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Errors of the Latins

“The things that thou hast heard of me among many witnesses, the same commit thou to faithful men, who shall
be able to teach others also.”

2 Tim. ii 2.
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Errors of the Latins:

Notes on the Differences Between Traditional Roman Catholicism and the Eastern Orthodox Church,
and an Analysis of Their Historical Controversies

By George

Updated 25 June 2021

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To the Holy Royal Family (+1918),

Everlasting remembrance
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Foreword

This present work is the fruit of almost ten years of study and research upon the controversy between Roman
Catholicism and the Orthodox Church. For some time, I have felt that a comprehensive treatise from the
Orthodox perspective addressing this controversy is a desideratum in the English literature.

This book is intended principally to confirm Orthodox Christians against those who say that the Orthodox
Church is not a true Church, or that She must alter and conform to Roman Catholicism. I show that the
Orthodox Church is justified in those matters in which She differs from Roman Catholicism.

This treatise offers a critique of Roman Catholicism from the Orthodox perspective and demonstrates the
antiquity and apostolicity of the Orthodox Church. I have preferred to focus almost exclusively on the plain
historical facts, since they are open to less dispute, and cannot as easily be evaded or contested by sophistical
pleading, and have been admitted by Roman Catholic authorities. I believe that recourse to authentic and
authoritative sources is essential in controversial discussions, and thus have attempted to review the points
under discussion with accurate and extensive citations.

I am aware of my own severe incompetence to write this treatise, and I am not ordained or representing the
Orthodox Church in any official capacity, and I beg the reader’s pardon for intruding upon their patience, and
for any errors made in this work, but I hope this study provides a satisfactory and useful account in defence of
the Orthodox Church against Roman Catholicism, and may aid someone much more competent than myself to
do more justice to so important a subject. I intend to discuss this controversy with mildness, liberality, peace,
goodwill, charity, mutual forbearance, and without any bitterness.

My approach has been to prefer to diligently systematise, compile, and refer to the knowledge and wisdom of
others (especially the saints before us), rather than to propose my own interpretations. I have made use of a
very large library of books, and brought together valuable information from many sources, especially Roman
Catholic sources, to show their own admissions and to fairly represent their position, which I critique by
contrasting with the early Church. Many authors on this topic in the 1900s and previous centuries were
limited to some degree by their access to books and manuscripts (as they admit), but I have made full use of
all the advantages of contemporary technology and digitised libraries to find almost any source, along with
additional analysis. This work aims to be descriptive rather than prescriptive, and lets the reader see the
sources and judge for themselves what is important. The aim of this work is to show that the Orthodox
Church is the same Church as the first-millennium Church, while Roman Catholicism has deviated from the
ancient Church.

Errors of the Latins discusses over 50 historical and theological differences between Orthodoxy and Roman
Catholicism, quotes over 120 authors and sources on trine immersion in baptism, quotes over 200 authors
and sources on the 28th Canon of Chalcedon and the Council of Trullo, quotes over 300 authors and sources
on the condemnation of Pope Honorius, and contains nearly 100 examples of false documents and collections
used by Roman Catholics, among many other useful historical notes, clearly showing the contrast between the
ancient Church and Roman Catholicism. Many sources are used to provide evidence from the writings of Holy
Scripture, the Church Fathers, the Lives of the saints, liturgical services, Church history, the acts and canons of
councils, imperial laws, iconography, numismatics, relics, archaeology, manuscripts, canonists, hierarchs,
elders, theologians, catechisms, scholars, Roman Catholic authorities, and other authors across many
countries and all centuries.

The importance of this controversy together with the inordinate number of errors in the writings of those
who oppose the Orthodox Church occasioned the Errors of the Latins’s large size. The aim is to support claims
with extensive documentation and evidence from original authorities, since too many others have alleged
historical support for their views without presenting the documentary evidence. Extensive footnotes and
careful documentation allows easy verification of references in this vast collection. The bibliography
comprehensively lists about 1,200 books and book series to help the reader find Orthodox material in
English. Errors of the Latins is intended as a reference work for Orthodox Christians looking to defend their
faith, and not necessarily to be read from beginning to end, and can be examined on a chapter-by-chapter
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basis. Even though certain chapters may seem long, they can be quickly skimmed on a high level, and the
entire quotations do not always need to be read, unless the reader wants to verify for themselves, and some
more important parts of the quotes are in bold text. For example, the chapter on trine immersion can be
rapidly browsed, and it is not necessary to read the full passages of all the Church Fathers and authors
supporting trine immersion, but the reader can skim through their names and is welcome to read in greater
detail if they wish to be satisfied with the facts.
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Table of Contents.

Foreword

Contents

Overview

Introduction

TOC – Book I Innovations

Part I The Sacraments

Ch I Baptism – Trine Immersion

Trine immersion enjoined by the ancients; This is the proper and normal mode of baptism,
handed down from the Lord and His Apostles, with exceptions only in extraordinary
circumstances; Patriarchal Encyclical of 1895 on this Latin error; Catechism of Philaret on
administration of baptism; Philip Schaff says trine immersion the rule; Raffaele Garrucci
admits ancient rite; Thomas Aquinas says trine immersion universally observed; Trent
Catechism admits change from ancient practice; Catholic Encyclopedia admits threefold
immersion as very ancient and apparently Apostolic; Authority of Catholic Encyclopedia;
Thomas Watson admits old and ancient tradition; All the following authorities from the
early centuries testifying to triple immersion, quoted at length: Apostolic Canon L; The
Didache; Dionysius the Areopagite; “The Acts of Paul”; Physiologus; Tertullian; The
Apostolic Tradition (Hippolytus of Rome); Monulus of Girba; Macarius of Jerusalem;
Ananias of Shirak; Testamentum Domini; Statutes of the Apostles or Canones Ecclesiastici –
Ethiopic, Arabic, Sahidic, Bohairic; “Acts of John the Son of Zebedee”; Athanasius of
Alexandria; Hesychius of Jerusalem; Ephraem the Syrian; Didymus the Blind; Cyril of
Jerusalem; John of Jerusalem; Basil the Great; Gregory of Nyssa; Ambrose of Milan;
Jerome; John Chrysostom; Theodore of Mopsuestia; Synopsis of Theodore; Augustine of
Hippo; Peter Chrysologus; Maximus of Turin; Eunomians first to practice single immersion,
according to ancient historians; Philostorgius; Theodoret of Cyrus; Sozomen; Socrates
Scholasticus; First Council of Constantinople Canon VII; Epitome of Canon; A fifth-century
letter of the Constantinopolitan Church; Council of Trullo Canon XCV; Barberini
Euchologion; More testimonies: Narsai of Nisibis; Early Syriac baptismal commentary
(three recensions); Acts of St. Silvester; Hincmar of Rheims on the baptism of Clovis I by St.
Remigius; Pope Leo the Great; Schaff’s Summary; Creed of Pope Pius IV enjoins accepting
Scripture according to the interpretation of the Fathers; Triple immersion is thus the correct
mode for Christ’s ordinance of baptism; Pope Pelagius II; The Latins do not baptise in
accordance with the ancient Church; [Continued in Appendix II].

Ch. II Eucharist and the Liturgy

Many Latin deviations from the Church of the first millennium in the Eucharist and Liturgy.

Section I Infant Communion

Infants given communion in ancient Church; Pope Pius X admits this; Pope
Benedict XIV admits this; Witnesses: Augustine of Hippo; Pope Innocent I; Pope
Gelasius I; Pope Leo the Great; Council of Trent misleading and attempts to
minimise the historical prevalence of this practice; Trent Catechism likewise
misleading; Catholic Encyclopedia admits antiquity of paedocommunion; Thomas
Aquinas says Eucharist should not be given to children since they lack the use of
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reason; Dionysius the Areopagite misrepresented by Aquinas; Alexius Aurelius

Pelliccia admits antiquity of paedocommunion; Catholic Dictionary likewise;
Additional witnesses: Apostolic Constitutions; Gregorian Sacramentary; Other
ancients; Further reading; Eustratios Argenti on this Latin error.

Section II Leavened Bread

Leavened bread should be used in the Eucharist; Catholic Encyclopedia on the Latin
uncertainty of solving this question; Council of Florence permits both unleavened
and leavened bread to the West or East respectively; Latins must be permitting a
form that Christ did not use; Some Latins have unjustly criticized Greek usage of
leavened bread; Anathema against Orthodox in 1054 calls Greeks “prozymite
heretics”; Scholars and remarks on the question: Nicholas Gihr; John Mason Neale;
John O’Brien; Cardinal Bona; Nicholas Hydrantus; William Edward Scudamore;
Joseph Andreas Jungman; William O’Shea; Johannes H. Emminghaus; George
Galvaris; Reginald Maxwell Woolley; The bread used at the Eucharist was ordinary,
that is, leavened; St. Epiphanius; Cardinal Humbert; Pope Leo IX falsely asserted in
1054 that “the Roman Church had always used Azymes”; Further reading.

Section III The Use of Wafers

Wafers not the ancient form of the Eucharistic bread; 1848 Encyclical of the Eastern
Patriarchs; Maurice M. Hassett (Catholic Encyclopedia) admits that first evidence of
wafers is in 1050s; John Francis Goggin (Catholic Encyclopedia).

Section IV The Elevation of the Host

The Elevation of the Host is a rite that did not exist earlier than the close of the XII
century; 1848 Encyclical; Julian Joseph Overbeck; Herbert Thurston (Catholic
Encyclopedia) admits recent introduction of this rite; Pope Honorius III in c. 1217
first to formally institute the elevation; William Palmer’s learned remarks.

Section V Epiklesis or Invocation

Latins omit the Invocation of the Holy Spirit; 1848 Encyclical; Adrian Fortescue
(Catholic Encyclopedia) admits that “all the old liturgies”, both Eastern and Western,
contained the Epiklesis, but now only the Eastern liturgies retain it.

Section VI Solitary Masses

Priests should not be alone at the Liturgy; Solitary Masses were forbidden in earlier
centuries; John O’Brien; John Henry Hopkins.

Section VII Transubstantiation

The Orthodox take issue with the improper application of scholasticism to the
theology of the Eucharist; Maurice M. Hassett (Catholic Encyclopedia); Alexei
Stepanovich Khomiakov; Russian Catechism; John of Damascus.

Section VIII Communion in Both Kinds

Christ bids us to take both the bread and wine in the Eucharist, and this is the
ancient practice of the Church, but the Latins have given only the bread to the laity;
1895 Encyclical; 1848 Encyclical; Council of Constance; Council of Trent; Pope
Benedict XIV; Pope Gregory XIII directs single communion to the Maronites;
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Cardinal Bona; George Cassander; Pope Gelasius; Georg Witzl; Thomas Aquinas;
Samuel Edgar; Charles Hastings Collette; Patrick J. Toner (Catholic Encyclopedia);
Catholic Dictionary; William Payne.

Section IX The Conservatism of the Eastern Liturgy

The Byzantine Liturgy has remained virtually unchanged, as testified by the

Barberini MS. (A.D. 790), compared to the liturgy at the end of the 19th century;
The Church Quarterly Review.

Ch. III Chrismation or Confirmation

The early Church confirmed children after baptism, but the Latins hold that “this is not
expedient before the use of reason”; 1848 Encyclical; Thomas Bartholemew Scannell
(Catholic Encyclopedia); Trent Catechism; Pope Leo XIII; Pope Innocent I.

Ch. IV Holy Unction

The Latins frequently administer Extreme Unction to the dying only, and erroneously
withhold it from the sick not in immediate danger of death; Patrick J. Toner (Catholic
Encyclopedia); Council of Florence; Trent Catechism; Thomas Aquinas; John Peter
Arendzen; Pope Pius V; Frederick George Scott; Cardinal Cajetan.

Ch. V Marriage

Section I Clerical Celibacy

Priests should be allowed to live in matrimony; St. Peter was married; 1054
Excommunication against the Orthodox calls clerical marriage a heresy and evil
error; Latins often inconsistent by permitting married clergy in their Eastern Rite
Churches; St. Patrick of Ireland was the son of a deacon, who was the son of a priest,
who was the son of a deacon; Herbert Thurston (Catholic Encyclopedia)
summarises the history; Pope Benedict XIV permits married priests in Greek rite;
Sigebert of Gembloux on Gregory VII forbidding married clergy to say mass and
forbidding all layment to be present when such a married priest should officiate;
Roman Council under Pope Gregory VII likewise; Gregory VII likewise; Latin Ninth
Ecumenical Council forbids married priests; Council of Nicaea permits married
clergy; Charles Joseph Hefele on Nicaea; Paphnutius against mandatory clerical
celibacy; The record of Paphnutius confirmed, despite Latin doubts and Gregory VII
condemning the story as a forgery; Maurice M. Hassett (Catholic Encyclopedia);
Æneas Sylvius; Ulric of Imola; Roman Catholic priests of Germany; Pope Pius IV;
Socrates Scholasticus; Henry Wharton; Apostolic Canons V, XL, and LXXVI; Council
of Trullo Canon XIII; Antonius Augustinus; Council of Gangra Canon IV; Hefele
admits that the ancient Church allowed married clergy; Synodal Letter of Gangra;
Gregorian Reforms; Social considerations; Further reading.

Section II Divorce

Latins erroneously affirm the absolute indissolubility of marriage; Francis J.

Schaefer (Catholic Encyclopedia); Council of Trent Canon VII on Matrimony; Words
of Christ; St. Cyril of Alexandria; Marriage dispensations; The Pope has authorised
incestuous marriages between an aunt and a nephew, as well as with a sister-in-law;
Pope Gregory II apparently allows for divorce and remarriage; Synopsis Papismi;
John Meyendorff’s important remarks; Ubi Petrus’s florilegium; The Latins have
forcibly separated married priests from their lawfully wedded wives.
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Section III Marriage Within Prohibited Degrees

Popes have permitted marriage between uncles and nieces and with a sister-in-law,
but this falls within the prohibited degrees of consanguinity and was not approved
by the early Church; Theodosius of Kiev lists this as a Latin error; Papal marriage
dispensations in cases forbidden by Divine law; Pius IX declares that no Roman
Pope has ever “wandered outside the limits of their powers.”; Gregory the Great,
Innocent III, and Turrecremata (representing Eugene IV) declared marriage with a
sister-in-law forbidden; Pusey’s treatise recommended.

Section IV Fourth Marriages

The Orthodox rightly permit a maximum of three marriages, but the Latins permit a
fourth and more; Council of Florence; Canons of St. Basil Canon IV, L, and LXXX;
Apostolic Canon XVII; Code of Civil Law; Philip Schaff on Tetragamy; Council of
Constantinople in 920; Tomos of Union forbids fourth marriages; Rome approves
the Tomos; Further reading.

Ch. VI Penance

Differences mostly philosophical; Latins have more of a formal and juridical understanding
of repentance; Alexander Schmemann; The wooden confessional is of modern introduction;
Encyclopædia Britannica; Monks of the Holy Monastery of Great Meteoron; Michael
Ivanovich Pomazansky.

Ch. VII Holy Orders

There are some Latin innovations with regard to the matter and form of ordination; Hubert
Ahaus (Catholic Encyclopedia); For most of the first millennium, the Latin Church only used
imposition of hands, like the Orthodox Church to this day; Later on, the West added the
tradition of the instruments; Many scholastics have held a position later abandoned.

Part II Theological Innovations

Ch. I The Immaculate Conception of Mary

The Immaculate Conception is an inappropriate novelty; Pope Pius IX defined this dogma in
1854; 1895 Encyclical on this Latin error; Orthodoxy holds that Mary was born without sin,
but was conceived in sin and purified in the womb of St. Anna; Pope Alexander VII prohibits
any Latin to affirm the Immaculate Conception as a dogma of faith; Catholic Encyclopedia;
Bernard of Clairvaux; Thomas Aquinas; Pius IX falsely claims the continuous support of
tradition; Edward Bouverie Pusey’s treatise the best study of this question in English;
Further reading.

Ch. II Legalistic View of Ancestral Sin / Original Sin

The Latins have an excessively legalistic view of original sin; 1992 Catechism of the Catholic
Church; Vatican document on unbaptised infants; Ernesto M. Obregón; John Savvas
Romanides.

Ch. III Latin Soteriology

Orthodoxy views salvation as the unification of man with God (theosis); The Latins have
innovated in their soteriology; Anselm of Canterbury was a “revolutionary thinker” who
first promoted the theory of penal substitutionary atonement, which became the prevalent
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idea in the West in the second millennium; Scholars on Anselm and the fact that the early
Church did not hold to Anselm’s theory: Patrick Henry Reardon; Laurence William Grensted;
Henry Nutcombe Oxenham; Gustaf Emanuel Hildebrand Aulén; James Franklin Bethune-
Baker.

Ch. IV Purgatory

Purgatorial fire a novel dogma; 1895 Encyclical; Epitome of Mark of Ephesus’s arguments
against Purgatory; Augustine on doubtfulness of Purgatory; Chrysostom on 1 Cor. iii.;
William John Hall on prayer for the dead; Roman Catholics admitting novelty: John
Roffensis; Polydore Virgil; Alphonsus a Castro; Further reading.

Ch. V The Papal Treasury of Merit

A thirteenth-century theological novelty, first formally defined by Pope Clement VI in 1343,

with scarcely a century of antiquity behind it; Ivan Vasilyevich Kireyevsky; Seraphim Rose;
Robert W. Shaffern.

Ch. VI Indulgences

Indulgences an admitted novelty; William Preston quoting Roman Catholics; James

Brogden; First applied to souls in Purgatory by Pope Sixtus IV in 1476; Orthodox Council of
Constantinople 1583; Further reading.

Ch. VII The Full Reward for the Just Before the Last Judgment

1895 Encyclical; First officially defined by Pope Benedict XII in 1336; Pope John XXII
contradicted Benedict XII and taught heresy (according to the Latins) on this point; Mark of
Ephesus.

Ch. VIII The Essence-Energies Distinction and the Hesychastic or “Palamite” Controversy

Mark of Ephesus; Recommended reading by Orthodox theologians and historians.

Ch. IX Scholasticism

Latins of the second millennium adopted a different theological approach than the Christians
of the first millennium; Henry Nutcombe Oxenham; Ivan Vasilyevich Kireyevsky; Seraphim
Rose.

Ch. X Modernism and the Latin Second Vatican Council

Latins of the 20th century underwent significant theological and practical change, especially
after Vatican II.

Ch. XI Variations of Roman Catholicism

Latins have had many internal inconsistencies and rival parties; James Benign Bossuet on
the variations of the Protestants, his words apply to factions of Roman Catholicism as well.

Ch. XII Filioque Added to the Creed and Notes on the Schism

The Filioque heretical and improperly added to the Creed; First Ecumenical Council; Second
Ecumenical Council; Third Ecumenical Council; John of St. Sabas; Council of Aachen in 809;
Pope Leo III strongly advises to omit the filioque in the Creed; Filioque likely first admitted
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in Rome in A.D. 1014-15; Council of Florence; Henry Percival; Edward Siecienski; Trent
Catechism; 1895 Encyclical; Leo engraved on silver the Creed without the Filioque;
Conference between Leo and the legates from Aachen; Pope John VIII; Latins permit the
Creed to be recited without the filioque; Pope Nicholas III said there could be no diversity in
the Creed; Council of Trent; Fourth Ecumenical Council, Sessions II & V; Address to
Marcian; Imperial edict confirming Chalcedon; Chalcedon Session I; Justinian’s Law Code;
Sixth Ecumenical Council; Letter of Agatho; Seventh Ecumenical Council (Synodals of
Theodore and Definition); Percival on Council of Toledo 589; Recommended theological
and historical works on the Filioque; Adami Zœrnikavii; John Mason Neale; Theophanis
Procopowicz; Dositheus of Jerusalem; Germanus II of Constantinople; Gregory Palamas;
Nilus Cabasilas; Joseph Bryennios; Christianskoe Chtenie; Ioannitium Galiatowski;
Macarius Bulgakov; Aristeidis Papadakis; Photius; George Dion. Dragas; Alexander
Alexakis; Manuel II Palaeologus; Theodorus Lascaris Junior; Gregory the Theologian;
Douay-Rheims commentary; John of Damascus; His words “the Father alone is cause”
disputed at Florence; Fourth Lateran Council; Council of Florence; Maximus the Confessor
says the Son is not Cause of the Spirit; Anastasius Bibliothecarius reiterates Maximus;
Catholic Encyclopedia on Maximus and John of Damascus; Peter Damian; Gregory Palamas;
Philaret of Chernigov; Council of Blachernae; Photius; Eighth Ecumenical Council; Adrian
Fortescue (Catholic Encyclopedia); Encyclopædia Britannica; Rejoinders to Hergenröther;
Orthodox works on Church History and books relating to the Schism; Roman Catholic
admission of Photius’s greatness; Alleged ambition of Photius refuted; Abbe Guettée;
Warren H. Carroll; Ambition of Nicholas I rather the case; Great Schism of 1054; Some
translated sources on the controversy; Excommunication of Michael Cerularius by the Papal
legates; Cerularius to Peter of Antioch; Franz Xaver Funk; Pope Leo IX accuses Greeks of
removing filioque from Creed; Edward H. Landon; John Lingard; Peter of Antioch willing to
make peace on all other matters if Latins omit Filioque; Restatement of the case against the
Filioque; It is wiser to preserve unaltered the traditional Creed and Symbol of faith.

Part III Other Innovative Customs and Practices

Ch. I The Gregorian Calendar

The Gregorian Calendar, invented by Latins and promulgated by Pope Gregory XIII in 1582,
causes Christian Easter to fall on the same day as Jewish Passover in certain years (such as
1825, 1903, 1923, 1927, and 1981), which is expressly prohibited by the Council of Nicaea;
Council of Nicaea; Canon I of the Council of Antioch; Percival’s notes on this Canon;
Apostolic Canon VII; Charles Joseph Hefele admits the problem; Pope Leo I on the
unchangeability of the Nicene decrees; Summary by William Stuart Auchincloss.

Ch. II Fasting on Saturday

St. Photius’s Encyclical to the Eastern Patriarchs; Cardinal Humbert; Canon LV of the
Council of Trullo; Johannes Zonaras; Apostolic Canon LXVI; Spurious epistle of Ignatius to
the Philippians; Pierre Batiffol; Augustine; August Neander; John Cassian.

Ch. III Canonisation

Innovations in Canonizations of saints; First solemn Papal canonization not till A.D. 993;
Camillus Beccari (Catholic Encyclopedia); Papal infallibility in canonising; Restriction of
episcopal authority to canonize locally by Popes towards end of eleventh century.

Ch. IV Musical Instruments in Church

Musical instruments an innovation and only vocal singing should be permitted during
liturgy; Council of Trent accepts musical instruments in Churches; Thomas Aquinas says
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“the Church does not make use of musical instruments”; Joseph Bingham; Henry Bewerunge
(Catholic Encyclopedia); Gerhard Gietmann (Catholic Encyclopedia); Joseph Otten (Catholic
Encyclopedia); Popes have explicitly permitted musical instruments in Church; Catholic
Dictionary; Early Fathers against musical instruments: John Chrysostom; Theodoret;
Eusebius; Cyril of Alexandria; Hyun-Ah Kim; Further reading.

Ch. V Sign of the Cross

The sign of the cross should be made from right to left; Herbert Thurston (Catholic
Encyclopedia) admits that the Latins changed this; Pope Innocent III; Cassian Folsom;
Charles Butler; Overbeck.

Ch. VI Titles of the Pope and of Ecclesiastical Dignitaries

The titles ‘Pope’, ‘Servus servorum Dei’, and ‘Pontifex Maximus’, among others, were not at
first exclusive to the Bishops of Rome; Edward Denny; Andrew B. Meehan (Catholic
Encyclopedia); George H. Joyce (Catholic Encyclopedia); Francis J. Schaefer (Catholic
Encyclopedia); Latin bishops call themselves by a title unknown to all antiquity, ‘Bishops by
the Grace of God, and of the Apostolic See’.

Ch. VII Exemptions and Dispensations

In this matter the rise in papal influence is apparent, especially since the second half of the
eleventh century; Johannes Baptist Sägmüller (Catholic Encyclopedia); Jean Jules Besson
(Catholic Encyclopedia).

Ch. VIII Diocesan Affairs

The Pope has assumed greater authority in diocesan affairs since the eleventh century;
Alphonse Van Hove (Catholic Encyclopedia).

Ch. IX Papal Encyclicals

The modern Roman Catholic communion almost exclusively confines the term “Encyclical” to
Papal documents, but the early Church applied the term “Encyclical” to the writings of many
other bishops; Herbert Thurston (Catholic Encyclopedia); Renouf.

Ch. X The Cardinalate

Changes noticed after the schism; Johannes Baptist Sägmüller (Catholic Encyclopedia).

Ch. XI Papal Elections

The mode of electing the Bishop of Rome changed shortly after the schism; Overbeck;
William H. W. Fanning (Catholic Encyclopedia).

Ch. XII Papal Interdicts

Papal interdicts a sharp discontinuity from tradition. No Pope of the first millennium laid an
entire kingdom under interdict.

Ch. XIII Papal Jubilees

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Papal Jubilees first instituted in AD 1300, and unknown before the second millennium. Pope
Boniface VIII intended the Jubilee to take place every hundred years, but his Papal
successors increased the frequencies, likely for the sake of monetary gain.

Ch. XIV Oath of Fealty and Allegiance to the Pope by Bishops at their Consecration

The first episcopal oath of allegiance to the Bishop of Rome was introducted in the 11th
century by Pope Gregory VII It contains strong statements of obedience to the Pope. One
oath reproduced in full; Attempt by Roman Catholics to minimise or deny the consequences
of this oath.

Ch. XV Confirmation of Bishops

There are many novelties connected with the confirmation, nomination, and jurisdiction of
bishops in the Roman Catholic communion, since the beginning of the second millennium;
Dependence on the Bishop of Rome; Catholic Encyclopedia; Encyclopedia Britannica.

Ch. XVI Crosier, or Pastoral Staff

The Roman Pontiff has changed usage of the crosier, departing from primitive custom;
Patrick Morrisroe (Catholic Encyclopedia); Thomas Aquinas; Innocent III.

Ch. XVII Episcopal Rings

Cerularius objects to Latin bishops wearing rings; Fortescue; Maurice M. Hassett (Catholic
Encyclopedia); Churchill Babington; Apostolic Constitutions; Clement of Alexandria;
Cyprian; Basil the Great; Jerome; Rings to be understood in moderation; Tendency to
effeminacy and vanity.

Ch. XVIII Clerical Beards

The Orthodox clergy appropriately have beards; Cardinal Humbert’s Excommunication of

the Orthodox in 1054; Herbert Thurston (Catholic Encyclopedia); Council of Trullo Canon
XCVI; Nikodemos the Hagiorite; Pope Gregory I was bearded; The first beardless Pope;
Roman catacomb; Roman edict against beards; Apostolic Constitutions; Clement of
Alexandria; Tertullian; Cyprian; Dionysius of Alexandria; Lactantius; Peter the Great.

Ch. XIX Military and Secular Bishops

Many Latin bishops engaged in direct military combat and acted as feudal lords in the Middle
Ages; Cerularius to Peter III of Antioch; Fortescue admits the abuse; Apostolic Canon
LXXXIII; Chalcedon Canon VII; Pope Zachary.

Ch. XX The Stigmata

The Stigmata never occurred among Christians until Francis of Assisi in 1224; Yet there
have been at least 321 stigmatics since then; A serious discontinuity with tradition;
Augustin Poulain (Catholic Encyclopedia).

Ch. XXI Visions or Stories of Latins Receiving Milk from Mary’s Breast

No records of any miracle or vision of this sort until the Latins of the twelfth century;
Bernard of Clairvaux the most famous person said to experience this; James France;
Orthodox charge these Latins with prelest (likewise for the stigmata).
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Ch. XXII Roman Catholic Monasticism

Orthodox monasticism has remained extraordinarily stationary, while Latin monasticism has
changed more; G. Roger Hudleston (Catholic Encyclopedia) admits this.

Ch. XXIII Western Iconography

Western Iconography; Orthodox art more traditional; Louis Gillet and Gerhard Gietmann
(Catholic Encyclopedia); Nudity in art; Icon documentary.

Ch. XXIV Devotion to the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary

No devotion was given to the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary in the first thousand years of
the Church; Jean Vincent Bainvel (Catholic Encyclopedia); Devotion to Heart of Jesus; This
devotion has received official sanction and promotion by second-millennium Popes;
Devotion to Heart of Mary; Theological Objections.

Ch. XXV Use of the Vernacular Language

Services should be in the vernacular; Eastern Roman Catholic Rites; A. J. Mass (Catholic
Encyclopedia); Pope John VIII approves Slavonic in the services; Pope Gregory VII forbids
Slavonic in the services; Restriction of Bible reading; Anglican Article XXIV; William
Beveridge; Jerram.

Part IV Notes on Orthodoxy

Ch. I The Sun Rises in the East

The East has been an important center of Christianity. First Seven Ecumenical Councils held
near Constantinople, but Latin councils of second millennium held near Rome.

Ch. II Greek Language

Greek the original language at Rome and the most important language for early Christians;
Adrian Fortescue (Catholic Encyclopedia); John Jewel.

Ch. III Orthodox Missionary Activity

Orthodox missions have been widespread and successful, yet not widely known in the West;
Conversion of the Russian Empire; Alexander Solzhenitzyn on its fall; Muslim missions;
More Jewish people converted to Orthodoxy than to any other Christian denomination in the
19th Century; Comprehensive list of English literature on Orthodox missions; Orthodox
missions to Alaska and Russian America; Missions to Muslims; Orthodox neomartyrs;
Statistics; Number of Orthodox Christians in the world by 1917; About 128 million, or one-
fifth of all Christians; Joseph McCabe on inflated Roman Catholic statistics; Charles Reuben
Hale; Andrei Nikolaevich Mouravieff.

Ch. IV The Russian Church

The Russian Church an important part of Christendom; Vladimir the Great; Christianization
of Rus; Russian Primary Chronicle; Arthur Penrhyn Stanley; L. Boissard; Alexander Whyte;
George Frederick Wright.

Ch. V Commentary on Roman Catholic Criticism of the Orthodox Church

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Unfair criticism of Orthodoxy from Roman Catholics; George Angus; H. G. Worth; O. R.

Vassall; The Orthodox Church calls itself Catholic.

TOC – Book II Papacy

Ch. I Introduction and Miscellaneous Matter

The Bishop of Rome has the primacy, but not the supremacy; Pope Gregory XI to John Cantacuzene;
Orthodox position on the Papal claims; 1848 Encyclical; 1895 Encyclical; Reasons for Rome’s
honour; Theodoret of Cyrus; Nilus Cabasilas; Apostolic Canon XXXIV; First Vatican Council;
Döllinger on Greek-Latin relations; Ignatius of Antioch; John Chrysostom on the Bishop of Antioch as
the full successor of Peter; Pope Benedict XIV; Chrysostom on the other Apostles receiving the Keys.

Ch. II Doubtful Petrine Succession

Problematic succession of the Roman Bishops; George Hayward Joyce (Catholic Encyclopedia);
Doubtful lists of the successors of Peter; Erroneous numbering of Pope John XX; Novelty of Gregory
VII; Richard Frederick Littledale; Immoral popes held not to injure the Papal position; Simoniacal
papal elections; Pope Alexander VI; Girolamo Savonarola.

Ch. III St. Gildas and Rome

Paul Bottalla adduces St. Gildas in favour of Rome; Gildas does not refer to the Bishop of Rome;
Further reading on the ancient British Church.

Ch. IV A Short Commentary on Paul Bottalla

A response to Bottalla’s claims against the Orthodox Church.

Ch. V Patriarch St. Nicephorus on Councils and the Pentarchy

Passages from Patriarch Nicephorus and his life showing the conciliar (and non-monarchical) nature
of the Church.

Ch. VI St. Cyprian and Pope Stephen of Rome

Cyprian no Papalist; Trent Catechism; Dispute with Pope Stephen; Pope Stephen judged that
heretical baptism was valid, yet Cyprian rejected Stephen’s decision; Augustine’s commentary on
Cyprian and the controversy; Augustine vindicates Cyprian, as only an Ecumenical Council settles the
matter; Augustine did not hold the Pope as the final authority in the Church; James Austin Mason;
Commentary in Foreign Church Chronicle and Review; First Vatican Council contrasted with
Cyprian’s words.

Ch. VII The History of Canon XXVIII of Chalcedon and the Ecumenicity of the Council in Trullo

Section I Introduction to Canon XXVIII of Chalcedon

This Canon extremely important for understanding the Papacy; Overbeck; Text of Canon;
Ancient Epitome; Chalcedon’s decision on Papal primacy in Session XVI; Various
translations; Pope Leo rejects the 28th Canon; Leo to Emperor Marcian Augustus; Leo to
Empress Pulcheria Augusta; Leo invokes the authority of St. Peter; Leo asserts that the
bishops were extorted; Leo rejects the Third Canon of the Second Ecumenical Council and
implies that Council’s non-Ecumenicity; Leo to Anatolius of Constantinople; Thomas
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William Allies; Henry Percival; Leo to Maximus of Antioch; Leo to the Chalcedonian
Fathers; Leo to Julian of Cos; Leo to Proterius of Alexandria; Leo to Marcian; Leo to
Anatolius; Leo explicitly states that the ranking of the Sees is permanently fixed; Leo asserts
that Antioch must never be lowered from the third place; Council of Florence declares that
Antioch holds the fourth place; Leo thus annuls the definitions of Florence; Rome later
accepted Constantinople as the second see; Leo rightly a saint; Other instances of Rome
accepting Constantinople as the second see; Leo objects to the 28th canon not because it
infringed on the rights of his see, but because it went against the canons of Nicaea and the
rights of the other sees; Pope Gelasius I insists that Constantinople cannot attain the second
see; Dvornik on the lack of original Greek documents of the time; Aeneas of Paris; Pope
Nicholas I; Latin Eighth Ecumenical Council Canon XXI; Pope Leo IX.

Section II Later History of Canon 28

Pope Leo XIII erroneously states that the 28th Canon is admitted by all to be worthless; H. I
D. Ryder; Bottalla; Sidney Herbert Drane-Scott; Leo to Empress Pulcheria; Leo to Julian of
Cos; Anatolius to Leo; This letter in Latin only and therefore suspect; This letter also
contrasts with other correspondence of Anatolius; Manuscript evidence not strong for this
letter’s authenticity, and it is surrounded by other spurious works; Pope Gelasius’s alleged
reference to Anatolius’s letter; Hefele admits that the Patriarchs of Constantinople retained
the privileges conceded to their see at Chalcedon; Pope Innocent III on sack of
Constantinople; John II. of Constantinople to Pope Hormisdas; Denny’s comment; John II
asserts validity of Canon 28; Justinian’s Law Code (multiple places) supports
Constantinople’s privileges; Syntagma in XIV Titles; 28th Canon in early Syriac, Copic, and
Latin translations; Peter L’Hullier; Prisca; Only 27 canons of Chalcedon in the canonical
collections; 28th Canon not formally a canon, but still a valid and official conciliar decision;
Grillmeier; Leo to Emperor Marcian; Chronicle of Pseudo-Zachariah Rhetor; Timothy III of
Alexandria; Timothy II of Alexandria; John Philoponus of Alexandria; Evagrius Scholasticus;
Ferrandus of Carthage; Responses to Codex Encyclicus; Liberatus of Carthage; Tillemont;
Pereira; Ancient Christians not in agreement with Pope Boniface VIII.

Section III The Council in Trullo

The Sixth Ecumenical Council (in Trullo) renews the 28th Canon of Chalcedon; Canon XXXVI
of the Council of Trullo; Epitome; Hefele; Pope Nicholas; Canon II of Trullo; Canon VIII of
Trullo; Canon XXXVIII of Trullo; Van Espen; Canon XVII of Chalcedon; “Let the order of
things ecclesiastical follow the civil and public models”; Cyprian on the magnitude of Rome
as the reason for her precedence; Errors of Paul Bottalla; Latin reluctance to honour the
emperors as saints; Baronius on Justinian; Adrian Fortescue (Catholic Encyclopedia) calls
Justinian I a “semi-Monophysite tyrant”; Pope Agatho calls Justinian I a great saint;
Acclamations of the Fathers in Session XVI; Aloysio Andruzzi; Alexander White; John
Chapman; Assembly of the Quinisext Council; The Council in Trullo is a continuation of the
Sixth Ecumenical Council, and it has ecumenical authority; The Fifth and Sixth Ecumenical
Council did not supply canons, so this was the duty of the Quinisext Council; Fleury; George
Nedungatt; Roman Cholij; Benedict XIV; Latins against Trullo; Mansi; Binius; Thomas
Morton Harper; Luke Rivington; Hergenröther; Percival; Emperor Justinian II an Orthodox
Emperor; Liber Pontificalis – life of Pope Constantine; Address of the Trullan bishops to the
Emperor; Date of Trullo; Proper understanding of Tarasius; A great assembly in 687; Liber
Pontificalis – life of Pope Conon; Horace Kinder Mann; Eutychius of Alexandria; Basil of
Gortyna represented Rome; 43 bishops from Trullo present at first assembly of Sixth
Ecumenical Council; By Papal admission, 43 “Holy Fathers and Doctors of the Church” were
present at Trullo; Thomas J. Shahan (Catholic Encyclopedia); Adrian Fortescue; Liber
Pontificalis – life of Pope Sergius I; The Pope said to have rejected the Trullan Canons; Bede;
Paul the Deacon; Paul the Deacon and Bede dependent on the Liber Pontificalis; Medieval
chronicles copying this account; Isaac Barrow; Liber Pontificalis – life of Pope John VII;
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Hefele; Judith Herrin; John VII appears to have accepted the Trullan Canons; Liber
Pontificalis – life of Pope Gregory II; Pope John VIII; XVIII Council of Toledo; This council
likely not connected with Trullo; Ecloga of Emperor Leo III; Laws compare with Trullo;
Third Law, Fourth Law, Sixth Law, Seventh Law; Basilika; Novels of Emperor Leo VI; First-
and-Second Council Canon XII; Photius’ Encyclical to the Eastern Patriarchs; First and
Second Nomocanons; 11th-century Russian Church; Ninth-century Prologue to the
Collection in Fourteen Titles; Libri Carolini; Pope Hadrian I to the Frankish bishops;
Libellus Synodalis of the Paris Synod of 825; 82nd Canon of Trullo; Germanus I; John of
Damascus; John of Jerusalem; Nicephorus I; Apologeticus Minor; Refutatio et Eversio;
Patrick O’Connell; Chalke Gate Inscription; Letter of the Three Patriarchs to Emperor
Theophilus; Greek life of Pope Martin I; Byzantine Chronology; English Church; Frederick
Hall; John Baron; Council of Celichyth Canon IV; John Johnson; Arthur Ritchie; Anastasius
of Sinai; Codex Barberini 336; Iconophile Florilegia; Codex Mosquensis Hist. Mus. 265;
Stephen the Younger; Theodore the Studite; Chronicle of Theophanes Confessor; George
Syncellus; Claudius of Turin; Life of the Patriarch Tarasios by deacon Ignatios; Chronicle of
George Monachos; Synodicon Vetus; Arethas of Caesarea; Agapius of Hierapolis; Symeon
Metaphrastes; Georgian Church; Small Nomokanon of Euthymios Mt‘ac‘mi(n)deli; Synod of
Ruis-Urbnisi; Niketas Stethatos; Humbert’s Reply to Niketas; 11th-century Latins
contending for clerical marriage; Peter Damian; Michael Cerularius; John VIII of
Constantinople; Leo of Chalcedon; Basil of Euchaita; Numismatic evidence; Judith Herrin;
James Douglas Breckenridge; Milton Vasil Anastos; Frescoes in Church of St. Maria Antiqua
in Rome; Michael the Sebastos; Theodore the Bestes; John Zonaras; Alexius Aristenus
(commentary, canonical synopsis, canonical recension also attributed to Stephen of
Ephesus); Theodore Balsamon; Meletios the Confessor; Athanasius I of Constantinople;
Barlaam of Calabria; Matthew Blastares; Council of Constantinople 1341; Nilus Cabasilas;
Philotheus Kokkinos; Constantine Harmenopoulos; Mark of Ephesus; Acts of the Patriarchs
of Constantinople; Thesaurus of Theognostus; Multiple manuscripts of canonical
collections; Synopsis Chronike; Gratian; His version of the 36th Canon; Gratian cites
multiple Trullan canons; Seventh Ecumenical Council affirms Trullo; Summary of this
Council from the Rudder; Canon I; William Beveridge; Canon VI; Session I; Session II;
Session III; Synodals of Theodore; Lateran Council of 769; Session IV; Very important
statement of Tarasius on the Trullan Canons; Pope Gregory II affirms Canon 82 of Trullo;
Pope Gregory II’s letters to Emperor Leo III; Session VI; Session VIII; Francis de Sales;
James Austin Mason; Review; Nicodemus the Hagiorite; Reply to Sidney Herbert Scott;
Symeon Metaphrastes; Gregory of Cæsarea; Comments on William Palmer; Additional
resources; Vincent Laurent; Heinz Ohme; Greek Orthodox Theological Review; Catherine
Jolivet-Lévy; John Lindsay Opie; John Joseph Myers; George Nedungatt; Ester Brunet;
Richard Price; Nicolae V. Dură; Summary; The Latins were unable to overturn Canon XXVIII
of Chalcedon.

TOC – Book III Forgeries

Ch. I Introduction

Latins have frequently used inauthentic documents; Roman Catholics not distinguished for
scrupulous attention to genuineness of documents; A sign that they are not the true Church; The
greatest controversies between East and West saw the rise or use of false documents in each case.

Ch. II An Overview of Falsified Conciliar Records

Summarising issues with the Latin treatment of records and facts pertaining to Church Councils.

Ch. III Pseudo-Isidorian Decretals

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The false decretals have promoted the Papal power; Introductory Notice in Ante-Nicene Fathers
Series; Admitted by all as forgeries; Louis Saltet (Catholic Encyclopedia); Henry Hart Milman;
Auguste Marie Félix Boudinhon (Catholic Encyclopdia); Pope Nicholas I; Attempt to exculpate Rome;
Roman Council under Pope Gregory VII; Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia; Pope Leo IX’s canonical
collection heavily relies on Pseudo-Isidore; Excerptions of Egbert; Official edition of the “Corpus
Juris” in 1582 upheld the genuineness of the false decretals; Giorgio Bartoli; Magdeburg
Centuriators first to expose their falsity; Turrianus defends the Decretals; Bonaventura Malvasia;
Eduard Dumond; Aguirre; Zeger Bernhard van Espen; Yves Congar; Christianus Lupus;
Inconsistency of Roman scholarship; Third Epistle of Anacletus; Third Epistle of Pope Felix I;
George Salmon; Paul Bottalla; William Edward Scudamore; Johannes Gratian; Melchior Canus;
Robert Bellarmine; Franz Xaver von Funk; Hefele; Thomas Harding; Sergius Bulgakov on forgeries
used to convince Orthodox at the Council of Florence; John of Ragusa; Basilios Bessarion; Manasses
I of Rheims; Gratry; Liguori; George Gordon Coulton; Interpolations to Chalcedon’s Acts; Further
reading.

Ch. IV Donation of Constantine

The Donation of Constantine a forged document to promote the Papacy; Text of the Donation;
Christopher B. Coleman; Catholic Encyclopedia; Baronius; Lorenzo Valla; Agostinus Steuchus; Pope
Leo IX cites the Donation in his letter to Michael Cerularius; Jean-Edmé-Auguste Gosselin; Cardinal
Deusdedit; Frank Zinkeisen; Döllinger; Leo IX to Cerularius; John of Salisbury; Otto of Freising;
Liutprand; Other Latins; Gabriel de Mussis; Gratian; Gilbert Génebrard; Johannes Vergenhans;
Cencius Savelli; Bernard of Clairvaux; John Huss; Pactum Hludowicianum; Henry Charles Lea;
Official edition of the “Corpus Juris” in 1582 defended the Donation of Constantine; Roman frescoes
and artworks depicting the Donation; John of Torquemada; Whether the Donation was a Greek
fabrication; Donation composed in Rome by a Roman ecclesiastic; Encyclopedia of Medieval Italy;
Summary of Popes who used the Donation; Dante Alighieri; Further reading.

Ch. V Pseudo-Clementine Literature

More spurious literature in support of Petrine claims; 1895 Encyclical; Frederick William Puller;
Heretical writings; Pope Nicholas I quotes spurious Clementine letter; Ebionite tendency to
depreciate role of St. Paul and increase that of St. Peter in Rome; St. Irenaeus provides the authentic
tradition.

Ch. VI Forged Greek Catena (or Libellus) and Errors of Thomas Aquinas

The forged Greek catena first used by Thomas Aquinas became the “quote mine” for many later
Latins arguing against the Orthodox; Many spurious Cyrillian passages in favour of Rome; Döllinger;
Luigi Andruzzi; John Rainolds first to show that Cyril’s works were interpolated; “The fathers
counterfeited by Papistes”; Spurious passages of Cyril cited in Aquinas’ Summa Theologica; Aquinas
extensively uses the false Cyril; John Henry Newman; Aquinas sincere but deceived; The Libellus;
Source for Aquinas; Error spread from Aquinas; Dupin; Otto Bardenhewer; Possevine; Pedro
d’Alva y Astorga; H. I D. Ryder; John of Torquemada; Bellarmine; Francisco Suárez; Giacomo
Pignatelli; Girolamo Donato; Franciscus Turrianus; William Damasus Lindanus; Christoval de Vega;
Thomas Gaggioli; Pompeo Sarnelli; Domenico Zelo; Clemens Dolera Monilianus; Remigio dei
Girolami; Guillaume de Pierre Godin; University of Toulouse; Antoninus of Florence; Andrew of
Colossus; Antonio Casini; Juan Tomás de Rocaberti; Baronius; Giovanni Antionio da Palermo; Louis
Bail; Denis the Carthusian; Gaspar Casalio Lusitano; Léonard Paradis; Juan Bautista de Valenzuela
Valázquez; Juan Bautist Fragoso; Henry Kalteisen; Peter Stroza; Giovanni Girolamo Albani;
Hieremias à Bennettis; Antoine Boucat; Michaele Mauclero; Lorenzo Condivi; Charles-François
Joseph; Pauli Fabulotti Romani; Dominicus Jacobatius; Agostino Steuco; Don José de Yermo; Alonso
Tostado; Eustachius de Zichensis; Council of Pisa 1409; Lucius Ferraris; Liguori; Valentino
Steccanella; Augustino De Roskovány; Errors of Thomas Aquinas; Aquinas cites many false
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documents; Chrysostom on Peter; Second Ecumenical Council Canon III; Jerome; Basil to
Athanasius on Antioch as the head; Gregory Nazianzen; Contra Errores Græcorum; Siecienski;
Table of inauthentic patristic quotes used by Aquinas against the Greeks; 72% inauthentic; Chapter-
by-chapter commentary; On the Papal power; On Purgatory; A misattributed quote from Pope
Gregory I on leavened bread; John Mason Neale; Pseudo-Gennadius Scholiarus; Dionysius the
Carthusian; Domingo de Soto; Antoine de Mouchy; John de Pina; Baronius; Martin Wigandt;
Antoine Boucat; Mariano Degli Amatori; John Alzog; F. J. Pabisch and Thomas S. Byrne; Other
forgeries in the Summa; Aquinas cites the Pseudo-Isidorian decretals of Popes Anacletus, Fabian, and
Soter on frequent communion; Aquinas cites the Pseudo-Isidorian decretals of Popes Melchiades,
Urban I, and Eusebius on Confirmation; Aquinas’s principal works use faulty translations of Aristotle
and the Vulgate Bible.

Ch. VII Inauthentic Patristic Quotations in John de Fontibus

A Letter of John de Fontibus against the Greeks has five incorrect patristic citations out of a total of
eight.

Ch. VIII Authenticity of Certain Passages of St. Maximos the Confessor and his Ecclesiology

Texts quoted from Maximus to promote the papacy are not sufficiently reliable; Jean-Claude Larchet;
Andrew Louth; Canons of the Lateran Council 649; Phil Booth.

Ch. IX More Corruptions of St. Cyril

Chrysostomos of Athens; Incorrect text in Migne; Eleventh sermon of Cyril spurious; Johannes
Quasten; Johann Friedrich Ludwig Rothensee; William Bright; James Chrystal; James Endell Tyler;
Christian Remembrancer; Trent Catechism; Luca Castellino of Catanzaro; John Baptista de Rubeis;
Gabriello Savonarola; Tommaso Maria Soldati; Alban Butler; John Kirk; Verax; Wiseman; William
Waterworth; Council of Kalocsa 1863; Martin John Spalding; Colin Lindsay; James Waterworth;
John Henry Newman; Charles Warren Currier; A monk of Fort Augustus Abbey; Lewis Jerome
O’Hern; Joseph Tixeront; Duchesne’s misleading translation of Cyril’s letter to Celestine;

Ch. X Three Spurious Fourteenth-Century Epistles Concerning Purgatory

Forgeries in attempt to bring patristic witness to Purgatory; Elizabeth Cropper; Charles Elliott;
James Ussher.

Ch. XI An Interpolation Pertaining to Purgatory in Erasmus’s Edition of Augustine

10 or 12 lines promoting purgatory were interpolated in Erasmus edition of Augustine’s City of God;
This interpolation quoted by Bellarmine; Later editions soon corrected this error.

Ch. XII The Arabic Canons of Nicaea

More forgeries adduced for Rome; Giorgio Bartoli; Council of Nicaea to Pope Sylvester; Nicene
Canon VI; Synod of Sinuessa; Decretum Gelasii; Council of Sardica; Arabic Canons of Nicaea;
Alphonsus Pisano; Hefele on the Arabic Canons; Text of the Canons; Peter le Page Renouf;
Columbanus; Natalis Alexander; Echellensis; Thomas Stanislaus Dolan; Joanne Paulo Lancelotto;
Stillingfleet; Alphonso Maria de Liguori; J. C. Poussin and J. C. Ganier; Aloysium Vincenzi; Francisco
Suarez; Johann Friedrich Ludwig Rothensee; Stephen K. Ray.

Ch. XIII The Council of Sardica and Misquotations of Nicaea

Corruption of the early councils to aggrandize Rome; Joseph Faà di Bruno’s Catholic Belief; Council
of Sardica to Pope Julius; Percival; Hefele; Fifth edition of Catholic Belief; Denny on the interpolated
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versions of the vi. Nicene canon; Percival on the reading of the authentic Nicene canon in the Acts of
Chalcedon; William Bright; The Church Quarterly Review; Pope Sixtus I; Bruno omits the name of
Honorius; Cyprian misquoted in favour of the Immaculate Conception; Tayler; Bruno’s Catholic
Belief received approbations from the papal legate to the USA, seven archbishops, seventeen bishops,
and numerous other Latin authorities, and was reprinted over 550,000 times, yet it still contains
references to the Pseudo-Isidorian decretals; Sardican Epistle to the Pope; Paul Bottalla; Robert
Knox Sconce; James Kent Stone; Kirk and Berington; Cardinal Wiseman; Text of the Sardican
Canons; Colin Lindsay; Edward Bouverie Pusey; Tillemont; Letter of the Nicene Fathers to Pope
Sylvester; Adrian Fortescue; Misquotation of the Sardican canons as Nicene; Popes Innocent I,
Zosimus, Boniface I, Celestine I, Leo I, Felix III, Gelasius I, and Western Roman Emperor Valentinian
III and his mother Galla Placidia cited or referred to the Sardican canons as Nicene; The Churches of
Africa, Constantinople, and Alexandria, at least, did not consider the Sardican canons as an appendix
to the Nicene

Ch. XIV Symmachian Forgeries

Five falsified documents, among others, to promote the idea that “the See of Rome can be judged by
no one”; Hefele; Binius; Johann Peter Kirsch (Catholic Encyclopedia); Jasper and Fuhrmann; Uta-
Renate Blumenthal; James M. Moynihan.

Ch. XV The Alleged Speech of Philip at the Council of Ephesus

At the Council of Ephesus, the papal legate Philip allegedly made a pro-Papal speech; Chrysostomos
of Athens; Conciliar conclusion of Philip.

Ch. XVI Latin Version of the Acts of Chalcedon

There are differences between Latin and Greek versions of Acts of Chalcedon, with the Latin version
being more pro-Papal; Session III; Session XVI; True text of Nicaea Canon VI omitted.

Ch. XVII Latin Version of the Papal Letters in Nicaea II

Significant textual corruptions were made to Latin editions of the Acts and related documents of the
Seventh Ecumenical Council to further the Papal interests; Jean Daille; Anastasius Bibliothecarius;
Pope Hadrian I’s letter to the Emperor; Hadrian’s letter to Tarasius.

Ch. XVIII Fictions in the Roman Breviary

The Roman Breviary of the 19th century still retained falsehoods on Papal primacy; Council of
Sinuessa; False Decretals.

Ch. XIX Inauthentic Documents in the Latin Pontificals and the Widespread Diffusion of Two Pseudo-
Isidorian Texts

Inauthentic documents included in the Latin Pontificals and widespread; Pseudo-

Hieronymian De septem ordinibus ecclesiae; Pseudo-Isidorian De officiis septem graduum;
Epistula ad Leudefredum; Pseudo-Alcuinian Liber de divinis officiis.

Ch. XX “Roma locuta est; causa finita est”

A misquotation and misrepresentation of Augustine’s words; James Kent Stone; John Evangelist
Zollner; Weininger; Victor Augustin Isidore Dechamps; John Francis Maguire and James L.
Patterson; Hergenröther; W. Devivier; John Miley; The Roman Catholic editor of “The Southern
Cross”; Oliver Rodie Vassall-Phillips; Henry Edward Manning; William Bright.
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Ch. XXI Peter Damian’s Misquotation of the Fathers in Favour of the Filioque

Peter Damian misquotes the fathers on the procession of the Spirit, citing them in a letter to a certain
Ambrose, and in another letter to the Patriarch of Constantinople; Jerome; Nicene Creed;
Athanasius; Ambrose; Augustin; 10 out of 22 patristic authorities on the procession misquoted.

Ch. XXII Forgeries in the Roman Catechism

There are multiple forgeries in the Trent Catechism

Section I Citations of Pseudo-Isidore

Multiple citations of the Pseudo-Isidorian decretals of Popes Clement I, Anacletus, Eusebius,

Urban I, Fabian, and, and Melchiades.

Section II Citations of Cyril, Cyprian, and Optatus

Cyril at Ephesus; Other impertinent citations; A brief note on the authenticity and reliability
of Optatus’s statements bearing on the Church of Rome.

Section III A False Quotation of St. Ambrose in Multiple Editions and Translations of the
Trent Catechism

Theodore Alois Buckley; John Breckinridge; Anna H. Dorsey; W. E. Youngman; James

Harvey Robinson and Charles Austin Beard; Recommendations of the Roman Catechism by
Popes; Catholic Encyclopedia; Pope Leo XIII; Pope Pius X; Decree of the Council of Trent.

Ch. XXIII Church Progress Cites False Letter

A false quote of Ignatius Bishop of Antioch, adduced by the Roman Catholic weekly Church Progress,
in public debate with the Protestant American Baptist paper.

Ch. XXIV The Dublin Review Cites False Passages

The Roman Catholic journal The Dublin Review cites spurious letters in controversy with Anglican
Arthur Philip Perceval.

Ch. XXV Forgeries and Novelties in Connection with the Rosary and the False Papal Claim that It
Originated with St. Dominic

Popes have falsely claimed that St. Dominic instituted the Rosary, but this is not historically tenable;
The Memoirs of Luminosi de Aposa are a forgery; The will of Anthony Sers is a forgery; The Novelty
of the Latin Hail Mary Prayer; Apocryphal legend told of St. Ildephonsus of Toledo.

Ch. XXVI The Novelty of the Latin Hail Mary Prayer and a Related Legend

The Hail Mary not an accepted devotional formula before about 1050; Herbert Thurston (Catholic
Encyclopedia).

Ch. XXVII A Quote from a Commentary Misattributed to St. Ambrose

The Douay-Rheims Bible cites St. Ambrose in favour of the Papacy; Thomas Cartwright; Simon
Patrick; Erasmus; Nicholas of Cusa; Thomas Harding; Thomas Stapleton; Francis de Sales; Review
of some errors of Francis de Sales; Anton de Waal.
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Ch. XXVIII Note on a Textual Variant in St. Ambrose’s De Pœnitentia

A Textual variant between the words “faith of Peter” and “chair of Peter” in Ambrose; Otto Faller’s
critical edition; Protestant scholars have held this to be a textual corruption.

Ch. XXIX A Pseudo-Isidorian Quote from St. Clement of Rome

A spurious passage of Clement is quoted for the Papacy; James Austin Mason; Thomas Ward; Ward
refers or cites four other pseudo-Isidorian decretals.

Ch. XXX A Spurious Letter of St. Athanasius with a Synod of Alexandria to Pope Felix II

A forged letter in favour of the Papacy; Now admitted as false; Cited by multiple Roman Catholics;
Francis de Sales; Deusdedit; Pisanus; Bellarmine; De Ordinando Pontifice; Lat. 10594; Thomas
Harding; Alexander White; Anselm; Deusdedit; Marcin Kromer; Thomas Ward; Johann Franz
Bessel; Giuseppe Marconi; Venceslaus Jelinek; Dominico Schram; A German periodical; James Luke
Meagher; Pope Leo X; Du Pin; Other related forgeries.

Ch. XXXI The Textual Variations in Cyprian’s De Unitate

There are pro-Petrine versions of Cyprian’s treatise on the Unity of the Church, which are not found
in many manuscripts; Roman Catholic scholars have argued that Cyprian was the author of both
versions; Geoffrey Grimshaw Willis.

Ch. XXXII The False Chronicles of Román de la Higuera

The Jesuit Jerónimo Román de la Higuera forged a number of influential Chronicles regarding
Spanish history; Katrina B. Olds; Many Roman Catholics accepted them and defended their
authenticity; This forgery notably promoted the Immaculate Conception; Antony of Trejo.

Ch. XXXIII Corruptions Regarding the Immaculate Conception

Summarising corruptions and issues with evidence regarding Immaculate Conception.

Section I The Leaden Tablets of Sacromonte

22 lead tables were allegedly discovered with remarkable information on Spanish Christian
history; Leonard Patrick Harvey; Preuss.

Section II Falsifications in Leonardo Nogaroli

Nogaroli invents passages from the Church Fathers; Natalis Alexander.

Section III Some Misquotations of Liguori

Liguori makes many misquotations throughout his writings; 8 examples.

Section IV Corruption of a Sermon of Eusebius of Gaul

Eusebius’s sermon was textually corrupted in two locations.

Section V Erroneous Allegations of the Spuriousness of a Letter of Bernard of Clairvaux

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Some Roman Catholics have falsely accused an authentic epistle of Bernard of being
spurious, because it argues against the Immaculate Conception. False visions of Bernard’s
retraction.

Section VI Two Interpolations in Hervé de Bourg-Dieu

Interpolation exempting the Virgin Mary from original sin.

Section VII An Interpolation in Peter Lombard

An interpolation minimising the force of his passage implying original sin in Mary.

Section VIII An Omission of Some Words of Raymond de Penyafort

Penyafort’s words against celebrating the Immaculate Conception were cut out from the
printed text.

Section IX A Forgery of a Revelation Supporting the Feast of the Conception

A false story that a Latin abbot received a revelation during a shipwreck supporting the
celebration of Mary’s conception; William Durand; Falsely professes to be written by
Anselm.

Section X An Omission of a Passage of Bartholomew of San Concordio

His passage denying the Immaculate Conception was omitted in an old manuscript.

Section XI A Misattributed Sermon of Bonaventure and an Admission of Frequent Latin

Interpolations

A sermon erroneously attributed to Bonaventure that upholds the Immaculate Conception;

Bonaventure’s editor admits that interpolation by modern Latins “frequently occurs in many
books”.

Section XII Alteration of Manuscripts of Joannes Ægidius of Zamora

Some manuscripts of Ægidius have been altered to support the Immaculate Conception.

Section XIII An Omission of a Passage in Alvarus

A passage of Alvarus’s eyewitness testimony that the Roman church does not celebrate the
feast of the Conception of Mary has been omitted in about three manuscripts.

Section XIV A Minor Interpolation in Odo of Châteauroux

Interpolation of the words “in her conception”.

Section XV An Omission of the Words “Original Sin” in Conrad of Saxony

The words “original sin”, as applied to the Virgin Mary, have been omitted in a manuscript of
Conrad of Saxony.

Section XVI An Attempt to Deny the Existence of John de Varsiaco and the Quodlibeta of
Nicolas Treveth
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John de Varsiaco did not hold the Immaculate Conception, and De Alva attempted to deny his
existence, but he was indeed a real author; De Alva also doubted the existence of Nicholas
Treveth’s Quodlibeta, but Quétif also shows their existence.

Section XVII Corruptions of Works of Nicolas de Lyra

Lyr’s works were corrupted to express the later state of opinion on the Immaculate
Conception.

Section XVIII Revelations of Catherine and Bridget

Alleged revelations by Roman Catholic saints both for and against the Immaculate
Conception.

Section XIX Petavius’s Comments on the Lack of Diligence of Latin Writings on the Question

Petavius admits that pro-Immaculate Conception writings “do not employ faithfulness and
discrimination in citing authors”.

Section XX Miscellaneous Errors of Perrone

Poor translations and misattribution of writings by Perrone, a chief defender of the

Immaculate Conception.

Section XXI A Mistranslation of Isidore of Kiev by Ballerini

Ballerini’s Latin translation of Isidore’s words “gives the passage exactly the opposite to its
real meaning”.

Section XXII An Interpolation in Robert de Holcot

Some manuscripts and printed editions of Holcot’s work contain an interpolation of 16 lines
promoting the Immaculate Conception.

Section XXIII A Textual Variant in Thomas Aquinas

The authenticity of Aquinas’s words “nec originale” with reference to the Immaculate
Conception have been disputed, and the manuscripts differ here; There is also an apparent
internal contradiction where Aquinas had just previously (seemingly) denied the
Immaculate Conception.

Section XXIV Alleged Retractions of Maculists

Aquinas, Alex. de Ales, Ric. Middleton, and Armachanus said to have later retracted their
views against the Immaculate Conception, but this is not proved.

