History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire — Volume 6Gibbon, Edward
History
History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire — Volume 6
Gibbon, Edward
Byzantine Empire -- History -- To 527; Rome -- History -- Empire, 30 B.C.-476 A.D.
people, Ignatius and Photius, were equally adverse to their
claims; their ministers were insulted or imprisoned; the
procession of the Holy Ghost was forgotten; Bulgaria was forever
annexed to the Byzantine throne; and the schism was prolonged by
their rigid censure of all the multiplied ordinations of an
irregular patriarch. The darkness and corruption of the tenth
century suspended the intercourse, without reconciling the minds,
of the two nations. But when the Norman sword restored the
churches of Apulia to the jurisdiction of Rome, the departing
flock was warned, by a petulant epistle of the Greek patriarch,
to avoid and abhor the errors of the Latins. The rising majesty
of Rome could no longer brook the insolence of a rebel; and
Michael Cerularius was excommunicated in the heart of
Constantinople by the pope’s legates. Shaking the dust from their
feet, they deposited on the altar of St. Sophia a direful
anathema, 10 which enumerates the seven mortal heresies of the
Greeks, and devotes the guilty teachers, and their unhappy
sectaries, to the eternal society of the devil and his angels.
According to the emergencies of the church and state, a friendly
correspondence was some times resumed; the language of charity
and concord was sometimes affected; but the Greeks have never
recanted their errors; the popes have never repealed their
sentence; and from this thunderbolt we may date the consummation
of the schism. It was enlarged by each ambitious step of the
Roman pontiffs: the emperors blushed and trembled at the
ignominious fate of their royal brethren of Germany; and the
people were scandalized by the temporal power and military life
of the Latin clergy. 11
8 (return) [ The xth volume of the Venice edition of the Councils
contains all the acts of the synods, and history of Photius: they
are abridged, with a faint tinge of prejudice or prudence, by
Dupin and Fleury.]
9 (return) [ The synod of Constantinople, held in the year 869,
is the viiith of the general councils, the last assembly of the
East which is recognized by the Roman church. She rejects the
synods of Constantinople of the years 867 and 879, which were,
however, equally numerous and noisy; but they were favorable to
Photius.]
10 (return) [ See this anathema in the Councils, tom. xi. p.
1457—1460.]
11 (return) [ Anna Comnena (Alexiad, l. i. p. 31—33) represents
the abhorrence, not only of the church, but of the palace, for
Gregory VII., the popes and the Latin communion. The style of
Cinnamus and Nicetas is still more vehement. Yet how calm is the
voice of history compared with that of polemics!]
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