sent to the mother of the churches, the great city of Rome, letters once and again. And indeed the people of Alexandria and Jerusalem and Antioch did likewise, entreating the most holy Pope John to confirm and to accept the peace agreed upon by us. And he, bent by our entreaties and his own, sent us forth—

4 —as you have seen, who are his sincere servants, that we might fulfill, together with you, the things requested by you. And he sent letters also concerning this peace and concord, both to the pious emperors and to Photios the most holy patriarch, and further also to your reverence. But before all else we desire that the letter dispatched to the most pious emperors be read in the presence of your holiness. And the holy synod said: Let it be read. And so Leo, the all-renowned imperial protospatharios and devoted asekretis, having taken the letter, read it aloud in the hearing of all.

Reading of Pope John’s Letter to the Emperors

1 [Letter of Pope John to the emperors Basil, Leo, and Alexander]

2 John, servant of the servants of God, to our most serene, beloved spiritual sons, beloved of God, Basil, Leo, and Alexander, victors, bearers of trophies, emperors, and eternal Augusti.

3 The pure and exceedingly brilliant character of your Orthodoxy in the faith and of your wisdom, and the goodness and equity manifest in your ways, most Christian and greatest emperors of the Romans—shining like a light in the midst of the earth—illumines all the bounds to which the inhabited world extends. For you do not, glorying in the faith alone, dispose yourselves to negligence rather than to zeal in other matters; rather, upon your blameless religion you build not wood, nor grass, nor straw, but precious stones, gold, silver—to put it simply, you bring forth all things with zealous beauty, in which the Divine is known to be served. And the Divine is read to be served most of all when all His churches, as many as the sun looks upon, abiding in the Orthodox faith and in concord and peace with one another, offer up to Him voices of thanksgiving each day. Wherefore, longing that this concord be seen and enjoyed also in your own Church, you have had recourse to the holy Church of the Romans through your apocrisiaries and your divine letters, believing that she would be a fellow worker in what you zealously seek, and not negligent—you yourselves not being the first to have come to this design, but yielding to and following the custom of the pious emperors who reigned before you. And from what teacher you received the doing of these things, if it be worth asking, is plain from the chief of the apostles, Peter, whom the Lord set as head of all the churches, saying, “Feed my sheep”; and not this alone, but also from the holy councils and ordinances; and further from the sacred and Orthodox and patristic holy decrees and statutes, as your divine and pious writings also bear witness. And this you do, that the authority of your faith, proclaimed abroad, may shine forth the more, and that your love toward God may be shown to be pure and unfading. For behold, what is more fitting by nature, or more proper to those established in authority and the highest offices, than to be zealous to glory in the beauty and comeliness of the right faith and in love toward God; and that all who serve God in the same faith should be seen embraced and bound together by the bond of love. Bending over your

4 letters, and made glad by the honey-flowing utterances in them, and kindled like a torch, and being of one mind and in agreement with our whole most holy Church of the Romans, we rose up to show all the things written by you fulfilled at once and joyfully—the present occasion being most opportune for us, and the course of affairs having favored this.

5 You wrote to us, our beloved son, that, opening apostolic and sympathetic bowels of compassion, we should receive all those of your Church, as many as have fallen under canonical penalties whether by transgression of their own handwritten subscriptions or in some other way, and that we should take thought for peace and concord. And not only this, but that before these things we should, having made Photios the most God-fearing hierarch a partaker and heir and concelebrant of communion with us, restore him again to the great dignity of the high priesthood, to the honor of the patriarchate; so that the Church of God might not remain for a long time troubled by the storm-surges of God-hated schisms and wicked scandals. And we, having accepted the supplication of your serenity as being reasonable and just and pleasing to God, and this occasion being opportune—such as we had long sought and labored for over the years—judging it fitting to make peace for the Church of God, sent our apocrisiaries to fulfill your will. And even though your piety, having constrained the man, anticipated and restored him before us, before our vicars arrived in those parts; nevertheless we accept this not from our own authority—although we have the power to do this—but bringing the proofs from the apostolic ordinances and patristic decrees, and being mindful of the laws of the Church handed down from of old; in which, when the strict observance of these things is kept inviolate, it tears asunder and harms the integrity of the body of the Church—having been taught by that very Church to lead all things to what is profitable. For indeed the second canon of Nicaea speaks thus: “Since it often happens, whether by necessity or by men being otherwise constrained, that the ecclesiastical canons are transgressed.” And further, Pope Gelasius says concerning the same matter, that “where force is present and at hand, let the laws of the holy Fathers remain inviolate.” And likewise the most holy Pope Leo enjoins in the same spirit, saying: “Where necessity does not go before, let the laws of the holy Fathers be kept incorrupt; but where necessity and force are found, there let him who has the power exercise economy for the profit of the churches of God; for by necessity, according to the divine Apostle, there comes also a change of the law.” And Pope Felix likewise concurs with these, saying: “Concerning this too one must take thought, that wherever necessity meets, often the constitutions of the Fathers are transgressed.” But indeed the holy synod at Carthage, in its fifteenth chapter, says: “We decree that the clergy of the Donatists return again into the Church, even though they had formerly been deposed by a synod. And one synod is seen to loose another synod, for the sake of the union and concord of the Church.” And Pope Innocent says, in the

6 fourteenth chapter: “Let those ordained by Bonosus the heretic be received, lest scandals spring up again in the Church.” And not only in these cases—though such persons were even of those sprung from heresies—does this apostolic see, taking thought for ecclesiastical peace, stretch out a hand of help to those deposed; but it has also defended Orthodox hierarchs and patriarchs who took refuge in it, as now the most blameless Photios, who have called upon its help. You all know the great Athanasius, bishop of Alexandria, and Cyril and Polychronius of Jerusalem, and John, whom your love names Chrysostom, and Flavian of Constantinople. For these men, having been deposed and proscribed by a synod and having had recourse to the holy Church of the Romans, this apostolic throne reinstated and restored to their former honor. If, then, those who received ordination from the Donatists or from Bonosus, and were driven from the precincts of the Orthodox Church by a synod of many men, are received by another synod and are ranked in the register of priests, so that the Church of God may remain undivided and pure and free of schisms—for behold, so abominable and hateful is it seen to be in the eyes of God, as a swarm of schisms subsisting within the Church of God; and nothing is more delightful or more dear to His goodness than that the Church should preserve her integrity by love toward God and by like-mindedness toward the neighbor—how much more men who are pleasing to God in the Orthodox faith, renowned for the dignity of their life and for an exact conduct, and who have scarcely so much as to require that works of penalty be exacted—how much more ought such men not to be overlooked as though liable, weighed down by the yoke of penalty, but ought rather to be led back to their former honor.

7 For just as this apostolic throne, having received the keys of the kingdom of heaven from the first and great high priest Jesus Christ, through the chief of the apostles Peter—to whom He said, “I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven”—has authority to bind and to loose universally, and, according to the prophet Jeremiah, to root up and to plant; therefore we also, employing the authority of the chief of the apostles Peter, together with our whole most holy Church, charge you, and through you our most holy brethren and concelebrants, the patriarchs of Alexandria, Antioch, Jerusalem, and the rest of the hierarchs and priests, and all the fullness of the Church of Constantinople, to be of one mind and one accord with us, or rather with God, in all the things which you have sought; and first of all to accept Photios, the most wonderful and most blameless hierarch of God and patriarch, your brother and concelebrant, and a sharer and partaker and heir of communion with the holy Church of the Romans—both on account of all his other virtue, and because the scandals have been removed, and the peace of God and love toward one

8 another has been planted among you. Receive him with an unbribed mind and with undoubting love and faith, driving out from your hearts all the venom of malice and guile and poison and ambiguity, just as the Church of the Romans also accepted him. For we learn at once from all who come to us from those parts that the man abounds in all the excellences that are according to God: in this, that he surpasses all in wisdom and understanding concerning things divine and human; and in this, that he is renowned for his diligence in practical virtue and his unashamed care for the divine commandments. And what we judged it just to say, that such and so great a man should not remain idle and inactive, but, set on high again in your Church and shining forth anew, should perform works in accord with God, dear to God, and worthy of priests and hierarchs.

9 Wherefore, taking up again the same word, we say to you all: Receive the man without pretext. Let no one plead the unjust synods held against him; let no one—as seems to many to be of greater antiquity—lay blame on the condemnations of the blessed hierarchs before us, I mean Nicholas and Adrian; for the things done by their hand against the most holy Photios were not proven. Let no one make your handwritten subscriptions against him an occasion of schisms against him and against one another; for all has ceased and been banished; all that was against him has been annulled and made void. All has, through us the least, been placed in the hands of the chief apostle, and through him upon the shoulders of Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. Receive him, then, with open hands as your brother and concelebrant; receive a blameless hierarch of God; receive the patriarch of your Church. Confirm toward him love, faith, and obedience with reverence, and through him toward the holy Church of the Romans. For whoever does not accept him plainly does not accept the things decreed concerning him by us and by the holy Church of the Romans; and such a one takes up war not against us, but against the most holy apostle Peter, or rather against Christ the Son of God, who so honored and glorified His apostle that he has authority to bind and to loose.

10 This too we beseech your pious majesty to remember: from how long a time the scandals and schisms that have crept into your Church have harmed her integrity. And of these evils, behold, this also has been a cause: your receiving, as emperors, blasphemies and calumnies against your hierarchs and patriarchs and the rest of the priests of God, and your holding lightly the love and faith and honor and reverence due to them. Wherefore we implore your might in God, from now on, to close the ears of your God-decreed majesty to the assaults and calumnies of those wicked and malicious men against the hierarchs of God; and to send away from yourselves, as unholy and abominable and accursed, both them and the wicked darts of their words; and to honor your

11 patriarchs, and to reverence them, and to regard them as your own fathers, and to venerate them as mediators between God and men. For they keep watch over your souls, ever seeking from God the things for your salvation; and for your failings as well, as is likely, in which you incur debt to God, they offer Him sacrifices for your reconciliation, rendering the Divine propitious toward you. And not only this, but they also intercede with our man-loving God for the stability and continuance of your might, and for victory and triumph over enemies, and for the salvation of all Christians. Moreover, they serve as your counselors and teachers, in that they exhort you to do those things which also procure for you the kingdom in the heavens. By these things they are known to love you above all others; for they do not appear to love you with the love of flatterers, but with that which Jesus Christ taught them through His holy apostles.

12 It is not right, then, that your patriarchs be overlooked, both because of the other things we have said before, and because they love you as the Lord commanded. And know that, in doing this and in being reverently disposed toward them, you do not honor and venerate them, but that which is sacrificed by their hands and offered to God the Father for the sin of all humanity; for whoever honors them honors God, and whoever turns away from them turns away from God. But let your prudent majesty flee the false discourses or whisperings against them, through which tares and schisms and scandals are introduced into the churches of God, and which divide the seamless tunic of Christ, woven from above, as the venom of asps; and let it rather strive together with the most holy Photios, our brother and concelebrant, in everything that contributes to the perfecting of the Church; and let it rebuke those who dishonor him, that they may be brought to their senses. For often where the fear of God and reverence toward divine things has not brought men to their senses, the indignation of emperors and rulers and magistrates, coming upon them, has made them more moderate. In doing this, know well that in the fitting manner you acquire for yourself the kingdom of heaven, and the perpetual continuance of your might, and the peaceful condition of your reign. But if you do not do this, know that schisms will never cease in the Church of Constantinople.

13 This too we exhort your God-minded majesty to decree: that after the repose of the most holy Photios, our concelebrant and brother, no one be elected and ordained to the hierarchical rank from among those of worldly dignities; but rather from among the presbyters or cardinals, or from among those enrolled in the catholic Church, or from among her deacons, or from among other priests serving under the throne of Constantinople, according to the divine and sacred canons; so that the things among you may not be done contrary to the ecclesiastical and patristic canons. And we wish such a one to advance by being tested in each grade of the Church: first reader, then subdeacon, then deacon, again presbyter, and after these bishop; that is, one attested in truth and in the study of letters, who in the lower orders has shown his virtue and the rest of his nobility of character,

14 [Continuation from p.214:] ⟦to remain for a time in the lower grades,⟧ that his virtue and the rest of his excellence ⟦may be proven⟧. In this manner, as you patriarchs also ⟦must be governed from the beginning⟧, that no ⟦one⟧ may seize a grade unfittingly, so that in the house of the Lord nothing ⟦may be found⟧ disjointed or disorderly. For he who ascends above all the grades ought to be blameless in all things, lest from this there spring up a dissolution of all the teachings of the Church.

15 And let it not be reckoned by you as a custom or a canon that we, exercising forethought and care for the peaceful condition of the church among you, received Photios our most God-fearing brother, just as Hadrian of old received Tarasios, who was a man divine to him; for rare benefits cannot ⟦be granted to the many alone⟧. Having ourselves also ⟦from⟧ our Lord Jesus Christ received the bowels of compassion, we have shown compassion to you in this matter; and at ⟦your request⟧ we have fulfilled this as well, just as we did concerning the holy priests who are of another ordination. But whoever from now on shall dare to do this, the penalty and condemnation of the canon, and from us as well, shall be without pardon for him.

16 We ask this also of your piety, that neither our brother and fellow minister Photios the most holy, nor any of his successors, shall from now on ordain in Bulgaria, neither by his own hand nor by sending omophoria, nor shall he lay claim to the said province of the Bulgarians as his own. For ⟦we must not⟧ build upon another’s foundation. For he of blessed memory who preceded us, Nicholas, by the entreaties of Michael the ruler of the Bulgarians, nourished that nation by apostolic teachings, and through ⟦those⟧ bishops baptized them; and he brought them to perfection, having handed down to them all ecclesiastical ordinances and canons and whatever pertains to the religion of Christians. Even though some have boldly snatched away from us the province that does not belong to them, and the ordinations and consecrations of churches, and in a word all that they did from this; therefore, in addition to what has been said, we charge you with this also: that when we detect those now exercising the episcopacy among them to have been convicted of an offense and subject them to canonical penalties, you do not receive them as a refuge; but rather that we may find you breathing together with us in this and following after us, and not dissenting.

17 Furthermore, we beseech your Christ-loving majesty to gather together the bishops and presbyters, and those of whatever order, whether ecclesiastical or ⟦civil⟧, who seem to have separated from you; and whenever they are within your borders, both to bring them to you, and to exhort them ⟦to make their way⟧ to the Church of God and to Photios the most holy patriarch, our brother and fellow minister; and you shall restore to them their own hierarchical and priestly honors and grades, opening to them the bowels of mercy. So that, as there is one God and one baptism and one faith, and we ourselves ⟦are one⟧ in Christ, ⟦so⟧ they too, ⟦through⟧ your divine teaching and exhortation, may no longer be apart from us, ⟦but⟧ may be joined together into the fullness of the Church of Christ, being [fitted together].

18 ⟦being fitted together⟧ and joined ⟦into⟧ the all-holy body of Christ; that, continuing in the same mind and in the same will, we may glorify the God who is over all. And let no one henceforth say, “I am of Cephas,” “I am of Paul,” “I am of Apollos,” but let us all say this, that we are all Christ’s; of him who was crucified and died for us; who through his passion made peace and reconciled the things on earth and the things in the heavens; and who joined and bound us to himself, to God and the Father, and in mutual love and communion. But if, when you gather them and summon them, urging and exhorting them to be reconciled to you in the unity of the Church, once and twice, and indeed many times, they should be unwilling to obey you, nor to submit to our letters, nor to reap their own salvation, but should persist in their former willfulness and arrogance, these we command to be excluded from the undefiled partaking of the body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, until they are united to the holy Church of God and to Photios the most holy patriarch, our brother and fellow minister.

19 And so the remaining matters of that just condemnation we did not write in the letter to you, lest its length be drawn out too far; but having written them in a commonitorium, we sent it to our most God-fearing presbyter and cardinal and apocrisiarius, to the most God-fearing bishops in the company of Eugenios and Paulos; that, sitting together with them along with the resident synod concerning the most holy patriarch Photios, our brother and fellow minister, and keeping before their own eyes the sleepless eye that watches over all things, and preserving inviolate and unfailing their accountability before the Divine and their conscience, they may transact all the affairs of the church of Constantinople—both those now in need of correction and those likely, as is to be expected, to arise—for the good and advantage of the Church of God. May God the Almighty guard your august might, and subject the necks of all nations beneath your feet.

Prokopios of Caesarea Receives Photios as Patriarch

1 After the reading of the letter, Prokopios the most God-beloved archbishop of Caesarea in Cappadocia said: We, as we have often said, both before your honored coming and before the exhortation contained in the honored letter, received and do receive Photios the most holy patriarch as our hierarch and shepherd; and to him as our own shepherd and master ⟦we have cleaved⟧ and embraced him; and he himself most gladly took us into his embrace with fatherly affection. And this good and worthy thing, befitting his own integrity, the most holy Pope John has done; in that he fulfilled the august will of our exalted and great emperors and of our humility, and sent your Holiness to us in agreement with us in all things. And glory be to God; and we pray for our pious emperors and for the most holy Pope John. And we venerate you as his vicars and ministers, and as holding the throne of Peter, the chief of the apostles.

Elias of Jerusalem on the Unbroken Concord With Photios

1 Elias, the most God-fearing presbyter and vicar

2 of Jerusalem said: Thanks be to God, that the ancient and unbroken conviction in Jerusalem concerning Photios the most holy patriarch—the whole world also delights in and accepts the same. Petros the most God-fearing presbyter and cardinal said: For it was for this very purpose that the most holy Pope John sent us: to confirm the concord of the Church and its peace; so that, glorifying God with one voice and one faith, you might preserve undiminished your love toward the most holy patriarch Photios. And since we have found you united to him, as you yourselves also bear witness, ⟦we give thanks⟧ to God, who awarded peace even before our coming.

Prokopios on Admonishing Those Still Outside the Church

1 Prokopios the most God-beloved archbishop of Caesarea in Cappadocia said: We have often spoken concerning your disposition, that we hold our ⟦own⟧ judgment toward our most holy master the ecumenical patriarch, the lord Photios, free of all doubt. And indeed we were bound to take the lead; for those who are near to affairs understand their exactness better than those farther off. And those whose hands have handled and whose eyes have seen take up the ⟦knowledge of them⟧ through themselves; all who are near to the truth, as we have said, are the more exact judges and examiners and lovers of it. Therefore we, having searched out all things and learned them thoroughly, have judged that our salvation and what is well-pleasing to God lie in nothing else but in being united to Photios the most holy patriarch. Yet since some—and indeed, as we said before, countless ones—are still outside the Church, your reverence must admonish and exhort those, who also need to be led back, as being weak concerning the word of truth. For if the very ones who remain behind did not ⟦also⟧ have a written document as the occasion of their separation, no one, neither small ⟦nor⟧ great, would have been left out of communion with the most holy Photios. But thus the evil one has contrived ⟦that⟧ the Cross, the symbol of peace and of common salvation, should now be to the foolish an occasion of stumbling.

Peter the Cardinal on Correcting the Erring

1 Petros the most God-fearing presbyter and cardinal ⟦said⟧: This we also, as far as it is in ⟦us⟧, are taking pains for, ⟦through⟧ the cooperation also ⟦of⟧ your reverence. For one must rather stretch out a hand to those who go astray than to those who walk in the divine way; for these have no need of one to guide them. Therefore let us do as the Gospel says: “If your brother sins against you, rebuke him between you and him alone; if he hears you, you have gained your brother. But if not, take with you two or three others. And if ⟦he refuse even their exhortation⟧, tell it to the Church. And if he refuse to hear the Church also, let him be to you as the gentile and the tax collector.” This let us also do: first let us exhort and admonish them together with your reverence; then, if they do not bear it, we shall proceed against them by another, sharper road. Perhaps what good will did not accomplish in them, fear will accomplish. And this being done, if they still abide in the same things, according to the command and authorization of the most holy Pope John we shall carry out the proceeding against them.

