Photius, a man of great learning and experience, a scholar and theologian of the familiar Greek type, was elected Patriarch of Constantinople on Christmas Day, 857. At the time when Michael III. determined on his appointment he was not even ordained: in six days he {193} received the different orders and was made patriarch. But his election was uncanonical. Ignatius the patriarch, who was still living, was deposed because of his censures of the emperor's evil life. Photius announced his election to Pope Nicolas, but Ignatius refused to surrender his rights; both parties excommunicated each other; and the emperor mocked at both. But he also asked the pope to send legates to a council which should restore order to the Church. The Council met in 861. It confirmed Photius in his office, and the papal legates assented. Nicolas refused to accept the decision and took upon him to annul it, to depose Photius, to declare the orders conferred by him invalid, and to announce his decision to the other patriarchs and to the metropolitans and bishops who owed obedience to Constantinople. Neither the emperor nor Photius would submit; and in 867 Photius issued, in a council at Constantinople, an encyclical letter, in which he repudiated the papal claim of jurisdiction (which was complicated by assertions of supremacy over the Bulgarian Church), and denounced a number of tenets held by Westerns, [Sidenote: The Philioque controversy.] and most notably the addition of the word _Filioque_ to the Nicene Creed, as asserting the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Father and the Son. He ended by excommunicating the pope.