Papal Claims and the Frankish Factor

The two forces that turned cultural estrangement into dogmatic division both matured in the West between the eighth and eleventh centuries: the escalation of the Roman see’s claims — armed after the 850s with the Pseudo-Isidorian forgeries and radicalized by the Gregorian reform — and the Frankish politicization of the Filioque, which Charlemagne’s court wielded against Byzantium and which Rome itself finally adopted into the Creed around 1014. This file traces both, from the Libri Carolini and Aachen 809 to Dictatus Papae.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox

Rome’s Primacy and Its Escalation

That the Church of Rome held the first place among the churches is not in dispute between Orthodoxy and Rome; what that place meant is the dispute. The East honored Rome’s presbeia tes times — seniority of honor — grounded in the city’s imperial rank, its foundation by Peter and Paul, and its early record of orthodoxy, and expressed canonically in Nicaea I Canon 6 and Chalcedon Canon 28 within a synodal order defined by Apostolic Canon 34 (Nicaea I, 325, Canon 6; Chalcedon, 451, Canon 28; Apostolic Canon 34 [trans. NPNF II/14]; Siecienski, The Papacy and the Orthodox: Sources and History of a Debate, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017, on the first-millennium evidence; see Language, Rite, and Law). Rome, from Damasus and Leo the Great onward, increasingly derived its position not from the canons but directly from Christ’s words to Peter (Matthew 16:18–19), read as constituting the Roman bishop heir of Peter’s authority over the whole Church (Leo the Great, Sermons 3–4 on the Petrine office [trans. NPNF II/12]; Siecienski, The Papacy and the Orthodox, 2017). The East never received this Petrine-jurisdictional reading: for the Greek Fathers the “rock” is Peter’s confession of faith, and the power of binding and loosing was given to all the apostles (cf. Matthew 18:18; John 20:23; the patristic exegesis is surveyed in Siecienski, The Papacy and the Orthodox, 2017, and in the hub file Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism).

Two documentary events armed the Roman claim in the ninth to eleventh centuries:

The Pseudo-Isidorian Decretals. Around the 840s–850s, in the Frankish church province of Reims, a workshop of forgers produced the most consequential fabrication of the Middle Ages: a corpus of invented papal letters attributed to the popes of the first centuries, systematically projecting later papal prerogatives (appeals to Rome, papal ratification of councils, immunity of bishops from local judgment) back into the apostolic age, and transmitting with them the earlier forged Donation of Constantine (Pseudo-Isidorian Decretals, ed. Hinschius, Decretales Pseudo-Isidorianae et Capitula Angilramni, Leipzig, 1863; on date, origin, and purpose, Knibbs, “Ebo of Reims, Pseudo-Isidore, and the Date of the False Decretals,” Speculum 92/1, 2017, with the earlier literature; Fuhrmann, Einfluss und Verbreitung der pseudoisidorischen Fälschungen, 3 vols., MGH Schriften 24, Stuttgart, 1972–74). The forgers’ immediate aims were Frankish and episcopal, not papal; but the corpus entered the Roman canonical collections, was cited by popes from Nicholas I onward, and supplied the Gregorian reformers with an apparently ancient documentary basis for universal papal jurisdiction (Fuhrmann, Einfluss und Verbreitung, 1972–74; Papadakis and Meyendorff, The Christian East and the Rise of the Papacy, Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1994, introduction). The forgeries were exposed only in the early modern period; the medieval debate between East and West was thus conducted, on the Western side, partly on fabricated evidence — a fact both Catholic and Orthodox scholarship now state without qualification (Fuhrmann, as above; Schatz, Papal Primacy: From Its Origins to the Present, Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 1996, a Catholic account acknowledging the forgeries’ role).