Section XXV Fraudulent Miracles Alleged for the Immaculate Conception

Four Dominicans or Franciscans said to have been seized with diseases for denying the
Immaculate Conception, but such miracles are fictitious; Cardinal Cajetan on “the so-called
miracles which are cited in this cause”.

Section XXVI Turrecremata on the Introduction of this Doctrine

 25

Turrecremata says that “in many places it [the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception] was
introduced with violence, threats, defamation, …”

Section XXVII The Charta of Ugo de Summo

A spurious donation showing early belief in the Immaculate Conception; Preuss; Pusey;
Athanase Josué Coquerel; J. B. Malou; Earliest artwork depicting the Immaculate Conception
in 1492; Thomas Morton Harper confidently cited this forgery, but later apologised for this
mistake.

Ch. XXXIV A Spurious Letter of St. Ignatius to a certain Mary

This spurious letter allegedly shows a very early focus on the Papal succession and giving the title
“Pope” to the Bishop of Rome; Bellarmine, Francis de Sales; Turrianus; Joannes Paulus Donatus;
Gregory Kolb.

Ch. XXXV Pope Vigilius’s Epistle to Bishop Profuturus of Braga

An interpolation of a paragraph to the end of this epistle promoting the Papal privileges.

Ch. XXXVI The Wigton Controversy and the Literary Dishonesty of a Certain Roman Priest

The Roman Catholic priest Edmund Joseph Kelly falsified texts in his correspondence with an
Anglican clergyman.

Ch. XXXVII An Alleged Greek Calumny concerning Pope Joan

The Jesuit Secchi falsely accused Photius of inventing this story as a calumny against the Latins.

Ch. XXXVIII Scott’s Misquotation of St. Stephen the Younger

Sidney Herbert Scott mistranslates and misrepresents St. Stephen’s words to promote the papacy; B.
M. Billon; Aidan Nichols; Weninger; Dvornik; Butler and Collorafi; Text compared; The importance
of patriarchal agreement, not the pope alone.

Ch. XXXIX Allies’s Misquotation of the Seventh Ecumenical Council

Thomas William Allies (in two of his books) misrepresents and misquotes the Seventh Ecumenical
Council on the importance of patriarchal agreement.

Ch. XL Three Corrupted Letters of Pope Leo

Grillmeier on different forms of the text of a letter of Leo to the bishops of Gaul; Disputed letter to
Theodoret; An inauthentic letter ‘Quali pertinacia’.

Ch. XLI Spurious Works of Popes Leo I and Gelasius I

15 letters of Pope Leo thought spurious and 9 suspect, besides two corruptions and interpolations;
Out of 49 letters, decretals, and tracts attributed to Pope Gelasius, 9 are thought inauthentic, besides
the inauthentic “garbled and shortened form” of the letter to the bishops of Dardania, and other
issues; Dvornik quotes from an inauthentic tract of Gelasius; Ziegler admits that Gelasius “failed
utterly” to make the emperor listen to him and end the Acacian schism, and that Gelasius’s harshness
is most pronounced in his inauthentic letters.

Ch. XLII A Forged Correspondence Between Emperors Honorius and Theodosius II

 26

Latin ecclesiastics forged an Imperial rescript to gain Roman control of Illyricum.

Ch. XLIII An Interpolation of Gratian’s Commentary into the Code of Canons of the African Church

Gratian gives a false account of an African canon; In some later editions and copies of Gratian’s
collection, Gratian’s own pro-Papal commentary became appended to the canon itself.

Ch. XLIV Forgeries of Adémar de Chabannes

Adémar created multiple literary forgeries, including those supporting the Filioque and Papacy.

Ch. XLV The Formula of Hormisdas

The extant Latin text of the Formula of Hormisdas contains pro-Papal statements, but the original
Greek text is not extant; Fortescue misrepresents the Latin Fourth Council of Constantinople; Six
versions with significant textual differences; The document itself contains false statements about
Rome’s historical orthodoxy; Further reading.

Ch. XLVI Pope Innocent II’s Imprecise Quotation of an Augustinian Passage

Innocent II imprecisely quotes Augustine and ascribes the passage to the wrong work.

Ch. XLVII Errors in Papal Bulls of Popes Innocent III and Leo X

Innocent III and Leo X misquote Deuteronomy and Leo X refers to a spurious document and gives
poor historical reasons for the papacy.

Ch. XLVIII Corruption of Some Latin Documents with the Filioque

Latins have corrupted the textual evidence in the Filioque controversy; Pope Damasus; Gennadius of
Massalia; Gregory the Great; 589 Council of Toledo; Leo I; Basil; Hormisdas; Bangor Antiphonary;
Stowe Missal; Epitome of Latin Abuses; False accusation at Florence of interpolating John of
Damascus.

Ch. XLIX An Open Admission of Pious Falsification

Albert Houtin reveals that a Roman Catholic priest believed it was permissible to tell a falsehood for
the purpose of “edifying people”.

Ch. L An Alleged Serbian Orthodox Archbishop Who Converted to Roman Catholicism

Epifanije Stefanović is said to have been an archbishop who joined Roman Catholicism, with
thousands of others, but the account appears exaggerated for propaganda purposes.

Ch. LI Unfaithful Quotations of the Fathers at the Council of Trent

Testimony of a Latin bishop at Trent admitting this.

Ch. LII The Broken Promise of a Papal Legate and the Roman Catholic Tampering of Conciliar Acts

Archbishop Kenrick’s exception at the Council of Baltimore was removed from the printed Acts of
that Council, though a Papal delegate had agreed it would be printed.
 27

Ch. LIII A False Quote of Bishop Strossmayer Published by Cardinal Manning to Promote the Alleged
Freedom of Discussion at the First Vatican Council.

Strossmeyer was falsely quoted as saying that he had freedom of discussion at the Vatican Council.

Ch. LIV The Testament of Patriarch Joseph at the Council of Florence

Joseph II of Constantinople is said to have accepted the Roman Catholic claims before he died at
Florence; Van der Essen (Catholic Encyclopedia); Thomas Stanislaus Dolan; Clearly a forgery: the
letter is dated one day after his death, is scarcely mentioned by contemporary historians, contradicts
the patriarch’s own views several days before, and the document is very Latinized (apparently
written by someone whose first language was Latin, not Greek).

Ch. LV Nag’s Head Fable

A Roman Catholic slander against Anglican ordinations, claiming that an uncanonical and indecent
Anglican consecration took place in a tavern; Sydney Fenn Smith (Catholic Encyclopedia);
Christopher Holywood; Further reading.

Ch. LVI Miscellaneous Other Errors with Historical Records

Archbishop Spalding at the Vatican Council falsely claimed that Cyprian’s letters were likely a
forgery; Spalding also misquoted his predecessor Archbishop Kenrick; Hefele mistranslates Pope
Julius I in his History of Councils to show the Papal power; The Canterbury Forgeries; Glastonbury
Abbey a “factory of fraud”; Forgeries by or under Guy of Vienne (Pope Calixtus II); Forged decree of
the 679 Council of Hatfield; Latin indulgences founded upon mistaken or fraudulent precedents;
Roman Council in the time of Boniface IV, his letter to Ethelbert, and his Bull of 611; Slanders against
Protestant reformers.

Ch. LVII An Inaccurate French Translation of the New Testament

50,000 copies of a French translation of the New Testament were distributed among converted
Portestants at the recommendation of bishop Bossuet and King Louis XIV; This translation contains
notable inaccuracies and corruptions of the correct text; 1 Cor. iii. 15, “he himself shall be saved, yet
so as by the fire of purgatory”; 1 Tim. iv 1, “In the latter times some shall depart from the Roman
Faith”; Further reading; These false documents distorted the Latins’ understanding of the fathers,
and provided the straw foundation for the Latins to leave the Orthodox Church.

TOC – Book IV Appendices

Appendix I The Apostolic Canons are of Ecumenical Authority

The Apostolic Canons were respected in the early Church, although it is not held that they were
directly written by the Apostles; Sixth Ecumenical Council Canon II; First Ecumenical Council Canon
I; William Beveridge; Hefele; Seventh Ecumenical Council Canon V; Latin Eighth Ecumenical
Council Canon XII; Basil; Alexander of Alexandria; Constantine the Great; Thomas Shahan (Catholic
Encyclopedia); Even the fifty canons accepted by the Latins contradict their practices.

Appendix II Additional Material Concerning Trine Immersion

Section I Additional Texts on Trine Immersion

Mark of Ephesus; Conference between Mark and the Latins at Florence; William Cathcart;
John Henry Moore; Wharton Booth; Du Pin; John Mason Neale; Coptic Rite; Ethiopian Rite;
John Wesley; Alexius Aurelius Pelliccia; Louis Duchesne; Justin Martyr; James Quinter;
 28

Daniel Webster Kurtz; William Reeves; Everett Ferguson; Cyprian; William Wall; Jewish
antiquities; Mandaeans; Juvenal; Zacharias’ Life of Severos; John of Damascus; Germanus I
of Constantiople; Photius; Theophylact of Ochrid; Nicholas Cabasilas; Council of Celichyth
816; Two Bishops of Charlemagne; Jesse of Amiens; Rabanus Maurus; Haymo; Pseudo-
Theodore; Hincmar of Rheims; Gottschalk of Orbais; Richerus of Saint-Remi; Fulbert of
Chartres; Ivo of Chartres; Hugo of St. Victor; Peter Abelard; Lanfranc; Anselm; Robert
Pullus; Gilbert of Limerick; Bernard of Clairvaux; Peter the Lombard; Bonaventura;
Hermann the Jew; William Durand; Jean Charlier de Gerson; Frederick Edward Warren;
Gelasian Sacramentary; Gregorian Sacramentary; Gellone Sacramentary; Wolfenbüttel
manuscript; Albi, Paris, and St. Gallen manuscripts; Carine van Rhijn; Magnus of Sens;
Leidradus of Lyons; Theodulphus of Orléans; Regino of Prüm; Rupert of Deutz; Council of
Tribur 895; Zonaras; Balsamon; Meletius the Confessor; Further reading.

Section II Whether Trine Immersion is from Tradition or Scripture

Comments on Jerome, Basil, and Tertullian; Trine immersion undoubtedly Apostolical and
thus the proper interpretation of Scripture.

Section III Gregory the Great and Single Immersion

Pope Gregory I the first father to permit single immersion; Joseph Bingham; Arian
controversy in the Spanish Churches; Gregory’s letter; Fourth Council of Toledo 633 Canon
V; Hildephonsus of Toledo; Alcuin on trine immersion; Trine immersion “the universal
custom of the holy Church of God”; Alcuin suspects Gregory’s letter is a forgery; Whether
Gregory’s letter is authentic; Authors who refer to or mention Gregory’s letter; Walafrid
Strabo; Pope Vigilius; Claude W. Barlow; First Council of Braga Canon V; Martin of Braga;
Second Council of Braga Canon I; John IV of Constantinople; Gregory I erred in permitting
single immersion; Strabo.

Section IV Milk and Honey at Baptism

Milk and Honey and Various Incidental Customs; Wharton Booth Marriott; Tertullian;
William Wall; John the Deacon.

Section V Salt in Baptism

Roman Catholics put salt in the mouth of the baptismal candidate; Trent Catechism; Michael
Cerularius; Theodosius of Kiev; Robert Means Lawrence; Not an Apostolic tradition but a
minor and permissible custom; Supported by many Western fathers; John Farrar on the
symbolism of salt; Further reading; Hildephonsus of Toledo speaks somewhat
disparagingly of this custom.

Appendix III Excursus on the Condemnation of Honorius

Pope Honorius I of Rome was a heretic and was condemned as such by the universal Church, yet
many Roman Catholics deny this.

Section I Liber Diurnus

The Liber Diurnus recognizes the anathemas against Honorius; Hefele; Withheld from
publication by papal authority; Johan Peter Kirsch (Catholic Encyclopedia); Bona; Jacques
Sirmond; Gratry; Sparrow Simpson; Jean de Launoy; Jacques-Benigne Bossuet.

Section II Roman Breviary

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The Roman Breviary had listed Honorius among the condemned Monothelites, but in later
centuries his name was left out; Fernand Cabrol (Catholic Encyclopedia); Edward Denny;
Arthur Edward Gayer; Official revised edition of 1568 listed the other Monothelites, but not
Honorius.

Section III Testimonies to the Condemnation of Pope Honorius

A remarkable instance of frailty in the Bishop of Rome; Following the Pope no guarantee of
true doctrine; Lateran Council of 649; Sixth Ecumenical Council; Session XXI; The Sentence
Against the Monothelites; Letters of Honorius burned; Session XVI; Session XVIII; The
Definition of Faith; The Prosphoneticus to the Emperor; Letter of the Council to St. Agatho;
The Imperial Edict Posted in the Third Atrium; Leo II “approved and promulgated this Edict;
Rome was in possession of the authentic acts; Council of Trullo Canon I; Ancient Epitome;
Seventh Ecumenical Council; Joseph Mendham; The Decree of the Seventh Council; The
Letter of the Synod to the Emperor and Empress; Session III; Letter from Tarasius;
Synodals of Theodore; These Synodals were “read and approved” at the Lateran Council of
769 and were appealed to by Pope Hadrian I; Session VI; Epiphanius; Gregory; Session VII;
Canon I; Latin Eighth Ecumenical Council; Anastasius Bibliothecarius; Deacon Agatho on
Philippicus Bardanes; Pope Theodore I; Pope Leo II; Letter to Spanish Bishops; Letter to
King Erwig; Letter to the Emperor; Commentary on Leo’s letters by Dechamps and
Chapman; Fourteenth Council of Toledo; Pope Adrian II; Commentary on Adrian’s address;
Hefele; Paul Bottalla; William George Ward; Peter Le Page Renouf; Adrian’s inaccuracies;
Adrian admits that Honorius was “accused of heresy”; The Monothelites recognized
Honorius as one of their own; Macarius of Antioch and the Monothelite delegation of
Antioch; Pyrrhus of Constantinople; Paul of Constantinople; Acts in defence of the Ecthesis;
Sergius of Constantinople; George of Resh’aina’s Life of Maximus; Anastasius of Sinai;
Doctrina Patrum; Germanus I; Anonymous work on the first six Ecumenical Councils; Greek
life of Pope St. Martin I; Liber Diurnus; Liber Pontificalis’s various entries; Venerable Bede;
Reply to Bellarmine; Vita Sancti Bortulfi; Jonas of Bobbio; Manuscript evidence for the
authenticity of Bede’s passage; Honorius’s name undoubtedly in the original text of Bede;
Bede and the Liber Pontificalis followed by the Chronicon universale usque ad annum 741;
Hincmar of Rheims; John the Deacon’s Chronicon Venetum; The Annals of Quedlinburg;
The Chronicon Vedastinum; Cardinal Humbert; The Annales Hersfeldenses; The Chronicle
of Marianus Scotus; The Universale Chronicle of Eccard; Alexander the Minorite’s
Commentary on Revelation; Ivo of Chartres; The Chronicon Pontificum et imperatorum
Basileensia; The Chronica pontificum et imperatorum Tiburtina; Thomas Ebendorfer; Ado
of Vienna; Early Byzantine commentary on the Jesus Prayer; Vita of St. Stephen the Younger
(lists Muhammad right after Honorius); Symeon Metaphrastes; Tarasius of Constantinople;
Patriarch Nicephoros I of Constantinople; Letter of the Three Patriarchs to Emperor
Theophilus; Photius – Bibliotheca, Nomocanon, Interrogationes decem, and letter to Tsar
Borus (De Synodis); 11th-century Russian Church; Chronicle of George the Monk; Hincmar;
Vita Methodii; Synodicon Vetus; Eutychius; Humbert; Michael Psellus; Nicetas Choniates;
Zonaras; Aristenus; Balsamon; Bulgarian Synodikon of Orthodoxy; Theognostus;
Andronicus II Palaeologus; Nilus Cabasilas; Matthew Blastares; Athanasius the Monk; Nilus
of Rhodes; Symeon of Thessalonica; Mark of Ephesus; Possible additional manuscript
evidences in Eastern languages; Henry Boynton Smith; Catholics must believe that the Sixth
Council condemned Honorius, and that he was truly a heretic.

Section IV First Millennium Defences of Honorius or Omissions from Condemnation

A few sources that Latins cite in their attempt to defend Honorius; Anastasius
Bibliothecarius; Bottalla; False assertions of Honorius’s name omitted in Zonaras and
Photius; Chronicle of Theophanes; Latin Eighth Ecumenical Council; Letter of Pope Agatho;
John of Damascus; Paul the Deacon; Maximus the Confessor; John Symponus; Pope John IV,
in defending Honorius, calls Sergius of “reverend memory”; Lateran Council 649; Letter of
 30

Pope Martin I to Bishop Amandus, contradicted by Pope Leo II; 10th-century Latin textbook
on the councils; Mosaic of Pope Honorius and Latin inscription; John Chapman (Catholic
Encyclopedia) on Monothelitism;

Section V Claims that Popes were Always Orthodox and that None were Heretical

Aeneas of Paris; Pope Gregory VII; Pope Honorius III; Döllinger on the memory of Honorius
being forgotten in the West during the Middle Ages; Leo IX to Cerularius; Anselm of Lucca;
Rupert of Duetz; Martin of Opava; Bartolomeo Platina makes Honorius an opponent of
Monothelitism, and his history of the popes misled others, such as Pighius and Hosius;
Onofrio Panvinio; Alphonsus Cioconi; Flavius Blondus; Æneas Sylvius; Johannes
Vergenhans; Marcus Antonius Coccius Sabellicus; John Huss; Johann Eck; Nicholas of Lyra;
Council of Basil; Sylvius admits “very many examples” of papal heretics or reprobates; First
Vatican Council; Pope Pius IX.

Section VI Latin Attempts to Deal with the Condemnation of Honorius

Philip Schaff; Cardinal Raescher; Many Roman Catholics defend a heretic, substituting their
personal judgement for the judgement of the Sixth Ecumenical Council; John Chapman
(Catholic Encyclopedia) on the typical views of this controversy; Allegations of falsification
of Acts abandonded; A list of many Roman Catholics who have explicitly commented on the
case of Honorius; Manuel Kalekas; Nicholas of Cusa; Cardinal John de Torquemada; Albert
Pighius; Cardinal Stanislaus Hosius; Melchior Canus; Franciscus Turrianus; Thomas
Harding; Andradius; Francis Coster; Thomas Stapleton; Baronius; Bellarmine; John Hart;
Jacob Gretser; Peter Arkoudios; André Duval; Francis de Sales; Henricus Spondanus;
Johannes Wiggers; Adam Tanner; Dominic Gravina; Binius; Jodocus Coccius; Denis Pétau;
Isaac Habert; Raymond Caron; Antoine Godeau; Philippe Labbé; Francesco Sforza
Pallavicino; Louis Maimbourg; Richard Arsdekin; Jean-Baptiste Duhamel; Jean-Baptiste
Tamagnini; Francis Marchese; Antoine and François Pagi; Aguirre; François-Séraphim
Régnier-Desmarais; Natalis Alexander; Cardinal Celestino Sfondrati; François Fénelon;
Bernard Désirant; Honoré Tournély; Luigi Andruzzi; Jacques-Hyacinthe Serry; Charles
Witasse; John Gisbert; Anton Dezallier; Edward Hawarden; Charles du Plessis d’Argentré;
No Pope after Adrian II directly discusses the case of Honorius; Benedict XIV; Peter Dens;
Cardinal Orsi; Cavalcanti; Liguori; Antoine Boucat; Merlin; Giuseppe de Novaes; Gaetano
Moroni; Hieremias à Bennettis; Alban Butler; Pereira; Jean Joseph Havelange; Cardinal De
Laurea; Count Joseph de Maistre; Alexis-François Artaud de Montor; John Bell; James
Warren Doyle; Giovanni Battista Palma; Francis Patrick Kenrick (endorsed by Pope Pius
IX); John M’Encroe; Joseph Ferdinand Damberger; John Baptist Purcell; Orestes Brownson;
Prosper Louis Pascal Guéranger; Francis Xavier Weninger; Henry Edward Manning; Martin
John Spalding; Stephen Vincent Ryan; Victor Augustin Isidore Dechamps; Joseph
Pennacchi; Carlo Piccirillo; Gerhard Schneemann; William Humphrey; American Catholic
Quarterly Review; Amédée de Margerie; James Kent Stone; H. I D. Ryder; William George
Ward; Paul Bottalla; Luke Rivington; Dublin Review (multiple articles); Irish Ecclesiastical
Record; Abbot Marie Thé odore Guyot; Louis Pététot; Catholic World; Abbé Constantin;
Civilta Cattolica; Canon Lefebre; Abbé Laroque; Abbé Bélet; Father Roque; Father
Ramière; Avenir Catholique; Léon Gautier; Louis Jouin; William Cleophas Gaynor; John
Nicholas Murphy; Faucher edition of Aquinas’s Summa; John Gerard; William Francis
Berry; Reuben Parsons; Joseph Hergenröther; Bertrand Louis Conway; Daniel Lyons;
Columba Edmonds; Catholic Dictionary; William E. Addis; Jean Joseph Laborde; Vincent
Tizzani; Louis-Nazaire Bégin; Joseph Chantrel; Colin Lindsay; John Henry Newman;
Joseph-Epiphane Darras; Charles Coupe; Audishu V. Khayat; Joseph Turmel; Thomas
Patrick Gilmartin; John Chapman; Louis Duchesne; Adrian Fortescue; Thomas Stanislaus
Dolan; Walter Devivier; Alumni Association of St. Francis Seminary; Jakob Linden; Francis
X. Doyle; Clement Raab; Joseph F. Costanzo; Dvornik; Warren H. Carroll; Karl Keating;
 31

Denzinger’s collection of Catholic Dogma contains Honorius’s two heretical letters; Whether
Honorius spoke ex cathedra.

Section VII Summary

Roman Catholics have held widely divergent and erroneous positions on this issue; Edward
Denny; Roman Catholics have remained without any definite solution, and are uncertain
whether Honorius was the Vicar of Christ or a heretic; The condemnation and heresy of
Honorius is indisputable, yet many Latins have not accepted the decision of the Church;
Following the bishop of Rome can be hazardous to salvation; Further reading.

Appendix IV A Note on Protestantism

Many in Europe protested against the abuses of the Latins; Roman Catholics lost many adherents;
Protestants did not reject the filioque; Anglican High Church party before WWI the closest to
Orthodoxy; Protestant blind spot for the East; Charlotte Mary Yonge; Assaad Yakoob Kayat; The
infallbility of the Church; The best Protestant works against Roman Catholicism.

Appendix V A Note on an Article by a Sedevacantist Group

Most Holy Family Monastery has claimed that the catechism approved by Pope Pius X teaches
“abominable heresy”, however, this catechism was made “obligatory” for the Diocese of Rome by Pius
X and was widely promoted and published.

Appendix VI Geocentrism and the Papal Condemnation of the Heliocentric Model

Authorities in the Roman Catholic communion condemned the Copernican model of the solar system;
Galileo; Foucault pendulum; Catholic Encyclopedia; Popes Paul V and Urban VIII were convinced
anti-Copernicans, believed the Copernican system to be unscriptural, and desired its suppression;
Two trials of the Inquisition; Whether this decision was ex cathedra; Decree of the Congregation of
the Index 1616; Jesuit’s edition of Newton’s Principia; Decree of the Inquisition on the immovability
of the sun and the mobility of the earth; Further reading.

Appendix VII Lists of Latin Errors from Important Documents

Photius’s Encyclical; Cerularius’s letter to Peter of Antioch; Mark of Ephesus’s Encyclical; 1848
Encyclical; 1895 Encyclical.

Appendix VIII Conversion of Thomas William Allies to Roman Catholicism

Thomas William Allies was an Anglican who wrote an excellent book against the Papal supremacy,
yet later left to the Roman Catholic communion; Due to his dissatisfaction with Anglicanism; Julian
Joseph Overbeck; Aleksei Stepanovich Khomyakov; Andrew Nicolaievitch Mouravieff.

TOC - Book V Bibliography

A comprehensive bibliography on all first-millenium Christian literature in English, as well as Orthodox

authors and related or valuable books; Recommended books on the Roman Catholic controversy; Photius
and the Filioque; More on East-West Relations; Valuable Works Relating to Orthodoxy; Church Councils and
Canons; The Early Fathers; Series and Multi-Volume Works; Journals and Periodicals; Orthodox Culture;
Encyclopedias, Reference Works, and Bibliographies.
 32

Overview and Advertisement for this Treatise

This work is divided into five books, viz., Innovations, Papacy, Forgeries, Appendices, and Bibliography. The
sections where the author has focused most especially are on trine immersion, the Council in Trullo, and the
condemnation of Pope Honorius.

The author has compiled the most comprehensive collection of quotes on trine immersion in the first six
centuries of the Christian Era, followed by an Appendix that continues the survey down through the Middle
Ages. The early Church baptised by trine immersion, but Roman Catholics do not. It is very significant that
Roman Catholics do not baptise in the same way that the early Church baptised, and Roman Catholics have
not corrected their error, despite repeated admonition.

This work contains the most extensive survey of the ecumenicity of the Council of Trullo in the English
language. This follows an excursus on Canon XXVIII of Chalcedon. The Trullan council is extremely
significant, because many of its canons vindicate the beliefs of the Orthodox Church, especially Canon XXXVI
of Trullo, which is a full and satisfactory proof against the supremacy of the Bishop of Rome. The Church has
declared that this council must be considered ecumenical, as the Seventh Ecumenical Council, Pope Hadrian I,
and Pope Gregory II, with numerous others, have said that Trullo was a holy and ecumenical council, yet
second-millennium Roman Catholics have spoken with revulsion of this holy council. Latin Pope Leo XIII told
a serious error in his encyclical Satis Cognitum when he said that Canon XXVIII of Chalcedon “is admitted by
all to be worthless”, because Canon XXXVI of Trullo fully confirms that of Chalcedon.

The excursus on the condemnation of Pope Honorius contains a thorough collection of original documents
and opinions on the matter, found nowhere else in one place. The heresy of Pope Honorius demonstrates that
the Bishop of Rome cannot be perfectly relied upon to hold or teach the true faith. Moreover, many second-
millennium Roman Catholics have denied that Honorius was a heretic, or even the fact that he was
condemned. The Church has declared that Pope Honorius of Rome was indeed a heretic, as he was
condemned as such by the Sixth Ecumenical Council, and this condemnation was confirmed by popes,
ecclesiastical authorities, and subsequent Councils. It is difficult to withhold the charge of schism from those
numerous Roman Catholics who reject the decision of the Sixth Ecumenical Council on Honorius.

Regarding the filioque, it is sufficient to bring forth Pope Leo III, who strongly spoke out against the insertion
of the filioque into the Creed. This fact alone is enough to settle the debate, yet later Roman Catholics do not
follow the judgment of this holy Bishop of Rome.

In addition, the author has found that many documents cited by Roman Catholics in defence of their doctrines
are not authentic, and that many Roman Catholics have quoted forgeries in their books and letters. Perhaps
the most serious example of this is Pope Leo IX extensively quoting the forged Donation of Constantine, when
writing against Patriarch Michael Cerularius on the eve of the schism, as well as Leo IX’s claim that the Greeks
removed the filioque from the Creed, and the rise of the Pseudo-Isidorian decretals around the same time as
the beginning of the Photian controversy, and I believe this is an indication from God that the Latins are in
error in their key doctrines of Papal supremacy and the filioque. The most important forgery in the Roman
Catholic – Orthodox controversy is the forged Greek Catena or Libellus first extensively used by Thomas
Aquinas (considered the greatest Roman Catholic theologian) in his Contra Errores Graecorum (Against the
Errors of the Greeks, written 1263/1264), which became extremely widespread and the standard “quote
mine” for very many Latin books against the Orthodox for about five hundred years.

I have compiled perhaps the best bibliography available in the English language, including all Christian works
in the West until about 1000 AD, and all works in the East and by Orthodox authors until about 1900 AD. I
have aimed for a comprehensive collection of all English translations of Christian literature, as well as old
works written in Christian lands. I also list the greatest scholarly works on the Roman Catholic controversy.
The bibliography alone is very valuable and should be consulted by those looking to find Orthodox works and
works of the Church Fathers and original sources, many of which have been forgotten.
 33

The discussion of the sacraments and ancient practices, as they differ from Rome, exists nowhere else in as
complete a form. This book does not need to be read from beginning to end, but can be examined at any
chapter, to see the contrast between Roman Catholics and the early Church. The author hopes this will be a
useful reference work for those interested in learning more about the various topics discussed here.

“Frankish Delegates: Would not those same makers of the Creed have then done well, if by adding only four
syllables (filioque) they had made clear to all following ages so necessary a mystery of faith? Pope: As I dare not
to say that they would not have done well if they had done so, because, without doubt, they would have done with
it as with the rest which they either omitted or put in, knowing what they did, and being enlightened not by
human but divine wisdom, so neither do I dare to say that they understood this point less than we: on the
contrary, I say that they considered why they left it out, and why, when once left out, they forbade either it or any
thing else to be added afterwards. Do thou consider, what ye think of yourselves: for as for me, I say not that I
will not set myself up above (those holy Councils), but God forbid that I should either equal myself to them. … we
presume not in reading or teaching to add anything by way of insertion to the same Creed.”
– St. Pope Leo III on the filioque in the Creed1

“Unity of faith does not permit diversity in its confessors or in confession, … especially in the chanting of the
creed.”
– Latin Pope Nicholas III (1277 – 1280) on the filioque in the Creed

1 The full citation and discussion of these quotes will be found in the chapter on the Filioque.
 34

Introduction

In the year 1054, a schism occurred between the Eastern and Western Churches. The Pope of Rome, Leo IX
(1002 – 1054, pope from 1049 – 1054), left the communion of the Orthodox Church, having added to the
Divine Creed the Latin word “Filioque” (claiming that the Greeks had removed it from the Creed, and
disregarding the advice of his Apostolic predecessors, including Pope Leo III (750 – 816, pope from 795 –
816), who specifically forbade the Filioque insertion). Moreover, Pope Leo IX officially cited at length the
spurious Donation of Constantine in his letter to the Patriarch of Constantinople to justify his claims to
supremacy over the other Patriarchs. The next four highest ranking Sees – Constantinople, Alexandria,
Antioch and Jerusalem – along with other leading bishops of the Church, remained Orthodox, while Old Rome
fell away. These four Orthodox Sees are important members of the Church, as is read in the ecclesiastical
records:

• Constantinople: The 36th Canon of the Sixth Ecumenical Council (692), which was also confirmed in
the Seventh Ecumenical Council (787), gives us the correct understanding of the ecclesiastical dignity
of the Church of Rome (showing that Rome has equal privileges with Constantinople and is not
supreme over it), stating:

Renewing the enactments by the 150 Fathers assembled at the God-protected and imperial
city, and those of the 630 who met at Chalcedon; we decree that the see of Constantinople
shall have equal privileges with the see of Old Rome, and shall be highly regarded in
ecclesiastical matters as that is, and shall be second after it. After Constantinople shall be
ranked the See of Alexandria, then that of Antioch, and afterwards the See of Jerusalem.1

• Alexandria and Antioch: Pope St. Gregory the Great (540 – 604) writes of the unity of the three
Petrine Sees, referring to the Bishops of Alexandria and Antioch as Bishops of the See of Peter, in a
letter to Eulogius, Bishop of Alexandria:

Wherefore though there are many apostles, yet with regard to the principality itself the See
of the Prince of the apostles alone has grown strong in authority, which in three places is the
See of one. For he himself exalted the See in which he deigned even to rest and end the
present life [Rome]. He himself adorned the See to which he sent his disciple [St. Mark] as
evangelist [Alexandria]. He himself stablished the See in which, though he was to leave it, he
sat for seven years [Antioch]. Since then it is the See of one, and one See, over which by
Divine authority three bishops now preside, whatever good I hear of you, this I impute to
myself. If you believe anything good of me, impute this to your merits, since we are one in
Him Who says, That they all may be one, as You, Father, art in me, and I in you that they also
may be one in us.2

• Antioch: In the Synodical Letter of the Second Ecumenical Council (382), addressed to Pope Damasus
and the other Western bishops, Antioch is called “the most ancient and truly apostolic church in

1 Henry Robert Percival, The Seven Ecumenical Councils of the Undivided Church, Ch. VIII, p. 382, in A Select
Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church [hereafter NPNF], Series II, Vol. XIV,
Oxford: James Parker, 1900. See the chapter on the History of Canon XXVIII of Chalcedon and the Ecumenicity
of the Council in Trullo.
2 James Barmby (translator and editor), Register of the Epistles of Saint Gregory the Great, Book VII, Epistle

XL, p. 229, in NPNF, Series II, Vol. XII, Oxford: James Parker, 1895. It is important to note that Alexandria
ranks above Antioch, even though St. Peter did not directly supervise in Alexandria but only sent St. Mark, yet
Peter was seven years Bishop of Antioch, which shows that Petrine presence was not the key reason in the
ranking of the Patriarchal Sees, but a multitude of other factors, including the greatness of the city (as will be
shown in the book on the Papacy), which is clear in the case of Constantinople, which ranks above two Sees of
Peter.
 35

Syria, where first the noble name of Christians was given them”1. St. John Chrysostom considers the
Bishop of Antioch the full successor of Peter in the most comprehensive sense:

At all events the master of the whole world, Peter, to whose hands He committed the keys of
heaven, whom He commanded to do and to bear all, He bade tarry here for a long period.
Thus in His sight our city was equivalent to the whole world. But since I have mentioned
Peter, I have perceived a fifth crown woven from him, and this is that this man succeeded to
the office after him. For just as any one taking a great stone from a foundation hastens by all
means to introduce an equivalent to it, lest he should shake the whole building, and make it
more unsound, so, accordingly, when Peter was about to depart from here, the grace of the
Spirit introduced another teacher equivalent to Peter, so that the building already completed
should not be made more unsound by the insignificance of the successor.2

• On Jerusalem, the same Synodical Letter of the Second Ecumenical Council declares “Of the church at
Jerusalem, mother of all the churches, we make known that the right reverend and most religious
Cyril is bishop”3.

Russia: Moreover, hundreds of millions of faithful in the lands of Russia, Eastern Europe, and Northern
Asia entered into and remained in communion with the Orthodox Church, choosing to ally with the
Orthodox instead of the Latins.4 Many have become or remained Orthodox under the greatest
persecutions. Also, the missions of the Orthodox Church have been far more successful and fruitful than
commonly assumed in the West (as will be seen in the chapter on Missions).

The first subject to consider is the numerous innovations among the Latins, evidencing their
discontinuity from the early Church in sacramental, theological, disciplinary, political, supernatural, and
other matters, while the Orthodox Church has steadfastly maintained the ancient and Apostolic
traditions, carefully preserved and handed down the centuries. The examples here presented
demonstrate that the Roman Catholic communion of the second millennium is different from the Church
of the first millennium.

1 Blomfield Jackson (translator and editor), Theodoret, The Ecclesiastical History, Book V, Ch. IX, p. 138, in
NPNF, Series II, Vol. III, Oxford: James Parker, 1892.
2 W. R. W. Stephens and T. P. Brandram (translators), Saint Chrysostom: On the Priesthood; Ascetic Treatises;

Select Homilies and Letters; Homilies on the Statues, Homily on St. Ignatius, 4., pp. 138 – 139, in NPNF, Series
I, Vol. IX, New York, NY: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1903.
3 Blomfield Jackson (translator and editor), Theodoret, The Ecclesiastical History, Book V, Ch. IX, p. 138, in

NPNF, Series II, Vol. III, Oxford: James Parker, 1892.

4 Note that the term “Latins” in this work refers to Roman Catholics, not the people of Latin background. The

title of this book is meant as a rebuttal to Thomas Aquinas’s Against the Errors of the Greeks (Contra Errores
Græcorum). Occasionally the term Latin is used for the Latin-speaking Christians in the first millennium.
 36

Book I Innovations

“Thus saith the Lord, Stand ye in the ways, and see, and ask for the old paths, where is the good way, and walk
therein, and ye shall find rest for your soul.” (Jer. vi 16)

“stand fast, and hold the traditions which ye have been taught” (2 Thess. ii 15)

“Let the ancient customs prevail …” – I Nicaea, Canon VI

It is important for the Church to preserve the apostolic tradition, shunning innovations and departures from
the practices established in the New Testament, and retaining the patristic interpretation of the Scriptures.
The Roman Catholic confession claims to be semper eadem (always the same), but it will be shown that the
Latins have clearly altered the ancient customs and canons of the Church, and added numerous novelties.

The holy traditions and ancient practices, which Orthodox Christians have received from Christ, the Apostles,
the Ecumenical Councils, and the Church Fathers, should be respected and preserved throughout the ages.

St. Athanasius the Great (c. 296/298 – 373) says:

But, beyond these sayings [of Scripture], let us look at the very tradition, teaching, and faith of the
Catholic Church from the beginning, which the Lord gave, the Apostles preached, and the Fathers
kept. Upon this the Church is founded, and he who should fall away from it would not be a Christian,
and should no longer be so called.1

St. John of Damascus (c. 675/676 – 749) says:

Let us, therefore, brothers, stand on the rock of faith and in the tradition of the Church, not removing
the boundaries, which our holy fathers set in place [Prov. xxii 28], nor giving space to those who wish
to innovate or break up the structure of God’s holy, catholic and apostolic Church. For if license is
given to anyone who wishes, little by little the whole body of the Church will be broken up. No,
brothers, no, children of the Church who love Christ, let us not put our mother to shame, let us not
destroy her comeliness. Accept her in the preeminence I have defended. 2

Julian Joseph Overbeck (1820 – 1905), an Orthodox scholar who had been a Roman Catholic priest, wrote,

And the finger of God is not less visible in preserving the Eastern Church in its pure ancient
Orthodoxy than it is in allowing the West to follow its own vain conceits. Being cut off from the true
Church, the abode of the Holy Spirit, means shifting for one’s self. Hence the supremely human
development of the Roman system in doctrine and discipline.3

I begin this book with a discussion of the holy mysteries, also called holy sacraments.4

1 C. R. B. Shapland (translator and editor), The Letters of Saint Athanasius Concerning the Holy Spirit, Epistle
I, To Bishop Serapion, § 28, pp. 133 – 134, London: The Epworth Press, 1951. In another letter (ad Adelph 6),
Athanasius says “But our faith is orthodox, and starts from the teaching of the Apostles and tradition of the
Fathers, being confirmed …” (op. cit., p. 133, n. 28.)
2 Andrew Louth (translator), St John of Damascus, Three Treatises on the Divine Images, Treatise III, § 41, p.

110, in Popular Patristics Series, Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2003.
3 Julian Joseph Overbeck, A Plain View of the Claims of the Orthodox Catholic Church as Opposed to All Other

Christian Denominations, p. 53, London: Trübner & Co., 1881.

4 Although there are only seven mysteries proper and in the strict sense (see James Nathaniel William

Beauchamp (J. N. W. B.) Robertson, The Acts and Decrees of the Synod of Jerusalem: Sometimes Called the
Council of Bethlehem, Holden Under Dositheus, Patriarch of Jerusalem in 1672, pp. 12, 14, 62, 84, and 135,
London: Thomas Baker, 1899), the Orthodox Church does not limit the term “mystery” to only the seven, for
there are other sacramental activities in the Church, such as the service for the burial of the dead, the rites for
 37

Part I The Sacraments

Ch. I Baptism – Trine Immersion

“trine immersion is universally observed in Baptism: and consequently anyone baptizing otherwise would sin
gravely” – Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, Part III, Question LXVI, Article VIII

Baptism is the sacrament by which we formally enter the Church. Since the earliest times, the sacrament of
baptism has been performed by trine (triple) immersion in water, with exceptions in extraordinary
circumstances. The Church Fathers teach that immersion thrice into water is the divinely established
ordinance for baptism.

The only exceptions to immersion are weakness or sickness of the candidate (as in clinic baptism) or baptiser,
scarcity of water (as when a martyr was to be baptized in prison, or under other such confinement, or in
extreme cold weather, or in the desert, when a sufficient quantity of liquid water could not be procured), and
the necessity of baptism in extreme danger of life, in periculo mortis, or other urgent cause.1

The Patriarchal Encyclical of 1895, by Ecumenical Patriarch Anthimos VII of Constantinople (1835 – 1913,
Patriarch from 1895 – 1896), states:

The one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church of the first seven Ecumenical Councils baptized by three
immersions in the water, and the Pope Pelagius speaks of the triple immersion as a command of the
Lord, and in the thirteenth century baptism by immersions still prevailed in the West; and the sacred
fonts themselves, preserved in the more ancient churches in Italy, are eloquent witnesses on this
point; but in later times sprinkling or effusion, being privily brought in, came to be accepted by the
Papal Church, which still holds fast the innovation, thus also widening the gulf which she has opened;
but we Orthodox, remaining faithful to the apostolic tradition and the practice of the seven
Ecumenical Councils, ‘stand fast, contending for the common profession, the paternal treasure of the
sound faith.’ (St. Basil the Great, Ep. 243, To the Bishops of Italy and Gaul) 2

The Longer Russian Catechism of St. Philaret (1782 – 1867), Metropolitan of Moscow, states:

a monastic profession, the blessing of waters at Epiphany, and the anointing of a monarch, along with many
other blessings and services, and the whole Christian life itself can be seen as a single mystery or one great
sacrament (Timothy Ware, The Orthodox Church, Part II, Ch. XIV, p. 276, London: Penguin Books, 2nd Ed.,
1993). For an Orthodox study of the sacraments, see Ioan Ionita and Robert Barringer (translators and
editors), Dumitru Staniloae, The Experience of God: Orthodox Dogmatic Theology, Vol. V, The Sanctifying
Mysteries, Brookline, MA: Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 2012; and Fr. Seraphim Rose (translator and
annotator), Michael Ivanovich Pomazansky, Orthodox Dogmatic Theology: A Concise Exposition, Part II, Ch.
VIII, The Holy Mysteries (Sacraments), Platina, CA: Saint Herman of Alaska Brotherhood, 3rd Ed., 2005.
1 See the references to Metropolitan Philotheos Bryennios and Archimandrite Philaret Bapheidos, professors

of the Theological School of Halki, in Phillip Schaff, Didache, The Oldest Church Manual Called The Teaching of
the Twelve Apostles, Chapter XVII, p. 42, New York, NY: Funk & Wagnalls, 3rd Ed., 1890. Also see Joseph
Bingham, Origines Ecclesiasticæ, Vol. III, Book XI, Ch. XI, § V, pp. 601 – 605, London: William Straker, 1843.
2 Eustathius Metallinos (translator), Anthimos VII, Reply of the Holy Catholic and Apostolic Orthodox Church

of the East to the Encyclical of Pope Leo XIII. on Re-union, Art. VII, London: J. & E. Bumpus, 2nd Ed., 1896
(Originally published in Constantinople, 1895).
 38

Q. What is most essential in the administration of Baptism?

A. Trine immersion in water, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. 1

There is abundant testimony that the early Church baptized with trine immersion. In this section the focus
will be on witnesses from the first six centuries of the Christian Era that testify to trine immersion. This
chapter will omit the many evidences from the early Church where immersion (without reference to the
number of immersions) is shown to be the standard practice, and the focus is exclusively on the testimonies
for trine immersion. Later evidence and related discussion is found in Appendix II on Trine Immersion.

The learned Protestant scholar and historian Dr. Philip Schaff (1819 – 1893) writes:

The Didache, the Catacomb pictures, and the teaching of the fathers, Greek and Latin, are in essential
harmony on this point, and thus confirm one another. They all bear witness to trine immersion as
the rule, and affusion or pouring as the exception. This view is supported by the best scholars, Greek,
Latin, and Protestant.2

The Roman Catholic scholar Raffaele Garrucci (1812 – 1885) agrees:

The archæologists and historians of the Roman Catholic Church are likewise unanimous as to the
practice of ancient times. The Jesuit P. Raffaele Garrucci, who wrote the most elaborate and
magnificent work on Ancient Christian Art, says that the most ancient and solemn rite was “to
immerse the person in the water, and three times also the head, while the minister pronounced the
three names;” but he rightly adds that in exceptional cases baptism was also performed by “infusion”
or “aspersion,” when a sufficient quantity of water for immersion was not on hand, or when the
physical condition of the candidate would not admit it.3

The Patriarchal Encyclical of 1895 says, “in the thirteenth century baptism by immersions still prevailed in
the West” (quoted above). In support of this, I cite the preeminent Roman Catholic theologian Thomas
Aquinas (1225 – 1274), who has the following to say on trine immersion in his magnum opus, the Summa
Theologica:

1 Richard White Blackmore (translator), The Doctrine of the Russian Church, The Longer Catechism of the
Russian Church, Part I, Art. X, p. 85, Aberdeen: A. Brown and Co., 1845 (Originally published in Moscow,
1839).
2 Philip Schaff, Didache, The Oldest Church Manual Called The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles, Chapter XVII,

p. 42, New York, NY: Funk & Wagnalls, 3rd Ed., 1890.
3 Storia della arte Christiana, Prato, 1881, vol. i, P. I, p. 27 sq.: “Antichissimo e solenne fu it rito d’immergere la

persona nell’ acqua, e tre volte anche il capo, al pronunziare del ministro i tre nomi. Non è pertanto da
credere che altrimenti non si battezzasse giammai. Perocchè mancando al bisogna o la copia di acqua
richiesta all’ immersione, o la capacità della vasca, ovvero essendo la condizione del catecumeno tale che gli
fosse pericoloso il tuffarsi interamente nelle acque, ovvero per alcun altro grave motive supplivasi col
battesimo detto di infusion od aspersione, versando o spargendo l’acqua sul capo di colui che si battezzava,
stando egli or dentro una vasca che non bastava a riceverlo tutto, o fuori di essa e sulla terra asciutta.” in
Philip Schaff, Didache, The Oldest Church Manual Called The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles, Chapter XVII,
pp. 43 – 44, New York, NY: Funk & Wagnalls, 3rd Ed., 1890.
 39

Eighth Article.

Whether trine immersion is essential to Baptism?

We proceed thus to the Eighth Article: –

Objection 1. It seems that trine immersion is essential to Baptism. For Augustine says in a sermon on
the Symbol, addressed to the Neophytes: Rightly were you dipped three times, since you were baptized
in the name of the Trinity. Rightly were you dipped three times, because you were baptized in the name
of Jesus Christ, Who on the third day rose again from the dead. For that thrice repeated immersion
reproduces the burial of the Lord by which you were buried with Christ in Baptism. Now both seem to
be essential to Baptism, namely, that in Baptism the Trinity of Persons should be signified, and that
we should be conformed to Christ’s burial. Therefore it seems that trine immersion is essential to
Baptism.

Obj. 2. Further, the sacraments derive their efficacy from Christ’s mandate. But trine immersion was
commanded by Christ: for Pope Pelagius (II.) wrote to Bishop Gaudentius: The Gospel precept given
by our Lord God Himself, our Saviour Jesus Christ, admonishes us to confer the sacrament of Baptism to
each one in the name of the Trinity and also with trine immersion. Therefore, just as it is essential to
Baptism to call on the name of the Trinity, so is it essential to baptize by trine immersion.

Obj. 3. Further, if trine immersion be not essential to Baptism, it follows that the sacrament of
Baptism is conferred at the first immersion; so that if a second or third immersion be added, it seems
that Baptism is conferred a second or third time; which is absurd. Therefore one immersion does not
suffice for the sacrament of Baptism, and trine immersion is essential thereto.

On the contrary, Gregory wrote to the Bishop Leander: It cannot be in any way reprehensible to
baptize an infant with either a trine or a single immersion: since the Trinity can be represented in the
three immersions, and the unity of the Godhead in one immersion.

I answer that, As stated above (A. 7 ad 1), washing with water is of itself required for Baptism, being
essential to the sacrament: whereas the mode of washing is accidental to the sacrament.
Consequently, as Gregory in the words above quoted explains, both single and trine immersion are
lawful considered in themselves; since one immersion signifies the oneness of Christ’s death and of
the Godhead; while trine immersion signifies the three days of Christ’s burial, and also the Trinity of
Persons.

But for various reasons, according as the Church has ordained, one mode has been in practice, at one
time, the other at another time. For since from the very earliest days of the Church some have had
false notions concerning the Trinity, holding that Christ is a mere man, and that He is not called the
Son of God or God except by reason of His merit, which was chiefly in His death; for this reason they
did not baptize in the name of the Trinity, but in memory of Christ’s death, and with one immersion.
And this was condemned in the early Church. Wherefore in the Apostolic Canons (xlix.) we read: If
any priest or bishop confer baptism not with the trine immersion in the one administration, but with
one immersion, which baptism is said to be conferred by some in the death of the Lord, let him be
deposed: for our Lord did not say, ‘Baptize ye in My death,’ but ‘In the name of the Father and of the
Son, and of the Holy Ghost.’

Later on, however, there arose the error of certain schismatics and heretics who rebaptized: as
Augustine (Super. Joan., cf. De Haeres. lxix.) relates of the Donatists. Wherefore, in detestation of their
error, only one immersion was ordered to be made, by the (fourth) council of Toledo, in the acts of
which we read: In order to avoid the scandal of schism or the practice of heretical teaching let us hold
to the single baptismal immersion.
 40

But now that this motive has ceased, trine immersion is universally observed in Baptism: and
consequently anyone baptizing otherwise would sin gravely, through not following the ritual of
the Church. It would, however, be valid Baptism.

Reply Obj. 1. The Trinity acts as principal agent in Baptism. Now the likeness of the agent enters into
the effect, in regard to the form and not in regard to the matter. Wherefore the Trinity is signified in
Baptism by the words of the form. Nor is it essential for the Trinity to be signified by the manner in
which the matter is used; although this is done to make the signification clearer.

In like manner Christ’s death is sufficiently represented in the one immersion. And the three days of
His burial were not necessary for our salvation, because even if He had been buried or dead for one
day, this would have been enough to consummate our redemption: yet those three days were
ordained unto the manifestation of the reality of His death, as stated above (Q. LIII., A. 2). It is
therefore clear that neither on the part of the Trinity, nor on the part of Christ’s Passion, is the trine
immersion essential to the sacrament.

Reply Obj. 2. Pope Pelagius understood the trine immersion to be ordained by Christ in its
equivalent; in the sense that Christ commanded Baptism to be conferred in the name of the Father,
and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Nor can we argue from the form to the use of the matter, as
stated above (ad I).

Reply Obj. 3. As stated above (Q. LXIV., A. 8), the intention is essential to Baptism. Consequently, one
Baptism results from the intention of the Church’s minister, who intends to confer one Baptism by a
trine immersion. Wherefore Jerome says on Eph. iv. 5, 6: Though the Baptism – i.e., the immersion –
be thrice repeated, on account of the mystery of the Trinity, yet it is reputed as one Baptism.

If, however, the intention were to confer one Baptism at each immersion together with the repetition
of the words of the form, it would be a sin, in itself, because it would be a repetition of Baptism. 1

In the previous article (Art. VII), in response to the question of “Whether immersion in water is necessary for
Baptism?”, Aquinas answers,

Now washing may be done with water not only by immersion, but also by sprinkling or pouring. And,
therefore, although it is safer to baptize by immersion, because this is the more ordinary fashion, yet
Baptism can be conferred by sprinkling or also by pouring, … And this especially in cases of urgency:
either because there is a great number to be baptized, … or through there being but a small supply of
water, or through feebleness of the minister, who cannot hold up the candidate for Baptism; or
through feebleness of the candidate, whose life might be endangered by immersion. … Christ’s
burial is more clearly represented by immersion: wherefore this manner of baptizing is more
frequently in use and more commendable.2

In support of trine immersion, Aquinas cites Augustine (though this work is misattributed, as mentioned
below), Pope Pelagius II, Pope Gregory I’s letter to Leander (which is discussed in Appendix II, Section III),
Apostolic Canon XLIX, the Fourth Council of Toledo (here Aquinas is mistaken with regard to the reason for
this council’s decision, which was against the Arians, not rebaptisers, as is shown in the Appendix on Gregory
I’s letter to Leander), and St. Jerome. Although it is true that trine immersion is not absolutely necessary for a
person to be considered baptised, the Orthodox Church places much more importance on baptising with trine

1 “Sed cessante tali causâ, communiter observatur in baptismo trina immersio. Et ideo graviter peccaret aliter
baptizans, quasi ritum Ecclesiæ non observans;” Summa Theologica, Part III, Question LXVI, Article VIII;
English translation in Fathers of the English Dominican Province, The “Summa Theologica” of St. Thomas
Aquinas, Part III, Third Number, pp. 110 – 113, London: R. & T. Washbourne, LTD., 1914. Latin in Summa
Theologica, Vol. VII, pp. 112 – 115, Paris: Ludovicus Vives, 1859. Note that throughout this present work,
except where otherwise stated, italics are from the quoted source, and my emphasis is in bold.
2 Summa, Eng. Tr., p. 109.
 41

immersion, viewing it as a divinely established ordinance, and not merely as the changeable custom of the
Church for certain centuries and places. From Aquinas it is clear that trine immersion is attested to be the
universal practice of the Latins as late as the third quarter of the 13th century. However, the innovation of
pouring and even sprinkling in ordinary circumstances appears to have started becoming widespread in the
West by the 14th century,1 and established as the general practice by the 16th century.

The Catechism of the Council of Trent, an authoritative Roman Catholic document, states that pouring or
sprinkling of water has replaced the ancient practice of baptism by immersion into water:

This ablution [baptismal washing] takes place as effectively by immersion, which was for a
considerable time the practice in the early ages of the Church, as by infusion [pouring], which is
now the general practice, or by aspersion [sprinkling] … It is also a matter of indifference to the
validity of the Sacrament, whether the ablution is performed once or thrice; … The faithful, however,
will follow the practice of the particular Church to which they belong.2

The Catholic Encyclopedia3 article on Baptism, written by American Roman Catholic professor William H. W.
Fanning, agrees that trine immersion is ancient but not necessary:

1 It appears the first official permission was at the Latin Council of Ravenna in 1311, which allowed the
candidate for baptism be given their choice between sprinkling and immersion, and the mode of baptism was
declared as a matter of indifference in all circumstances.
2 “Ablutio autem non magis fit, sum aliquis aqua mergitus, quod diu a primis temporibus in Ecclesia

observatum animadvertimus; quam vel aquæ effusione, quod nunc in frequenti usu positum videmus; vel
adspersione, quemadmodum a Petro factum esse colligitur, cum uno die tria millia hominum ad fidei
veritatem transduxit, & baptizavit. Utrum vero unica, an trina ablutio fiat, nihil referre existimandum est
utrovis enim modo & antea in Ecclesia baptismum vere confectum esse, & nunc confici posse, ex D. Gregorii
Magni epistola, ad Leandrum scripta, satis apparet. Retinendus est tamen a fidelibus is ritus, quem
unusquisque in sua Ecclesia servari animadverterit.” John Donovan (translator), The Catechism of the
Council of Trent, Published by Command of Pope Pius the Fifth, p. 164, Dublin: W. Folds and Son, 1829. Latin
in Catechismus Ex Decreto Concilii Tridentini Ad Parochos, Pii V. Pont. Max. Iussu Editus, De Sacramento
Baptismi, pp. 174 – 175, Venice: Andreas Muschius, 1588.
3 Since I frequently cite the Catholic Encyclopedia in this work, as examples of the admissions of opponents, I

wish to include a note on the authority of the Catholic Encyclopedia. The Catholic Encyclopedia was created
by dozens of conservative and highly learned Roman Catholic professors and scholars to be “an international
work of reference on the constitution, doctrine, discipline and history of the Catholic Church.” After almost
10 years of work, the Catholic Encyclopedia was finished in 1914, just before World War I began, and it “bears
the imprimatur of the Most Reverend Archbishop under whose jurisdiction it is published. … Cordial
approval and assistance was given by the Apostolic Delegate and by the members of the Hierarchy,
particularly by his Eminence Cardinal Farley, to whom the project was formally submitted on January 27,
1905.” It met with great praise and reception by many Roman Catholics around the world, and the Dublin
Review, the chief organ of Irish Roman Catholicism, pronounced it the “greatest triumph of Christian science
in the English tongue.” The Catholic Encyclopedia is a reliable and authoritative source that I use to show the
perspective of the Roman Catholic position, and it cannot be said that this source has any bias against the
Latins. A revolutionary change in theology occurred during the early 20th century. Liberalism spread much
faster after the upheaval of World War I (1914 – 1918), and started affecting Roman Catholicism very rapidly,
as well as nearly all systems of thought throughout the world. Since this work is intended against
traditionalist Roman Catholics, I mostly attempt to cite the Roman Catholic authors before 1920, to accurately
represent the “traditional” Roman Catholic beliefs and opinions, which were not as impacted by modernism,
relativism, subjectivism, or post-modernism. It is also worth noting that Latin Pope Pius X signed Vol. I of
each of the twenty-six sets of the Commemorative First Edition (or the Vatican Edition) of the Catholic
 42

The most ancient form usually employed was unquestionably immersion. This is not only evident
from the writings of the Fathers and the early rituals of both the Latin and Oriental Churches, but it
can also be gathered from the Epistles of St. Paul, who speaks of baptism as a bath (Ephes., v, 26;
Rom., vi, 4; Tit., iii, 5). In the Latin Church, immersion seems to have prevailed until the twelfth
century. After that time it is found in some places even as late as the sixteenth century. Infusion and
aspersion, however, were growing common in the thirteenth century and gradually prevailed in the
Western Church. The Oriental Churches have retained immersion …

The threefold immersion is unquestionably very ancient in the Church and apparently of
Apostolic origin. It is mentioned by Tertullian (De Corona), St. Basil (On the Holy Spirit 27), St.
Jerome (Against the Luciferians 8), and many other early writers. Its object is, of course, to honor the
three Persons of the Holy Trinity in whose name it is conferred.1

Thomas Watson (1515 – 1584), the Roman Catholic bishop of Lincoln, who was jailed for maintaining loyalty
to Rome during the English Reformation, published a volume of sermons in 1558, in one of which he says:

And although the old and ancient tradition of the Church hath been from the beginning to dip the
child three times in the water, as Christ lay three days in the grave, yet that is not of such necessity,
but that if he be but once dipped in the water, it is sufficient, yea, and in time of great peril and
necessity, if the water be but poured upon his head, it will suffice.2

There are numerous passages from the early Church Fathers that witness to the fact that baptism is given by
trine immersion. It is important to note that the ancient Christians claimed Scriptural authority for trine
immersion. I will now review this testimony of the ancient Church:

The 50th Apostolic Canon declares:

If any bishop or presbyter does not perform the one initiation with three immersions, but with
giving one immersion only, into the death of the Lord, let him be deposed. For the Lord said not,
Baptize into my death, but, “Go, make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the
Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.”3

Encyclopedia. Also see The Catholic Encyclopedia and Its Makers, New York, NY: The Encyclopedia Press,
1917.
1 William H. W. Fanning, Baptism, V, 1., b., in The Catholic Encyclopedia [hereafter CE], Vol. II, pp. 261 – 262,

New York, NY: Robert Appleton Company, 1907. The Jesuit William Henry Windsor Fanning (1861 – 1920)
was a professor of Church History and Canon Law at St. Louis University, a Roman Catholic institution, and he
contributed dozens of articles to the Catholic Encyclopedia.
2 “And although the old and auncient tradition of the Churche hath bene from the begynnynge to dippe the

chylde three tymes in the water, as Chryste laye three dayes in his graue: yet that is not of suche necessytye
but that yf he bee but once dipped in the water, it is sufficient, yea, and in tyme of greate perylle and
necessytye, if the water be but powred on his heade, it wyll syffice.” Thomas Watson, Sermons on the
Sacraments, Sermon IV, p. 40, London: Burns & Oates, 1876. Originally Holsome and Catholyke Doctryne
concerninge the Seven Sacramentes of Chrystes Church, Sermon IV, folios xxii – xxiii, London: Roberti
(Robert) Caly, 1558. Watson cites Pope Gregory the Great’s letter to Leander (which is discussed in Appendix
II, Section III) in the margin of the 1558 edition.
3 “Si quis episcopus aut presbyter non trinam mersionem unius mysterii celebret, sed semel mergat in

baptismate, quod dari videtur in Domini morte, deponatur. Non enim dixit nobis Dominus: In morte mea
baptizate; sed: Euntes docete omnes gentes, baptizantes eos in nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus sancti.” “Εἴ τις
ἐπίσκοπος ἢ πρεσβύτερος μὴ τρία βαπτίσματα μιᾶς μυήσεως ἐπιτελέσῃ, ἀλλ’ ἕν βάπτισμα εἰς τὸν θάνατον
 43

The Greek, Latin, Syriac, Coptic, and Arabic versions of the Apostolic Canons are alike in condemning single
immersion,1 and this canon is in the collections of Dionysius Exiguus (470 – 544) and John of Antioch (or
Joannes Scholasticus, 503 – 577). The Apostolic Canons are recognized by Canon II of the Sixth Ecumenical
Council in Trullo (691), the First Ecumenical Council, the Fourth Ecumenical Council, the Seventh Ecumenical
Council, the Latins’ pseudo-Eighth Ecumenical Council, and Justinian’s Law Code, among other ecclesiastical
authorities. Note that these canons were not all directly written by the Apostles, but are simply recognized as
having been passed down in the name of the Apostles, since they represent the Apostolic tradition. For more
details and information see Appendix I (The Apostolic Canons are of Ecumenical Authority).

The Didache, or Teaching of the Twelve Apostles, is not explicit, but strongly implies trine immersion in its
7th Chapter:

1. Now concerning baptism, baptize thus: Having first taught all these things, baptize ye into the
name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, in living water.

2. And if thou hast not living water, baptize into other water; and if thou canst not in cold, then in
warm (water).

3. But if thou hast neither, pour [water] thrice upon the head in the name of the Father, and of the
Son, and of the Holy Ghost.2

Philip Schaff comments on this part of the Didache:

The normal and favorite mode of Baptism is threefold immersion* “in living water,” i.e. fresh, running
water, either in a stream or a fountain, as distinct from standing water in a pool or cistern.