Prokopios on Gentleness Toward the Separated

1 Prokopios the most God-beloved archbishop of Caesarea in Cappadocia said: With long-suffering and gentle-

2 ⟦ness⟧ let your reverence deal with them. ⟦And⟧ we hope that by your kindness you will be able to bring even those. For they, as we said, have no plea or other pretext but the document they made ⟦against themselves⟧ with their own hands. The holy synod said: The truth is so. For indeed we ourselves also, ⟦whoever⟧ of us were at any time in separation from Photios our most holy patriarch, separated for no other reason than for the documents wrongly made by us with our own hands. But now, by the grace of God, we are all ⟦united⟧.

The Synod Accepts the Papal Letter to the Emperor

1 Petros the most God-fearing presbyter and cardinal of the apostolic throne said: We too rejoice and give thanks to God for your union and concord, which you have with the lord Photios the most holy patriarch. The holy synod said: We also give thanks to God, that you are in agreement with us in all things and have no separation from us. The most holy vicars of elder Rome said: Have you heard the letter sent by the most holy Pope to the most pious emperor? The holy synod said: We have heard it. Petros the most God-beloved presbyter and cardinal said: Do you accept it and ⟦in⟧ every respect the chapters contained in it? And the holy synod said: As much as pertains to the acceptance and proclamation of the Church and of Photios our most holy patriarch, we accept. But as much as pertains to the emperor and to the imperial administrations, to him we assign the authority and power of administration over it. Yet if your Holiness so bids, we shall hear also the letter to our master and hierarch. And Petros the most God-beloved deacon and protonotary, taking it up, read it in the hearing of all.

Letter of Pope John to Patriarch Photios

1 John, bishop, servant of God, serving the most holy brother and fellow-minister patriarch of the church of Constantinople:

2 Having traced out the wisdom and prudence of the brotherhood ⟦among⟧ you in the letters that you sent—like a thunder resounding from heaven, sent from God and filling all the ends ⟦of the earth⟧ with its sound—we sent up to God the height of right thanksgiving and praise, to him who gives wisdom to all who ask according to their asking, and who settles men in a house of concord, and who shelters and saves those who in truth set their hope upon him; who neither casts off the wicked to the end, nor allows the good to fall into tyranny beyond ⟦what they can⟧ ⟦bear⟧; but who dispenses and sets right all human things with righteousness ⟦and⟧ holiness and the balance of judgment; and blessed is whoever, eagerly raising up in the ⟦present⟧ life those who have fallen ⟦into sin⟧, lays up treasure in ⟦the⟧ heavens. For he himself, continuing in blessedness, shall enjoy the splendor that shines forth into the ages to come. Therefore, applying ourselves to your aforesaid gracious letters, and learning the height of your praises in them, ⟦and⟧ ⟦recognizing⟧ both your disposition and your bearing toward us, and how piously and soundly you are disposed toward us—even if the works of our conduct toward those be-

3 yond, ⟦as⟧ you wrote, are referred to us. ⟦In a mortal⟧ ⟦and⟧ changeable nature, having the ⟦weak⟧ mind, ⟦we do not⟧ at all have full assurance in fair praises; and we are afraid and held by fear of him who sees all things, the eye that is, and who watches over both the hidden and the manifest; lest, being reckoned one way by men, we appear otherwise before him; and instead of obtaining true praises and the glory we desire, we reap eternal shame. But let us for now yield these things to God who knows all and is ignorant of none ⟦of⟧ our affairs; for we know him who says: “He who exalts himself shall be humbled.”

4 You wrote to us that the most holy church of God in Constantinople agreed with you and came together with you; and that you have received back the throne of which you were deprived, ⟦which⟧ ⟦was⟧ your own. For these things—I mean for the Church and for your restoration, ⟦in that⟧ you were established upon your own throne—we sent up thanksgiving to God with all our soul and strength. Furthermore, the letter of your reverence contained that our apocrisiaries were then ⟦unwilling⟧ to concelebrate with you. And we tell the reason: it was because we had not granted ⟦what⟧ we had charged them to do. Since ⟦indeed⟧ our command had gone forth, no ⟦hesitation⟧ would have been ⟦found⟧ in them, nor would they have had cause to occasion any grief to your reverence. Yet neither were we fully assured concerning your brotherhood that God had completely restored you to your throne, and that you had received it back; for, doing what was fitting, we would have sent also to console you and to rejoice with you in the restoration of your throne. And in this be not at all aggrieved. For the lack has been filled up and more than abundantly.

5 We have learned this also, that there are still schismatics among you, and they ⟦do not⟧ sleep, but toil a vain toil and wage a diabolical struggle, like the lion of the prophet; ⟦they were scattered, but were not⟧ pricked in heart; so as to draw away and pervert along with themselves some of the simpler folk. And as much as we rejoiced at your restoration, ⟦in⟧ which God restored you, and at the union that has come about of the Church, so much did we grieve at the destruction of those schismatics.

6 Do you yourself, by the wisdom and understanding ⟦given⟧ to you, and by the gift bestowed on you by God—⟦for what do you have⟧ ⟦that you did not receive?⟧ ⟦by no means⟧ as one ⟦boasting⟧ as though you had not received it—strive to make all your own toward yourself, and to those who have been removed from you and scattered, opening to them the bowels of love for mankind, and embracing them with the kindness of compassion, do not disdain to gather them; that, as the most holy Pope Leo the Great writes: let us receive those who seek to be humbled before God and who seek concord with us; but toward those who harden their heart, let us be hardened. Likewise also to those seeking repentance, which raises up the fallen, let us stretch out a hand of help; for there is no condemnation to those who repent, and to those who ask for mercy there is no shame.

7 We ask of your brotherhood: to take up an ⟦inimitable⟧ pattern, and that same humility ⟦which⟧ ⟦he underwent⟧ for the salvation of our race, and not to disdain to proclaim at the synod the mercy shown to you,

8 and the help, and the protection of the most holy church of the Romans, and the ⟦zeal⟧ ⟦which⟧ ⟦on behalf of⟧ you it laid out from a loving disposition and longing, assuring all of the concord toward you and of our consent; that, just as you asked of it, so also you received. And as it is her custom to help all who suffer anything unjustly, neither were you yourself deprived of her help; but by the cooperation of God, and by her toil and struggle, you were restored to your throne. And of her customary goodness and compassion, which she displays day by day in her very works toward all, of which you send forth the report, do not be forgetful; but ⟦hold⟧ ⟦her⟧; and neither ⟦without loss⟧, nor from the bowels ⟦of⟧ ⟦mercy⟧, thrust out those who up to the present have been unwilling for union with your reverence, nor to be of one mind; but rather lay out toil and struggle, on the one hand with teachings ⟦and⟧ words and long-suffering exhortation, and on the other with a cheerful and ⟦gentle⟧ eye; that, according to the apostle, you may draw and gain all, or at least the greater part, and bring them to yourself, and through yourself to God. And when they come to you, and through you to God, that they may receive back both their ⟦own⟧ priestly honors and their churches. And in the same manner as our spiritual son and most Christian emperor Basil deemed us worthy concerning you; and we, with your reverence, did what was reasonable in his just request, pleasing to God; in the same manner we have also exhorted you not to bear a grudge against those once anointed by you; but, as they turn back with their whole soul, and are recognized by ⟦the⟧ honor due to your reverence, to receive them with open hands and to deem them worthy; that all, ⟦piously⟧ being of one mind and one soul at your return to ⟦affairs⟧ and the restoration of the throne, and coming together to the same place, may celebrate a common gladness and a day of feasting and a festival of rejoicing.

9 And this also we ask of your brotherhood, to decree together with us, that from the present time no one of the laity shall be raised all at once to the great throne of the hierarchy, ⟦which⟧ ⟦is⟧ awesome and holds the place of mediation with God; but, advancing by grade and order into the ministry, and ⟦displaying⟧ his own virtue in each grade, ⟦thus⟧ ⟦let him receive⟧ the seat of the hierarchical throne. For he who ⟦does otherwise⟧ acts contrary to our ecclesiastical canons. And we wish that this custom, which ⟦is⟧ not auspicious, having ⟦been found⟧ as it were from the beginning in the church among us, should from now on remain ⟦without effect⟧. And this we say according to the canon set forth at the synod in the times of Hadrian the most holy Pope, and of Tarasios of blessed memory, patriarch of Constantinople.

10 And the synod held against your reverence in those parts we have annulled and utterly cast out and rejected, both for the other reasons and because the blessed Pope Hadrian before us did not subscribe in it. And all the rest of the ecclesiastical affairs, as many as the letter declared ⟦through⟧ us, having written them in a commonitorium, in which we all also subscribed unto your acceptance, and having delivered it to Petros the most reverend presbyter and cardinal and our vicar, we sent it to the most God-fearing bishops and our vicars in the company of

11 Eugenios and Paulos; that, having the fear of God before their eyes, and preserving their conscience ⟦un⟧plotting ⟦and un⟧watched, they may administer all things together with you for the advantage and for the Church. May God guard you to the end, beloved brother, most holy fellow-minister.

Photios Accepts What Is Written in the Letter

1 And after the reading of the letter, Petros the most apostolic presbyter and cardinal said to Photios the most holy patriarch: We ask your Holiness: do you bear all that is written in the letter and accept it? Photios the most holy patriarch said: As much as is comprised in auspicious and lawful speech, its work and its end are pleasing to our moderation, and we judge them worthy of honor and acceptance.

On Gathering the Dispersed Bishops

1 Petros the most God-fearing presbyter and cardinal said: Do you see, most holy of patriarchs, that the letter of the most holy Pope John exhorts that ⟦all⟧ the bishops who have been dispersed be gathered together, and obtain mercy and compassion from your Holiness? And that those formerly ordained should receive back their own honors, those most recently ordained being plainly suspended; and that they receive from ⟦their⟧ churches food and clothing, until they are assigned either to the same thrones or to others. And as many as are in exile in any ⟦place⟧, let them ⟦return⟧, and be admonished to be united to the Church.

Photios on the Two Bishops Sent Into Exile

1 Photios the most holy patriarch said: ⟦I⟧ have said to you on another occasion also, that the emperor sent only two into exile; and these not for any ecclesiastical causes, but the one as having been detected the cause of civil disturbances and tumults, and the other as having shared in the same charge. And the greatest thing: with unbarred mouth and unbridled tongue he reviled, publicly and in the sight of many, the most holy Pope John. And since your Holiness so bids, we shall entreat the lofty might of our great emperors; ⟦and⟧ we hope that, as he was ⟦well-disposed⟧ to our requests, those too may ⟦come from there⟧, and be deemed worthy of admonition from you.

The Cardinal Raises the Question of Bulgaria

1 Petros the most reverend presbyter and cardinal said: ⟦Another thing also⟧ is written ⟦in⟧ ⟦our⟧ commonitorium, that ⟦into the⟧ land ⟦of the⟧ Bulgarians you should neither send an omophorion nor perform an ordination.

Photios on Peace and the Question of Bulgaria

1 Photios the most holy patriarch said: We, being always of love and lovers of peace, and ready to grant all these things if possible, and caring for our own members with eagerness and diligence; accustomed to do nothing rashly nor inconsiderately; even before the letter of the most holy Pope John, our brother and fellow minister and spiritual father—both of old and now, although ⟦knowing⟧ that we have full right to all things, perhaps by just claim and by the precedent of other borders, having passed so long a time on the hierarchical throne—neither sent an omophorion or ordinations, nor indeed did we perform any ordination; ever, as we said before to all, preserving the divine ⟦zeal⟧ of love and peace, and ⟦being⟧ ready in our own affairs, so far as belonged to our judgment, apart from ancient ordinances, to gratify our friends. For what would an enlargement of borders be, when the law ⟦compels nothing⟧, but an increase of care and ⟦an addition⟧ of greater and more laborious anxiety?

The Cardinal Praises Photios for Keeping Love

1 Petros the most God-fearing presbyter and cardinal said: Well have you discerned, and well do you do; and for this reason you keep love unadulterated, because love conquers all things.

Photios on His Reply to Pope Nicholas Concerning the Thrones

1 Photios the most holy patriarch said: We long ago also answered in writing the most blessed Pope Nicholas, when he requested certain of the ⟦western⟧ thrones, thus: that the thrones which your Holiness seeks are comprehended within the principality of the imperial East. But if the breadth of my love in the Lord were not constrained by imperial necessities, nor any other canonical bond held me back, and if my own priestly body breathed together with me in this—not only those whom you say were once subject to the throne of Rome, but even those who were never under it, these too, being ready ⟦as I am found⟧, so far as belongs to a disposition of friendship, I would grant to you at your request. For true friendship does not seek its own, but to fulfill the will of one’s neighbor.

Prokopios on the Subjection of the Nations

1 Prokopios the most God-beloved archbishop of Caesarea in Cappadocia said: We hope in the compassion of God, and in the holy prayer of our master and hierarch, that all the nations shall be subjected to the august might of our God-appointed and great emperors; and then, ⟦whenever⟧, as their most mighty majesty bids, things are duly ordered, and there is rendered to each his own dioceses uncurtailed, by the synod which from time to time gives its vote, even as the divine counsel may guide them.

Gregory of Ephesus on Deferring the Question of Dioceses

1 Gregorios the most God-beloved archbishop of Ephesus said: The matter concerning dioceses has no place now, while all the hierarchical thrones are not gathered together in like manner into one empire; but when the divine assent has accomplished this—which we hope will come to pass under our great and exalted emperor—then the dispute concerning the diocese will also have place; and it will be possible to give and to give in return to each hierarchical throne, as one wills toward his neighbor.

The Synod Sets Aside the Matter of Dioceses

1 ⟦The⟧ holy synod said: We all say so. Not for the dividing of dioceses was this holy synod assembled; let these things be examined on another occasion.

The Cardinal Asks How Photios Ascended the Throne

1 Petros the most God-fearing presbyter and cardinal of the apostolic throne ⟦said⟧: The most holy and ecumenical Pope John asks you, through us his servants, how the lord Photios the most holy patriarch has now ascended to his throne; for we say that it was not good for him to have ascended before our coming. Elias the most God-fearing presbyter and vicar of Jerusalem said: The three patriarchates of the East always held him, ⟦Photios⟧ himself, as patriarch; the hierarchs and priests in Constantinople, with a small ⟦exception⟧, all ⟦hold⟧ him as patriarch; and what hindered his ascending?

The Synod Answers: By the Agreement of the Three Thrones

1 The most holy vicars of elder Rome said: Brothers, do you tell us, how did he ascend? And the holy synod said: By the agreement of the three hierarchical thrones, just as the most holy Elias said; and then by much exhortation and entreaty; or rather, to speak the truth, by great constraint of our exalted and most Christian emperors, and before the

2 constraint,

3 by the agreement and supplication of the whole church of God of the Constantinopolitans.

The Synod Denies That Photios Ascended Tyrannically

1 Petros the most God-fearing presbyter and cardinal said: Did he not ascend tyrannically? And the holy synod said: Between tyranny and entreaty there is much difference. We told you before, that it was by the exhortation and entreaty of us all, and by the agreement of the hierarchical thrones. And what place has the question concerning tyranny? Tyranny does not produce longing; tyranny does not strengthen love; the sincere union of the Church knows no tyranny.

The Cardinal on the Concord Toward Photios

1 Petros the most God-fearing presbyter and cardinal said: Blessed be God, that just as it was declared also through your letters to the most holy Pope John, concerning the concord and agreement which you have toward the lord Photios the most holy patriarch, so also we behold today the words confirmed by the works. And we give thanks to God, that, the church ⟦of you⟧ being united ⟦and⟧ in nothing ⟦else⟧, his all-holy name is glorified with one faith.

The Synod Proclaims One Flock and One Shepherd

1 And the holy synod said: By the grace of Christ, and ⟦by⟧ the […] of our exalted and great emperors, and ⟦through⟧ the prayers of our most holy patriarch ⟦Photios⟧, all things among us ⟦have become⟧ easy. We ⟦are⟧ one flock, one shepherd, one concord in Christ, all of us one body, being fitted together and joined in Christ our true God. And we are shepherded by the most holy and ecumenical patriarch Photios, and guided into the ⟦commandments⟧ of the ⟦Master⟧.

Photios Recounts His Ascent to the Throne

1 Photios, the most holy patriarch, said: Since indeed your holiness has asked how we came to ascend [to the throne]—our brothers and fellow ministers having anticipated the question and ⟦given⟧ the answer—nevertheless we speak in the Lord, and let no one disbelieve me: I make the judge of the truth not my own opinion, but that which is ⟦known⟧ to others. For I was never in any desire for this throne. ⟦This was⟧ in the presence of our brothers and fellow ministers, things which all, ⟦or⟧ at least the greater part, can attest together; and let there be among you ⟦holy⟧ vicars no word that is doubted. For you will see that even formerly it was with tears ⟦and⟧ much delay of every kind, and under inescapable force, that I ascended to this ⟦hierarchical⟧ throne. For the one who reigned at that time brought to bear an irresistible compulsion; and so too did those who held power under him; and indeed the hierarchs and priests also—though I in no way ⟦was acting⟧ with full awareness ⟦…⟧—prevailed by their unanimous votes and by their common signatures, joining the imperial [will] to the force of ⟦necessity⟧. For this reason I was even handed over to custody and kept under guard; and thus, unwilling and bewailing it, I was raised to this throne.

2 When Photios, the most holy patriarch, had said these things, the holy synod cried out: With our own eyes we beheld it—and we are not few; and as many of us as did not see it learned it from those who had seen it, the report having been held unbroken from that time until now, and we know it exactly, that ⟦this⟧ happened so.

Photios Continues on the Troubles of His Ascent

1 Again Photios, the most holy patriarch, ⟦in⟧ the words that followed, went on: But at that time, then, as ⟦was said⟧, so ⟦it was done⟧; and the force of all men ⟦overruled⟧ the judgment, against our ⟦withdrawal⟧. And these things—in such storms as God ⟦knows⟧—when I had ⟦departed⟧ from the throne, I chose neither to make any disturbance, ⟦nor⟧ to recall this [office] ⟦to myself⟧. Nor did I then entrust my restoration to my own contrivings; but, persevering in thanksgiving to God, I bore and endured patiently the things that He both wrought and dispensed; neither stirring up disturbances, nor troubling the imperial ears; nor did any longing for the throne spring up in me; yet neither, even had I wished, was anything of hope left to me. But the Lord of ⟦the⟧ ⟦brethren⟧, and the king of mercy, and the unsearchable fulfiller of things unhoped-for—He prepared our exalted and great emperor to take up the bowels of mercy and compassion, ⟦not⟧ ⟦upon⟧ us ⟦perhaps⟧, ⟦but⟧ upon the many and innumerable people of Christ; when already all our hopes had failed, as I said, and when neither the intercession of any friend had mediated, nor any other study or zeal had been brought to bear, it seemed good to bring us back from that exile—a thing beyond all human reckoning and every earthly hope—and, with much mercy and great welcome, to bring us into the City. So long, then, as the blessed Ignatios remained in this life—for we count him blessed, since while he was yet living we made a covenant of friendship with him, and we would never deny this; God forbid—but so long, as I said, as he remained in life, we did not consent to take back that throne, though there were many who not only urged this but even brought compulsion to bear; and, greatest of all, there was the captivity, the persecution, and the exile of our brothers and fellow ministers. Nevertheless, this ⟦at least⟧ we chose to accept, as all who were present can attest.

