Photius, Nicholas, and the Two Councils (858–870)

The ninth-century collision between Patriarch Photius of Constantinople and Pope Nicholas I was the dress rehearsal of the Great Schism: every later issue — papal jurisdiction, the Filioque, rival missions, the limits of Roman judgment over the East — appeared here first, a century and a half before Humbert. This file gives the outline of the crisis through the anti-Photian council of 869–870 and its historiographical rehabilitation by Dvornik, deferring the full treatment to the sibling collection St. Photius the Great.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox

Why the Photian Crisis Belongs in the Story of the Schism

Steven Runciman began his history of the eastern schism in the eleventh century, but he and every other modern historian of the separation points back to the 860s as the moment when the two conceptions of the Church first met head-on and discovered they were incompatible (Runciman, The Eastern Schism, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1955, ch. 1; Chadwick, East and West: The Making of a Rift in the Church, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003, on the ninth century; Dvornik, The Photian Schism: History and Legend, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1948). The reason is that the Photian affair joined, for the first time in one quarrel, the two engines identified in Section 02: a pope acting on the new maximal reading of Roman authority — Nicholas I was among the first to make systematic use of the Pseudo-Isidorian corpus — and the Filioque, which Frankish missionaries carried into Bulgaria and which Photius was the first Eastern hierarch to condemn formally as heresy (Dvornik, The Photian Schism, 1948; Siecienski, The Filioque: History of a Doctrinal Controversy, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010, on Photius; on Pseudo-Isidore and Nicholas, Fuhrmann, Einfluss und Verbreitung der pseudoisidorischen Fälschungen, MGH Schriften 24, 1972–74).

This collection does not retell the story in detail. The sibling collection St. Photius the Great covers the whole: the disputed circumstances of Photius’ elevation in 858 after the deposition of Ignatius (02 — The Photian Controversy), the theology of the procession of the Holy Spirit (03 — The Filioque), the Bulgarian mission field on which the quarrel ignited (06 — The Mission to the Slavs), and the modern reassessment (08 — The Photian Schism Reassessed). Here only the skeleton, as it bears on the schism.

The Skeleton of the Crisis

858–863. Patriarch Ignatius was deposed (or resigned — the sources conflict) under the regime of Caesar Bardas, and Photius, the most learned layman of his age, was elevated through the clerical grades to the patriarchate in December 858. Both parties appealed to Rome. Nicholas I sent legates who, at the Council of Constantinople of 861, concurred in confirming Photius; Nicholas then repudiated his own legates, retried the case at a Roman synod of 863, and declared Photius deposed — a claim to appellate jurisdiction over the see of Constantinople that the East had never conceded and did not concede now (Dvornik, The Photian Schism, 1948, part I; the papal correspondence in Nicholas I, Epistolae, MGH Epistolae VI; summarized with the Orthodox assessment in The Photian Controversy).

865–867. Nicholas’ letters escalated the claims — the famous assertion that the Roman church holds authority “over all the earth, that is, over every church” belongs to this correspondence (Nicholas I, Epistolae, MGH Epistolae VI; discussed in Siecienski, The Papacy and the Orthodox, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017). Meanwhile the newly converted Bulgaria of Khan Boris became the battlefield: Greek and Frankish missions competed, and the Franks taught the interpolated Creed. In 867 Photius issued his Encyclical to the Eastern Patriarchs, indicting the Filioque and the Latin usages introduced in Bulgaria, and a council at Constantinople in 867 went so far as to declare Nicholas deposed (Photius, Encyclical to the Eastern Patriarchs [867], PG 102; Dvornik, The Photian Schism, 1948; the theology is treated in The Filioque and later in Photius’ Mystagogy of the Holy Spirit, PG 102).

867–870. A palace revolution unmade everything: Basil I murdered Michael III, deposed Photius, restored Ignatius, and sought Roman support. The council of Constantinople of 869–870 — attended by a tiny episcopate, acting on Roman instructions — condemned and anathematized Photius. This is the council the later Latin West came to number “the Eighth Ecumenical”; the East never received it, and it was formally annulled ten years later (Dvornik, The Photian Schism, 1948, on 869–870 and on the fact — which Dvornik established — that the Latin canonists began counting it ecumenical only from about the time of the Gregorian reform; see The Council of 879–880).