[* Schaff’s note:] “Three times” is only mentioned in connection with pouring, but must, of course, be
supplied in the normal form of immersion. 3

John Henry Moore (1846 – 1935), a Protestant bishop and author of the article in the Schaff-Herzog
Encyclopedia on “Trine Immersion”, concurs: “‘Three times’ applies to the immersion as well as to the
pouring. Pouring plenty of water on the head “three times” was the nearest practicable substitute of total
trine immersion.”4 The Didache is usually dated to the latter part of the first century. 5

τοῦ Κυρίου διδόμενον, καθαιρείσθω· οὐ γὰρ εἶπεν ὁ Κύριος· Εἰς τὸν θάνατον μου βαπτίσατε, ἀλλὰ·
Πορευθέντες μαθητεύσατε πάντα τὰ ἔθνη, Βαπτίζοντες αὐτοὺς εἰς τὸ ὄνομα τοῦ Πατρὸς καὶ τοῦ Υἱοῦ καὶ τοῦ
ἁγίου Πνεύματος.” English in Henry Robert Percival, The Seven Ecumenical Councils of the Undivided
Church, Appendix, The Apostolical Canons, Canon L, p. 597, in NPNF, Series II, Vol. XIV, Oxford: James Parker,
1900; Latin and Greek in Charles Joseph Hefele, A History of the Christian Councils, Vol. I, Book II, Appendix,
Can. L, p. 478, Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 2nd Ed., 1894.
1 Wharton Booth Marriott, A Dictionary of Christian Antiquities, Vol. I, Baptism, III, Baptism, § 49., p. 161,

London: John Murray, 1908.

2 Philip Schaff, Didache, The Documents, I, The Didache, Chapter VII, pp. 184 – 186, 3rd Ed., New York, NY:

Funk & Wagnalls, 1890.

3 Philip Schaff, Didache, The Oldest Church Manual Called The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles, Chapter XV, p.

32, 3rd Ed., New York, NY: Funk & Wagnalls, 1890.
4 J. H. Moore, Trine Immersion, Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge, Vol. XII, Trine Immersion,

p. 16, New York and London, 1912

5 A recent in-depth study on the Didache is Aaron Milavec, The Didache: Faith, Hope, & Life of the Earliest

Christian Communities, 50 – 70 C.E., New York, NY: The Newman Press, 2003.
 44

St. Dionysius the Areopagite is a witness for trine immersion. In his work “Ecclesiastical Hierarchy”,
Dionysius writes:

When the Deacons have entirely unclothed him, the Priests bring the holy oil of the anointing. Then
he begins the anointing, through the threefold sealing, and for the rest assigns the man to the Priests,
for the anointing of his whole body, while himself advances to the mother of filial adoption, and when
he has purified the water within it by the holy invocations, and perfected it by three cruciform
effusions of the altogether most pure Muron, and by the same number of injections of the all holy
Muron, and has invoked the sacred melody of the inspiration of the God-rapt Prophets, he orders the
man to be brought forward; and when one of the Priests, from the register, has announced him and
his surety, he is conducted by the Priests near the water to the hand of the Hierarch, being led by the
hand to him. Then the Hierarch, standing above, when the Priests have again called aloud near the
Hierarch within the water the name of the initiated, the Hierarch dips him three times, invoking
the threefold Subsistence of the Divine Blessedness, at the three immersions and emersions of
the initiated. The Priests then take him, and entrust him to the Sponsor and guide of his
introduction; and when they, in conjunction with him, have cast over the initiated appropriate
clothing, they lead him again to the Hierarch, who, when he has sealed the man with the most
Divinely operating Muron, pronounces him to be henceforward partaker of the most Divinely
initiating Eucharist.1

And in the next chapter:

And consider attentively, I pray, with what appropriateness the holy symbols are presented. For
since death is with us not an annihilation of being, as others surmise, but the separating of things
united, leading to that which is invisible to us, the soul indeed becoming invisible through
deprivation of the body, and the body, through being buried in earth in consequence of one of its
bodily changes, becoming invisible to human ken, appropriately, the whole covering by water would
be taken as an image of death, and the invisible tomb. The symbolical teaching, then, reveals in
mystery that the man baptized according to religious rites, imitates, so far as Divine imitation is
attainable to men, by the three immersions in the water, the supremely Divine death of the Life-
giving Jesus, Who spent three days and three nights in the tomb, in Whom, according to the mystical
and secret teaching of the sacred text, the Prince of the world found nothing. 2

The apocryphal book titled “The Acts of Paul” was written about the year 160, and contains an early
testimony to trine immersion in Christian baptism:

There came a great and terrible lion out of the valley of the burying-ground. But we were praying, so
that through the prayer Lemma and Ammia did not come upon the beast (?). But when I finished
praying, the beast had cast himself at my feet. I was filled with the Spirit (and) looked upon him,
(and) said to him: “Lion, what wilt thou?” But he said: “I wish to be baptized.” …

I glorified God, who had given speech to the beast and salvation to his servants. Now there was a
great river in that place; I went down into it and he followed me. As doves (?) in terror before eagles
(?) fly into a house in order to escape, so was it with Lemma and Ammia, who did not cease (?) to
pray humbly, until I had praised and glorified God. I myself was in fear and wonderment, in that I
was on the point of leading the lion like an ox and baptizing him in the water. But I stood on the
bank, … When I had prayed thus, I took <the lion> by his mane <and> in the name of Jesus Christ

1 John Parker, The Works of Dionysius the Areopagite, Part II, Ecclesiastical Hierarchy, Ch. II, § VII, pp. 78 – 79,
London, 1899.
2 John Parker, The Works of Dionysius the Areopagite, Part II, Ecclesiastical Hierarchy, Ch. III, § VII, p. 86,

London, 1899.
 45

immersed him three times. But when he came up out of the water he shook his mane and said to
me: “Grace be with thee!” And I said to him: “And likewise with thee.”1

In the Physiologus, a popular Christian work dated to perhaps about 200, there is an allusion to baptismal
trine immersion in the section on the eagle: “[The eagle] descends into the fountain and bathes himself three
times and is restored and made new again.”2 The Physiologus was originally written in Greek in Alexandria,
and was soon translated into Latin, Armenian, Georgian, Syriac, Coptic, Ethiopic, Arabic, Old Slavic (Old
Bulgarian), Anglo-Saxon, Old High German, and more modern languages, and it was widely known and
referenced by the Greek and Latin Church Fathers.

Tertullian (155 – 240; alternatively 145 – 220), writing in the year 204, notes that trine immersion is an
ancient practice, in his work De Corona, or The Chaplet:

And how long shall we draw the saw to and fro through this line, when we have an ancient practice,
which by anticipation has made for us the state, i.e., of the question? If no passage of Scripture has
prescribed it, assuredly custom, which without doubt flowed from tradition, has confirmed it. For
how can anything come into use, if it has not first been handed down? Even in pleading tradition,
written authority, you say, must be demanded. Let us inquire, therefore, whether tradition, unless it
be written, should not be admitted. Certainly we shall say that it ought not to be admitted, if no cases
of other practices which, without any written instrument, we maintain on the ground of tradition
alone, and the countenance thereafter of custom, affords us any precedent. To deal with this matter
briefly, I shall begin with baptism. When we are going to enter the water, but a little before, in the
presence of the congregation and under the hand of the president, we solemnly profess that we
disown the devil, and his pomp, and his angels. Hereupon we are thrice immersed, making a
somewhat ampler pledge than the Lord has appointed in the Gospel. Then when we are taken up (as
new-born children), we taste first of all a mixture of milk and honey, and from that day we refrain
from the daily bath for a whole week.3

Tertullian writes in his book “Against Praxeas”, about the year 208:

After His resurrection He promises in a pledge to His disciples that He will send them the promise of
His Father; and lastly, He commands them to baptize into the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost,

1 Wilhelm Schneemelcher, R. McL. Wilson, and Edgar Hennecke, New Testament Apocrypha, Vol. II, Ch. XV, p.
264, Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, Rev. Ed., 1992. Everett Ferguson, Baptism in the Early
Church, Part III, Ch. XIII, p. 231. Note that this text only remains in an imperfect Coptic translation (the 6th
century Coptic manuscript at Heidelberg) from the original Greek, and I have retained the parenthetical
remarks of the translator. It should also be noted that although this work is uncanonical and heretical, it still
provides valuable supporting historical evidence.
2 Michael J. Curley (translator), Physiologus: A Medieval Book of Nature Lore, Ch. VIII, p. 12, Chicago, IL: The

University of Chicago Press, 2009. Also see Gohar Muradyan, Physiologus: The Greek and Armenian Versions
with a Study of Translation Technique, Introduction, 9.3, p. 29, Hebrew University Armenian Studies, Vol. VI,
Peeters: Leuven, 2005; Everett Ferguson, Baptism in the Early Church: History, Theology, and Liturgy in the
First Five Centuries, Part III, Ch. XIII, p. 236, Eerdmans: Grand Rapids, MI, 2009.
3 “Aquam adituri ibidem, sed et aliquanto prius in ecclesia sub antistitis manu contestamur nos renuntiare

diabole et pompae et angelis ejus. Dehinc ter mergitamur, amplius aliquid respondentes, quam Dominus in
Evangelio determinavit.” Arthur Cleveland Coxe (translator and editor), Latin Christianity: Its Founder,
Tertullian, Part I, De Corona, Chapter III, p. 94, in Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol. III, New York, NY: Charles
Scribner’s Sons, 1903.
 46

not into a unipersonal God. And indeed it is not once only, but three times, that we are immersed
into the Three Persons, at each several mention of Their names.1

The learned American Protestant clergyman James Chrystal (1832 – 1908) comments, “The words seem to
imply from his using it against Praxeas that even the heretical sect to which he belonged used the trine as well
as the orthodox Church. The use of this custom in a controversy to establish a doctrine points clearly to its
general reception, and these words above quoted occurring in the connection in which they stand show
clearly that Tertullian believed it the mode commanded by Christ.” 2

In the Apostolic Tradition, an early Christian treatise attributed to St. Hippolytus of Rome (martyred 235), the
following instructions are given:

Then, after these things, let him give him over to the presbyter who baptizes, and let the candidates
stand in the water, naked, a deacon going with them likewise. And when he who is being baptized
goes down into the water, he who baptizes him, putting his hand on him, shall say thus:

Dost thou believe in God, the Father Almighty?

And he who is being baptized shall say

I believe.

Then holding his hand placed on his head, he shall baptize him once. And then he shall say:

Dost thou believe in Christ Jesus, the Son of God, who was born of the Holy Ghost of the
Virgin Mary, and was crucified under Pontius Pilate, and was dead and buried, and rose
again the third day, alive from the dead, and ascended into heaven, and sat at the right hand
of the Father, and will come to judge the quick and the dead?

And when he says:

I believe,

he is baptized again. And again he shall say:

Dost thou believe in [the] Holy Ghost, and the holy church, and the resurrection of the flesh?

He who is being baptized shall say accordingly:

I believe, and so he is baptized a third time. 3

1 “Nam nec semel, sed ter, ad singular nomina in personas singulas tinguimur” Arthur Cleveland Coxe
(translator and editor), Latin Christianity: Its Founder, Tertullian, Part II, Against Praxeas, Chapter XXVI, p.
623, in Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol. III, New York, NY: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1903.
2 James Chrystal, A History of the Modes of Christian Baptism, Ch. XVIII, § 6, p. 261, Philadelphia, PA: Lindsay

and Blakiston, 1861.

3 Burton Scott Easton, The Apostolic Tradition of Hippolytus, Translation, Part I, Ch. 21, pp. 46 – 47, Cushing –

Malloy Inc., Ann Arbor, MI, 1962 (first published 1934); also see Gregory Dix and Henry Chadwick, The
Treatise on the Apostolic Tradition of St Hippolytus of Rome, The Apostolic Tradition, Part II, pp. 36 – 37, pp.
lxvii – lxix and footnotes, London: Routledge, 1992 (first published 1937, second revised edition 1968).
 47

Munnulus or Monulus, the bishop of Girba, is thought to refer to trine immersion in his address at the Council
of Carthage in 256:

The truth of our Mother the Catholic Church, brethren, hath always remained and still remains with
us, and even especially in the Trinity of baptism, as our Lord says, “Go ye and baptize the nations, in
the name of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.” Since, then, we manifestly know that
heretics have not either Father, or Son, or Holy Spirit, they ought, when they come to the Church our
Mother, truly to be born again and to be baptized; that the cancer which they had, and the anger of
damnation, and the witchery of error, may be sanctified by the holy and heavenly laver.1

St. Macarius I was an eminent saint and the Archbishop of Jerusalem (from 311/314 to his death about
331/336, likely late 335 or early 336) and he was one of the 318 fathers who attended the Council
of Nicaea. In Macarius’ Epistle to the Armenians (written between 325 and 335, most likely 335), he writes:

If they have no hallowed font, and baptize in any vessel which comes handy, because there was not
near a church built into the glory of God and [accessible] for the entrance of the congregation, then
truly there was nothing to blame. But if we have churches, we must also make baptisteries and a
font, in which to baptize those who come in the right faith of true religion. However, if any one
should chance to be in a place where there is not a church and regular font, it is not right to prevent
any one from being baptized who desires to be; but we must perform his baptism without a regular
font, because the circumstances compel us to; lest we be found a debtor for the salvation [of the man]
by hindering his baptism. For the Holy Spirit gives grace according to our prayers and entreaties,
and is not hindered by want of a font; and on every occasion it is the wish and desire that is enough
for the grace of the Spirit. Nor is the rite fulfilled only in chief feasts; for the apostles did not baptize
according to a choice of feasts; but according to the sufficiency of those who came to them, they were
used to illuminate … [the manuscripts are mutilated here] … being born again out of the waters, and

1 “Munnulus a Girba dixit: Ecclesiæ catholicæ matris nostæ veritas semper apud nos, fratres, et mansit et
manet, et vel maxime in Baptismatis trinitate, Domino nostro dicente: Ite et baptizate gentes in nomine Patris
et Filii et Spiritus sanci (Matth., XXXVIII, 19). Cum ergo manifeste sciamus hæreticos non habere nec Patrrem
nec Filium nec Spiritum sanctum, debent venientes ad Ecclesiam matrem nostrum vere renasci et baptizari,
ut cancer quod habebant et damnationis ira et erroris effectura per sanctum et cœleste Lavacrum
sanctificetur.” Migne, Patrologia Latina, Vol. III, p. 1099 A (p. 1060 of 1844 ed.), Paris, 1886. Eng. tr. from
Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol. V, Seventh Council of Carthage under Cyprian, Concerning the Baptism of Heretics,
p. 567. The footnote in Migne reads, “Baptismatis trinitate. Quia trina immersione expediebatur, nomine
Patris, Fili et sancti Spiritus.” The footnote then goes on to mention a few of the ancient fathers (Tertullian,
Basil, Cyril of Jerusalem, Athanasius, Ambrose and Jerome) who also refer to trine immersion. This footnote
is copied from John Fell (1625 – 1686), the learned Anglican Bishop of Oxford who edited Cyprian’s works
(Joanne Fello, Cypriani Opera, Ad Donatum Liber, Concilium Carthaginiense, X, p. 160, Amsterdam, 1700).
Not one of the 87 bishops present at the council challenged Monulus’s statement. Also note that “baptismatis
trinitate” is translated as “trine immersion” (although I would prefer the more literal translation I have used
above) in several Protestant books, such as in Ross H. Miller, The Doctrine of the Brethren Defended, Trine
Immersion, Arg. 5, pp. 180 – 181, Indianapolis, 1876; William Cathcart, The Baptism of the Ages and of the
Nations, North Africa, p. 200, Philadelphia, PA, 1878; James Quinter, A Vindication of Trine Immersion,
Huntingdon, PA, 1886; Ernst Emil Gerfen, Baptizein, Ch. XVI, p. 144; Columbus, OH, 1897; C. F. Yoder, God’s
Means of Grace, p. 226, Elgin, IL, 1908; which all appear to be based off the translation of Anglican
ecclesiastic Nathaniel Marshall (d. 1730), in The Genuine Works of St. Cyprian, p. 241, London, 1717. J. R.
King, in the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers series, translates these words as “the three-fold nature of
baptism”, and agrees that these words refer to trine immersion (J. R. King (translator), The Seven Books of
Augustin, Bishop of Hippo, On Baptism, Against the Donatists [De Baptisimo Contra Donatistas], Circa A.D.
400, Book. VI, Ch. XVII, 28., pp. 487, n. 10., Philip Schaff (editor), NPNF, Series I, Vol. IV, New York, NY: Charles
Scribner’s Sons, 1909). Almost no scholars challenge the view that “baptismatis trinitate” refers to trine
immersion. Indeed, “baptismatis trinitate” is a good way to refer to one baptism in three immersions.
 48

with triple immersion burying in the water of the holy font, we signify the three days' burial of
the Lord in the persons of those baptized, a thing which the divine apostle clearly shows when he
says, ‘Being buried with him in the baptism, let us become imitators of the likeness of his death, to the
end that by the renewal of resurrection we may become participators with him in the life eternal.’
And thus with right faith laying on our hands, the Holy Spirit is bestowed unto our salvation,
illuminating those who are called to adoption. And in faith we are anointed with the oil of holiness;
and thus in the several parts prescribed the ordinances of the holy Church are duly carried out,
without any transgression of the prescribed rules; and we are made pre-eminent in the heavenly
ranks, as we learned from the spiritual fathers, the disciples of the holy apostles. …

Accordingly with the unanimous approval of the clergy and bishops and priests and deacons, I,
Macarius, Archbishop of the holy city of Jerusalem, hand on to you this canon law, having learned it
from the histories of the apostles, and on the tradition of the fathers it is firmly based among us, that,
as we said above, it belongs to bishops and priests along to perform baptism and laying on of
hands, … This our holy fathers prescribed, and let no one venture to change the rule rightly
prescribed, and let no one venture to change the rule rightly prescribed, lest the chain of their
anathema engage them and cut them off from God. 1

This text is also preserved in Ananias of Shirak (about 610 – 685), who quotes this letter of Macarius (also
helping to supply the lacuna in the MSS.):

And the same is clear from the letter of the blessed Macarius, Patriarch of Jerusalem, which he wrote
to the land of Armenia concerning the direction of the Holy Baptism. For he was one of the 318
fathers of Nicea. And it is written as follows in the sixth chapter of the directions laid down by him:

“… Wherefore it is proper to acquaint you with the particular import of each of these feasts, of the
Birth and of the Baptism, to the end that ye may diligently fulfil the same. For our expiatory birth in
the holy font is (or was) fulfilled on the same saving day he took on himself to be baptized out of
condescension to us (or ‘in order to come down to us’). For it was not because he was himself in any
need of baptism; but he wished to cleanse us from the stain of sin. Accordingly he cries out loud,
saying: ‘Unless a man be born of water and of Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.’ To the end
that we may come to be born along with him after the same type (or way) and baptized along with
him on the day of the birth of Christ. But in the life-bringing resurrection of Zatik, by putting to death
our sins in the waters of the font, we become imitators of the death with which our Lord Jesus Christ
was put to death; and being buried with triple immersion in the water of the holy font, we shadow
forth in the persons of the baptized the three days’ burial of our Lord, according to the clear imitation
of the divine apostle, who said: ‘Being buried with him in baptism, let us become like him in the
likeness of his death, to the end that with the renewal of his resurrection we may become sharers
with him in life eternal.’”2

In the early Christian treatise “The Testament of Our Lord” (Testamentum Domini), dated to perhaps about
350, there are instructions for trine immersion. This treatise is part of a series of writings, classified in the
genre of Ancient Church Orders, including the Didache, the Apostolic Tradition of St. Hippolytus of Rome, the
Apostolic Constitutions, and the Canons of the Apostles, among others, “whose aim seems to have been to
provide the clergy of the Early Church with a manual of their duties, and especially with directions for the

1 Fred C. Conybeare, The Key of Truth: A Manual of the Paulician Church of Armenia, Appendix IX, pp. 182 –
183, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1898.
2 Conybeare, op. cit., pp. 185 – 186.
 49

proper fulfillment of the offices of Public Worship.”1 Regarding baptism, this document the following
directions:

Then after these things let him give him over to the presbyter who baptizeth. And let them stand in the
water naked. But let the deacon descend with him similarly. But when he who is being baptized goeth
down into the water, let him that baptizeth him say, putting his hand on him, thus: Dost thou believe in
God the Father Almighty? Let him that is being baptized say: I believe. Let him immediately baptize
him once. Let the priest also say: Dost thou believe also in Christ Jesus the Son of God, who came from
the Father, who is of old with the Father, who was born of Mary the Virgin by the Holy Ghost, who
was crucified in the days of Pontius Pilate, and died and rose the third day, [who] came to life from
the dead, and ascended into heaven and sat down on the right hand of the Father, and cometh to
judge the quick and the dead? But when he saith: I believe, let him baptize him the second time. And
also let him say: Dost thou believe also in the Holy Ghost, in the holy Church? And let him who is being
baptized say: I believe; and thus let him baptize him the third time.2

The ancient Church Order called the Statutes of the Apostles or Canones Ecclesiastici, dated to perhaps about
350 – 400 (but probably representing a third-century form of an earlier Church Order), instructs trine
immersion. This Church Order has been preserved in Ethiopic, Arabic, Sahidic, and Bohairic versions. The
translation of the Ethiopic text contains the following directions for baptism:

Let the deacon go down with him to the water, … And thus he shall baptize him and lay his hand
upon him, and upon him who answers for him. And he shall dip him three times; and he who is
baptised shall make declaration every single time that he is dipped, … 3

In the translation of the Arabic:

And thus he who baptises shall leave his hand upon him who receives (baptism) and dip him three
times.4

In the translation of the Sahidic (also called Thebaic, a dialect of Southern or Upper Egypt):

And he who gives (the baptism) shall put his hand upon the head of him who receives and dip him
three times, professing (homologei) these things every time, …5

In the translation from the Bohairic (also called Memphitic, a dialect of Northern or Lower Egypt):

And let him who receives (baptism) repeat after all these, “I believe thus.” And he who bestows it
shall lay his hand upon the head of him who receives, dipping him three times, confessing these
things each time.6

1 James Cooper and Arthur John Maclean, The Testament of Our Lord, Preface, p. v, Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark,
1902.
2 James Cooper and Arthur John Maclean, The Testament of Our Lord, Book II, Ch. IX, p. 126, Edinburgh: T. &

T. Clark, 1902.
3 George William Horner, The Statutes of the Apostles or Canones Ecclesiastici, Translation of the Ethiopic,

Statute 35., pp. 153 – 154, London: Williams & Norgate, 1904.
4 George William Horner, The Statutes of the Apostles or Canones Ecclesiastici, Translation of the Arabic, Ch.

34., p. 253, London: Williams & Norgate, 1904.

5 George William Horner, The Statutes of the Apostles or Canones Ecclesiastici, Translation of the Saidic, Ch.

46., pp. 317 – 318, London: Williams & Norgate, 1904.

6 Henry Tattam, The Apostolical Constitutions, or Canons of the Apostles in Coptic, Ch. 46., p. 58, London:

Printed for the Oriental Translation Fund of Great Britain and Ireland, 1848.
 50

In the apocryphal Acts of John the Son of Zebedee (dated to the mid-fourth century), there is explicit
reference to triple immersion in the baptism of the procurator:

And the procurator stretched out his hands to Heaven, and cried out, weeping and saying: “I believe
in the Father and in the Son and in the Spirit of holiness;” and he leapt down into the font. Then the
holy man [St. John] drew near, and placed his hand on the head of the procurator, and dipped him
once, crying out, “In the name of the Father;” and the second time, “In the name of the Son;” and the
third time, “In the name of the Spirit of holiness.” And when he had come up out of the water, then he
clothed him in white garments, and gave him the (kiss of) peace, and said to him: “Peace be unto thee,
thou new bridegroom, who hadst grown old and effete in sin, and, lo, to-day art become a youth, and
thy name has been written in Heaven.” …

Then the procurator said: “Hearken, my brethren! When I was (first) dipped, I opened my eyes and
saw, not that I was going down, but that I was going up to Heaven. And the second time, I looked and
opened my eyes, and saw a right hand holding a reed and writing. And the third time, I heard a voice
saying: ‘The sinner, the sheep which was lost, is found; let him come in.’”1

In the work Dicta et Interpretationes Parabolarum Evangelicarum (also called De Parabolis Scripturæ or
Questions upon the Scripture), under the name of St. Athanasius (296 – 373), in question XCII, on the Epistles
of Paul, Rom. vi. 5, the following is stated:

We have been planted together; that is, made fellow heirs. For as the body of the Lord when buried
in the earth gave life to the world, so our bodies buried in baptism guarantee our justification. But
the similitude consists in this: as Christ died, and rose again on the third day, so we also dying in
baptism rise again. For the plunging of the child three times into the bath, and the raising him out of
it again, symbolize the death, and the resurrection of Christ on the third day. 2

In the work De Titulis Psalmorum, which has been attributed to Athanasius, but is now held to be a work of
the priest Hesychius of Jerusalem3 (fl. first half of fifth century, perhaps died 433), there is a reference to trine
immersion:

Gentes clamant ad Deum, ut rapiant ejus Regnum. Catulos dixit Gentes, quoniam Catulus, quando
natus est, intra tres dies oculos aperit, ita etiam gentes per triduam commemorationem Domini in
Baptismo visum receperunt. Nam in tribus submersionibus Baptismi trest noctes mortis Dñi
repræsentatur, quoniam in submersione nihil videre possunt tanquam in nocte, in tribus autem
emersionibus Baptismi tres dies Domini exprimuntur, quoniam velut in die cuncta conspiciunt in
emersione: hæc Catuli est interpretatio.4

1 William Wright, Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles, Vol. II, pp. 40 – 42, London: Williams and Norgate, 1871.
2 “το γαρ κατα δυσαι το παιδιον εν τη κολυμβηθρᾳ, και αναδυσαι, τουτο δηλοι τον θανατον και την
τριημερον αναστασιν του χριστου.” James Chrystal, A History of the Modes of Christian Baptism, Ch. VI, p. 69,
Philadelphia, PA: Lindsay and Blakiston, 1861. Migne, Patrologia Græca, Vol. XXVIII, pp. 753 – 754. Some
editions have numbered this as the XCIV question.
3 Johannes Quasten, Patrology, Vol. III, The Golden Age of Greek Patristic Literature, pp. 38 & 492, Utrecht:

Spectrum, 1960.
4 Nicolai Antonelli, Sancti Patris Nostri Athanasii Archiepiscopi Alexandriæ Interpretatio Psalmorum Sive De

Titulis Psalmorum, Psalm ciii, 45., 46., pp. 259 – 260, Rome: Apud Josephum Collinum, 1746. Also in Migne,
Patrologia Græca, Vol. XXVII, pp. 1095 – 1096, Paris: J. P. Migne, 1857.
 51

St. Ephraem the Syrian (or Ephrem of Edessa, 306 – 373) is an important Syriac Church Father. Ferguson
writes that in Ephraem’s works, “A triple immersion is indicated in some passages. (Nisibene Hymns
29.207ff.; Hymns on Virginity 7.5; 27.4)”1. Nathan Witkamp (1973 – current), a Dutch university
researcher specialising in early Syrian baptismal rites, writes that, according to St. Ephrem,

Baptism was Trinitarian and consisted of three immersions, possibly accompanied by a threefold
creedal interrogation.

[Footnote:] Baptism “gives birth to them with triple pangs, accompanied by the three glorious
names, of Father, Son and Holy Spirit” (On Virginity. 7.5; ed. and tr. Brock & Jiraz, 188 – 189; cf. On
Virginity, 27.4; On Epiphany 11.8). Also Ephrem’s own baptism consisted of a triple immersion
(“Baptizatus sum tripliciter …”; Against Heresies 3.13, in Beck “Baptême,” 124).2

In the treatise On the Trinity, attributed to the Venerable Didymus the Blind (310/313 – 395/398), there is a
reference to trine immersion, as Ferguson writes:

Earlier in the treatise Didymus had used triple immersion as an argument for the Trinity (2.12).
Even if some believe and baptize in the name of Father and Son and not equally in the divinity of the
Holy Spirit, “they receive in vain the three dippings [καταδύσεις]” (669B – 672A).

[Footnote:] The use of καταδύσεις, a secular term for dipping, instead of βαπτίσματα is a deliberate
denial of the sacred character of baptisms by those who denied the deity of the Holy Spirit. 3

In the Mystagogal Catecheses, attributed to both St. Cyril of Jerusalem (313 – 386) and his immediate
successor St. John II of Jerusalem (c. 356 – 417, bishop from 387 – 417), trine immersion is taught in the
lecture on Baptism:

After these things, ye were led to the holy pool of Divine Baptism, as Christ was carried from the
Cross to the Sepulchre which is before our eyes. And each of you was asked, whether he believed in
the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, and ye made that saving confession,
and descended three times into the water, and ascended again; here also hinting by a symbol at
the three days burial of Christ. For as our Saviour passed three days and three nights in the heart of
the earth, so you also in your first ascent out of the water, represented the first day of Christ in the
earth, and by your descent, the night; for as he who is in the night, no longer sees, but he who is in the
day, remains in the light, so in the descent, as in the night, ye saw nothing, but in ascending again ye
were as in the day. And at the self-same moment ye were both dying and being born; and that Water
of salvation was at once your grave and your mother. And what Solomon spoke of others will suit you
also; for he said, in that case, There is a time to bear and a time to die; but to you, in the reverse order,
there was a time to die and a time to be born; and one and the same time effected both of these, and
your birth went hand in hand with your death. 4

1 Everett Ferguson, Baptism in the Early Church, Part V, Ch. XXXI, p. 508.
2 Nathan Witkamp, Tradition and Innovation: Baptismal Rite and Mystagogy in Theodore of Mopsuestia and
Narsai of Nisibis, Part III, Ch. VII, pp. 335 – 336, n. 253, Leiden: Brill, 2018. I thank Dr. Witkamp for his help in
recommending Syriac sources.
3 Everett Ferguson, Baptism in the Early Church: History, Theology, and Liturgy in the First Five Centuries,

Part V, Ch. XXVIII, p. 469, Eerdmans: Grand Rapids, MI, 2009.

4 Edwin Hamilton Gifford, The Catechetical Lectures of S. Cyril, Archbishop of Jerusalem, Lecture XX (On the

Mysteries II), Of Baptism, 4., pp. 147 – 148, in Henry Wace and Philip Schaff (editors), NPNF, Series II, Vol. VII,
 52

St. Basil the Great of Caesarea (330 – 379) writes in his book “On the Holy Spirit”:

For this cause the Lord, who is the Dispenser of our life, gave us the covenant of baptism, containing a
type of life and death, for the water fulfils the image of death, and the Spirit gives us the earnest of
life. Hence it follows that the answer to our question why the water was associated with the Spirit is
clear: the reason is because in baptism two ends were proposed; on the one hand, the destroying of
the body of sin, that it may never bear fruit unto death; on the other hand, our living unto the Spirit,
and having our fruit in holiness; the water receiving the body as in a tomb figures death, while the
Spirit pours in the quickening power, renewing our souls from the deadness of sin unto their original
life. This then is what it is to be born again of water and of the Spirit, the being made dead being
effected in the water, while our life is wrought in us through the Spirit. In three immersions, then,
and with three invocations, the great mystery of baptism is performed, to the end that the type of
death may be fully figured, and that by the tradition of the divine knowledge the baptized may have
their souls enlightened. It follows that if there is any grace in the water, it is not of the nature of the
water, but of the presence of the Spirit. For baptism is “not the putting away of the filth of the flesh,
but the answer of a good conscience towards God.” 1

In Chapter XXVII of “On the Holy Spirit”, St. Basil writes:

Of the beliefs and practices whether generally accepted or publicly enjoined which are preserved in
the Church some we possess derived from written teaching; others we have received delivered to us
“in a mystery” by the tradition of the apostles; and both of these in relation to true religion have the
same force. And these no one will gainsay; – no one, at all events, who is even moderately versed in
the institutions of the Church. For were we to attempt to reject such customs as have no written
authority, on the ground that the importance they possess is small, we should unintentionally injure
the Gospel in its very vitals; or, rather, should make our public definition a mere phrase and nothing
more. For instance, to take the first and most general example, who is there who has taught us in
writing to sign with the sign of the cross those who have trusted in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ?
What writing has taught us to turn to the East at the prayer? Which of the saints has left us in writing
the words of the invocation at the displaying of the bread of the Eucharist and the cup of blessing?
For we are not, as is well known, content with what the apostle or the Gospel has recorded, but both
in preface and conclusion we add other words as being of great importance to the validity of the
ministry, and these we derive from unwritten teaching. Moreover we bless the water of baptism and
the oil of the chrism, and besides this the catechumen who is being baptized. On what written
authority do we do this? Is not our authority silent and mystical tradition? Nay, by what written
word is the anointing of oil itself taught? And whence comes the custom of baptizing thrice? And
as to the other customs of baptism from what Scripture do we derive the renunciation of Satan and
his angels? Does not this come from that unpublished and secret teaching which our fathers guarded
in a silence out of the reach of curious meddling and inquisitive investigation? Well had they learnt
the lesson that the awful dignity of the mysteries is best preserved by silence. … In the same manner
the Apostles and Fathers who laid down laws for the Church from the beginning thus guarded the
awful dignity of the mysteries in secrecy and silence, for what is bruited abroad at random among the
common folk is no mystery at all. This is the reason for our tradition of unwritten precepts and

New York, NY: The Christian Literature Company, 1894. Note that some have mistakenly cited this work as a
production of Clement of Alexandria.
1 Blomfield Jackson (translator and editor), St. Basil: Letters and Select Works, De Spiritu Sancto, Chapter XV,

¶ 35, p. 22, in Henry Wace (editor), NPNF, Series II, Vol. VIII, New York, NY: The Christian Literature
Company, 1895. Blomfield Jackson (1839 – 1905), the Protestant scholar who translated and edited this
volume, comments here in a footnote, “Trine immersion was the universal rule of the Catholic Church.”, and
he goes on to cite and refer to other fathers in agreement.
 53

practices, that the knowledge of our dogmas may not become neglected and contemned by the
multitude through familiarity.1

In his letter CCXXXVI, to Amphilochius, St. Basil writes:

With regard to emerging in baptism—I do not know how it came into your mind to ask such a
question, if indeed you understood immersion to fulfil the figure of the three days. It is impossible
for any one to be immersed three times, without emerging three times.2

St. Gregory of Nyssa (335 – 394) writes in his Great Catechism:

But the descent into the water, and the trine immersion of the person in it, involves another
mystery. For since the method of our salvation was made effectual not so much by His precepts in
the way of teaching as by the deeds of Him Who has realized an actual fellowship with man, and has
effected life as a living fact, so that by means of the flesh which He has assumed, and at the same time
deified, everything kindred and related may be saved along with it, it was necessary that some means
should be devised by which there might be, in the baptismal process, a kind of affinity and likeness
between him who follows and Him Who leads the way. … And as He, that Man from above, having
taken deadness on Himself, after His being deposited in the earth, returned back to life the third day,
so every one who is knitted to Him by virtue of his bodily form, looking forward to the same
successful issue, I mean this arriving at life by having, instead of earth, water poured on him, and so
submitting to that element, has represented for him in the three movements the three-days-delayed
grace of the resurrection. … But since, as has been said, we only so far imitate the transcendent
Power as the poverty of our nature is capable of, by having the water thrice poured on us and
ascending again up from the water, we enact that saving burial and resurrection which took place on
the third day, with this thought in our mind, that as we have power over the water both to be in it
and arise out of it, so He too, Who has the universe at His sovereign disposal, immersed Himself in
death, as we in the water, to return to His own blessedness.3

In his work “On the Baptism of Christ”, St. Gregory of Nyssa says:

Let us then leave the task of searching into what is beyond human power, and seek rather that which
shows signs of being partly within our comprehension: — what is the reason why the cleansing is
effected by water? and to what purpose are the three immersions received? That which the fathers
taught, and which our mind has received and assented to, is as follows: — We recognize four
elements, of which the world is composed, which every one knows even if their names are not
spoken; but if it is well, for the sake of the more simple, to tell you their names, they are fire and air,
earth and water. Now our God and Saviour, in fulfilling the Dispensation for our sakes, went beneath
the fourth of these, the earth, that He might raise up life from thence. And we in receiving Baptism, in
imitation of our Lord and Teacher and Guide, are not indeed buried in the earth (for this is the shelter
of the body that is entirely dead, covering the infirmity and decay of our nature), but coming to the
element akin to earth, to water, we conceal ourselves in that as the Saviour did in the earth: and by
doing this thrice we represent for ourselves that grace of the Resurrection which was wrought

1 Blomfield Jackson (translator and editor), St. Basil: Letters and Select Works, De Spiritu Sancto, Chapter
XXVII, ¶ 66, pp. 40 – 42, in Henry Wace (partial editor), NPNF, Series II, Vol. VIII, New York, NY: The Christian
Literature Company, 1895.
2 Blomfield Jackson (translator and editor), St. Basil: Letters and Select Works, The Letters, Letter CCXXXVI, ¶

5, p. 278, in Henry Wace (partial editor), NPNF, Series II, Vol. VIII, New York, NY: The Christian Literature
Company, 1895.
3 William Moore and Henry Austin Wilson (translators and editors), Gregory of Nyssa: Dogmatic Treatises,

Etc., IV Apologetic, The Great Catechism, Chapter XXXV, pp. 502 – 503, in Philip Schaff and Henry Wace
(editors), NPNF, Series II, Vol. V, New York, NY: The Christian Literature Company, 1893.
 54

in three days: and this we do, not receiving the sacrament in silence, but while there are spoken
over us the Names of the Three Sacred Persons on Whom we believed, in Whom we also hope, from
Whom comes to us both the fact of our present and the fact of our future existence. It may be thou
art offended, thou who contendest boldly against the glory of the Spirit, and that thou grudgest to the
Spirit that veneration wherewith He is reverenced by the godly. Leave off contending with me: resist,
if thou canst, those words of the Lord which gave to men the rule of the Baptismal invocation. What
says the Lord’s command? “Baptizing them in the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy
Ghost.”1

St. Ambrose of Milan (Aurelius Ambrosius) (340 – 397), in the 2nd Book of his work De Sacramentis, says:

Thou wast asked, “Dost thou believe in God the Father Almighty?” Thou saidst, “I believe,” and didst
dip, that is, thou was buried. Again thou wast asked, “Dost thou believe in our Lord Jesus Christ, and
in his Cross?” Thou saidst, “I believe,” and didst dip; therefore, thou wast also buried with Christ; for
he who is buried with Christ, rises again with Christ. A third time thou was asked, “Dost thou believe
also in the Holy Ghost?” Thou saidst, “I believe,” and didst dip a third time, that the triple confession
might absolve the manifold fall of thy former life.

Thus (that we may give you an example), after the holy Apostle Peter seemed to have fallen during
the Lord’s passion by the weakness of human nature, he who had previously denied was afterwards
thrice asked by Christ if he loved Christ, that he might cancel and annul that fall. Then he said, “Thou
knowest, Lord, that I love Thee.” He said it thrice, that he might be thrice absolved.

Therefore, the Father forgives sin, just as the Son forgives; likewise also the Holy Ghost. But he bade
us be baptized in one name, that is, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.2

Trine immersion is also implied in Ambrose’s On the Mysteries, where he says:

So the Syrian dipped seven times under the Law. But thou wast baptized in the name of the Trinity,
thou didst confess the Father – remember what thou didst – thou didst confess the Son, thou didst
confess the Holy Spirit. …

Thou didst descent, then; remember what thou didst answer, that thou believest in the Father, thou
believest in the Son, thou believest in the Holy Spirit.3

1 William Moore and Henry Austin Wilson (translators and editors), Gregory of Nyssa: Dogmatic Treatises,
Etc., V Oratorical, On the Baptism of Christ: A Sermon, Chapter XXXV, p. 520, in Philip Schaff and Henry Wace
(editors), NPNF, Series II, Vol. V, New York, NY: The Christian Literature Company, 1893.
2 “Interrogatus es, ‘credis in Deum, Patrem Omnipotentem?’ Dixixti, ‘credo’ at mersisti, hoc est, sepultus es.

Iterum interrogates es, ‘credis in Dominum nostrum Jesum Christum?’ Dixisti, ‘credis in Dominum nostrum
Jesum Christum?’ Dixisti, ‘credo,’ et mersisti. Ideo et Christo es consepultus. Qui enum Christo consepelitur,
cum Christo resurgit. Tertio interrogatus es, ‘Credis et in Spiritum Sanctum?’ Dixisti, ‘credo.’ Tertio mersisti,
ut multiplicem lapsum superioris aetatis absolveret trina confessio.” J. H. Srawley (editor), Tom Thompson
and F. H. Colson (translators), St. Ambrose: “On the Mysteries” and the Treatise On the Sacraments by an
Unknown Author, IV, On the Sacraments, Book II, Ch. VII, ¶¶ 20. – 22., p. 93, in Translations of Christian
Literature, Series III, London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1919. The “unknown author” is
now also recognised as St. Ambrose by scholars.
3 J. H. Srawley (editor), Tom Thompson and F. H. Colson (translators), St. Ambrose: “On the Mysteries” and the

Treatise On the Sacraments by an Unknown Author, III, On the Mysteries, Ch. IV, ¶ 21., p. 53 & Ch. V, ¶ 28, p.
56, in Translations of Christian Literature, Series III, London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge,
1919. The learned Anglican scholar and Oxford professor William Bright (1824 – 1901) also notes that “In S.
Ambrose, de Mysteriis, 21, 28, the three confessions are mentioned, and the three immersions implied.”
 55

St. Jerome (342 – 420), in his 2nd Book of commentary on Ephesians, writes the following on Ephesians iv, 5 –
6:

For we are thrice dipped in water, that the mystery of the Trinity may appear to be but one. We are
not baptized in the names of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost; but in one name, which is God. … Though
we be thrice put under water to represent the mystery of the Trinity, yet it is reputed but one
baptism.1

In his Dialogue Against the Luciferians, written about 379, St. Jerome writes, as the words from a hypothetical
Luciferian:

Thirsty men in their dreams eagerly gulp down the water of the stream, and the more they drink the
thirstier they are. In the same way you appear to me to have searched everywhere for arguments
against the point I raised, and yet to be as far as ever from being satisfied. Don’t you know that the
laying on of hands after baptism is a custom of the Churches? Do you demand Scripture proof? You
may find it in the Acts of the Apostles. And even if it did not rest on the authority of the Scriptures
the consensus of the whole world in this respect would have the force of a command. For many other
observances of the Churches, which are due to tradition, have acquired the authority of the written
law, as for instance the practice of dipping the head three times in the laver, and then, after leaving
the water, of tasting mingled milk and honey in representation of infancy; and, again, the practices of
standing up in worship on the Lord’s day, and ceasing from fasting every Pentecost; and there are
many other unwritten practices which have won their place through reason and custom. So you see
we follow the practice of the Church, although it may be clear that a person was baptized before the
Spirit was invoked.2

St. John Chrysostom (347 – 407), in his 25th Homily on John, commenting on John iii., 5., says:

In Baptism are fulfilled the pledges of our covenant with God; burial and death, resurrection and life;
and these take place all at once. For when we immerse our heads in the water, the old man is buried
as in a tomb below, and wholly sunk forever; then as we raise them again, the new man rises in its
stead. As it is easy for us to dip and to lift our heads again, so it is easy for God to bury the old man,

William Bright (translator and editor), Select Sermons of S. Leo the Great on the Incarnation, Notes, n. 97, p.
197, London: J. Masters & Co., 2nd Ed., 1886.
1 “Ter mergimur, ut Trinitatis unum appareat sacramentum. Et non baptizamur in nominibus Patris, et Filii,

et Spiritus Sancti, sed in uno nomine, quod intelligitur Deus. … Potest unum baptisma et ita dici, quod licet
ter baptizemur propter mysterium Trinitatis, tamen unum baptisma reputetur.” Joseph Bingham, Origines
Ecclesiasticæ, Vol. III, Book XI, Ch. XI, § VI, p. 607, note b., London: William Straker, 1843. The Protestant
historian Bingham comments here, “St. Jerome makes this ceremony [trine immersion] to be a symbol of the
Unity as well as the Trinity”.
2 “Multa alia, quæ per traditionem in ecclesiis observantur, auctoritatem sibi scriptæ legis usurpaverunt: velut

in lavacro ter caput mergitare …” W. H. Fremantle, G. Lewis, and W. G. Martley (translators), St. Jerome:
Letters and Select Works, Treatises, Dialogue Against the Luciferians, Ch. VIII, p. 324, in Philip Schaff and
Henry Wace (editors), NPNF, Series II, Vol. VI, New York, NY: The Christian Literature Company, 1893. Latin
in Joseph Bingham, Origines Ecclesiasticæ, Vol. III, Book XI, Ch. XI, § VI, p. 605, note g., London: William
Straker, 1843. Jerome is here speaking as Helladius the Luciferian, who is engaged in a dialogue with
Orthodoxus, an Orthodox Christian, and the schismatic is portrayed as less informed, without a perfect
understanding, and is often corrected by Orthodoxus. See the Appendix on Trine Immersion for my
commentary on some questions raised in connection with these words of St. Jerome regarding Scripture and
Tradition.
 56

and to show forth the new. And this is done thrice, that you may learn that the power of the Father,
the Son, and the Holy Ghost fulfilleth all this. To show that what we say is no conjecture, hear Paul
saying, “We are buried with Him by Baptism into death”: and again, “Our old man is crucified with
Him”: and again, “We have been planted together in the likeness of His death.” (Rom. vi. 4, 5, 6.) And
not only is Baptism called a “cross,” but the “cross” is called “Baptism.” “With the Baptism,” saith
Christ, “that I am baptized withal shall ye be baptized” (Mark x. 39): and, “I have a Baptism to be
baptized with” (Luke xii. 50) (which ye know not); for as we easily dip and lift our heads again, so He
also easily died and rose again when He willed or rather much more easily, though He tarried the
three days for the dispensation of a certain mystery. 1

In the Catechetical Lectures of John Chrysostom, the following is read:

At the exclamation of the priest, ‘x is baptized in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the
Holy Spirit’, he pushes the head down three times [into the water] and raises it, by this mystical
initiation preparing the candidate to receive the visitation of the Spirit. For it is not only the priest
who touches the head, but the right hand of Christ, And this is shown by the words of baptism; he
does not say, ‘I baptize so and so’, but ‘so and so is baptized’. (Stav. 2.26) 2

In an ancient homily attributed to St. Chrysostom, “De Fide, et Lege naturæ, et Spiritu Sancto”, likewise:

Christ delivered to his disciples one baptism in three immersions of the body, when he said to them,
“Go, teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy
Ghost.”3

Theodore of Mopsuestia (350 – 428), in his Catechetical Homilies, has written extensively on baptism, and
there are multiple references to trine immersion, most clearly in the following passage:

You perform three identical immersions, one in the name of the Father, another in the name of the
Son, and another in the name of the Holy Spirit; your immersions are done in an identical way in
order that you may know that each one of those names is equally perfect and able to confer the
benefits of baptism. You immerse yourself in water three times, according to the words of the
priests, but you go out of the water once in order that you may know that baptism is one, and one
also the grace which is accomplished in it by the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit who are never
separated from one another as they are one nature. This is the reason why, although each one of
them is able to confer the gift – as the baptism by which you are baptised in the name of each one of
them shows – yet we believe that we only receive a complete baptism when the call upon the Father,
Son and Holy Spirit is finished.4

1 Philip Schaff (editor), G. T. Stupart (translator), Saint Chrysostom: Homilies on the Gospel of St. John and the
Epistle to the Hebrews, Homilies on the Gospel of St. John, Homily XXV, § 2., p. 89, in NPNF, Series I, Vol. XIV,
New York, NY: The Christian Literature Company, 1898.
2 Juliette Day, The Baptismal Liturgy of Jerusalem: Fourth- and Fifth-Century Evidence from Palestine, Syria

and Egypt, Ch. V, p. 98, Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007. Also see op. cit., pp. 35 et sqq.
3 Joseph Bingham, Origines Ecclesiasticae, Vol. I, Book XI, Chapter XI, p. 540, London: Henry G. Bohn, 1845.
4 Alphonse Mingana, Commentary of Theodore of Mopsuestia on the Lord’s Prayer and on the Sacraments of

Baptism and the Eucharist, Ch. IV, p. 63, in Woodbrooke Studies, Vol. VI, Cambridge: W. Heffers & Sons, 1933.
See the surrounding context for more on trine immersion. The Synopsis of this chapter (p. 48), likely from a
later ancient editor, also instructs trine immersion.
 57

It was seen above that Thomas Aquinas quotes the Sermon to the Neophytes, ascribed to St. Augustine of
Hippo (354 – 430), in defence of trine immersion. Other works ascribed to Augustine also mention trine
immersion.1

St. Peter Chrysologus (380 – 450), the Archbishop of Ravenna, has written the following in his 113th Sermon:

Or do you not know that all of us who have been baptized in Christ have been buried with him
through baptism into his death? Let the faithful listen and learn how the three days the Lord spent in
the grave are represented by the triple immersion in Baptism; let them rejoice that they have risen
with Christ, although not yet in body, yet already by newness of life; let the whole human being be a
dwelling of the virtues, who had earlier been a cistern of the vices, and, as Paul said, as Christ rose by
the glory of the Father, so too let us walk in newness of life.2

St. Maximus of Turin (about 380 – 465), was the Bishop of Turin and a theological writer. Of baptism and the
baptized he writes:

After you promised to believe we plunged your bodies three times in the sacred fountain. This order
of baptism is observed to express a double mystery; for ye are rightly immersed three times who
have been baptized in the name of Jesus Christ, who arose on the third day from the dead; for this
immersion, thrice repeated, is a figure of our Lord’s burial, through which ye are buried with Christ
in faith; that washed from sins, you may live by imitating Christ in the sanctity of virtues.3

It appears that the Eunomians were the first to deviate from trine immersion. Eunomius was appointed
bishop of Cyzicus in 360 and died around 393 or 395, and was an influential Arian heresiarch.
Philostorgius (c. 368 – 439) is an Arian ecclesiastical historian whose original works are now lost, but St.
Photius (810 – 893) wrote an epitome of his history (originally written between 425 – 433). Philostorgius
writes about the Eunomian use of single immersion in the 10th Book, as summarized by St. Photius:

The Eunomians, according to the testimony of Philostorgius, so utterly abhorred the heresies above
mentioned, that they would not admit their baptism or their ordination. Moreover, the Eunomians
baptized not with trine immersion, but with one immersion only, baptizing, as they said, into the
Lord’s death; and this death (they added) he underwent for us once only, and not three times. 4

1 Trine immersion is also mentioned in Sermon XXIV, De via trium dierum, 1., (Sancti Aurelii Augstini
Hipponensis Episcopi Opera Omnia, Vol. V, Part II, Appendix, p. 2368, Paris: Gaume Fratres, 1838), and in
Sermon XL, De Elia, 4 (op. cit., p. 2418). However, it is most likely that these are not genuine sermons of
Augustine’s, although they are ancient and have often been quoted as such (see Chrystal, Baptism, pp. 74 –
76), and the sermon to the Neophytes is included in Gratian’s mid-twelfth century collection (Gratian. de
Consecrat. distinct. iv, c. lxxviii).
2 William B. Palardy, St. Peter Chrysologus: Selected Sermons, Vol. III, Sermon CXIII, 5., p. 148, in The Fathers

of the Church: A New Translation, Vol. CX, Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2005.
3 “Tertio corpora vestra in sacro fonte demersimus … Recte enim tertio estis. Illa enim tertio repetita

demersio … per quam Christo consepulti estis in baptismo.” William Cathcart, The Baptism of the Ages and of
the Nations, p. 144, Philadelphia, PA: American Baptist Publication Society, 1878.
4 Edward Walford, History of the Church by Sozomen and Philostorgius, The Ecclesiastical History of

Philostorgius, as Epitomized by Photius, Patriarch of Constantinople, Book X, Ch. IV, pp. 501 – 502, London:
Henry G. Bohn, 1855.
 58

Theodoret of Cyrus (393 – 458), writing against heresies in his work Hæreticarum Fabularum Compendium,
says in the 4th Book:

He (Eunomius) subverted the law of holy baptism, which had been handed down from the beginning
from the Lord and the apostles, and made a contrary law, asserting that it is not necessary to
immerse the candidate for baptism thrice, nor to mention the names of the Trinity, but to immerse
once only into the death of Christ.1

Sozomen (last quarter of 4th century – 450), the famous Church historian, in the 6th book of his Ecclesiastical
History, writes on Eunomius:

Some assert that Eunomius was the first who ventured to maintain that divine baptism ought to be
performed by one immersion, and to corrupt, in this manner, the apostolical tradition which has been
carefully handed down to the present day. He invented, it is said, a mode of discipline contrary to
that of the Church, and disguised the innovation under gravity and greater severity. … They asserted
that baptism ought not to be administered in the name of the Trinity, but in the name of the death of
Christ. … But whether it was Eunomius, or any other person, who first made these innovations upon
the tradition of baptism, it seems to me that such innovators, whoever they may have been, were
alone in danger, according to their own representation, of quitting this life without having received
the divine baptism; for if, after they had been baptized according to the mode recommended from the
beginning, they found it impossible to rebaptize themselves, it must be admitted that they introduced
a practice to which they had not themselves submitted, and thus undertook to administer to others
what had never been administered to them by themselves nor by others. 2

Socrates Scholasticus (or Socrates of Constantinople, c. 380 – 440/450), the important early Church historian,
writes on the Eunomians:

But neither did the followers of Eunomius remain without dissensions … What those nonsensical
terms were about which they differed I consider unworthy of being recorded in this history, lest I
should go into matters foreign to my purpose. I shall merely observe that they adulterated baptism:
for they do not baptize in the name of the Trinity, but into the death of Christ. 3

The seventh canon attributed to the Second Ecumenical Council (the First Council of Constantinople, in 381),
states the following:

Those who from heresy turn to orthodoxy, and to the portion of those who are being saved, we
receive according to the following method and custom: Arians and Macedonians, and Sabbatians, and
Novatians, who call themselves Cathari or Aristeri, and Quarto-decimans or Tetradites, and
Apollinarians, we receive, upon their giving a written renunciation [of their errors] and anathematize

1 James Chrystal, A History of the Modes of Christian Baptism, Ch. VI, p. 78, Philadelphia, PA: Lindsay and
Blakiston, 1861. Crystal translates from Theodoret. Hæret. Fabul., Lib. IV, c. III, p. 236 (Hal. 1772, IV, 356).
2 Chester D. Hartranft (translator), The Ecclesiastical History of Sozomen, Book VI, Ch. XXVI, p. 363, in Philip

Schaff and Henry Wace (editors), NPNF, Series II, Vol. II (Socrates, Sozomenus: Church Histories), New York,
NY: The Christian Literature Company, 1890. See the entire chapter for additional context.
3 Andrew C. Zenos (translator), The Ecclesiastical History of Socrates Scholasticus, Book V, Ch. XXIV, pp. 134 –

135, in Philip Schaff and Henry Wace (editors), NPNF, Series II, Vol. II (Socrates, Sozomenus: Church
Histories), Oxford: Parker and Company, 1891.
 59

every heresy which is not in accordance with the Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church of God.
Thereupon, they are first sealed or anointed with the holy oil upon the forehead, eyes, nostrils,
mouth, and ears; and when we seal them, we say, “The Seal of the gift of the Holy Ghost.” But
Eunomians, who are baptized with only one immersion, and Montanists, who are here called
Phrygians, and Sabellians, who teach the identity of Father and Son, and do sundry other mischievous
things, and [the partisans of] all other heresies – for there are many such here, particularly among
those who come from the country of the Galatians: – all these, when they desire to turn to orthodoxy,
we receive as heathen. On the first day we make them Christians; on the second, catechumens; on
the third, we exorcise them by breathing thrice in their face and ears; and thus we instruct them and
oblige them to spend some time in the Church, and to hear the Scriptures; and then we baptize them.1

An Ancient Epitome of this canon states: “Eunomians baptized with one immersion, Sabellians, and Phrygians
are to be received as heathen.”2 Hefele notes on this canon that “we possess a letter from the Church at
Constantinople in the middle of the fifth century to Bishop Martyrius of Antioch, in which the same subject is
referred to in a precisely similar way”.3 The ninety-fifth canon of the Sixth Ecumenical Council in Trullo
adopts this canon, and contains the following statement: “The Eunomeans also, who baptize with one
immersion;”.4 The Barberini Euchologion (Gr. 336 of the Vatican Library), a very important manuscript
dating c. 790, also follows Canon VII of Constantinople I and Canon XCV of Trullo.5 Witkamp writes that
“Although the [Barberini] manuscript itself dates from the second half of the eighth century, its contents,
including the baptismal rite, seems to go back to the mid-fifth century.”6

Narsai of Nisibis (c. 399 – c. 502), a very important writer, attests to triple immersion:

Three times he bows his head at Their names, that he may learn the relation – that while They are
One They are Three. With a mystery of our Redeemer he goes into the bosom of the font (lit. ‘of
baptism’) after the manner of those three days in the midst of the tomb. Three days was our
Redeemer with the dead: so also he that is baptized: – the three times are three days. He verily dies
by a symbol of that death which the Quickener of all died; and he surely lives with a type of the life
without end. Sin and death he puts off and casts away in Baptism, after the manner of those
garments which our Lord departing left in the tomb.7

An anonymous early Syriac baptismal commentary (in three recensions, AR, C, and D) witnesses to trine
immersion. Witkamp writes that “AR represents an anonymous baptismal commentary witnessed by the two
Syriac sources A (British Library, Add. 14496, f. 23 [tenth c.]) and R (Rahmani, Rome, 1920, pp. x – xiii). This

1 Henry Robert Percival, The Seven Ecumenical Councils of the Undivided Church, Ch. III, p. 185, in NPNF,
Series II, Vol. XIV, Oxford: James Parker, 1900.
2 Percival, Seven Ecumenical Councils, p. 185.
3 Henry Nutcombe Oxenham (translator and editor), Charles Joseph Hefele, A History of the Councils of the

Church, Vol. II, Book VII, Sec. 98., p. 368, Edinburgh, T. & T. Clark, 1876.
4 Percival, Seven Ecumenical Councils, Ch. VIII, p. 405. For the proof of the Ecumenical canonical authority of

this council, see the section below on the Council in Trullo.

5 Stefano Parenti and Elena Velkovska (editors), L’Eucologio Barberini GR. 336, p. 155, Rome: CLV-Edizioni

Liiturgiche, 1995. See Patrick (John) Ramsey, Canon 95 – Council of Trullo, p. 3,

academia.edu/36579829/Canon_95_-Council_of_Trullo.
6 Witkamp, op. cit, Introduction p. 32.
7 Richard Hugh Connolly (translator and editor), The Liturgical Homilies of Narsai, Homily XXI (C), p. 51, in J.

Armitage Robinson (editor), Texts and Studies: Contributions to Biblical and Patristic Literature, Vol. VIII, No.
1., Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1909; Also see Witkamp, op. cit., Ch. I, p. 45 and Ch. VII, p. 319.
 60

text, published and edited by Brock, probably dates to the first half of the fifth century.”1 C (Charfet MS 4/1,
11th c.) and D (British Museum, Add. 14538, ff 67 – 69, 10th c.) reflect recensions of the text at a later time
(Brock says that D “must date somewhere between the early sixth and late seventh century”).2 Brock says
that the original version of “the commentary is likely to belong to the early fifth century (at the latest)”.3

In the apocryphal Acts of St. Silvester (dated to the second half of the 5th century), Pope Silvester is
represented as baptising Emperor Constantine by trine immersion:

The font was blessed, and there the water of salvation purified me with a triple immersion. And
when I had been placed in the bosom of the font, I saw with my own eyes a hand from heaven
touching me. And rising from it clean, I apprehended that I had been cleansed from the whole blight
of leprosy.4

The baptism of Clovis I (466 – 511), the first King of the Franks, took place at Rheims in the year 496, and it is
probable that it equalled in grandeur any baptismal service in Christian history. Hincmar (806 – 882), the
Archbishop of Rheims from 845, a prolific writer, notable ecclesiastical historian, and successor of St.
Remigius (who baptized the King) – a writer with every qualification to give a correct account of the most
prominent and influential event in French history – describes the baptism of Clovis as follows:

In the mean time the way leading to the baptistery was put in order. On both sides it was hung with
painted canvas and curtains; overhead there was a protecting shade; the streets were leveled; the
baptistery of the church was prepared for the occasion, and sprinkled with balsam and other
perfumes.

Moreover, the Lord bestowed favor on the people, that they might think that they were refreshed
with the sweet odors of paradise.

And the holy pontiff Remigius, holding the hand of the king, went forth from the royal residence to
the baptistery, followed by the queen and the people, the holy Gospels going before them, with all
hymns and spiritual songs and litanies, and with the names of the saints loudly invoked. Moreover,
whilst they proceeded together the king interrogated the bishop, saying, ‘Patron, is this the kingdom
of God which you promised me?’ And the bishop said, ‘This is not that kingdom, but the beginning of
the way by which you approach it.’ The new Constantine advanced to the healing font in which the
leprosy of chronic disease and the filth of the ancient pollution of iniquity might be completely
removed. The blessed Remigius officiated on the solemn occasion, by whom, in apostolic doctrine
and in a holy life, another Silvester seemed to be represented.

Clovis having entered the life-giving fountain, the holy bishop delivered this eloquent address: ‘O
Sicamber, meekly bow thy head, and adore what thou hast burned, and burn what thou hast adored.’
Framing salutary laws, with lowly reverence he honored the churches built for religious worship,
that he might adore God in the houses which with fierce profanity he was accustomed to give to the
flames. … After confessing the orthodox faith in answer to questions put by the holy pontiff,

1 Witkamp, op. cit, Introduction pp. 32 – 33, and Ch. VII, p. 357. See Sebastian Brock, Some Early Syriac
Baptismal Commentaries, in Orientalia Christiana Periodica, Vol. XLVI, pp. 20 – 61, Rome: Pontificio Istituto
Orientale, 1980.
2 Sebastian Brock, An Early Syriac Commentary on the Liturgy, in Journal of Theological Studies, NS, Vol.

XXXVII, Part II, p. 400, October 1986.

3 Brock, An Early Syriac Commentary on the Liturgy, p. 387.
4 Mark J. Edwards, Constantine and Christendom, p. 104, in Translated Texts for Historians XXXIX, Liverpool:

Liverpool University Press, 2003.

