The Council of Union

The great council of 879–880, the reconciliation that crowned Photius’s second patriarchate. This file narrates the death of Ignatius and Photius’s restoration, the assembly of nearly four hundred bishops in Hagia Sophia with the legates of Pope John VIII present, the annulment of the anti-Photian council of 869–870, and the two questions on which the traditions still divide: whether John VIII genuinely ratified the council, and whether it is the true Eighth Ecumenical Council.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox / Byzantine

Reconciliation and Restoration

The condemnation of Photius in 869–870 (see The 867 and 869 Councils) proved temporary, and its undoing followed the ordinary course of Byzantine ecclesiastical life rather than any second rupture. Photius and the restored Ignatius were reconciled in the years after 870; the bitterness of the parties softened, and Photius — recalled from exile by the emperor Basil I, who entrusted him with the education of his sons — returned to favor at court. This reconciliation between the two former rivals is one of the most important and least remembered facts of the whole affair, for it dissolves at a stroke the picture of two irreconcilable parties locked in permanent schism: the very men around whom the Ignatian and Photian factions had formed were, before the end, at peace with one another, and the Photian succession to the throne came not over Ignatius’s opposition but with his goodwill (Dvornik 1948, part I; Hussey, The Orthodox Church in the Byzantine Empire [1986], ch. 4). When the aged Ignatius died on October 23, 877, Photius, already reconciled to him, succeeded peacefully to the patriarchal throne for the second time, resuming the office a few days later with the emperor’s full support (Fortescue 1911; Dvornik, The Photian Schism [1948], part I; ODB, s.v. “Photios”).

The new pope, John VIII (872–882), pursuing his own reconciliation with the East, recognized Photius as the lawful patriarch and absolved him of the censures laid on him by Nicholas and Hadrian (Fortescue 1911; Dvornik 1948). John’s motives were a characteristic Byzantine-papal mixture of the pastoral and the political. On the one hand he genuinely sought the peace of the Churches and was prepared to acknowledge a patriarch whom the East plainly accepted; on the other he had pressing reasons of state, for southern Italy and Rome itself were under heavy Saracen pressure, and the pope needed the naval and military help that only Constantinople could supply (Fortescue 1911; Dvornik 1948; Hussey 1986). Bound up with both was the standing question of Bulgaria, over which Rome still hoped for satisfaction. John’s recognition of Photius was thus neither a reluctant capitulation nor a purely cynical bargain, but the act of a pope who found that the path of reconciliation and the path of Roman interest, for once, ran together — a convergence that makes the genuineness of his approval of the council, disputed below, so consequential (Dvornik 1948; Siecienski, The Filioque [2010]).

The Council in Hagia Sophia

To set the seal on the reconciliation, a great council was convened at Constantinople, meeting in the cathedral of Hagia Sophia from November 879 into March 880. It was, in attendance, the largest council of the age: some three hundred and eighty-three bishops took part, with all five patriarchal sees represented, and the legates of Pope John VIII present and participating, having brought with them tokens of papal favor for Photius (Fortescue 1911; Dvornik 1948; Hussey, The Orthodox Church in the Byzantine Empire [1986], ch. 4). The contrast with the small anti-Photian council of 869–870, which had never gathered much more than a hundred bishops, was pointed and deliberate: the Photian side staged an assembly whose sheer breadth of representation answered, point for point, the charge of narrowness that hung over the council it was convened to reverse (Dvornik 1948; Hussey 1986). Where the council of 869 had opened with a handful of bishops and required the Formula of Hormisdas as the price of admission, the council of 879 gathered the East in force and welcomed the Roman legates as honored participants in a proceeding the East itself directed — a difference of atmosphere as much as of numbers (Dvornik 1948; Fortescue 1911).

The council’s work was the vindication of Photius and the undoing of his condemnation. It recognized Photius as the canonical patriarch, received him into communion with Rome and the other patriarchates, and — its central act — annulled the council of 869–870, declaring its acts against Photius void and removing it from the standing of an authoritative synod (Fortescue 1911; Dvornik 1948; the acta, Mansi). The annulment was thorough: the council did not merely rehabilitate Photius the man but struck at the standing of the synod that had condemned him, so that the very assembly the West would one day enroll as the Eighth Ecumenical Council was, on the contemporary Eastern record and with the assent of the pope’s own legates, deprived of authority within a decade of its sitting (Dvornik 1948; the acta, Mansi). The council also addressed the Bulgarian jurisdiction and issued a horos on the integrity of the Creed, forbidding any addition to or subtraction from the Symbol of faith (treated in The Repudiation of the Filioque Addition). The legates of John VIII assented to these acts in the pope’s name — and it is the durability of that assent, not its fact, that the traditions contest. That the pope’s representatives sat through the sessions, joined in the vindication of Photius, and concurred in the annulment of 869–870 is common ground; the question that remains is what weight to give their concurrence once they had returned to Rome (Fortescue 1911; Dvornik 1948; Siecienski 2010).

