Pope Nicholas of Rome sent a letter to Emperor Michael III on this day in 865. Until 330, Rome was the capital of the Empire. It was the city where the Holy Chief Apostles Peter and Paul ended their lives’ journey, the city of the catacombs and martyrs. When Emperor Constantine the Great moved the Imperial capital to the shores of the Bosporus, the Bishop of Rome became, first and foremost, the leader of the Christian population of the city, largely unfettered by political dictat. This newfound independence from Imperial authority contributed to the popes’ historical steadfastness in Orthodoxy, and as a result, it was not uncommon for Byzantine church leaders such as St. Theodore the Studite (d. 826) to appeal to in his letter to Pope Leo to the authority of “the thirteen apostle.” In 843, Empress St. Theodora restored the veneration of icons. In 847, St. Ignatios, a castrated son of Emperor Michael Rangabe and a person of ascetic life, became Patriarch of Constantinople. When Theodora’s son, Michael III, toppled Theodora in 855, Igantios had to go, too. The “new team” – Michael and his uncle Bardas, Theodora’s brother – nominated Photios, a scholar from the “University of Constantinople” (Magnaura), who was hurriedly promoted through all the clerical ranks in the course of four days and made patriarch on Christmas day in 858. Early in 860, a Byzantine delegation went to Rome, carrying two letters. Photios sent his letter of introduction to Pope Nicholas I, asking him to send legates to Constantinople to condemn the Iconoclast heresy. Emperor Michael III also sent an invitation to send legates to a council in Constantinople that would once again condemn Iconoclasm. In late September 860, the papal legates left Rome with the Byzantine embassy. The legates – Bishops Radoald and Zachary – were superb canonists. Their task was to examine whether the canons had been observed at Ignatios’s deposition. They were carrying letters to Michael III and Photios. In his response to the emperor, dated September 25, 860, Nicholas assessed Ignatios’s trial as unjust. Pope Nicholas stated that he had decided to wait for the legates to deliver the results of their investigation to him before deciding whether or not to recognize Photios’s accession to the Patriarchal Throne of Constantinople. A topical issue for Rome – territories lost by the Roman Church to Constantinople – was mentioned once again in the letter to Michael III. Upon their arrival in Constantinople before Christmas 860, the legates were prevented from contacting Ignatios for three months. During that time, the imperial authorities intimidated and bribed them to win their support by confirming Ignatios’s deposition. These internal (the Ignatians) and external (papal primacy) issues led to this Council being called the “First and Second.” They also shaped its agenda and how it was conducted. Since the Imperial Church had deposed Ignatios, he was summoned to the Council’s sessions clad in plain monastic clothes. Ignatios, who still considered himself a patriarch, noted that he was left standing while the legates remained seated. A senior court official (protospatharios), John, accused Ignatios of being appointed by Empress Theodora over and against the Council. Ignatios countered that Patriarch St. Tarasios had been appointed by the Empress Irene. The Ignatians rejected the “canonical authority” of the legates, since they did not produce a mandate from the Pope and had received rich gifts of vestments from the imperial court. Citing Canon 4 of the Council of Sardica, Ignatios demanded a trial by the Bishop of Rome. Bishops Radoald and Zachary became central figures at this trial. The legates themselves pronounced Ignatios’s deposition. Apparently, at some point Ignatios was clothed in episcopal vestments (do you remember the mention of St. Arsenii Matsievich in my September 16 report on the Plague Riot in Moscow?). However, Subdeacon Prokopios was ordered by the Roman legates to deprive Ignatios of his episcopal insignia and vestments. Ignatios was expelled from the Council and the convocation proclaimed the polychronion: “Many years to Pope Nicholas and Photios the Patriarch! Many years to the apokrisarioi of the Pope!” This sole reference to St. Photios in the acts of the Council could be interpreted as his unwillingness to join in persecuting Ignatios. Pope Nicholas was not happy with the behavior of his emissaries at the First and Second Council. Zachary and Rodoald were deposed at the council of 863 and 864 as a direct result of their actions at the 861 council. At the Roman council of 863, Pope Nicholas deemed Photios’s election as uncanonical. Consequently, Nicholas deposed Photios as well as all the clergy ordained by Photios. Pope Nicholas upheld Ignatios as the legitimate patriarch. This attitude of the Pope as a universal bishop who could depose a patriarch without even summoning him up demonstrates that the phenomenon of the primacy of the Pope of Rome as we know it now was already in the process of incubation. The fact that the Byzantines had not given back papal patrimonies seized in Sicily and Calabria did not cause the Pope to treat Emperor Michael III and Photios any better. Nor did it help to alleviate the tensions between the Byzantines and the Latins in their rival missions to convert the inhabitants of Bulgaria and Moravia, especially regarding ecclesiastical jurisdiction and the language to be used in the liturgy. (Pope Nicholas took measures to block the mission of Cyril and Methodius in favor of the Frankish clergy, although his successor, Pope Adrian II, explicitly authorized the use of Slavonic as a liturgical language.) In 865, the Byzantines took over Bulgaria, and in the same year, Michael III wrote to Pope Nicholas, responding negatively to the decision of his council against Photios. This is what Pope Nicholas wrote to Michael on this day (September 28) in 865: “The privileges of the Roman Church were founded by Christ upon Saint Peter and from antiquity were ordered and preserved, celebrated by the ecumenical councils and honored by the whole of Christendom. These privileges cannot be diminished, impaired, or altered. No man’s effort can remove what God has founded […] We repeat, eternal are these privileges. Their root is in God, who has planted them. One can thrust against them, but not shift them, one can hurt but not destroy them. They have been there before your Empire and with God’s grace they remain intact and they will remain after you […] These privileges were granted to our church by Christ, not by synods, which merely have celebrated and venerated them.” (Cited from Evangelos Chrysos, “New perceptions of imperium and sacerdotium in the letters of Pope Nicholas I to Emperor Michael III”, in: Constantinople réelle et imaginaire autour de l'oeuvre de gilbert Dagron, Paris 2018.) When the Bulgarian Tsar Boris (d. 907) switched his ecclesiastical allegiance in favor of Rome in 866, Pope Nicholas again wrote to Michael, undermining the rights of Constantinople to be called an apostolic see and promoting the exclusive status of the See of Rome. In response, in 867, Photios convened a council attended by the Eastern patriarchs, exposing Latin doctrinal heterodoxy (the filioque clause) and liturgical practices that deviated from the Byzantine norms and anathematized Nicholas. |
