The Addition to the Creed

Mark’s chosen battleground at the council: not, in the first place, the truth or falsity of the Latin doctrine of the procession, but the prior question of whether the Western Church had any right to alter the Creed at all. This file sets out the text of the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed of 381, the history of the Western interpolation of the Filioque (Toledo, the Franks, its late adoption at Rome in 1014), the canon of the Third Ecumenical Council (Ephesus 431) forbidding the composition of “another faith,” and Mark’s argument that the unilateral addition stood condemned by that canon regardless of the doctrine behind it — together with the Latin reply.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox / Byzantine

The Creed of 381 and Its Clause on the Spirit

The Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed — the Symbol of faith confessed by the whole Church East and West, fixed at the First Council of Constantinople in 381 — declares of the Holy Spirit that He is “the Lord, the Giver of Life, who proceeds from the Father” (τὸ ἐκ τοῦ Πατρὸς ἐκπορευόμενον, to ek tou Patros ekporeuomenon). The verb ekporeuesthai is the precise term of John 15:26, and in Greek theological usage it denotes origination from an ultimate source or cause (Siecienski, The Filioque: History of a Doctrinal Controversy [2010]; see Pneumatology). This was the Creed as the universal Church received it; the dispute at Florence was, at bottom, about whether anyone had the authority to change it.

The Western interpolation added two words: “who proceeds from the Father and the Son” (qui ex Patre Filioque procedit). A linguistic asymmetry underlies the whole controversy: the Latin verb procedere is broader than the Greek ekporeuesthai and can cover a mediated coming-forth, where the narrower Greek term cannot — so that the Latin clause, rendered back into Greek with ekporeuesthai, says something the Latins did not strictly mean and that the Greeks could not accept (Siecienski 2010).

The History of the Interpolation

Mark and the Greeks could point to a clear historical record of the addition as a Western innovation, foreign to the original Creed and to Rome itself for centuries:

Spain, late sixth century. The clause is traditionally associated with the Third Council of Toledo (589) in Visigothic Spain, in an anti-Arian context under King Reccared (Siecienski 2010, ch. 5).
The Frankish lands. The Filioque spread through Frankish territory, was affirmed in the Libri Carolini under Charlemagne, and was endorsed at the Synod of Aachen (809), after which Charlemagne pressed Rome to adopt it (Siecienski 2010: 91–100).
Rome’s refusal. Pope Leo III affirmed the doctrine of double procession but refused to insert the clause into the Creed, and had the un-interpolated Creed engraved in both Greek and Latin on two silver shields set up at St. Peter’s, reasoning that the Fathers of 381 had been no less inspired than the bishops at Aachen (Siecienski 2010: 96–100). The point is decisive for the Greek case: Rome itself, for two centuries, kept the Creed unaltered while granting the doctrine.
Rome’s adoption (1014). The Filioque was first sung in the Creed at Mass in Rome only in 1014, under Pope Benedict VIII, at the request of the Emperor Henry II (Siecienski 2010, ch. 5). The interpolation that the Greeks were asked at Florence to accept as ancient and apostolic had, on the Roman liturgical record, entered the Roman Mass barely four centuries before.

[Disputed: the precise date and manner of the first Spanish creedal interpolation. The traditional attribution to Toledo III (589) is questioned by modern scholarship, some of which holds that the clause was inserted into the Spanish creed only between 589 and the Eighth Council of Toledo (653), citing a letter of Isidore of Seville. Both the traditional association and the dating dispute belong to the record (Siecienski 2010, ch. 5).]

The Canon of Ephesus

Mark’s central canonical argument rested on the Third Ecumenical Council (Ephesus, 431), which decreed against the composition or use of any creed other than the Nicene faith. The relevant horos — commonly cited as the seventh canon, from the council’s decree on the faith of 22 July 431 — forbids anyone “to bring forward, or to write, or to compose a different faith (ἑτέραν πίστιν, hetera pistis)” as a rival to that established at Nicaea, on pain of deposition for clergy and anathema for laymen. The Council of Chalcedon (451) renewed the prohibition (Ephesus 431, decree on the faith; Chalcedon 451; see Ecumenical Councils).