The Synod Affirms the Truth of the Account

1 The holy synod said: The truth is so.

Photios on His Reconciliation With the Emperor

1 Photios, the most holy patriarch, declared: On the contrary, we contrived by every means to bind fast and strengthen our peace with him; which [reconciliations] took place in the palace, when he had come to us, both of us having ⟦fallen⟧ at each other’s feet, and if anything had been done amiss by either toward the other, pardon for these things being ⟦received⟧ from each. After this, when he had been laid low by sickness and had sought our presence, not once, nor twice, but many times we pledged to visit him; and whatever was possible for me, at his own request, I contributed toward relieving the disease. And if any word of consolation had power to bring [comfort], I offered him the healing that comes from this also—so that at the last he, having received much assurance toward us, entrusted into our hands those persons closest to him, that after his departure they might ⟦find⟧ in us both guardians and saviors. And this came to pass by divine grace; and no one could find fault with ⟦any⟧ of them concerning his final care and ordering on their behalf. But when he had departed from human affairs, at once your Christ-loving and great emperor first sounded out my opinion through certain more confidential persons; then openly, through his patricians, he made known what was of his counsel, adding ⟦that⟧ now there is no occasion, nor any reckoning of scandals, ⟦nor⟧ ⟦setting aside⟧ of the peace between you and one another: the choir of bishops ⟦seeks⟧ your return, the freedom of those in exile [seeks it], the hierarchical thrones are in

2 accord; ascend to your throne, and shepherd your flock, which the choir ⟦of⟧ the good has established in you. In these terms, then, was the imperial declaration set down; but I said to those who had come: That ⟦we⟧ did not bear without pain the things that had befallen of old, we would not belie my own truth; yet the greatest of the griefs was the affliction of the hierarchs and priests of God and their flight into exile. Let there be for them all, and ⟦before⟧ ⟦every⟧ release, consolation, and recall, and the restoration of their own thrones; and let the slanders against us ⟦perish⟧ as well—not for our own sake, but lest through me ⟦some reproach⟧ be laid upon the Church of God. As for me, I have ⟦no⟧ need of anything; but in place of all things I have the gentleness and serenity of the disposition of our ⟦holy⟧ emperor toward me. ⟦But since⟧ the sending of the patricians, not once but ⟦many times⟧, ⟦had⟧ returned ⟦fruitless⟧, that same benevolent and ⟦good⟧ emperor of ours, having come to us, brought compulsion to bear with many words. Now what was said at that time, and the things by which they persuaded us to assent, it ⟦is⟧ not the present occasion to relate. Yet when all were in agreement, and the three hierarchical thrones had besought us with their synodical votes; and when, moreover, the earlier letters which the most holy pope John had sent to our Christ-loving and exalted emperor [had arrived], promising to assent to all his requests—we ascended to this throne: first, looking to the mercy of God and His compassion; and then, to speak the truth, being as it were astonished at the marvel of the change of what had come to pass, accounting it now to be fighting against God to contradict it; and secondly, ⟦looking⟧ to the disposition of the most holy pope John, and his benevolence and love of justice, knowing that he rejoices and longs for the union of the Churches of God and for Christian concord. Thus, then, do we relate our affairs, as all who are present can attest.

The Synod on the Afflictions and Restoration of Photios

1 The holy synod said: So it came to pass, as the hierarch of God and our shepherd has narrated. And he endured many afflictions; but God scattered them all, and marvelously restored to us ⟦our⟧ hierarch.

Peter the Cardinal on Hierarchs Restored by Rome

1 Peter, the most God-fearing presbyter and cardinal, said: Flavian of Constantinople, John Chrysostom, Cyril of Jerusalem, and Polychronios likewise—as your holiness has also declared—when they had been driven from their own thrones, the holy Church of the Romans by its own authority restored ⟦to them⟧ again. And the most holy Gregory the Dialogist, having driven out the bishop ⟦in⟧ Dalmatia on account of some slander, again restored him to his own throne; and when pope Nicholas had wholly ⟦deposed⟧ the most reverend Zacharias, pope Hadrian again gave back to him his own throne, whom now also the most holy pope John has made librarian. He is not ⟦inferior⟧ either to pope Hadrian or to pope Nicholas in administering what is profitable to the Church of God.

The Synod on Photios Imitating Christ the First Hierarch

1 The holy synod said: For in this is he the more glorified, ⟦imitating⟧ Christ the first hierarch, who, coming upon the earth, loosed every bond of iniquity, and reconciled the human ⟦race⟧, which had been at war

2 for many ages, to His Father, ⟦uniting⟧ the things on earth with the things in heaven. And He, having become a good and exemplary mediator, set forth great eagerness to reconcile to their own hierarch those who had once been corrupted and led astray ⟦from him⟧.

Pope John Restores Photios to His Throne

1 Peter, the most God-fearing presbyter and cardinal, said: Having such examples, the most holy pope John has given back to your holiness your own throne. And he embraces you as a brother and fellow minister, greeting also communion with you. Let every church know that [you are] a true brother of the ecumenical pope, as were all the Orthodox hierarchs and priests before you.

Photios Gives Thanks to Christ and Pope John

1 Photios, the most holy patriarch, said: We send up thanks to Christ our true God, the first and great hierarch; and indeed also to the most holy pope John, who has ⟦stood firm⟧ against every schismatic ⟦delusion⟧, ⟦embracing⟧ all concord of the Churches, and removing the rod of sinners from the lot of the righteous.

The Reading of the Eastern Letters Is Proposed

1 And when all the sacred synod had taken pleasure in what had been said, and had proclaimed acclamations to Photios, the most holy patriarch, the most holy vicars of elder Rome said: If it seems good to your reverence, let the letters of the Eastern thrones also be read. The holy synod said: Let them be read. And so Kosmas, the most God-fearing presbyter and legate of Michael, the most holy pope of Alexandria, having entered and bearing the letters conveyed by him, delivered them to Photios, the most holy patriarch. From among them Photinos, the most God-beloved deacon and chartophylax, taking one—that addressed to the Christ-loving emperor—read it.

Letter of Michael of Alexandria to the Emperors

1 To the divinely-appointed emperors, Basil, Leo, and Alexander, Michael, archbishop of Alexandria.

2 The understanding of men, ⟦well⟧ furnished with wisdom and intelligence; every tongue truly eloquent and nimble, and trained its whole life long for quickness of speech; and the mind of men, dispassionate and free, undefiled and unclouded by the cares of this life—these, O most gentle and most wise of emperors, ⟦are not⟧ sufficient, clearly, for anyone who wishes to extol the magnitude of your achievements, and to match in their ⟦praises⟧ the deeds of one [so worthy of] praise. And [it is enough] only that, with the sleepless eye of the soul, and with tireless and unwearied foot ranging up and down everywhere over earth and sea, you cleansed away the barbarous and alien nations—some ⟦through⟧ yourself, others through your invincible and unconquerable armies—and so procure ⟦through it⟧ much salvation for your subjects; so that this very [thing] [becomes for] them a love that is freely chosen, more lasting ⟦and⟧ more secure. And because there ⟦is one⟧ upon a mountain, like a banner upon a hill, according to the voice of the prophet, [a flock] led astray by the sloth and negligence of those who reigned before, and seeking rest—this [flock], standing in need of ⟦the perception⟧ of your care, you yourself, having taken up upon the shoulders of your compassion, made to encamp in a place of green pasture and beside the water of rest of your mighty ⟦hand⟧; and from a thing slackened and failing you ⟦showed⟧ it to be most flourishing again. So that it has confidence toward God and may say:

3 Behold, I and the children whom God ⟦has given⟧ me. ⟦Lord⟧, ⟦those⟧ whom You gave me, I have kept. But because the great and ⟦untroubled⟧ body of Christ—I mean the Church, the holy nation, the royal priesthood, for whom the good shepherd, Christ our God, ⟦bowing⟧ the heavens, came down, and shed His own blood ⟦willingly⟧; and, ⟦having torn⟧ them out of the snares of the evil one, brought them as a gift offered to God and the Father—this [body], ⟦through⟧ love of rule, or rather, through the envy and wrestling of the demon, and through men who had set at naught the fear of God, having been ⟦torn asunder⟧ and ravaged, so that one clung to one opinion and another to another—this you could not bear to see; and again you reconciled and fitted them into ⟦one⟧ harmony of spirit and ⟦one⟧ will, and fitted and joined them together unto Christ the chief shepherd; and you showed yourself a ⟦guardian⟧ not only ⟦of⟧ things that perish, but also of things that stand ⟦well⟧ and abide, as one pious and God-loving in [your] oversight and care. And [you caused] not only the realm under the Romans to be filled with your good works, but well-nigh as much as the sun ⟦reaching⟧ beholds, [the sun] which by its own bright ⟦light⟧ ⟦sends forth⟧ its radiance. For behold, even to us who are far off and ⟦cut off⟧ from your serenity ⟦on this side⟧, after a very long and protracted sojourn for Christ’s sake, there has ⟦come⟧ Kosmas, the most reverend monk and presbyter, the zealot of Mark the evangelist and his truest disciple, welcoming us with ⟦longed-for⟧ and gladdening, delightful and desirable ⟦tidings⟧: namely, that the all-holy and consubstantial Trinity, which brought all things in the heavens and on the earth from non-being into being, ⟦and⟧ preserves them, in ⟦three⟧ ⟦Suns⟧ that are of one nature and of one mind, has commanded you—the all-good emperor, with Leo and Alexander, the sons like-minded in piety—to direct the Roman race, a race ⟦ever⟧ being magnified; and, placing the deniers of her all-holy name ⟦under⟧ his feet, ⟦deemed⟧ their necks worthy to be trodden ⟦underfoot⟧ by his honored and holy feet, bringing low to the earth their arrogance and blotting it out. At which things we, rejoicing, and ⟦breathing again⟧ from the grievous evils ⟦round about⟧ us, O all-good and God-watched emperors of ours, lifting up our hands to the heavens with one accord, and rendering accordingly the fitting ⟦thanksgiving⟧ to the supersubstantial and all-holy Trinity, beseech her goodness to keep your reign unto ages and beyond ages, and yet more; and to make your days as the days of heaven, and to strengthen you, so as to scatter before you and before your armies the nations that desire wars; granting you, together with the things of earth, the heavenly good things also, together with Eudokia, the most august Augusta, and the God-given branches of her, the Porphyrogennetoi—the most holy Mother of God interceding, and the God-like angels, and all the saints. Amen.

4 A very great good, O master, has come to pass, in that our child, the presbyter Kosmas, has been sent on this service—a man instructed in all sorts of different languages, knowing how to handle affairs, and capable of guarding the secrets of emperors. And had it seemed good to your divinely-[established] majesty, O master, to send concerning the ten metropolitans ⟦indeed⟧ before our ⟦departure⟧, we would not so [readily] have ⟦been disposed⟧ toward the ⟦mission⟧

5 to our most holy ⟦pope and⟧ ecumenical patriarch. And though we pressed the presbyter Kosmas hard to remain with us, by whom [we sent] the agreements [made] with your majesty and with the ecumenical patriarch, the most holy Photios, we could not persuade him; for he made it his earnest endeavor to keep the truth uncut. For he was not willing even to be made like the accursed Joseph, who lied before your holy majesty, [claiming] that he was archdeacon of the lord Michael, the patriarch of Alexandria; and when the patriarch learned of his wickedness, he anathematized him. And likewise also the impious Elias, who himself too dared to deceive the crowds, and to say that he was syncellus of Sergios, the patriarch of Jerusalem; and coming here, ⟦stricken with leprosy⟧, he ended his wicked life. To these the presbyter Kosmas, not ⟦willing⟧ to be made like, was not ⟦content⟧ to remain with us. And so much concerning him. But the chief point of our thanksgiving, and the debt of our so great joy, we here declare: the same most reverend Kosmas the presbyter ⟦has assured⟧ ⟦us⟧, O master, that your mighty majesty has given back to the Church her glory; that is to say, Photios the most holy patriarch, the man of light and the giver of light, the perfection of the priesthood, the undistorted standard of the truth, the most ⟦upright⟧ canon of virtue, the ⟦abode⟧ of wisdom, the venerable treasury of good things, the unfailing hand of almsgiving, the refuge of the ⟦destitute⟧—him you have again raised up and set upon the lampstand of the high priesthood, to illumine with words of wisdom and knowledge the fullness of the Church. For we, having received him, being such a man, from Michael of blessed repose, both hold and have him as fellow shepherd and fellow minister, and we receive him until our ⟦last⟧ day and our last breath. And whoever does not commune with him and does not accept him to be a ⟦lawful⟧ patriarch, his portion is with the slayers of God. For we, exhorting every man and every soul, counsel them, through this our imperfect letter, and we are ⟦kept⟧ in communion with the man, apart from all evil counsel and defiled conscience. For he who communes with him, clearly communes with us also. But if any should attempt to break themselves off from the body of the Church, let such as these be strangers to the hope of Christians. Yet this too it is good ⟦to set forth⟧, O master: that if the Lord God should incline your holy soul, and you should wish to make some charitable provision for the holy [places], on equal [terms], as did the emperors before you, be eager to send such charity not by another, but by the presbyter Kosmas; for in another we have no assurance. For if we had prepared to send some ⟦other⟧ with him, we were held back by the fear of the nations. But may God, who created all things, and who set up emperors for the salvation of those under [their] hand, who also ⟦set you apart⟧, the most faithful emperor, from your ⟦mother’s⟧ womb, and ⟦crowned⟧ your holy head with a ⟦diadem⟧ and precious stones—may He Himself hold fast your right hand, and [the hand] of your sons and co-emperors; and by His own counsel may He guide you, together with the God-watched Augusta and the Porphyrogennetoi, ⟦granting⟧ you, with the things of earth, the ⟦heavenly⟧ things also. So be it. Amen.

6 And

The Synod Affirms the Communion of the Eastern Thrones

1 And after the reading of ⟦the⟧ letters to our Christ-loving emperor, the holy synod cried out: ⟦We know⟧ that the thrones of the East never stood apart from the communion of the most holy patriarch Photios. Wherefore we gladly accept the vote brought forward by them, and now also confirmed; those who do not so think we account as strangers to God. Yet we shall hear also the letter to our most holy patriarch. And Peter, the most God-beloved deacon and protonotary, taking it, read it.

Letter of Michael of Alexandria to Patriarch Photios

1 To our thrice-blessed fellow minister Photios, patriarch of Constantinople. Michael of Alexandria.

2 The majesty of the goodness of the great shepherd Christ—inaccessible to the irrational and unattainable by reasonings—every God-loving soul knows surpassingly: that day by day, and month by month, and through every cyclic course of the years, He confirms and orders the creation of His own hands, and tends and does good to the assembled congregations of His Christians, and consoles those in pain, and ⟦raises up⟧ again those who are set [in place] and yet are about to ⟦fall⟧. Concerning all ⟦these things⟧ we are not sufficient to recount the surpassing greatness of His kindness. For having had these things sounded forth to us from the words dear to us of your most consecrating priesthood, we hastened, as to a paternal inheritance, longing for the most consecrating priesthood of him who was before us; and we also sing the same praises ⟦with you⟧ to the Divine, and give thanks through you for the works of His goodness that have come ⟦to⟧ you. For having learned ⟦accurately⟧ all things concerning you from our Kosmas the presbyter, we breathed a little, from the misery that prevailed over our life from those round about us, and instead of any other joy we accounted your joy [our own]; but as it has come to pass ⟦in⟧ us, so we beseech that it come to pass ⟦in⟧ you also: that in your confession of joy you may forget the grievous things that have befallen you.

3 For Kosmas the letter-bearer ⟦has assured⟧ us, that the mighty ⟦and⟧ ⟦pious⟧ ⟦emperor⟧, having become an imitator of Him who bestowed the kingdom upon him, gave it back as a proper adornment to the Church of Christ, and ⟦bestowed⟧ peace ⟦in⟧ her, ⟦casting out⟧ from her every heretical grief and driving away all that is schismatic, and consoling those who had been afflicted in long affliction; and, taking away ⟦faint-heartedness⟧, he gathered all together into ⟦unity⟧. And who would not praise such a work as being truly most kingly, O you named for light and worker of light, and chief shepherd of the Church of God? For you are indeed the man of light, the perfecter of the priesthood, the standard of the truth, the undistorted canon of virtue, the ⟦abode⟧ of knowledge and wisdom, the venerable treasury, the unfailing hand of almsgiving, the refuge of the destitute, the consolation ⟦to those⟧ in calamities, the lodging-place of all good things. Such a one you are, and again He raised you up upon the lampstand of the priesthood and ⟦established⟧ you ⟦through⟧ His servant the emperor—God [did this], and ⟦healed⟧ the ⟦close-pressed wounds⟧ of His Church. For you ⟦illumine⟧ with words of wisdom and knowledge ⟦its⟧ fullness. For we too [received] you, being such a one, from Michael of blessed repose, ⟦from⟧ him who was before us

4 having received the road under the guidance of the all-blessed Mark the Evangelist, we have him as our guide, and we ask to keep him as our fellow-minister until our last day and our final breath. And to all who are heedlessly scandalized concerning the high priesthood, we give firm assurance, proclaiming with a clear voice the very things we set forth before our synod—now that there have been gathered together the metropolitans and bishops nearest to us, as many as our hardship has thus far been able to assemble; I mean those around Zacharias of Tamiathis, and James of Babylon, Stephen of Thebes, and Theophilus of Vares, choice metropolitans, together with other bishops not a few. And the things that were proclaimed in this our synod, to speak summarily, are these: We exhort every man and every soul, and we counsel, and both in writing and unwritten we enjoin, that they be in communion with you, without any ill counsel or perversity or defiled conscience. For he who is in communion with you is plainly in communion with us also. But if any should attempt to cut themselves off from your most holy Church, which is the body ⟦of our Lord Jesus Christ⟧, may they be strangers, cut off from the hope of Christians. And whoever is not in communion with you—who does not accept you as patriarch ⟦of God⟧, duly appointed—let him be cast out, ⟦and let his portion be with⟧ the God-slayers. And I, going up onto a mountain, will lift up my voice before all who hear: he who is not in communion with the most holy Photios, patriarch of the imperial city of Constantinople and our fellow-minister, let him be anathema and accursed from the holy and life-originating Trinity. He who rejects the ordination of Photios our fellow-minister, let him have no part nor communion in the kingdom of God. He who doubts the appointment of Photios the patriarch, let him be a stranger and an outcast from God the Father. He who accuses Photios the hierarch of God on account of his appointment and ordination, let darkness and gloom fall upon him; and let him be made a leper like Naaman the Syrian; and let him inherit the curse of the fratricide Cain; and let him be tossed and trembling upon the earth.

5 And we, O sacred head and chief shepherd of the rational sheep of Christ, following our predecessor who held the hierarchy of Alexandria, the blessed Michael, both consent and concur with you in all things, and we accept your high-priestly perfection, and we hold your name inscribed in the sacred diptychs unto the ages. May God grant you your throne for long years, and unite your churches in your days, and scatter the counsels of those who purpose evil against him; and may the Lord God grant you length of days, submission, obedience, teaching, purity, chastity, and grace. For he himself appoints shepherds for the salvation of those under him; he who set you, the chief shepherd and hierarch, apart from your mother’s womb, may he himself take hold of your right hand and guide you in his counsel and glorify you. But those who raged against you, our brother and fellow-minister—Elias, I mean, and Joseph the vain—died in their most unholy mind an eternal death, the divine justice, I think, having overtaken them, ⟦as we shall be able to learn in due course from the event⟧, since for their own fault they did not ask forgiveness. But the other of them, Thomas of Berytus, acknowledged his offense, and when he asked forgiveness we deemed him worthy of pardon; on whose behalf we have now been entreated to intercede with

6 your brotherhood, the man putting us forward as mediators for himself, that you might entirely forget the affronts once committed against you by him, as the man’s presbyteral repentance itself declares, which we have appended to these our present letters.

7 The priestly gifts that were sent to us by your far-renowned holiness through our oft-mentioned disciple, according to the quality you indicated, we have received. May the Lord God and the lover of mankind reward you for such a ministration. For know, brother, that for the most part we do not so much dwell as in Hades, living like the dead because of the prevailing tyranny. For even if one were charged to set down in words the calamities of each day, we could not. Yet for now, by recounting even some small things, we are relieved of the greatest part of our grief by having others who share in our misfortunes. It is no small thing, indeed, to say truly that we both live and breathe in Christ, who each day strengthens and emboldens us to an unwearied resistance against all the evils that fall upon us; but in all else we have all but died. And if it seems good to your holiness to send a blessing to these holy places, as did the hierarchs before you—do not, by any means, send it through chance persons, but be eager to send the blessing through the presbyter Kosmas or through some such man. We had wished to send another of our representatives along with him; but for fear of the nations we were prevented. And since he himself also wishes to return again to us, may your holiness see to it that he is unhindered.