870–877. Photius in exile was gradually reconciled with Ignatius, whom he ultimately succeeded peacefully on Ignatius’ death in 877 — a reconciliation that destroys the old caricature of a lifelong “Photian schism” (Dvornik, The Photian Schism, 1948, part II; The Dvornik Rehabilitation).

[Disputed: several load-bearing details of the Photian-era narrative are contested in the sources and the scholarship. (a) Whether Ignatius validly resigned or was uncanonically deposed in 858 — the pro-Ignatian *Vita Ignatii* of Niketas David Paphlagon presents a deposition; Dvornik argued for a resignation accepted by a local synod (Dvornik, *The Photian Schism*, 1948, part I). (b) Whether the council of 867 formally "deposed" Nicholas or more narrowly anathematized his actions — its acts were destroyed after 869, and its proceedings are known only from hostile summaries (Dvornik, ibid.). (c) The authenticity and scope of some correspondence in the affair, notably the letters exchanged through Bulgaria. The Orthodox and Catholic scholarly traditions read these differently, though Dvornik's rehabilitation of Photius is now accepted across confessional lines; per §4.2 the questions of fact are left to the evidence, and the fuller discussion is in the sibling collection: East and West on Photius (../../st-photius-the-great/08-the-photian-schism-reassessed/east-and-west-on-photius.md).]

What the Crisis Revealed

Three things, each fatal in the long run, stood revealed by 870:

  1. Two doctrines of the Church’s order. Nicholas claimed, and acted on, a right to judge the internal affairs of the Eastern patriarchates; the East answered with the synodal grammar of Apostolic Canon 34 and the councils — the same impasse that would recur in 1054, at Lyons, at Florence, and at Ravenna in 2007 (Siecienski, The Papacy and the Orthodox, 2017; see Filioque and Papal Primacy and The Official Dialogue).
  2. The Filioque as church-dividing. Photius’ 867 encyclical and his Mystagogy fixed the Orthodox dogmatic assessment: the addition teaches a double origin of the Spirit, confuses the hypostatic properties, and violates the conciliar prohibition of altering the Creed (Photius, Mystagogy of the Holy Spirit, PG 102; Siecienski, The Filioque, 2010; the Orthodox position in full at The Filioque Controversy).
  3. Missionary rivalry as accelerant. Bulgaria showed that the two halves of Christendom were no longer one mission field but two competing systems — a pattern repeated in the Latin patriarchates after 1204 and in the Unia after 1596 (see The Latin Empire and the Popular Schism and The Unia and Brest 1596).

Yet the ninth century also left a counter-witness: the crisis was healed — by a council, on Eastern terms, with Roman legates concurring. That healing, and Rome’s later repudiation of it, is the subject of The Council of 879–880.

See Also

References

  • Dvornik, Francis. The Photian Schism: History and Legend. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1948. (The standard critical history; the destruction of the anti-Photian legend; a Roman Catholic scholar whose findings the Orthodox gladly receive.)
  • Photius. Encyclical to the Eastern Patriarchs (867); Mystagogy of the Holy Spirit. PG 102. (The first formal Eastern indictment of the Filioque.)
  • Nicholas I. Epistolae. Ed. E. Perels, MGH Epistolae VI. Berlin, 1925. (The papal claims of the 860s.)
  • Niketas David Paphlagon. Vita Ignatii. PG 105. (The hostile source for Photius’ elevation.)
  • Fuhrmann, Horst. Einfluss und Verbreitung der pseudoisidorischen Fälschungen. MGH Schriften 24. Stuttgart: Hiersemann, 1972–74. (Nicholas I’s use of the forged corpus.)
  • Siecienski, A. Edward. The Filioque: History of a Doctrinal Controversy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010. (Photius’ theology and its context.)
  • Siecienski, A. Edward. The Papacy and the Orthodox: Sources and History of a Debate. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017. (The jurisdictional claims and the Eastern response.)
  • Runciman, Steven. The Eastern Schism. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1955. Ch. 1. (The ninth century as prologue.)
  • Chadwick, Henry. East and West: The Making of a Rift in the Church. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. (The crisis in the long rift.)