The Two Disputed Questions

Two questions about this council divide the traditions, and both must be set out fairly. They are distinct questions, and it is worth keeping them apart: the first is historical — what John VIII actually did and how lastingly he stood by it — while the second is theological and conciliar — what authority the council carries in the reckoning of the Church. A reader can grant the Eastern case on the first without thereby settling the second, and the sober course is to follow each on its own evidence rather than to let the answer to one decide the other (Dvornik 1948; Siecienski 2010).

[Disputed: whether Pope John VIII genuinely ratified the council of 879–880. The Eastern position, strongly supported by Dvornik’s research, is that John VIII genuinely accepted the council and its annulment of 869–870; the decisive corroboration is that the early Western canonists Ivo of Chartres (late eleventh century) and Gratian (twelfth century) regarded the synod of 879–880 as duly approved by John VIII — that is, Western canon law itself, before the polemic hardened, counted it valid (Dvornik, The Photian Schism [1948]; OrthoChristian.com, “St. Photios the Great”). The Western/traditional position is that John VIII’s approval was at most conditional or qualified, or that he was misled by his legates and afterward repudiated the council, and that his successors (Marinus I and Stephen V) reaffirmed the condemnation of Photius and the standing of 869–870; the modern Catholic scholar A. E. Siecienski explicitly dissents from Dvornik, characterizing John VIII’s response as only a “qualified assent” (Fortescue, Catholic Encyclopedia [1911]; Siecienski, The Filioque [2010]). The factual core both grant is that John VIII’s legates participated and assented at the council; the dispute is over the durability and completeness of papal ratification afterward.]

[Disputed: whether the council of 879–880 is the Eighth Ecumenical Council. Many Orthodox reckon it the true Eighth Ecumenical Council — a status affirmed, for instance, in the Encyclical of the Eastern Patriarchs of 1848 and by modern Orthodox theologians (Meyendorff, Byzantine Theology [1974]; OrthodoxWiki, “Eighth Ecumenical Council”) — precisely because it healed the schism, was attended by all five patriarchates with Roman legates, and reaffirmed the unaltered Creed. The Roman Catholic Church does not count it ecumenical and reserves the number “Eighth” for the anti-Photian council of 869–870 (papalencyclicals.net; Siecienski 2010). It should be added that Orthodox tradition has not formally and universally enrolled 879–880 in the canonical list of seven-plus-one ecumenical councils with the fixity it gives the first seven; the claim that it is “the Eighth” is widely held and argued but is itself a matter of Orthodox theological discussion rather than a closed conciliar definition. Both traditions agree that 879–880 reconciled Photius with Rome.]

The Meaning of the Council

Whatever the disputes over its number and its ratification, the council of 879–880 is the decisive fact against the older Western story of an unrepentant Photius who broke with Rome and died excommunicate. At the height of his career Photius sat in a great council with the legates of the Roman pope, was received into communion with Rome, and saw his condemnation annulled. He was, on the contemporary record, reconciled — and, as Dvornik showed, he remained in communion with Rome through the rest of his second patriarchate (see The Dvornik Rehabilitation). It is worth weighing how much of the legendary narrative this single council unmakes. The image of the “two schisms” required a Photius who broke with Rome, was reconciled, and then broke again; but the council of union shows the first breach healed in the most public manner conceivable, before all the patriarchates and the pope’s own legates, and the supposed “second schism” after 880 rests, as Dvornik demonstrated, on sources he found to be worthless (Dvornik 1948; see The Dvornik Rehabilitation). The council of union is thus both the summit of Photius’s vindication and the hinge of the whole reassessment of his career: the event that the polemical tradition had to suppress or explain away in order to maintain the image of the arch-schismatic, and the event that modern scholarship has restored to the center of the story. The dogmatic dispute it raised over the Creed remains unhealed between the Churches — though for the Orthodox Church the inviolability of the Creed is settled teaching, not an open question — and the conciliar question of its number remains under discussion; but the biographical legend of the unreconciled villain does not survive a clear sight of November 879 in Hagia Sophia (Dvornik 1948; Hussey 1986).

See Also

References

  • Dvornik, Francis. The Photian Schism: History and Legend. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1948. On the reconciliation, the council of 879–880, John VIII’s approval, and the witness of Ivo of Chartres and Gratian.
  • Fortescue, Adrian. “Photius of Constantinople.” The Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. 12. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1911 (newadvent.org/cathen/12043b.htm). The pre-Dvornik Western account of the council and of John VIII’s later repudiation; cited by author and date.
  • Hussey, J. M. The Orthodox Church in the Byzantine Empire. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986, ch. 4. On the council and its attendance.
  • Mansi, J. D. Sacrorum conciliorum nova et amplissima collectio, vol. 17. The acts of the council of 879–880.
  • Siecienski, A. Edward. The Filioque: History of a Doctrinal Controversy. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010. On John VIII’s “qualified assent” and the Western reckoning of the council.
  • Meyendorff, John. Byzantine Theology: Historical Trends and Doctrinal Themes. New York: Fordham University Press, 1974. On the Orthodox reckoning of 879–880.
  • Encyclical of the Eastern Patriarchs (1848); OrthodoxWiki, “Eighth Ecumenical Council.” For the Orthodox position; used to locate the Eastern reckoning, cross-checked against Meyendorff and Dvornik.