8 We were instructed by him concerning the virtues of the sovereigns—that they are compassionate and merciful, dignified, hospitable, friends of monks, gentle, peaceable; all their days they spend in fasting and vigil and purity. For all these things we have marveled and exalted them, and we have made three [intercessions?] for their salvation, and we have offered prayers and supplications to God on their behalf and for their valiant deeds. And may God grant them good things still more abundantly, and guard their reign as it endures, and together with earthly goods grant them also the heavenly kingdom, and make their days as the days of heaven, scattering before them the nations that desire wars, restoring to them the boundaries of their kingdom, and casting nations beneath their feet; and may the Lord God grant them length of days, health, and the downfall of all the nations, through the intercessions of the Mother of God and of all the saints, and through the prayers of your holy father Mark, the apostle and evangelist.

9 And after the completion of the letter the holy synod said: The mind that we too hold concerning Photios, our most holy patriarch, we have many times made manifest; rather, by our very deeds we have confirmed it. And those who no longer hold this mind, we regard as cast out and cut off. And since the letter of Michael, the most holy pope of Alexandria, made mention of Thomas, the president of Tyre, let us hear that letter also. Photinos the chartophylax read it.

Letter of Repentance of Thomas of Tyre

1 Most ancient hierarch of God and radiant in faith: to commit no sin belongs to God alone and to the first and unoriginate nature; but for those who sin to turn back

2 through confession of the fault unto correction and be raised up again—this belongs to men, but to such as are forbearing and fear the Lord, and is most proper to them. I, then, the vain and foolish one—as your holiness rather knows—being prevailed upon by Elias and Joseph, profane and deceitful men, went lame on both knees, leaping far away from the straight road after them, and in many things sinning greatly against the truth, and offending against you, the hierarch of God, O greatest leader in the Spirit, Photios; wherefore both of them, being condemned by justice to penalties worthy of their own folly, brought their own life to an end by a wretched death: the one cut off his life by an incurable leprosy; and Joseph, liable to the executor of the law and constrained by deadly blows, surviving a few brief and evil days, himself breathed his last—know this—he who counterfeited impiety, and spoke calumny, working injustice against the just one and against the gift of God who made him. But I alone, left behind by the forbearance of God who wills not the death of the sinner, unfolded my own conscience, and seek healing for my fault.

3 This is the repentance of Thomas of Tyre, which he made before us with a contrite heart. Let it be received by your brotherly love as well, even as by us. For we ought both to receive and to welcome those who repent. And may the grace of the Lord preserve your high-priestly brotherhood, and direct the works of your hands, and render to you good things as recompense for the benefits shown to us, through the intercessions of the apostle and evangelist Mark. Amen.

4 And after the reading, the holy synod said gratefully: Amen. And may the Lord uphold the holy high priesthood for Photios, our most holy patriarch. And in return for this greatest of achievements, the common peace, may God who is sovereign show him worthy to be a partaker of his glory, as is fitting. For it was meet that this far-renowned good should be accomplished under the mighty reign of our most pious and peace-making emperor, through the compassion of our most holy and great hierarch, who took up our discouragement without shame, and who, with kindliness of manner and fatherly forbearance, worthily pardoned our slips against him. Since, therefore, he closed the door of repentance to none of all men, but received them into the bowels of Christ as his own children, we entreat also concerning Thomas, the president of Tyre, who asks pardon for his transgression, that he too be deemed worthy of forgiveness from all.

5 The most holy legates of elder Rome said: To close repentance to those who sincerely turn back, not even we forbid—God forbid. But since they perceive the offense to be grievous and as reaching up to an affront against God, we refer this to the most holy and ecumenical pope John: let him do what is pleasing in his eyes. And the holy synod said: We know that as regards God he takes the sin upon himself; nevertheless, by a certain principle of reckoning it was loosed unto our hierarch—if rather he himself, because the sin was committed against him, has the authority to loose it. Photios the most holy patriarch said: So far as it depends on us,

6 brethren—and especially because the priestly thrones of the East also made supplication on his behalf—we hold him absolved from his transgression and offense against us. But if the most holy pope of Rome, John, our spiritual brother and fellow-minister and father, concurs in the loosing of this, it is better. The most holy legates of elder Rome said: Neither in this has the most holy and ecumenical pope John any disagreement with your holiness, but in this too he will ratify our vote.

7 Photios the most holy patriarch said: The letters that have come to us from the most holy patriarch of Jerusalem, Theodosius, through Andrew the most reverent monk and through our holy brother Elias the most honorable presbyter and legate—even if in the earlier sessions they were read, and the greater part of those now present became hearers of their teaching and exhortation—yet, if it seems good to your holiness, let those too be set alongside the proceedings now under way. The most holy legates said: It is just to set the letters of the most holy patriarch of Jerusalem alongside this proceeding, so that from every side the confirmation of the truth may appear to all more exact and more complete. And taking up the letter brought forward, Photinos the aforesaid chartophylax read it, containing thus:

Letter of Theodosios of Jerusalem to Photios

1 To our God-chosen, holy, and ever-memorable fellow-minister, the lord Photios, patriarch of Constantinople. Theodosius, least of men, patriarch of Jerusalem, greeting. God, who provides for the hearts of all, declaring through David that dwelling together in concord and in a brotherly disposition in God is shown forth, said: “The Lord settles those of one manner in a house.” He who chose David from the flock of sheep by his providence to be both king and prophet, the same in our generation has brought to fulfillment what was prophesied. For by the grace of God your incomparable holiness, O divinely-inspired hierarch, both the foundation of the churches, the concord of virtue, piety, and brotherly harmony, is everywhere heard of and confirmed in the holy Church of our God; your God-governed care and pastoral watchfulness gladden and delight our ears, and throughout the holy assemblies in their places provide rejoicing to the presidents under them, and bring to pass a common spiritual and festal gladness. For since we are all of one body and members one of another, when one member is sound, its soundness is imparted to the rest as well. And again, when one member suffers, the whole body suffers. This indeed comes to pass also in the spiritual members fitted together into the catholic Church. And we, being a part of the Church, even if the other part is otherwise disposed, yet already share in the identity of the suffering. Therefore, O divinely-inspired one, and great bulwark of the Church of Christ, also for us who are caught in the snares of the lawless, and who suffer unbearable things at their hands, both in the loss of the revenues of the churches and in the plundering of the dues owed to us, give heed to your prayers and supplications to God, O sacred head of the body of the Church, and as a city living in God on behalf of another city, plead with the pious and God-chosen

2 emperors, to have mercy and take pity on the holy Church of the Resurrection of Christ our God, and on holy Zion; and do not grow weary on this account, for a grievous time is upon us, in which they are in need of mercy. But to recount one by one the kinds and the things done to us wretched ones by these evils I judge unseemly to your ⟦most unblemished⟧ holiness. Nevertheless, out of the unbearable and many-headed throng of the various dangers that press upon us, we have with fear deemed worthy the most reverent monk, the lord ⟦Andrew, who⟧ keeps guard as no other—being the sole blood-kinsman of our holy legate the lord Elias, who contends together with your holiness—to take the trouble to come as far as your holiness, both for the building up of the canonical proclamations and for the cessation of the scandals that are springing up. He will also more clearly recount the destructive assaults of the nations against us. Wherefore let your God-moved disposition be stirred to pity for us, and let it extend the fitting care. And I, urged on by this insufferable necessity, as I said before, have sent up an unfinished letter of supplication, together with the aforesaid lord Andrew, in a letter to the merciful might of the holy emperors, in which is summarily set forth the dreadful evils against us. And I beseech your holiness to show us loving-kindness compassionately, and to cooperate that the things we have asked of their divine majesty may reach their end. May the manly excellence of your God-chosen hierarchy frequently aid us by direct intercessions to God. And if anyone does not accept you as a holy hierarch of God and patriarch of the imperial city, let him be anathema from the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, and deposed from all priesthood. For thus also the holy synod that is with us has decreed.

3 The holy synod said: With the things decreed by the said synod of the most holy patriarch of the East, we too agree; and if anyone does not accept Photios, our most holy patriarch, as the lawful hierarch, let him be anathema. Photios the most holy patriarch said: If our holy synod commands, let the letters from the most holy patriarch of Antioch, through Kosmas the presbyter, also be read. The most holy legates said: Let them be read. And coming forward, Photinos the oft-mentioned chartophylax read them, containing thus:

Letter of Theodosios of Antioch to Photios

1 To the most holy patriarch of Constantinople. Theodosius, sinful patriarch of Antioch. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. May the merciful God be with us, our father, unto ages of ages. I make known to you, our beloved father, that the good news of you has reached us also through Abba Kosmas, the disciple of Abba Michael, the patriarch of Alexandria—to whom may the Lord God grant us the ages. And you rejoiced over this with great gladness, when God brought you to your throne, just as he foretold to you in good things. And we accepted your holiness,

2 and behold, you have become as one of us and among us. But a calamity befell us from Ebintaklom. And we beseech God to repel his afflictions, for he has damaged the church of Antioch in much wealth. But because of our sin we have suffered all these things. And when God brought Abba Kosmas the priest safe as far as us, we rejoiced, because God sheltered him on his way, and concealed your tidings and the mandates of the emperor, until they were revealed to us. And before this, Abba Thomas the metropolitan had arrived from Tyre, wishing to console us over the calamity that bit us; and he came to repentance, and asked forgiveness both of us and of Michael the president of Alexandria, confessing his fault; and that we should write to your high priesthood on his behalf, and he himself confessed it in writing. And do not close, holy father, your bowels and your mercy from him. Glory to God who has brought you up to your throne; and the three thrones have written to you in their own hand, since they have received you. Indeed both lately and of old, as it seems, by God’s will. And behold, we say and write: that if anyone does not accept you as patriarch, he is accursed from the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. May Christ guard you, our holy father, and your flock. And may he add glory to you in this present age and in the age to come, through the intercessions of the divine chief [of the apostles] and of all the saints.

3 And after the reading of such a letter, the holy synod said: Let there come also the letter of our brother and fellow-minister Adramius, metropolitan of Amida and Samosata, and let it be read. So taking this also into his hands, the above-mentioned Photinos the chartophylax read it, containing thus:

Letter of Adramius of Amida and Samosata to Photios

1 To the father of fathers illumined by the Holy Spirit, the lord Photios, patriarch of Constantinople. Adramius, a sinner, your disciple, metropolitan of Amida and Samosata in Armenia. May God lengthen your days, spiritual holy father, and guard your manifestation; and fulfill in you his will, and add to you, making your holiness resplendent; and grant you a most prolonged life, bestowing you as a gift upon his holy Church, by the unfailing graces upon you, by the energy of the Holy Spirit. I too have written, together with all my flock, to the holy father purified by the Holy Spirit. And being the better for the manner of life supplied to me by God, for this glory be to God himself. We did not cease inquiring carefully until we learned about your tidings, as is owed to us from God. And we rejoice in your joy, as also in your sorrows we sorrowed. For we are fully assured concerning your holiness and spiritual goodness, your love of the poor and your compassion for the needy; in which we take delight and exult; and we beseech the bountiful and merciful God that you may abide for many years in a good generation, and that he may magnify in abundance his holy churches and monasteries through your hands; and that in your

2 days he may drive away from them every harm and scandal, and may turn back all who have gone astray to his flock, through the intercession of the Mother of God our Lady, and of holy John the Baptist, and of all the saints. Amen.

3 There were sent to me, holy father, letters from our holy father Theodosius, the patriarch of Antioch, and a letter of Abba Michael, the pope of Alexandria, through Abba Kosmas. And the letters contained […] of the peace, and may the Lord preserve it both for them and for us. And the letters contained also concerning Thomas of Tyre, and Elias, and Joseph, who styled himself in a rank that was not his. But God repaid him as he deserved, and his partner Elias as well. But the president of Tyre redeemed that very fault before the patriarchs, concerning his transgression and deed; and God is his judge. He himself entreats, and asks forgiveness; let God be the judge of those who divided his holy Church. And may he visit us in mercy, through your holy portion.

4 The patriarchs wrote to me, divinely-inspired father, declaring to me that he who does not proclaim the lord Photios as patriarch of Constantinople, let him be anathema from the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. And we, their humble disciples, anathematize with the same anathema, and we accept whom they accept; but if anyone does not accept—I say—our most holy father, the lord Photios, patriarch of Constantinople, and proclaim him openly and before all the people, whether he be a bishop, even a bishop, or a ruler, or one belonging to the remaining authority over the people, let such a one be under anathema and excommunication from the Church of God; and let his portion be with Judas the Iscariot. And let everyone who hears say: so be it, so be it. He entreats you ⟦and beseeches⟧ by his prayers, to effect for us your long life. And may God multiply the years of the good emperor, and of his sons; and may he deem us worthy of the glorious sight of your countenance; and may he magnify Christianity in our days. And I beseech God, holy father, that you be preserved and sheltered by his compassion; may all wickedness and scandal be driven away from you, and from the good emperor, and from his children; may the Lord God magnify them. Greet yourself, holy father, with the sweetest peace and embrace. And we send greeting also to your most God-loving flock, and to all the clergy. Peace, and the peace of God be unto you. Know, all-holy father, that a calamity befell our flock in Antioch from Ebintaklom. It is not, then, [possible?] to recount these things in a letter; but Abba Kosmas will recount everything. The patriarch of Jerusalem has fallen asleep in peace; may the Lord grant us [the repose of] his soul. And Abba Elias the Damascene has succeeded to the throne.

5 The holy synod said: Concerning the forgiveness we said before that the authority to forgive lies with our most holy master, since the offense was committed primarily against him. The schisms of the Church were permitted, it seems, that those who are approved might become manifest. May God guard

6 our holy master. May God lengthen his days; having removed from our midst every scandal, and having abolished all the causes of the schisms, may he establish peace and concord for us and for the Church of God.

7 The most holy legates of the priestly thrones of the East said: If the wounds had not been great, the wisdom and skill of the physician would not have been admired. But now, as much as the evil one wished to rend and wound the Church of God, so much did the wisdom and skill of your most holy hierarch shine forth; who, by the healing and divine method, having cured the bruises in every part, rendered the body of the Church of Christ whole and entire by his many and manifold cares.

8 The most holy legates of elder Rome said: Thanksgiving be to God, and to the great and exalted emperor, and to this our lord, the most holy and ecumenical pope John; for through him the Church of God has received peace and concord. And the whole synod said: We all ought, for such a great and complete concord and peace, to give thanks to God; all ought to glorify him. May God preserve this unshaken, may he guard it forever. Many be the years of the emperors.

Third Session

1 THIRD ACTION

2 On the nineteenth of the month of November, the fifth day, in the thirteenth indiction. While Photios, our most holy patriarch, presided in the right part of the catechumena of the most holy great Church of God, and there sat together with him the most holy legates of elder Rome and of the priestly thrones of the East; and, moreover, the most God-loving metropolitans—I mean Prokopios of Caesarea, Gregory of Ephesus, John of Heraclea, and all those mentioned in the preceding action—Peter, the most God-fearing presbyter and cardinal, said to the holy synod: Most pious hierarchs and fellow-ministers, you surely remember that we spoke at the preceding session of bringing before you the letter sent to your holiness from the most holy pope; ⟦we have now fulfilled⟧ this promise. And if it is agreeable to your holiness, let it be read before you. And taking it, Peter the most God-loving deacon and protonotary read it.

Letter of Pope John to the Church of Constantinople

1 [Letter of John, the most holy pope of Rome]

2 John, servant of the servants of God, to all the most reverent and most holy bishops, our brothers and fellow-ministers, of the church of the Constantinopolitans, and to all who accept it, and to the remaining other foremost churches of Jerusalem, Antioch, Alexandria, and to those who preside over their priestly thrones. Having received, beloved brothers, your sound letters concerning the union and concord, with the most holy patriarch assisting on his part, we rejoiced greatly in them—that all alike may think and worship in the communion of the Father and in the ecumenical harmony of those of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the things that befit your pious station and most holy soul are fitting; that there be no schisms among you, but that you may know how to seek, and to knock, and to find. And we, moved by the compassion of the apostolic throne, even as we suffer together and grieve together over those who are separated and cut off from the body of Christ, and who strive to hold fast the things of fabrication and error rather than the things of Christ, so we rejoice in the bond of the peace and love of your brotherhood; and we pray always without ceasing that you may remain blameless and unblemished, according to the apostle; and that the God of peace may be with you continually. Therefore truly your much-careful and good zeal asked for a demonstration through the testimony of the blessed and chief of the apostles, Peter, that we should restore and jointly accept Photios, the most holy patriarch, within the regions of the province of the church of the Constantinopolitans; and this with an eager and most radiant soul, holding to what is said in the Gospel to the chief shepherd, to whom the Lord says: “I have prayed for you, Peter, that your faith fail not; and you, when you have once turned again, strengthen your brethren.” We have fulfilled it, then, rousing ourselves to the divine oracles, and having authority that waters, insofar as we may be able to remain blameless and beyond reproach, to bring help and cooperation to all Christians—the [authority?] resounded unto all the ends [of the earth]; and especially following the examples of the hierarchs of God before us—I mean Hadrian, pope of blessed memory—even as he acted in cooperating with Tarasius, the patriarch among the saints, when certain persons stirred up troubles and seditions against him. For that one, the patriarch of Constantinople among the saints, Tarasius, sent us synodical letters, fulfilling the custom; and we received them, and learning the rightness of his faith which he held both concerning the other doctrines and concerning the holy and venerable images, and finding them in agreement with the six holy ecumenical councils, we were well pleased and concurred—even if we bore it not without grief, nor without disturbance, that from a secular order and royal service, from the laity and not according to the [rule] among us, he ascended to the great throne, not having fulfilled the canons as patriarch. And to speak was hard, while to be silent again was dangerous. For shepherds must not be [in need of] being taught, nor before learning be called teachers; but they must have insight, lest they reap sin from the souls over which they were appointed, nor be eager to leap up to the rank of wisdom of which they have the ignorance. For one must know how presumptuous and fearful it is for one ignorant and unlearned in divine things to ascend from secular business and common everyday converse to the rank of teaching. For what general can lead an army, unless it be attested by all that he is able by toil and care to save the people entrusted to him? And if this is so, how much more shall souls be entrusted to him? And let him who is ignorant of ecclesiastical learning ascend to the height of the episcopate; and one entangled in worldly and civic affairs

3 will then run up to the chief height of the ecclesiastical order; and then, having ascended there, having mastered none of the ecclesiastical ordinances, how is it possible for him to teach others? For this reason the canonical practice was established, and enjoined, that the ignorant man—one who does not know how to be shepherded—should not thus ascend to be among shepherds and sacrificers and teachers. And for this reason also the aforesaid most holy Tarasius, coming from a layman to the high priesthood, troubled some. But because of his faithfulness in his course—for at that time there was still the restoration of the holy images—then, for grace’s sake, all those who [were present?], being of one mind concerning his high priesthood, voted together, and we too with them; just as also in the present matter, I mean concerning Photios, our most holy brother and fellow-minister. For the rare ought not to become law; nor, because these men shone forth in extraordinary fashion, ought this to be made a canon for the others. But it is fitting, beloved brothers, to bind fast the ancient law, that from the present time, in your holy Church of God, the canons of the Fathers may not be transgressed in this matter by like means, nor that some persons ascend suddenly to the great dignity.