The Gregorian reform. In the mid-eleventh century — the very generation of Humbert and Leo IX — the reform party at Rome, fighting simony and lay investiture, sharpened the papal claim into an ideology. Its manifesto is the Dictatus Papae (1075), twenty-seven theses entered in Gregory VII’s register, including: that the Roman church was founded by God alone; that the pope alone may be called universal; that he alone may depose and reinstate bishops; that he may depose emperors; that the Roman church has never erred and never will err; and that a canonical book may be made only by his authority (Gregory VII, Dictatus Papae, Register 2.55a; ed. Caspar, Das Register Gregors VII., MGH Epistolae selectae 2, Berlin, 1920–23; trans. in Tierney, The Crisis of Church and State 1050–1300, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1988). Cardinal Humbert of Silva Candida was among the reform’s chief theorists; his conduct at Constantinople in 1054 was Gregorianism applied abroad (Runciman, The Eastern Schism, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1955, ch. 2; Papadakis and Meyendorff, The Christian East, 1994). Papadakis’ judgment states the Orthodox historical consensus: it was the reformed papacy’s new self-definition, more than any Byzantine act, that made the old diversity of East and West suddenly intolerable to Rome (Papadakis and Meyendorff, The Christian East, 1994, introduction and ch. 1).

The Frankish Factor and the Filioque

The Filioque’s doctrinal history is treated in Section 06 and, for the ninth century, in the St. Photius collection; here the concern is its politics — for the interpolation entered the Creed not from Rome but from the Frankish kingdom, and was weaponized against Byzantium before it was ever a considered theology.

The phrase “and the Son” (Filioque) first entered creedal use in Visigothic Spain — associated with the Third Council of Toledo (589) and clearly present in later Toledan professions — as an anti-Arian intensifier, and spread through Gaul with the Spanish liturgical books (Siecienski, The Filioque: History of a Doctrinal Controversy, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010, ch. on the Latin West; on the uncertainty whether the 589 creed itself or later copies first carried the interpolation, ibid.). What made it an East–West issue was Charlemagne. The Frankish court, in tension with Byzantium over the imperial title and over the Seventh Ecumenical Council (whose acts reached the Franks in a defective Latin translation), produced the Opus Caroli regis contra synodum (the Libri Carolini, c. 790–793), a sweeping attack on Nicaea II which also faulted the Greeks’ creedal language on the Spirit’s procession (Opus Caroli regis contra synodum, ed. Ann Freeman, MGH Concilia II, Supplementum I, Hanover: Hahnsche Buchhandlung, 1998 [Corrected: older literature ascribed the Libri Carolini to Alcuin; Freeman's studies, embodied in the MGH edition, established Theodulf of Orléans as the principal author, and this is the current consensus]; Noble, Images, Iconoclasm, and the Carolingians, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009, on the work’s origin, Theodulf’s authorship, and its anti-Byzantine program).

At the Council of Aachen (809) Charlemagne’s theologians formally endorsed the Filioque doctrine and its creedal use, and sent envoys to Pope Leo III seeking Roman confirmation. Leo’s response is among the most cited facts of the whole controversy: he affirmed the doctrine as he understood it but refused the interpolation of the Creed, and had the uninterpolated Creed engraved in Greek and Latin on two silver shields displayed at St. Peter’s — a standing Roman witness against the Frankish addition (the Aachen dossier and the record of the envoys’ conversation with Leo III survive in Smaragdus’ minutes; the shields are reported in the Liber Pontificalis, Life of Leo III; both discussed with full references in Siecienski, The Filioque, 2010, ch. on the Carolingian era; cf. Ware, The Orthodox Church, new ed., Penguin, 1993, ch. 3). For two more centuries Rome held that line while Frankish and German churches sang the interpolated Creed. The line broke only when the papacy itself passed under German influence: according to the contemporary testimony of Berno of Reichenau, the Creed with the Filioque was sung at Rome at the coronation Mass of Emperor Henry II in 1014, under Pope Benedict VIII (Berno of Reichenau, De officio missae; the testimony and its context in Siecienski, The Filioque, 2010; Runciman, The Eastern Schism, 1955, ch. 1). The East’s charter document against the addition already existed: Photius’ encyclical of 867 and his Mystagogy of the Holy Spirit (see Section 03).