 61

according to ecclesiastical custom he was baptized by trine immersion, in the name of the holy
and undivided Trinity – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; and, received by the pontiff himself from the
holy font, he was anointed with sacred chrism, with the sign of the holy cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Moreover, from his army three thousand men were baptized, without counting women and children.
His sisters also, Albofledis and Landeheldis, were baptized; and there was great rejoicing that day
among holy angels in heaven and godly men on earth.

Finally, a great host of the Franks, not yet converted to the faith, lived with Regnarius for some time
beyond the river Somme. King Clovis, having gained famous victories, killed Regnarius, who was
covered with flagitious crimes, and who had been delivered to him bound by the Franks; and he
induced all the Frankish people, through the blessed Remigius, to be converted to the faith and to be
baptized.1

One cannot ignore the words of Pope Leo the Great (400 – 461), writing to the Bishops of Sicily:

yet it is appropriate that the power of baptism should change the old into the new creature on the
death-day of the Crucified and the Resurrection-day of the Dead: that Christ’s death and His
resurrection may operate in the re-born, as the blessed Apostle says: “Are ye ignorant that all we who
were baptized in Christ Jesus, were baptized in His death? We were buried with Him through
baptism into death; that as Christ rose from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we also
should walk in newness of life. For if we have become united with the likeness of His death, we shall
be also (with the likeness) of His resurrection,” and the rest which the Teacher of the Gentiles
discusses further in recommending the sacrament of baptism: that it might be seen from the spirit of
this doctrine that that is the day, and that the time chosen for regenerating the sons of men and
adopting them among the sons of God, on which by a mystical symbolism and form, what is done in
the limbs coincides with what was done in the Head Himself, for in the baptismal office death ensues
through the slaying of sin, and threefold immersion imitates the lying in the tomb three days,
and the raising out of the water is like Him that rose again from the tomb. The very nature, therefore
of the act teaches us that that is the recognized day for the general reception of the grace, on which
the power of the gift and the character of the action originated. And this is strongly corroborated by
the consideration that the Lord Jesus Christ Himself, after He rose from the dead, handed on both the
form and power of baptizing to His disciples, in whose person all the chiefs of the churches received
their instructions with these words, “Go ye and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the
Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost.”2

In his Sermon LXX, Pope Leo writes:

For since our Lord says, “He that taketh not up his cross, and followeth Me not, is not worthy of Me;”
and the Apostle, “If we suffer with Him, we shall also reign with Him;” who does really honour Christ
as having suffered, died, and been raised, save he who both suffers, and dies, and rises again with
Christ? And indeed in all the children of the Church, these events have already been begun in the
very mystery of Regeneration, wherein the death of sin is the life of the new-born, and the three
days’ death of the Lord is imitated by trine immersion; so that the burial-mound being as it were

1 “Secundum ecclesiasticam morem baptizatus est trina mersione.” Vita Sanct. Remig., Migne, Patrol. Lat., vol.
125, pp. 1160 – 1161; English translation and opening remarks from William Cathcart, The Baptism of the
Ages and of the Nations, pp. 88 – 91, Philadelphia, PA: American Baptist Publication Society, 1878.
2 “Supulturam triduanam imitator trina demersio, et ab aquis elevatio, resurgentis instar est de sepulcro.”

Charles Lett Feltoe (translator and editor), The Letters and Sermons of Leo the Great Bishop of Rome, Letter
XVI, § IV, in NPNF, Series II, Vol. XII, p. 28.
 62

removed, those whom the bosom of the font received in their old state are brought forth new by the
Baptismal water.1

Philip Schaff has the following conclusions on the mode of baptism:

Let us now briefly sum up the results of this historical survey concerning the mode of Baptism.

(a) Trine immersion and emersion of the whole body was the general practice of the ancient Church,
Greek and Latin, and continues to this day in all Eastern churches and sects and in the orthodox
State Church of Russia.

(b) Trine affusion or pouring was allowed and practised in all ancient churches as legitimate
Baptism in cases of sickness or scarcity of water or other necessity.

(c) Single immersion has no proper authority in antiquity, as it was forbidden in the West as valid
but incomplete.

(d) Affusion or pouring was used first only in exceptional cases, but came gradually into general use
since the thirteenth century in the Latin Church, and then in all the Protestant churches, last in
England, except among Baptists, who during the seventeenth century returned to the practice of
immersion.2

The Creed of the Latin Pope Pius IV (Pope from 1559 – 1565), also called The Profession of Faith of the
Council of Trent, states:

The apostolic and ecclesiastical traditions and all other observances and constitutions of that same
Church I most firmly admit and embrace. I likewise accept Holy Scripture according to that sense
which our holy Mother Church has held and does hold, whose [office] it is to judge of the true
meaning and interpretation of the Sacred Scriptures; I shall never accept nor interpret it otherwise
than in accordance with the unanimous consent of the Fathers.3

The Church Fathers, including the Bishops of Rome, interpret the words of Christ in favour of the practice of
trine immersion in baptism. Therefore, this is the “true sense” of Christ’s words in the Scriptures, and Roman
Catholics are thus found inconsistent with their own profession. Let us hear again the divine words of Pope
Pelagius II (520 – 590, pope from 579), who contradicts the modern Roman Catholic practice with regard to
this holy sacrament:

There are many who say that they baptize in the name of Christ alone, and by a single immersion.
But the Gospel command, which was given by God Himself, and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ,
reminds us that we should administer holy baptism to every one, in the name of the Trinity and by

1 William Bright (translator and editor), Select Sermons of S. Leo the Great on the Incarnation, Sermon XII, §
4., pp. 68 – 69, London: J. Masters & Co., 2nd Ed., 1886.
2 Philip Schaff, Didache, The Oldest Church Manual Called The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles, Chapter XVII,

p. 54, 3rd Ed., New York, NY: Funk & Wagnalls, 1890.
3 Roy Joseph Deferrari (translator), Henry Denzinger, The Sources of Catholic Dogma, Pius IV, Bull “Iniunctum

nobis”, Nov. 13, 1565, n. 995, p. 303, Louis, MO: Herder, 1957.
 63

trine immersion, for our Lord said to His disciples, “Go, baptize all nations in the name of the Father,
and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.”1

Perhaps several more early references to trine immersion will be found by consulting newly discovered
Syriac and ancient Eastern sources.

Thus it is apparent that the Orthodox Church justly charges the Latins of baptising not in accordance with the
ancient Church. The test of Pius IV is rather self-destructive for Roman Catholics, for by the standards of
tradition, the Orthodox Church correctly follows the true sense of the Scriptures, as interpreted by the
Fathers, and follows the Apostolic tradition, as practised in the early Church.

This section is continued in Appendix II.

Ch. II Eucharist and the Liturgy

Christians are bid to continue the sacrament of the Eucharist in the manner instituted by Christ. However,
the Latins have altered their practice and no longer follow the Apostolic Tradition and practice of the early
Church in several noteworthy points. There are many novelties associated with modern Roman Catholic
liturgical rites.

Section I Infant Communion

“This, as was prescribed in almost all ancient Ritual books, was done at Baptism until the thirteenth century, and
this custom prevailed in some places even later.” – Latin Pope Pius X (Quam Singulari, 1910)

“Nor is antiquity, therefore, to be condemned, if at one time it observed this custom in some places.” – Latin
Council of Trent (Session XXI, Ch. IV, 1562)

The ancient Church gave communion to young children and babies. In this chapter it will be shown that
Roman Catholics have admitted that this practice was widespread for many centuries in the early Church.
However, the Latins began to change this practice around the end of the first millennium, denying these
children communion, thus expressly contradicting the declaration of Christ, “Let the little children come to
me, and do not hinder them” (Matthew xix 14. Mark x 14. Luke xviii 16.) This deviation from Apostolic
tradition is a great error, for the early Church (including the Bishops of Rome) interpreted the words of Christ
in Scripture to mean that young children and infants should receive the Eucharist. No valid justification for
this change has been provided by Roman Catholics that would not apply to the first millennium as well. This
results in the de facto “excommunication” (not receiving communion) of children in Roman Catholicism.

1 “Multi sunt, qui in nomine solummodo Christi una etiam mersione se adserunt baptizare. Evangelicum vero
præceptum, ipso Deo et Domino salvatore nostro Jesu Christo tradente, nos admonet, in nomine Trinitatis,
trina etiam mersione sanctum baptisma unicuique tribuere, dicente Domino discipuli suis, ‘Ite, baptizate
omnes gentes in nomine Patris, Filii, et Spiritus Sancti.’” James Chrystal, A History of the Modes of Christian
Baptism, p. 80, Philadelphia, PA: Lindsay and Blakiston, 1861. Chrystal translates from Pelag. Epist. ad.
Gaudent. ap. Gratianum, distinct. 4, c. 82.
 64

The Latin Pope Pius X (1835 – 1914, Pope from 1903 – 1914) approved the following decree on August 8,
1910, titled Quam Singulari, which was issued by the Sacred Congregation of the Sacraments, on the subject
of first Communion. In response to many Roman Catholics who had been delaying communion for children
even after they had reached the age of reason, Pius X decreed that children should receive communion when
they reach the age of reason, at about seven years of age.

The pages of the Gospel show clearly how special was that love for children which Christ showed
while He was on earth. …

The Catholic Church, bearing this in mind, took care even from the beginning to bring the little
ones to Christ through Eucharistic Communion, which was administered even to nursing
infants. This, as was prescribed in almost all ancient Ritual books, was done at Baptism until
the thirteenth century, and this custom prevailed in some places even later. It is still found in
the Greek and Oriental Churches. But to remove the danger that infants might eject the
Consecrated Host, the custom obtained from the beginning of administering the Eucharist to them
under the species of wine only.

Infants, however, not only at the time of Baptism, but also frequently thereafter were
admitted to the sacred repast. In some churches it was the custom to give the Eucharist to the
children immediately after the clergy; in others, the small fragments which remained after the
Communion of the adults were given to the children.

This practice later died out in the Latin Church, and children were not permitted to approach the
Holy Table until they had come to the use of reason and had some knowledge of this august
Sacrament. This new practice, already accepted by certain local councils, was solemnly confirmed
by the Fourth Council of the Lateran, in 1215, which promulgated its celebrated Canon XXI, whereby
sacramental Confession and Holy Communion were made obligatory on the faithful after they had
attained the use of reason, in these words: “All the faithful of both sexes shall, after reaching the years
of discretion, make private confession of all their sins to their own priest at least once a year, and
shall, according to their capacity, perform the enjoined penance; they shall also devoutly receive the
Sacrament of Holy Eucharist at least at Easter time unless on the advice of their own priest, for some
reasonable cause, it be deemed well to abstain for a while.” …

However, in the precise determination of “the age of reason or discretion” not a few errors and
deplorable abuses have crept in during the course of time. … As a consequence, owing to various
local customs and opinions, the age determined for the reception of First Communion was placed at
ten years or twelve, and in places fourteen years or even more were required; and until that age
children and youth were prohibited from Eucharistic Communion.

This practice of preventing the faithful from receiving on the plea of safeguarding the august
Sacrament has been the cause of many evils. …

[Rule] 1. The age of discretion both for Confession and for Holy Communion, is the time when a child
begins to reason, that is about the seventh year, more or less. From that time on begins the
obligation of fulfilling the precept of both Confession and Communion.

His Holiness, Pope Pius X, in an audience granted on the seventh day of this month, approved all the
above decisions of this Sacred Congregation, and ordered this Decree to be published and
promulgated.
 65

He furthermore commanded that all the Ordinaries make this Decree known not only to the pastors
and the clergy, but also to the people, and he wishes that it be read in the vernacular every year at the
Easter time.1

It is also worth noting that the Catechism of Pius X teaches the following:

Q. Do they sin who are old enough to receive Communion and do not?

A. They who are old enough to receive Communion and do not either because they are unwilling, or
because, through their own fault, they are not instructed, undoubtedly sin. Their parents or
guardians also sin if the delay of Communion is owing to their fault, and they shall have to render a
strict account to God for it.2

Pius X was referring to those who have attained the age of reason, but as the early Church gave communion to
infants (as he has admitted), infants thus qualify to receive communion and benefit from it, and so by delaying
till the age of reason, the Orthodox can likewise say that the Latin Church errs and will have to give a severe
account of this to God.

The Latin Pope Benedict XIV (1675 – 1758, Pope from 1740 – 1758) writes the following in his encyclical
Allatae Sunt on July 26, 1755 (On the Observance of Oriental Rites), regarding the sacrament of the Eucharist
immediately following Baptism:

24. For several centuries the practice prevailed in the Church of giving children the Eucharist
after the sacrament of baptism. This practice flourished as a simple rite and custom; it involved no
belief that it was necessary for the eternal salvation of the children, as the fathers of Trent wisely
remarked (session 21, chap. 4). Among the errors of the Armenians which Pope Benedict XII
condemned, the fifty eighth was their declaration that the Eucharist as well as Confirmation must be
given to children at baptism to ensure the validity of their baptism and their eternal salvation
(Raynaldus, 1341, sect. 66).

For the last four centuries, the Western church has not given the Eucharist to children after
baptism. But it must be admitted that the Rituals of the Oriental churches contain a rite of
Communion for children after baptism. Assemanus the Younger (Codicis Liturgici), bk. 2, p. 149)
gives the ceremony of conferring baptism among the Melchites. On page 309, he quotes the Syrians’
baptismal ceremony as it was published by Philoxenus, the Monophysite Bishop of Mabbug, and on p.

1 “Haec memorans catholica Ecclesia, vel a sui primordiis, admovere Christo parvulos curavit per
eucharisticam Communionem, quam iisdem subministrare solita est etiam lactentibus. Id, ut in omnibus fere
antiquis libris ritualibus ad usque saeculum XIII praescriptum est, in baptizando fiebat, eaque consuetudo
alicubi diutius obtinuit; apud Graecos et Orientales adhuc perseverat.” “Neque in baptismate solum, sed
subinde saepius divino epulo reficiebantur infantes.” “Mos hic deinde in Ecclesia latina obsolevit, nec sacrae
mensae participes fieri coeperunt infantes, nisi illucescentis rationis usum aliquem haberent et Augusti
Sacramenti notitiam quandam. Quae nova disciplina …” Claudia Carlen, The Papal Encyclicals: 1740 – 1981,
Vol. III, 1903 – 1939, Quam Singulari, Washington, DC: McGrath Publishing Company, 1981. Pius X, Quam
Singulari, Acta Apostolicae Sedis, Vol. II, p. 578, Rome: Typis Polyglottis Vaticanis, 1910.
2 “D. Peccano coloro che hanno l’età capace per essere ammessi alla Comunione, e non si comunicano? R.

Coloro che, avendo l’età capace per essere ammessi alla Comunione non si comunicano, o perché non
vogliono, o perché non sono per loro colpa istruiti, peccano senza dubbio. Peccano altresi i loro genitori, o chi
ne fa le veci, se la dilazione della Comunione avviene per loro colpa e ne dovranno rendere gran conto a Dio.”
John Hagan (translator), A Compendium of Catechetical Instruction, Vol. II, Catechism of Pius X, The Larger
Catechism, Ch. IV, The Eucharist, § 5, Dublin: Browne and Nolan, 1928. Pope Pius X, Compendio Della
Dottrina Cristiana Prescritto da Sua Santità Papa Pio X Alle Diocesi Della Provincia di Roma, Catechismo
Maggiore, Part IV, Ch. IV, § 5, pp. 220 – 221, Rome: Tipografia Vaticana, 2nd Ed., 1906.
 66

306, the ceremony from the ancient Ritual of Severus, Patriarch of Antioch and leader of the
Monophysites. He gives also the ceremonies of baptism observed by the Armenians and Copts (bk. 3,
p. 95 and 130). All of these ceremonies command that the Eucharist should be given to children after
baptism.

St. Thomas says that this practice was still observed by some Greeks in his time (Summa Th. 3, qu. 70,
art. to the third). But Arcudius writes that this is the practice of the Greeks although some of them
gradually abandoned it on account of the difficulties which arose repeatedly from offering the
Eucharist to children at baptism (de Sacramento Eucharistiae, bk. 3, ch. 11.). Canon 7 of the Maronite
Synod gathered at Mt. Lebanon on 18 September 1596 under Sergius Patriarch of Antioch and
presided over by Fr. Jerome Dandin S.J., Nuncio of Pope Clement VIII, reads as follows: “Since Christ’s
Holy Communion can hardly be given to children with propriety and due respect for the holy
sacrament, all priests should in the future beware of allowing anyone to receive before he attains the
use of reason.” The fathers of the synod of Zamoscia in 1720 agree with this view (sect. 3, de
Eucharistia). And the Synod of Lebanon confirmed it in 1736: “In our old Rituals as well as in the old
Roman ordo and in the Greek Euchologies, the minister of Baptism is clearly told to give the
sacrament of the Eucharist to infants as soon as they are baptized and confirmed. Still, both from due
respect for this most august sacrament and since this is not necessary for the salvation of children
and infants, we command that the Eucharist should not be offered to infants when they are baptized,
not even under the appearance of wine” (chap. 12, Sanctissimo Eucharistiae Sacramento, no. 13). We
made the same provision in Our constitution for Italian Greeks Etsi Pastoralis (Our Bullarium, vol. 1,
sect. 2, no. 7).1

Whereas Pope Benedict XIV says of Paedocommunion, “This practice flourished as a simple rite and custom; it
involved no belief that it was necessary for the eternal salvation of the children, as the fathers of Trent wisely
remarked”, Pope Gelasius says, “we see no one is excepted, nor hath any one dared to say, that a little one
without this saving Sacrament can be brought to eternal life.” and Augustine is in agreement with Pope
Innocent and says “they share in his table, in order to have life in themselves” (quoted below). Benedict XIV
has here minimized the value of this sacrament, for infant communion is certainly more than “a simple rite
and custom”. Much more could be said on Benedict’s encyclical, but this work will attempt to avoid prolixity.

The following extract is from Augustine of Hippo, who quotes a letter of Pope St. Innocent I, equating the
Eucharist with baptism as essential to salvation for infants, clearly applying Scripture in favour of infant
communion:

What was that which the same pope replied to the bishops of Numidia concerning this very cause,
because he had received letters from both Councils, as well from the Council of Carthage as from the
Council of Mileve – does he not speak most plainly concerning infants? For these are his [Pope
Innocent’s] words: “For what your Fraternity asserts that they preach, that infants can be endowed
with the rewards of eternal life even without the grace of baptism, is excessively silly; for unless
they shall eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink His blood, they shall not have life in
themselves.” …

Lo, Pope Innocent, of blessed memory, says that infants have not life without Christ’s baptism, and
without partaking of Christ’s body and blood. If he should say, “They will not,” how then, if they

1“In alcuni secoli si affermò l’uso di dare l’Eucaristia ai fanciulli dopo il Battesimo,” “Nella Chiesa Occidentale
da quattrocento e più anni non si dà ai fanciulli l’Eucaristia dopo il Battesimo.” Claudia Carlen, The Papal
Encyclicals: 1740 – 1981, Vol. I, 1740 – 1878, Pope Benedict XIV, Allatae Sunt, Washington, DC: McGrath
Publishing Company, 1981. Tutte le Encicliche e i principali documenti Pontifici emanati dal 1740: 250 anni
di storia visti dalla Santa Sede, Vol. I, Benedetto XIV, 39., p. 336 – 337, Vatican City: Libreria Editirice Vaticana,
1993.
 67

do not receive eternal life, are they certainly by consequence condemned in eternal death if they
derive no original sin?1

Pope St. Gelasius I (492 – 496) writes in his epistle to the bishops of Picenum (493):

The Divine testimonies and the very sacraments of the Church and the tradition of Catholic Doctors
from the Lord and Saviour Himself, teach, that the beginnings of human generation are polluted.
Hence it is, that the prophet cries out, “Who shall boast that he hath a clean hear, and that he is pure
from sin? Not even an infant, whose life is one day on the earth.” Hence it is, that Holy Scripture also
says, “Who can make clean what is conceived from unclean seed? is it not Thou, Who art Alone?” and
elsewhere, “Because it was a cursed seed;” and David too attests, “I was conceived in iniquities, and
in sin did my mother bear me.” And if he says this, who should assert that he was generated
otherwise? The blessed Paul too says, “We too were once by nature children of wrath, even as the
rest.” [Gelasius then quotes S. John iii. 36, adding,] That wrath of which it is said, “thou shalt surely
die.” The Lord Jesus Christ Himself pronounces with a voice from heaven, “Whoso eateth not the
flesh of the Son of man, and drinketh not His blood, shall not have life in him.” Where we see no one
is excepted, nor hath any one dared to say, that a little one without this saving Sacrament can
be brought to eternal life. Whence, since he is held bound by no guilt from his own act, there
remains nothing but that he is polluted by a vicious nativity alone. 2

It should be noted that there was always a close connection and identification between Baptism and the
Eucharist, since infants and others were given the Eucharist right after Baptism, and although the Eucharist is
necessary, it is not strictly necessary, and Baptism is much more necessary, as Baptism itself confers the
benefit of the Eucharist. St. Fulgentius of Ruspe (462/467 – 527/533) was asked by the deacon Ferrandus
Fulgentius (d. 546/547) about a case where an earnest catechumen became extremely sick and the Baptism
that he had desired was given to him while unconscious, but this catechumen died soon after while
unconscious and never received the Eucharist. Fulgentius replied that someone departing this life with only
Baptism and not the Eucharist will still be saved, since Baptism itself provides participation in the Body and
Blood of the Lord.3 This case still shows how closely Baptism and the Eucharist were bound, and that it was
standard for the Eucharist to be given immediately after Baptism, and, moreover, that exceptions were rare,
and that this practice was due to the words of Christ in Scripture.

1 Benjamin B. Warfield (editor), Robert Ernest Wallis (translator), Against Two Letters of the Pelagians
(Contra Duas Epistolas Pelagianorum), Book. II, Ch. VII, p. 394, in NPNF, Series I, Vol. V (Saint Augustin: Anti-
Pelagian Writings), New York, NY: The Christian Literature Company, 1887. There are many other passages
in Augustine’s works on the necessity of the Body and Blood of Christ for infants, see John Daillé, A Treatise
on the Right Use of the Fathers, Book I, Ch. VIII, pp. 170 – 171, 2nd American Ed., Philadelphia, PA:
Presbyterian Board of Publication, 1856. For example, Augustine elsewhere writes, “Yes, they’re infants, but
they are his members. They’re infants, but they receive his sacraments. They are infants, but they share in
his table, in order to have life in themselves.” (John E. Rotelle (editor), Edmund Hill (translator), The Works
of Saint Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century, Sermons, III, Vol. V (Sermons 148 – 183), On the New
Testament, Sermon 174., 7., p. 261, New Rochelle, NY: New City Press, 1992.
2 Edward Bouverie Pusey, Eirenicon, Part II, First Letter to the Very Rev. J. H. Newman, D.D., In Explanation,

Chiefly in Regard to The Reverential Love Due to the Ever-Blessed Theotokos, and The Doctrine of Her
Immaculate Conception, with an Analysis of Cardinal De Turrecremata’s Work on the Immaculate Conception,
42., pp. 129 – 130, Oxford: James Parker & Co., 1869.
3 Robert B. Eno (translator), Fulgentius: Selected Works, Letters XI – XII, pp. 475 – 476 & 492 – 496, in The

Fathers of the Church: A New Translation, Vol. XCV, Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America
Press, 1997.
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Pope Leo the Great writes:

In what density of ignorance, in what utter sloth must they hitherto have lain, not to have learnt from
hearing, nor understood from reading, that which in God’s Church is so constantly in men’s mouths,
that even the tongues of infants do not keep silence upon the truth of Christ’s Body and Blood at the
rite of Holy Communion? For in that mystic distribution of spiritual nourishment, that which is given
and taken is of such a kind that receiving the virtue of the celestial food we pass into the flesh of Him,
Who became our flesh.1

The Latin Council of Trent stated the following in its 21st Session (16 July 1562):

Chap. 4. Little Children are not Bound to Sacramental Communion

Finally, the same holy Synod teaches that little children without the use of reason are not bound by
any necessity to the sacramental communion of the Eucharist [can. 4.], since having been regenerated
through “the laver” of baptism [Tit. 3:5], and having been incorporated with Christ they cannot at
that age lose the grace of the children of God which has already been attained. Nor is antiquity,
therefore, to be condemned, if at one time it observed this custom in some places. For, just as those
most holy Fathers had good reason for an observance of that period, so certainly it is to be believed
without controversy that they did this under no necessity for salvation. …

Canon 4. If anyone says that for small children, before they have attained the years of
discretion, communion of the Eucharist is necessary: let him be anathema.2

The Trent Catechism says:

But, although this law, sanctioned, as it is, by the authority of God, and of his Church, regards all the
faithful, the pastor, however, will teach that is does not extend to persons who have not arrived at the
years of discretion, because they are incapable of discerning the Holy Eucharist from common food,
and cannot bring with them to this Sacrament, the piety and devotion which it demands. To extend
the precept to them would appear inconsistent with the institution of this Sacrament by our Lord:
“Take,” says he, “and eat,” words which cannot apply to infants, who are evidently incapable of taking
and eating. In some places, it is true, an ancient practice prevailed of giving the Holy Eucharist even
to infants; but, for the reasons already assigned, and for other reasons most consonant to Christian
piety, this practice has been long discontinued by authority of the same Church. With regard to the
age at which children should be admitted to communion, this the parents and confessor can best

1 Charles Lett Feltoe (translator and editor), The Letters and Sermons of Leo the Great Bishop of Rome, Letter
LIX, § II, in NPNF, Series II, Vol. XII, p. 59. The Anglican professor Charles Lett Feltoe (1857 – 1926) notices
here “that infant communion is implied as regular: this we know to have been the case in much earlier days.”
(p. 59, n. 1.)
2 “Caput IV.: Parvulos non obligari ad Communionem sacramentalem] Denique eadem sancta Synodus docet

parvulos usu rationis carentes nulla obligari necessitate ad sacramentalem Eucharistiae communionem si
quidem per baptismi lavacrum regenerati et Christo incorporati adeptam iam filiorum Dei gratiam in illa
aetate amittere non possunt. Neque ideo tamen damnanda est antiquitas si eum morem in quibusdam locis
aliquando servavit. Ut enim sanctissimi illi patres sui facti probabilem causam pro illius temporis ratione
habuerunt ita certe eos nulla salutis necessitate id fecisse sine controversia credendum est.” “4. Si quis dixerit
parvulis antequam ad annos discretionis pervenerint necessariam esse Eucharistiae communionem:
anathema sit.” Roy Joseph Deferrari (translator), Henry Denzinger, The Sources of Catholic Dogma, Council of
Trent, Session XXI, n. 933, 937, pp. 287 – 288, Louis, MO: Herder, 1957. Henry Joseph Schroeder, Canons and
Decrees of the Council of Trent: Original Text with English Translation, pp. 408 – 409, St. Louis, MO: B. Herder
Book Co., 1941.
 69

determine: to them it belongs to ascertain whether the children have acquired a competent
knowledge of this admirable Sacrament, and desire to taste this bread of angels.1

The Trent Catechism gives the wrong impression when it says that infant communion was the ancient
practice in “some places” (“quibusda locis”), whereas it was nearly the universal practice everywhere in the
Church for at least the first eight hundred years. Similarly, Trent does not accurately represent antiquity
when it says of the Church that “at one time it observed this custom in some places” (“si eum morem in
quibusdam locis aliquando servavit”). Pope Pius X more truthfully states that infant communion “was
prescribed in almost all ancient Ritual books until the thirteenth century” (“in omnibus fere antiquis libris
ritualibus ad usque saeculum XIII praescriptum est”, cited above).

The early Church did not see the words of Christ, “Take, eat” as restricting communion from infants. The
other reasons alleged did not hold weight in the early Church, for they saw no inconsistency in giving
communion to infants, and the same argument could be applied to baptism, that infants are incapable of
discerning Holy Baptism from a common washing in water. The early Church understood Christ’s words to
mean that the infants and little children should receive His life-giving Eucharist.

On the “Ancient practice” of “Communion of Children”, the Catholic Encyclopedia writes:

It is now well established that in the early days of Christianity it was not uncommon for
infants to receive Communion immediately after they were baptized. Among others St.
Cyprian (Lib. de Lapsis, c. xxv) makes reference to the practice. In the East the custom was
pretty universal, and even to this day exists in some places, but in the West infant Communion was
not so general. Here, moreover, it was restricted to the occasions of baptism and dangerous illness.
Probably it originated in a mistaken notion of the absolute necessity of the Blessed Eucharist for
salvation, founded on the words of St. John (vi, 54). In the reign of Charlemagne an edict was
published by a Council of Tours (813) prohibiting the reception by young children of Communion
unless they were in danger of death (Zaccaria, Bibl. Rit., II, p. 161) and Odo, Bishop of Paris, renewed
this prohibition in 1175. Still the custom died hard, for we find traces of it in Hugh of St. Victor (De
Sacr., I, c. 20) and Martène (De Ant. Ecc. Rit., I bk., I, c. 15) alleges that it had not altogether
disappeared in his own day. The manner of Communicating infants was by dipping the finger in the
consecrated chalice and then applying it to the tongue of the child. This would seem to imply that it
was only the Precious Blood that was administered, but evidence is not wanting to show that the
other Consecrated Species was also given in similar circumstances (cf. Sebastiano Giribaldi, Op. Mor.,
I, c. 72). That infants and children not yet come to the use of reason may not only validly but even
fruitfully receive the Blessed Eucharist is now the universally received opinion, but it is opposed to
Catholic teaching to hold that this sacrament is necessary for their salvation (Council of Trent, Sess.
XXI, can. iv).2

1 “Verum, quamuis hæc lex, Dei, & Ecclesiæ auctoritate sancita, ad omnes fideles pertineat; docendum est
tamen eos excipi, qui nondum rationis vsum propter ætatis imbecillitatem habent, hi enim neque ad eam
accipiendam pietatem animi, & religionem afferre possunt, atque id etiam a Christi domini institutione
alienissimum videtur: ait enim: Accipite, & comedite. Infantes autem idoneos non esse, qui accipiant, &
comedant, satis constat. Vetus quidem illa fuit in quibusda locis consuetudo, vt infantibus etiam sacram
Eucharistiam præberent: sed tamen, tum ob eas caussas, quæ ante dictæ sunt, tum ob alias, Christianæ pietati
maxime cosentaneas, iamdiu eiusde Ecclesiæ auctoritate id fieri desijt. Qua vero ætate pueris sacra mysteria
danda sint, nemo melius constituere poterit, quam pater, & sacerdos, cui illi confitentur peccata, ad illos enim
pertinet explorare, & a pueris percunctari, an huius admirabilis sacramenti cognitionem aliquam
acceperinint, & gustum habeant.” Trent Catechism, op. cit., p. 243. Catechismus Ex Decreto Concilii Tridentini
Ad Parochos, Pii V. Pont. Max. Iussu Editus, De Sacramento Eucharistiæ, pp. 259 – 260, Venice: Andreas
Muschius, 1588.
2 Patrick Morrisroe, Communion of Children, in CE, Vol. IV, pp. 170 – 171. Patrick Morrisroe (1869 – 1946)

was an Irish Latin bishop and university professor who contributed 23 articles to the Catholic Encyclopedia.
 70

If infants can “fruitfully” partake of the Eucharist, then they should not be prevented. In another article by a
different author in the Catholic Encyclopedia, this is confirmed again: “It was the practice in the Early Church
to give the Holy Eucharist to children even before they attained the use of reason.” 1

Yet Thomas Aquinas writes in his Summa Theologica that “the Eucharist ought not to be given to children”.2
Moreover, Aquinas writes, discussing the question, “Whether those who have not the use of reason ought to
receive this sacrament?” (referring to the Eucharist):

Objection 3. Further, among those that lack the use of reason are children, the most innocent of all.
But this sacrament is not given to children. Therefore much less should it be given to others
deprived of the use of reason. …

Reply Obj. 3. The same reason holds good of newly born children as of the insane who never have
had the use of reason: consequently, the sacred mysteries are not to be given to them. Although
certain Greeks do the contrary, because Dionysius says (Eccl. Hier. ii.) that Holy Communion is to be
given to them who are baptized; not understanding that Dionysius is speaking there of the Baptism of
adults. Nor do they suffer any loss of life from the fact of Our Lord saying (John vi. 54), Except you eat
the flesh of the Son of Man, and drink His blood, you shall not have life in you; because, as Augustine
writes to Boniface (Pseudo-Beda Comment. in I Cor. x. 17), then every one of the faithful becomes a
partaker, i.e., spiritually, of the body and blood of the Lord, when he is made a member of Christ’s body
in Baptism. But when children once begin to have some use of reason so as to be able to conceive
some devotion for the sacrament, then it can be given to them.3

In his commentary on John vi. 53 – 60, Aquinas similarly writes on infant communion:

But if we refer this statement to eating in a sacramental way, a difficulty appears. For we read above:
“Unless one is born again of water and the Holy Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God” (3:5).
Now this statement was given in the same form as the present one: Unless you eat the flesh of the Son
of Man. Therefore, since baptism is a necessary sacrament, it seems that the Eucharist is also. In fact,
the Greeks think it is; and so they give the Eucharist to newly baptized infants. For this opinion they
have in their favor the rite of Dionysius, who says that the reception of each sacrament should
culminate in the sharing of the Eucharist, which is the culmination of all the sacraments. This is true
in the case of adults, but it is not so for infants, because receiving the Eucharist should be done with
reverence and devotion, and those who do not have the use of reason, as infants and the insane,
cannot have this. Consequently, it should not be given to them at all.4

Although Aquinas says that the Eucharist “should not be given to them [infants] at all”, some Eastern Uniats
who are in communion with Roman Catholicism have still given communion to infants. Aquinas is advising
against what the early Church practised. Moreover, it is strange that Aquinas asserts that Dionysius the
Areopagite is not referring to children, when Aquinas writes above, “Although certain Greeks do the contrary,
because Dionysius says (Eccl. Hier. ii.) that Holy Communion is to be given to them who are baptized; not
understanding that Dionysius is speaking there of the Baptism of adults.” This is completely false, and

1 Patrick J. Toner, Communion under Both Kinds, in CE, Vol. IV, p. 177.
2 Summa, Supplement, Question XXXII, Art. IV. Fathers of the English Dominican Province (translators), The
“Summa Theologica” of St. Thomas Aquinas, Part III, No. IV, p. 365, London: R. & T. Washbourne, 1917.
3 Summa, Part III, Question LXXX, Art. IX, Obj. III & Reply. Fathers of the English Dominican Province

(translators), The “Summa Theologica” of St. Thomas Aquinas, Part III, No. III, pp. 393 – 395, New York, NY:
Benziger Brothers, 1914.
4 Fabian Larcher and James A. Weisheipl (translators), St. Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on the Gospel of

John, Vol. II, Chapters 6 – 12, Ch. VI, Lect. VII, p. 45, ¶. 969., Thomas Aquinas in Translation, Washington, DC:
The Catholic University of America Press, 2010.
 71

indicates a serious flaw in Aquinas’s integrity or the translations he used, for Dionysius directly speaks of
infant communion in the following passage, at the end of his Ecclesiastical Hierarchy:

Now the fact that even children, not yet able to understand the things Divine, become recipients of
the holy birth in God, and of the most holy symbols of the supremely Divine Communion, seems, as
you say, to the profane, a fit subject for reasonable laughter, if the Hierarchs teach things Divine to
those not able to hear, and vainly transmit the sacred traditions to those who do not understand.
And this is still more laughable – that others, on their behalf, repeat the abjurations and the sacred
compacts. … For they (“our Godlike initiators”) say, what is also a fact, that infants, being brought up
according to a Divine institution, will attain a religious disposition, exempt from every error, and
inexperienced in an unholy life. When our Divine leaders came to this conclusion, it was determined
to admit infants upon the following conditions, viz.: that the natural parents of the child presented,
should transfer the child to some one of the initiated, a good teacher of children in Divine things, –
and that the child should lead the rest of his life under him, as under godfather and sponsor, for his
religious safe-keeping. The Hierarch then requires him, when he has promised to bring up the child
according to the religious life, to pronounce the renunciations and the religious professions, not, as
they would jokingly say, by instructing one instead of another in Divine things; for he does not say
this, “that on behalf of this child I make, myself, the renunciations and the sacred professions,” but,
that the child is set apart and enlisted; i.e. I promise to persuade the child, when he has come to a
religious mind, through my godly instructions, to bid adieu wholly to things contrary, and to profess
and perform the Divine professions. There is here, then, nothing absurd, in my judgment, provided
the child is brought up as beseems a godlike training, in having a guide and religious surety, who
implants in him a disposition for Divine things, and keeps him inexperienced in things contrary.

The Hierarch imparts to the child the sacred symbols, in order that he may be nourished by them,
and may not have any other life but that which always contemplates Divine things; and in religious
progress become partaker of them and have a religious disposition in these matters, and be devoutly
brought up by his Godlike surety.1

The learned Roman Catholic scholar Alexius Aurelius Pelliccia (1744 – 1822), professor of Christian
Antiquities in the University of Naples, wrote the following on “Rites which followed immediately after
Baptism”:

But before proceeding to the Sacrifice, the Bishop confirmed them with the sacred chrism. Then he
celebrated the Liturgy, and administered to them the Sacrament of the Eucharist: for this discipline
prevailed everywhere, both in the Greek and Latin Church, from the first down to the twelfth century.
But in that century, in the Latin Church, instead of the Blood of Christ, they began to administer to the
baptized wine which had been blessed. And we read that this custom prevailed everywhere down to
the sixteenth century, when the Minister used to give his finger, dipped in that wine, for the infant to
suck. Nevertheless, in some places in this same sixteenth century, the Blood of Christ was
administered to little children after being baptized, as we know from the evidence of the Missal of the
Church of Amiens, published A.D. 1506.

But among the Orientals the ancient discipline survives: for the Jacobites, Syrians, Maronites, and
others administer the Blood of Christ to the newly baptized. Formerly the Blood of Christ was given
to children out of the chalice which was put to their lips, – but afterwards, even down to our own

1 John Parker (translator), The Works of Dionysius the Areopagite, Part II, On the Ecclesiastical Hierarchy,
Chapter VII, Part III, Section XI, pp. 160 – 162, London: James Parker & Co., 1899. Note that much of the focus
is on infant baptism, and infant communion is invariably connected with it.
 72

time, the Priest puts into the infants’ mouths his finger moistened with the Blood, and they suck it off
his finger: some among them however let them take the Blood out of a spoon. 1

The Catholic Dictionary says:

Further, it is to this day the custom in the East to communicate infants just after baptism, and this
use, Fleury says, continued in the West till the opening of the ninth century, while even in the
thirteenth Communion was given to children in danger of death. The Council of Trent (Sess. xxi. cap.
4, De Commun.) declares that children who have not come to the use of reason need not receive
Communion. At present, children usually make their first Communion between ten and twelve years
of age.2

This “usual” age of ten to twelve years was censured by Pope Pius X (as shown above), who preferred the age
of seven, as more closely approximating the age of reason.

The Apostolic Constitutions, written around 380, recommend that mothers bring their children with them to
communion (“Let the mothers receive their children;”3) and children are counted among those who partake
of the Lord's Supper (“And after that, let the bishop partake, then the presbyters, and deacons, … then the
children;”4)

The Gregorian Sacramentary, prescribed by the Popes of Rome in the second half of the first millennium,
orders thus: “Infants should be allowed to suck the breast before the holy communion, if necessity so
requires.”5

Other ancients in support of infant communion are Theodoret, Isidorus Pelusiota, Theodore of Mopsuestia,
Gennadius of Massilia, Jesse of Amiens, Photius, other old Roman Orders, Hugo of St. Victor, Radulphus
Ardens, the synodal decrees of Walter of Orleans, Alcuin, Basilius Cilix, Evagrius Ponticus, John Moschus,
Dionysius the Areopagite, the second Council of Mascon (585), the third Council of Tours, Canon XI of the
eleventh Council of Toledo (675), Pope Paschal II, Paulinus of Nola, the Pontifical of Egbert, Willibrord,
William of Champeaux, Charlemagne, and Louis the Pious.6

1 John Crosthwaite Bellett (translator), Alexius Aurelius Pelliccia, The Polity of the Christian Church, of Early,
Mediæval, and Modern Times, Book I, Ch. II, § 5, pp. 17 – 19, London: J. Masters & Co., 1883.
2 William E. Addis, Thomas Arnold, and Jas. L. Meagher, The Catholic Dictionary, Communion, (2), pp. 200 –

201, New York, NY: Christian Press Association Publishing Co., Rev. Ed., 1896. The same is found in the 1884
first edition.
3 Arthur Cleveland Coxe, Fathers of the Third and Fourth Centuries, VII, James Donaldson (editor),

Constitutions of the Holy Apostles, Book VIII, Ch. XII, p. 486, in Alexander Roberts, James Donaldson, and
Arthur Cleveland Coxe (editors), The Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol. VII, New York, NY: Charles Scribner’s Sons,
1905.
4 Constitutions of the Holy Apostles, op. cit., Book VIII, Ch. XIII, p. 490.
5 Joseph Bingham, Origines Ecclesiasticæ, Book XV, Ch. IV, Sect. VII.
6 John M’Clinktock and James Strong (editors), Cyclopædia of Biblical, Theological, and Ecclesiastical

Literature, Vol. IV, Infant Communion, pp. 576 – 577, New York, NY: Harper & Brothers, 1894. Joseph
Bingham, Origines Ecclesiasticæ, Book XV, Ch. IV, Sect. VII Thomas Edward Bridgett, History of the Holy
Eucharist in Great Britain, Vol. I, Ch. XVI, pp. 222 – 223, London: C. Kegan Paul & Co., 1881. Jean Daille,
Treatise on the Right Use of the Fathers, p. 325. Also see the works listed below.
 73

This section could be extended much longer with many quotes from the Fathers and the ancient Church
approving of and practicing infant communion, but citations from Roman Catholic authorities admitting that
this was the case should be sufficient. For further reading on this subject see James Pierce, An Essay
In Favour of the Ancient Practice Of giving the Eucharist to Children, London: J. Noon, 1728; Henry Holloway,
The Confirmation and Communion of Infants and Young Children, London: Skeffington & Son, 1901; Joseph
Bingham, Origines Ecclesiasticæ, Book XII, Ch. I & Book XV, Ch. IV, Sect. VII; J. M. M. Dalby, The End of Infant
Communion, Church Quarterly Review, Vol. CLXVII, pp. 59 – 71, 1966; Mark Dalby, Infant Communion: The
New Testament to the Reformation, Gorgias Liturgical Studies, Vol. LIV, Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press, 2010;
Tommy Lee, The History of Paedocommunion: From the Early Church Until 1500
[http://www.reformed.org/sacramentology/tl_paedo.html] & Appendix: The Theology of Paedocommunion,
1998 [http://www.reformed.org/sacramentology/tl_paedo2.html, note that these links are currently
automatically redirecting, so quickly hit escape to cancel the redirect]; Patrick Fodor, Baptism, Confirmation,
and First Communion: Some Historical, Theological, and Practical Observations,
[https://www.academia.edu/25991517/Baptism_Confirmation_and_First_Communion_Some_Historical_The
ological_and_Practical_Observations]; Gary V. Gehlbach, Infant Communion Bibliography [various], 2005
[http://wctc.net/~gehlbach/IC/]; Ruth A. Meyers, Infant Communion: Reflections on the Case from
Tradition, in Anglican and Episcopal History, Vol. LVII, No. 2 (June 1988), pp. 159 – 175, Austin, TX: Historical
Society of the Episcopal Church, 1988; John D. Suk, Infant Communion: The Historical and Biblical Case for Its
Practice, Grand Rapids, MI, Dissertation: Calvin Theological Seminary, 1989.

Eustratios Argenti, a highly learned Orthodox writer (d. 1758), wrote of the Latins:

They have driven away from the holy table and from the Mystical Supper of the Lord those very
children whom Christ took in his arms and blessed, and concerning whom he gave commandment
that they should be suffered to come to him: yet the rebuke which shamed the Apostles has proved of
no avail against the Papists. Christ’s injunction in the Gospel of John, ‘Unless you eat the flesh of the
Son of Man …’, was not limited to any class or age, but applies to all alike. The Papists cannot deny
that they once gave communion to small children, as the east, whether Orthodox or heterodox, has
continued to do.1

Section II The Use of Leavened Bread In the Eucharist

“old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.” (2 Cor. v 17)

The Orthodox use leavened bread in the Eucharist, which is what Christ instituted, while the Latins use
unleavened bread, which was used under the old law. I aim to show here that the evidence supports the side
of the Orthodox, and that the Church of the New Testament uses leavened bread.

The Catholic Encyclopedia presents the indecisive position of Roman Catholic scholars on this subject:

Whether the bread which Our Lord took and blessed at the Last Supper was leavened or unleavened,
is another question. Regarding the usage of the primitive Church, our knowledge is so scant, and the
testimonies so apparently contradictory, that many theologians have pronounced the problem
incapable of solution.2

Another article in the Catholic Encyclopedia states:

1 Kallistos Ware, Eustratios Argenti: A Study of the Greek Church under Turkish Rule, Ch. IV, p. 136, Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1964. Ware has partially paraphrased Argenti’s argument.
2 James F. Loughlin, Azymites, in CE, Vol. II, p. 172.
 74

It is a debated question whether Christ used leavened or unleavened bread at the institution of the
Holy Eucharist, since different conclusions may be drawn, on the one hand, from the Gospel of St.
John and the synoptic Gospels on the other. History does not establish conclusively what the practice
of the Apostles and their successors was, but it may be asserted with some probability that they
made use of whatever bread was at hand, whether azymous [unleavened] or fermented [leavened]. 1

Roman Catholics tolerate both leavened and unleavened bread. The Latin Council of Florence declares in
1439:

We have likewise defined that the body of Christ is truly effected in unleavened or leavened wheaten
bread; and that priests ought to effect the body of our Lord in either one of these, and each one
namely according to the custom of his Church, whether that of the West or of the East.2

However, Christ instituted the Sacrament with either leavened bread or unleavened bread. By allowing both
practices, the Latins must be permitting a form that Christ did not use. For example, almost all Latins
(incorrectly) hold that Christ used unleavened bread at the institution of the Eucharist, yet they permit the
use of leavened bread. Christ says, “Take, eat: this is my body, which is broken for you; this do in
remembrance of me.” (1 Cor xi. 24.) Thus, if Christ did use unleavened bread at the Eucharist, then by
permitting leavened bread, the Latins permit a deviation from Christ’s original institution.

Some Roman Catholics have also unjustly criticized the Orthodox for using leavened bread, as the Catholic
Encyclopedia notes:

Since reviling is apt to beget reviling, some few Latin controversialists have retorted by assailing the
Greeks as “Fermentarians” and “Prozymites”. There was, however, but little cause for bitterness on
the Latin side, as the Western Church has always maintained the validity of consecration with either
leavened or unleavened bread.3

Although the Catholic Encyclopedia claims it was “some few Latin controversialists” who called the Orthodox
“Prozymites”, the very legates (among them the future Latin Pope Stephen IX) who excommunicated the
Orthodox in 1054 also uttered another public excommunication before the Orthodox Eastern Emperor and
his princes, stating: “Whoever has stubbornly opposed the faith of the Roman Church and its sacrifice, let
them be anathema Maranatha, nor let them be considered a catholic Christian, but a prozymite heretic.” 4 The
anathema implies that the very use of leaven itself is heresy.

Dr. Nicholas Gihr’s standard Roman Catholic work on the Mass states the following:

Among the Greeks it appears that leavened sacrificial bread, from the most ancient times, was
exclusively or at least generally used. The historic question has not as yet been solved, what kind of
bread the Western Church used for the Sacrifice during the first ten centuries. Three different views
prevail regarding it among Catholic theologians since the seventeenth century, when the controversy
was most animated. P. Sirmond S. J. († 1651) in his Disquisitio de azymo, semperne in usu altaris
fuerit apid Latinos defended the assertion (in its universality at any rate exaggerated and incorrect),
that the Western Church in the middle of the ninth century consecrated exclusively leavened bread.

1 J. F. Goggin, Liturgical Use of Bread, in CE, Vol. II, pp. 749 – 750.
2 Roy Joseph Deferrari (translator), Henry Denzinger, The Sources of Catholic Dogma, Council of Florence, n.
692, p. 219, Louis, MO: Herder, 1957.
3 James F. Loughlin, Azymites, in CE, Vol. II, p. 172.
4 William L. North (translator), Cardinal Bishop Humbert of Silva Candida, A Brief or Succinct Account of What

the Ambassadors of the Holy Roman and Apostolic See Did in the Royal City, p. 3, Original translation on
Carleton College MARS (Medieval and Renaissance Studies) Website,
www.acad.carleton.edu/curricular/MARS/Schism.pdf.
 75

Christopher Lupus O. S. Aug. († 1681) first opposed this opinion. But as its chief opponent Mabillon
O. S. B. († 1707) came forth, who principally in his Dissertatio de pane eucharistico azymo ac
fermentato defended the diametrically opposite opinion, namely, that in the West the constant and
general use of unleavened sacrificial bread had prevailed (among the Apostles only, he admits the
partial use of leavened bread). Cardinal Bona O. Cist. († 1674) takes a middle view, employing the
inconclusive arguments used by both opponents, to make it probable, that the Roman Church until
late in the ninth century permitted the use of leavened as well as unleavened sacrificial bread. The
views of Mabillon and Bona since that epoch have had the greater number of adherents. On the side
of Mabillon are, for example, Martene, Macedo, Ciampini, Cabassutius, Boucat, Berti, Simmonet,
Sandini; on Bona’s side, for example, Tournely, Witasse, Bocquillot, Grancolas, Graveson, Natalis
Alexander.1

Other Roman scholars before the 19th century that agree with the position of Bona or Sirmond include
Latinus Latinius, Emmanuel Schelstrate, Jean de Launoy, Claude De Vert, and Antoine and François Pagi.

John Mason Neale (1818 – 1866), an eminent Anglican scholar and connoisseur of the Orthodox Church,
summarizes the conclusions of the different positions held by Roman Catholic scholars:

No subject, probably, has employed more learning, or been discussed, on the whole, in a more
Christian spirit, than that on which we are entering. The correspondence between the most learned
and pious Cardinal Bona, and the eminent scholar Mabillon, is a model of Catholic controversy. We
shall endeavour, as briefly as may be, to give a sketch of the discussion in late times, before we
endeavour to lay down and establish the view which seems best supported among the many that
have been propounded.

It is clear that, at the present day, the Oriental Church uses leavened bread only, the Western,
unleavened: that the Eastern Communions severely blame the use of Rome, though they do not go the
length of declaring that it renders the Holy Eucharist invalid; and that Rome prescribes nothing to
other nations on the point, merely laying down that the blessed Sacrament may more conveniently
be consecrated in Azymes: and that, in her own Communion, it cannot be consecrated otherwise
without grevous sin. There was indeed a tradition, through the whole course of the middle ages, that
the Roman Church had originally used leaven; and such was the belief, to name no other authorities,
of Scotus, S. Thomas, S. Bonaventure, and Durandus. The decree of union in the last session of the
Council of Florence, enacts that “the Body of Christ is truly consecrated in bread made of wheat,
whether it be leavened or unleavened; and that Priests should consecrate in either, according to the
use of their Church.”

At the revival of a more exact ecclesiastical criticism, three opinions arose as to the origin of Azymes.
The first of these was put forward by the learned Jesuit Sirmondus, who, in his disquisitio de Azymo,
published in 1651, contended that the early use of the Roman Church consecrated in leavened bread,
and in that alone; and that the employment of Azymes was introduced between the times of Nicholas
I. and Leo IX., that is, between 867 and 1054. Sirmondus was supported in his view by the
distinguished name of John Launoy; but by no one else of note. The second opinion was that of
Mabillon, who undertook to prove, in opposition to Sirmondus, that the Latin Church had always
from the beginning used Azymes. He was followed by Ciampini, Lupus, Cabassutius, and Sandini.
The third is that of Cardinal Bona, that, till the beginning of the tenth century, the use of leaven was
indifferent in the Roman Church: but that since that time, Azymes had been compulsory. This
assertion provoked many replies, and was by one or two writers, as Macedo and Papadopoli, treated
as heterodox: but it numbers among its advocates, Tournely, Graveson, De Vert, Bocquillot, and
Grancolas.

1Nicholas Gihr, The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, Book II, Sect. II, Art. I, 46., 2., a., pp. 507 – 508, n. 3, St. Louis,
MO: B. Herder, Third Ed. (tr. from the sixth German Ed.), 1908.
 76

In like manner, the use of the Greeks has not been free from controversy. The common opinion was
held that the perpetual use of that Church has employed leavened bread: but there are not wanting
those who assert that it also, till subsequently to the age of Photius, celebrated the Holy Eucharist in
Azymes. The most celebrated teachers of this dogma are Honoratus a Sancta Mariâ, and, less
decidedly, Tournely, a Doctor of the Sorbonne.

This question we shall first discuss: and we shall endeavour to shew that the Eastern Church (with
the exception of the Armenians, of whom more hereafter) has always used leavened bread, and
leavened bread only.1

John O’Brien, a Roman Catholic priest and professor of sacred liturgy in Mount St. Mary’s College,
Emmittsburg, Maryland, writes in his work on the history of the Mass:

No question has given rise to more warm dispute than that which touches the use of leavened or
unleavened bread in the preparation of the Holy Eucharist. Cardinal Bona tells us in his wonted
modest way what a storm of indignation he brought down upon himself when he stated in his great
work on the Mass and its ceremonies that the use of leavened and unleavened bread was common in
the Latin Church until the beginning of the tenth century, when unleavened bread became
obligatory on all. We shall not now go over the ground which the leaned Cardinal did to prove this
assertion, but we shall simply say for the instruction of the reader that his opinion is embraced by
almost all writers on sacred liturgy. That the use of unleavened bread, or azymes, was never
intermitted in the Latin Church from the very institution of the Blessed Eucharist itself all are willing
to admit; but it is very commonly held that when the Ebionite heretics taught that the precepts of the
ancient law were binding upon Christian people, and that, in consequence, the Eucharist could not be
celebrated at all unless the bread our Lord used – viz., unleavened – were employed, the Church also
sanctioned the use of leavened bread to confound this teaching, and that this remained in force until
all traces of the Ebionites had died away. This statement has for its supporters several eminent
theologians, among whom are Alexander of Hales, Duns Scotus, St. Bonaventure, and St. Thomas
Aquinas (see Cardinal Bona, Rer. Liturg., lib. i. cap. xxiii.; Kozma, 238; Neale, Holy Eastern Church,
“On the Controversy concerning the Azymes,” vol. ii.) 2

The following is a very important testimony from Latin Cardinal Bona:

Great have been the feuds between the Eastern and Western Churches on the subject of the
eucharistic bread; for the Eastern Church uses leavened bread as alone lawful; whereas the Western
Church adopts unleavened bread, without, however, condemning those who follow the Eastern
custom. This controversy first began in the fourth century after the sixth Ecumenic council (cc. A.D.
1050); for there is no doubt that at first the use of leavened bread was general in the Western
Church.3

1 John Mason Neale, History of the Holy Eastern Church, Part I, Vol. II, Book V, Dissertation I, 10. – 14., pp.
1055 – 1057, London: Joseph Masters, 1850.
2 John O’Brien, A History of the Mass and Its Ceremonies in the Eastern and Western Church, Ch. XVI, pp. 153

– 154, New York, NY: The Catholic Publication Society Co., Thirteenth Ed., 1886). Another authority that can
be listed at the end is William Durand (or Guillaume Durand, or Durandus, 1230 – 1296), an influential
French Roman Catholic canonist and bishop. It is significant that many Latin authorities admit that the early
church sanctioned leavened bread.
3 Solomon Caesar Malan, The Two Holy Sacraments of Baptism and of the Lord’s Supper, Note I, I, p. 255,

London: David Nutt, 1881. Malan translates from Bona, Rer. Lit., lib. i, c. xxiii.
 77

It is important that Bona’s position shows that Latins changed their practice with regard to the type of bread
used in the Latin rite, because Bona and his learned followers admit that for most of the first millennium the
Latins permitted the use of leavened bread in their Churches, yet later, the Latins held that “The bread should
be unleavened. This is a strict ordinance of the Church for the priests of the Latin rite” 1, and the Catholic
Encyclopedia notes that the Latin Council of Florence decided “that unleavened bread must, under grave
precept, be used in the Western Church and leavened in the Eastern; … This is a precept so strict that were a
priest to consecrate in a rite not his own he would sin grievously.” 2 The Orthodox Church prefers to
consecrate only in the rite of Christ. Although the Orthodox Church does not strictly teach that the Eucharist
cannot be consecrated in unleavened bread, much more importance is placed on using leavened bread.

The Orthodox have proof of the most definite kind:

Nicholas Hydrantus relates, in his work on unleavened bread, that when the Franks took
Constantinople, they found in the royal treasury the precious wood of the cross, the crown of thorns,
the sandals worn by our Lord, and one nail. They also found, inside a certain golden vessel set in
jewels, some of the bread of which our Saviour gave to his disciples. Around it was this inscription:
“Herein is contained the divine bread which Christ distributed to His disciples at the time of the
Supper, saying, ‘Take, eat; this is My body.’” As it was leavened, the Frank bishop wished to hide it;
but he could not, thank God! – Gregory of Corcyca tells this as a true story. 3

The Anglican scholar William Edward Scudamore (1813 – 1891) writes:

There is no reason whatever to think that the Greeks and the Orientals in general ever changed from
Azymes to leaven; and all their practice has been unvarying. They have moreover for many centuries
professed to have derived their rule from the example of our Lord, having (universally, I believe)
adopted the hypothesis that He kept the Passover a day before its observance by the Jews; and
therefore while leavened bread was still lawful and in use. We may therefore dismiss them without
further notice. It is otherwise, however, with the Latins. While their Schoolmen affirm that the
whole Church gave up Azymes because the Ebionites used them, and that the Latins resumed them
after the fall of that heresy, their modern writers, though agreed in their estimate of that story, are
yet divided on the question, whether they were from the first in general use throughout the West.
Sirmond and Bona especially have maintained, as I think, most conclusively, that unleavened Bread
was not in common use in Europe for many centuries after Christ; i.e. not until the end of the ninth
century at the earliest. The chief advocate of the opposite theory is Mabillon, who has displayed
great research and ingenuity in the investigation, but far less than his usual judgment. Some of his
authorities might apply to either kind of bread, while others are too late to be of any value. This has
been so clearly shown by Bona that we need here take only those testimonies, alleged by him and
others, which appear to have been considered most weighty, and have at the same time an historical
importance.4

Modern Roman Catholic scholars have also agreed that unleavened bread was an innovation in Rome.

1 Gihr, op. cit., p. 507.

2 Augustin Joseph Schulte, Host (Canonico-Liturgical), in CE, Vol. VII, p. 494.
3 Malan, op. cit., Note I, II, p. 256, n. 1.
4 William Edward Scudamore, Notitia Eucharistica: A Commentary, Explanatory, Doctrinal, and Historical, on

the Order for the Administration of the Lord’s Supper or Holy Communion according to the Use of the Church
of England, with an Appendix on the Office for the Communion of the Sick, Part I, Ch. XV, Sect. IV, VII, pp. 868 –
869, London: Rivingtons, 2nd Ed., 1876.
 78

The Roman Catholic professor Josef Andreas Jungmann (1889 – 1975), in his magnum opus, “The Mass of the
Roman Rite”, first published in German in 1948, states:

In the West, various ordinances appeared from the ninth century on, all demanding the exclusive use
of unleavened bread for the Eucharist. A growing solicitude for the Blessed Sacrament and a desire
to employ only the best and whitest bread, along with various scriptural considerations – all favored
this development.

Still, the new custom did not come into exclusive vogue until the middle of the eleventh century.
Particularly in Rome it was not universally accepted till after the general infiltration of various
usages from the North.

… the opinion put forward by J. Mabillon, Dissertatio de pane eucharistia, in his answer to the Jesuit J.
Sirmond, Disquisitio de azymo, namely, that in the West it was always the practice to use only
unleavened bread, is no longer tenable.1

The Roman Catholic priest William O’Shea, in his “The Worship of the Church”, first published in 1957, states:

Another change introduced into the Roman Rite in France and Germany at the time [i.e., 8th – 9th
century] was the use of unleavened bread and of thin white wafers or hosts instead of the loaves of
leavened bread used hitherto.2

Dr. Johannes H. Emminghaus (1916 – 1989) was ordained a Roman Catholic priest in 1947 and was a
professor in Vienna. In his “The Eucharist: Essence, Form, Celebration”, first published in German in 1972, he
states:

The Eucharistic bread has been unleavened in the Latin rite since the 8th century – that is, it is
prepared simply from flour and water, without the addition of leaven or yeast. … in the first
millennium of the Church’s history, both in East and West, the bread normally used for the Eucharist
was ordinary ‘daily bread,’ that is, leavened bread, and the Eastern Church uses it still today; for the
most part, they strictly forbid the use of unleavened bread. The Latin Church, by contrast, has not
considered this question very important.3

The Byzantine scholar and Orthodox Christian George Galavaris writes:

The same baking method and ovens were used by the Christians for both their daily bread and that
which was to be used in worship. It must be made clear that (contrary to practices today in the
West) in the Early Christian centuries and in all eastern rites through the ages, except in the
Armenian church, the bread used for the Church did not differ from ordinary bread in substance.
From the beginning leavened bread was used. Even the Armenians before the seventh century and
the Maronites before their union with Rome in the twelfth century used leavened bread. The practice
of using unleavened bread for the Eucharist was introduced to the West much later. Among the
earliest written accounts is that given by Alcuin (A.D. 798) and his disciple Rabanus Maurus. After
this the altar bread took the light, wafer like form, achieved with pressing irons, so common today.4

1 Francis A. Brunner (translator), Josef Andreas Jungmann, The Mass of the Roman Rite, Vol. II, pp. 33 – 34,
New York, NY: Benzinger Brothers, 1955.
2 William O’Shea, The Worship of the Church, p. 128, London: Darton, Longman & Todd, Rev. Ed., 1960 (First

published 1957).
3 Theodor Maas-Ewerd (editor), Linda M. Maloney (translator), Johannes H. Emminghaus, The Eucharist:

Essence, Form, Celebration, Ch. III, A., 2., p. 162, Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 1997.
4 George Galavaris, Bread and Liturgy: The Symbolism of Early Christian and Byzantine Bread Stamps, p. 54,

Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1970.