4 We entreat your brotherhood also in this: that you restore to us the province of Bulgaria, which God, through the intercession of the blessed Peter the apostle, and through the toil and labor of our predecessor, turned to Christ. And we wish this also: if anyone be persecuted or [an exile?], [that] through your labor you, together with the most holy patriarch Photios, may [aid them]; for indeed you have made plain your longing, that out of all your pious works you may gain them too; so that in this also you may be found blameless before God. And let our most holy and most God-fearing brother Photios the patriarch not disdain, before the synod, [to acknowledge?] our grace and our zeal, but rather the bowels of compassion of the church of the Romans; for whatever brotherly graces we have shown him, accepting him as a lawful and canonical patriarch, in communion with the blessed Peter the apostle—and the whole church of the Romans has shown fatherly bowels of compassion toward him, following the examples of our other predecessors, and especially of the most blessed Innocent and Gelasius and many holy hierarchs of Rome; for one must do eagerly all things that conduce to the common salvation. For [consider this]: many of the hierarchs, having unjustly lost their own thrones and been driven from them, by the apostolic disposition recovered their own thrones; and you being good, and making your request for good ends, and for the benefit also of the whole world—who could be found so hard and savage as to act presumptuously against your request, beloved brothers, and to reject the common salvation of the churches? Behold, then, we have obeyed and do obey your worthy request, ratifying and confirming your shepherd Photios, the most holy patriarch; and we implore your reverence to abide in good conduct, and that there be no schisms among you; but having all accepted him devoutly, with sincere purpose, undoubting mind, and guileless heart, just as

5 also that no one any longer among us may raise sedition. For he who does not accept him has no part with us; just as he who receives him receives us also. For you must, to whomever we extend a hand, extend it with us; that you also, to whomever you extend a hand, may extend it with us. For thus is fulfilled the glorifying, in one spirit and one heart, of the all-honorable name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, now and ever and unto the ages of ages. Amen.

6 After the letter was read, the most holy legates of elder Rome said: Does your holiness accept the letter, and do you embrace the union and communion with the most holy patriarch? The holy synod said: We have said—not once, nor twice only, but many times, even before this most honorable letter—that we are united with Photios, our most holy patriarch; and we remain inseparable from him all the days of our life. And those who do not accept his high priesthood as holy and canonical and lawful, we both regard and reckon as strangers to piety and to the canonical ordinances. And now we give thanks to God and to the most holy pope John, as being of one mind and one accord with us, and embracing the union of the Church of God, and cooperating with us in every restoration of our Church, and clasping and embracing, and united with whole-souled disposition to Photios, our most holy master and hierarch.

7 Peter, the most God-fearing presbyter and cardinal, said: And do you do all that is contained in the letter? The holy synod said: Whatever is for the glory of the Church of God, we both have done and have accepted and do accept, and we remain unchangeable in this disposition unto the age. But whatever else there is that does not pertain to our judgment, but to the administration and decision of our great and exalted emperor, these things we commit to his care and providence. The most holy legates of elder Rome said: The letter contains nothing outside of fitting reason. Prokopios, the most God-loving archbishop of Caesarea in Cappadocia, said: It is contained in the letter that men should not be advanced from the laity to the high-priestly dignity, and that it is a shame to those who do this. We, then, are not ignorant that the synod at Sardica forbids this from being done. But neither does it forbid every layman, but it specifies certain persons: that is, the rich man from the marketplace, and the advocate from the marketplace. Such men this Church, by the grace of Christ, has never received. Yet even if there were a canon that altogether forbade every layman, and that not of a local synod but of an ecumenical one—if it had no custom opposing it, it would be necessary to observe it. But since we see that in many cases local custom has often prevailed over canonical ordinances, we have no shame coming upon us. For what profit is there, if a man, being a cleric or a monk, lives in a manner foreign to his profession? And what is the hindrance—the natural covering of hair—if a man, being reckoned in the order of the laity, lives according to the evangelical ordinances, and renders himself worthy by what he does, of both the priestly and the high-priestly dignity?

8 Zacharias, the most God-loving metropolitan of Chalcedon, said: The most holy pope John, and you, brothers and fathers, who have come to our church for the sake of zeal—both God and our humility accept you; may it be granted you to obtain the like, when need requires. But concerning the matter of [advancement] from the laity, I wish to say a few things. The canon plainly and expressly states the reason why it forbids a man from the laity to ascend to this great throne. For it says thus: that if a man should give proof of his own virtue and be found suitable and tested—then if a man has rendered sufficient works of his own virtue, and has a tested character, the canon does not forbid such a one. Witness of what is said is the holy and ecumenical Second Council, which testified not in words but rather in deeds to the things said by me. For it appointed Nectarius, just lately come to the divine laver, as patriarch of Constantinople. You have also the example of Ambrose the great, Ephraim of Antioch, Eusebius of Caesarea, and many whom we cannot even number because of their multitude. And if you wish, I will recount the opinion of a man whom the Church of God inscribes as father and teacher, and whose words it names canons and accepts; and I will recount one thing from his writings. For writing to Amphilochius, the most holy bishop of Iconium, concerning the appointment of bishops, he says somewhat thus: “But if there is one of the newly-illumined, whether it seem good to Macedonius or not, let him be my bishop; and you shall form him to what is fitting”—and [God] cooperating in all things, and to ask the grace unto this. For you see that one must promote to the high-priestly dignity not only from the laity, but also from the newly-illumined, as the very wording clearly showed—provided, that is, evidently, that he be tested in his life, and in his character first, his ground still being purified. But if even this does not suffice, the twenty holy hierarchs are sufficient to take away from us all shame and all reproach. For all these aforesaid men the same accepted church of the Romans openly proclaims today, that [it testifies] not out of regard for the things said by me, but rather by the things done. And I now say this: even in the very church of the Romans certain men descended from the laity to the high-priestly throne, whose names your holiness knows better than we. But also the custom itself is sufficient to overcome the canon. Many such things we see today. You, the luminaries of the Church, who send forth your own rays over the world—what have you to say, when you examine and search these men, doing many things contrary to the canon by following the customs? But also custom often overcomes custom. In the East, if a man is not [tonsured?] in Christ, he does not become a bishop or patriarch. And the West makes clerics even of those who are ragged in dress. This we do not recognize. And then the canon speaks of the advocate from the marketplace, just as the most God-loving archbishop of Caesarea said before; and never has our Church received [such]. For what need is there to speak concerning our most holy hierarch? Who was so far from the leisure of the marketplace that he would not even look upon it with his eyes, or touch any such thing. For he himself, because of the [honor] belonging to him

9 was indeed reckoned among the foremost of the senate council of that time; for if he declined human honor, he so fled the tumults in the marketplace, in his longing for the better things, that even the city-dwellers and citizens were reckoned, in comparison with him, as nothing more than those who dwell in the mountains. Yet I say this also: many were then elected, both clerics and monks, and he was preferred above all according to the occasion. Then is it not absurd and unreasonable that those who at that time came behind and took the second rank should themselves again be reckoned first; and that those who hold the lowest place should ascend by their virtues to the high-priestly throne; while this man, who by all votes prevailed over them, as one measured to the lowest place, should reckon ranks and times in vain—he who has already advanced in virtues? And concerning holy Tarasius it was said by you that he turned back many heretics. And the word is true. His father and mother also died contending for piety. From childhood this our most holy master and patriarch traversed the road with a most unswerving course, and when he had ascended to this sacred throne, he did not neglect to do the same all the more. And he confined piety not within himself alone, nor among the early husbandman people; but he went over almost the whole earth with his words, converting men. And witness is the land of the Armenians, and Mesopotamia, and whole nations that formerly lived a barbarous and savage life, set free by his teachings from their old error, and led to the light through his very proclamation of piety. And however many one might wish to present in word, he will show himself far inferior to the deeds.

10 Peter, the most God-fearing presbyter and cardinal, said: The apostles chose two, Barsabbas [among them], that he might be equal in number to him; but the grace of the all-holy Spirit prepared the most sacred Matthias to be enrolled into the choir of the apostolic company, so that they became sharers in the vote with him on whom the lot fell. Behold, then, is such a judgment absurd? The divine Spirit voted in that very vote of the patriarch. And the apostolic pope, having now come, both ratified it with you and jointly accepted it. But if your holiness commands, let there come also the letter previously sent from [the patriarch] of Jerusalem to the emperor; for it is just that this too, having been read of old before you, be now read before the rest of your brothers and fellow-bishops, those who were not then present, and be ranged with the proceedings. And so, being invited, Peter the most God-loving deacon and protonotary read it.

Letter of Theodosios of Jerusalem to the Emperor Basil

1 [Letter of Theodosius, Patriarch of Jerusalem, to the Emperor Basil]

2 To the master who is attended, guided, and governed by the divine providence from above—the beneficent, peaceable, victory-bringing, ally of God, reverently Christ-loving, most Christian, gentle and most meek Basil, Emperor of the Romans: Theodosius, by the mercy of God the least patriarch of Jerusalem, write, having made bold to do so.

3 Great is the Lord and great is his strength, and according to his great mercy he has wrought an inexpressible and great salvation for the Christians throughout the world, who await the unutterable consolation; for he has raised up the great and incomparable might of your empire, in which the horns of all the sinful adversaries are crushed, and what is left over and remains shall be utterly broken in pieces; and [the realm] of the righteous and the pious shall be exalted on high together with felicity. By your trophy-bearing victories and your magnificent sceptred dominion—and in them the all-variegated glory of the Orthodox faith blossoms forth like a lily—every man cast down in long despondency is made bright in his soul, in the hope of these joyful preludes, as though he already had part in them; and all grief is consigned to vanishing. But that this may come to a perfect work, we who are held fast in the hands of the lawless because of our sins make ceaseless supplication; for, to speak in the words of the prophet, we have become utterly poor, and our grievous life has drawn near to Hades. May the Lord God help us—he who has raised up your holy empire—through which he may utterly destroy from the earth the memory of our most grievous enemies and bitter tyrants, and may preserve the souls of us who toil in the uttermost humiliation, and redeem us by deliverance from it. For inasmuch as, like the hope that does not put to shame, O God-crowned emperors, the good tidings are proclaimed to the Christians everywhere from the brilliant achievements of your sovereignty, the [hour] of our redemption shall come to its fulfillment; and we, the pitiable, who have not yet attained it—divine providence directing the things concerning us—through you set our hope. But as matters now stand, suppliantly, with groaning and lamentation, with a contrite and grieving heart, I, as a servant, bring my adoration to your divinely-ordained empire, [imploring you] to have mercy on the church of the holy Resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ, and to take pity on Zion, the mother of the holy churches, that in the time of the visitation of your incomparable empire they may not fall away into the danger of [their] annihilation. For we are scarcely able worthily to set forth in detail the unbearable injuries that frequently befall them; for the dangers are boundless, and the trials, being insupportable, do not submit to narration. Wherefore may we be deemed worthy of God-imitating mercy from your empire; for when we came to the uttermost humiliation, with destruction threatening us, then, constrained by the dread that grips us, we deemed it right [to ask] the most reverent lord Andrew, the own brother of our holy vicar, the holy Elias the stylite, to set out for your divinely-built might, bearing also this our bare suppliant letter—who will confirm before your holy empire the dread and tyrannical things [done] against us—while his aforesaid most excellent brother waits upon your empire there, for the sake of the restoration of the ecclesiastical ordinances and ranks, and the deposition and abolition of the contrivances of the enemy. For I have no other means to this end, so as to serve in this matter, save Andrew, the aforesaid own brother of our vicar Elias; because necessity has so moved us that we chose him to minister this hope-bearing ministry. And [we charge him] to speak to all that has befallen the holy churches, boldly and earnestly asking of our most compassionate empire to deem them worthy of mercy, and in whatever way is possible to help them. This we ordain, or rather we

4 ⟦jointly ask⟧ through the apostolic thrones that are among us, and to all we announce and proclaim, as an inviolable canon: if anyone does not receive our holy and far-renowned fellow-minister, our brother lord Photios, the patriarch of the imperial city, and is not joined to him, let him be anathema. And let him be deposed by the authority of the holy apostolic thrones. And by their prayers may your holy might lay hold of the uttermost parts of all the earth, gathering thereto the scattered children of the catholic Church. For you have arisen to take pity on Zion, since it is the time to take pity on her.

5 The holy synod answered: The things synodically decreed by the most holy patriarch of Jerusalem, our moderation also accepting them, consigns to the anathema those who do not so think.

6 The most holy vicars of elder Rome said to Elias, the most God-fearing presbyter and vicar of the East: When did this letter come, and by whom was it brought?

7 Elias, the most God-fearing presbyter and vicar of the East, said: This was sent by Theodosius, the most holy patriarch of Jerusalem, who had already accepted Photios the most holy patriarch in synod before me—my own insignificance being present there as well—or rather, he confirmed the ancient, high, and great esteem which he held concerning him. And afterward, as the occasion called for it, he sent this letter through Andrew, the most reverent monk and my own true brother; and not only [the patriarch] of Jerusalem, but also the president of Antioch, became a co-voter in this synodical judgment.

8 Peter, the most God-fearing presbyter and cardinal, said: Behold now, just as the most holy patriarchs of the East beforehand sent synodical letters confirming and accepting Photios the most holy patriarch, so also our master the ecumenical pope sent a letter, which you have already heard, agreeing in all things with the said most holy patriarchs, upon the acceptance and restoration of the said most holy patriarch; and he holds him as a brother and fellow-minister. But since those who came of old from the East, those associated with Thomas and Elias—as we hear unanimously from all—were seeking out Saracen captives, and were dispatched by the Saracens for the ransoming of their own kinsmen, and were registered and conducted their affairs as agents of the Saracens; and were sent by none of the patriarchs, having been entrusted with no ecclesiastical office; and among these Elias had of old been condemned and cast out of the choir of the Christians—for this reason we make examination concerning the brothers who have lately arrived, both bearing hierarchical letters and holding the person of the hierarchical thrones of the East. For it is written that the truth, when examined, becomes the purer. You have heard, then, the answers of these brothers, and how the churches of the East are in concord.

9 Paul and Eugenius, the most holy vicars, said: Not only the letters, but also the letter-bearer himself, lord Andrew the most reverent monk, did we see, he having spent a good many days with us; and when we had examined his faith exactly, we found him purely professing the doctrines of the Church; from whom also we received a libellus of the faith. The holy syn- [—text continues at—]

10 …synod said: It was fitting that those men, who had unlawful and accursed works and the mind of the Saracens, and who were servants of the Saracens, should be thrust out of the Church. But those whom the most holy patriarchs released are truly their representatives, and disciples of the apostles, and nurslings of the Church, and ⟦were entrusted⟧ with ecclesiastical ministry.

Photios on Committing Past Wrongs to Oblivion

1 Photios, the most holy patriarch, said: As for the things that took place at that time, may God consign them to deep oblivion, and may He turn us to keep them in forgetfulness and in freedom from the memory of wrongs. For silence does far better in these matters than even some brief and abridged discussion of them. Nevertheless, at that time, when we were being driven from the throne, and when the whole roster of the hierarchs and priests of God was being grievously afflicted by the harsh ills of being deprived of their own thrones, I said to those who were then present: If you hold your whole wrath against me, let these men go free; but as for me, frame whatever charge your will may dictate to lay upon me, and carry it out. In exchange for the freedom and release of all these, I am ready even to confess the charge against myself—provided only that it contain no impiety—and to fill your will to the full. For I deliver myself up, conceding to you the accusation against me, to do to me whatever your impulse may wish. Only do not bring this pitiable and tragic story into the Church of God, nor hand over so great and so numerous a people, devoted from of old to Orthodoxy and consecrated to God—so far as it lay within our judgment—to death and famine and exile and every evil; nor make the sacred rites of Christians a laughingstock to all Greeks and barbarians, nor set them forth as such; nor with so great a shame blot out the ordinances of Christians. And these things I both solemnly protested and was ready to do, undertaking to ransom the salvation of the many innocent and blameless ones in exchange—as those men would say—for my own destruction. But the sacred ordinance bore into the aforesaid roster not only him who was first absolved of their assault, and all the rest, but simply all who at any time bore the marks of priesthood and godliness. Yet those matters, as we have said, let silence and reputation keep. And the Lord of inscrutable judgments and the good Giver of things unhoped for, looking only upon our purpose at that time, beyond all expectation and beyond every human hope, justly overlooked all those things that had been ventured against us; and the heart of our exalted and great emperor—held fast and carried about, as it is, in His hand—He stirred to take up His mercies upon us; and what He had foreordained, as He has shown, this also, beyond all reason, as you see, He brought to fulfillment.

Elias on His Coming for the Sake of the Church

1 Elias, the most God-fearing presbyter and representative of the East, said: The goodness of God knows that when I beheld the patriarch the lord Photios, I received no letter from him, when I met with him in those days; but it was for the sake of the Church, and his virtue, and the unlawful madness that had been committed against him, and those godless false representatives, that for these reasons I came.

Paul and Eugenios, Legates of Elder Rome, Speak

1 Paul and Eugenius, the most holy representatives of Elder Rome,

2 said: As the truth itself bears witness, we speak neither out of partiality nor out of bribery; but as God knows, and as the holy emperor himself bore witness to the man’s sympathy and mercy and the surpassing height of his virtue, the Church of the Constantinopolitans has for many years failed to receive such a man.

Photios on the Reward of the Legates’ Goodwill

1 Photios, the most holy patriarch, said: We are sinful and lowly; but you yourselves shall receive the worthy reward of your disposition toward us. If, then, the discourse and the matter set before us concerned some other person, I would have much to say; but since it concerns myself, taking up the burdensomeness of such words, I judge it better to keep silent, unless some great necessity should compel me to speak.

Peter the Cardinal Proposes the Reading of the Commonitorium

1 Peter, the most God-fearing presbyter and cardinal, said: You fulfill the gospel saying which declares: “I seek not my own glory; there is one who seeks and judges.” But the times have proved these matters. If it seems good to this holy and most peaceful synod, let there also be read the commonitory given to us, that is, the mandate, from the most holy and ecumenical Pope John, in which all our hierarchs and bishops have also subscribed. The holy synod said: Let it be read. And Peter, the most God-fearing presbyter and cardinal, rising, read it through Leo the protospatharios and interpreter.

The Commonitorium to the Legates

1 A Commonitory to the brethren Paul and Eugenius, the bishops; likewise also to Peter, our presbyter and cardinal, who have been sent to Constantinople.

Commonitorium, Chapter 1

1 Chapter 1. With the help of God and the intercessions of the holy apostles, when you have entered into Constantinople, go there when the emperor shall give the order; and before you behold the emperor, do not consent to give the apostolic letters. But when you stand before the emperor, present the letters, addressing him with these words: Our spiritual father, the lord John, the apostolic pope, does homage to your God-given majesty, commending your God-given power day by day in his earnest prayers to the holy God; that He who has given you such a desire, the author of ecclesiastical peace, may send back to you His grace in return, and console you according to His worthiness, and bring your will to perfection in good things.

Commonitorium, Chapter 2

1 Chapter 2. If the emperor should wish, before the letters are read, to learn the heads of our answer, answer him with these words: If your majesty commands, let him see the letters; and if he should say, “What do the letters contain?” answer him: “Homage to your seemly piety, and words that knit together the bond of ecclesiastical peace and fulfill it well in every way.”

Commonitorium, Chapter 3

1 Chapter 3. On the next day, greeting Photios the most holy, deliver to him also a letter, greeting him fittingly with these words: Our lord John, the apostolic pope, does homage to you, and wishes to have you as a brother and fellow-minister.

Commonitorium, Chapter 4

1 Chapter 4. Inasmuch as the emperor has sent word that, for the peace of the Church, we should receive the most holy patriarch Photios as our brother and fellow-minister, we have hearkened to your petition, and we command that he come before you into the synod, and that the whole Church receive him according to the disposition of our letters; and you also shall receive him as one in communion and a fellow-minister, that he may offer thanksgiving and sincerity to the Church of the Romans.

Commonitorium, Chapter 5

1 Chapter 5. Rising, say to him: Our lord, the most holy pope, commands that all who are in various places in exile, whether bishops or presbyters or any others, who until the present have not been willing to be in communion with you, may through your labor be united to the Church of God and become one with you. And when they come, he shall receive them as a father receives his children, and admonish them often, that for the peace of the Church of God they may be of one mind with the apostolic see, and hold fast their will together with it, receiving Photios the most holy patriarch, or becoming partakers in communion with him. And as for those received: as many as were ordained beforehand, that they may recover their thrones; but those ordained later, that they may have from the same bishops sufficient sustenance and clothing.