For Mark, this was the heart of the matter — and it gave him a strategic advantage he deliberately seized. He chose to fight first on the legitimacy of the addition rather than on the doctrine, over the preference of Bessarion and Scholarios, who wanted to begin with the doctrine itself (Siecienski 2010, on the Ferrara strategy). His argument was this: even if the Latin doctrine were true, the unilateral insertion of the Filioque into the universal Creed violated the canon of Ephesus, which forbids the framing of “another faith.” The remedy was simple and complete — for the Latins to remove the words. The thirteen public sessions from 8 October to 13 December 1438 turned on this question of liceity (Siecienski 2010, on the Ferrara debate). Mark reinforced the case with St. Cyril of Alexandria’s own warning, in his letter to John of Antioch, that “we permit neither ourselves nor others to change a word” of the faith — Cyril being the very Father who had presided at Ephesus (Acta Graeca, ed. Gill 1953).

Mark put the point with a rhetorical edge the Acta preserve: the addition of a word may seem a small matter to the Latins, “so then to remove it would cost you nothing” — and “this Symbol, this noble heritage of our Fathers, we demand back from you” (attributed to Mark in the Acta Graeca, ed. Gill 1953, as rendered in Siecienski 2010).

The Latin Reply

The Latin spokesmen — Cesarini and especially the Greek-born Dominican Andrew of Rhodes — answered the canonical argument on several fronts (Siecienski 2010; Acta Graeca, ed. Gill 1953):

The Ephesine prohibition concerns a different faith (hetera pistis) — a contrary or rival creed — not added words that clarify and preserve the same faith. The bar is on heresy, not on legitimate explanation.
Constantinople I (381) itself expanded Nicaea (325) — adding the whole article on the Spirit, among much else — without violating Ephesus; this proves that faith-preserving additions to the Creed are licit. (This argument traces back to Paulinus II of Aquileia at the Synod of Friuli in 796; Siecienski 2010: 91.)
The Church has standing authority to clarify the faith against new errors, as Nicaea had added the non-scriptural word homoousios.

[Disputed: whether the Ephesine and Chalcedonian canons protect the words of the Creed or only its meaning. The Latin reading (the canon bars a contrary faith, not clarifying additions) and the Orthodox reading (the canon bars any alteration of the received text, however true the addition) are the two poles, and the Chalcedonian precedent — where the bishop Diogenes of Cyzicus acknowledged that Constantinople 381 had altered Nicene wording against the Macedonians — is read by Catholics as proof that meaning, not words, is protected, and by the Orthodox as confined to the act of a competent ecumenical council, which Rome’s unilateral insertion was not (Siecienski 2010).]

The Deadlock

The debate on the addition ended, like the rest of the council’s first phase, in deadlock — neither side moved. John Erickson’s diagnosis, much cited, captures why the Fathers could not settle it: “all agreed that we must look to the fathers, but in the absence of a common living tradition, this meant looking to the words of the fathers rather than to their message” (Erickson, quoted in Siecienski 2010). The Greeks could not prove the Latins had no authority to add to the Creed without the Latins denying that any addition had been made to the faith; the Latins could not prove the addition licit without the Greeks invoking the plain text of Ephesus. The argument then moved, at Florence, from the addition to the doctrine — the subject of the next file. But for Mark the canonical point was never superseded: to the end he held that a Creed altered without the consent of the whole Church was no longer the Creed of the whole Church, and that this alone justified his refusal to sign.

References

Siecienski, A. Edward. The Filioque: History of a Doctrinal Controversy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010. (The text of the Creed; the history of the interpolation, Toledo, the Franks, Leo III’s silver shields, Rome 1014; the canon of Ephesus; Mark’s strategy and the Latin reply; the Erickson diagnosis.)
Acta Graeca = Quae supersunt actorum graecorum Concilii Florentini. Ed. J. Gill. Rome, 1953. (Mark’s arguments and Cyril’s “not a word” at the council.)
Council of Ephesus (431), decree on the faith (sixth session, 22 July 431); Council of Chalcedon (451). (The prohibition of “another faith.”)