The sequence matters for assessment. The Filioque was not, in origin, a Roman aggression against the East; it was a provincial usage that a new Frankish power politicized against Byzantium, that popes resisted for two centuries, and that Rome finally absorbed — after which, under the Gregorian reform, defense of the addition became bound to the doctrine of papal authority itself: if the pope could not err, the addition could not be an error (Siecienski, The Filioque, 2010; Papadakis and Meyendorff, The Christian East, 1994). From within the Church the assessment is therefore double (METHODOLOGY §4.1): the interpolation of the ecumenical Creed by any local authority — Frankish or papal — is a canonical and dogmatic wrong the Church cannot receive, as Ephesus Canon 7 forbids composing “another faith” (Ephesus, 431, Canon 7 [trans. NPNF II/14]); and yet the historical record shows Rome itself, for two hundred years, witnessing with the East against the addition — a memory the Church holds out to Rome still (cf. the 1848 Encyclical of the Eastern Patriarchs, §5, invoking Leo III’s shields; see From 1848 to 1965).

Convergence: The Eve of the Crises

By about 1050 all the elements were assembled: a papacy re-founded ideologically on forged ancient precedent and reforming zeal; a Creed sung differently in Rome and Constantinople; two canonical grammars, each now armed; and no common language in which to argue. The ninth century had already rehearsed the collision (Section 03); the eleventh made it public (Section 04); the thirteenth made it irreversible (Section 05).

See Also

References

  • Nicaea I (325), Canon 6; Chalcedon (451), Canon 28; Apostolic Canon 34; Ephesus (431), Canon 7. Trans. NPNF II/14. (The canonical grammar of primacy; the prohibition of another faith.)
  • Leo the Great. Sermons 3–4; Letters 104–106. Trans. NPNF II/12. (The Petrine doctrine; the rejection of Chalcedon Canon 28.)
  • Pseudo-Isidorian Decretals. Ed. Paul Hinschius, Decretales Pseudo-Isidorianae et Capitula Angilramni. Leipzig: Tauchnitz, 1863. (The forged corpus.)
  • Knibbs, Eric. “Ebo of Reims, Pseudo-Isidore, and the Date of the False Decretals.” Speculum 92/1 (2017): 144–183. (Current scholarship on origin and date.)
  • Fuhrmann, Horst. Einfluss und Verbreitung der pseudoisidorischen Fälschungen. 3 vols. MGH Schriften 24. Stuttgart: Hiersemann, 1972–74. (The forgeries’ influence on the papal claims.)
  • Schatz, Klaus. Papal Primacy: From Its Origins to the Present. Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 1996. (A Roman Catholic history acknowledging the escalation and the forgeries’ role.)
  • Gregory VII. Dictatus Papae (Register 2.55a). Ed. Erich Caspar, Das Register Gregors VII., MGH Epistolae selectae 2. Berlin, 1920–23. Trans. in Brian Tierney, The Crisis of Church and State 1050–1300. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1988. (The Gregorian program.)
  • Freeman, Ann, ed. Opus Caroli regis contra synodum (Libri Carolini). MGH Concilia II, Supplementum I. Hanover: Hahnsche Buchhandlung, 1998. (The critical edition; Theodulf’s authorship.)
  • Noble, Thomas F. X. Images, Iconoclasm, and the Carolingians. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009. (The Carolingian anti-Byzantine program.)
  • Liber Pontificalis, Life of Leo III (the silver shields); Smaragdus’ record of the Aachen envoys (809/810). Discussed with editions in Siecienski 2010. (Leo III’s refusal of the interpolation.)
  • Berno of Reichenau. De officio missae. (The 1014 testimony; discussed in Siecienski 2010.)
  • Siecienski, A. Edward. The Filioque: History of a Doctrinal Controversy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010. (Toledo, the Carolingians, Aachen 809, 1014.)
  • Siecienski, A. Edward. The Papacy and the Orthodox: Sources and History of a Debate. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017. (The primacy claims and their reception.)
  • Runciman, Steven. The Eastern Schism. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1955. Chs. 1–2. (The eve of 1054; Humbert and the reform.)
  • Papadakis, Aristeides, with John Meyendorff. The Christian East and the Rise of the Papacy: The Church 1071–1453 A.D. Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1994. (The reformed papacy as the destabilizing novelty.)
  • Ware, Kallistos (Timothy). The Orthodox Church. New ed. London: Penguin, 1993. Ch. 3. (Synthesis.)
  • Encyclical of the Eastern Patriarchs (1848), §5. (The Orthodox appeal to Leo III’s shields.)