Commonitorium, Chapter 6

1 Chapter 6. When you are seated in the synod with the aforesaid most holy patriarch and the representative of the East, together with the rest of the archbishops and metropolitans and all the priests of the Church of Constantinople, first let the letters be read which were sent to the emperor; and let the synod be asked whether it accepts them. And if they keep the testimonies which the letter also contains, when they have answered, say: Our lord, the most holy pope, taking thought for all the churches, and providing for your salvation and union and peace, has sent us his servants, that we may gather together those who were scattered, and make peace among those who were torn apart, and stretch out a hand by the mercy of the Church, and set upright those who were overthrown; that all with one mouth may glorify the Father together with the Son and the Holy Spirit. Is this good, or not? The holy synod said: Whatever things are for the peace and concord of the Church are both good and acceptable.

Commonitorium, Chapter 7

1 Chapter 7. But those who persist in the same insolence and tyranny, and are unwilling to come together into the unity of the Church and of the brethren, nor to preserve the bond of love, after two or three admonitions from you and from the holy synod, declare them out of communion, and cut them off from every ecclesiastical order, until they are united to their own patriarch and to the Church under him.

Commonitorium, Chapter 8

1 Chapter 8. Following the canons of the holy Fathers, we declare that, after the death of Photios the most holy patriarch, no one from a secular dignity shall ascend to the throne of Constantinople, even as our letters also testify.

Commonitorium, Chapter 9

1 Chapter 9. We wish, before the synod, that you entreat the aforesaid Photios the most holy patriarch neither to send the omophorion into Bulgaria,

2 nor to ordain in that same province. For if he should do this, we are bound to rebuke him canonically.

Commonitorium, Chapter 10

1 Chapter 10. We wish it to be proclaimed before the lawful synod, that the synod which was held against the aforesaid patriarch Photios in the times of Adrian the most holy pope, at Rome and at Constantinople, be from the present banished and annulled and held invalid, and that it not be reckoned together with any other holy synod. The holy synod answered: And we, by our deeds, have repudiated and cast out and anathematized the synod that is called yours, being united to Photios our most holy patriarch; and those who do not cast out the things written or spoken against him in that synod said to be yours, we consign to the anathema. Elias, metropolitan of Martyropolis, and Elias, representative of Jerusalem, said: For how could that be called a synod which filled the Church with countless schisms? Who would name a synod that which seated the agents of the Saracens as judges and lawgivers? Among what synods could that be numbered which dared to oppose all the holy synods, and condemned the guiltless without any examination whatsoever; which confounded and overthrew all ordinances, ecclesiastical and civil? For these reasons the most holy sees of the East repudiated its acts and made them rejected, and consigned them to the anathema.

Commonitorium, Chapter 11

1 Chapter 11. See that you walk according to our mandate in this way, and that you be neither led astray by gifts, nor through flattery or fear turn aside to the right hand or to the left; but proceed by the royal road, holding the model and the authority which we have given you for the peace of the Church; that through your labor and the worthy toil of your effort you may have our grace and that of the apostolic see, and become fellow-heirs of our communion.

2 The holy synod said: Behold, we see that you have followed in all things the mandate of the most holy pope. For in truth, such a great hierarch ought to have such representatives also. Niketas, the most God-beloved metropolitan of Smyrna, said: God has so ordered the course of affairs that, even should you wish to step outside the commandment of God and the injunctions of the most holy pope and so to walk, you would find no occasion. The very course of affairs compels men to proceed along the way of God; not even those who hold base opinions are able to come against the course of affairs; how much more, then, can those whose mind is furnished with every virtue in no way thus turn aside, to the right hand or to the left, from the will of God or from the mandates of the hierarch of Rome?

3 The most holy representatives of Elder Rome said: The prophet says, “Unto all to whom I send you, go.” We came to fulfill nothing except the will of God and of our lord, the most holy pope. The holy synod said: Clearly we see that you fulfill the will of God and of the hierarch who sent you.

Photios on the Reconciliation of the Churches

1 Photios, the most holy patriarch, said: It is the divine will of Him who came down from heaven and took up our nature, that He might reconcile the human race, which had sinned from many ages, to His Father. And now your holiness sees together with us that, according to the will of our all-compassionate Lord Jesus Christ, and the mandates of the most holy pope and the intercessions of the holy apostles, and moreover those of the most God-beloved metropolitan and bishops: Peter, the most God-fearing deacon and representative of Martyropolis, having just arrived, [coming] to them from the throne, and [bearing] together with him a letter of the most holy patriarch of Jerusalem—it pleases them, and the holy synod commands, that he enter. The holy synod said: Let him enter. And when he had entered, that having paid his reverence to Photios the most holy patriarch, the letters which had come to him from the most holy patriarch Photios were delivered to him, and peace from his holiness was given to them.

2 Peter, the most God-fearing presbyter and cardinal, said: Behold the votes of the bishops, how they were of one mind and received Photios the most holy patriarch through the holy Church of the Romans.

3 Zacharias, bishop of the church of the Anagnini, and librarian of the apostolic see, in the commonitory, for the reception of Photios the most holy patriarch, subscribed with his own hand.

4 Martinus, bishop of the church of Narnia, likewise subscribed.

5 Dominicus, bishop of the church of Tuscania, likewise.

6 Florus, bishop of the holy church of Manduela, likewise subscribed with his own hand.

7 Gaudericus, bishop of Veliternum, likewise.

8 Stephen, bishop of the holy church of Fereatina, likewise.

9 Leo, bishop of Gabii, legate and representative of the apostolic see, likewise subscribed with his own hand.

10 Walfertus, of the holy church of Petra, likewise.

11 Symeon, bishop of the holy church of Foudara, likewise.

12 John, bishop of the holy church of Spina, likewise.

13 Benedict, bishop, likewise.

14 Gregory, bishop of the holy church of Solecandia, likewise.

15 Bonifatius, bishop of the holy church of the Blerani, likewise.

16 Stephen, bishop of the holy church of the Nepesini, likewise.

17 Germanus, archpresbyter of Saint Paul and Saint John, likewise.

18 Peter, archpresbyter of Saint Chrysogonus, likewise.

19 Benedict, archpresbyter of Saint Balbina, likewise.

20 Adrian, archpresbyter of Saint Lawrence, likewise.

21 John, archpresbyter of Saint Cecilia, likewise.

22 Paul, deacon, likewise subscribed.

23 Leo, deacon, likewise.

24 After the commonitory had been completed, Peter, the most God-fearing cardinal, said: Does it please your holiness? And the holy synod answered: It pleases us—and especially the handwritten subscriptions for the common peace and concord of the holy Church of God, and for the reception of Photios the most holy and ecumenical patriarch. And to these all gave their assent: Many be the years of the emperor!

Fourth Session

1 FOURTH ACT.

2 In the month of December, on the fifth day, on the eve of the nativity of Christ our God, when Photios our most holy patriarch had kept vigil in the great secretum, and there were seated together with him the most holy representatives both of Elder Rome and of the Eastern sees, and moreover all the most God-beloved metropolitans and bishops, Peter, the most God-beloved deacon and protonotary, said: The metropolitan of Martyropolis, having just arrived from the patriarch of Theoupolis, that is, Antioch, holding his place and bringing with him also letters of the most holy patriarch of Jerusalem, stands before the gates; your holy synod commands that he enter. The holy synod said: Let him enter. And when he had entered, the letter of the most holy patriarch of Jerusalem pleases them; and bearing it with him, the most holy patriarch commands, and the holy synod, that he enter. The holy synod said: Let him enter. And when he had entered, that having paid his reverence to Photios the most holy patriarch, having entered he asked him how fared the patriarch of Antioch, and likewise of Jerusalem. And when he had said that they were in good health, though he had again subjected the patriarch Photios to many dangers; [and asked] how the holy Church of God was disposed, what peace it enjoyed. And when he had answered, “Through your holy prayers it abides in peace and concord,” the greeting was given to him by the most holy representatives of Elder Rome; and being seated in his own place upon the step, he took his rest.

3 After these things he was asked by the most holy representatives for what cause he had come, and by whom he had been sent. Basil, the most God-beloved bishop of Martyropolis and representative of the Church of Antioch, said: My most holy patriarch of Theoupolis, that is, Antioch, Theodosius, sent me as his deputy; and moreover I have been sent for the same purpose by Elias, the present representative of the high-priestly office of Jerusalem. I bear also his letters, and those of the most holy patriarch of Jerusalem. The cause for which I came the letter itself will declare more plainly than my tongue; though I may also say a few things by living voice. My most holy patriarch Theodosius confirmed [Photios as] the rightful holder of this throne, and in all the Church of God held and proclaimed him as most pure and as a fellow-minister. And in all these things [he charged me to do homage] to him who, with such and so great a thing to the ends of the world, holds the most pious mind, [in matters touching] us and our Church, together with you, in those things that are for the peace of God and for the union and good order of the Church.

4 …which all must belong to the bishops counted worthy of the hierarchy—those from the lay order; for he who once injured the high-priesthood, when the schisms befell the holy Church, which against your patriarchate, most holy and our fellow-minister, they bark out—and rather, to disclose his own person to him, he consigned to the anathema. And now I have been sent also from him, so that I may make manifest to this holy synod the things of his mind, as they were from the beginning, and are, and shall be. And after these things, rising, he said to Photios the most holy patriarch: If your holiness commands that the letters be received, behold, they are in my hands.

Reading of the Letters of the Eastern Patriarchs

1 Photios the most holy patriarch said: With the concurrence of our brothers and fellow-ministers, the most honorable legates, let your holiness deliver the letters of the most holy patriarchs. And when these had been delivered, Peter the most God-beloved presbyter and protonotary took them and read.

2 [Letter of Theodosius patriarch of Antioch: It has become known to us—the things sent for the common peace and concord of the holy Church of God—together with our least bishops there who govern the City of the Martyrs of Christ; at that time we issued our present letter, and to your patriarchal headship, having entrusted our representative, we sent [word], that the affairs that concern us and our church, together with you, [are directed] toward the peace of God and toward ecclesiastical union and good order.]

3 It is not enough that one should render to Christ our true God, as is owed, the fullness of the Godhead bodily; for in him we live and are moved and have our being. And not only this, but I have been honored with the honor of likeness to him—a likeness we have come to know in our unworthiness—which he himself possesses by nature. Beyond the pattern of all others who have obtained every priesthood, we too have attained to the [free] dignity of this ministry.

4 …the substance of the request; lest we be found liable to those who would do us injury. And for the present, in the state in which we abide—yet if the Lord, who orders all things toward what is most profitable, should by his own hand decree what seems fitting, may he counsel what is pleasing in his sight. For the present, in the cause for which we stand according to the mind of God, our bishops being received who govern the City of the Martyrs of Christ, at that time we issued our present letter; and to your patriarchal headship, having entrusted our representative, we sent [word], that the affairs that concern us and our church, together with you, [are directed] toward the peace of God and toward ecclesiastical union and good order.

5 …[that] by the resurrection of Christ the fall of man, whatever it suffered, should be healed. And we do not deny that the suffering is common to the whole Church of our God. Even we who are the mother of all the churches grieve, and holy Sion herself; and now the grief among us has been laid bare. But ever since the holy man Theodosius, who before us [presided over] the holy [sees] of God, who was placed—so to speak—in the greatest agony and affliction for the faith, like Adam, whether for his own homeland or for the church through the schism that [was raised] against your patriarchate, most holy one and our fellow-minister—[against this] they snarl. And further, to one who would set forth his person [against it], he handed [it] over to the anathema. All that has been written and spoken against him we have rejected, and we depose those [who hold] them and who have communicated [with them]; and now we too wish to proceed to the same vote. For if with one soul he was confirmed in the love of our Lord Jesus Christ, [and] upon her Creed he looked to himself by himself, he laid a contrivance, even if he saw his defender in fair form. But now we ask, from the God-protected and peace-making emperor and from your brotherly love, that a firm unity be brought about for us.

6 And after the reading of the letter, Gregory the most God-beloved archbishop of Ephesus said: This letter too we hierarchs and fellow-ministers have heard. The holy synod said: We—even before this letter, and not only before this one, but also before the letter that came through Andrew, which was read out earlier—have full assurance that the eastern thrones never separated from our most holy patriarch, but always held and proclaimed him as fellow-hierarch and fellow-minister. And for all this, thanksgiving be to God, who wills such and so great a concord unto the ends of the world.

7 Who would dare to pronounce decisions in [a state of] sin? [Is it] because this is the work of God, or because God did not [implant] it in them—in the hearts of the most holy patriarchs, and not in them alone, but also in all the people who love [Christ] throughout the whole eastern region? But why do I say that he implanted it in the hearts of the most holy patriarchs? Most of all, to our most holy and ecumenical patriarch Photios it [reached] even into the regions of the [rulers], so that the Saracens themselves, who are held [in those parts], sent letters to our most holy lord: some requesting instruction and holy baptism, and they surrendered themselves to the [protection] of our holy emperors; others confessing that they would convert to the faith, and showing themselves plainly […], you exhort us [to bring this] before our God-[guarded] emperor, through the mediation of our most holy patriarch. And as you see, behold, here are the very letters of the Emirs. And if [there is] a change for the better—is such a transformation also of God? The holy synod said: To all it has become manifest that God dwells in him; [whoever denies it] is ignorant.

8 The most holy legates of elder Rome said: The sun of God and [the radiance] that proceeds from it illumines the creation; for just as the sun, even though it is contained in [one place] only, nonetheless illumines the whole

9 world: so also our lord [the emperor], though he is seated in Constantinople, yet gives light as with torches to the whole creation, and shines forth, and rejoices at the union of all the holy churches of God, and in [the union] together with Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem. For just as we heard at first through legates and through letters, so now we behold with our own eyes this lord bishop of Martyropolis, having come to the holy synod.

Prokopios on the Concord Concerning the Seventh Council

1 Prokopios the most God-beloved archbishop of Caesarea in Cappadocia said: Blessed be God, who through the goodness and boundless compassion of the most holy patriarch made [him] of one voice, concerning the [reckoning of] times, with Alexander and Tarasius the holy patriarchs of Constantinople, and with the holy churches everywhere. And the holy Church of the Romans now [confirms] her doctrines in agreement with us, and proclaims to the rest of the holy [synods] [the Seventh Council] together with them, so that henceforth no ambiguity remains from this quarter.

2 Thus he rejoices at their concord and * agreement; and let this holy and ecumenical synod also call to mind that, in the letter which the most holy pope sent to our holy emperor, certain chapters were set forth, which we wish to be read once more before your holiness, so that your holy assembly may give its agreement to the said chapters. The holy synod said: Let them be read. Peter the most God-beloved deacon and protonotary took them and read.

Canon: No Layman to Be Advanced to the Throne of Constantinople

1 Chapter ⟦4⟧. That no longer should anyone be advanced from the lay state to the throne of Constantinople; for what has become rare, even if it be very good, cannot be established as a law for those who come after.

The Eastern Legates on Advancement From the Laity

1 Basil the most God-beloved metropolitan of Martyropolis and legate, and Elias the most reverent presbyter, and also Kosmas the apokrisiarios of Alexandria, said: This in no way contradicts the ecclesiastical ordinances. For if [the see] of Alex-

2 andria, and the patriarchal [throne] of Antioch [are roused to it], and not only that of the holy city as well—if in any order, whether of laity, or of monks, or of clergy, they find one who excels the rest in virtue, they do not decline to raise him to the hierarchical throne. For if Christ came down to earth as a layman [and not] only [a cleric], yet he did not shut off the prizes of virtue to these alone, but to the whole Christian fullness. But if this should be approved for acceptance, all the hierarchical thrones will come to be set in desolation and ruin; for the greater part of those who have shone among us were established upon the hierarchical thrones from the lay order. In agreeing to this, we do not sin, lest you should appear to be casting a vote against our hierarchs.

The Synod on Each Church Keeping Its Own Custom

1 The holy synod said: The [Roman] throne has ancient [customs] that have been handed down; and we ought, accordingly, not to contend with one another, but to yield. For let not the Church of the Romans [be reproached] in such things, [for] she has not fallen. Let the Church of Constantinople likewise keep the things proper to her, which she received from of old; and so too the thrones of the East. If the Church of the Romans never received a man from the laity into the episcopate, let her keep this; for let each one keep his own [usage], and let us not do harm by transgression. But [let it be said] that the easterners observed this, whereas with us the holy Church of the Constantinopolitans has been led to bring such men forward, not [only] from clergy but [also] from laity; so that the vote of the high-priesthood may come to them—and even if it [be granted] to them not [otherwise], yet [to those] who have proved themselves in the lay order.

2 …let us anathematize all things [written] against him, and reject [them]; and those who now receive them, let us hand over to the same anathema.

Canon: On Those Separated From Photios and the Church

1 Chapter 5. Those who until now have separated themselves from the Church and from Photios the most holy patriarch, and have given themselves over to the schismatic error, we define [to be cut off] from God and from all [communion] with Christ our true God, and from the assembly and concourse of the [established] faith, so long as they persist in the apostasy.

The Synod Allows the Repentant to Return

1 The holy synod said: It is pleasing to all, and rightly has it been decreed. Yet let them also be examined; and they themselves are free, as you also hear, to come to the feet of Photios the most holy patriarch, and, repenting, to [seek pardon] for the sin committed.

Peter the Cardinal Proposes a Common Liturgy

1 Peter the most reverent presbyter and cardinal said: Since by the grace of God all stumbling-blocks have been removed from the midst, and the truth, [now exalted], has become more radiant, and the Church has been illumined in the light of God, having received back peace and concord—and since the assembly ought to be filled out also with the sacred sacred-rite, and it seems good to your holiness—let us all, gathered together [as] the priestly assemblies of our [order], fulfill with Photios the most holy patriarch the sacred and divine liturgy and the holy mysteries. The holy synod said: Good things are acceptable to God. We rejoice also at your word. May God protect our lord the holy [emperor], and prolong his days unto the salvation of his Church; many years to the emperor.

Fifth Session

1 SESSION V.

2 In the month of January, the 25th, on the 3rd day [Tuesday], in the 9th indiction, with Photios the most holy and ecumenical patriarch presiding in the right part of the catechumens’ [gallery] of the Great Church; and seated together with him Paul and Eugenius the most God-beloved bishops and legates of elder Rome; and also Peter the most reverent presbyter and cardinal; and moreover Basil the most God-beloved bishop of Martyropolis and legate of the Church of Antioch; and Elias the most reverent presbyter and legate of Jerusalem; and Kosmas the most reverent presbyter and apokrisiarios of Alexandria; and the most God-beloved, etc.—Photios the most holy patriarch proclaims, concerning the Second [Council] at Nicaea in Bithynia [the Savior’s], and concerning [the matter of] Adrian the most [reverend] pope of Rome and of the [holy] patriarchs of Constantinople, that the church among us [should] be named [the Seventh]; and now he proclaims to the rest of the holy churches that legations [come] to the synods on equal terms with them. And the Church of the Romans, and likewise the thrones of the East, [should] accept and embrace her doctrine without troubling it, and concur with her, together with the rest of the holy ecumenical synods, and proclaim it to them [as] the Seventh.

The Cardinal on Concord Regarding the Council of Nicaea

1 Peter the most reverent presbyter and cardinal said: We wish your holiness to be in accord concerning the holy synod of [Nicaea], [held under] the holy patriarchs Alexander and Tarasius of Constantinople, concerning [their] being of one voice for the [reckoning of] times with the holy churches everywhere; and the holy Church of the Romans now [confirms] her doctrines.

The Synod Anathematizes Rejectors of the Seventh Council

1 The holy synod said: Better still, [let there be], with all concord, the acceptance and union of the Church of the Romans through the mediation of our most holy patriarch Photios; and on this matter let it be voiced to us, so that not even in this should there be…

2 [Text continues beyond p.259 seam]

3 …disagreement among us. Whoever does not so hold and name the holy and ecumenical Second Council of Nicaea, as the most God-fearing presbyter and cardinal also declared above, let him be anathema.

4 Eugenius, the most God-beloved bishop and legate of elder Rome, said: Whoever does not hold the ecumenical Second Council of Nicaea—held under the most holy Pope Adrian and Tarasius the patriarch of Constantinople who is among the saints—as a holy and Seventh Council, and does not honor it as the remaining six ecumenical councils, let him be anathema.