 79

Here are several extracts from a work on the bread of the Eucharist, written by the Anglican priest Reginald
Maxwell Woolley (1877 – 1931):

The next question to be considered is whether the word ἄρτος, which is used by the Synoptists and
by St. Paul in his account of the Institution, can properly denote unleavened bread. In the
controversy of the eleventh century this was denied by the Greeks.

The contention of the Greeks seems to be true. Ἄρτος is properly “leavened bread,” and is not used
by itself of “unleavened bread.” If it is so used it is always qualified by some other word – thus, ἄρτος
ἄζυμος. In the LXX this is the case. Ἄρτος alone is never used of unleavened. In the case of the
Shewbread, for instance, which was unleavened, it is qualified – ἄρτος προθέσως. It is true that at the
Council of Nymphæum the Latins adduced Lev. vii. 12 as affording an example of ἄρτος used of
“unleavened.” In this passage ἄρτους ἐκ σεμιδáλεως occurs in the LXX against the Hebrew ‫חֹּלתַַמּצוֹת‬,
but the Greek translator did not read ‫ מצות‬here, for he translates the word which occurs again in the
verse by ἄζυμα. Therefore this quotation proves nothing.

In the same way, panis, which is the equivalent of ἄρτος, does not by itself represent unleavened
bread. Indeed, the use of unleavened bread seems to have been almost unheard of in the West in
early days, for the words to denote it, azyma and (panis) infermentatus are both late words, and
Tacitus can speak of unleavened as “iudaicus panis.” …

We have seen that Tacitus, by speaking of unleavened bread as “iudaicus panis,” shows that, to say
the least, such unleavened bread was not in ordinary use among the Romans.

Nor is there any ground for thinking that it was in ordinary or common use among other Gentile
peoples. When, however, decrees of Councils deal with the subject of the Eucharistic bread, we get
much more definite evidence – evidence all the more valuable as showing indirectly the causes that
led to the introduction of new uses. The absence of all reference in the earlier Councils tends to show
that there was only one use in earlier times, and that general to the whole Church.1

Woolley’s study reviews the historical evidence, where he concludes in favour of leavened bread as the
common usage of the early Church. Woolley brings forth many testimonies of the early church which
demonstrate the primitive use of leavened bread in the Eucharist, including the Didache, St. Justin Martyr, St.
Irenaeus, St. Cyril of Jerusalem, and St. Gregory of Nyssa, where the expressions used by these saints imply
that “the bread used was probably … a leavened loaf.”2

One important argument for why the early Church used leavened bread is that the bread used was ordinary,
as “the elements were usually taken out of the oblations of the people, where doubtless common bread and
wine were offered.”3 The bread that was in common use was leavened bread. Woolley continues:

Again in Ps.-Ambrose (de Sacr. IV. iv. 14) we find such words as these : “Tu forte dicis; meus panis est
usitatus.” To the point, too, is the story of a woman who laughed when St. Gregory the Great was
about to administer to her the Body of the Lord, and afterwards explained that she had laughed
“because you called the bread, which I knew I had made with my own hands, the Body of Christ.” [Life
of Gregory, by John the Deacon, ii. § 41.]

Surely these expressions seem to imply that the bread used at the Eucharist was ordinary; that is,
leavened. It is most improbable that none of the writers quoted above should have commented on

1 Reginald Maxwell Woolley, The Bread of the Eucharist, Ch. I, pp. 3 – 6, London: A. R. Mowbray, 1913. Tacitus
(56 – 117) was a senator and historian of the Roman Empire. “Iudaicus panis” is Latin for “Jewish bread”.
2 Woolley, op. cit., Ch. I, p. 6.
3 Bingham, op. cit., Vol. II, Book XV, Ch. II.
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the fact if the bread was unleavened when using such words. Indeed, if the bread contemplated by
Ps.-Ambrose was unleavened it was certainly not “usitatus.”

The story of St. Gregory and the irreverent woman brings up the whole question of the oblations of
bread and wine by the people. The very fact that for centuries it was the custom for the people to
offer the bread and wine to be used in the celebration of the mysteries seems to me to argue strongly
in favour of the use of ordinary, i.e. leavened bread. Bona even goes so far as to say that the practice
proves the use of leavened; and it is interesting to note that, in the three Rites in which this oblation
by the people survives, the Consecration of a Bishop, the Consecration of a King, and the Rite of
Canonisation, the loaves then offered are of leavened bread. [Bona, Rerum Liturgicarum, I. XXIII.
III.] …

The attitude of the Fathers generally to the usages of the Jews, and the contemptuous language in
which they refer to the use of unleavened bread among the Jews, makes it difficult to believe that the
use of unleavened bread in the Eucharist was known to the writers in question. …

St. Chrysostom classes the use of unleavened bread with other ceremonies of the old law which have
now been done away with. …

Epiphanius, speaking of the Ebionites, says that, while they celebrate the Eucharist in imitation of the
Church, yet they use unleavened bread for the bread, and water alone in the cup. This is evidently a
peculiarity; and his drawing attention to their use of unleavened bread as a peculiarity shows that he
knew of no such practice in the Church.1

It is worth noting that Saint Epiphanius is writing a handbook against various heresies, and speaks of the
Ebionite heretics with the utmost revulsion,

Following these and holding views like theirs, Ebion, the founder of the Ebionites, arose in the world
in his turn as a monstrosity with many forms, and practically represented in himself the snake-like
form of the mythical many-headed hydra. He was of the Nazoraeans’ school, but preached and taught
other things than they.

For it was as though someone were to collect a set of jewelry from various previous stones and outfit
of varicolored clothing and tog himself up conspicuously. Ebion, in reverse, took any and every
doctrine which was dreadful, lethal, disgusting, ugly and unconvincing, thoroughly contentious, from
every sect, and patterned himself after them all. … And he wants to have just the Christians’ title –
most certainly not their behavior, opinion and knowledge, and the consensus as to faith of the
Gospels and Apostles.2

After quoting numerous authors from all around the ancient Christian world, from England to Syria, and
immediately after quoting the words of the Venerable Bede (673 – 731), Woolley states,

Here, surely, Bede must have mentioned the use of unleavened bread in the Eucharist if such was the
use in his day. But it is noticeable here, and in other like passages from other Fathers which I have
quoted, that the unleavened bread in the Passover represents that which was to come, and when the
law was fulfilled in the new dispensation the shadow, the ‘umbra,’ the law and all its observances and
ceremonies, had fulfilled their purpose and had passed away. It is almost inconceivable that in these
passages, all dealing with the same subject, there would not have been at least in some of them some
reference to the use of unleavened bread in the Christian Passover if any such use had been known to
the authors.3

1 Woolley, op cit., Ch. I, pp. 7 – 12.

2 Frank Williams (translator), The Panarion of Epiphanius of Salamis, Book I, Sect. II, 30., 1,1 – 1,2, p. 131,
Leiden: Brill, 2nd Ed., 2009.
3 Woolley, op. cit., Ch. I, p. 16.
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It appears that the real reason for which the West changed to unleavened bread was for convenience:

It may perhaps be convenient at this point, before we pass on to the great controversy between East
and West, to consider the causes which led to the introduction of unleavened bread into general use
in the West.

The real reason seems to have been considerations of convenience.

We must remember that there was a great difference between the civilisations of East and West. In
the West many regions were almost barbarous and we can understand how very difficult it must
have been to be sure of getting a supply of fine, pure, wheaten bread. a Of course, leavened bread is
much more difficult to keep in anything like a fresh condition than unleavened. Thus we see that the
use of unleavened bread, with its better keeping properties, would be a matter of the greatest
convenience.

Thus, then, we may conclude that the introduction of this use in the West was based on utility; a
spiritual meaning was soon found for it.

[Woolley’s Footnote:] a) Even as late as 1773 wheaten bread was a luxury unknown in parts of the
Highlands of Scotland. “I also gave each person a bit of wheat bread, which they had never tasted
before” (Boswell’s Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides, p. 123 (Everyman’s Library Ed.)).”1

In the heated controversy in the eleventh century with the Latins, the Orthodox argued, “Unleavened bread is
lifeless. … the use of unleavened bread was instituted under the Mosaic law, and does not commemorate the
death of the Lord, and under the new dispensation is past and done away with.”2 Orthodox tradition has
many symbolic applications of leaven with the risen Christ, the Kingdom of Heaven, and new life.

The Latin Cardinal Humbert (1000 – 1061), bishop of Silva Candida, who laid the Papal Bull of
excommunication of the Patriarch on the high altar of the Cathedral of Hagia Sophia in 1054, was heavily
engaged in the controversy over leavened bread. Humbert’s “chief point is, as against the Greek position, that
panis may mean any sort of bread.” However, Woolley points out, “He [Humbert] does not seem to have
noticed that in each case that he cites [from the Bible], ἄρτος does not stand alone, but is qualified by some
other word.”3

Humbert claimed that “in the New Testament, leaven is always used in a bad sense.” 4 This is a shallow
argument, for Christ says in the Gospels, “The kingdom of heaven is like unto leaven, which a woman took,
and hid in three measures of meal, till the whole was leavened.” (Matthew xiii 33. Luke xiii 20 – 21.)
Woolley continues his remarks on Humbert:

Then he goes on to give what was probably one of the chief reasons why unleavened bread became
general in the West, whether he was conscious of it or not, and that is the great convenience of the
use of unleavened, and the absence of crumbs … Cardinal Humbert, in his next contribution to the
controversy, abandons his moderate tone and descends to violent and coarse abuse of the Greeks.5

1 Woolley, op. cit., Ch. I, pp. 20 – 21.

2 Woolley, op. cit., Ch. II, p. 24.
3 Woolley, op. cit., Ch. II, p. 25.
4 Woolley, op. cit., Ch. II, p. 25.
5 Woolley, op. cit., Ch. II, pp. 25 – 26.
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Neale writes that “Leo IX., in 1054, … assert[ed] that the Roman Church had always used Azymes.” 1 However,
it was shown above that Pope Leo IX’s assertion has been contradicted by many scholars of his own
communion.

It thus appears that the Orthodox are correct on this question. For further reading (although not all authors
fully take the Orthodox side) see John Mason Neale, History of the Holy Eastern Church, Part I, Vol. II, Book V,
Dissertation I, pp. 1051 – 1076, London: Joseph Masters, 1850; William Edward Scudamore, Notitia
Eucharistica, Part II, Chapter XV, Section IV, pp. 857 – 876, London: Rivingtons, Second Ed., 1876; Reginald
Maxwell Woolley, The Bread of the Eucharist, London: A. R. Mowbray, 1913; John H. Erickson, Leavened and
Unleavened: Some Theological Implications of the Schism of 1054, St. Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly, Vol.
XIV, No. 3., January 1, 1970, pp. 155 – 176, Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary,
1970; Mahlon H. Smith III., And Taking Bread: Cerularius and the Azyme Controversy of 1054, Paris: Éditions
Beauchesne, 1978; Saed Y. Rihani, Azymes: The Schism of 1054, Yonkers, NY, Dissertation: St. Vladimir’s
Orthodox Theological Seminary, 1985; Also see St. Symeon of Thessalonica’s excursus on leavened bread
against the Latins, in Steven Hawkes-Teeples (editor and translator), St. Symeon of Thessalonika: The
Liturgical Commentaries, pp. 186 – 203 (Greek with parallel English translation), in Studies and Texts
(Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies), Vol. CLXVIII, Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies,
2011. A dedicated treatise on this subject from the Orthodox perspective remains a desideratum in the
English language.

Section III The Use of Wafers

Wafers are another innovation in the liturgical use of bread. The 1848 Encyclical of the Eastern Patriarchs
lists “the use of wafers” as one of the Latin novelties.2 Roman Catholics admit that the earliest evidence for
the use of wafers dates to the mid-eleventh century.

Maurice M. Hassett (1869 – 1953), an Irish-American Roman Catholic priest who wrote 44 articles for the
Catholic Encyclopedia, writes the following:

The earliest documentary evidence that the altar-breads were made in thin wafers is the answer
which Cardinal Humbert, legate of St. Leo IX, made at the middle of the eleventh century to Michael
Cerularius, Patriarch of Constantinople (Fleury, Hist. Eccles., LX, n. 6).3

John Francis Goggin (1877 – 1964), a professor at the Roman Catholic St. Bernard’s Seminary in Rochester,
New York, writes the following in the Catholic Encyclopedia:

Although in the beginning bread which served for common use was offered at the altar, still, growing
reverence for the Holy Eucharist soon effected a change, so that the altar-breads were specially
prepared, assuming a round form of moderate thickness, and were stamped with a cross or some
other significant religious emblem having special reference to Our Lord in the Eucharist. These hosts
became smaller and thinner in the Western Church until they assumed the light, wafer-like form now
so common.4

1 John Mason Neale, History of the Holy Eastern Church, Part I, Vol. II, Book V, Dissertation I, 22. p. 1064,
London: Joseph Masters, 1850.
2 Encyclical Epistle of the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church to the Faithful Everywhere: Being a Reply

to the Epistle of Pius IX to the Easterns, dated January 6, 1848, § 5, xii, in Papers of the Russo-Greek
Committee, 2nd Series, No. 1., New York, NY: John F. Trow, 1867.
3 Maurice M. Hassett, Altar, Altar-Breads, in CE, Vol. I, p. 349.
4 John Francis Goggin, Liturgical Use of Bread, in CE, Vol. II, p. 750.
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Scholars have pointed out the relationship between minted coins and wafers, such as Norweigian
numismatist and professor Svein Harald Gullbekk (1967 – current), who writes:

From the eleventh century, wafers were made in the image of coins: they were round, flat, white, and
two-sided. Like coins, they were mass produced (by means of an iron host press) and were
sometimes engraved with religious imagery or liturgical phrases. This timing is significant: the
emergence of coin-like wafers corresponds with the rise of monetary offerings in coin, suggesting a
notion of the ‘minting’ of the Eucharist (Kumler 211, 188).1

Section IV The Elevation of the Host

The Elevation of the Host is a Latin rite that did not exist earlier than the close of the twelfth century. The
1848 Encyclical of the Eastern Patriarchs lists “elevation of one and the same bread broken” as one of the
inappropriate Latin novelties.2 This issue is related to Invocation (discussed in the next section), and
Overbeck says “The Roman Catholics here elevate and adore the Host and Chalice, but this is wrong, because
the Consecration is only accomplished by the Invocation of the Holy Ghost.”3

The Roman Catholic Jesuit priest and scholar Herbert Henry Charles Thurston (1856 – 1939) writes in the
Catholic Encyclopedia:

What we now know as par excellence the Elevation of the Mass is a rite of comparatively recent
introduction. The Oriental liturgies, and notably the Byzantine, have indeed a showing of the
consecrated Host to the people, with the words “Holy things to the holy”, but this should rather be
regarded as the counterpart of our “Ecce Agnus Dei” and as a preliminary to the Communion. Again,
in the West, a lifting of the Host at the words “omnis honor et gloria”, immediately before the Pater
Noster, has taken place ever since the ninth century or earlier. This may very probably be looked
upon as originally an invitation to adore when the great consecratory prayer of the canon extending
from the Preface to the Pater Noster (see Cabrol in “Dict. d’Archéologie”, I, 1558) had been brought to
a conclusion. But the showing of the Sacred Host (and still more of the Chalice) to the people after
the utterance of the words of Institution, “Hoc est corpus meum”, is not known to have existed
earlier than the close of the twelfth century. Eudes de Sully, Bishop of Paris from 1196 to 1208,
seems to have been the first to direct in his episcopal statutes that after the consecratory words the
Host should be “elevated so that it can be seen by all”.4

Thurston says likewise in another article:

1 Svein Harald Gullbekk, The Rise of Spiritual Economies in Lake Viking and Early Medieval Scandinavia, in
Jane Kershaw and Gareth Williams (editors), Søren Sindbæk and James Graham-Campbell (consultant
editors), Silver, Butter, Cloth: Monetary and Social Economies in the Viking Age, Ch. V, p. 99, Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2019. Also see Aden Kumler’s article The Multiplication of the Species: Eucharistic
Morphology in the Middle Ages, in RES: Anthropology and Aesthetics 59/60, pp. 179 – 191, 2011. Especially
see the passages quoted from medieval Latin theologians William Durandus and Honorius Augustodunensis,
pp. 187 – 188. Their symbolic interpretation of the Eucharist, as “formed in the manner of a denarius”, is
foreign to the first-millennium Church.
2 Encyclical Epistle, op. cit., § 5, xii.
3 Jean-François Mayer, ‘We are Westerners and Must Remain Westerners’: Orthodoxy and Western Rites in

Western Europe, in Maria Hämmerli and Jean-François Mayer (editors), Orthodox Identities in Western
Europe: Migration, Settlement and Innovation, Ch. XIV, p. 270, n. 8, Farnham: Ashgate, 2014. On its own this
issue is not really too important, and some modern Western Rite Orthodox liturgies do the same, though it is
preferable to follow tradition.
4 Herbert Thurston, The Elevation, in CE, Vol. V, p. 380.
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When the elevation of the Host at Mass was introduced in the early years of the thirteenth century,
probably as a form of protest against the theological views of Peter the Chanter, the idea by degrees
took firm hold of the popular mind that special virtue and merit were attached to the act of looking at
the Blessed Sacrament.1

The Protestant controversialist Charles Hastings Collette (1816 – 1901) writes that it is “an historical fact,
that the elevation of the Host for adoration was first instituted by [Latin Pope] Honorius III., A.D. 1217.”2

The Anglican scholar William Palmer (1803 – 1885) writes the following on the Elevation of the Host:

The elevation is, comparatively speaking, not an ancient rite. The Roman ritualists, Bona a, Meratib,
[Latin Pope] Benedict XIV.c, Le Brund, &c. acknowledge that there is no trace of its existence before
the eleventh or twelfth century in the west. The Ordo Romanus, Amalarius, Walafrid Strabo, and
Micrologus, make no mention of the rite, though the last of these ritualists lived at the end of the
eleventh century. The truth is, that no certain documents refer to it, until the beginning of the
thirteenth century, but it may possibly have existed in some places in the twelfth. The synodal
constitutions of Odo de Sulli, bishop of Paris, about 1200, appoint this elevatione, and it was probably
then first introduced into the diocese of Paris. Innocent III., who wrote on the ceremonies of the
mass at the beginning of the thirteenth century, does not speak of it, but in the time of Honorius III. it
had come into use, for he mentions it in an epistle to the Latin bishops of the patriarchate of Antioch,
A.D. 1219, where he commands that at the elevation the people should reverently bow. “Sacerdos
quilibet frequenter doceat plebem suam, ut cum in celebratione missarium elevatur hostia salutaris,
quilibet reverenter inclinetf.” This was inserted in the decretals (c. sane de celebratione missarum)
by Gregory IX., his successor, and thus became the law of the west. It is spoken of by Bonaventureg,
Durandh, and the council of Lambethi in the latter part of the same century; and cardinal Guido is said
to have introduced this rite, or some part of it, at Cologne, about 1265. j

[Palmer’s footnotes:] a) Bona, Rer. Liturgic. Lib. ii. c. 13. b) Gavanti Thesaurus a Merati. c)
Lambertinus, de Missa, p. 115, &c. d) Le Brun, Cérémonies de la Messe, tom. i. p. 469, &c. e) Harduini
Concilia, tom. vi. p. 1946. f) See Raynaldus, ad an. 1219. g) De Myst. Missæ, oper. vii. 83. h) Rationale
Div. Off. iv. c. 41. i) Lyndwood, Provinciale Angliæ. Const. Peckham, 1281. j) Raynaldus, ann. 1203.
This date, assigned in Raynaldus’ Annals, is obviously an error, as both Fleury and he himself
afterwards speak of this very cardinal on the same mission in German, A.D. 1265. These are the first
authentic notices of the elevation; for the passages adduced by Le Brun from Robertus Paululus, or
Hugo S. Victor, and from Hildebert, who lived in the twelfth century, are (as he admits) not
sufficiently clear to be of use unless aided by other evidence; and the “customs” of the Carthusians,
Premonstratenses, and Camaldulite monks, which he alleges to prove its existence in the twelfth
century, were most probably added to in later times. (Le Brun, Cérémonies de la Messe, i. 469.)
Honorius [Augustodunensis, 1080 – 1154] (Gemma Animæ, l. i. c. 46) speaks of some elevation, but it
is doubtful whether he means this, or the lesser elevation at the end of the canon, when there is no
adoration.3

Section V Epiklesis or Invocation

1 Herbert Thurston, Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament, in CE, Vol. II, p. 465.
2 Charles Hastings Collette, Saint Augustine: A Sketch of his Life and Writings as Affecting the Controversy
with Rome, Ch. XI, p. 104, London: W. H. Allen & Co., 1884. Collette here cites the learned Roman Catholic
historian Claude Fleury (1640 – 1723), who expressly states that the custom of elevating the host before the
consecration of the chalice, was not in use until the beginning of the thirteenth century (Fleury, Eccl. Hist., Vol.
XV, Book LIV, 74, p. 663, Paris, 1719; and Vol. XV, p. 580, Paris, 1789). This letter of Honorius III has been
variously dated from 1217 to 1219.
3 William Palmer, A Treatise on the Church of Christ, Vol. I, Part I, Ch. XI, Obj. VI, pp. 240 – 241, London: J. G. F.

& J. Rivington, 3rd Ed., 1842.

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The 1848 Encyclical of the Eastern Patriarchs mentions the omission of the Invocation of the Consecrating
Spirit as an error of the Latins.1

Adrian Fortescue (1874 – 1923), a learned English Roman Catholic priest and scholar who wrote about the
Orthodox Church, wrote the following on Epiklesis in the Catholic Encyclopedia:

Epiklesis (Gr. ἐπἱκλησις; Lat. invocatio) is the name of a prayer that occurs in all Eastern liturgies
(and originally in Western liturgies also) after the words of Institution, in which the celebrant
prays that God may send down His Holy Spirit to change this bread and wine into the Body and Blood
of His Son. This form has given rise to one of the chief controversies between the Eastern and
Western Churches, inasmuch as all Eastern schismatics now believe that the Epiklesis, and not the
words of Institution, is the essential form (or at least the essential complement) of the sacrament.

Form of the Epiklesis. – It is certain that all the old liturgies contained such a prayer. For
instance, the Liturgy of the Apostolic Constitutions, immediately after the recital of the words of
Institution, goes on to the Anamnesis – “Remembering therefore His Passion …” – in which occur the
words: “Thou, the God who lackest nothing, being pleased with them (the Offerings) for the honour of
Thy Christ, and sending down Thy Holy Spirit on this sacrifice, the witness of the Passion of the Lord
Jesus, to manifest (ὄπως ἀποϕήνῃ) this bread as the Body of Thy Christ …” (Brightman, Liturgies
Eastern and Western, I, 21). So the Greek and Syrian Liturgies of St. James (ibid., 54, 88 – 89), the
Alexandrine Liturgies (ibid., 134, 179), the Abyssinian Rite (ibid., 233), those of the Nestorians (ibid.,
287) and Armenians (ibid., 439). The Epiklesis in the Byzantine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom is
said thus: “We offer to Thee this reasonable and unbloody sacrifice; and we beg Thee, we ask Thee,
we pray Thee that Thou, sending down Thy Holy Spirit on us and on these present gifts” (the Deacon
says: “Bless, Sir, the holy chalice”); “and that which is in this chalice, the Precious Blood of Thy Christ”
(Deacon: “Amen. Bless, Sir, both”), “changing [μεταβαλών] them by Thy Holy Spirit” (Deacon: “Amen,
Amen, Amen.”). (Brightman, op. cit., I, 386 – 387.)

Nor is there any doubt that the Western rites at one time contained similar invocations. The
Gallican Liturgy had variable forms according to the feast. That for the Circumcision was: “Hæc nos,
Domine, institute et præcepta retinentes suppliciter oramus uti hoc sacrificium suscipere et
benedicere et sanctificare digneris: ut fiat nobis eucharistia legitima in tuo Filiique tui nomine et
Spiritus sancti, in transformationem corporis ac sanguinis domini Dei nostril Jesu Christi unigeniti
tui, per quem omnia creas …” (Duchesne, “Origines du culte chrétien”, 2nd ed., Paris, 1898, p. 208,
taken from St. Germanus of Paris, d. 576). There are many allusions to the Gallican Invocation, for
instance St. Isidore of Seville (De Invocation, for instance St. Isidore of Seville (De eccl. officiis, I, 15,
etc.). The Roman Rite too at one time had an Epiklesis after the words of Institution. Pope Gelasius I.
(492 – 496) refers to it plainly: “Quomodo ad divini mysterii consecrationem cœlestis Spiritus
adveniet, si sacerdos … criminosis plenus actionibus reprobetur?” (“Epp. Fragm.”, vii, in Thiel, “Epp.
Rom. Pont.”, I, 486.) Watterich (Der Konsekrationsmoment im h. Abendmahl, 1896, pp. 133 sq.)
brings other evidences of the old Roman Invocation. He (p. 166) and Drews (Entstehungsgesch. des
Kanons, 1902, p. 28) think that several secrets in the Leonine Sacramentary were originally
Invocations (see article Canon of the Mass). Of this Invocation we have now only a fragment, with the
essential clause left out – our prayer: “Supplices te rogamus” (Duchesne, op. cit., 173-5). It seems
that an early insistence on the words of Institution as the form of Consecration (see, for instance, Ps.-
Ambrose, “De Mysteriis”, IX, 52, and “De Sacramentis”, IV, 4, 14-15, 23; St. Augustine, Sermo ccxxvii,
in P.L., XXXVIII, 1099) led in the West to the neglect and mutilation of the Epiklesis. …

That in the Liturgy the Invocation should occur after the words of Institution is only one more case of
many which show that people were not much concerned about the exact instant at which all the
essence of the sacrament was complete. They looked upon the whole Consecration-prayer as one
simple thing. In it the words of Institution always occur (with the doubtful exception of the

1 Encyclical Epistle, op. cit., § 13 and § 5, xii.

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Nestorian Rite); they believed that Christ would, according to His promise, do the rest. But they did
not ask at which exact moment the change takes place. … It was not till Scholastic times that
theologians began to discuss the minimum of form required for the essence of each sacrament. 1

The rest of the article contains interesting remarks on the controversy with the Orthodox Church respecting
this tradition, but it is sufficient here to show that Roman Catholic scholars admit that this prayer has now
been omitted in the Western liturgies, although it is an ancient tradition of the universal Church.

Section VI Solitary Masses

“How can the priest say ‘The Lord be with you’ when there are none to respond?” - Theodulf of Orléans (d. ~821)
(Church Quarterly Review, 1894, Vol. 37, p. 387)

Solitary Masses, where the priest is alone at the Liturgy, are another innovation and improper practice of
modern Roman Catholicism.

The Roman Catholic professor John O’Brien (1841 – 1879) writes:

Solitary Mass. – When Mass is said by a priest alone, without the attendance of people, or even of a
server, it is called a Solitary Mass. Masses of this kind were once very common in monasteries and
religious communities (Bona, p. 230), and they are still practised to a great extent in missionary
countries. They cannot, however, be said without grave necessity; for it is considered a serious
offence by theologians to celebrate without a server, and this server must be always a male, never a
female, no matter how pressing the necessity be.

Strangely enough, Solitary Masses were forbidden in days gone by by several local councils, and this
principally for the reason that it seemed ridiculous to say “Dominus vobiscum,” the Lord be with you;
“Oremus,” let us pray; and “Orate fratres,” pray, brethren, when there were no persons present. The
Council of Mayence, held in the time of Pope Leo III. (A.D. 815), directly forbade a priest to sing Mass
alone. The prohibition not merely to sing it, but to celebrate at all without witnesses, was repeated
by the Council of Nantes, and for the reasons alleged. Gratian cites a canon in virtue of which two
witnesses at least were required for the due celebration of every Mass; and this we find to be the rule
among the early Cistercians.

Cardinal Bona (Rer. Liturg., p. 230), from whom we copy these remarks, seems much in doubt as to
whether Solitary Masses were wholly abrogated in his day. He instances, however, a well-known
exception in case of a certain monastery which enjoyed the privilege from the Holy See of celebrating
without having any person to respond.

According to the present discipline of the Church, whenever necessity compels a priest to celebrate
alone, he must recite the responses himself, and otherwise act as if he had a full congregation
listening to him. He must not omit, abridge, add, or change anything to suit the peculiar
circumstances of the occasion, but must do everything that the rubrics prescribe for ordinary Mass,
and this under pain of sin.2

John Henry Hopkins (1792 – 1868), a learned bishop of the Protestant Episcopal communion in America,
writes in reply to a Roman controversialist:

1Adrian Fortescue, Epiklesis, in CE, Vol. V, p. 502.

2John O’Brien, A History of the Mass and Its Ceremonies in the Eastern and Western Church, Ch. I, pp. 8 – 9,
New York, NY: Benziger Brothers., 15th Ed., [1895?] (Same in first edition of 1879).
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Thus, in the Capitular of Theodulf, the Bishop of Aurelia [Orléans], A. D. 797, we find the following
plain testimony against solitary Masses:—

“The priest should by no means celebrate the Mass alone; because, as it cannot be celebrated
without the salutation of the priest, with the response of the people, so it ought not to be
celebrated by one. For there must be those around him, whom he may salute, and by whom
the response may be given to him, and he must remember the saying of our Lord: Wherever
two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.”*

Again, in a Council held by order of Charlemagne, A. D. 813, Canon xliii., we read these words:—

“No presbyter, in our judgment, can rightly perform the Mass alone. For how shall he say,
The Lord be with you, or how shall he give the admonition, Lift up your hearts, and many
others similar to these, when there is no other person present with him?Ӡ

Again, in another collection of Canons, we have the following:—

“It is decreed that none of the presbyters shall presume to celebrate Mass alone because
neither the words of our Lord and Saviour, nor the writings of the Apostle Paul, declare it,
nor is it found in the Acts of the Apostles, that it ought to be so done in any wise. This
custom, therefore, so contrary to Apostolic and ecclesiastical authority, must be eradicated,
and thoroughly extirpated by the priests of the Lord; and if anyone shall hereafter presume
to do this thing, he shall be liable to degradation.”‡

And again, in the 6th Council of Paris, held by the Bishops of all the Provinces, A. D. 829, the 48th
Canon repeats the same prohibition, decreeing, “that none of the presbyters shall presume to
celebrate the Mass alone; and if any should transgress this rule, he should be subject to canonical
correction.Ӥ

A multitude of similar proofs might be added, to demonstrate that solitary Masses were held to be
absurd and unlawful by the Church of Rome herself for at least nine centuries.

And yet, in the face of Scripture, reason and authority, your last great Council of Trent passed the
following decree, in A. D. 1562 :—** “If any one shall say that Masses, in which the priest alone
communicates sacramentally, are unlawful and ought to be abolished, LET HIM BE ANATHEMA.”

So that here we have your unchangeable Church pronouncing her solemn curse upon the very
doctrine which she publicly maintained so late as the ninth century! Is not this, most Reverend Sir,
another evidence of the candor with which your writers boast of your unity? Are the “variations of
Protestantism” more extraordinary than the variations of Rome? If your deluded but honest-minded
laity knew the history of their own Church, how soon would they insist upon a thorough reformation,
and abandon that figment of infallibility which, when it is analyzed, resolves itself into a set of
dissolving views, shifted at the dictate of expediency!

[Hopkins’s Footnotes:]
* Hard. Con., Tom. 4, p. 914.
† Ib., p. 1015.
‡ Ib., p. 1308
§ Ib., p. 1324.
** Hard. Con., Tom. 10, p. 129.1

1 John Henry Hopkins, “The End of Controversy,” Controverted: A Refutation of Milner’s “End of Controversy,”
in a Series of Letters Addressed to the Most Reverend Francis Patrick Kenrick, Roman Catholic Archbishop of
Baltimore, Vol. II, Letter XXXVI, pp. 204 – 206, New York, NY: Pudney & Russell, 1854.
 88

Section VII Transubstantiation

While holding very similar views with the Orthodox on the Real Presence of Christ, the Latins have invented
novel terminology and have improperly applied scholasticism to the theology of the Eucharist.

The Catholic Encyclopedia says:

The scientific development of the concept of Transubstantiation can hardly be said to be a product of
the Greeks, who did not get beyond its more general notes; rather, it is the remarkable contribution
of the Latin theologians, who were stimulated to work it out in complete logical form by the three
Eucharistic controversies mentioned above. The term transubstantiation seems to have been
first used by Hildebert of Tours (about 1079). 1

Alexei Stepanovich Khomiakov (1804 – 1860), a Russian Orthodox theologian, says:

Concerning the Sacrament of the Eucharist (Communion) the Holy Church teaches that in it the
change of bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Christ is verily accomplished. She does not
reject the word ‘Transubstantiation’; but she does not assign to it that material meaning which is
assigned to it by the teachers of the Churches which have fallen away. 2

The Russian Catechism explains:

Q. How are we to understand the word transubstantiation?

A. In the exposition of the faith by the Eastern Patriarchs, it is said that the word transubstantiation
is not to be taken to define the manner in which the bread and wine are changed into the Body and
Blood of the Lord; for this none can understand but God; but only thus much is signified, that the
bread truly, really, and substantially becomes the very true Body of the Lord, and the wine the very
Blood of the Lord. In like manner John Damascene, treating of the Holy and Immaculate Mysteries of
the Lord, writes thus: It is truly that Body united with Godhead, which had its origin from the Holy
Virgin; not as though that Body which ascended came down from heaven, but because the bread and
wine themselves are changed into the Body and Blood of God. But if thou seekest after the manner how
this is, let it suffice thee to be told that it is by the Holy Ghost; in like manner as, by the same Holy Ghost,
the Lord formed flesh to Himself, and in Himself, from the Mother of God; nor know I aught more than
this; that the word of God is true, powerful, and almighty, but its manner of operation unsearchable. l.
4. cap. xiii. 7.3

It is clear that the Latins have a different approach to the mystery of the Eucharist than St. John of Damascus.
They have attempted to “work it out in complete logical form”, while John of Damascus says, “nor know I
aught more than this” and “its manner of operation unsearchable”.

Many translations of Orthodox writers (some found nowhere else in English) on this subject can be found in
Darwell Stone, A History of the Doctrine of the Holy Eucharist, Vol. I, Ch. IV, Eastern Theology from the Sixth
Century to the Present Time, pp. 133 – 192, London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1909.

1 Maurice M. Hassett, Eucharist, I, 3., in CE, Vol. V, p. 579.

2 Alexei Stepanovich Khomiakov, Essay on the Unity of the Church, § 8, in William John Birkbeck (editor),
Russia and the English Church During the Last Fifty Years, Vol. I, Ch. XXIII, p. 207, London: Rivington, Percival
& Co., 1895.
3 Richard White Blackmore (translator), The Doctrine of the Russian Church, The Longer Catechism of the

Russian Church, Part I, On the Communion, p. 92, Aberdeen: A. Brown and Co., 1845.
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Section VIII Communion Under Both Kinds

The Latins are not in accordance with the ordinance of our Lord, and of Catholic Tradition, by giving the
sacrament of the Holy Eucharist only in the form of bread (in their Western Rite Churches under the
traditional Latin rite). The Orthodox correctly offer the Eucharist in the forms of both bread and wine, as
Christ expressly commanded, “eat this bread and drink this cup”. (1 Cor. xi. 26 – 27. Many passages from
Scripture apply.)

The 1895 Orthodox Encyclical states:

The one holy, catholic and apostolic Church of the seven Ecumenical Councils, following the Lord's
command, ‘Drink ye all of it,’ [Matt. xxvi. 27.] imparted also of the holy chalice to all; but the Papal
Church from the ninth century downwards has made an innovation in this rite also, by depriving the
laity of the holy chalice, contrary to the Lord's command and the universal practice of the ancient
Church, as well as the express prohibition of many ancient orthodox bishops of Rome. 1

The 1848 Orthodox Encyclical mentions this issue on multiple occasions. It lists the “denial of the divine Cup
to the Laity”2 as a Latin error, and notes that the Latins deem “the communion of the Cup void of sacred
efficacy”,3 and the Encyclical says, “but we see in that Church the eucharistic Cup, heavenly drink, considered
superfluous, (what profanity!)”.4

In Session 13 of the Latin Ecumenical Council of Constance, on 15 June 1415, in the following condemnation
of maintaining communion under the forms of both bread and wine, the Latins admit that the ancient practice
was to give communion under both species:

Since in some parts of the world certain ones have rashly presumed to assert that Christian
people should receive the sacrament of the Eucharist under both species of bread and wine, and
since they give communion to the laity indiscriminately, not only under the species of bread, but also
under the species of wine, after dinner or otherwise when not fasting, and since they pertinaciously
assert that communion should be enjoyed contrary to the praiseworthy custom of the Church
reasonably approved which they try damnably to disprove as a sacrilege, it is for this reason that this
present Council … declares, decides, and defines, that, although Christ instituted that venerable
sacrament after supper and administered it to His disciples under both species of bread and
wine; yet, notwithstanding this, the laudable authority of the sacred canons and the approved
custom of the Church have maintained and still maintain that a sacrament of this kind should not be
consecrated after supper, nor be received by the faithful who are not fasting, except in case of
sickness or of another necessity granted or admitted by law or Church; and although such a
sacrament was received by the faithful under both species in the early Church, yet since then it is
received by those who consecrate under both species and by the laity only under the species of bread
[another reading: And similarly, although this sacrament was received by the faithful in the early
Church under both species, nevertheless this custom has been reasonably introduced to avoid certain
dangers and scandals, namely, that it be received by those who consecrate it under both species, and
by the laity only under the species of bread], since it must be believed most firmly and not at all
doubted that the whole body of Christ and the blood are truly contained under the species of bread
as well as under the species of wine. Therefore, since this custom was introduced for good reasons
by the church and holy fathers, and has been observed for a very long time, it should be held as a law
which nobody may repudiate or alter at will without the church’s permission. To say that to observe
this custom or law is a sacrilege or illicit must be considered erroneous, and those pertinaciously

1 Anthimos VII, Encyclical, Art. XI. Art. IV also notes the contradiction of having two different practices
(potential Uniates) in the same Church.
2 Encyclical Epistle, op. cit., § 5, xii.
3 Encyclical Epistle, op. cit., § 8.
4 Encyclical Epistle, op. cit., § 13.
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asserting the opposite of the above mentioned must be avoided as heretics and should be severely
punished, either by the local diocesan officials or by the inquisitors of heretical depravity. 1

The Latin Council of Trent decreed the following Chapters and corresponding Canons on this matter in its
21st Session:

Chap. 1. That Laymen and Clerics who not Offering Mass are not Bound by Divine Law to
Communion under Both Species

Thus, the holy Synod itself, instructed by the Holy Spirit, who is the Spirit of wisdom and
understanding, the Spirit of counsel and piety, [Isa. 11:2], and following the judgment and custom of
the Church itself, declares and teaches that laymen and clerics not officiating are bound by no divine
law to receive the sacrament of the Eucharist under both species, and that without injury to the faith
there can be no doubt at all that communion under either species suffices for them for salvation. For
although Christ the Lord at the Last Supper instituted and delivered to the apostles this
venerable sacrament under the species of bread and wine [cf. Matt. 26:26 f.; Mark 14:22; Luke
22:19; I Cor. 11:24 f.], yet, that institution and tradition do not contend that all the faithful of Christ

1 “Cum in nonnullis mundi partibus quidam temerarie asserere praesumant, populum christianum debere
sacrum Eucharistiae sacramentum sub utraque panis et vini specie suscipere, et non solum sub specie panis,
sed etiam sub specie vini populum laicum passim communicent, etiam post coenam vel alias non ieiunum, et
communicandum esse pertinaciter asserant contra laudabilem Ecclesiae consuetudinem rationabiliter
approbatam, quam tamquam sacrilegam damnabiliter reprobare conantur: hinc est, quod hoc praesens
Concilium… declarat, decernit et diffinit, quod licet Christus post coenam instituerit et suis discipulis
administraverit sub utraque specie panis et vini hoc venerabile sacramentum, tamen hoc non obstante
sacrorum canonum auctoritas laudabilis et approbata consuetudo Ecclesiae servavit et servat, quod
huiusmodi sacramentum non debet confici post coenam, neque a fidelibus recipi non ieiunis, nisi in casu
infirmitatis aut alterius necessitatis a iure vel Ecclesia concesso vel admisso. Et sicut haec consuetudo ad
evitandum aliqua pericula et scandala rationabiliter introducta est, sic potuit simili aut maiori ratione
introduci aut rationabiliter observari, quod, licet in primitiva Ecclesia huiusmodi sacramentum reciperetur a
fidelibus sub utraque specie, tamen postea a conficientibus sub utraque specie et a laicis tantummodo sub
specie panis suscipiatur (al.: Et similiter quod licet in primitiva Ecclesia huiusmodi sacramentum reciperetur
a fidelibus sub utraque specie: tamen haec consuetudo ad evitandum aliqua pericula et scandala est
rationabiliter introducta, quod a conficientibus sub utraque specie, et a laicis tantummodo sub specie panis
suscipiatur), cum firmissime credendum sit et nullatenus dubitandum, integrum Christi corpus et sanguinem
tam sub specie panis quam sub specie vini veraciter contineri. Unde, cum huiusmodi consuetudo ab Ecclesia
et sanctis Patribus rationabiliter introducta et diutissime observata sit, habenda est pro lege, quam non licet
reprobare aut sine Ecclesiae auctoritate pro libito innovare (immutare). Quapropter dicere, quod hanc
consuetudinem aut legem observare sit sacrilegum aut illicitum, censeri debet erroneum, et pertinaciter
asserentes oppositum praemissorum tamquam haeretici arcendi sunt…” Roy Joseph Deferrari (translator),
Henry Denzinger, The Sources of Catholic Dogma, Council of Constance, Session XIII, n. 626, pp. 211 – 212, St.
Louis, MO: Herder, 1957. Latin in Denzinger, Enchiridion Symbolorum, Definitionum et Declarationum de
Rebus Fidei et Morum, n. 1198 – 1200 (old numbering n. 626). The sentence beginning “Therefore, since this
custom …” is missing by mistake in Deferrari’s English translation, so I have supplied the translation from
Norman P. Tanner, Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, Vol. I, Council of Constance, Sess. XIII, Washington,
DC: Georgetown University Press, 1990. Note that many Roman Catholics say that the Council of Constance
was not truly ecumenical until the 14th Session. This is to resolve the assertions made by that council of the
superiority of a council to the Pope, made to end the turbulent Western Great Schism, a period of about 40
years when there were two or three claimants to the Papacy at one time, with each Antipope holding the
allegiance of multiple nations, and each excommunicating the other, which exemplifies the lack of unanimity
in the Roman church. However, the question over the ecumenicity of this council and related events provides
powerful evidence of Roman Catholic contradiction on the highest level, but this will not be investigated here.
Moreover, this decree was confirmed by the Latin Pope Martin V on 1 September 1425.
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by an enactment of the Lord are bound [can. 1, 2] to receive under both species [can. 1, 2]. But
neither is it rightly inferred from that sixth discourse in John that communion under both forms was
commanded by the Lord [can. 3], whatever the understanding may be according to the various
interpretations of the holy Fathers and Doctors. For, He who said: “Unless you eat the flesh of the Son
of Man and drink His blood, you shall not have life in you” [John 6:54], also said: “If anyone eat of this
bread, he shall live forever” [John 6:52). And He who said: “He that eateth my flesh, and drinketh my
blood hath life everlasting” [John 6:55] also said: “The bread, which I shall give, is my flesh for the life
of the world" [John 6:52]: and finally, He who said: “He that eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood,
abideth in me and I in him” [John 6:57], said nevertheless: “He that eateth this bread, shall live
forever” [John 6:58].

Chap. 2. The Power of the Church Concerning the Administration of the Sacrament of the Eucharist

It [the Council] declares furthermore that this power has always been in the Church, that in
the administration of the sacraments, preserving their substance, she may determine or change
whatever she may judge to be more expedient for the benefit of those who receive them or for the
veneration of the sacraments, according to the variety of circumstances, times, and places.
Moreover, the Apostle seems to have intimated this in no obscure manner, when he said: “Let a man
so account of us as of the ministers of Christ and the dispensers of the mysteries of God” [1 Cor. 4:1];
and that he himself used this power is quite manifest in this sacrament as well as in many other
things, not only in this sacrament itself, but also in some things set down-with regard to its use, he
says: “The rest I will set in order when I come” [1 Cor. 11:23]. Therefore holy mother Church,
cognizant of her authority in the administration of the sacraments, although from the beginning of
the Christian religion the use of both species was not infrequent, nevertheless, since that
custom in the progress of time has been already widely changed, induced by weighty and just
reasons, has approved this custom of communicating under either species, and has decreed that it be
considered as a law, which may not be repudiated or be changed at will without the authority of the
Church [can. 2].

Moreover, it declares that although our Redeemer, as has been said before, at that Last
Supper instituted this sacrament and gave it to the apostles under two species, yet it must be
confessed that Christ whole and entire and a true sacrament is received even under either species
alone, and that on that account, as far as regards its fruit, those who receive only one species are not
to be deprived of any grace which is necessary for salvation [can. 3]. …

Can. 1. If anyone says that each and every one of the faithful of Christ ought by a precept of
God, or by necessity for salvation to receive both species of the most holy Sacrament: let him be
anathema [cf. n. 930].

Can. 2. If anyone says that the holy Catholic Church has not been influenced by just causes
and reasons to give communion under the form of bread only to layman and even to clerics
when not consecrating, or that she has erred in this: let him be anathema [cf. n. 931].

Can. 3. If anyone denies that Christ whole and entire, who is the fountain and author of all
graces, is received under the one species of bread, because, as some falsely assert, He is not received
according to the institution of Christ Himself under both species: let him be anathema [cf. n. 930,
932].1

1 “Nam, etsi Christus Dominus in ultima coena venerabili hoc sacramentum in panis et vini speciebus instituit
et apostolis tradidit, non tamen …” “Praeterea declarant, hanc potestatem perpetuo in ecclesia fuisse, ut in
sacramentorum dispensatione, salve illorum substantia, ea statueret vel mutaret, quae suscipientium utilitati
seu ipsorum sacramentorum veneration pro rerum, temporum et locorum varietate magis expedire
judicaret.” “Quare agnoscens sancta mater ecclesia hanc suam in administratione sacramentorum
auctoritatem, licet ab initio Christianae religionis non infrequens utriusque specie usus fuisset, tamen
progressu temporis latissimi jam mutata illa consuetudine, gravibus et justis causis adducta hanc
 92

Popes themselves have promoted half communion to the Eastern Churches, imposing the Latin custom upon
them. The Latin Pope Benedict XIV’s encyclical letter “Allatæ Sunt”, on the observance of Oriental Rites,
promulgated on July 26, 1755, states the following:

Among the statements requested by Pope Gregory XIII from the Patriarch of the Maronites is the
following: “We celebrate Mass only with unleavened bread, but our laity communicate under both
species.” The Pope replied: “If they wish to consecrate unleavened bread, it is obvious that they
should not be prevented, but the laity should be slowly discouraged from communicating under
both species. For all Christ is present under one species, and there is great danger of spilling if the
chalice is used” (Thomas of Jesus, de Conversione omnium gentium, p. 486f).1

In contradiction to the assertion of the Council of Constance, which says that communion under one kind “has
been observed for a very long time” (“diutissime observata”), there is the acknowledgement of the Latin
Cardinal Bona, who testifies:

It is certain that clergymen every where and laics, men and women, did anciently receive the holy
mysteries under both kinds, when they were present at the solemn celebration of them: in this, all,
both catholics and sectaries agree, neither can any one deny it, who is endued with the least
knowledge of the ecclesiastical affairs; for at all times, and in all places, from the first beginnings
of the Church, even to the twelfth age, the faithful communicated under the species of bread and
wine.2

George Cassander (1513 – 1566), a learned Flemish Roman Catholic theologian, who collected several of the
ancient rites and orders of the liturgies of Christians all over the world, and wrote a particular treatise on the
topic under consideration, says that “as many as communicate of the Body, communicate of the Blood also”.3
Cassander continues:

consuetudinem sub altera specie communicandi approbavit, et pro lege habendam decrevit, quam reprobare
aut sine ipsius ecclesiae auctoritate pro libito mutare non licet.” “2. Si quis dixerit, sanctam ecclesiam
catholicam non justis causis et rationibus adductam fuisse, ut laicos atque etiam clericos non conficienes sub
panis tantummodo specie communicaret, aut in eo errase: anathema sit.” Roy Joseph Deferrari (translator),
Henry Denzinger, The Sources of Catholic Dogma, Council of Trent, Session XXI, n. 930. – 936., pp. 286 – 288,
St. Louis, MO: Herder, 1957. Schroeder, Trent, pp. 406 – 409. Roman Catholics have not been able to provide
any “just causes” that could not have applied in the first 1200 years of the Church.
1 Claudia Carlen, The Papal Encyclicals: 1740 – 1981, Vol. I, 1740 – 1878, Pope Benedict XIV, Allatae Sunt,

Washington, DC: McGrath Publishing Company, 1981.

2 “Certum quippe est omnes passim clericos et laicos, viros et mulieres, sub utraque specie sacra mysteria

antiquitus sumsisse, cum solenni eorum celebration aderant, - consentiunt omnes tam Catholici quam
sectarii, nec eam negare potest qui vel levissima rerum Ecclesiasticarum notitia imbutus sit: semper enim et
ubique ab Ecclesiae primordiis usque ad seculum duodecimum, sub specie panis et vini communicaverunt
fideles.” William Payne, A Discourse of the Communion in One Kind: In Answer to a Treatise of the Bishop of
Meaux’s, in John Cumming, A Preservative Against Popery, Vol. VIII, pp. 370 – 371, London: British Society for
Promoting the Religious Principles of the Reformation, 1848. Bona, Rerum Liturgicarum, Book II, Ch. XVIII, p.
323, col. 2., Venice, 1754.
3 “Quotquot communicant de corpore, totidem communicant etiam de sangine.” Payne, op. cit., p. 368.

Cassander, Liturg. in Ordine Celebrat. Miss. per Romanos Celebrante Pontifice, p. 28. Note that many of
Cassander’s works have been placed on the Index of Prohibited Books by the Roman Catholic authorities
since he sympathized with some Protestant ideas, but he remained in communion with the Roman Church.
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Concerning the administration of the most holy sacrament of the Eucharist, it is sufficiently known,
that the Universal Church of Christ to this very day, and the Western or Roman, for above a thousand
years after Christ, did exhibit both the Species of Bread and Wine, to all the members of the Church of
Christ, especially in the solemn and ordinary dispensation of this sacrament; which appears from
innumerable testimonies, both of ancient Greek and Latin writers.1

In his Dialogue speaking against those who pretended that the use of either one or both kinds was indifferent,
and who endeavoured to make this out by the authority and practice of the Primitive Church, Cassander gives
his judgement:

I have searched, and that not slightly, the custom of the ancient Church, and, I profess, I have read the
writings of those who have handled this argument with an attent and impartial mind, and have
weighed the reasons by which they endeavour to prove this indifferent custom; but neither could I
yet find any firm proof, which could not be most plainly refuted, although I most earnestly desired it;
but there remain many, and those the most strong reasons which do evince the contrary.2

After the strictest search and inquiry into everything in antiquity that could be brought to bear on the subject
of the two species of communion, Cassander thus determines:

Wherefore I do not think that it can be shown that for a whole thousand years and more, that this
most holy Sacrament of the Eucharist was ever administered from the Lord’s Table, in the holy
Communion, to the faithful people in any part of the Catholic Church, otherwise than under both the
Symbols of Bread and Wine.3

Cassander writes about the first deviations from this practice:

The Manichæans were the first who in the time of the Popes Leo and Gelasius, violated this universal
and perpetual Rite of the Church; for when they approached, as the other faithful people did in the
Church, to receive the Mysteries, they took the Lord’s body, but abstained from the cup of the Lord’s
blood; not from any reverence for the holy blood, but because, by an impious superstition, they did
not think that Christ had any real blood.4

The conduct of the Manichæans occasioned the following decree of Pope Gelasius:

We have learned that certain persons, having taken a portion of the sacred body only, abstain from
the cup of the sacred blood. Let such, without hesitation (for I know not by what superstition they

1 “De administratione sacrosancti Sacramenti Eucharistiæ satis compertum est, universalem Christi Ecclesiam
in hunc usq; diem; Occidentalem vero seu Romanam mille amplius a Christo annis in solenni presertim &
ordinaria hujus sacramenti dispensatione utramp; panis & vini speciem omnibus Ecclesiæ Christi membris
exhibuisse, id quod ex innumeris veterum scriptorum tam Græcorum quam Latinorum testimoniis
manifestum est.” Payne, op. cit., p. 368, Cassander, Consultatio de Utraque Specie Sacramenti.
2 “Equidem haud oscitanter & veteris Ecclesiæ confuetudinem perscutatus sum, & attento æquoq; animo,

eorum scripta, qui hoc argumentum tractarunt, legisse & rationes quibus indifferentem eum morem probare
nituntur, expendisse profiteer; neq; tamen firmam ullam demonstrationem, quæ non apertissome reselli
possit, reperire vehementer exoptassem; quin multæ & firmissimæ rationes suppetunt, quæ contrarium
ecincunt.” Payne, op. cit., pp. 368 – 369. Cassander, Dialog. apud Calixt. p. 6.
3 “Quare nec puto demonstrari totis mille amplius annis in ulla Catholicæ Ecclesiæ Sacramentum aliter in

sacra synaxi e mensa Dominica fideli popula, quam sub utroq; panis & vini symbolo, administratum suisse.”
Payne, op. cit., p. 369. Id. de Sac. Com. sub Utraque Specie. p. 1027.
4 Samuel Farmar Jarvis, A Reply to Doctor Milner’s End of Religious Controversy, Part II, Ch. VII, p. 198, New

York, 1847. De Sacra Comm. sub utraque specie. Opera, Paris, fol. 1616, p. 1025.
 94

are taught to be thus scrupulous), either receive the whole sacrament or be repelled from the whole;
because the division of one and the same Mystery cannot proceed without a great sacrilege.1

Wicelius (Georg Witzl, 1501 – 1573), a learned German theologian who converted to Lutheranism, and then
returned to Rome and defended it, agrees fully with Cassander:

It is confessed that the holy Sumption from the ecclesiastic altar, was equally common to all
Christians for salvation, through all the times of the New Testament. It is a little obliterated, indeed,
among us of the Western Church, and separated from a promiscuous use for some reasons, but not
wholly blotted out and destroyed. Of this thing, since we are encompassed with a cloud of most
certain witnesses, we embrace this as a most sure thing without any doubt.2

By the “times of the New Testament”, Wicelius means the Christian Era, and by “not wholly blotted out and
destroyed”, he means that the Wine was then granted to some, as to the Bohemians and Eastern Roman
Catholics.

The following is the entire article of Aquinas in the Summa, on the question “Whether it is lawful to receive
the Body of Christ without the Blood?”:

Objection 1: It seems unlawful to receive the body of Christ without the blood. For Pope
Gelasius says (cf. De Consecr. ii): “We have learned that some persons after taking only a portion of
the sacred body, abstain from the chalice of the sacred blood. I know not for what superstitious
motive they do this: therefore let them either receive the entire sacrament, or let them be withheld
from the sacrament altogether.” Therefore it is not lawful to receive the body of Christ without His
blood.

Objection 2: Further, the eating of the body and the drinking of the blood are required for the
perfection of this sacrament, as stated above (Question [73], Article [2]; Question [76], Article [2], ad
1). Consequently, if the body be taken without the blood, it will be an imperfect sacrament, which
seems to savor of sacrilege; hence Pope Gelasius adds (cf. De Consecr. ii), “because the dividing of one
and the same mystery cannot happen without a great sacrilege.”

Objection 3: Further, this sacrament is celebrated in memory of our Lord’s Passion, as stated
above (Question [73], Articles [4],5; Question [74], Article [1]), and is received for the health of soul.
But the Passion is expressed in the blood rather than in the body; moreover, as stated above
(Question [74], Article [1]), the blood is offered for the health of the soul. Consequently, one ought to
refrain from receiving the body rather than the blood. Therefore, such as approach this sacrament
ought not to take Christ's body without His blood.

On the contrary, It is the custom of many churches for the body of Christ to be given to the
communicant without His blood.

I answer that, Two points should be observed regarding the use of this sacrament, one on the
part of the sacrament, the other on the part of the recipients; on the part of the sacrament it is proper

1 Jarvis, op. cit., p. 198. Gratian Decr. P. iii de Consecrat. Dist. ii c. xii.
2 “Et in confesso sumptionem sanctam de altari Ecclesiastico æque omnibus Christianis communem extitisse
ad salute per omnia novi testamenti tempora. Obliteratam quidem paulisper apud nos Occidentales, & ab usu
promiscuo semotam suas ob causas, at non deletam omnino atq; exstinctam. Ejusce rei cum nube quodam
certissimorum testium septi sumus, … aplectimur omni excluso dubio.” Payne, op. cit., p. 369. Vicel. via Reg.
tit. de utr. Specie.
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for both the body and the blood to be received, since the perfection of the sacrament lies in both, and
consequently, since it is the priest's duty both to consecrate and finish the sacrament, he ought on no
account to receive Christ's body without the blood.

But on the part of the recipient the greatest reverence and caution are called for, lest
anything happen which is unworthy of so great a mystery. Now this could especially happen in
receiving the blood, for, if incautiously handled, it might easily be spilt. And because the multitude of
the Christian people increased, in which there are old, young, and children, some of whom have not
enough discretion to observe due caution in using this sacrament, on that account it is a prudent
custom in some churches for the blood not to be offered to the reception of the people, but to be
received by the priest alone.

Reply to Objection 1: Pope Gelasius is speaking of priests, who, as they consecrate the entire
sacrament, ought to communicate in the entire sacrament. For, as we read in the (Twelfth) Council of
Toledo, “What kind of a sacrifice is that, wherein not even the sacrificer is known to have a share?”

Reply to Objection 2: The perfection of this sacrament does not lie in the use of the faithful,
but in the consecration of the matter. And hence there is nothing derogatory to the perfection of this
sacrament; if the people receive the body without the blood, provided that the priest who
consecrates receive both.

Reply to Objection 3: Our Lord’s Passion is represented in the very consecration of this
sacrament, in which the body ought not to be consecrated without the blood. But the body can be
received by the people without the blood: nor is this detrimental to the sacrament. Because the
priest both offers and consumes the blood on behalf of all; and Christ is fully contained under either
species, as was shown above (Question [76], Article [2]). 1

It is interesting that Aquinas says “it is the custom of many [multarum] churches for the body of Christ to be
given to the communicant without His blood,” and later “it is a prudent custom in some [quibusdam] churches
for the blood not to be offered to the reception of the people”.

In his lecture on the Gospel of St. John, Aquinas writes:

970 But even this causes difficulty: because by these words of Our Lord, it is necessary for salvation
not only to eat his body, but also to drink his blood, especially since a repast of food is not complete
without drink. Therefore, since it is the custom in certain Churches for only the priest to receive
Christ’s blood, while the rest receive only his body, they would seem to be acting against this.
I answer that it was the custom of the early Church for all to receive both the body and blood of
Christ; and certain Churches have still retained this practice, where even those assisting at the altar
always receive the body and blood. But in some Churches, due to the danger of spilling the blood, the
custom is for it to be received only by the priest, while the rest receive Christ’s body. Even so, this is
not acting against our Lord’s command, because whoever receives Christ’s body receives his blood
also, since the entire Christ is present under each species, even his body and blood. But under the
species of bread, Christ’s body is present in virtue of the conversion, and his blood is present by
natural concomitance; while under the species of wine, his blood is present in virtue of the
conversion, and his body by natural concomitance.2

1Summa, Part III, Question 80., Article xii.

2“Sed secundum hoc etiam dubitatur: quia per haec verba domini, non solum manducatio corporis, sed etiam
sumptio sanguinis est de necessitate salutis, praesertim cum perfecta refectio cibi non sit sine potu. Cum ergo
consuetudo aliquarum Ecclesiarum sit quod solus sacerdos communicet de sanguine, alii vero communicant
corpori tantum, videtur huic sententiae contrariari. Respondeo dicendum, quod, secundum antiquae
Ecclesiae consuetudinem, omnes sicut communicabant corpori, ita communicabant et sanguini; quod etiam
adhuc in quibusdam Ecclesiis servatur, ubi etiam ministri altaris continue et corpori et sanguini
communicant. Sed propter periculum effusionis, in aliquibus Ecclesiis servatur ut solus sacerdos communicet
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I will not attempt to enter into the theological disputes, but it should be pointed out that the reasons given by
Thomas Aquinas are quite deficient. First of all, it does not help for half-communion to be a “custom of many
churches” if this custom is without antiquity and without truth. Aquinas also implies that the Latins lacked
“enough discretion to observe due caution in using this sacrament” compared to earlier Christians. Aquinas is
aware that the ancient custom was to give both bread and wine, and that there was a change, when he says
“because the multitude of the Christian people increased,” but this is a poor attempt to justify the novelty.
This would be an admissible argument for a minor change that occurred in the fourth century, for example,
but this does not apply to the Church in the 12th century. The danger of the wine being spilt did not prevent
the wine being given to lay people for the first millennium of the Christian era. Concerning Aquinas’s first
reply, there is nothing in the context of Gelasius that leads us to infer he is speaking only of priests. The
learned Protestant controversialist Samuel Edgar notes:

Aquinas avers that Gelasius, in this instance, addressed only the clergy. He condescends, however, to
give no reason for his assertion. Baronius, on the contrary, admits that the pontiff makes no mention
of the clergy, to whom, therefore, the words, which are general, should not be confined. The Roman
cardinal styles the angelic doctor’s account a frigid solution of the difficulty. Binius, also differing
from Aquinas, represents the pontiff’s enactment as a mere temporary expedient, adopted for a short
period, on account of the present exigence, and contrary to former usage, which was afterwards to be
resumed. This statement, like the other, is a mere assumption without evidence. The two,
disagreeing in opinion, agree in substituting affirmation for proof. Cassander grants that the
determinations of Leo and Gelasius are conclusive for the antiquity of entire communion. The
language of these pontiffs, indeed, is general, and cannot, without the utmost violence, be restricted
to the priesthood.1

Charles Hastings Collette notes that:

Cardinal Bellarmine virtually admits the same, when he says, in his chapter De Euchar., lib. iv. c. 4,
while alleging, in excuse for the change, ‘that the inconvenience became more and more apparent as
the multitude of communicants increased, and so the custom under both species gradually ceased.’2

The Catholic Encyclopedia concurs:

It may be stated as a general fact, that down to the twelfth century, in the West as well as in
the East, public Communion in the churches was ordinarily administered and received under
both kinds. That such was the practice in Apostolic times is implied in 1 Corinthians 11:28, nor does
the abbreviated reference to the “breaking of bread” in the Acts of the Apostles (ii, 46) prove
anything to the contrary. The witness to the same effect for the sub-Apostolic and subsequent ages

sanguini, reliqui vero corpori. Nec tamen est contra sententiam domini, quia qui communicat corpori,
communicat etiam sanguini, cum sub utraque specie totus Christus contineatur, etiam quantum ad corpus et
sanguinem. Sed sub speciebus panis continetur corpus Christi ex vi conversionis, sanguis vero ex naturali
concomitantia: sub speciebus vero vini continetur sanguis Christi ex vi conversionis, corpus vero ex
concomitantia naturali. James A. Weisheipl (translator), Aquinas, St. John, Ch. 6, Lecture 7. It seems that this
quote has often been misattributed to Bonaventure (1221 – 1274) by Payne and Protestants who have
followed him.
1 Samuel Edgar, The Variations of Popery, Ch. XIV, p. 439, Toronto: Maclear & Company, 1875. Bellarmine

also maintains that Gelasius addressed himself to priests only.