5 Basil, the most God-beloved bishop of Martyropolis and legate of Antioch, said: We both received it beforehand, and now, in agreement with your Holiness, we accept the holy and ecumenical Second Council of Nicaea, calling it the Seventh and holy, numbering it together with the six ecumenical councils that preceded it and proclaiming it together with them; and those who do not so hold we consign to anathema.

6 Elias, the most God-fearing presbyter and legate of Jerusalem, said: Whoever does not accept the holy and ecumenical council that convened at Nicaea the second time, neither does he accept the other six councils. For just as in those councils all the hierarchical thrones came together—some in their own persons, some through legates—and established the firm assurance of the doctrines, so also there: legates came both from the most holy Pope of Rome and likewise from the thrones of the East that are among us; and its doctrines were kindred, proper, and of one mind with those of the six ecumenical councils. Therefore whoever does not receive this council, nor names it an ecumenical and Seventh Council, even if he does not dare to say so, repudiates the others as well. Wherefore if anyone does not accept it as he does those holy and ecumenical six councils, let him be anathema. The holy synod said: Anathema.

7 The most holy legates of elder Rome said: We ask your Holiness to go to Metrophanes and to say to him: This holy synod, presiding here together with the holy legates, summons you, wishing to learn fully your purpose and your will concerning the union of the holy Church of God. Accordingly, having been summoned, Basil the most God-beloved archbishop of Crete, Niketas the most God-beloved metropolitan of Smyrna, and Gregory the most God-beloved archbishop of Selge were sent by the most holy legates and by the presiding synod. And coming to Metrophanes the most reverend, they said to him: The most holy bishops and legates of elder Rome, together with the presiding synod, make known to you these things through us: Clear up for us the state of your mind, and give an account to this holy and ecumenical synod for what cause you separate yourself from the Church. Metrophanes the most reverend said: I am ill, and for this reason I cannot say much. But this I say briefly: as for the cause for which I stand apart from you—had I been able, I would willingly have come and given an account of whatever was just. But my conscience bears witness to me that I have not the strength to set foot before you and to stand in your presence. For this reason I beg ⟦the syn-⟧

8 ⟦od⟧, since I am exceedingly ill; and when I am able, if it be possible, I beg you, allow me until the strength of my nature is restored; and ⟦then in this way I will give my account⟧.

9 Those who had been sent to the most reverend Metrophanes carried such words of his back to the synod. And the most holy legates of elder Rome answered: We, according to the charge we received from the most holy Pope John, not once but twice and many times, have admonished, enjoined, and entreated him to depart from his error and to come to the Church of God. But since now too, when we were sent, he makes excuses in his sins, and is able to utter empty babblings and words of apostasy, yet is not able to speak one right and saving word—namely, to say, “Behold, I am in communion with no dissenting church, according to the charge of the most holy Pope of Rome”—but his sickness in no way hinders him from his long babbling, while, being unwilling to make the saving confession, he blames his sickness: behold, according to the charge of the most holy and ecumenical Pope John, and according to the ecclesiastical ordinances handed down to us, we separate him from all ecclesiastical communion and fellowship, until he return to his own shepherd. For we wish you to know that the apostolic Pope John enjoined upon us these things, which we have duly proclaimed and announced beforehand: namely, that we should jointly depose and jointly absolve those whom Photios the most holy patriarch should subject either to deposition or to absolution, we and you being of one mind with us; and that whomever the most holy and ecumenical Pope John holds canonically deposed, in whatever order or rank, Photios the most holy patriarch should also hold as deposed; and likewise whomever Photios the most holy patriarch holds deposed or absolved, the most holy and ecumenical Pope John should also hold as condemned or absolved. Only, if it seem good to your Holiness, let this present matter also be taken up into the form of a canon.

10 The holy synod said: Let it be taken up. And when the canon had been issued, Peter the most God-beloved deacon and protonotary took it and read it.

Canon on the Common Bond of Rome and Constantinople

1 Chapter 1. The holy and ecumenical synod has decreed that if any of the clergy or laity or bishops from Italy, sojourning in Asia or Europe or Libya, have come under bond and deposition or anathematization by the most holy Pope John, such persons shall be under the same sentence of penalty by Photios the most holy patriarch of Constantinople also—that is, either deposed, or subjected to anathema, or excommunicated. And whatever cleric or layman, or whoever of the hierarchical and priestly order in any parish whatsoever, Photios our most holy patriarch shall place under excommunication or deposition or anathematization, the most holy Pope John and the holy Church of the Romans under him shall hold them under the same judgment of penalty—none of the prerogatives and privileges belonging to the most holy throne of the Church of the Romans, nor to its president, being in any way prejudiced thereby, neither now nor for the time to come.

2 The most holy legates of elder Rome said: It is approved. And the holy synod said: It is approved. Elias the most God-fearing presbyter and legate of Jerusalem said: May God grant that the thrones of the East also, with which the most holy Pope John

3 and our most holy patriarch Photios are concerned, may be of one soul and one accord, and that their will may be common and indivisible.

4 Basil the most God-beloved bishop of Martyropolis and legate of Antioch said: The greatest hierarchs of the thrones among us, holding an ever more indissoluble disposition toward the most holy patriarch Photios from the time he was raised to the hierarchical rank, sent us also for this purpose, giving authority and sanction to Photios the most holy patriarch, that if anyone—whether he be of the priestly register or of the lay order—should set himself apart, separating himself from the holy Church of God, whatever seems good to his Holiness might be ratified upon such persons. So that he, having received authority also from the Eastern thrones and having taken on the validity of the Roman sanction as well, as we have just now heard—or rather, as a great hierarch anticipating it from God—whomever he should bind with the indissoluble bond of the all-holy Spirit, we too hold bound; and whomever he should loose, we also hold loosed.

5 The most holy legates of elder Rome said: Blessed be God, that thus the minds and wills of all the most holy commanders have come together into one, and that through the common concord and peace all the things initiated and done by the holy and ecumenical synod have come to a good end. The holy synod said: That the things done by us have received a good end—even if we should be silent, the stones will cry out. Whoever does not conform to the things done by this holy and ecumenical synod shall be separated from the holy and ⟦consubstantial⟧ Trinity. But we ask your Holiness concerning those who separate themselves from the Church: if, after the synod is completed, they return in repentance, what is your view? Concerning this the most holy legates of elder Rome said: We have already said that the most holy Pope John conferred all this authority upon Photios the most holy patriarch, so that he has authority both to receive those who return, and to condemn by excommunication those who do not repent. Only, let those appointed go to Metrophanes the most reverend, carrying our answers and the bond made against him. The holy synod said: It is just. The holy legates of elder Rome said: Let those who are to go be appointed. There went John the most God-beloved metropolitan of Heraclea, Daniel of Ancyra, and George of Nicomedia, who announced to Metrophanes the things said above concerning him. And returning, they gave this answer: As, according to the Apostle, the law is not laid down for the righteous, so neither for one who is sick and grievously ill. The things, therefore, which your Holiness proposes, as with the authority of the Pope, are not now suited to our lowliness; for we are ailing, as we said before, and we are not able to come. But if you wish to receive a complete answer concerning the ecclesiastical union, let the three of you alone take the trouble to come to our lowliness, that I may speak with you; and then may what is pleasing in the sight of God come to pass.

6 When this utterance, therefore, had been carried back and read, the most holy legates said: His

7 sickness did not hinder him, that through many words the light of God should not be kindled in him, and that he should declare to us, “I am in communion with the Church.” Wherefore, behold, delaying will profit him nothing; rather, he wishes to deliver himself from the penalty imposed upon him.

8 Prokopios the most God-beloved archbishop of Caesarea in Cappadocia said: That man often pleads sickness, often incapacity; in every way he has been eager to escape the judgment that rests with your Holiness. The most holy legates of elder Rome said: As for what concerns him, we have given our verdict, just as our most holy and ecumenical Pope ordained. For let your Holiness call to mind that in your presence we read the letter of the most holy Pope John, and it contained, concerning the peace of the Church, the reception of those who come to it sincerely and in repentance, and that whatever things are bound, the shepherds are able to loose.

9 Prokopios the most God-beloved archbishop of Caesarea in Cappadocia said: If they do not loose the things that are bound, what else can they do? Peter the most God-fearing presbyter and cardinal said: The ecumenical and apostolic Pope John, having received this authority from Peter the chief of the apostles, has given the same authority of binding and loosing to the most holy patriarch Photios also. But Metrophanes, by these and such-like pretexts, wishes to escape the condemnation that hangs over him; and he will not be able to evade it. For the most holy patriarch Photios, having the authority given him by the most holy Pope John, will impose upon him the fitting condemnation even without our presence.

10 Photios the most holy patriarch said: What is your view concerning those of the hierarchical order who enroll themselves into the rank of the monks? Can these same men, while delivering themselves over into subjection, still retain the same pastoral office? The most holy legates said: This is not so among us, nor is it permitted. For whoever is numbered from the hierarchical order into that of the monks—that is, of the penitents—can no longer hold the distinguishing dignity of the hierarchy. And Basil and Elias, the most holy legates of the Eastern thrones, said: Neither among us has this ever been found to have happened. On the contrary, monks advance to become hierarchs; but those who descend from being hierarchs to being monks cannot remain hierarchs.

11 The holy synod said: Let a canon be defined concerning this also; for often disputes arise among us concerning this matter, some saying that hierarchs who have become monks are not prevented from still performing the functions of hierarchs, while others do not concur in this. The most holy legates said: Let a canon be set forth. And the holy synod said: We wish, moreover, that a canon be set forth also concerning those of the laity who have come to such madness and folly as to strike or imprison hierarchs or priests of God. For even if this has happened but rarely, yet we know it to have occurred from many years past. For if there be no defined and conspicuous punishment for those who dare this, all the more will the evil one prevail to

12 ⟦drag men into⟧ this godless deed. Basil and Elias, the most holy legates of the East, said: It is fitting that a canon be laid down concerning this also. And when the canons had at once been issued, Photios the most holy patriarch said: If your Holiness so commands, let the canons be read. And Peter the most God-beloved deacon and protonotary took them and read.

Canon: On Hierarchs Who Become Monks

1 Chapter 2. Although until now some of the hierarchs, descending into the habit of monks, have forced themselves to remain in the height of the hierarchy, and in doing this were overlooked, yet this holy and ecumenical synod, regulating the oversight and bringing back this disorderly practice to the ordinances of ecclesiastical good order, has decreed: that if a bishop, or anyone else of the hierarchical dignity, having descended to the monastic life and wishing to fill the place of repentance, should desire it, he shall no longer lay claim to the hierarchical dignity. For the covenants of the monks bear the character of subjection and discipleship, but not of teaching and presidency; they profess not to shepherd others, but to be shepherded. Wherefore, in accordance with what has been said before, we decree: that no one of those numbered in the hierarchical register and accounted among the shepherds shall bring himself down into the rank of the shepherded and the penitent; and if anyone should dare to do this after the proclamation and promulgation of the decree now proclaimed, having himself deprived himself of the hierarchical rank, he shall no longer return to the former dignity which he willingly renounced.

Canon: On Laymen Who Strike a Bishop

1 Chapter 3. If any of the laity, acting insolently and despising the divine and imperial ordinances, and deriding also the awesome statutes and laws of the Church, should dare to strike or imprison some bishop, whether without cause, or having fabricated a cause, let such a one be anathema. The holy synod said: Anathema.

2 Photios the most holy and ecumenical patriarch said: Since all that needed to be done in this holy and ecumenical synod has—by the good pleasure of God, by the cooperation of our great and exalted emperors, and by the assent and concurrence of the most holy Pope of Rome, our spiritual brother and father, through the presence of his most holy legates and of the remaining three Eastern thrones—since these things have attained an auspicious end, such as we could have prayed for from the beginning, we give thanks to the surpassingly good and man-loving God, who has put away the scandals from our midst and the schismatic error, who has joined together what was divided and has bestowed concord upon the Churches of God. And if anything yet remains of what ought to be accomplished together with these things, your Christ-loving assembly, considering this also, is bound through the prayer and cooperation of all to receive its proper completion.

3 The most holy legates of elder Rome said: Let your Holiness also call to mind that, in the foregoing session of your Sanctity, in the presence of your Holiness, the commonitorium given to us by the most holy and ecumenical Pope, when read, contained also the subscriptions of the most holy bishops found at the Roman synod held by John the most holy Pope at elder Rome, for the acceptance of Photios the most holy patriarch and for the rejection of those who write or speak against him; and for the excommunication of those who willingly separate themselves from the holy Church of God at Constantinople; and for the acceptance of those who repent and sincerely take refuge in his compassion. We therefore entreat your holy assembly, with the consent and counsel of all, that the same things be done here also; and that each of you, by his own handwritten signature, confirm and corroborate the things done and accomplished by common decree by this holy and ecumenical synod. For indeed, as far as lay within our power, we have with great diligence set ourselves, according to the command of the great hierarch John the most holy Pope of Rome, to remove all the scandals and tares newly springing up in the Church of the Constantinopolitans, and to bestow peace upon it by the cooperation of God. And if anything has been judged by Peter, which we do not know and has been left undone, we know that the most holy patriarch lord Photios is able, by words and deeds, to set these things right, and to instruct, teach, and admonish those who still separate themselves out of folly, and to reconcile them to his holy Church; and to deal with those who are incurably sick with justice and the fitting penalty. For he had authority received from God even before our coming, and this he doubled through the charge of the most holy Pope. And thus we hold and regard and accept him, as the most holy Pope John himself.

4 Photios the most holy patriarch said: We also accept you in the place of fathers, and as serving as legates of the most holy Pope John, our spiritual brother and father—especially since you have zealously fulfilled and displayed all his charges, and have undergone no small struggle and toil to remove the tares and scandals springing up from the evil one in this holy Church of God. Holding and reckoning you in such honor and rank, with your counsel and concurrence—just as until now we have transacted all things—so also from now on, concerning the rest, with your counsel and exhortation joining in, we shall deliberate and accomplish.

5 The most holy legates of the Eastern thrones said: Neither would our own disposition toward him in the Holy Spirit be chosen as less than your disposition toward him. For indeed the holy Church of Jerusalem, and that of the Antiochenes and the Alexandrians, never rejected or denied that they held this same holy Photios as the most holy and canonically established patriarch of Constantinople, from the time he was raised to this sacred throne. But also those who dared falsely to assign to themselves the titles of legates, and to do unlawful things here against this holy man—these the aforesaid most holy thrones rejected and delivered to anathema. And I too, the humble Elias—what shall I dare to say even concerning myself? Many imprisonments, exiles, toils, hungers, and dishonors have I endured for his sake, fulfilling the command of God, and then also of the most holy patriarch of Jerusalem, who sent me here.

6 The holy synod said: We give thanks to God, that God has granted us such a hierarch and chief shepherd, through the mediation of our exalted and great emperors, and the

7 cooperation of the holy Pope John, and of your Holiness.

8 Then Paul and Eugenius and Peter, the most holy legates of elder Rome, took the parchments, and each of them signed. Then, after the signing, the subscriptions were read aloud through an interpreter in the hearing of all, containing as follows.

Subscription of Paul of Ancona and the Roman Legates

1 I, Paul, least of bishops of the holy Church of Ancona, and legate of the holy apostolic throne and of my lord John, the most blessed supreme hierarch of the holy catholic and apostolic Church of the Romans and ecumenical Pope, in this holy and ecumenical synod—those things which, according to the charge, the command, and the consent of our most holy apostolic and ecumenical Pope John, and the consent of the holy Church of the Constantinopolitans, and the agreement of the legates of the three hierarchical thrones, and the joint vote of the holy and ecumenical synod, [were enacted]—I accept this most venerable Photios as lawful and canonically established patriarch in the dignity of the hierarchy, and I am in communion with him according to the series of the letters, that is, the text of the commonitorium. And I reject and anathematize the synod that was constituted against him in the holy Church of the Constantinopolitans; likewise also all the things lately [done] against him in the times of the pious memory of Adrian the former Pope of Rome—according to the chapter of the commonitorium, I annul and anathematize and reject them, and I in no way count this among the number of councils. And since, if it should happen that any should separate themselves from the holy Church of God and turn away from their own chief shepherd and ecumenical patriarch, the holy Photios, [I decree] that they be separated from the holy Church of God and remain out of communion, until they return to the holy Church of God, and enter into communion with the most holy and ecumenical patriarch, and be of one mind and of one accord with the apostolic throne. Moreover, calling the Seventh holy and ecumenical Council at Nicaea the second time, concerning the sacred and venerable icons, in the times of the pious memory of Adrian the former Pope of Rome, and under Tarasius the most holy patriarch of the Church of the Constantinopolitans, a holy and ecumenical Seventh Council, and numbering it among the holy councils, I have signed with my own hand.

2 The same also Eugenius the most God-beloved bishop of the holy Church of Ostia, and Peter the most God-fearing presbyter and cardinal, signed with their own hands. And since, for the confirmation and recognition of what was written, as was said above, the document of the most holy legates of elder Rome was read, after the reading the holy synod answered: Blessed be God, who through the cooperation of your most holy Pope John has united His holy catholic and apostolic Church. Then the most holy legates of the Eastern thrones also took [the parchments]—Basil the most God-beloved metropolitan of Martyropolis, also holding the throne of the Church of Antioch; Elias the most God-fearing presbyter and legate of Jerusalem; and further Kosmas the most God-

3 fearing presbyter and apocrisiarius of Alexandria—and each of them signed with his own hand thus.

Subscription of Basil of Martyropolis, Legate of Antioch

1 I, Basil, by the mercy of God metropolitan of Martyropolis and legate of Antioch, agreeing with this holy and ecumenical synod—or rather, holding this view even before it—accept Photios the most holy hierarch of God as lawful and canonically established patriarch, just as Theodosius the most holy patriarch of Antioch, by whom I was also sent, accepted him, and the remaining hierarchical thrones. And those who do not accept him as we do, or who dare to break off in schism against him, I anathematize and turn away from; and all the things constituted against him in any place whatsoever and by any person whatsoever, I subject to the same anathema. Moreover, proclaiming the council that convened at Nicaea the second time against the iconoclasts as a holy and ecumenical Seventh Council, I have signed with my own hand.

Subscription of Elias, Legate of Jerusalem

1 I, Elias, by the mercy of God monk, presbyter, and legate of the holy Church of God of Jerusalem, agreeing with this holy and ecumenical synod—or rather, holding this view even before it—accept Photios the most holy hierarch of God as lawful and canonically established patriarch, just as Theodosius the patriarch of Jerusalem who is among the saints accepted him, and his successor Elias the most holy patriarch of the same hierarchy, and the remaining hierarchical thrones. And those who do not accept him as we do, or who dare to break off in schism against him, I anathematize and turn away from; and all the things constituted against him in any place whatsoever and by any person whatsoever, I subject to the same anathema. Moreover, proclaiming the council that convened at Nicaea the second time against the iconoclasts as a holy and ecumenical Seventh Council, I have signed with my own hand.

Subscription of Kosmas of Alexandria and the Metropolitans

1 I, Kosmas, by the mercy of God monk, presbyter, and apocrisiarius of Alexandria, agreeing with this holy and ecumenical synod—or rather, holding this view even before it—accept Photios the most holy hierarch of God as lawful and canonically established patriarch, just as Michael the patriarch of Alexandria who is among the saints accepted him, and his successor of the same name, Michael the most holy patriarch of the same hierarchy, and the remaining hierarchical thrones. And those who do not accept him as we do, and who dare to break off in schism against him, I anathematize and turn away from, subjecting all the things constituted against him in any place whatsoever and by any person whatsoever to the same anathema. Moreover, proclaiming the council that convened at Nicaea the second time against the iconoclasts as a holy and ecumenical Seventh Council, I have signed with my own hand.

2 Upon these, the most God-beloved metropolitans and bishops also subscribed with their own hand thus. Prokopios, by the mercy of God archbishop of Caesarea in Cappadocia, agreeing in all things with this holy and ecumenical synod, both for the acceptance of Photios the most holy patriarch, and for the rejection of all who write or speak against him; ratifying also the holy and ecumenical council held at Nicaea the second time, I have signed with my own hand.