2 Charles Hastings Collette, Milner Refuted, Part II, No. XX, p. 130, London: William Penny, 1856.
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are too numerous, and the fact itself too clearly beyond dispute, to require that the evidence should
be cited here.1

The Catholic Dictionary has the following statement on the Latin change to single communion:

We now come to the most important of all changes in the discipline of the Church on this
matter. Down to the middle ages, the faithful throughout the whole Church usually received the
Eucharist under both kinds. That the celebrating priest should consecrate and receive under both
kinds is of divine institution and therefore unalterable [see Mass]. But writers of the eleventh and
following centuries notice the custom springing up in the Latin Church, of giving the Eucharist to all
communicants except the celebrant under the form of bread alone, partly to counteract the heretical
error that Christ is not received whole and entire under either kind, partly to prevent the spilling of
the Precious Blood. St. Thomasa (†1274) says that in his day Communion under one kind prevailed
“in some churches.” The Council of Constance to meet the errors of Huss and Jerome of Prague made
this custom of universal obligation in the West; this decree was renewed by the Council of Basle
against the Taborites and Calistines, and by that of Trent against the Lutherans and
Calvinists. Exceptions have been made by special privilege. Thus, Clement VI. gave the kings of
France leave to communicate under both kinds. In solemn Mass celebrated by the Pope, the deacon
and subdeacon receive the Precious Blood, and so even in the last century the deacon and subdeacon
used to on Sundays and solemn feasts in the church of St. Denis near Paris, and in the church of
Clugny.b

We take for granted here that Christ is given whole and entire under either kind [see
Eucharist]; but it is often alleged that in any case the Church has altered the custom of
communicating under both kinds which was imposed by our Lord. To this we reply with the Council
of Trent that there is no divine precept binding anyone, except the celebrant, to receive both
species. Communion under one or both kinds is a matter of discipline, which the Church may alter as
she sees fit. This Catholic truth is indicated in Scripture and fully certified by tradition. It is indicated
in Scripture, for our Lord says, on the one hand, “Unless ye eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink
his blood, ye will not have life in you;” “He who eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood, hath eternal
life;” but also, on the other hand, “If anyone eat of this bread he shall live for ever;” “The bread, which
I shall give, is my flesh for the life of the world,” “He who eateth this bread, will live for ever.” It is
fully certified by tradition, because the Church, from the beginning, has permitted both modes of
communicating. Children received Communion under the form of wine alone; c the sick, and the
faithful generally who communicated at home, under the form of bread alone. d True, Popes Leo and
Gelasius emphatically condemned persons who abstained from the chalice, but this because they did
so on private authority and in consequence of the Manichean error, which made them look on wine
as evil. Moreover, the present use of the Greek and Oriental Churches makes it as clear as day that
they do not consider it a matter of necessity to give Communion under both kinds, though it is their
usual practice to do so. Thus the Church has ever faithfully maintained the same principles on this
matter; her discipline has, indeed, changed from time to time, but never in any essential particular;
while, on the contrary, those who charge her with innovation are themselves convicted of
introducing a new principle, directly opposed to the unanimous teaching of antiquity. (In the works
of Bossuet, there is a short but masterly treatise on Communion under one kind. On the whole
subject of Communion much interesting matter will be found in Benedict XIV. “De Missa”; Denzinger,
“Ritus Orientalium”; Chardon, “Histoire des Sacrements,” &c.)

[Footnotes:]
a) III. lxxx. 12.
b) Benedict XIV. speaks of all these privileges as continuing in his time.
c) Cyrian. [sic] De Laps. 25.

1 Patrick J. Toner, Communion under Both Kinds, in CE, Vol. IV, p. 176.
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d) Tertull. De Orat. 19; Ad Uxor. ii. 5. Dionys. Al. apud Euseb. H.E. vi. 44. Cyprian, De Laps. 25.1

Sporadic and exceptional cases of single communion throughout history are not a valid reason to alter the
general practice of the Church. The error of heretics is also not a valid reason to change Church practice, and
in appendix II on trine immersion, it was shown that this excuse led to the innovation of single immersion in
baptism. The danger of spilling the chalice was no less in the early Church, and cannot be alleged as a new
difficulty that arose in the second millennium.

The classic Protestant work against communion in one kind is William Payne, A Discourse of the Communion
in One Kind: in Answer to a Treatise of the Bishop of Meaux’s, of Communion under Both Species, London:
Brabazon Aylmer, 1687 (reprinted with improved notes in John Cumming, A Preservative Against Popery,
Vol. VIII, pp. 320 – 404, and Vol. IX, pp. 1 – 35, London: British Society for Promoting the Religious Principles
of the Reformation, 1848).

Our Lord says, “For he that eateth and drinketh unworthily, eateth and drinketh damnation to himself, not
discerning the Lord’s body.” (1 Cor. xi 29). The Latins prevent little children from receiving the eucharist, add
azymes, and divide the Body and Blood of Christ, which is not proper for this sacrament, and deviates from
the Apostolic tradition handed down for about one thousand years, in the East and West.

Section IX The Conservatism of the Eastern Liturgy

As a remarkable instance of the degree to which the Eastern Liturgy has remained unchanged, I quote an
extract from a review of Brightman’s Eastern Liturgies2 in The Church Quarterly Review (an Anglican
periodical). The Barberini manuscript (Barberini Euchologion, Gr. 336), written around 790, is critically
compared with the contemporary Greek Liturgy at the end of the nineteenth century, and very few changes
are found to have occurred over the eleven-hundred year span:

Several interesting subjects for investigation are suggested by Mr. Brightman’s volume. We
will content ourselves with mentioning, and to a limited extent handling, one of them. How far, in the
course of the last eleven hundred years, has the text of the Eastern Liturgies been altered? and what
is the nature of such alterations as have taken place? Such questions can only be asked – or rather,
can only be answered – in the case of the Byzantine family, for in no other family of Eastern Liturgies
are there MSS. in existence covering so long a period of time. But the famous Barberini MS.
was written in A.D. 800, and we can compare the Byzantine Greek Liturgy of that date with the same
Liturgy as it is in use to-day. … All that we can do legitimately by the aid of the older MSS. of the
Liturgy, strictly and technically so called, is to compare the text of the priest’s part of a thousand
years ago, more or less, with the text of the priest’s part as it stands in print to-day. We have
performed this operation on the text of the Greek Liturgy of St. Basil, and present our readers with
the result.
There are in round numbers about fifty variations of text. This sounds a large number, but
the majority of them are of the slightest possible importance, or rather of no importance
whatever. Some are purely orthographical … Others consist of merely a variation in the order of the
words used; others of the addition or omission of some unimportant words, generally a particle, an
article, or a pronoun, occasionally a substantive in the vocative case … in one case only of an
additional adjectival epithet … having become amplified.

1 William E. Addis, Thomas Arnold, and Jas. L. Meagher, The Catholic Dictionary, Communion, (6), pp. 201 –
202, New York, NY: Christian Press Association Publishing Co., Rev. Ed., 1896. The same is found in the 1884
first edition.
2 Frank Edward Brightman, Liturgies Eastern and Western, being the Texts, original or translated, of the

principal Liturgies of the Church, Vol. I, Eastern Liturgies, Oxford, 1896.

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Leaving, then, all such cases as the above on one side as having, except perhaps in the last
quoted instance, no liturgical or even literary importance whatever, let us pass on to the cases where
a noteworthy change of reading has taken place. They are so few in number that they may be
mentioned and briefly discussed in the order in which they occur in the text. …
[Here follows a list of eight textual differences, with comments such as “It is an addition
which has no special theological significance.”, “we cannot but think that the change is solely due to a
confusion between two similar words,” and “This is merely an instance of verbal enrichment, and is
destitute of any other significance.”]
This completes the list of variations of text. They are neither numerous nor important, and
they enforce the fact, which we should have expected to be the fact on other and independent
grounds, that the Greek Church has been extremely conservative in guarding her liturgical
language, and in preserving her Liturgies from change. 1

Ch. III Chrismation or Confirmation

The postponing of chrismation for infants is another innovation. The 1848 Encyclical of the Eastern
Patriarchs lists “not anointing baptized infants” as one of the Latin novelties.2

Thomas Bartholomew Scannell (1854 – 1917), an English Roman Catholic priest and author, writing in the
Catholic Encyclopedia, admits that the Western practice has deviated from the early Church with regard to
this sacrament:

In the early ages of the Church, confirmation was part of the rite of initiation, and consequently was
administered immediately after baptism. When, however, baptism came to be conferred by simple
priests, the two ceremonies were separated in the Western Church. Further, when infant baptism
became customary, confirmation was not administered until the child had attained the use of reason.
This is the present practice, though there is considerable latitude as to the precise age. The
Catechism of the Council of Trent says that the sacrament can be administered to all persons after
baptism, but that this is not expedient before the use of reason; and adds that it is most fitting
that the sacrament be deferred until the child is seven years old, “for Confirmation has not been
instituted as necessary for salvation, but that by virtue thereof we might be found well armed and
prepared when called upon to fight for the faith of Christ, and for this kind of conflict no one will
consider children, who are still without the use of reason, to be qualified.” (Pt. II, ch. iii, 18.)
Such, in fact, is the general usage in the Western Church. Under certain circumstances, however, as,
for instance, danger of death, or when the opportunity of receiving the sacrament is but rarely
offered, even younger children may be confirmed. In the Greek Church and in Spain, infants are
now, as in earlier times, confirmed immediately after baptism. Leo XIII, writing 22 June, 1897,
to the Bishop of Marseilles, commends most heartily the practice of confirming children before
their first communion as being more in accord with the ancient usage of the Church. …

The Sacrament of Confirmation is a striking instance of the development of doctrine and ritual in the
Church. …

The most explicit passage [from the Fathers] is in the letter of Pope Innocent I to Decentius: “As
regards the sealing of infants, ….” Saint Leo in his fourth sermon on Christ’s Nativity says to the
faithful: “Having been regenerated by water and the Holy Ghost, you have received the chrism of

1 The Church Quarterly Review, Vol. XLIV, No. LXXXVIII, July 1897, Art. IX, Brightman’s Eastern Liturgies, pp.
418 – 421, London: Spottiswoode & Co., 1897. I have omitted the detailed Greek examples and comparisons,
which will be interesting to textual critical scholars.
2 Encyclical Epistle, op. cit., § 5, xii.
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salvation and the seal of eternal life” (chrisma salutis et signaculum vitæ æternæ. – P. L., LIV, col.
207).1

There is a clear discrepancy between Pope Innocent I and the Catechism of Trent, which says that it is not
expedient to administer confirmation to children. This was not the case in the early Church, which did
confirm children, and did consider it expedient. In this and in other matters, there is no reason to abandon
the common ancient usage of the Church.

An additional difference exists between the Orthodox and the Latins regarding the roles of the bishop and
priests in this sacrament, and whether one priest or several should dispense it, but this will not be discussed.

Ch. IV Holy Unction

“If anyone says that the rite and usage of extreme unction which the holy Roman Church observes is at variance
with the statement of the blessed Apostle James, and is therefore to be changed and may without sin be despised
by Christians, let him be anathema.” – Latin Council of Trent, Session XIV

“Down to the twelfth century in the Western Church the practice was to give the unction freely to all (except
public penitents) who were suffering from any serious illness, without waiting to decide whether danger of death
was imminent. This is clear from many testimonies quoted above (III). But during the twelfth and thirteenth
centuries a change of practice took place, and the sacrament came to be regarded by many as intended only for
the dying.” – Catholic Encyclopedia, Extreme Unction

With the early Church, the Orthodox continue to teach that the holy sacrament of Unction is to be
administered to both the sick and those in danger of death, but many Roman Catholics have changed this
Apostolic practice, which was instituted by Christ, and limited this sacrament to the dying only. The Latins
have also held inconsistent beliefs with each other.

The Catholic Encyclopedia has the following important admissions:

The name Extreme Unction did not become technical in the West till towards the end of the twelfth
century, and has never become current in the East. Some theologians would explain its origin on the
ground that this unction was regarded as the last in order of the sacramental or quasi-sacramental
unctions, being preceded by those of baptism, confirmation, and Holy orders; but, having regard to
the conditions prevailing at the time when the name was introduced (see below, VI), it is much more
probable that it was intended originally to mean “the unction of those in extremis”, i.e. of the dying,
especially as the corresponding name, sacramentum exeuntium, came into common use during the
same period. In previous ages the sacrament was known by a variety of names, e.g., the holy oil, or
unction, of the sick; the unction or blessing of consecrated oil; the unction of God; the office of the
unction; etc. In the Eastern Church the later technical name is euchelaion (i.e. prayer-oil); but other
names have been and still are in use, e.g. elaion hagion (holy), or hegismenon (consecrated), elaion,
elaiou Chrisis, chrisma, etc. …

Down to the twelfth century in the Western Church the practice was to give the unction freely to all
(except public penitents) who were suffering from any serious illness, without waiting to decide
whether danger of death was imminent. This is clear from many testimonies quoted above (III). But
during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries a change of practice took place, and the sacrament
came to be regarded by many as intended only for the dying. The causes contributing to this change

1 Thomas Scannell, Confirmation, in CE, Vol. IV, pp. 216 – 219. The rest of this article cites several passages
from the Fathers and councils that show infants and little children were the recipients of this sacrament.
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were: (a) the extortionate demands of the clergy on the occasion of administering the unction which
prevented the poor or even those of moderate means from asking for it except as a last resource; (b)
the influence of certain popular superstitions, as, for instance, that the person anointed could not, in
case of recovery, use the rights of marriage, eat flesh meat, make a will, walk with bare feet, etc.; and
(c) the teaching of the Scotist School and of other theologians that, as the principal effect of the
sacrament was the final remission of venial sins, it should not be given except to those who could not
recover, and were no longer able or at least likely to fall again into venial sin (St. Bonaventure,
“Breviloquium” P. VI, c. xi; Scotus, “Report. Parisien.”, dist. xxiii, Q. unica). It was doubtless under the
influence of this teaching that one or two provincial synods of the sixteenth century described the
subject of extreme unction as “the dangerously sick and almost dying” (Hardouin X, 1848, 1535); and
the neglect of the sacrament induced by these several causes resulted, during the disturbances of the
sixteenth century, in its total abandonment in many parts of Germany and especially of Bavaria
(Knöpfler, “Die Kelchbewegung in Bayern unter Herzog Albrecht V.”, pp. 61 sq.; and on this whole
matter see Kern, op. cit., pp. 282 sq.). In view of these facts, the oft-repeated accusation of the
Eastern schismatics, that the Latins gave the sacrament only to the dying and withheld it from the
seriously ill who were capable of receiving it, is not without foundation (Kern, op. cit., p. 274); but
they were wrong in assuming that the Western Church as a whole or the Holy See is responsible for
abuses of this kind.1

It is right to hold the Latins accountable for the corruption of the general practice of their communion. The
Latin Pope Eugene IV’s Letter to the Armenians, which is part of the Latin Council of Florence, decrees:

The fifth sacrament is extreme unction, whose matter is olive oil blessed by the bishop. This
sacrament should be given only to the sick of whose death there is fear. 2

This Pope and Council are requiring the 12th or 13th century novelty, requiring that the recipient of the
sacrament be in danger of death, a condition that was not held in the early Church.

Trent decrees the following on Extreme Unction, in its Fourteenth Session:

It has seemed good to the holy council to add to the preceding doctrine on penance the following
concerning the sacrament of extreme unction, which was considered by the Fathers as the
completion not only of penance but also of the whole Christian life, which ought to be a continual
penance. First therefore, with regard to its institution it declares and teaches that our most
benevolent Redeemer, who wished to have His servants at all times provided with salutary remedies
against all the weapons of all enemies, as in the other sacraments He provided the greatest aids by
means of which Christians may during life keep themselves free from every graver spiritual evil, so
did He fortify the end of life by the sacrament of extreme unction as with the strongest defense.
For though our adversary seeks and seizes occasions throughout our whole life to devour our souls
in any manner, yet there is no time when he strains more vehemently all the powers of his cunning to
ruin us utterly, and if possible to make us even lose faith in the divine mercy, than when he perceives
that the end of our life is near.

Chapter I. … In which words [of St. James], as the Church has learned from Apostolic tradition
received from hand to hand, he teaches the matter, form, proper administration and effect of this
salutary sacrament. …

1 Patrick J. Toner, Extreme Unction, in CE, Vol. V, pp. 716 – 726. Dr. Toner (born 1874) was a Professor of
Dogmatic Theology at St. Patrick’s College in Maynooth, Dublin, and he wrote 10 articles for the Catholic
Encyclopedia.
2 “Quintum sacramentum est extrema unctio, cuius materia est oleum olivae per episcopum benedictum. Hoc

sacramentum nisi infirmo, de cuius morte timetur, dari non debet;” Denzinger, op. cit., n. 1324 (old n. 700), p.
224. Decree for the Armenians, from the Bull “Exultate Deo,” Nov. 22, 1439.
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Chapter III. … It is also declared that this anointing is to be applied to the sick, but especially to those
who are in such danger as to be at the end of life, whence it is also called the sacrament of the dying.
If the sick should after the reception of this sacrament recover, they may again be strengthened with
the aid of this sacrament when they fall into another similar danger of death. Wherefore, they are
under no condition to be listened to who against so manifest and clear a statement of the Apostle
James … maintain that the rite and usage which the holy Roman Church observes in the
administration of this sacrament are opposed to the expression of the Apostle James, and therefore
must be changed into some other; … Assuredly, in reference to those things that constitute the
substance of this sacrament, the Roman Church, the mother and mistress of all other churches, does
not observe anything in administering this unction that has not been prescribed by the
blessed James. Nor indeed can there be contempt for so great a sacrament without a grievous sin
and offense to the Holy Ghost. …

Canon 3. If anyone says that the rite and usage of extreme unction which the holy Roman
Church observes is at variance with the statement of the blessed Apostle James, and is
therefore to be changed and may without sin be despised by Christians, let him be anathema.1

The Latin Council of Trent claims that Roman Catholics follow the “Apostolic tradition received from hand to
hand” with regard to the administration of this sacrament, but this is shown to be false by considering that
Roman Catholic scholars have admitted that “during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries a change of practice
took place”. Trent accepts the name “sacrament of the dying”, whereas it is in truth rather a sacrament of the
sick, as the Church has handed down in the East and West for over a thousand years.

The Trent Catechism writes on Extreme Unction:

“In all thy works,” says Ecclesiasticus, “remember thy last end, and thou shalt never sin;”
words which convey to the pastor a silent admonition, to omit no opportunity of exhorting the
faithful to constant meditation on their last end. The sacrament of Extreme Unction, because
inseparably associated with this awful recollection, should, it is obvious, form a subject of frequent
instruction, not only inasmuch as it is eminently useful to develope the mysteries of salvation, but
also because death, the inevitable doom of all men, when frequently recalled to the minds of the
faithful, represses the licentiousness of depraved passion. Thus shall they be less appalled by the
terrors of approaching dissolution, and will pour forth their gratitude in endless praises to God,
whose goodness has not only opened to us the way to true life in the sacrament of Baptism, but has
also instituted that of Extreme Unction, to afford us, when departing this mortal life, an easier
access to Heaven.

In order, therefore, to follow, in a great measure, the same order observed in the exposition
of the other sacraments, we will first show that this sacrament is called “Extreme Unction,” because
amongst the other unctions prescribed by our Lord to his Church, this is the last to be administered.
It was hence called by our predecessors in the faith, “the sacrament of the anointing of the sick,” and
also “the sacrament of dying persons,” names which naturally lead the minds of the faithful to the
remembrance of that last awful hour. …

this can apply to the sick only, and therefore, this Sacrament is to be administered to those only,
whose malady is such as to excite apprehensions of approaching dissolution. It is, however, a very
grievous sin to defer the Holy Unction until, all hope of recovery now lost, life begins to ebb, and the
sick person is fast verging into a state of insensibility. 2

Thomas Aquinas also follows the novel practices of the Latins. In his Summa Theologica, he writes:

1 Schroeder, Trent, pp. 99 – 105. Latin on pp. 374 – 380.

2 Trent Catechism, op. cit., pp. 295 – 299.
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This sacrament is called by all Extreme Unction. Now it is not every sickness that brings man to the
extremity of his life, since some ailments prolong life, according to the Philosopher (De Long. et Brev.
Vitae i). Therefore this sacrament should not be given in every case of sickness.

I answer that, This sacrament is the last remedy that the Church can give, since it is an immediate
preparation for glory. Therefore it ought to be given to those only, who are so sick as to be in a state
of departure from this life, through their sickness being of such a nature as to cause death, the danger
of which is to be feared. …

It is thus that this sacrament is called Extreme Unction, because it ought not to be given save to those
whose death men think to be nigh. …

This sacrament regards not only the sickness, but also the state of the sick man, because it ought not
to be given except to those sick people who seem, in man’s estimation, to be nigh to death. … some
diseases are of long duration, as hectic fever, dropsy and the like, and those who lie sick of them
should not be anointed until they seem to be in danger of death.1

“St. Bonaventure and Duns Scotus [held] that only the dying should receive the sacrament”, although this is a
conclusion that Toner correctly says should be “rejected”.2 Toner is not alone here, as other modern Roman
Catholic theologians agree.

The Roman Catholic priest and professor John Peter Arendzen (1873 – 1954), who wrote a small book on
Extreme Unction, rightly says:

It is most emphatically not a sacrament of the dying, but a sacrament of the sick. The delay in asking
for the sacrament till death is near or almost inevitable is a lamentable abuse, unfortunately all too
frequent. It arises from lack of faith, foolish superstition, or false kindness, or from all these causes
combined.3

The biography of the Latin Pope Pius V (1504 – 1572, Pope from 1566), considered a saint by Roman
Catholics, informs us that he himself used extreme unction the day before he died, aware that he would be
dying soon:

He felt, however, his end approaching; … He likewise directed his nephew, who had command
enough of the other cardinals, to hasten the election of a successor after his death, that no
interruption might happen to the league. He then directed that the seven penitential psalms should
be read to him, and the account of the Saviour’s passion; and on the last day of April had the
ceremony of extreme unction administered, discoursing of his approaching dissolution without any
perturbation. His last act was to place both his hands on a cross, when he quietly expired, on the 1st
of May, about five o’clock in the afternoon.4

1 Summa, Supplement, Q. 32, Art. 3.

2 Patrick J. Toner, Extreme Unction, in CE, Vol. V, pp. 728.
3 John Peter Arendzen, Extreme Unction, Ch. II, pp. 43 – 44, New York, NY: The Macmillan Company, 1931.

Arendzen (1873 – 1954) was a well-known English Roman Catholic priest who contributed dozens of articles
to the Catholic Encyclopedia and reviewed books for the Dublin Review, and also taught at St. Edmunds
College. As usual with Roman Catholic productions, this work bears the “Nihil Obstat” and “Imprimatur” of
the Latin authorities.
4 Joseph Mendham, The Life and Pontificate of Saint Pius the Fifth, Ch. VII, pp. 219 – 221, London: James

Duncan, 1832 & Supplement, p. 21. Pope Pius V’s last acts show us that he did not know or apply the rightful
use of this sacrament.
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From the authorities cited above, it is clear that there is a frequent “lamentable abuse” in the Latin Church by
only giving Unction to people near death. However, Aquinas, Bonaventure, and Duns Scotus taught this error,
and it appears to be implied by the Latin Councils of Florence and Trent, and the Trent Catechism, whose only
reserve is to not wait until the very final moments of life. Later learned Romish authorities, realizing the
antiquity of the Orthodox practice, seem to have protested against this abuse, and held that the sacrament is
not just for the imminently dying, but also for the sick in various degrees of danger of death. However, it is
undeniable that the Roman practice has changed since the early ages of the Church, and has strayed towards
requiring that the person be in great danger of death, while the Eastern Orthodox have remained faithful to
the Apostolic tradition, and offer this Holy Sacrament not just to those in extremis.

Frederick George Scott (1861 – 1944), an Anglican priest and author, concurs: “The Eastern Church, in this
matter, has continued the ancient use, and it is to her we turn and not to the Roman Church, for a proof that
the Unction of the Sick has continued to the present day in its primitive significance.”1

Tommaso de Vio Gaetani Cajetan (1469 – 1534) was a highly renowned Dominican cardinal, theologian, and
professor, and one of the foremost opposers of the Protestant reformation, and was commissioned by Latin
Popes and kings to lead important assemblies. Cajetan comments on James v 14, 15:

It cannot be gathered, either from the words or from the effect, that these words are spoken of the
sacramental anointing of extreme unction, but rather of that anointing which the Lord Jesus
instituted in the Gospel to be used by the disciples on the sick. For the text does not say, is any one
sick unto death, but absolutely is any one sick; and it says that the effect is the relieving of the sick,
and it speaks of remission of sins only conditionally; whereas extreme unction is given only at the
point of death, and tends directly (as the form imports) to remission of sins. Besides this, that St.
James commands many elders to be sent for both to pray and anoint the sick, which is foreign to the
rite of extreme unction.2

It is significant that Cajetan does not see this sacrament in the text of James, showing that Rome has changed
the practice of Holy Unction away from its Biblical institution. However, both the Latin Councils of Florence
and of Trent cite this passage of James as referring to this sacrament.

For further reading, see the following work by Orthodox scholar Paul Meyendorff, The Anointing of the Sick,
in Orthodox Liturgy Series, Vol. I, Crestwood, NY: SVS Press, 2009. An Anglican study, with useful historical
notes, is Frederick William Puller, The Anointing of the Sick in Scripture and Tradition, with some
Considerations on the Numbering of the Sacraments, London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge,
1904.

Ch. V Marriage

Section I Clerical Celibacy

1 Frederick George Scott, Unction of the Sick, p. 5, Quebec: Chronicle Printing Co., 1903.
2 “Nec ex verbis, nec ex effectu, verba haec loquuntur de sacramentali unctione extremæ unctionis; sed magis
de unctione quam instituit Dominus Jesus in Evangelio a discipulis exercendam in ægrotis. Textus enim non
dicit infirmatur quis ad mortem, sed absolute infirmatur quis: et effectum dicit infirmi alleviationem, et de
remissione peccatorum non nisi conditionaliter loquitur. Quum extrema unction non nisi propé articulum
mortis detus, et directé (ut ejus forma sonat) tendit ad remisssionem peccatorum. Præter hoc quod Jacobus
ad unum ægrum multos presbyteros tum orantes, tum ungentes mandat vocari, quod ab extremæ unctionis
ritu alienum est.” John Nash Griffin, Sermons on the Creed of Pope Pius IV, Sermon XII, p. 200, Dublin: George
Herbert, 1856. Cajetan, in James, v 14, 15.
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“Marriage is honourable in all, and the bed undefiled: but whoremongers and adulterers God will judge.” – St.
Paul to the Hebrews (xiii., 4)

Allowing priests to live in marriage is an apostolic institution that was acknowledged by the early Church.
For example, the Gospels indicate that St. Peter was married.1 However, the excommunication against the
Orthodox in 1054 (and a letter from Pope Leo IX in 1051, along with other documents of the controversy)
calls clerical marriage a heresy, and demands that the Blessed Patriarch Michael I Cerularius of
Constantinople (or Cærularius, Keroularios, c. 1000 – 1059) repent of this evil and error, among others.2

Married men should be allowed to become priests and live with their wives in chastity. Rome has changed
this Orthodox and apostolic tradition and banned married men from entering the clergy, imposing
compulsory celibacy for the priesthood in the Latin rite.3

St. Paul’s directions that “A bishop then must be blameless, the husband of one wife” (1 Timothy iii. 2) and
“Let the deacons be the husbands of one wife, ruling their children and their own houses well.” (1 Timothy iii.
12) and that elders appointed be “the husband of one wife” (Titus i. 6) show an Apostolic permission for a
married clergy. It is important to note here, that perfect celibacy has always and rightly been considered a
more holy way of life than marriage, but the wisdom of God has directed the Church not to require celibacy in
her ministers.

One well-known example is St. Patrick of Ireland (last quarter of 4th century – c. 461), who writes at the very
beginning of his Confession that he was the son of a deacon, who was a son of a priest:

1. I, Patrick the sinner, am the most illiterate and the least of all the faithful, and
contemptible in the eyes of very many.

1 “And when Jesus was come into Peter’s house, he saw his wife’s mother laid, and sick of a fever.” Matthew
vii 14., see also Mark i 30., Luke iv 38. Schaff notes that Peter “took his wife with him on his missionary tours,
(1 Cor 9: 5)” and that “Patristic tradition ascribes to him children, or at least a daughter (Petronilla). His wife
is said to have suffered martyrdom in Rome before him.” Philip Schaff, History of the Christian Church, Vol. I,
p. 262, New York, NY: Charles Scribner’s Sons, Third Revision, 1920.
2 “sicut Nicolaitæ carnales nuptias concedunt et defendunt sacri altari ministris” “like Nicolaitists, they allow

and defend the carnal marriages of the ministers of the sacred altar”. This is given as an example of the
excommunication’s claim that “innumerable tares of heresies are daily sown in its [the Constantinopolitan
Church’s] midst”, and then the excommunication states “For these errors and many others committed by
them, Michael himself, although admonished by the letters of our lord Pope Leo, contemptuously refused to
repent. Furthermore, when we, the Pope’s ambassadors, wanted to eliminate the causes of such great evils in
a reasonable way, he denied us his presence and conversation, …” William L. North (translator), Humbert,
Brief Account, op. cit., pp. 2 – 3. Leo IX’s letter to the East says “ut Nicolaitæ, nuptias sacerdotibus
concedebant” “as Nicolaitists, they allowed the marriage of priests”, and this is listed among the “Greek
heresies” “Græcorum hæreses”. Edward H. Landon, A Manual of Councils of the Holy Catholic Church, Vol. I, p.
220, Edinburgh: John Grant, Rev. Ed., 1909. The Roman Catholic historian F. X. Funk writes “the attack which
he [Cardinal Humbert] ventured on the Greek positions was less well advised. Thus he assailed priestly
marriage as the Nicolaite ‘heresy,’”. Luigi Cappadelta (translator), Franz Xaver von Funk, A Manual of Church
History, Vol. I, The Middle Ages, Part I, Ch. III, § 95, p. 280, London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co.,
(authorized tr. from the 5th German Ed.), 1910. One of the legates who wrote this excommunication, Cardinal
Frederick, afterwards became the Latin Pope Stephen IX.
3 Most attempts defending clerical celibacy border on (and indeed almost all are) hypocrisy because the

Latins do officially permit married men to enter the priesthood in many of their Eastern communions, such as
the Maronites (as will be discussed later).
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My father was Calpurnius, a deacon, one of the sons of Potitus, a presbyter, who belonged to
the village of Banavem Taberniæ. Now he had a small farm hard by, where I was taken captive. 1

Herbert Thurston has written a good article in the Catholic Encyclopedia on the “Celibacy of the Clergy”,
which contains the following passages:

This freedom of choice [regarding celibacy] seems to have lasted during the whole of what we may
call, with Vacandard, the first period of the Church’s legislation, i.e. down to about the time of
Constantine and the Council of Nicæa.

A strenuous attempt has indeed been made by some writers, of whom the late Professor
Bickell was the most distinguished, to prove that even at this early date the Church exacted celibacy
of all her ministers of the higher grades. But the contrary view, represented by such scholars as
Funk and Kraus, seems much better founded and has won general acceptance of recent years.
It is not, of course, disputed that all times virginity was held in honour, and that in particular large
numbers of the clergy practised it or separated from their wives if they were already married. …

The statement of Clement of Alexandria at an earlier date is open to no ambiguity. After commenting
on the texts of St. Paul noted above, and expressing his veneration for a life of chastity, Clement adds:
“All the same, the Church fully receives the husband of one wife whether he be priest or deacon or
layman, supposing always that he uses his marriage blamelessly, and such a one shall be saved in the
begetting of children” (Stromateis, III, xiii).

Not less explicit is the testimony given by the church historian, Socrates. He declares that in
the Eastern Churches neither priests nor even bishops were bound to separate from their wives,
though he recognized that a different custom obtained in Thessaly and in Greece (H. E., Bk. V, cap.
xxii). Further, in his account of the Council of Nicæa (Bk. I, cap. xi) Socrates tells the story of
Paphnutius rising in the assembly and objecting to an enactment which he considered too rigorous in
behalf of celibacy. It would be sufficient, he thought, that such as had previously entered on their
sacred calling should abjure matrimony according to the ancient tradition of the Church, but that
none should be separated from her to whom, while yet unordained, he had been united. And these
sentiments he expressed although himself without experience of marriage. Some attempt has been
made to discredit this story, but nearly all modern scholars (notably Bishop von Hefele, with
his most recent editor, Dom H. Leclercq) accept it without reserve. The fact that the attitude of
Bishop Paphnutius differs but little from the existing practice of the Eastern Churches is alone a
strong point in its favour. These testimonies, it will be observed, are from Eastern sources and
indicate, no doubt, the prevailing Oriental discipline. …

If we may trust the account of Socrates, just quoted, an attempt was made at the Council of Nicæa
(perhaps by the Bishop Osius who had also sat at Elvira) to impose a law similar to that passed in the
Spanish council. But Paphnutius, as we have seen, argued against it, and the Fathers of Nicæa were
content with the prohibition expressed in the third canon which forbade mulieres subintroductas. No
bishop, priest, or deacon was to have any woman living in the house with him, unless it were his
mother, sister, or aunt, or at any rate persons against whom no suspicion could lodge. But the
account of Socrates at the same time shows that marriage on the part of those who were already
bishops or priests was not contemplated; in fact, that it was assumed to be contrary to the tradition

1Newport J. D. White, St. Patrick: His Writings and Life, The Confession, p. 31 (also see notes on pp. 110 –
111), Translations of Christian Literature (Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge), Series V, Lives of the
Celtic Saints, London: The Macmillan Company, 1920. The Hymn of Fiacc on the Life of St. Patrick (called
Génair Pátraicc, a poem attributed to Saint Fiacc (or Fíacc, c. 415 – 520) of Leinster, but thought to have been
composed sometime in the seventh to ninth centuries) adds that Potitus was the son of the deacon Odisse (or
Odissus).
 107

of the Church. This is again what we learn from the Council of Ancyra in Galatia, in 314 (canon x),
and of Neo-Cæsarea in Cappadocia, in 315 (canon i). The latter canon absolutely forbids a priest to
contract a new marriage under the pain of deposition; the former forbids even a deacon to contract a
marriage, if at the moment of his ordination he made no reservation as to celibacy. Supposing,
however, that he protested at the time that a celibate life was above his strength, the decrees of
Ancycra allow him to marry subsequently, as having tacitly received the permission of the ordaining
bishop. There is nothing here which of itself forbids even a bishop to retain his wife, if he were
married before ordination. In this respect the law, as observed in the Eastern Churches, was drawn
gradually tighter. Justinian’s Code of Civil Law would not allow anyone who had children or even
nephews to be consecrated bishop, for fear that natural affection should warp his judgment. The
Apostolic Constitutions (c. 400), which formed the principal factor of the church law of the East, are
not particularly rigid on the point of celibacy, but whether through imperial influence or not the
Council of Trullo, in 692, finally adopted a somewhat stricter view. Celibacy in a bishop became a
matter of precept. If he were previously married, he had at once to separate from his wife upon his
consecration. On the other hand, this council, while forbidding priests, deacons, and subdeacons to
wake a wife after ordination, asserts in emphatic terms their right and duty to continue in conjugal
relations with the wife to whom they had been wedded previously. This canon (xiii of Trullo) still
makes the law for the great majority of the Churches of the East, though some of the Uniat
communions have adopted the Western discipline.

In Latin Christendom, however, everything was ripe for a stricter law. …

With Pope St. Leo IX, St. Gregory VII (Hildebrand), and their successors, a determined and
successful stand was made against the further spread of corruption. For a while in certain districts
where effective interference appeared hopeless, it would seem that various synodal enactments
allowed the rural clergy to retain the wives to whom they had previously been married. See, for
example, the Councils of Lisieux of 1064 (Delisle in the “Journal des Savants”, 1901, p. 517), Rouen in
1063 and 1072, and Winchester, this last presided over by Lanfranc, in 1076. In all these we may
possibly trace the personal influence of William the Conqueror. But despite these concessions, the
attitude of Gregory VII remained firm, and the reform which he consolidated has never subsequently
been set aside. His determined attitude brought forth a whole literature of protests (see the Libelli
de Lite, 3 vols., in Mon. Germ. Hist.), amongst others the letter “De Continentiâ” which Dr. H. C. Lea
(Celibacy, 1907, I, 171) is not ashamed even now to attribute to St. Ulric of Augsburg, though every
modern scholar admits it to be a forgery, fabricated more than one hundred years after St. Ulric’s
death. The point is of importance because the evidence seems to show that in this long struggle the
whole of the more high-principled and more learned section of the clergy was enlisted in the cause of
celibacy. The incidents of the long final campaign, which began indeed even before the time of Pope
St. Leo IX and lasted down to the First Council of Lateran in 1123, are too complicated to be detailed
here. We may note, however that the attack was conducted along two distinct lines of action. In the
first place, disabilities of all kinds were enacted and as far as possible enforced against the wives and
children of ecclesiastics. Their offspring were declared to be of servile condition, debarred from
sacred orders, and, in particular, incapable of succeeding to their fathers’ benefices. The earliest
decree in which the children were declared to be slaves, the property of the Church, and never to be
enfranchised, seems to have been a canon of the Synod of Pavia in 1018. Similar penalties were
promulgated later on against the wives and concubines (see the Synod of Melfi, 1189, can. xii), who
by the very fact of their unlawful connexion with a subdeacon or clerk of higher rank became liable to
be seized as slaves by the over-lord. Hefele (Conciliengeschichte, V, 195) sees in this first trace of the
principle that the marriages of the clerics are ipso facto invalid.

As regards to the offenders themselves, the strongest step seems to have been that taken
by Nicholas II in 1059, and more vigorously by Gregory VII in 1075, who interdicted such
priests from saying Mass and from all ecclesiastical functions, while the people were
forbidden to hear the Masses which they celebrated or to admit their ministrations so long as
they remain contumacious. In the controversies of this time the Masses said by these incontinent
priests were sometimes described as “idolatrous”; but this word must not be pressed, as if it meant to
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insinuate that such priests were incapable of consecrating validly. The term was only loosely used,
just as if it was also sometimes applied at the same period to any sort of homage rendered to an
antipope. Moreover the wording of a letter of Urban II (Ep. cclxxiii) enforcing the decree takes an
exception for cases of urgent necessity, as, for example, when Communion has to be given to the
dying. Clearly, therefore, the validity of the sacraments when consecrated or administered by a
married priest was not in question. Finally, in 1123, at the First Lateran Council, an enactment was
passed (confirmed more explicitly in the Second Lateran Council, can. vii) which, while not in itself
very plainly worded, was held to pronounce the marriages contracted by subdeacons or ecclesiastics
of any of the higher orders to be invalid (contracta quoque matrimonia ab hujusmodi personis
disjungi … judicamus – can. xxi). This may be said to mark the victory of the cause of celibacy.
Henceforth all conjugal relations on the part of the clergy in sacred orders were reduced in the eyes
of canon law to mere concubinage. Neither can it be pretended that this legislation, backed, as it
were, by the firm and clear pronouncements of the Fourth Council of Lateran in 1215, and later by
those of the Council of Trent, remained any longer a dead letter. Laxity among the clergy at certain
periods and in certain localities must undoubtedly be admitted, but the principles of the canon law
remained unshaken, and despite all assertions to the contrary made by unscrupulous assailants of
the Roman system the call to a life of self-denying continence has, as a rule, been respected by the
clergy of Western Christendom. …

Turning now to the Oriental Churches in communion with the Holy See, we may note that as
a general principle married clerics are not ineligible for the subdiaconate, diaconate, and priesthood.
As in the Russian Church they must either be married in accordance with the canons (i.e. not to a
widow, etc.), or else as a preliminary to ordination they are asked whether they will promise to
observe chastity. The full recognition of the right of the Oriental clergy to retain their wives will be
found in the Constitution of Benedict XIV, “Etsi pastoralis”, 26 May, 1742. There has, however, been a
strong movement of recent years among the Eastern Catholic Churches favouring conformity with
Western Christendom in this matter of celibacy.1

Latin Pope Benedict XIV’s encyclical letter “Allatæ Sunt” has the following statements on married clergy in the
Eastern Rites of the Roman Catholic communion, addressed “To Missionaries Assigned to the Orient”:

When Union was effected at the Council of Florence, some Latin Catholics living in Greece thought
that it was lawful for them to go over to the Greek rite. They may have been attracted by the freedom
retained by the Greeks for priests to keep wives after Ordination if they were married before being
ordained. But Pope Nicholas V carefully applied a timely remedy to this abuse: “It has come to Our
attention that many Catholics in districts with a Greek Catholic bishop are shamelessly going over to
the Greek rites under pretext of the Union. We are greatly astonished, since We do not know what
inspired them to leave the practice and rites in which they were born and reared for foreign rites.
Even though the rites of the oriental church are praiseworthy, it is not permitted to confuse the rites
of the churches. The holy council of Florence never allowed this” (constitution in Bullarii recenter
Romae editi, vol. 3, part 3, p. 64). …

Another example is the freedom enjoyed by priests of the Oriental and Greek church to remain
married to their wives after their ordination (see can. Aliter, dist. 31 and chap. Cum olim, de Clericis
Conjugatis). Considering that this practice was at variance neither with divine nor natural law, but
only with Church discipline, the popes judged it right to tolerate this custom, which flourished among
Greeks and Orientals, rather than to forbid it by their apostolic authority, to avoid giving them a
pretext to abandon unity. So does Arcudius assess the matter (Concordia bk. 7, chap. 33).

1 Herbert Thurston, Celibacy of the Clergy, in CE, Vol. III, pp. 481 – 488.
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Nevertheless, incredible though it sounds, some Greeks and Orientals still accuse the Latin church of
rejecting marriage simply because it requires celibacy of its subdeacons, deacons, and priests in
imitation of the Apostles (see Hincmar of Rheims, Operum, vol. 2, letter 51). …

We thought We should explain these matters in this encyclical letter to reveal the bases of the
answers given to the missionary who raised the questions mentioned at the beginning. But We also
wanted to make clear to all the good will which the Apostolic See feels for Oriental Catholics in
commanding them to observe fully their ancient rites which are not at variance with the Catholic
religion or with propriety. The Church does not require schismatics to abandon their rites when they
return to Catholic unity, but only that they forswear and detest heresy. Its great desire is for the
preservation, not the destruction, of different peoples-in short, that all may be Catholic rather than all
become Latin.1

I consider this a very serious example of Latin inconsistency, which has been revealed in Rome’s attempt to
win over the Orthodox, as Rome knew the Eastern clergy would never submit to Rome if they were not
permitted the freedom to retain their wives. Yet for centuries Rome pronounced the strongest decrees, with
the strictest enforcement, against a married priesthood, which can be read in the works listed at the end of
this section. Whereas Pope Benedict XIV says “this practice was at variance neither with divine nor natural
law, but only with Church discipline,” many Popes placed far more importance on clerical celibacy, and those
defending clerical celibacy did not urge it only because of the canon law, but because they claimed it was
necessary from the nature and religious duties of the New Testament office of the priesthood. As many Latins
often accused supporters of a married priesthood of the Nicolaite heresy and as an evil and an error (e.g., at
the time of the Great Schism of 1054, as shown above), it does not appear that they thought clerical marriage
was simply a matter of Church discipline.

The following documents, taken from A Source Book for Mediæval History, help to illustrate some of the
legislation of the Gregorian reforms:

The Latin chronicler Sigebert of Gembloux (1030 – 1112) wrote in his entry for the year 1074:

Pope Gregory [VII] held a synod in which he anathematized all who were guilty of simony.
He also forbade all clergy who were married to say mass, and all laymen were forbidden to be
present when such a married priest should officiate. In this he seemed to many to act contrary to the
decisions of the holy fathers who have declared that the sacraments of the church are neither made
more effective by the good qualities, nor less effective by the sins, of the officiating priest, because it
is the Holy Spirit who makes them effective.

The Roman Council in 1074, held under Gregory VII, declares:

Nor shall clergymen who are married say mass or serve the altar in any way. We decree also
that if they refuse to obey our orders, or rather those of the holy fathers, the people shall refuse to
receive their ministrations, in order that those who disregard the love of God and the dignity of their
office may be brought to their senses through feeling the shame of the world and the reproof of the
people.

Gregory VII decrees in 1074:

If there are any priests, deacons, or subdeacons who are married, by the power of
omnipotent God and the authority of St. Peter we forbid them to enter a church until they repent and
mend their ways. But if any remain with their wives, no one shall dare hear them [when they
officiate in the church], because their benediction is turned into a curse, and their prayer into a sin.
For the Lord says through the prophet, “I will curse your blessings” [Mal. 2:2]. Whoever shall refuse

1Claudia Carlen, The Papal Encyclicals: 1740 – 1981, Vol. I, 1740 – 1878, Pope Benedict XIV, Allatae Sunt,
Washington, DC: McGrath Publishing Company, 1981.
 110

to obey this most salutary command shall be guilty of the sin of idolatry. For Samuel says: “For
rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, and stubbornness is as iniquity and idolatry” [1 Sam. 15:23].
Whoever therefore asserts that he is a Christian but refuses to obey the apostolic see, is guilty of
paganism.

The Latin Ninth Ecumenical Council, held in the Lateran in 1123, declares:

We forbid priests, deacons, and subdeacons to live with wives or concubines, and no woman
shall live with a clergyman except those who are permitted by the council of Nicæa, viz.: mother,
sister, aunt, or others of such sort that no suspicion may justly arise concerning them. 1

The Council of Nicaea permitted married clergy. Hefele writes:

Sec. 43. Paphnutius and the projected Law of Celibacy.

Socrates, Sozomen, and Gelasius affirm that the Synod of Nicæa, as well as that of Elvira (can.
33), desired to pass a law respecting celibacy. This law was to forbid all bishops, priests and deacons
(Sozomen adds subdeacons), who were married at the time of their ordination, to continue to live
with their wives. But, say these historians, the law was opposed openly and decidedly by Paphnutius,
bishop of a city of the Upper Thebaïs in Egypt, a man of a high reputation, who had lost an eye during
the persecution under Maximian. He was also celebrated for his miracles, and was held in so great
respect by the Emperor, that the latter often kissed the empty socket of the lost eye. Paphnutius
declared with a loud voice, “that too heavy a yoke ought not to be laid upon the clergy; that
marriage and married intercourse are of themselves honourable and undefiled; that the Church
ought not to be injured by an extreme severity, for all could not live in absolute continency: in this
way (by not prohibiting married intercourse) the virtue of the wife would be much more certainly
preserved (viz. the wife of a clergyman, because she might find injury elsewhere, if her husband
withdrew from her married intercourse). The intercourse of a man with his lawful wife may also be a
chaste intercourse. It would therefore be sufficient, according to the ancient tradition of the Church,
if those who had taken holy orders without being married were prohibited from marrying
afterwards; but those clergymen who had been married only once as laymen, were not to be
separated from their wives (Gelasius adds, or being only a reader or cantor).” This discourse of
Paphnutius made so much the more impression, because he had never lived in matrimony himself,
and had had no conjugal intercourse. Paphnutius, indeed, had been brought up in a monastery, and
his great purity of manners had rendered him especially celebrated. Therefore the Council took the
serious words of the Egyptian bishop into consideration, stopped all discussion upon the law, and left
to each cleric the responsibility of deciding the point as he would.

If this account be true, we must conclude that a law was proposed to the Council of Nicæa
the same as one which had been carried twenty years previously at Elvira, in Spain: this coincidence
would lead us to believe that it was the Spaniard Hosius who proposed the law respecting celibacy at
Nicæa. The discourse ascribed to Paphnutius, and the consequent decision of the Synod, agree very
well with the text of the Apostolic Constitutions, and with the whole practice of the Greek Church in
respect to celibacy. The Greek Church as well as the Latin accepted the principle, that whoever had
taken holy orders before marriage, ought not to be married afterwards. In the Latin Church, bishops,
priests, deacons, and even subdeacons, were considered to be subject to this law, because the latter
were at a very early period reckoned among the higher servants of the Church, which was not the
case in the Greek Church. The Greek Church went so far as to allow deacons to marry after their
ordination, if previously to it they had expressly obtained from their bishop permission to do so. The

1 Oliver Joseph Thatcher and Edgar Holmes McNeal, A Source Book for Mediæval History: Selected Documents
Illustrating the History of Europe in the Middle Age, Section III, nos. 60 – 63, pp. 134 – 135, New York, NY:
Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1905.
 111

Council of Ancyra affirms this (c. 10). We see that the Greek Church wished to leave the bishops free
to decide the matter; but in reference to priests, it also prohibited them from marrying after their
ordination.

Therefore, whilst the Latin Church exacted of those presenting themselves for ordination,
even as subdeacons, that they should not continue to live with their wives if they were married, the
Greek Church gave no such prohibition; but if the wife of an ordained clergyman died, the Greek
Church allowed no second marriage. The Apostolic Constitutions decided this point in the same way.
To leave their wives from a pretext of piety was also forbidden to Greek priests; and the Synod of
Gangra (c. 4) took up the defence of married priests against the Eustathians. Eustathius, however,
was not alone among the Greeks in opposing the marriage of all clerics, and in desiring to introduce
into the Greek Church the Latin discipline on this point. S. Epiphanius also inclined towards this side.
The Greek Church did not, however, adopt this rigour in reference to priests, deacons, and
subdeacons; but by degrees it came to be required of bishops, and of the higher order of clergy in
general, that they should live in celibacy. Yet this was not until after the compilation of the Apostolic
Canons (c. 5) and of the Constitutions (l.c.); for in those documents mention is made of bishops living
in wedlock, and Church history shows that there were married bishops, for instance Synesius, in the
fifth century. But it is fair to remark, even as to Synesius, that he made it an express condition of his
acceptation, on his election to the episcopate, that he might continue to live the married life.
Thomassin believes that Synesius did not seriously require this condition, and only spoke thus for the
sake of escaping the episcopal office; which would seem to imply that in his time Greek bishops had
already begun to live in celibacy. At the Trullan Synod (c. 13) the Greek Church finally settled the
question of the marriage of priests. Baronius, Valesius, and other historians, have considered the
account of the part taken by Paphnutius to be apocryphal. Baronius says, that as the Council of Nicæa
in its third canon gave a law upon celibacy, it is quite impossible to admit that it would alter such a
law on account of Paphnutius. But Baronius is mistaken in seeing a law upon celibacy in that third
canon: he thought it to be so, because, when mentioning the women who might live in the
clergyman’s house – his mother, sister, etc. – the canon does not say a word about the wife. It had no
occasion to mention her; it was referring to the συνεισάκτοι, whilst these συνεισάκτοι and married
women have nothing in common. Natalis Alexander gives this anecdote about Paphnutius in full: he
desired to refute Bellarmin, who considered it to be untrue, and an invention of Socrates to please
the Novatians. Natalis Alexander often maintains erroneous opinions, and on the present question
he deserves no confidence. If, as S. Epiphanius relates, the Novatians maintained that the clergy
might be married exactly as the laity, it cannot be said that Socrates shared that opinion, since he
says, or rather makes Paphnutius say, that, according to ancient tradition, those not married at the
time of ordination should not be so subsequently. Moreover, if it may be said that Socrates had a
partial sympathy with the Novatians, he certainly cannot be considered as belonging to them, still
less can he be accused of falsifying history in their favour. He may sometimes have propounded
erroneous opinions, but there is a great difference between that and the invention of a whole story.
Valesius especially makes use of the argument ex silentio against Socrates. (a.) Rufinus, he says, gives
many particulars about Paphnutius in his History of the Church: he mentions his martyrdom, his
miracles, and the Emperor’s reverence for him, but not a single word of the business about celibacy.
(b.) The name of Paphnutius is wanting in the list of Egyptian bishops present at the Synod. These
two arguments of Valesius are very weak; the second has the authority of Rufinus himself against it,
who expressly says that Bishop Paphnutius was present at the Council of Nicæa. If Valesius means by
lists only the signatures at the end of the acts of the Council, this proves nothing; for these lists are
very imperfect, and it is well known that many bishops whose names are not among these signatures
were present at Nicæa. This argument ex silentio is evidently insufficient to prove that the anecdote
about Paphnutius must be rejected as false, seeing that it is in perfect harmony with the practice of
the ancient Church, and especially of the Greek Church, on the subject of clerical marriages. On the
other hand, Thomassin pretends that there was no such practice, and endeavours to prove by
quotations from S. Epiphanius, S. Jerome, Eusebius, and S. John Chrysostom, that even in the East
priests who were married at the time of their ordination were prohibited from continuing to live
with their wives. The texts quoted by Thomassin prove only that the Greeks gave especial honour to
priests living in perfect continency, but they do not prove that this continence was a duty incumbent
 112

upon all priests; and so much the less, as the fifth and twenty-fifth apostolic canons, the fourth canon
of Gangra, and the thirteenth of the Trullan Synod, demonstrate clearly enough what was the
universal custom of the Greek Church on this point. Lupus and Phillips explain the words of
Paphnutius in another sense. According to them, the Egyptian bishop was not speaking in a general
way: he simply desired that the contemplated law should not include the subdeacons. But this
explanation does not agree with the extracts quoted from Socrates, Sozomen, and Gelasius, who
believe Paphnutius intended deacons and priests as well.1

Some Roman Catholics have attempted to throw doubt upon this proceeding at Nicaea, but it was seen that
the Catholic Encyclopedia says “nearly all modern scholars accept it without reserve.” Maurice M. Hassett
(1869 – 1953), an Irish-American Roman Catholic priest and the author of the article on Paphnutius in the
Catholic Encyclopedia, also appears to accept the story of Paphnutius against mandatory celibacy at Nicaea.2

Roman Catholics who have not accepted the historicity of the record of Paphnutius include Bernold of
Constance (1054 – 1100), Bellarmine, Baronius, Valesius, Thomassin, Adolphus Pisanus, and Turriano. Some
Roman Catholics who accept the record are Mendoza, Christian Wolf, the Latin priest Alboin (c. 1076), Du Pin,
Tillemont, and Moreri.3

Furthermore, the Roman Catholic scholar Æneas Sylvius (1405 – 1464), who later became the Latin Pope Pius
II (1458), accepts the story of Paphnutius, saying, “Whence we read in the twenty-third canon of the Fourth
Council of Carthage that a bishop ought to obtain opinions of many priests, and he is not to act contrary to
them, which is said of Paphnutius, who spoke against the man who wished the Nicene council to promulgate a
law forbidding the marriages of priests and impeded the law. For this was not the opinion of Paphnutius, but
of the entire council acquiescing to the arguments of Paphnutius. Nor did the council deliberate fully
beforehand, but it had to deliberate intermittently. And this is the way of councils. What is said by one is
received as said by all, as we find in the records of the synod of Chalcedon. But we need not dwell further on
this evident fact.”4 The Latin defenders of a married clergy in the era of Pope Gregory VII also brought

1 Hefele, History of Councils, Vol. I, pp. 435 – 439. It is also worth adding here that evidence of Paphnutius’
participation in the First Ecumenical Council has been found in several ancient lists, in Greek, Latin, and
Arabic, of Bishops who attended that Council, as noted in Nelly Marans (translator), Christian Cochini, The
Apostolic Origins of Priestly Celibacy, Part II, Section A., pp. 198 – 199, San Francisco, CA: Ignatius Press, 1990
(Originally published in Paris, 1981). This book is written in favour of the Roman Catholic position, and the
Jesuit Cochini reaches the opposite conclusion regarding the authenticity of the story of Paphnutius and even
his attendance at the Council, alleging the many lists that do not contain the name of Paphnutius. However,
the presence of Paphnutius’ name on some lists outweighs all the absences, for the reasons Hefele has given,
as well as the scholar Ernst Honigmann (1892 – 1954), who is the author of several studies (cited by Cochini)
on the lists of the Fathers of Nicaea, and Honigmann accepts Paphnutius’ presence at the Council. It appears
to us that Cochini’s reasons for rejecting the presence of Paphnutius at the Council of Nicaea stem from
prejudice, and not from a sober review of the historical evidence.
2 Maurice M. Hassett, Paphnutius, in CE, Vol. XI, p. 457.
3 Samuel Edgar, The Variations of Popery, Ch. XVIII, p. 553, Toronto: Maclear & Co., 1875. Henry Charles Lea,

History of Sacerdotal Celibacy in the Christian Church, Vol. I, Ch. III, pp. 50 – 52, London: Williams and
Norgate, 3rd Ed., 1907.
4 Thomas M. Izbicki, Gerald Christianson, and Philip Krey (translators), Reject Aeneas, Accept Pius: Selected

Letters of Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini (Pope Pius II), Letter 23, A.D. 1444, pp. 139 – 140, Washington, DC: CUA
Press, 2006. Note that after Æneas Sylvius became Pope, “he retracted the errors contained in his earlier
writings in a Bull, the gist of which was ‘Reject Eneas, hold fast to Pius’.” Nicholas Weber, Pope Pius II, in CE,
Vol. XII, p. 128. However, it is still noteworthy that a learned man who later became the Latin Pope accepted
the story of Paphnutius as authentic. It is also very interesting to compare Sylvius’s opinions (especially in
the immediate context of what is quoted above) as it relates to the controversy within the Roman Catholic
communion over the dogmas of the Latin Vatican Council of 1870.
 113

forward the story of Paphnutius as a basis of their claim that clerical marriage was canonical.1 However, Pope
Gregory VII and the Synod of Rome in 1079 explicitly condemned the story of Paphnutius as a forgery.2

Another important Latin defence of married clergy in this period is the Epistle or Rescript Concerning the
Celibacy of the Clergy. Some have mistakenly thought that St. Ulric of Augsburg (893 – 973) is the author of
this letter. However, as the letter is addressed to a Pope Nicholas, and St. Ulric of Augsburg is neither
contemporary with Pope Nicholas I nor Pope Nicholas II, this has been the occasion for many to assert that
this letter is a forgery or unauthentic (such as Herbert Thurston, in his article on the Celibacy of the Clergy in
the Catholic Encyclopedia, which is quoted above). The latest scholarship concurs that it is most probably
Ulric of Imola (1053 – 1063), an Italian bishop, who wrote this letter, and that this letter was written around
1059 or 1060, on the occasion of Pope Nicholas II’s reforms. This rescript was specifically condemned by
Pope Gregory VII at the Synod of Rome in 1079. Pope Gregory VII condemns it as alleged to have been
written by “sancti Oudalrici”, so from an early date it appears to have been misidentified with St. Ulric
of Augsburg. Ulric’s letter was widely circulated and copied, and its arguments, including the story
of Paphnutius, were repeated by other Latins in the debates of the 11th and 12th centuries, such as in the
anonymous Tractatus Pro Clericorum Connubio, written in the mid-1060s, as well as a second version of
the Tractatus in the mid-1070s.3

Also in agreement is the petition of many German Roman Catholic priests and princes:

The emperor Ferdinand, though without success, applied to the Pope in 1564, for a repeal of the laws
against sacerdotal matrimony. Maximilian also, with many of the German princes, importuned Pius
the fourth for the same purpose. … The emperor’s application was supported by the popish
priesthood of Germany. These in maintenance of their petition, alleged various reasons. … the
decision of the Nicene council suggested by Paphnutius, the usage of the Greeks and Latins in the East
and West, till the popedom of Calixtus; all these arguments, the German ecclesiastics urged for the
lawfulness of sacerdotal matrimony. 4

Lea writes about Latin Pope Pius IV’s reply to this petition:

In spite of this [Pope Gregory VII’s condemnation of the authenticity of the Paphnutius story], Pius
IV., in 1564, admitted its authenticity in his epistle to the German princes who had requested of him
the concession of sacerdotal marriage.5

Socrates Scholasticus relates the matter as follows:

1 Earl Evelyn Sperry, An Outline of the History of Clerical Celibacy in Western Europe to the Council of Trent,
pp. 29 – 30, Syracuse, NY: Published by the Author, 1905. This is also mentioned in the Catholic
Encyclopedia’s article on Pope Gregory VII, which is cited below.
2 Henry Charles Lea, History of Sacerdotal Celibacy in the Christian Church, Vol. I, Ch. III, p. 51, London:

Williams and Norgate, 3rd Ed., 1907. Monumenta Gregoriana. Migne, PL, Vol. CXLVIII, p. 1378.
3 The Italian Orthodox priest Fr. Atanasio Georgi translated this letter into English (Atanasio Georgi

(translator), Ulrich of Imola, Apologia of the Married Clergy,

https://www.academia.edu/36950425/Apologia_of_the_Married_Clergy_-_by_Ulrich_of_Imola_XI_century_).
For more on this letter, see James A. Brundage, Law, Sex, and Christian Society in Medieval Europe, Ch. V, p.
221, Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 1987; Helen Parish, Clerical Celibacy in the West: c. 1100 –
1700, Ch. III, pp. 114 – 117, London: Routledge, 2016; Henry Charles Lea, History of Sacerdotal Celibacy in
the Christian Church, Vol. I, Ch. X, pp. 171 – 172, London: Williams and Norgate, 3rd Ed., 1907.
4 Samuel Edgar, The Variations of Popery, Ch. XVIII, p. 578, Toronto: Maclear & Co., 1875.
5 “Verum quidem est, quod ob ministrorum Dei defectum in primitiva ecclesia conjugati admittebantur ad

sacerdotium, ut ex canonibus apostolorum et Paphnutii responso liquet, et in Concilio Nicæno.” Respons. Pii
IV. ap. Le Plat, Concil. Trident. Monument. VI 337. Henry Charles Lea, History of Sacerdotal Celibacy in the
Christian Church, Vol. I, Ch. III, p. 51, London: Williams and Norgate, 3rd Ed., 1907.
 114

Paphnutius was bishop of one of the cities in Upper Thebes: he was a man so favored
divinely that extraordinary miracles were done by him. In the time of the persecution he had been
deprived of one of his eyes. The emperor honored this man exceedingly, and often sent for him to the
palace, and kissed the part where the eye had been torn out. So great devoutness characterized the
emperor Constantine. Let this single fact respecting Paphnutius suffice: I shall now explain another
thing which came to pass in consequence of his advice, both for the good of the Church and the honor
of the clergy. It seemed fit to the bishops to introduce a new law into the Church, that those who
were in holy orders, I speak of bishops, presbyters, and deacons, should have no conjugal intercourse
with the wives whom they had married while still laymen. Now when discussion on this matter was
impending, Paphnutius having arisen in the midst of the assembly of bishops, earnestly entreated
them not to impose so heavy a yoke on the ministers of religion: asserting that ‘marriage itself is
honorable, and the bed undefiled’; (Hebrews xiii. 4.) urging before God that they ought not to injure
the Church by too stringent restrictions. ‘For all men,’ said he, ‘cannot bear the practice of rigid
continence; neither perhaps would the chastity of the wife of each be preserved:’ and he termed the
intercourse of a man with his lawful wife chastity. It would be sufficient, he thought, that such as had
previously entered on their sacred calling should abjure matrimony, according to the ancient
tradition of the Church: but that none should be separated from her to whom, while yet unordained,
he had been united. And these sentiments he expressed, although himself without experience of
marriage, and, to speak plainly, without ever having known a woman: for from a boy he had been
brought up in a monastery, and was specially renowned above all men for his chastity. The whole
assembly of the clergy assented to the reasoning of Paphnutius: wherefore they silenced all
further debate on this point, leaving it to the discretion of those who were husbands to exercise
abstinence if they so wished in reference to their wives. Thus much concerning Paphnutius.1

The Anglican scholar Henry Wharton (1664 – 1695), after quoting Socrates on this matter, points out the
ancient authorities who also support this record of Paphnutius:

Sozomen and Nicephorus relate it almost in the same words; Suidas in the very same; Cassiodorus in
the like words; and so do Ivo Carnotensis, Gratian, and Blastares; and who is ancienter than them all,
except the two first, Gelasius Cyzicenus, who transcribed the Acts of that Council out of a copy which
had belonged to Dalmatius, bishop of Cyzicum, who was present in the Ephesine Council, in the year
431.2

This proceeding in Nicaea rebukes the Latins, because they have laid “a heavy yoke” upon the clergy,
contradicting the decision of the Council of Nicaea. I believe that this event is also evidence that the Holy
Spirit was guarding the decisions of the Council of Nicaea, because when the bishops in attendance were
about to decree something contrary to the will of God, they were corrected from so doing, by the intervention
of the “divinely favored” Paphnutius.

The Ecumenical Council of Nicaea, which represents the infallible consensus of the whole Church, has thus
interpreted Scripture (citing Hebrews xiii. 4) to mean that married men should be permitted to become
clergy.

The Apostolic Canons show that the early Church had married clergy and supported them:

Apostolic Canon V:

1 Andrew C. Zenos (translator), The Ecclesiastical History of Socrates Scholasticus, Book I, Ch. XI, p. 18, in
NPNF, Series II, Vol. II (Socrates, Sozomenus: Church Histories), Oxford: Parker and Company, 1891.
2 Henry Wharton, A Treatise of the Celibacy of the Clergy, in John Cumming, A Preservative Against Popery,

Vol. II, Book V, I, p. 305, London: British Society for Promoting the Religious Principles of the Reformation,
1848.
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Let not a bishop, presbyter, or deacon, put away his wife under pretence of religion; but if he put her
away, let him be excommunicated; and if he persists, let him be deposed. 1

Apostolic Canon XL:

Let the private goods of the bishop, if he have any such, and those of the Lord, be clearly
distinguished, that the bishop may have the power of leaving his own goods, when he dies, to whom
he will, and how he will, and that the bishop’s own property may not be lost under pretence of its
being the property of the Church: for it may be that he has a wife, or children, or relations, or
servants; and it is just before God and man, that neither should the Church suffer any loss through
ignorance of the bishop’s own property, nor the bishop or his relations be injured under pretext of
the Church: nor that those who belong to him should be involved in contests, and cast reproaches
upon his death.2

Apostolic Canon LXXVI:

A bishop must not out of favour to a brother or a son, or any other relation, ordain whom he will to
the episcopal dignity; for it is not right to make heirs of the bishopric, giving the things of God to
human affections. Neither is it fitting to subject the Church of God to heirs. But if anyone shall do so
let the ordination be void, and the ordainer himself be punished with excommunication. 3

Canon XIII of the Sixth Ecumenical Council in Trullo:

Since we know it to be handed down as a rule of the Roman Church that those who are
deemed worthy to be advanced to the diaconate or presbyterate should promise no longer to cohabit
with their wives, we, preserving the ancient rule and apostolic perfection and order, will that the
lawful marriages of men who are in holy orders be from this time forward firm, by no means
dissolving their union with their wives nor depriving them of their mutual intercourse at a
convenient time. Wherefore, if anyone shall have been found worthy to be ordained subdeacon, or
deacon, or presbyter, he is by no means to be prohibited from admittance to such a rank, even if he
shall live with a lawful wife. Nor shall it be demanded of him at the time of his ordination that he
promise to abstain from lawful intercourse with his wife: lest we should affect injuriously marriage
constituted by God and blessed by his presence, as the Gospel saith: “What God hath joined together
let no man put asunder;” and the Apostle saith, “Marriage is honourable and the bed undefiled;” and
again, “Art thou bound to a wife? seek not to be loosed.” But we know, as they who assembled at
Carthage (with a care for the honest life of the clergy) said, that subdeacons, who handle the Holy
Mysteries, and deacons, and presbyters should abstain from their consorts according to their own
course [of ministration]. So that what has been handed down through the Apostles and preserved by
ancient custom, we too likewise maintain, knowing that there is a time for all things and especially
for fasting and prayer. For it is meet that they who assist at the divine altar should be absolutely
continent when they are handling holy things, in order that they may be able to obtain from God what
they ask in sincerity.
If therefore anyone shall have dared, contrary to the Apostolic Canons, to deprive any of
those who are in holy orders, presbyter, or deacon, or subdeacon of cohabitation and intercourse
with his lawful wife, let him be deposed. In like manner also if any presbyter or deacon on pretence
of piety has dismissed his wife, let him be excluded from communion; and if he persevere in this let
him be deposed.4

Ancient Epitome:

1 Percival, Seven Ecumenical Councils, p. 594.

2 Percival, Seven Ecumenical Councils, p. 596.
3 Percival, Seven Ecumenical Councils, p. 599.
4 Percival, Seven Ecumenical Councils, p. 371.
 116

Although the Romans wish that everyone ordained deacon or presbyter should put away his wife, we
wish the marriages of deacons and presbyters to continue valid and firm.1

This Ecumenical Canon shows the contrast of the Apostolic practice with the erroneous Roman practices:

Antonius Augustinus in his proposed emendations of Gratian says (Lib. I. dial. de emend. Grat. c. 8.):
“This canon can in no way be received; for it is written in opposition to the celibacy of the Latin
priests, and openly is against the Roman Church.”2

After quoting part of this 13th canon of Trullo, the Roman Catholic historian Horace Kinder Mann comments,
“Thus did these infatuated Greeks cast away the salt that preserves the Church, a celibate clergy.” 3

Canon IV of the Council of Gangra is also relevant against the Latins:

If any one shall maintain, concerning a married presbyter, that is not lawful to partake of the
oblation when he offers it, let him be anathema. 4

The Ancient Epitome of this canon likewise states:

Anathema to him who hesitates to receive communion from presbyters joined in matrimony.5

The Synod of Gangra took place about the middle of the fourth century, and was attended by at least thirteen
bishops. This council has Ecumenical force, approved by the First Canon of the Fourth Ecumenical Council,
the Second Canon of the Sixth Ecumenical Council, and the First Canon of the Seventh Ecumenical Council,
and its canons are included in multiple ancient canonical collections.

Hefele comments here:

As is well known, the ancient Church, as now the Greek Church, allowed those clergy
who married before their ordination to continue to live in matrimony. Compare what was said above
in the history of the Council of Nicæa, in connection with Paphnutius, concerning the celibacy and
marriage of priests in the ancient Church. Accordingly this canon speaks of those clergy who have
wives and live in wedlock; and Baronius, Binius, and Mitter-Müller gave themselves useless trouble
in trying to interpret it as only protecting those clergy who, though married, have since their
ordination ceased to cohabit with their wives.6

The so-called Codex Ecclesiæ Romanæ published by Quesnel, which, however, as was shown
by the Ballerini, is of Gallican and not Roman origin, has not this canon, and consequently it only
mentions nineteen canons of Gangra.

The Synodal Letter of the Synod of Gangra states:

1 Percival, Seven Ecumenical Councils, p. 371.

2 Percival, Seven Ecumenical Councils, p. 372.
3 Horace Kinder Mann, The Lives of Popes in the Early Middle Ages, Vol. I, Part II, St. Sergius I, p. 89, St. Louis,

MO: B. Herder, 1914. Mann must have forgotten that Rome permits the Easterners to have a married clergy.
4 Percival, Seven Ecumenical Councils, p. 93.
5 Percival, Seven Ecumenical Councils, p. 93.
6 Hefele, History of Councils, Vol. II, Book VI, Sec. 94., p. 329. This is an example of the inaccuracy of Latin

preservation of the canons.

 117

Eusebius, Ælian, Eugenius, Olympius, Bithynicus, Gregory, Philetus, Pappus, Eulalius,

Hypatius, Proæresius, Basil and Bassus, assembled in the holy Synod at Gangra, to our most
honoured lords and fellow-ministers in Armenia wish health in the Lord.
Forasmuch as the most Holy Synod of Bishops, assembled on account of certain necessary
matters of ecclesiastical business in the Church at Gangra, on inquiring also into the matters which
concern Eustathius, found that many things had been unlawfully done by these very men who are
partisans of Eustathius, it was compelled to make definitions, which it has hastened to make known
to all, for the removal of whatever has by him been done amiss. For, from their utter abhorrence of
marriage, and from their adoption of the proposition that no one living in a state of marriage has any
hope towards God, many misguided married women have forsaken their husbands, and husbands
their wives: then, afterwards, not being able to contain, they have fallen into adultery; and so,
through such a principle as this, have come to shame. They were found, moreover, fomenting
separations from the houses of God and of the Church; treating the Church and its members with
disdain, and establishing separate meetings and assemblies, and different doctrines and other things
in opposition to the Churches and those things which are done in the Church; wearing strange
apparel, to the destruction of the common custom of dress; making distributions, among themselves
and their adherents as saints, of the first-fruits of the Church, which have, from the first, been given
to the Church; slaves also leaving their masters, and, on account of their own strange apparel, acting
insolently towards their masters; women, too, disregarding decent custom, and, instead of womanly
apparel, wearing men’s clothes, thinking to be justified because of these; while many of them, under a
pretext of piety, cut off the growth of hair, which is natural to woman; [and these persons were
found] fasting on the Lord’s Day, despising the sacredness of that free day, but disdaining and eating
on the fasts appointed in the Church; and certain of them abhor the eating of flesh; neither do they
tolerate prayers in the houses of married persons, but, on the contrary, despise such prayers when
they are made, and often refuse to partake when Oblations are offered in the houses of married
persons; contemning married presbyters, and refusing to touch their ministrations;
condemning the services in honour of the Martyrs and those who gather or minister therein, and the
rich also who do not alienate all their wealth, as having nothing to hope from God; and many other
things that no one could recount. For every one of them, when he forsook the canon of the Church,
adopted laws that tended as it were to isolation; for neither was there any common judgment among
all of them; but whatever any one conceived, that he propounded, to the scandal of the Church, and to
his own destruction.
Wherefore, the Holy Synod present in Gangra was compelled, on these accounts, to condemn
them, and to set forth definitions declaring them to be cast out of the Church; but that, if they should
repent and anathematize every one of these false doctrines, then they should be capable of
restoration. And therefore the Holy Synod has particularly set forth everything which they ought to
anathematize before they are received. And if any one will not submit to the said decrees, he
shall be anathematized as a heretic, and excommunicated, and cast out of the Church; and it
will behove the bishops to observe a like rule in respect of all who may be found with them. 1

The Synod of Gangra also added an epilogue (sometimes cited as the 21st canon) to the canons:

These things we write, not to cut off those who wish to lead in the Church of God an ascetic
life, according to the Scriptures; but those who carry the pretence of asceticism to superciliousness;
both exalting themselves above those who live more simply, and introducing novelties contrary to
the Scriptures and the ecclesiastical Canons. We do, assuredly, admire virginity accompanied by
humility; and we have regard for continence, accompanied by godliness and gravity; and we praise
the leaving of worldly occupations, [when it is made] with lowliness of mind; [but at the same time]
we honour the holy companionship of marriage … and, to sum up in a word, we wish that all things
which have been delivered by the Holy Scriptures and the Apostolical traditions, may be observed in
the Church.2

1 Percival, Seven Ecumenical Councils, p. 91.

2 Percival, Seven Ecumenical Councils, p. 101.
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It appears to us that the early schismatic Popes fell under the anathema of Canon IV of Gangra. The Catholic
Encyclopedia article on the Latin Pope Gregory VII, considered a saint by Roman Catholics, is important in
showing the changes brought about by the Gregorian Reforms:

With admirable discernment, Gregory began his great work of purifying the Church by a reformation
of the clergy. At his first Lenten Synod (March, 1074) he enacted the following decrees: …

• That all who were guilty of incontinence should cease to exercise their sacred ministry.
• That the people should reject the ministrations of clerics who failed to obey these
injunctions.

Similar decrees had indeed been passed by previous popes and councils. Clement II, Leo IX, Nicholas
II, and Alexander II had renewed the ancient laws of discipline, and made determined efforts to have
them enforced. But they met with vigorous resistance, and were but partially successful. The
promulgation of Gregory’s measures now, however, called forth a most violent storm of opposition
throughout Italy, Germany, and France. And the reason for this opposition on the part of the vast
throng of immoral and simoniacal clerics is not far to seek. Much of the reform thus far accomplished
had been brought about mainly through the efforts of Gregory; all countries had felt the force of his
will, the power of his dominant personality. His character, therefore, was a sufficient guarantee that
his legislation would not be suffered to remain a dead letter. In Germany, particularly, the
enactments of Gregory aroused a feeling of intense indignation. The whole body of the married
clergy offered the most resolute resistance, and declared that the canon enjoining celibacy was
wholly unwarranted in Scripture. In support of their position they appealed to the words of the
Apostle Paul, 1 Corinthians 7:2 and 7:9: “It is better to marry than to be burnt”; and 1 Timothy 3:2: “It
behooveth therefore a bishop to be blameless, the husband of one wife.” They cited the words of
Christ, Matthew 19:11: “All men take not this word, but they to whom it is given”; and, recurred to
the address of the Egyptian Bishop Paphnutius at the Council of Nice. At Nuremberg they informed
the papal legate that they would rather renounce their priesthood than their wives, and that he for
whom men were not good enough might go seek angels to preside over the Churches. Siegfried,
Archbishop of Mainz and Primate of Germany, when forced to promulgate the decrees, attempted to
temporize, and allowed his clergy six months of delay for consideration. The order, of course,
remained ineffectual after the lapse of that period, and at a synod held at Erfurt in October, 1074, he
could accomplish nothing. Altmann, the energetic Bishop of Passau, nearly lost his life in publishing
the measures, but adhered firmly to the instructions of the pontiff. The greater number of bishops
received their instructions with manifest indifference, and some openly defied the pope. Otto of
Constance, who had before tolerated the marriage of his clergy, now formally sanctioned it. In
France the excitement was scarcely less vehement than in Germany. A council at Paris, in 1074,
condemned the Roman decrees, as implying that the validity of the sacraments depended on the
sanctity of the minister, and declared them intolerable and irrational. John, Archbishop of Rouen,
while endeavouring to enforce the canon of celibacy at a provincial synod, was stoned and had to flee
for his life. Walter, Abbot of Pontoise, who attempted to defend the papal enactments, was
imprisoned and threatened with death. At the Council of Burgos, in Spain, the papal legate was
insulted and his dignity outraged. But the zeal of Gregory knew no abatement. He followed up his
decrees by sending legates into all quarters, fully empowered to depose immoral and simoniacal
ecclesiastics.1

There are several important political and social considerations associated with priestly celibacy. Protestants
have argued that it tends to make the priests, since without families, less attached to their locality, and more

1 Thomas Oestreich, Pope St. Gregory VII (Hildebrand), in CE, Vol. VI, pp. 793 – 794.
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loyal to Rome. Another issue, regarding the heritability of characteristics, is brought up by Francis Galton.1 It
is worth noting that many saints have been related to each other by family ties (an entire book could be
written on that subject, although I am not currently aware of any), and children and grandchildren of clerics
have often become esteemed Christians. Furthermore, clerical celibacy has not edified the Latin priesthood,
but has instead resulted in clerical corruption, perversity and scandal, of which very much has been written,
but which would be outside the boundaries of this work to discuss. The proof of the wisdom of the Orthodox
permission of clerical marriage is illustrated in the turbulent history with regard to married clergy in the
Latin Church, which would have saved itself much trouble had it obeyed and heeded the Nicene Council. All
throughout the history of Latin issues with married clergy, one calls to mind the infinite wisdom of St. Paul,
who says, “But if they cannot contain, let them marry: for it is better to marry than to burn.” (1 Corinthians vii.
9). It is worth noting that in a memoir prepared for the Latin General Council of Vienne, the Latin Bishop of
Mende says, “Licentiousness was so common, that marriage ought to be permitted to the priests, as in the
Greek Church.”2 Roman Catholics consider the Council of Vienne (1311 – 1312) to be the Fifteenth
Ecumenical Council.

The following are some of the useful works on celibacy in English: The classic Anglican work is Henry
Wharton, A Treatise of the Celibacy of the Clergy: Wherein its Rise and Progress are Historically Considered,
London: H. Clark, 1688 [Reprinted with improved notes in John Cumming, Preservative Against Popery, Vol.
II, Book. V, I, pp. 226 – 381, London: British Society for Promoting the Religious Principles of the Reformation,
1848.]. A short study is in John Wordsworth, The Ministry of Grace: Studies in Early Church History with
Reference to Present Problems, Ch. IV, pp. 206 – 256, London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 2nd Ed., 1903. A
short but compact work is Earl Evelyn Sperry, An Outline of the History of Clerical Celibacy in Western
Europe to the Council of Trent, Syracuse, NY: Published by the Author, 1905. Henry Charles Lea’s book
(Henry Charles Lea, History of Sacerdotal Celibacy in the Christian Church, London: Williams and Norgate,
3rd Ed., 2 Vols., 1907) shows many of the issues that have resulted from clerical celibacy, but it is written in
an irreverent spirit and with a somewhat faulty scholarly method, and emphasizes the scandals resulting
from clerical celibacy, so I cannot recommend it. A modern work by a Roman Catholic scholar is Roman
Cholij, Clerical Celibacy in East and West, Leominster: Gracewing, 2nd Ed., 1989. For the apparent
discrepancy on the Orthodox requirement for celibate bishops (which was the general state of things well
before Trullo), see the commentary of Nicodemus on Canon XII of Trullo (Denver Cummings (translator),
Agapios and Nicodemos, The Rudder (Pedalion) of the Metaphorical Ship of the One Holy Catholic and
Apostolic Church of the Orthodox Christians, pp. 303 – 305, Chicago, IL: Orthodox Christian Educational
Society, 1957. Also see the two-part article by the Orthodox Deacon Chr. Knetes, Ordination and Matrimony
in the Eastern Orthodox Church, in The Journal of Theological Studies, Vol. XI, Issue 3, April 1910, pp. 348 –
400 & Issue 4, July 1910, pp. 481 – 513, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1910.

Section II Divorce

The Latins have changed Christ’s standard with regard to divorce, by affirming marriage to be absolutely
indissoluble while the parties remain alive, and not permitting divorce for any reason, including adultery.

The Catholic Encyclopedia’s article on Divorce states:

The doctrine of Scripture about the illicitness of divorce is fully confirmed by the constant tradition
of the Church. The testimony of the Fathers and of the councils leave us no room for doubt. In
numerous places they lay down the teaching that not even in the case of adultery can the marriage
bond be dissolved or the innocent party proceed to a new marriage. They insist rather that the

1 Francis Galton, Hereditary Genius: An Inquiry into Its Laws and Consequences, pp. 343 – 345, London:
Macmillan and Co., 2nd Ed., 1892. It should be noted that Sir Francis Galton’s (1822 – 1911) framework is
critically lacking in a spiritual perspective and is missing key components.
2 Fleury, Tom. 19, pp. 201 – 202, in Hopkins, “The End of Controversy,” Controverted, Vol. I, Letter VIII, p. 148.
 120

innocent party must remain unmarried after the dismissal of the guilty one, and can only enter upon
a new marriage in case death intervenes.1

Canon VII on Matrimony of the Latin Council of Trent (Session XXIV):

If anyone says that the Church errs in that she taught and teaches that in accordance with evangelical
and apostolic doctrine the bond of matrimony cannot be dissolved by reason of adultery on the
part of one of the parties, and that both, or even the innocent party who gave no occasion for
adultery, cannot contract another marriage during the lifetime of the other, and that he is guilty of
adultery who, having put away the adulteress, shall marry another, and she also who, having put
away the adulterer, shall marry another, let him be anathema.2

The Catholic Encyclopedia comments on this canon:

The decree defines directly the infallibility of the church doctrine in regard to indissolubility of
marriage, even in the case of adultery, but indirectly the decree defines the indissolubility of
marriage.3

The Latins have gone too far, and the Orthodox Church views the following words of Christ in disagreement
with the Papal canons:

And I say unto you, Whosoever shall put away his wife, except it be for fornication, and shall marry
another, committeth adultery: and whoso marrieth her which is put away doth commit adultery.
(Matt. xix. 9)

But I say unto you, That whosoever shall put away his wife, saving for the cause of fornication,
causeth her to commit adultery: and whosoever shall marry her that is divorced committeth
adultery. (Matt. v. 32)

From these words, it is plain that a man can legitimately put away his wife (divorce) for the cause of
fornication. The sin of the Decalogue is cause for separation.

The Catholic Encyclopedia attempts to contradict the force of Christ’s words, and Roman Catholics admit that
they have no clear explanation to this “difficulty”:

It must also be remarked that even for Matthew 19:9, there is a variant reading supported by
important codices, which has ‘maketh her to commit adultery’ instead of the expression ‘comitteth
adultery’. This reading answers the difficulty more clearly. (Cf. Knabenbauer, ‘Comment, in Matt.’, II,
144). Catholic exegesis is unanimous in excluding the permissibility of absolute divorce from
Matthew 19, but the exact explanation of the expressions, ‘except it be for fornication’ and ‘excepting
for the cause of fornication’, has given rise to various opinions. Does it mean the violation of marital
infidelity, or a crime committed before marriage, or a diriment impediment? (See Palmieri, "De
matrim. Christ.", 178 sqq.; Sasse, ‘De sacramentis’, II, 418 sqq.) Some have tried to answer the
difficulty by casting doubt on the authenticity of the entire phrase of Matthew 19, but the words are
in general fully vouched for by the more reliable codices. Also, the greater number, and the best, have
‘committeth adultery’. (See Knabenbauer, loc. cit., and Schanz, ‘Kommentar über das Evang. d. hl.
Matth.’, 191, 409.)4

1 Francis J. Schaefer, Divorce, in CE, Vol. V, p. 56.

2 Schroeder, Trent, pp. 181 – 182. Latin on p. 453.
3 Francis J. Schaefer, Divorce, in CE, Vol. V, p. 58.
4 Francis J. Schaefer, Divorce, in CE, Vol. V, p. 56.
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It is clear that Christ allowed an exception to the general indissolubility of marriage, an exception that Roman
Catholics have unwisely disregarded, and an exception that the Orthodox Church continues to allow.

St. Cyril of Alexandria says that marriages can be dissolved by bad actions, commenting on Matthew 5: 31,

It hath been said: Whosoever shall put away his wife, let him give her a writing of divorcement. A man’s
wise wife gives him another opportunity to let go of the marriage, as the bond has not yet been
dissolved. For it is not the papers of divorce that dissolves marriage before God, but evil behavior. 1

Pope Gregory II (715 – 731) seems to allow for divorce and remarriage. In his letter to St. Boniface he says,
“The husband, if his wife be taken with any infirmity, so that she cannot perform her due unto him, may
marry another.”2

Gratian comments, “This (decision) of Gregory is to be considered entirely opposed to the sacred canons, and
even to the teaching of the Gospel and the apostles”.3 The Gallican Roman Catholic historian Louis Ellies du
Pin (or Dupin, 1657 – 1719) says, in his synopsis of this Pope’s Letters, “he permits an Husband, whose Wife
is unable to perform Conjugal Duties, to Marry another.”4 Also see Bellarmine’s comments.5

This statement by Pope Gregory II has attracted lots of attention by later Roman Catholic writers and
commentators. A Jesuit of the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome in 1975 wrote a 300-page doctoral
dissertation on this letter and the views of Pope Gregory on this matter, which makes the distinction that
Pope Gregory did not intend to break up a consummated marriage.6

The early Church allowed divorce in cases of adultery or fornication, as an Anglican controversialist has
shown.7 John Meyendorff’s short chapter on the subject makes the following important remarks:

But at the same time, the Church never considered the Gospel as a system of legal
prescriptions which human society could adopt overnight. The Gospel was to be accepted as a
commitment, as a pledge of the Kingdom to come; it presupposed constant personal struggle against
sin and evil, but it never could be reduced to a system of legal “obligations” or “duties.”

Thus, the Christian empire continued to admit divorce and remarriage as a regular social
institution. The laws of the Christian emperors, especially Constantine, Theodosius and Justinian,
defined the various legal grounds and conditions on which divorce and remarriage were permissible.
It is impossible for us here to enumerate them all. It will be sufficient to say that they were relatively
lenient. Divorce by simple mutual consent was tolerated until a law issued by emperor Theodosius II

1 “V, 31. Dictum est: Quicunque dimiserit uxorem suam, det ei libellum repudii. Sapientem uxorem dimittens
copiam ei dat alii nubendi, quod est mœchationis genus, quasi nondum dissoluto vinculo. Non enim repudii
libellus apud Deum matrimonium solvit, set mala agendi ratio.” Comment. In Matthæum, Migne, Patrologia
Græca, Vol. LXXII, p. 380 D (Latin on p. 379 D).
2 “Virum uxore infirmitate correpta, et non valente ei debitum reddere, aliam ducere”. John Cumming

(editor), Andrew Willet, Synopsis Papismi, Vol. II, p. 192, London: British Society for Promoting the Religious
Principles of the Reformation, 1852.
3 Victor J. Pospishil, Divorce and Remarriage, pp. 176 – 177, 1967.
4 William Wotton (translator), Lewis Ellies du Pin, A New History of Ecclesiastical Writers, Vol. VI, Gregory II,

p. 96, London: H. Clark, 1693.

5 Translated in Pusey, Eirenicon, Part III, pp. 200 – 201.
6 William Kelly, Pope Gregory II on Divorce and Remarriage: A Canonical-Historical Investigation of the letter

Desiderabilem mihi, with special reference to the response Quod proposuisti, Analecta Gregoriana, Vol. CCIII,
Rome: Pontifical Gregorian University, 1976.
7 John Cumming (editor), Andrew Willet, Synopsis Papismi, Vol. VI, Book III, Controversy XV, Question III, Of

Divorce, 246 – 271, London: British Society for Promoting the Religious Principles of the Reformation, 1852.
 122

in 449, which forbade it; but it was again authorized by Justin II in 566. The law of Justin II was
repealed only in the eighth century. Throughout all that period, divorce, with right of remarriage,
was granted not only on the grounds of adultery, but also on such grounds as political treason,
planning of murder, disappearance for five years or more, unjustified accusation of adultery and,
finally, monastic vows of one of the partners.a

No Father of the Church ever denounced these imperial laws as contrary to

Christianity. There was an evident consensus of opinion that considered them as inevitable.
Emperors like Justinian I sincerely tried to issue legislation inspired by Christianity and, when
formulating it, used competent advice of bishops and theologians. Among the latter, many opposed
imperial will when it infringed upon Christian orthodoxy; but none opposed their legislation on
divorce.

[Meyendorff’s Footnote:] a) See especially the Novella 22 of Justinian. 1

Also see a patristic florilegium, available online, by the Orthodox controversialist Ubi Petrus.2 Much more
could be said about marriage and divorce, but I do not here wish to enter in-depth on this subject.3

However, even with all their apparent strictness, the Latins have seriously erred in one very grave matter –
by deliberately separating married priests from their lawfully wedded wives. This was forcibly done at the
time of Gregory VII’s reforms, as well as in other periods. Although this separation is not technically a
divorce, this is an instance that contradicts Latin pretensions of adhering to the sanctity of marriage, and goes
against Christ’s command, “What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.” (Matt. xix 6.
Mark x 9.)

Section III Marriage Within Prohibited Degrees

Several popes have permitted marriage between uncles and nieces, between aunts and nephews, and with a
sister-in-law or brother-in-law. However, this falls within the prohibited degrees of consanguinity and was
not approved by the early Church. St. Theodosius of Kiev (c. 1008 – 1074) lists the following Latin error:
“They take their nieces in marriage.”4

The apparent Latin strictness with regard to marriage has only led to the scandal of marriage dispensations, a
topic only briefly noted here. The Anglican controversialist Richard Frederick Littledale (1833 – 1890) points
out, “in Leviticus xviii. 12-14, the marriage of a nephew and aunt is declared incestuous,” and notes:

Even this union is sometimes permitted, and there is a case of a marriage of a nephew and aunt in the
Portuguese Royal family in 1777. And before the Council of Trent, the line publicly taken by the
Roman Curia was, that the Pope can dispense in every degree forbidden by Divine law; and more
specially: ‘The Pope can dispense without assigning any reason in cases forbidden by Canon Law,

1 John Meyendorff, Marriage: An Orthodox Perspective, Ch. XII, p. 56 (see the whole chapter, pp. 54 – 58, and
notes throughout the book), Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 3rd Ed., 1984.
2 Ubi Petrus, Divorce and Remarriage in the Church Fathers and Patristic Era Writers (Florilegium),

https://ubipetrusibiecclesia.com/2020/01/05/church-fathers-and-patristic-era-writers-on-the-topic-of-
divorce-and-remarriage-a-florilegium/.
3 The scandal of Roman Catholic marriage annulments is another large topic, which I have not discussed.
4 Muriel Heppell (translator), The Paterik of the Kievan Caves Monastery, Discourse 37, p. 212, in Harvard

Library of Early Ukrainian Literature, English Translations, Vol. I, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,
1989. The attribution of this work to Theodosius is disputed by some (see the footnote).
 123

and with sufficient reason in cases forbidden by Divine Law.’ ‘Practica,’ fol. 88, — a manual for the
use of the officers of the Curia — Rome, 1514.1

Although there are various views of this subject, Pope Pius IX’s Syllabus of Errors (considered an infallible
document by many Roman Catholics) in 1864 condemns the following proposition (#23): “Roman pontiffs
and ecumenical councils have wandered outside the limits of their powers, have usurped the rights of princes,
and have even erred in defining matters of faith and morals.” Therefore, according to Pius IX, no Roman Pope
has ever “wandered outside the limits of their powers.” So if a Pope has granted a marriage dispensation (or
annulment) for any reason, then he had the power to do so.

The highly learned Anglican scholar Edward Bouverie Pusey (1800 – 1882) points out that marriage with a
sister-in-law was declared forbidden by Pope St. Gregory the Great, Latin Pope Innocent III, and Cardinal
Turrecremata (acting by command of Latin Pope Eugene IV), but that this was directly contradicted by Latin
Pope Alexander VI, who gave a dispensation to marry a sister-in-law (to Emmanuel, king of Portugal) and an
aunt (to Ferdinand, king of Sicily).2 To avoid prolixity, I would recommend Pusey’s learned treatise on this
subject, of over 250 pages.3

Section IV Fourth (and More) Marriages

The Latins have claimed to be strict with regard to marriage law, but they are in error by permitting fourth
marriages (and more, with no theoretical limit). The Orthodox rightly permit a maximum of three marriages,
in accordance with the Church Fathers and the decision of the Council of Constantinople in 920, which settled
the matter, and was accepted by the Roman Pope and all the East. This Council ruled that the penalty for a
fourth marriage was to be excommunication and exclusion from the Church, while the penalty for a third
marriage was four to five years’ deprivation of communion.

The Latin Council of Florence, in Session XI, on 4 February 1442, declared:

It is asserted that some people reject fourth marriages as condemned. Lest sin is attributed where
it does not exist, since the apostle says that a wife on her husband’s death is free from his law and
free in the Lord to marry whom she wishes, and since no distinction is made between the deaths of
the first, second and third husbands, we declare that not only second and third marriages but also
fourth and further ones may lawfully be contracted, provided there is no canonical impediment.
We say, however, that they would be more commendable if thereafter they abstain from marriage
and persevere in chastity because we consider that, just as virginity is to be preferred in praise and
merit to widowhood, so chaste widowhood is preferable to marriage.4

1 Richard Frederick Littledale, Plain Reasons Against Joining the Church of Rome, LII, pp. 116 – 117, London:
Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, Last Ed., 1912.
2 Edward Bouverie Pusey, Eirenicon, [Part I], pp. 305 – 206, Oxford: John Henry and James Parker, 1865.

There are many other such examples of papal dispensations for avunculate marriages and those related in the
first degree through marriage.
3 Pusey, Marriage with a Deceased Wife’s Sister Prohibited by Holy Scripture, as Understood by the Church for

1500 Years, Oxford: John Henry Parker, 1849. Another interesting work, more as a historical curiosity, is an
over 500-page book on English king Henry VIII’s divorce with Catherine of Aragon (who was formerly
wedded to Henry’s elder brother Prince Arthur): James Anthony Froude, The Divorce of Catherine of Aragon,
London: Longmans, Green, & Co., New Ed., 1897.
4 Norman P. Tanner, Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, Vol. I, Council of Florence, Sess. XI, Washington, DC:

Georgetown University Press, 1990. Another papal decree permitting fourth marriages is by Latin Pope
Benedict XII (pope from 1334 – 1342), in his book “Iam dudum” sent to the Armenians in the year 1341, also
titled “Errors of the Armenians”. See error number 49, which says, “Also they say that if any one … takes a
third [wife] or a fourth, one after another, he cannot be absolved by their church, because they say that such a
marriage is fornication. …” (Denzinger, n. 541, p. 200.)
 124

However, the Church Fathers held it was no light matter to be wed multiple times, as will be seen from a few
examples. It is the standard custom all across the East and West, to this day, that those who have married
twice after baptism, cannot become ordained, showing that there is a distinction made between first and
second marriages. The Apostolic Canons state in Canon XVII, “He who has been twice married after baptism,
or who has had a concubine, cannot become a bishop, presbyter, or deacon, or any other of the sacerdotal
list.”1

The Apostolic Constitutions permit second marriage, reprove third marriage, and forbid fourth marriage:

For you ought to know this, that once marrying according to the law is righteous, as being according
to the will of God; but second marriages, after the promise, are wicked, not on account of the
marriage itself, but because of the falsehood. Third marriages are indications of incontinency. But
such marriages as are beyond the third are manifest fornication, and unquestionable uncleanness.2

The Canons of St. Basil strongly express his aversion to successive marriages, showing that there is a
“distinction [made] between the deaths of the first, second and third husbands” and that sin and dishonor can
be attributed here:

Canon IV of St. Basil:

In the case of trigamy and polygamy they laid down the same rule, in proportion, as in the case of
digamy; namely one year for digamy (some authorities say two years); for trigamy men are
separated for three and often for four years; but this is no longer described as marriage at all, but as
polygamy; nay rather as limited fornication. It is for this reason that the Lord said to the woman of
Samaria, who had had five husbands, “he whom thou now hast is not thy husband.” (John iv. 18.) He
does not reckon those who had exceeded the limits of a second marriage as worthy of the title of
husband or wife. In cases of trigamy we have accepted a seclusion of five years, not by the canons,
but following the precept of our predecessors. Such offenders ought not to be altogether prohibited
from the privileges of the Church; they should be considered deserving of hearing after two or three
years, and afterwards of being permitted to stand in their place; but they must be kept from the
communion of the good gift, and only restored to the place of communion after showing some fruit of
repentance.3

Canon L of St. Basil:

There is no law as to trigamy: a third marriage is not contracted by law. We look upon such things as
the defilements of the Church. But we do not subject them to public condemnation, as being better
than unrestrained fornication.4

Canon LXXX Of St. Basil:

On polygamy the Fathers are silent, as being brutish and altogether inhuman. The sin seems to me
worse than fornication. It is therefore reasonable that such sinners should be subject to the canons;
namely a year’s weeping, three years kneeling and then reception. 5

1 Percival, Seven Ecumenical Councils, p. 595.

2 James Donaldson (translator and editor), Constitutions of the Holy Apostles, Book III, Sec. II, p. 426, in ANF,
Vol. VII.
3 NPNF, Series II, Vol. VIII, pp. 225 – 226.
4 NPNF, Series II, Vol. VIII, p. 240.
5 NPNF, Series II, Vol. VIII, p. 258. This does not refer to polygamy in the modern sense, and Zonaras and

Balsamon, with several modern scholars, understand “polygamy” here to mean fourth and more marriages.
 125

The Dictionary of Christian Antiquities has a short overview of the subject, showing that there were
significant penalties to multiple marriages throughout Church history. 1 For example, Herard of Tours, A.D.
858, declares any greater number of wives than two to be unlawful, and St. Nicephorus of Constantinople, A.D.
814, suspends trigamists for five years. Several other Church Fathers (Epiphanius, Theodoret, St. Ambrose,
St. Augustine, and St. Jerome) are cited, who “pronounce in like manner in favour of the legality and against
the propriety of a second marriage. This was the general sentiment in the early church.”2 Gregory Nazianzus
also calls a third marriage unlawfulness.3 In general, a second marriage was reluctantly conceded, and a third
marriage was considered the lesser evil, but fourth marriages went beyond the limits of acceptance. Many
other authorities could be cited, and I could go much more in-depth, but it is clear that the Church Fathers are
not as willing as the Latin Council of Florence to allow the legality of fourth and unlimited more marriages.

The Byzantine code of civil law, published between 870 – 879, under the names of Emperors Basil,
Constantine, and Leo, states the following:

A law was laid down by the ancients and confirmed by the most pious Justinian, whereby
those who wished might extend cohabitation as far as a fourth marriage; he had in mind, no doubt, to
how many persons it naturally happens that their partners in marriage die early, when they
themselves are still youthful, and nothing can resist their natural desires; so that it happens to such
that they are debarred from chaste wedlock, and turn to criminal intimacies. We, who are subject to
the same natural weakness, might well adhere to the ancient laws in this regard; but we see that the
sacred [sc. canon] law forbids it. For this reason Our Serenity, wishing to curb the abandoned
passions of those in love, forbids anyone to proceed to a fourth cohabitation, and orders that those
who have proceeded to a third shall be subject to the canonical penalties of the Church; so that the
same writ shall run in the case of a third cohabitation as in that of a second. Let it now be absolutely
clear to all, that if any shall dare to proceed to a fourth marriage, which is no marriage, not merely
shall such a pretended marriage be of no validity and the offspring of it be illegitimate, but it shall be
a subject to the punishment of those who are soiled with the filthiness of fornication, it being
understood that the persons who have indulged in it shall be separated from one another. 4

There was a controversy over this issue in the early tenth century, and though there had previously been
some differences within the Church in how successive marriages were treated, the matter finally became
settled for East and West. Philip Schaff writes on the tetragamy controversy:

The fourth marriage of the emperor Leo the Philosopher (886–912), which was forbidden by
the laws of the Greek church, caused a great schism in the East (905).a The Patriarch Nicolas
Mysticus solemnly protested and was deposed (906), but Pope Sergius III. (904–911), instead of
siding with suffering virtue as Pope Nicolas had done, sanctioned the fourth marriage (which was not
forbidden in the West) and the deposition of the conscientious patriarch.
Leo on his death-bed restored the deposed patriarch (912). A Synod of Constantinople in
920, at which Pope John X. was represented, declared a fourth marriage illegal, and made no
concessions to Rome. The Emperor Constantine, Leo’s son, prohibited a fourth marriage by an edict;
thereby casting a tacit imputation on his own birth. The Greek church regards marriage as a
sacrament, and a necessary means for the propagation of the race, but a second marriage is

1 Frederick Meyrick, Marriage, Second Marriage, in William Smith and Samuel Cheetham (editors), A
Dictionary of Christian Antiquities, Vol. II, pp. 1103 – 1104, London: John Murray, 1880.
2 Meyrick, op. cit., pp. 1103 – 1104.
3 “παρανομία”. Orat. 31. NPNF, Series II, Vol. VIII, p. 258, n. 4.
4 Romilly James Heald Jenkins, Byzantium: The Imperial Centuries A.D. 610 – 1071, pp. 217 – 218, London:

Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 1966.

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prohibited to the clergy, a third marriage is tolerated in laymen as a sort of legal concubinage, and a
fourth is condemned as a sin and a scandal. The pope acquiesced, and the schism slumbered during
the dark tenth century. The venal Pope John XIX. (1024) was ready for an enormous sum to
renounce all the claim of superiority over the Eastern patriarchs, but was forced to break off the
negotiations when his treasonable plan was discovered.

[Schaff’s footnote:] a) Leo himself had forbidden not only tetragamy, but even trigamy. His four
wives were Theophano, Zoë (his former mistress), Eudokia, and Zoë Karbonopsyne, who in 905 bore
him a son, Constantine Porphyrogenitus (or Porphyrogennetos, d. 959). See Hergenrö ther, Phot. III.
656 sq.)1

The Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium has an article on the “Tomos of Union”:

(τόμος ϵ̔ νώσεως), a document that formulated the decision of the local council of Constantinople of
920, convened to settle the conflict between the partisans of Patr. Euthymios and Nicholas I Mystikos
(see under Constantinople, Councils of). Solemnly proclaimed on 9 July 920, the Tomos attempted to
terminate the long dispute over the tetragamy of Leo VI by completely banning a fourth marriage
and restricting the third marriage (with the penalty of four to five years’ deprivation of
communion). … The Tomos signified not only the unification of the Byz. church, very important for a
government that was at war with Bulgaria, but also the restoration of the alliance with Rome, since
the papal representatives approved of the Council of 920.2

An article on the “Tetragamy of Leo VI” says:

On 1 Feb. 907 Leo deposed Nicholas, and soon thereafter Doukas escaped to the Arabs; Nicholas was
replaced as patriarch by Euthymios, who removed the epitimion but also severely punished the
priest Thomas who had performed the fourth marriage. This compromise solution was confirmed by
a council of patriarchal envoys convened in Constantinople (Feb. 907). Nicholas’s return to power in
912 gave a new aspect to the struggle; he energetically deposed supporters of Euthymios from many
sees and promoted his own candidates. The political instability of the regency after Leo’s death
(Constantine VII being a minor) and the active involvement of the papacy in the conflict aggravated
the situation. Euthymios’s death in 917 paved the way for reconciliation, finally achieved in July 920
by Romanos I Lekapenos, who arranged the promulgation of the Tomos of Union; three years later
Rome approved the Tomos, and the papal delegates joined Nicholas in anathematizing the fourth
marriage.3

This Council of 920 proclaimed, speaking of its decision as a “holy decree of the Church”:

So now we declare unanimously and by common consent that from this present year, which
is the year 6428, in the eighth indiction, no one shall venture to contract a fourth marriage, but that it
shall be utterly banned, and that anyone who should wish to enter into such a union shall be
excluded from every religious congregation and even forbidden to enter the holy temple, as long as

1 Philip Schaff, History of the Christian Church, Vol. IV, Ch. V, § 71., pp. 317 – 318, New York, NY: Charles
Scribner’s Sons, 1905.
2 Alexander P. Kazhdan, Tomos of Union, in The Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium, Vol. III, p. 2093, Oxford:

Oxford University Press, 1991. The text of the Tome of Union, with a critical Greek edition and English
translation, can be found in L. G. Westerink, Nicholas I, Patriarch of Constantinople: Miscellaneous Writings,
200., B., pp. 58 – 69, Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks, 1981.
3 Alexander P. Kazhdan, Tetragamy of Leo VI, in The Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium, Vol. III p. 2027.
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the union continues. This, in fact, is what the Holy Fathers before us have also decreed; and we, too,
making their view more explicit, excommunicate him as alien from the Christian polity.1

Thus the Latin Council of Florence contradicts Pope John X and the Church of the tenth century with regard to
the legality of fourth marriages.

For further reading on this topic, see the two articles by Nicolas Oikonomides, Leo VI and the Narthex Mosaic
of Saint Sophia; Leo VI’s Legislation of 907 Forbidding Fourth Marriages: An Interpolation in the “Procheiros
Nomos” (IV, 25-27), found in Dumbarton Oaks Papers, Vol. XXX, pp. 151 – 172 and 173 – 193, Washington,
DC: Harvard University Press, 1976. Also see John Lawrence Boojamra, The Eastern Schism of 907 and the
Affair of the Tetragamia, in JEH, Vol. XXV, pp. 113 – 133, 1974; Patricia Karlin-Hayter, New Arethas
Documents III, Byzantion, Vol. XXXII, No. 1., pp. 117 – 127, Brussels: Peeters Publishers, 1962; Patricia Karlin-
Hayter, New Arethas Documents IV, Byzantion, Vol. XXXII, No. 2., pp. 387 – 487, Brussels: Peeters Publishers,
1962; Patricia Karlin-Hayter, New Arethas Documents V, Byzantion, Vol. XXXIV, No. 1., pp. 49 – 67, Brussels:
Peeters Publishers, 1964; R. J. H. Jenkins and Basil Laourdas, Eight Letters of Arethas on the Fourth Marriage
of Leo the Wise, in Hellē nika, Vol. XIV, pp. 293 – 372, Thessalonica: Hetaireia Makedonikon Spoudon, 1956
(reprinted in R. J. H. Jenkins, Studies on Byzantine History of the 9th and 10th Centuries, Ch. VII, pp. 293 –
370, London: Variorum Reprints, 1970); R. J. H. Jenkins, Three Documents Concerning the “Tetragamy”,
Dumbarton Oaks Papers, Vol. XVI, pp. 229 – 241, Washington, DC: Harvard University Press, 1962 (reprinted
in R. J. H. Jenkins, Studies on Byzantine History of the 9th and 10th Centuries, Ch. VIII, pp. 231 – 241, London:
Variorum Reprints, 1970); Milton Vasil Anastos, Aspects of the Mind of Byzantium: Political Theory,
Theology, and Ecclesiastical Relations with the See of Rome, in Constantinople and Rome: A Survey of the
Relations between the Byzantine and the Roman Churches, Ch. XVIII, Aldershot: Ashgate, 2001; R. J. H.
Jenkins and L. G. Westerink, Nicholas I, Patriarch of Constantinople: Letters, Washington, DC: Dumbarton
Oaks, 1973; L. G. Westerink, Nicholas I, Patriarch of Constantinople: Miscellaneous Writings, Washington, DC:
Dumbarton Oaks, 1981; Nicholas G. Itsines, Patriarch Nicholas Mysticos and the Fourth Marriage of Leo VI
the Wise, Dissertation: Fordham University, New York, NY, 1973. There are also various moral and social
reasons why a fourth marriage should not be permitted.

On the sacrament of marriage in general, see John Meyendorff, Marriage: An Orthodox Perspective,
Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 3rd Ed., 1984.

Ch. VI Confession

With regard to the sacrament of confession (also called penance or repentance), the differences here are
more philosophical and not as directly significant to the present treatise. One Orthodox criticism of the Latin

1 L. G. Westerink, Nicholas I, Patriarch of Constantinople: Miscellaneous Writings, 200., B., pp. 64 – 65,
Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks, 1981. The text of the Tome of Union, with a critical Greek edition and
English translation, can be found in this work, pp. 58 – 69. It is worth noting that in the acclamations, this
Council multiple times lists St. Photius among “the most holy and Orthodox Patriarchs of Constantinople –
eternal their memory!” (op. cit., pp. 71, 73 (twice), 75 (twice), 81 (twice), and 83), and then says, “All that has
been written or spoken against the holy Patriarchs Ignatius, Photius, … – anathema! (op. cit., p. 83). Photius
continues to be spoken highly of in subsequent Synodikons of Orthodoxy, such as in the Georgian Synodikon
of Orthodoxy in 1025, which says, “Ignatius, Photius, … the holy and Orthodox patriarchs – may their memory
and blessing be eternal! … Any accusation that has been written by anyone against the holy patriarchs …
Ignatius, Photius, … is evil and in vain. … The Orthodox patriarchs Ignatius, Photius, … – may their memory
and blessing be eternal!” (Natia Gabrichidze, Davide Dainese, and Norman Russell (translators), B. Martin-
Hisard, Synodicum Georgicum, pp. 416, 418, & 424 (Old Georgian on pp. 417, 419, & 425), in Alberto Melloni
(editor), The Great Councils of the Orthodox Churches: From Constantinople 861 to Moscow 2000, Vol. I,
Turnhout: Brepols Publishers, 2016.) Also in the Synodikon of Orthodoxy of Patriarch Alexios Studites
(Patriarch of Constantinople 1025 – 1043) (Frederick Lauritzen, Synodicum Orthodoxiae Alexii Studitae, 6., p.
393, line 5, in Great Councils, Vol. I)
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practice of confession is that the Latins have “a purely formal and juridical understanding” of it, as Orthodox
priest and professor Alexander Schmemann (1921 – 1983) says:

Another source of difficulties is the theoretical, or even theological, confusion as to the nature of the
sacrament of penance. In practice a purely formal and juridical understanding of it, clearly Western
and “romanizing” in its origin, coexists paradoxically with an equally doubtful reduction of
confession to psychology. In the first case the man comes to the priest, confesses transgressions of
Christian law, and receives absolution which entitles him to the second sacrament “of obligation” –
Holy Communion. Confession proper is reduced here to a minimum, and in some churches even
replaced by a general formula to be read by the penitent. All emphasis is on the priest’s power of
absolution and the latter is considered “valid” regardless of the state of soul of the penitent. If the
first case reveals “romanizing” tendencies, the second can be termed “protestantizing”. Confession is
regarded as “counseling,” as helping and solving difficulties and problems and is a dialogue not
between man and God, but between man and a supposedly wise and experienced advisor with ready
answers to all human problems. Both tendencies, however, obscure and deform the truly Orthodox
understanding and practice of confession. 1

The confessional, or wooden box or booth, the structure in which modern Roman Catholics perform the
sacrament of penance, is of relatively recent (16th century) introduction. According to the Encyclopædia
Britannica, the confessional is:

a box, cabinet or stall, in which the priest in Roman Catholic churches sits to hear the confessions of
penitents. The confessional is usually a wooden structure, with a centre compartment—entered
through a door or curtain—in which the priest sits, and on each side a latticed opening for the
penitents to speak through, and a step on which they kneel. By this arrangement the priest is hidden,
but the penitent is visible to the public. Confessionals sometimes form part of the architectural
scheme of the church; many finely decorated specimens, dating from the late 16th and the 17th
centuries, are to be found in churches on the continent of Europe. A notable example, in Renaissance
style, is in the church of St Michel at Louvain. But, more usually, confessionals are movable pieces of
furniture.

The confessional in its modern form dates no farther back than the 16th century, and Du
Cange cites the year 1563 for an early use of the word confessionale for the sacrum poenitentiae
tribunal. …

In England, before the Reformation, publicity was reckoned the best safeguard. Thus
Archbishop Walter Reynolds, in 1322, says in his Constitutions: “Let the priest choose for himself a
common place for hearing confessions, where he may be seen generally by all in the church; and do
not let him hear any one, and especially any woman, in a private place, except in great necessity.” It
would seem that the priest usually heard confessions at the chancel opening or at a bench end in the
nave near the chancel. There is, however, in some churchwardens accounts mention of a special seat:
“the shryving stool,” “shriving pew” or “shriving place” (Gasquet, Parish Life in Mediaeval England, p.
199). At Lenham in Kent there is an ancient armchair in stone, with a stone bench and steps on one
side, which appears to be a confessional.2

The monks of the Holy Monastery of Great Meteoron have written the following on this subject in a document
against the Latins:

On the mystery of repentance, the Holy Confession of the Roman Catholics is like a trial and the
communication is impersonal. The repenter tells his sins, separated and unknown to the confessor

1 Alexander Schmemann, Some Reflections on Confession, 2., in St. Vladimir’s Seminary Quarterly, Vol. V, No.
3, Fall, 1961, p. 38, Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary, 1961.
2 Walter Alison Phillips, Confessional, in Hugh Chisholm (editor), Encyclopædia Britannica, Vol. VI, pp. 904 –

905, New York, NY: Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 11th Ed., 1911.
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(within the wooden booths) and receives the penalties and absolution. There is no relationship with
the shepherd, and the ecclesiastical fellowship but a legalistic and impersonal relationship. The
legalistic justification of the sinner and not the forgiveness, the return and restitution to the father’s
home (The Church) and to the father’s bosom. In contrast, in the Orthodox Church there is a personal
interaction of the faithful with the priest. The forgiveness of sins finds its source in the sacrifice upon
the Cross of our Lord and not through the intercessions of the saints and the other factors as the
papists preach.1

The Russian priest, theologian, and professor Michael Ivanovich Pomazansky (1888 – 1988) writes the
following on “The Roman Catholic View” of the mystery of repentance:

From this is apparent the unacceptability of the Roman Catholic view of penances, which
proceeds from legal concepts according to which: (a) every sin or sum of sins must have an
ecclesiastical punishment (apart from the fact that often misfortunes – for example, illnesses – are a
natural recompense for sin, so that often the sinner himself can see in his fate a Divine punishment
for sins); (b) this punishment can be removed by an “indulgence,” which can be given even in
advance, for example, on the occasion of jubilee celebrations; a (c) the Church, that is, its head, the
Bishop of Rome (the Pope), in giving indulgences, applies to persons who are subject to penance the
“merits of the saints,” taking them from the so-called “treasury” of supererogatory works.b

If among certain Western teachers of the ancient Church, penances were called
“satisfactions,” they were called this only in the moral sense, as a means for deepening the awareness
of sinfulness in the sinner, this being “satisfactory” for the aim of edification, but not as a legal
justification.

[Rose and Editor’s Footnotes:] a) For example, the “holy year” proclaimed by Pope Paul VI in 1975.
b) Roman Catholic theologians divide good works into two aspects: merit (which is personal and non-
transferable), and satisfaction (expiation); the latter aspect can be transferred to others who are
lacking in “satisfaction.” The “satisfaction” of all saints (and first of all, of Christ Himself), makes up a
“treasury” which the Pope distributes to the faithful by means of “indulgences,” formally defined as “a
remission of the temporal punishment due to sin, the guilt of which has been forgiven.”
“Supererogatory works,” or “works of supererogation,” are the “excess” satisfactions of saints, not
required for their salvation, which enter into the above-mentioned “treasury” (See the Catholic
Encyclopedia 1913 ed., article “Indulgences.”) All these ideas were developed in 13th-century
scholasticism and are totally foreign to Orthodox thinking.2

Also see revered Romanian Orthodox theologian and professor Fr. Dumitru Stăniloae’s (1903 – 1993) chapter
on Repentance: The Mystery of Forgiveness in his book on Orthodox Dogmatic Theology,3 and Repentance
and Confession by Hieromonk Gregorios (1936 – current).4

Ch. VII Holy Orders

1 Holy Monastery of Great Meteoron, The Falsehoods of Papism: The Differences of Orthodoxy from Papism,
12., https://www.impantokratoros.gr/Papism-Falsehoods.en.aspx (originally in Greek).
2 Fr. Seraphim Rose (translator and annotator), Michael Ivanovich Pomazansky, Orthodox Dogmatic

Theology: A Concise Exposition, Part II, Ch. VIII, The Mystery (Sacrament of Repentance), Platina, CA: Saint
Herman of Alaska Brotherhood, 3rd Ed., 2005. See the rest of Pomazansky’s chapter on this sacrament. Also
see the short chapters in the next Part on The Papal Treasury of Merit, Indulgences, and Scholasticism.
3 Ioan Ionita and Robert Barringer (translators and editors), Dumitru Staniloae, The Experience of God:

Orthodox Dogmatic Theology, Vol. V, Ch. V, pp. 113 – 133, Brookline, MA: Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 2012.
4 Rev. Fr. Michael Monos (editor), Stelios Zarganes (translator), Hieromonk Gregorios, Repentance and

Confession, in Spiritual Life Series, Vol. I, Columbia, MO: Newrome Press, 2nd Ed., 2015.
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With regard to Holy Orders, one important difference is sacerdotal celibacy, which was discussed in the
section on the sacrament of marriage.

Another point of difference is with regard to the matter and form of ordination. The Catholic Encyclopedia
admits that for most of the first millennium the Latin Church only used imposition of hands, like the Orthodox
Church to this day. Later on, the West added the tradition (handing over) of the instruments (e.g., the chalice,
paten, book of the Gospels) and changed its symbolical language at ordination. Also, many scholastic
theologians have held a position later abandoned by Roman Catholics. The Catholic Encyclopedia’s article on
Holy Orders states:

Matter and Form. – In the question of the matter and form of this sacrament we must
distinguish between the three higher orders and the subdiaconate and minor orders. The Church
having instituted the latter, also determines their matter and form. With regard to the former, the
received opinion maintains that the imposition of hands is the sole matter. This has been
undoubtedly used from the beginning; to it, exclusively and directly, the conferring of grace is
ascribed by St. Paul and many Fathers and councils. The Latin Church used it exclusively for nine
or ten centuries, and the Greek Church to this day knows no other matter. Many scholastic
theologians have held that the tradition of the instruments was the sole matter even for the strictly
hierarchical orders, but this position has long been universally abandoned. Other scholastics
held that both imposition of hands and the tradition of the instruments constitute the matter of the
sacrament; this opinion still finds defenders. Appeal is made to the Decree of Eugene IV to the
Armenians, but the pope spoke “of the integrating and accessory matter and form, which he wished
Armenians to add to the imposition of hands, long since in use amongst them, that they might thus
conform to the usage of the Latin Church, and more firmly adhere to it, by uniformity of rites”
(Benedict XIV, “De syn. dioc.”, VIII, x, 8). The real foundation of the latter opinion is the power of the
Church with regard to the sacrament. Christ, it is argued, instituted the Sacrament of Order by
instituting that in the Church there should be an external rite, which would of its own nature signify
and confer the priestly power and corresponding grace. As Christ did not ordain His Apostles by
imposition of hands, it would seem that He left to the Church the power of determining by which
particular rite the power and grace should be conferred. The Church’s determination of the
particular rite would be the fulfilling of a condition required in order that the Divine institution
should take effect. The Church determined the simple imposition of hands for the East and added, in
the course of time, the tradition of the instruments for the West – changing its symbolical
language according as circumstances of place or time required.

The question of the form of the sacrament naturally depends on that of the matter. If the
tradition of the instruments be taken as the total or partial matter, the words which accompany it
will be taken as the form. If the simple imposition of hands be considered the sole matter, the words
which belong to it are the form. The form which accompanies the imposition of hands contains the
words “Accipe spiritum sanctum”, which in the ordination of priests, however, are found with the
second imposition of hands, towards the end of the Mass, but these words are not found in the old
rituals nor in the Greek Euchology. Thus the form is not contained in these words, but in the longer
prayers accompanying the former imposition of hands, substantially the same from the beginning.
All that we have said about the matter and form is speculative; in practice, whatever has been
prescribed by the Church must be followed, and the Church in this, as in other sacraments, insists
that anything omitted should be supplied.1

Part II Theological Innovations

1Hubert Ahaus, Holy Orders, in The Catholic Encyclopedia, Vol. XI, p. 281, New York, NY: The Universal
Knowledge Foundation, 1913. Ahaus (1877 – 1944) was a Roman Catholic priest and professor.
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Ch. I The Immaculate Conception of Mary

“For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God” (Romans iii. 23)

The Immaculate Conception is another Roman novelty that stands against Scriptures and the Church Fathers.
This is the doctrine that the Blessed Virgin Mary was conceived without original sin, 1 and was absolutely
sinless from the first instance of her existence. Latin Pope Pius IX formally defined this dogma on 8 December
1854 in his Bull Ineffabilis Deus:

We declare, pronounce, and define that the doctrine, which holds that the most Blessed Virgin Mary
at the first instant of her conception, by a singular grace and privilege of Almighty God, in virtue of
the merits of Christ Jesus, the Savior of the human race, was preserved immaculate from all stain of
original sin, has been revealed by God, and on this account must be firmly and constantly believed by
all the faithful. Wherefore, if any should presume to think in their hearts otherwise than as it has
been defined by Us, which God avert, let them know and understand that they are condemned by
their own judgment; that they have suffered shipwreck in regard to faith, and have revolted from the
unity of the Church; …2

The general principle of the Church is to preserve the Apostolic teachings throughout the ages and avoid
innovations in dogma or in practice. The Church upholds and maintains the ancient traditions, and does not
follow the latest fashions in religion. Of course there are some controversial issues that require debate and
resolution within the Church, but the Immaculate Conception has far from universal consent of the ancient
Church or medieval Latins. Respected and influential Roman Catholics had hotly disputed the Immaculate
Conception for many hundred years.