3 Gregory, by the mercy of God archbishop of Ephesus, agreeing in all things with this holy and ecumenical synod, both for the acceptance of Photios the most holy patriarch, and for the rejection of all who write or speak against him;

4 ratifying also the holy and ecumenical council held at Nicaea the second time, I have signed with my own hand.

Subscription of John of Heraclea and the Rest

1 I, John, by the mercy of God metropolitan of Heraclea, agreeing in all things with this holy and ecumenical synod, both for the acceptance of Photios the most holy patriarch, and for the rejection of all who write or speak against him; ratifying also the holy and ecumenical council held at Nicaea the second time, I have signed with my own hand.

2 And thereafter all the hierarchs by name, who are designated at the beginning of the acts, each signed the like with his own hand. After the signing, the holy synod, sending up many thanksgivings to God, the cause of good things, and to the emperors, for the things that had come to pass, made acclamation: Many be the years of the emperors! Of Basil, Leo, and Alexander, the great emperors and autocrats, many be the years! Of Eudokia, the most pious Augusta, many be the years! Of Stephen the Porphyrogenitus, and God-promoted syncellus, many be the years! Of John and Photios, the most holy patriarchs, many [years]!

Sixth Session

1 SESSION VI

2 In the month of March, on the third day, in the thirteenth indiction, while our most pious and Christ-loving emperors Basil, Leo, and Alexander were seated in the renowned palace of the Chrysotriklinos, and there was seated together with them Photios the most holy patriarch;

3 and further Paul and Eugenius, the most holy bishops and vicars of elder Rome; and Peter, the most God-fearing presbyter and cardinal; and with them Basil, metropolitan of Martyropolis and vicar of the Church of Antioch; Elias, the most God-fearing presbyter and vicar of Jerusalem; and Kosmas, the most God-fearing presbyter and apocrisiary of Alexandria; and besides these the most God-beloved metropolitans and bishops being seated together, I mean Prokopios of Caesarea in Cappadocia, John of Heraclea, Daniel of Ancyra, George of Nicomedia, Zacharias of Chalcedon, Cyprian of Claudiopolis, Nikephoros of Caria, Paul of Thessalonica, Theophilus of Iconium, Symeon of Laodicea, Nicholas of Philippi, Ignatius of Hierapolis, Gregory of Selge, Sabbas of Apros, Stephen of Cypsella, Niketas of Smyrna, Luke of Bosporus, Paul of Cherson—all these being seated together, Basil the Christ-loving emperor said: It would perhaps have been fitting to be present at the holy and ecumenical council that has been convened, and together with you both to accomplish and to carry through the matters of peace and concord of the Churches of God, in the presence of the whole assembly of hierarchs and priests; and by our own subscription to seal and ratify what has seemed good to this sacred and great council. But lest some of those who have tongues ready for reproaches and blasphemies should cry out that the presence of our imperial Majesty was some insult to this holy and ecumenical council—as though all had run together toward peace and concord out of some deference to our person, or even in some hope toward us—for this reason we held back, so that first, of yourselves and of the other hierarchical thrones and of the whole fullness of the Church, with the favor from on high lending you its aid, you might bring all things to completion according to the divine will and your own voluntary and free judgment; and thus our God-appointed sovereignty, having accepted together with you and ratified the things defined and confirmed by the holy and ecumenical council, might set its seal with its own hand. Yet I have thought it better—if it also seems good to you, all being in concord and deep peace and joined to Christ the head of all—that a certain definition of the ecclesiastical mind be proclaimed: not some common and intruded one, but that which the holy and great council in Nicaea laid as a foundation, and which the rest of the holy and ecumenical councils built up and ratified together.

4 Basil, the most God-beloved metropolitan of Martyropolis and vicar of Antioch, said: It is fitting that, the schisms and scandals having been taken away from every church—by your forethought and zeal, our Christ-loving emperor, and by the prayers and supplications to God of your spiritual father, our most holy patriarch Photios—this same definition should be one and the same throughout all the inhabited world, as indeed it is even now, having also been ratified by the present fourteenth council.

5 The hierarchs of God who were present said: By all means the definition of the council in Nicaea, which the rest of the holy and ecumenical councils also ratified and built upon, ought to be read out also in this

6 great and ecumenical council. The most holy vicars of elder Rome said: As our great emperor from God has commanded, and as it has pleased our brethren and fellow priests, it is fitting that no other definition be devised, but that the ancient one, which is held fast and glorified throughout all the inhabited world, be read out and confirmed. Photios the most holy patriarch said: According to the judgment of all our brethren and fellow priests, let it be read. And so Peter, the most God-beloved deacon and protonotary, came forward and read.

Proclamation and Confirmation of the Symbol of Faith

1 Holding the most true and divine teaching of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ within the bosoms of our understanding with unhesitating mind, and being grounded in purity of faith, and through his holy disciples and apostles maintaining the sacred ordinances and the canonical norms with most unerring judgment and preserving them intact; and likewise honoring with most sincere and unshaken belief and guarding together the proclamation and the canonical statutes of the seven holy and ecumenical councils—as guided and raised up by the inspirations of one and the same Holy Spirit—unbroken and unassailable: we cast off those whom they excommunicated; and we hold as welcome and worthy of acceptance those who, judged to be of the same belief and teachers against impiety, have rendered the honor and holy reverence that is owed. For, thinking and proclaiming concerning these things the definition of the most pure Christian faith that has come down from the Fathers of old even to us, working it out both in mind and tongue, we announce it to all with a far-sounding voice: taking nothing away, adding nothing, altering nothing, falsifying nothing. For neither the removal nor the addition, when no heresy is being stirred up by the devices of the evil one, introduces anything but a condemnation of the unimpeachable and an inexcusable insult to the Fathers. And to alter the definitions of the Fathers with adulterated words is far more grievous than the former. Therefore this holy and ecumenical council, working with divine longing and uprightness of mind upon the definition of the faith handed down from the beginning, and establishing and raising up in it the support of salvation, cries aloud to all to think and proclaim thus: I believe in one God, the Father almighty—and so forth to the end.

2 [The Symbol of Faith—recited in full according to the Niceno-Constantinopolitan formulation.]

3 Thus we believe; in this confession of faith we were baptized. Through it the word of truth has exposed every heresy scattered abroad and dissolved. Those who think thus we inscribe as brethren and fathers and fellow heirs of the commonwealth on high. But if anyone should dare to write out another exposition besides this sacred Symbol, which has been handed down to us from of old from our blessed and holy fathers even to us, and to call it a definition of faith, robbing the dignity of the confession of those divinely inspired men and attaching this to it by his own quibbling inventions, and to set it forth as a common lesson to the faithful, or even to certain who are returning from some heresy; and if with counterfeit words, or additions, or subtractions, he should be so brazen as to falsify the antiquity of this sacred and venerable definition—then, according to the sentence already proclaimed before us by the holy and ecumenical councils, if he be one of the clergy, we subject him to deposition; but if of the laity, we hand him over to the anathema.

4 And after the reading, the sacred assembly that was present cried out: We all think thus, thus we believe; in this confession we were baptized and were deemed worthy of the priestly rank. Those who think otherwise than these things, or who dare to put forward another definition in place of this one, we subject to the anathema.

5 Elias, the most God-fearing presbyter and vicar of Jerusalem, and Kosmas, the apocrisiary of Alexandria, said: Anathema to those who think anything other than this. Anathema to those who do not confess this common Symbol of the faith.

6 Photios the most holy patriarch said: If it seems good to you, O sacred and holy assembly—as also at the beginning our exalted and holy emperor assented—to seal and ratify by his own subscription the things transacted and defined by the council, let this now be accomplished. The most holy metropolitans said: Not only do we think it good, but we also beg and entreat his holy and exalted Majesty to accept and seal by his own subscription all the things accomplished in this holy and ecumenical council. And Basil the Christ-loving emperor, taking it, subscribed with his own hand. And after the subscription the sacred company present acclaimed him. And after the acclamation the holy council again said: We beg that not only our exalted and great emperor confirm the things that have seemed good to this holy council, but also his God-supported and God-guarded offshoots, our great and holy emperors, and indeed now Stephen the Porphyrogennetos, the spiritual child of the Church—that each of them likewise subscribe.

7 Basil the Christ-loving emperor said: Let it be done according to your request. And Leo, taking it, subscribed; then Alexander—the emperors. And after them Stephen the most pious subdeacon and Porphyrogennetos.

8 And after all had subscribed, Theophanes the most reverend deacon and inspector, taking it, read.

Subscription of the Emperor Basil

1 In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Basil, autocrat, faithful emperor of the Romans in Christ, in all things agreeing with this holy and ecumenical council, both in the ratification and sealing of the holy and ecumenical seventh council, and in the ratification and confirmation of Photios the most holy patriarch of Constantinople, a blameless father, and in the rejection of all that has been written or spoken against him, have subscribed with my own hand. Likewise also the subscriptions of the others, which stand exactly the same.

2 And after the reading, Daniel the most God-beloved metropolitan of Ancyra said: God preserve your holy Majesty. God preserve your pious sovereignty. May God grant length of days to your holy life. You have strengthened the doctrine of Orthodoxy. You have removed the scandals of the Church from our midst. And peace has been granted to the Church of God through you. God preserve your holy Majesty. And further the sacred assembly that was present also cried out:

3 As you have united the Church of God and driven out all the scandals from it, may God subject all the barbarian nations under your mighty and great hand. May the Lord our God restore the ancient boundaries of the Roman dominion to your mighty and peacemaking reign. Truly it is fitting to say the word of David concerning you also: “Because you have loved righteousness and hated lawlessness, therefore God, your God, has anointed you with the oil of gladness above your fellows.” For indeed the whole Christian race rejoices at the trophies won against your enemies, and the Church today, having recovered her own adornment, completely hymns and glorifies you. May it go well with your mighty and great and exalted Majesty. And having said these things, they acclaimed: Many years to the emperors!

Seventh Session

1 SESSION VII.

2 In the month of March, on the thirteenth, in the thirteenth indiction, on the Lord’s day. Photios our most holy lord presiding, on the right side of the catechumens’ gallery of the great church; and seated together with him Paul and Eugenius the most holy bishops; and Peter the most God-fearing presbyter and cardinal and vicar of elder Rome; and the most holy vicars of the East, together with the most God-beloved metropolitans and bishops. Photios the most holy patriarch said: The old strife and contention—I mean the schismatic error—having been removed, by the good pleasure of God and his love for mankind, and then by the zeal and struggle of our exalted and great emperor, and by the cooperation and aid of the most holy pope, our spiritual brother and father, and of the rest of the hierarchical thrones; and deep peace, as you all see, having been bestowed upon the Churches of God everywhere, and the former indifference and gloom having been dissolved, and joy and gladness being spread abroad over the fullness of the Church—it is fitting, as I think, that the definition proclaimed yesterday by this holy and ecumenical council, together with the imperial subscriptions which ratify the conciliar acts, be brought forward into the midst and read out in the hearing of all; so that, of all the joy and delight with which those present and listening were filled on the preceding day, those who were then not present but are now with us may also come into the enjoyment.

3 The holy council said: It is right that the brethren who were left behind also become hearers, that they too may become partakers of the gladness. And Peter the most God-beloved deacon and protonotary, taking it, read the definition proclaimed and ratified by this holy and ecumenical council—it is the one set forth in the previous session. And after the reading the holy council cried out: We think thus, we believe thus, in this confession of faith we stand firm. Those who think thus we proclaim as teachers and fathers. Those who think contrary to these things we regard as enemies of God and of the truth. If anyone should dare to write out and put forward another besides this sacred Symbol, or to take away from it, and be so brazen as to call it a definition,

4 let him be put away from us under condemnation and as one hated. For by taking away or adding, he shows our confession toward the holy and consubstantial Trinity, held from the beginning until today, to be incomplete, and he condemns both the apostolic tradition and the teaching of the Fathers. If therefore anyone, driven to such madness, should dare, as has been said above, to set forth another Symbol and call it a definition, that is, to make an addition or subtraction in the one handed down to us by the holy and ecumenical great council first held in Nicaea, let him be anathema.

5 But let us also hear the subscription of our pious and Christ-loving emperors. And so Peter the most God-beloved deacon and protonotary, coming forward, read these also. And after the reading, Prokopios the most God-beloved archbishop of Caesarea in Cappadocia said: The Wisdom and Power of God that holds all things together, which has appointed the principalities and authorities and the nature of men to be governed most wisely, foreseeing the pure and untroubled mind of our holy emperor, exalted him and established him upon the renowned and most lofty throne of the empire; granting to us also our lord, the holy lord Photios the patriarch; and through him uniting the divided parts of the Church into one flock of the great Chief Shepherd, Christ our God, cutting off also the hostile wolves from the rational fold of Christ—those who cloak their own wickedness with a sheepskin and do not embrace peace and concord. Wherefore we also, his unworthy servants, pray for his reign in peace, that the Lord God may grant him to us for many and good years. May the Lord subject under his feet all the nations that desire wars; and may he show him to be a partaker of the eternal good things which he has prepared for those who love him, through the intercessions of the most holy Theotokos, and of the first and chief apostles Peter and Paul, and by the prayers of our most holy lord Photios the ecumenical patriarch. So be it. Amen.

6 The most holy vicars of elder Rome said: Blessed be God, that the good repute of the most holy Photios the patriarch has gone out not only into our own country but into all the world—having its certainty not in words only, but rather embracing the ends of the earth by deeds; and not only in Gaul and Italy was it ⟦recounted⟧, but in all the land under the sun; and to this bear witness not only those who use the tongue of Greece, but even the barbarian and most savage race, that there is none like him in wisdom and knowledge, nor in mercy and compassion, nor in kindness and humility, since always his deeds are more than his words. Our apostolic Lord [the Pope], inclined by the entreaties of the emperor and by your supplications, sent us, the least of men, that together with you we might gather the Church of God into one. Which has come to pass through the Holy Spirit, and you have become one body and one flock under one shepherd.

7 Prokopios the most God-beloved archbishop of Caesarea in Cappadocia said: Such in truth ought he to be who has obtained the oversight of the whole world, after the type of the Chief Shepherd, Christ our God; which the blessed Paul also, anticipating it, ⟦portrayed⟧ when he said: “Having therefore a great high priest who has passed through the heavens.” For my discourse will dare to raise itself even thus far, since the Scripture knows also how to call gods those who live according to grace.

8 The most holy vicars of elder Rome said: True is what you have said. We too, who dwell at the ends of the earth, have heard these things. Prokopios of Caesarea said: Knowing these things, our exalted and great emperors conceived a certain fervent longing toward our hierarch. And not they alone, but every hierarch and priest, monks too and those in the lay station, we are his followers and disciples, and from his fullness we have all received, just as the all-venerable apostles received from our Lord Jesus Christ. May he be granted to us for many years. And may the Lord God bestow upon us his holy prayers and intercessions, in this present age and in the age to come.

9 Paul and Eugenius the most holy bishops and vicars of elder Rome, and further also Peter the most God-fearing presbyter and cardinal, said: If anyone does not hold him to be the holy one, and does not embrace communion with him, let his portion be with Judas; and may he not be numbered at all among Christians. And the holy council cried out: We all think and glorify the same. And if anyone does not hold him to be a hierarch of God, may he not see the glory of God. And having said these things, they acclaimed: Many years to the emperors!

10 [—The ratification of the acts of this holy and ecumenical council. Likewise there follows a letter of the great man, the pope of Rome, to the most holy Photios, archbishop of Constantinople—NOT TRANSCRIBED: a separate document, distinct from the acts.]

Colophon

The Acts of the Council of Constantinople (879–880)
by The Council of Constantinople (879–880).

This edition was produced by
Royal Archives.

The cover features
Santa Sofia (1891)
by John Singer Sargent (American, 1856–1925), The Met (Open Access), which is in the public domain.

The text is set in Palatino and Georgia.

The first edition of this ebook was released on
August 16, 2026.

Table of Contents

Title Page
Copyright
Introduction

The Acts of the Holy Council Under St. Photios

The Council Convenes: List of Those Present
Peter the Protonotary Opens the Proceedings
First Session
Second Session
Opening of the Second Session
Reading of Pope John’s Letter to the Emperors

Prokopios of Caesarea Receives Photios as Patriarch

Elias of Jerusalem on the Unbroken Concord With Photios

Prokopios on Admonishing Those Still Outside the Church

Peter the Cardinal on Correcting the Erring

Prokopios on Gentleness Toward the Separated

The Synod Accepts the Papal Letter to the Emperor

Letter of Pope John to Patriarch Photios
Photios Accepts What Is Written in the Letter
On Gathering the Dispersed Bishops
Photios on the Two Bishops Sent Into Exile
The Cardinal Raises the Question of Bulgaria
Photios on Peace and the Question of Bulgaria
The Cardinal Praises Photios for Keeping Love

Photios on His Reply to Pope Nicholas Concerning the Thrones

Prokopios on the Subjection of the Nations

Gregory of Ephesus on Deferring the Question of Dioceses

The Synod Sets Aside the Matter of Dioceses

The Cardinal Asks How Photios Ascended the Throne

The Synod Answers: By the Agreement of the Three Thrones

The Synod Denies That Photios Ascended Tyrannically

The Cardinal on the Concord Toward Photios

The Synod Proclaims One Flock and One Shepherd

Photios Recounts His Ascent to the Throne

Photios Continues on the Troubles of His Ascent

The Synod Affirms the Truth of the Account

Photios on His Reconciliation With the Emperor

The Synod on the Afflictions and Restoration of Photios

Peter the Cardinal on Hierarchs Restored by Rome

The Synod on Photios Imitating Christ the First Hierarch

Pope John Restores Photios to His Throne

Photios Gives Thanks to Christ and Pope John

The Reading of the Eastern Letters Is Proposed

Letter of Michael of Alexandria to the Emperors

The Synod Affirms the Communion of the Eastern Thrones

Letter of Michael of Alexandria to Patriarch Photios

Letter of Repentance of Thomas of Tyre
Letter of Theodosios of Jerusalem to Photios
Letter of Theodosios of Antioch to Photios

Letter of Adramius of Amida and Samosata to Photios

Third Session

Letter of Pope John to the Church of Constantinople

Letter of Theodosios of Jerusalem to the Emperor Basil

Photios on Committing Past Wrongs to Oblivion

Elias on His Coming for the Sake of the Church

Paul and Eugenios, Legates of Elder Rome, Speak

Photios on the Reward of the Legates’ Goodwill

Peter the Cardinal Proposes the Reading of the Commonitorium

The Commonitorium to the Legates
Commonitorium, Chapter 1
Commonitorium, Chapter 2
Commonitorium, Chapter 3
Commonitorium, Chapter 4
Commonitorium, Chapter 5
Commonitorium, Chapter 6
Commonitorium, Chapter 7
Commonitorium, Chapter 8
Commonitorium, Chapter 9
Commonitorium, Chapter 10
Commonitorium, Chapter 11
Photios on the Reconciliation of the Churches
Fourth Session

Reading of the Letters of the Eastern Patriarchs

Prokopios on the Concord Concerning the Seventh Council

Canon: No Layman to Be Advanced to the Throne of Constantinople

The Eastern Legates on Advancement From the Laity

The Synod on Each Church Keeping Its Own Custom

Canon: On Those Separated From Photios and the Church

The Synod Allows the Repentant to Return
Peter the Cardinal Proposes a Common Liturgy
Fifth Session

The Cardinal on Concord Regarding the Council of Nicaea

The Synod Anathematizes Rejectors of the Seventh Council

Canon on the Common Bond of Rome and Constantinople

Canon: On Hierarchs Who Become Monks

Canon: On Laymen Who Strike a Bishop

Subscription of Paul of Ancona and the Roman Legates

Subscription of Basil of Martyropolis, Legate of Antioch

Subscription of Elias, Legate of Jerusalem

Subscription of Kosmas of Alexandria and the Metropolitans

Subscription of John of Heraclea and the Rest

Sixth Session

Proclamation and Confirmation of the Symbol of Faith

Subscription of the Emperor Basil
Seventh Session
Colophon