The Orthodox response is the following:

The one holy, catholic and apostolic Church of the seven Ecumenical Councils teaches that the
supernatural incarnation of the only-begotten Son and Word of God, of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin
Mary, is alone pure and immaculate; but the Papal Church scarcely forty years ago again made an
innovation by laying down a novel dogma concerning the immaculate conception of the Mother of
God and ever-Virgin Mary, which was unknown to the ancient Church (and strongly opposed at
different times even by the more distinguished among the papal theologians). 3

The Orthodox Church believes that Mary was born without sin, but was conceived in sin and purified in the
womb of St. Anna.4 Mary had original sin and needed healing, but had the grace which allowed her to not
personally fall into sin. However, there are no dogmas or precise definitions on this subject. 5

1 For more on the Orthodox position of original sin or ancestral sin, see the next chapter.
2 “Declaramus, pronuntiamus et definimus doctrinam quae tenet beatissimam Virginem Mariam in primo
instanti suae conceptionis fuisse singulari Omnipotentis Dei gratia et privilegio, intuit meritorum Christi Jesu
Salvatoris humani generis, ab omni originalis culpae labe praeservatam immunem, esse a Deo revelatam,
atque idcirco ab omnibus fidelibus firmiter constanterque credendam.” Denzinger, op. cit., n. 1641, p. 413.
3 Anthimos VII, Encyclical, Art. XIII.
4 The Russian Holy Synod’s condemnation of Count Leo Tolstoy in 1901, mentions, among other heresies, “he

[Tolstoy] denies the immaculate conception of Christ the Lord, the virgin birth, and the sinless birth of the
Mother of God, the Virgin Mary;” (Bryn Geffert and Theofanis G. Stavrou (editors), Eastern Orthodox
Christianity: The Essential Texts, Part III, p. 374, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2016. Translated by
Bryn Geffert from “Opredielenie Sviatieishago Synoda,” Tserkovnyia viedomosti No. 8 (24 February 1901): 45
– 47.) Much more could be written about the Orthodox response to this doctrine.
5 The Synod of Jerusalem in 1672 and the related Acts imply that Mary was conceived with original sin, and

that Mary committed no actual sins in her life (Robertson, The Acts and Decrees of the Synod of Jerusalem, pp.
 132

Before this doctrine was settled, no side was permitted to call the other side heretics. I cite here from an
important document by Pope Alexander VII On December the Eighth, 1661, Pope Alexander VII issued his
Bull, “Solicitudo omnium”, which states:

We also prohibit to all sorts of persons, conformably to the constitution of Sixtus IV., to assert either
that those who hold the contrary opinion, to wit, that the glorious Virgin Mary was conceived with
original sin, are heretics, or that they have become guilty of mortal sin, since the Roman Church and
the Holy See have not yet decided on this matter, as we now, ourselves, by no means wish or intend
to decide thereupon; and even in addition to the penalties to which Sixtus IV. and other Roman
Pontiffs, our predecessors, have subjected those who have dared to condemn the contrary opinion of
heresy, or of mortal sin, or impiety, we subject them to still more grave punishment, such as we have
above imposed upon those who may violate this constitution; and it is our will that not only the
bishops and prelates superior, but the local ordinaries, and even the inquisitors of heresy, whenever
deputed, should proceed against, and make search for, and punish severely, those who shall
contravene this present constitution, whether regulars, of whatsoever order they may be, even the
Company of Jesus, or ecclesiastical and secular persons, of whatever sort, state, rank, or condition
soever they may be … Given at Rome under the ring of the fisherman this 8th December, 1661, and of
our Pontificate the Seventh.1

According to Pope Alexander VII in 1661, it is not permitted to call those heretics who deny the Immaculate
Conception. According to Pope Leo IX in 1854, it “is a doctrine revealed by God” and it is necessary to call
those heretics, who deny the Immaculate Conception. Furthermore, from the historical accounts, it appears
that political expediency is the reason that the Pope of Rome did not infallibly settle the matter earlier.
Several Popes were directly consulted on this question, at multiple times in different centuries, and yet
refused to settle the question. Many highly influential Roman Catholics repeatedly urged and pressed the
Popes to define this dogma. The Latin Council of Trent deliberately avoided discussion of this question, to
preserve unity among Latins and avoid the controversial and troublesome disputes between the Dominicans
and Franciscans.

Since many Roman Catholics hold that Pope Honorius was anathematised for his negligence in not
condemning Monothelitism, on the same principle, one could also hold that the multiple Popes who failed to
define the Immaculate Conception were likewise guilty of negligence in a matter of faith.

The Catholic Encyclopedia writes the following on this topic:

In regard to the sinlessness of Mary the older Fathers are very cautious: some of them even seem to
have been in error on this matter.

93 – 94 & 118 – 119, “And hence hereditary sin flowed to his [Adam’s] posterity; so that none is born after the
flesh who beareth not this burden, and experienceth not the fruits thereof in this present world. But by these
fruits and this burden, we do not understand [actual] sin, … and especially the Mother of God the Word, the
ever-virgin Mary, experienced not these [actual sins], or such like faults; but only what the Divine Justice
inflicted upon man as a punishment for the [original] transgression”).
1 Arthur Edward Gayer, Papal Infallibility and Supremacy tried by Ecclesiastical History, Scripture and

Reason, Ch. XX, pp. 214 – 215, London: Partridge and Co., 1877. See Pope Sixtus IV’s Constitution “Grave
nimis,” Sept. 4, 1483, which “by apostolic authority” reprehends those “who have dared to assert that those
holding the contrary opinion, namely, that the glorious Virgin Mary was conceived with original sin are guilty
of the crime of heresy and of mortal sin, since up to this time there has been no decision made by the Roman
Church and the Apostolic See.” (Denzinger, op. cit., n. 735, p. 237.)
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• Origen, although he ascribed to Mary high spiritual prerogatives, thought that, at the time of
Christ’s passion, the sword of disbelief pierced Mary’s soul; that she was struck by the
poniard of doubt; and that for her sins also Christ died (Origen, “In Luc. hom. Xvii”).
• In the same manner St. Basil writes in the fourth century: he sees in the sword, of which
Simeon speaks, the doubt which pierced Mary’s soul (Epistle 259).
• St. Chrysostom accuses her of ambition, and of putting herself forward unduly when she
sought to speak to Jesus at Capharnaum (Matthew 12:46; Chrysostom, Homily 44 on
Matthew).

But these stray private opinions merely serve to show that theology is a progressive science. … [the
Catholic Encyclopedia here quotes some passages from the Fathers honouring Mary.]

The rhetorical character, however, of many of these and similar passages prevents us from laying too
much stress on them, and interpreting them in a strictly literal sense. The Greek Fathers never
formally or explicitly discussed the question of the Immaculate Conception.

In celebrating the feast of Mary’s Conception the Greeks of old did not consider the theological
distinction of the active and the passive conceptions, which was indeed unknown to them.
They did not think it absurd to celebrate a conception which was not immaculate, as we see from the
Feast of the Conception of St. John. They solemnized the Conception of Mary, perhaps because,
according to the “Proto-evangelium” of St. James, it was preceded by miraculous events (the
apparition of an angel to Joachim, etc.), similar to those which preceded the conception of St. John,
and that of our Lord Himself. Their object was less the purity of the conception than the holiness and
heavenly mission of the person conceived. …

The older feast of the Conception of Mary (Conception of St. Anne), which originated in the
monasteries of Palestine at least as early as the seventh century, and the modern feast of the
Immaculate Conception are not identical in their object.

Originally the Church celebrated only the Feast of the Conception of Mary, as she kept the Feast of St.
John’s conception, not discussing the sinlessness. This feast in the course of centuries became the
Feast of the Immaculate Conception, as dogmatical argumentation brought about precise and
correct ideas, and as the thesis of the theological schools regarding the preservation of Mary
from all stain of original sin gained strength. Even after the dogma had been universally accepted
in the Latin Church, and had gained authoritative support through diocesan decrees and papal
decisions, the old term remained, and before 1854 the term “Immaculata Conceptio” is nowhere
found in the liturgical books, except in the invitatorium of the Votive Office of the Conception. The
Greeks, Syrians, etc. call it the Conception of St. Anne (Eullepsis tes hagias kai theoprometoros Annas,
“the Conception of St. Anne, the ancestress of God”).

Bernard of Clairvaux (1090 – 1153), considered by Roman Catholics as a saint and Doctor of the Church,
directly rejected the Immaculate Conception. The Catholic Encyclopedia states that:

When the canons of the cathedral of Lyons, who no doubt knew Anselm the Younger Abbot of Bury
St. Edmund’s, personally introduced the feast [of the conception of Mary] into their choir after the
death of their bishop in 1240, St. Bernard deemed it his duty to publish a protest against this new
way of honouring Mary. … No doubt, when the feast was introduced in England and Normandy, the
axiom “decuit, potuit, ergo fecit”, the childlike piety and enthusiasm of the simplices building
upon revelations and apocryphal legends, had the upper hand. The object of the feast was not
clearly determined, no positive theological reasons had been placed in evidence. … Hence Albert the
Great observes: “We say that the Blessed Virgin was not sanctified before animation, and the
affirmative contrary to this is the heresy condemned by St. Bernard in his epistle to the canons of
Lyons” (III Sent., dist. iii, p. I, ad 1, Q. i).

St. Bernard was at once answered in a treatise written by either Richard of St. Victor or Peter
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Comestor. In this treatise appeal is made to a feast which had been established to
commemorate an insupportable tradition. It maintained that the flesh of Mary needed no
purification; that it was sanctified before the conception. Some writers of those times entertained
the fantastic idea that before Adam fell, a portion of his flesh had been reserved by God and
transmitted from generation to generation, and that out of this flesh the body of Mary was formed
(Scheeben, op. cit., III, 551), and this formation they commemorated by a feast. The letter of St.
Bernard did not prevent the extension of the feast, for in 1154 it was observed all over France, until
in 1275, through the efforts of the Paris University, it was abolished in Paris and other dioceses.

After the saint’s death the controversy arose anew between Nicholas of St. Albans, an English monk
who defended the festival as established in England, and Peter Cellensis, the celebrated Bishop of
Chartres. Nicholas remarks that the soul of Mary was pierced twice by the sword, i.e. at the foot of
the cross and when St. Bernard wrote his letter against her feast (Scheeben, III, 551). The point
continued to be debated throughout the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, and illustrious names
appeared on each side. St. Peter Damian, Peter the Lombard, Alexander of Hales, St.
Bonaventure, and Albert the Great are quoted as opposing it.

Thomas Aquinas seriously considered this doctrine, and then directly rejected it. According to the Catholic
Encyclopedia:

St. Thomas at first pronounced in favour of the doctrine in his treatise on the “Sentences” (in I. Sent. c.
44, q. I ad 3), yet in his “Summa Theologica” he concluded against it. … The Dominicans, however,
were under special obligation to follow the doctrines of St. Thomas, and the common conclusion was
that St. Thomas was opposed to the Immaculate Conception. Therefore the Dominicans asserted
that the doctrine was an error against faith (John of Montesono, 1373); although they adopted the
feast, they termed it persistently ‘Sanctificatio B.M.V.’ not ‘Conceptio’.

Latin Pope Pius IX boldly claims throughout his official definition that there is a continuous tradition in favour
of the Immaculate Conception by the Church Fathers and ecclesiastical writers, claiming:

And indeed, illustrious documents of venerable antiquity, of both the Eastern and Western Church,
very forcibly testify that this doctrine of the Immaculate Conception of the most Blessed Virgin,
which was daily more and more splendidly explained, stated and confirmed by the highest authority,
teaching, zeal, knowledge, and wisdom of the Church, and which was disseminated among all peoples
and nations of the Catholic world in a marvelous manner – this doctrine always existed in the
Church as a doctrine that has been received from our ancestors, and that has been stamped
with the character of revealed doctrine. For the Church of Christ, watchful guardian that she
is, and defender of the dogmas deposited with her, never changes anything, never diminishes
anything, never adds anything to them; but with all diligence she treats the ancient documents
faithfully and wisely;1 if they really are of ancient origin and if the faith of the Fathers has transmitted
them, she strives to investigate and explain them in such a way that the ancient dogmas of heavenly
doctrine will be made evident and clear, but will retain their full, integral, and proper nature, and will
grow only within their own genus – that is, within the same dogma, in the same sense and the same
meaning.

The Fathers and writers of the Church, well versed in the heavenly Scriptures, had nothing more at
heart than to vie with one another in preaching and teaching in many wonderful ways the Virgin’s
supreme sanctity, dignity, and immunity from all stain of sin, and her renowned victory over the
most foul enemy of the human race. This they did in the books they wrote to explain the Scriptures,

1Against the claim that the Latins have “with all diligence treated the ancient documents faithfully and
wisely”, see the book on Forgeries and especially the chapter on forgeries pertaining to the Immaculate
Conception.
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to vindicate the dogmas, and to instruct the faithful. These ecclesiastical writers … This sublime and
singular privilege of the Blessed Virgin, together with her most excellent innocence, purity, holiness
and freedom from every stain of sin, as well as the unspeakable abundance and greatness of all
heavenly graces, virtues and privileges – these the Fathers beheld in that ark of Noah, … In such
allusions the Fathers taught that the exalted dignity of the Mother of God, her spotless innocence and
her sanctity unstained by any fault, had been prophesied in a wonderful manner. In like manner did
they use the words of the prophets to describe this wondrous abundance of divine gifts and the
original innocence of the Virgin of whom Jesus was born. They celebrated the august Virgin as the
spotless dove, … entirely perfect, beautiful, most dear to God and never stained with the least
blemish.

When the Fathers and writers of the Church meditated on the fact that the most Blessed Virgin was,
in the name and by order of God himself, proclaimed full of grace by the Angel Gabriel when he
announced her most sublime dignity of Mother of God, they thought that this singular and solemn
salutation, … To them Mary is an almost infinite treasury, an inexhaustible abyss of these gifts, to
such an extent that she was never subject to the curse and was, together with her Son, the only
partaker of perpetual benediction.

Hence it is the clear and unanimous opinion of the Fathers that the most glorious Virgin, for
whom “he who is mighty has done great things,” was resplendent with such an abundance of
heavenly gifts, with such a fullness of grace and with such innocence, that she is an unspeakable
miracle of God – indeed, the crown of all miracles and truly the Mother of God; that she approaches as
near to God himself as is possible for a created being; and that she is above all men and angels in
glory. Hence, to demonstrate the original innocence and sanctity of the Mother of God, not only
did they frequently compare her to Eve …

Accordingly, the Fathers have never ceased to call the Mother of God … the incorruptible wood that
the worm of sin had never corrupted, …

As if these splendid eulogies and tributes were not sufficient, the Fathers proclaimed with particular
and definite statements that when one treats of sin, the holy Virgin Mary is not even to be mentioned;
for to her more grace was given than was necessary to conquer sin completely. … And hence they
affirmed that the Blessed Virgin was, through grace, entirely free from every stain of sin, and from all
corruption of body and mind; that she was always united with God and joined to him by an eternal
covenant; that she was never in darkness but always in light; …

To these praises they have added very noble words. Speaking of the conception of the Virgin, they
testified that nature yielded to grace, and unable to go on, stood trembling. … They testified, too,
that the flesh of the Virgin, although derived from Adam, did not contract the stains of
Adam, … They affirmed … that at her Immaculate Conception she came into the world all
radiant like the dawn.

This doctrine so filled the minds and souls of our ancestors in the faith … No wonder, then, that the
Pastors of the Church and the faithful gloried daily more and more in professing with so much piety,
religion, and love this doctrine of the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mother of God, which, as
the Fathers discerned, was recorded in the Divine Scriptures; which was handed down in so many of
their most important writings; which was expressed and celebrated in so many illustrious
monuments of venerable antiquity; which was proposed and confirmed by the official and
authoritative teaching of the Church. Hence, nothing was dearer, nothing more pleasing to these
pastors than to venerate, invoke, and proclaim with most ardent affection the Virgin Mother of God
conceived without original sin. Accordingly, from ancient times the bishops of the Church,
ecclesiastics, religious orders, and even emperors and kings, have earnestly petitioned this Apostolic
See to define a dogma of the Catholic Faith the Immaculate Conception of the most holy Mother of
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God.1

It suffices to point out once again that Latin Popes Sixtus IV (on this point expressly endorsed by the Latin
Council of Trent in Session V) and Alexander VII formally prohibited any Roman Catholics from teaching the
Immaculate Conception as a matter of faith (because these Popes said that holding the opinion that Mary was
conceived in sin cannot be called heretical), while Pope Pius IX claims that it “is a doctrine revealed by God”
and that “this doctrine always existed in the Church as a doctrine that has been received from our ancestors,
and that has been stamped with the character of revealed doctrine.” If the Immaculate Conception was really
“a doctrine revealed by God”, then denying the Immaculate Conception is heresy. Thus according to Pius IX’s
infallible decree, Sixtus IV, Alexander VII, and the whole Council of Trent were in error when they explicitly
and publicly denied that the Immaculate Conception was an article of faith, for they condemn those who say
that Maculists are heretics or in mortal sin, but if the Immaculate Conception was truly “a doctrine revealed
by God”, then it is necessary to anathematise those who reject it. To refute Pius IX’s claims, I advise carefully
reading Anglican scholar Edward Bouverie Pusey’s (1800 – 1882) excellent and labourious treatise on this
subject, which is over 500 pages, largely of citations from the Church Fathers and Latin theologians denying
the Immaculate Conception, and answering those that may seem to affirm it.

For further reading, see The Virgin Mary Truly Represented, Against the Inventions and Misrepresentations
of Papists, in A Preservative Against Popery, Vol. XV, pp. 244 – 389, and Vol. XVI, pp. 1 – 56, London: British
Society for Promoting the Religious Principles of the Reformation, 1849 [Anglican author, but with good
historical discussion of the controversy]; Arthur Cleveland Coxe (translator), Abbé Jean Joseph Laborde, The
Impossibility of the Immaculate Conception as an Article of Faith: In Reply to Several Works which Have
Appeared on that Subject of Late Years, Philadelphia, PA: Herman Hooker, 1855 (also see Robert Maguire
(translator), The Abbé Laborde in Rome: His Protest and Persecution, London: Seeley, Jackson, and Halliday,
1855 [Laborde of Lectoure (1804 – 1855) was a French Gallican Roman Catholic priest who strongly argued
against the Immaculate Conception and was persecuted.]); Robert Charles Jenkins (translator), The Judgment
of Thomas de Vio, Cardinal Cajetan, Against the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary,
Canterbury: Ashenden, 1858 & London: Wertheim, Mackintosh, and Hunt; and Whittaker and Co. [a
translation of Cajetan’s short treatise De Conceptione beate Mariae Virginis ad Leonem Decimum Pon. Max in
quinque capita divisus (1515). The only copies of this translation, that I am aware of, are in the Rare Book
Room of Yale University Library, the Universary of London Senate House Library, Cambridge University
Library, and the National Library of Scotland]; George Gladstone (translator), Edward Preuss, The Romish
Doctrine of the Immaculate Conception: Traced from Its Source, Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1867 [this Lutheran
author later converted to Roman Catholicism]; Edward Bouverie Pusey, Eirenicon, Part II, First Letter to the
Very Rev. J. H. Newman, D.D., In Explanation, Chiefly in Regard to The Reverential Love Due to the Ever-
Blessed Theotokos, and The Doctrine of Her Immaculate Conception, with an Analysis of Cardinal De
Turrecremata’s Work on the Immaculate Conception, Oxford: James Parker & Co., 1869 [this is the most
scholarly treatise in the English language against the Immaculate Conception; Pusey’s brief comments on
some criticism of his book can be found in Henry Parry Liddon, Life of Edward Bouverie Pusey, Vol. IV, pp.
150 – 152, London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1897. Pusey later published in 1869, all in Latin, a scholarly
edition of Turrecremata’s Treatise on the Immaculate Conception, which contains the fruits of additional
research on the subject, and verification of more of Turrecremata’s references. Also see Pusey’s Eirenicon,
[Part I], pp. 121 – 190 (subject discussed in general here, and also mentioned elsewhere) and Notes B & C, pp.
351 – 409 (on “Doubts among the Roman Catholic Bishops, as to making the doctrine of the Immaculate
Conception of the Blessed Virgin an Article of faith.” and “The Greek Church believes the Blessed Virgin to
have been conceived in original sin.”), Oxford: John Henry and James Parker, 1865]; Fr. Seraphim Rose
(translator), St. John Maximovitch, The Orthodox Veneration of the Mother of God [Previously titled The
Orthodox Veneration of Mary: The Birthgiver of God], Platina, CA: St. Herman of Alaska Brotherhood, 2012.

1Claudia Carlen, The Papal Encyclicals: 1740 – 1981, Vol. I, 1740 – 1878, Pope Pius IX, Ineffabilis Deus,
Washington, DC: McGrath Publishing Company, 1981.
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Ch. II Legalistic View of Ancestral Sin / Original Sin

The Latins have had an excessively legalistic view of original sin, viewing it more as an imputation of personal
guilt to all mankind. Whereas in Orthodoxy, ancestral sin is the framework of the disease of sin and death
oppressing humanity from the work of the devil, which then is undone by the healing and divine power that
Christ brought to the earth when He established a new humanity cured from such evil and unity in His Body
as the Church. This is a very large topic and I can only give a brief overview in this and the other chapters on
Latin theological innovations and errors.

The 1992 Catechism of the Catholic Church states:

The whole human race is in Adam “as one body of one man.” By this “unity of the human race” all
men are implicated in Adam’s sin, as all are implicated in Christ’s justice … But we do know by
Revelation that Adam had received original holiness and justice not for himself alone, but for all
human nature. By yielding to the tempter, Adam and Eve committed a personal sin, but this sin
affected the human nature that they would then transmit in a fallen state. It is a sin which will be
transmitted by propagation to all mankind, that is, by the transmission of human nature deprived of
original holiness and justice.1

The Vatican approved a document in 2007 on the question of unbaptised infants, which states the following:

Furthermore, they [the “Greek Fathers”] had a different view of the present condition of humanity.
For the Greek Fathers, as the consequence of Adam’s sin, human beings inherited corruption,
possibility, and mortality, from which they could be restored by a process of deification made
possible through the redemptive work of Christ. The idea of an inheritance of sin or guilt – common
in Western tradition – was foreign to this perspective, since in their view sin could only be a free,
personal act …2

Orthodoxy prefers to use the term “ancestral sin”, as opposed to “original sin”, to describe the effect of Adam’s
sin on humanity. The Cuban-American Orthodox priest Fr. Ernesto M. Obregón (1952 – current) writes:

Thus, it is clear in Saint Gregory of Nyssa that Ancestral or Original Sin contains no imputation of
personal guilt, but rather a certain damage to the likeness of God, a damage so widespread and deep-
seated that one must labor and rely on the overflowing grace of God and the Mysteries in order to
begin to conquer the damage inherited from Adam and Eve.3

For more on this issue, see the theological works of Fr. John Savvas Romanides (1927 – 2001), especially
Romanides’s landmark publication Ancestral Sin (Ridgewood, NJ: Zephyr Publishing, 2002), and his Original
Sin According to St. Paul. Also see the following three-part essay published in St. Vladimir’s Seminary
Quarterly, by David Weaver: “The Exegesis of Romans 5:12 Among the Greek Fathers and Its Implications for
the Doctrine of Original Sin: The 5th-12th Centuries” (Vol. 27, No. 3, 1983 & Vol. 29, Nos. 2-3, 1985). Part I in
Vol. 27 is titled “From Paul to Augustine: Romans 5:12 in Early Christian Exegesis.”4 Many other

1 Catechism of the Catholic Church, ¶ 404. Also see ¶ 405, which more correctly states that “original sin does
not have the character of a personal fault in any of Adam’s descendants. It is a deprivation of original holiness
and justice, but human nature has not been totally corrupted.” These paragraphs reflect contemporary
Roman Catholic teaching (as well as ecumenical dialogue with the Orthodox), which has varied with the
centuries. Roman Catholics in earlier times had insisted more on the personal imputation of Adam and Eve’s
sin to mankind.
2 The Hope of Salvation for Infants Who Die Without Being Baptized,

https://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/cti_documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_20070419_un-
baptised-infants_en.html, 2007.
3 Ernesto M. Obregón (OrthoCuban), https://orthodoxwiki.org/Original_sin, 4 March 2010.
4 Bibliographical entry from OrthodoxInfo.com, see http://orthodoxinfo.com/inquirers/inq_western.aspx.
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contemporary Orthodox theologians have also contributed valuable works on this subject, such as
Metropolitan Hierotheos (Vlachos) of Nafpaktos (1945 – current).

Ch. III Latin Soteriology

Orthodoxy views salvation as the unification of man with God (theosis). However, the Latins have innovated
in the theology of how we are saved and the understanding of Christ’s incarnation and crucifixion. Regarding
Latin soteriology, there is a marked development at the beginning of the second millennium. The extremely
influential Roman Catholic theologian Anselm of Canterbury (1033/1034 – 1109, Archbishop from 1093 –
1109, considered a saint by Roman Catholics) was the first to popularly state the theory of penal
substitutionary atonement (which later became further developed by the Protestant Reformers) in his Cur
Deus Homo written in 1099. The Orthodox archpriest and scholar Fr. Patrick Henry Reardon writes:

Anselm understood the evil of sin to consist in its affront to the honor of God … sin is an offence to the
honor of God. Now, reasoned Anselm, if the evil of sin consists in its affront to the divine honor, the
affront can only be removed by someone equal to God in honor, someone able to render to God the
honor men owe Him. That is to say, the very idea of satisfying the divine honor required the
incarnation, the enfleshing of Someone equal to God; that is why the Word became flesh and dwelt
among us. This line of argument is known as St. Anselm’s “satisfaction theory,” which for centuries
has dominated Western soteriology … When we turn to Anselm, however, we detect in his
satisfaction theory a new component: his definition of sin as an affront to God’s honor. This addition,
I contend, is what took soteriology in a new direction. 1

Anselm wrote: “The honour taken away must be repaid, or punishment must follow” (Book I, Ch. VIII).

Anselm was greatly influenced by Latin medieval feudalistic conceptions of honour and authority, and the
English historian Sir Richard William Southern (1912 – 2001) writes:

Anselm’s references to God’s honour are to be interpreted in the light of contemporary usage. God’s
honour is the whole complex of service and worship which the whole creation, animate and
inanimate, in heaven and earth, owes to the Creator. … in withholding his service Man is guilty of
attempting to withdraw some part of God’s ‘honour’. … All this of course is capable of expression in
entirely non-feudal language. But Anselm found the language of feudalism convenient for various
reasons.2

Church historians and scholars have generally recognised that the penal substitution theory was not taught
by the Fathers in the early Church. The Anglican priest and professor Laurence William Grensted (1884 –
1864) wrote that Anselm was a “revolutionary thinker” in this regard:

Bold as were the speculations of Abelard, in reality the most revolutionary thinker of his day was
Anselm, saint and loyal upholder of the authority of the Church. … Yet it has seldom been given to
any writer to work such a change in the history of thought as that wrought by Anselm’s short treatise,
Cur Deus Homo?3

The English Roman Catholic theologian Henry Nutcombe Oxenham (1829 – 1888) writes:

1 Patrick Henry Reardon, Reclaiming the Atonement: An Orthodox Theology of Redemption, Vol. I, The
Incarnate Word [or The Incarnation], pp. 57 – 67, Chesterton, IN: Ancient Faith Publishing, 2015.
2 Richard William Southern, St. Anselm and His Biographer: A Study of Monastic Life and Thought, 1059 – c.

1130, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1963. Southern also describes Anselm’s prayers as part of an
“Anselmian revolution”.
3 Laurence William Grensted, A Short History of the Doctrine of the Atonement, Ch. VI, p. 120, Manchester:

Manchester University Press, 1920.

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we may pause to sum up briefly the main points of teaching on Christ’s work of redemption to be
gathered from the patristic literature of the first three centuries as a whole. And first, as to what it
does not contain. There is no trace, as we have seen, of the notion of vicarious satisfaction, in the
sense of our sins being imputed to Christ and His obedience imputed to us, which some of the
Reformers made the very essence of Christianity; or, again, of the kindred notion that God was angry
with His Son for our sakes, and inflicted on Him the punishment due to us; nor is Isaiah’s prophecy
interpreted in this sense, as afterwards by Luther; on the contrary, there is much which expressly
negatives this line of thought. There is no mention of the justice of God, in the forensic sense of the
word; the Incarnation is invariably and exclusively ascribed to His love; the term satisfaction does
not occur in this connection at all, and where Christ is said to suffer for us, huper (not anti) is the
word always used. It is not the payment of a debt, as in St. Anselm’s Cur Deus Homo, but the
restoration of our fallen nature, that is prominent in the minds of these writers, as the main
object of the Incarnation. They always speak, with Scripture, of our being reconciled to God, not of
God being reconciled to us.1

The Swedish Lutheran bishop Gustaf Emanuel Hildebrand Aulén (1879 – 1977), who wrote an influential
book on the atonement, says:

The history of the doctrine of the Atonement is a history of three types of view, which emerge in turn.
The classic idea emerges with Christianity itself, and remains the dominant type of teaching for a
thousand years. The origin of the Latin doctrine can be exactly determined; it belongs to the West,
and it becomes the dominant form of the doctrine of the Atonement in the West in the Middle Ages.
Though Luther returns to the classic type, and teaches it with unique power, post-Reformation
theology goes back to the Latin type, which is therefore common to the scholasticism of both the
Roman and the Protestant churches.

We have, then, found some interesting connections, which traverse the commonly accepted scheme.
First, we have seen the close connection between the teaching of the Apostolic Age and that of the
early church; at the same time a gulf has opened between both these and the scholastic doctrine of
the Middle Ages. …

The first full statement of the Latin theory by Anselm was followed immediately by the criticism of
Abelard; and the controversy was renewed in full force by the theologians of the Enlightenment. …

Meanwhile the classic idea dropped almost out of sight in the sphere of theology [in the West]; it has
been the common assumption that the other two types of doctrine were the only possible forms
which the Christian doctrine of the Atonement can take. 2

The Anglican professor and theologian James Franklin Bethune-Baker (1861 – 1951) writes:

Of the various aspects of the Atonement which are represented in the pages of the New Testament,
the early Fathers chiefly dwell on those of sacrifice (and obedience), reconciliation, illumination by
knowledge, and ransom. Not till a later time was the idea of satisfaction followed up. a …

From this review of the teaching of the Church it will be seen that there is only the most slender
support to be found in the earliest centuries for some of the views that became current at a later
time. It is at least clear that the sufferings of Christ were not regarded as an exchange or substitution
of penalty, or as punishment inflicted on him by the Father for our sins. There is, that is to say, no
idea of vicarious satisfaction, either in the sense that our sins are imputed to Christ and his obedience

1 Henry Nutcombe Oxenham, The Catholic Doctrine of the Atonement, Ch. II, pp. 128 – 129, London: W. H.
Allen & Co., 3rd Ed., 1881.
2 A. G. Herbert (translator), Gustaf Emanuel Hildebrand Aulén, Christus Victor: An Historical Study of the

Three Main Types of the Idea of Atonement, Ch. VIII, § I, pp. 143 – 144, London: SPCK, 1931.
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to us, or in the sense that God was angry with him for our sakes and inflicted on him punishment due
to us. Wherever language that seems to convey such notions is used, it is safeguarded by the idea of
our union with Christ, so peculiarly close and intimate that we are sharers in his obedience and his
passion, and only so far as we make them our own do we actually appropriate the redemption which
he won for us.

[Bethune-Baker’s Footnote:] a) The only ‘satisfaction’ which was thought of was the satisfaction
which the penitent himself makes. There is no suggestion of any satisfaction of the divine justice
through the sufferings of Christ.1

Within this Latin frame of thinking about salvation, many of the theological innovations discussed here are
related.

For more, see Fr. Reardon’s book on this subject (Vol. II has not yet been published). Also see Matt
Ferdelman, Why I’m Becoming Orthodox, Part II, Why I Deny Penal Substitutionary Atonement, December 29,
2014 (https://journeytoorthodoxy.com/2014/12/why-im-becoming-orthodox-2-of-3/); Christopher
Veniamin, The Orthodox Understanding of Salvation: Theosis in Scripture and Tradition, Dalton, PA: Mount
Thabor Publishing, 2nd Reprint, 2016.

Moreover, the Orthodox Church does not accept Augustine’s errors in regards to deterministic or
unconditional salvation. Roman Catholics have had intense debates within their own communion about this
question, especially between the Jansenists and the Jesuits, and their teaching on this subject has many
distinctions and intricacies which I cannot enter in depth here, except to make some remarks upon St.
Augustine’s teaching.

For three reasons St. Augustine’s teaching on this subject must be subjected to the larger consensus of the
Church Fathers. First, when Augustine countered the Pelagian heresy, he did so from a position of not
knowing Greek,2 which handicaps his ability to be received into the patristic consensus because he is
unfamiliar with the language by which the Church was expressing itself in the original Scriptures, the great
Fathers, and the Ecumenical Councils. Next, Augustine had been a philosopher in his past life and some of this
baggage appeared to carry on well into his episcopacy, and appears to have swayed in his positions, though
out of humility or necessity he wrote many pages of his Retractions, and there was likely much more he
would have retracted had he lived even longer. Lastly, Augustine’s writings are not free from Latin
corruption, as St. Nicodemos states,3 and others point out that the Filioque has been interpolated into some
places of his writings.4 In a nutshell, the question which was provoked by Pelagius and his followers is
whether or not man’s salvation is achieved by the grace of God or by man’s own free will. Pelagius taught that
every man’s free will was not corrupted by Adam’s sin, but Augustine rightly pointed out that this ignores the
workings of grace in our salvation. Pelagianism was condemned throughout the Church, but Augustine’s
position was also not accepted, and the Fathers clearly teach a concept of synergy, which is man working with
the grace of God to achieve salvation, and participating in God’s uncreated energies. Many in the West
followed Augustine, but the whole Church did not accept Augustine’s teaching, and steered a “middle road”
between the two extremes. Those who did not follow Augustine’s teaching on this point include St. Vincent of
Lerins, St. John Cassian (incorrectly labeled by the West as a “Semi-Pelagian”), St. Mark the Ascetic, St. John

1 James Franklin Bethune-Baker, An Introduction to the Early History of Christian Doctrine to the Time of the
Council of Chalcedon, Ch. XVIII, pp. 328 & 351 – 352, London: Methuen & Co., 3rd Ed., 1933.
2 “We are not so familiar with the Greek tongue …” (On the Trinity, Book III, Ch. I). Augustine neglected the

study of Greek in his youth.

3 “… they [Augustine’s writings] were garbled by heretics. This is why Orthodox Easterners do not accept

them in toto and as a matter of course, but only whatever agrees with the common consensus of the catholic
Church.” (Rudder, p. 652.)
4 See the chapter on Corruption of Some Latin Documents with the Filioque. Also see An Interpolation

Pertaining to Purgatory in Erasmus’s Edition of Augustine.

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Chrysostom, St. Gregory the Theologian, St. Gregory the Great, St. Faustus of Riez, St. Maximus the Confessor,
St. Symeon the New Theologian, and the regional synods of Arles and Lyons in the fifth century, and the
synods in Paris and Mainz in the ninth century, along with many others.

This issue is closely connected with theosis and the other theological issues mentioned here, such as on
original sin and the Essence/Energies distinction. An important Orthodox council on this subject was the
Synod of Jerusalem in 1672, directed against Calvinism. 1 Many contemporary Orthodox theologians have
ably discussed this topic.2

Ch. IV Purgatory

The Latins teach that most people who die in the faith will go through a purgatorial fire in the afterlife, which
is a place of torment as painful as the fires of Hell, except only of temporary duration. Latins often present
evidence of early Christians praying for the dead, but the Orthodox Church retains this Apostolic practice, yet
rejects Purgatory as a novelty and unscriptural.

The 1895 Orthodox Encyclical comments on this and the related system of Papal innovations:

The one holy, catholic and apostolic Church of the seven Ecumenical Councils, walking according to
the divinely inspired teaching of the Holy Scripture and the old apostolic tradition, prays and invokes
the mercy of God for the forgiveness and rest of those ‘which have fallen asleep in the Lord’; but the
Papal Church from the twelfth century downwards has invented and heaped together in the person
of the Pope, as one singularly privileged, a multitude of innovations concerning purgatorial fire, a
superabundance of the virtues of the saints, and the distribution of them to those who need them,
and the like, setting forth also a full reward for the just before the universal resurrection and
judgment.3

St. Mark of Ephesus makes the following points against Purgatory: Purgatory is not taught either in the
Scriptures, in the prayers and hymns for the dead, nor in the Church Fathers. The Church services make no
mention of purgatorial fire, but only of eternal fire and unceasing punishment. Prayers for the dead are not
an argument for Purgatory, for the Church prays also for those enjoying blessedness with God, who, of course,
have no need to go through “purgatorial fire”. The passages from II Maccabees xii 44 – 45 and Matt. xii 32 in
no way prove Purgatory or a cleansing by fire and punishment, and rather show remission of sins for the sake
of prayers or Divine love. Regarding the commonly-cited prooftext I Cor. iii 11 – 15, Paul called it not a
purgatorial, but a proving fire, through which good and honourable works also must pass, and such have no
need of any cleansing. “That day” refers to the day of Judgment, but to suppose the existence of purgatorial

1 James Nathaniel William Beauchamp (J. N. W. B.) Robertson, The Acts and Decrees of the Synod of
Jerusalem: Sometimes Called the Council of Bethlehem, Holden Under Dositheus, Patriarch of Jerusalem in
1672, London: Thomas Baker, 1899. This Synod is not infallible, and later theologians and synods have felt
free to revisit some of the issues addressed in Jerusalem, such as on the Old Testament canon. Some
Orthodox theologians have criticised this Synod for Latin leanings (such as on original sin). The Synod was
primarily intended against Calvinism and does not directly address or discuss any Roman Catholic teaching
besides the Filioque (which the Calvinists retained from Rome).
2 See Bishop Elias Minatios, On Predestination, http://orthodoxinfo.com/inquirers/predestination.aspx; John

Sanidopoulos, John Cassian, Vincent of Lerins and Faustus of Riez Were Not Semi-Pelagians, May 24, 2009,
https://www.johnsanidopoulos.com/2009/05/saints-vincent-of-lerins-and-john.html; John Sanidopoulos,
Saint Photios the Great Against the Augustinian Doctrine of Original Sin, June 15, 2021,
https://www.johnsanidopoulos.com/2021/06/saint-photios-great-against-augustinian.html. The question
of grace and free-will is a very large topic in and of itself. Also see Orthodox theologians on theosis, and
commentaries on the Bible. However, I am not aware of any official Orthodox statement against the Roman
Catholics on this matter.
3 Anthimos VII, Encyclical, Art. XII.
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fire after the final sentence is a total absurdity. Christ will divide all those under judgment into two parts, and
did not at all declare that there are any who are to be cleansed by fire. The fire mentioned by Paul likely
refers to the fire mentioned by the Prophets David (Ps. xlix 4, Ps. xcvi 3) and Daniel (Dan. vii 10). The “work”
of sinners is utterly destroyed, and they are “saved”, that is, preserved and kept forever (and not annihilated).
Objections raised from (mis)quotations of the Fathers are answered and Saints John Chrysostom, Basil the
Great, Augustine, Ambrose, Gregory the Great, Gregory of Nyssa and other Fathers are shown to actually teach
the Orthodox doctrine and not the Latin Purgatory. Divine Justice does not necessitate purgatorial
punishment after death, when considering the remission of sins and deliverance from punishment.1

Augustine has often been brought forth in defence of Purgatory, but he speaks of the matter merely as a
possibility, and not as the settled doctrine of the Church, which could plead antiquity for its origin,
universality for its belief, and general consent for its truth. Augustine’s words show that Purgatory was not a
dogma when he was writing. Moreover, what Augustine was speculating about is notably different from the
modern Latin Purgatory. Augustine writes in his Enchiridion:

And it is not impossible that something of the same kind may take place even after this life.
It is a matter that may be inquired into, and either ascertained or left doubtful, whether some
believers shall pass through a kind of purgatorial fire, and in proportion as they have loved with
more or less devotion the goods that perish, be less or more quickly delivered from it. 2

In Augustine’s Civitate Dei (City of God):

But if it be said that in the interval of time between the death of this body and that last day of
judgment and retribution which shall follow the resurrection, the bodies of the dead shall be exposed
to a fire of such a nature that it shall not affect those who have not in this life indulged in such
pleasures and pursuits as shall be consumed like wood, hay, stubble, but shall affect those others who
have carried with them structures of that kind; if it be said that such worldliness, being venial, shall
be consumed in the fire of tribulation either here only, or here and hereafter both, or here that it may
not be hereafter, – this I do not contradict, because possibly it is true. For perhaps even the death
of the body is itself a part of this tribulation, for it results from the first transgression, so that the time
which follows death takes its color in each case from the nature of the man’s building. The
persecutions, too, which have crowned the martyrs, and which Christians of all kinds suffer, try both
buildings like a fire, consuming some, along with the builders themselves, if Christ is not found in
them as their foundation, while others they consume without the builders, because Christ is found in
them, and they are saved, though with loss; and other buildings still they do not consume, because
such materials as abide for ever are found in them. In the end of the world there shall be in the time
of Antichrist tribulation such as has never before been. How many edifices there shall then be, of
gold or of hay, built on the best foundation, Christ Jesus, which that fire shall prove, bringing joy to
some, loss to others, but without destroying either sort, because of this stable foundation!3

St. John Chrysostom, who understood Greek better than Augustine did, has the following to say on the
common proof-text of Purgatory. It is significant that Chrysostom interprets the word “saved” in “but he
himself shall be saved, but so as by fire;” as meaning preserved in the fire, and of the damned remaining
undestroyed in the eternal torment of Hell fire.

[5.] Ver. 12. “If any man build upon this foundation, gold, silver, costly stones, wood, hay,
stubble.” For after the faith there is need of edification: and therefore he saith elsewhere, “Edify one
another with these words.” (perhaps 1 Thes. v. 11; iv. 5.) For both the artificer and the learner
contribute to the edifying. Wherefore he saith, “But let every man take heed how he buildeth

1 Summarised from St. Mark’s homilies on Purgatory, translated with notes in Fr. Seraphim Rose, The Soul
After Death, Appendix I, pp. 196 – 213.
2 J. F. Shaw (translator), St. Augustin, The Enchiridion; or, On Faith, Hope, and Love, Ch. LXIX, in NPNF, Series I,

Vol. III, p. 260.

3 Marcus Dods (translator), Augustine City of God, Book XXI, Ch. XXVI, in NPNF, Series I, Vol. II, pp. 474 – 475.
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thereon.” (1 Cor. iii. 10.) But if faith had been the subject of these sayings, the thing affirmed is not
reasonable. For in the faith all ought to be equal, since “there is but one faith;” (Ephes. iv. 5.) but in
goodness of life it is not possible that all should be the same. Because the faith is not in one case less,
in another more excellent, but the same in all those who truly believe. But in life there is room for
some to be more diligent, others more slothful; some stricter, and others more ordinary; that some
should have done well in greater things, others in less; that the errors of some should have been
more grievous, of others less notable. On this account he saith, “Gold, silver, costly stones, wood, hay,
stubble, – every man’s work shall be made manifest:” – his conduct; that is what he speaks of here: –
“If any man’s work abide which he built thereupon, he shall receive a reward; if any man’s work shall
be burned, he shall suffer loss.” Whereas, if the saying related to disciples and teachers, he ought not
to “suffer loss” for disciples refusing to hear. And therefore he saith, “Every man shall receive his
own reward according to his own labor” not according to the result, but according to “the labor.” For
what if the hearers gave no heed? Wherefore this passage also proves that the saying is about
actions.

Now his meaning is this: If any man have an ill life with a right faith, his faith shall not shelter
him from punishment, his work being burnt up. The phrase, “shall be burned up,” means, “shall not
endure the violence of the fire.” But just as if a man having golden armor on were to pass through a
river of fire, he comes from crossing it all the brighter; but if he were to pass through it with hay, so
far from profiting, he destroys himself besides; so also is the case in regard of men’s works. For he
doth not say this as if he were discoursing of material things being burnt up, but with a view of
making their fear more intense, and of shewing how naked of all defence he is who abides in
wickedness. Wherefore he said, “He shall suffer loss:” lo, here is one punishment: “but he himself
shall be saved, but so as by fire;” lo, again, here is a second. And his meaning is, “He himself shall
not perish in the same way as his works, passing into nought, but he shall abide in the fire.

[6.] “He calleth it, however, “Salvation,” you will say; why, that is the cause of his adding, “so
as by fire:” since we also used to say, “It is preserved in the fire,” when we speak of those
substances which do not immediately burn up and become ashes. For do not at sound of the word
fire imagine that those who are burning pass into annihilation. And though he call such punishment
Salvation, be not astonished. For his custom is in things which have an ill sound to use fair
expressions, and in good things the contrary. For example, the word “Captivity” seems to be the
name of an evil thing, but Paul has applied it in a good sense, when he says, “Bringing into captivity
every thought to the obedience of Christ.” (2 Cor. x. 5.) And again, to an evil thing he hath applied a
good word, saying, “Sin reigned,” (Rom. v. 21.) here surely the term “reigning” is rather of auspicious
sound. And so here in saying, “he shall be saved,” he hath but darkly hinted at the intensity of the
penalty: as if he had said, “But himself shall remain forever in punishment.” He then makes an
inference, saying,

[7.] Ver. 16. “Know ye not that ye are the Temple of God?” For since he had discoursed in the
section before, concerning those who were dividing the Church, he thenceforward attacks him also
who had been guilty of uncleanness; not indeed as yet in plain terms but in a general way; hinting at
his corrupt mode of life and enhancing the sin, by the Gift which had been already given to him. Then
also he puts all the rest to shame, arguing from these very blessings which they had already: for this
is what he is ever doing, either from the future or from the past, whether grievous or encouraging.
First, from things future; “For the day shall declare it, because it is revealed by fire.” Again, from
things already come to pass; “Know ye not that ye are the Temple of God, and the Spirit of God
dwelleth in you?”1

As in other cases, the Protestants overreacted to this error of Roman Catholicism, and not only cast off
Purgatory and indulgences, but got rid of nearly all orisons for the dead. In his detailed study on the issue of

1Hubert Kestell Cornish and John Medley (translators, with various editors), Saint Chrysostom: Homilies on
the Epistles of Paul to the Corinthians, Homilies on First Corinthians, Homily IX, in NPNF, Series I, Vol. XII, pp.
51 – 52.
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Purgatory and prayers for the dead, the learned Anglican William John Hall (1793 – 1861), while providing
some good evidence of how the Church Fathers did not believe in Purgatory, admits that prayers for the dead
were part of the early Church, and has made this important statement:

It is admitted that the practice of praying for the dead, though in a widely different sense from that in
which it is employed by the Church of Rome, was long antecedent to the belief in Purgatory. The one,
it may be, prevailed in the first or second century; the other was not taught before the end of the
sixth.1

John Roffensis, or John Fisher, the Roman Catholic bishop of Rochester (1469 – 1535, beheaded 1535 during
the English Reformation), was a learned theologian, cardinal, Chancellor of the University of Cambridge, and
Roman Catholics considered him a saint and martyr. He wrote the following well-known passage on
Purgatory, in the eighteenth article of his treatise Confutation of Luther’s Assertions:

He that pleases, let him read the commentaries of the old Greeks, and, as I suppose, he shall find none
or very rare mention of purgatory. But neither did the Latins at one time, but little and little conceive
the truth of this thing. … For some while it was unknown; it was but lately known to the Catholic
Church. Then it was believed by some by little and little; partly from Scripture, partly from
revelations.2

Polydore Virgil (1470 – 1555), a Roman Catholic priest and scholar, writes the following on the subject,
quoting John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester:

As it regards the origin of this matter, as far as I can ascertain, after inquiry, I do not find before St.
Gregory presented it in reference to his stations. Wherefore, in a subject of so much obscurity, I use
the testimony of John, Bishop of Rochester, who in that work which he lately wrote against Luther,
thus declares the matter in the beginning of his concessions on this point: - “Probably he moved
many not to trust much to indulgences, because their use appeared more recently in the Church, and
was found out very lately among Christians.” To this I answer, that it does not appear certainly from
what time they first began to teach indulgences. They were in use among some (as they say) of the
ancient Romans, which can be collected from their stations, and follows of course. No orthodox
Christian entertains a doubt respecting purgatory: concerning which, nevertheless, there is no
mention among the ancients except in very rare instances. But even among the Greeks to this day it
is not believed: for so long as there was no care about purgatory, nobody inquired after indulgences;
for all the value of indulgences depends on purgatory: if you take away purgatory, what use is there
for indulgences? Indulgences therefore began after men had a while trembled at the torments of
purgatory.3

1 William John Hall, The Doctrine of Purgatory and the Practice of Praying for the Dead, as Maintained by the
Romish Church, Examined, Ch. VII, pp. 311 – 312, London, 1843. The Orthodox should not be faulted for
continuing a practice that was in use in the first century.
2 “Legat qui uelit græcor ueterum comentarios, & nullu, quatu opinor, aut quararissimu de purgatorio

sermone inueniet. Sed neq latini, simul oes ac sensim, huius rei ueritate conceperut. … Cotemplates igitur
aliquadiu purgatoriu incognitu suisse: deinde quibusda pedetentim, partim ex reuelationibus, pertim ex
scripturis, suisse creditum, atq itatande generatim eius sidem ab orthodoxa ecclesia suisse receptissimam,
facil lime rationem iliqua indulgentiar intelligem.” John Fisher, Assertionis Lutheræ Confutatio, Art. 18. p.
314, Antwerp, 1523. Translated in The Whole Works of the Right Rev. Jeremy Taylor, D.D., Vol., VI, Dissuasive
From Popery, Part II, Book II, sec. 2, p. 543, London, 1852. Note that the Latin given by Taylor does not match
exactly with the original, but is a fair paraphrase.
3 “Ego vero originem quod mei est muneris, quæritans non reperio ante fulsse, quod seiam, quam D.

Gregorius ad suas stationes id præmio proposuerit. Quapropter in re parum perspicua, utar testimonio
Johannis Roffensis Episcopi, qui in co opere quod nuper in Lutherum scripsit sic de cjusmodi veniarum initio
prodit:- Multos fortasse movit indulgentiis istis non usque adeo fidere, quod earum usus in Ecclesia videatur
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The Roman Catholic scholar Alphonsus a Castro (1495 – 1558) says:

Concerning purgatory, there is almost no mention, especially among the Greek writers. In
consequence of which, even to this day, purgatory is not believed by the Greeks. 1

For additional reading, see Fr. Peter Alban Heers (translator), Elder Cleopa, The Truth of Our Faith, Vol. I, Ch.
X, On Prayer for the Dead, pp. 123 – 133, Thessalonica: Uncut Mountain Press, 2000; Esther Williams
(translator), Metropolitan Hierotheos (Vlachos), Life After Death, Levadia, Greece: Birth of the Theotokos
Monastery, 1996; G. John Champoux (translator), Jean-Claude Larchet, Life After Death According to the
Orthodox Tradition, Rollinsford, NH: Orthodox Research Institute, 2012; Archimandrite Panteleimon
(Nizhnik), Eternal Mysteries from Beyond the Grave, Chicago, IL: Holy Trinity Publications, 2nd Ed., 2012;
Archbishop John Maximovitch, Life After Death, in The Orthodox Word, Vol. VII, No. 4, pp. 147 & 189 – 191,
Platina, CA: The Saint Herman of Alaska Brotherhood, 1971; Auxentios and Chrysostomos (translators),
Constantine Cavarnos, The Future Life According to Orthodox Teaching, Etna, CA: Center for Traditionalist
Orthodox Studies, 1985; Fr. Seraphim Rose, The Soul After Death, Platina, CA: Saint Herman of Alaska
Brotherhood, Fifth Ed., 2015; The Departure of the Soul According to the Teaching of the Orthodox Church,
Florence, AZ: St. Anthony’s Greek Orthodox Monastery, 2017; John Mason Neale (editor), Basil Popoff
(translator), Ivan N. Ostroumoff, The History of the Council of Florence, Ch. IV, pp. 47 – 60, London: Joseph
Masters, 1861 (Reprinted Boston, MA: Holy Transfiguration Monastery, 1971); Holy Apostles Convent
(compiler and translator), The Lives of the Pillars of Orthodoxy: Saint Photios the Great, Patriarch of
Constantinople, Saint Gregory Palamas, Archbishop of Thessalonica, and Saint Mark Evgenikos, Metropolitan
of Ephesus, [Chapter on] St. Mark of Ephesus, pp. 404 – 411, Buena Vista, CO: Holy Apostles Convent, 1990
(Reprinted 1996 & 2000); Also see St. Mark’s homilies on Purgatory, translated with notes in Fr. Seraphim
Rose, The Soul After Death, Appendix I, pp. 196 – 213.

Ch. V The Papal Treasury of Merit

Much could be said on the theological system of the Latins, such as those issues mentioned by Patriarch
Anthimos cited in the previous chapter on Purgatory, where Anthimos is quoted listing the following Latin
error and innovation: “a superabundance of the virtues of the saints, and the distribution of them to those
who need them, and the like”.2 The Orthodox Church objects to the thirteenth-century Latin theological
innovation of the papal treasury of merit and the superabundance of the virtues of the saints. The Latins first
defined this doctrine in the following papal decree of Latin Pope Clement VI (1342 – 1352), Unigenitus Dei
Filius (25 or 27 January 1343), which says that just one single drop of Christ’s blood would have sufficed for
the redemption of the human race, and all the superfluous amount, along with the merits of the Blessed Virgin
Mary and the saints, became a treasury of merit for the pope to dispense from:

recentior, et admodum sero apud Christianos repertus. Quibus ego respondeo, non certo constare a quo
primum trade cœperunt. Fuit tamen nonnullus earum usus (ut aiunt) apud Romanos vetustissimos, quod ex
stationibus intelligi potest et subit. Nemo certe dubitat orthodoxus an purgatorium sit, de quo tamen apud
priscos, non ulla, vel quam rarissime, fiebat mentio. Sed et Græcis ad hune usque diem, non est creditum
esse; quamdiu enim nulla fuerat de purgatorio cura, nemo quæsivit indulgentias; nam ex illo pendet omnis
indulgentiarum existimatio: si tollas purgatorium, quorsum indulgentiis opus erit? cœperunt igitur
indulgentiæ, postquam ad purgatorii cruciatus aliquandiu trepidatum est.” Invent. Rerum., lib. viii, cap. 1.
Translated in Charles Elliott, Delineation of Roman Catholicism, Book II, Ch. XII, pp. 264 – 265, London:
Wesleyan Conference Office, 4th Ed., 1877.
1 “De purgatorio fere nulla mentio, potissimum apud Græcos scriptores. Qua de causa, usque hodiernum

diem, purgatorium non est a Græcis creditum.” Lib. iv, verb. Indulg. Vide etiam, lib. xii Purgatorium.
Translated in Elliott, Delineation, p. 265.
2 Anthimos VII, Encyclical, Art. XII.
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The only begotten Son of God … who innocent, immolated on the altar of the Cross is known
to have poured out not a little drop of blood, which however on account of union with the Word
would have been sufficient for the redemption of the whole human race, but copiously as a kind of
flowing stream, so that “from the soles of His feet even to the top of His Head no soundness was
found in Him” [Isa. 1:6]. Therefore, how great a treasure did the good Father acquire from this for
the Church militant, so that the mercy of so great an effusion was not rendered useless, vain or
superfluous, wishing to lay up treasures for His sons, so that thus the Church is an infinite treasure to
men, so that they who use it, become the friends of God [Wisd. 7:14].
Indeed this treasure … through blessed Peter, the keeper of the keys of heaven and his
successors, his vicars on earth, He has committed to be dispensed for the good of the faithful, both
from proper and reasonable causes, now for the whole, now for partial remission of temporal
punishment due to sins, in general as in particular (according as they know to be expedient with
God), to be applied mercifully to those who truly repentant have confessed.
Indeed, to the mass of this treasure the merits of the Blessed Mother of God and of all the
elect from the first just even to the last, are known to give their help; concerning the consumption or
the diminution of this there should be no fear at any time, because of the infinite merits of Christ (as
was mentioned before) as well as for the reason that the more are brought to justification by its
application, the greater is the increase of the merits themselves.1

The Russian literary critic and philosopher Ivan Vasilyevich Kireyevsky (1806 – 1856), as translated and
commented upon by Fr. Seraphim Rose (1934 – 1982), says:

“And this also explains why they could assign an essential worthiness to the outward works of a man;
why, when a soul was inwardly prepared but had an insufficiency of outward works, they could
conceive of no other means of his salvation than a definite period of purgatory; why, finally, they
could assign to certain men even an excess of worthy outward deeds and give this worthiness to
those who had insufficient outward deeds.” This means the whole Latin system of indulgences and
the supererogatory works of the saints of which there is a whole treasury of good deeds, which are
added up like in a bank, and when they have too many for their salvation, they spill them out and the
Pope distributes to other people, in a very legalistic way.2

The teaching of the treasury of merit dates its beginnings to the 1230s, and it was first systematised by
scholastic Dominican and Franciscan theologians. The German Protestant theologian and historian Gottlieb
Jakob Planck (1751 – 1833) writes, “Before the beginning of the thirteenth century, no theologue of the
Roman church knew of any ‘treasure of superabundant merits.’” 3 Latin theologians make this doctrine very
transactional, mercantile, and like a bank account. The American Roman Catholic professor Robert W.
Shaffern (1963 – current), who specialises in medieval indulgences, writes:

The Dominican and Franciscan masters of the next generation of scholars [after William of
Auvergne (1190 – 1249)] adopted and systematized this imagery into the teaching of the treasury of
merit. Their pastoral commission, in the words of the Dominican master-general Humbert of
Romans, enjoined that they should illustrate Christian teaching with analogies drawn from the daily
routine of their listeners. Consequently, they described indulgences as payments from the Church’s
inexhaustible treasury of merits.a Bonaventure taught that “remissions or indulgences are granted
from the superabundant merits which belong to the Church, which indeed are unto its spiritual
treasury.” The Aristotelian Thomas Aquinas called the treasury of merit the formal cause of pardons:
“Indeed, the cause of remission of penalty in indulgence is nothing other than the abundance of

1 Denzinger, nn. 550 – 552 [new numbering n. 1025], pp. 201 – 202. The text of Unigenitus is in Beresford
James Kidd (editor), Documents Illustrative of the Continental Reformation, Part I, Document No. I, pp. 1 – 3,
Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1911.
2 Fr. Seraphim Rose, Orthodox Survival Course, Lecture II, p. 6, [published digitally].
3 R. Emerson (translator), On the Origin and Commencement of the Reformation; from Planck’s Protestant

Theology, in The American Biblical Repository, Vol. X, No. XXVII, July, 1837, Article VI, p. 108, n. *, New York,
NY: Gould & Newman, 1837.
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merits of the Church.” The Church underwrote spiritual promissory notes good for a penitent’s
outstanding debt of sin.
The metaphor of the treasury in turn encouraged the comparison between spiritual debts
and credits. The canonist Hostiensis [1200 – 1271] taught that

the martyrs shed their blood for the faith and the Church, and they were punished beyond
that for which they had sinned. It so occurs that in [Christ’s] shedding of blood, all sin is
punished, and this effusion of blood is the stored treasury in the casket of the Church, of
which the Church possesses the keys. Hence, when the Church wishes, she is able to open
the chest, and will be able to grant to anyone her treasury, by granting pardons and
remissions to the faithful.

Thomas Aquinas also compared “accounts”:

Many have patiently sustained unjust trials by means of which a host of sins could have been
expiated, if punishment were due them. So abundant are these merits that they exceed all
punishment that is due those who now live: and especially because of the merits of Christ.

[Shaffern’s Footnote:] a) Two schoolmen have been credited with the authorship of the treasury of
merit. Hostiensis believed that the Dominican Hugh of St. Cher [1200 – 1263] had invented the
treasury, but Paulus argued that the Franciscan Alexander of Hales [1185 – 1245] was its author.
Neither case is compelling, owing to the lack of evidence [since this teaching is not found in their
authentic works].1

Thus this teaching, formally and solemnly defined by the pope in 1343, scarcely had a century of antiquity to
its name.

Ch. VI Indulgences

“Blessed be ye poor: for yours is the kingdom of God.” (Luke vi. 20)

Regarding the novelty of indulgences, the abuse of which became a significant issue in the Protestant
Reformation, I quote in whole a section from the Protestant William Preston’s controversial work against
Roman Catholicism:

Section XXX. – Indulgences are an Admitted Novelty

Indulgences sprang from the custom of bishops in their own dioceses granting a permission
of the penances which Church authority had imposed upon offenders. From a remission of penances
it soon passed into a remission of sin, as it was found to be a profitable speculation. Without
hesitation, we deny the antiquity of the doctrine as now it is taught. We adduce proofs in support.

Morinus declares-
“He can find no ground for this practice of indulgences before the twelfth century.”a

Durandus affirms :-
“Very little can be affirmed with any certainty concerning indulgences, because neither the
Scripture speaks expressly of them, and the Fathers Ambrose, Hilary, Augustine, Jerome, speak not at
all of them.”b

1Robert W. Shaffern, The Medieval Theology of Indulgences, in Robert N. Swanson (editor), Promissory Notes
on the Treasury of Merits: Indulgences in Late Medieval Europe, Ch. I, pp. 24 – 25, in Brill’s Companions to the
Christian Tradition, Vol. V, Leiden: Brill, 2006. Other footnotes omitted.
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Bishop Fisher says :-

“The use of indulgences came very late into the Church.”c

Alphonsus a Castra confesseth-

“Among all the controversies he writes of, there is none which the Scripture or Fathers speak
less of than this; … though the use of them seems to have come very late into the Church, they ought
not to be contemned.”d

Jacobus Angularis writes :-

“There is nothing in Scripture or antiquity expressly for indulgences, but that ought to be no
argument; for there are many other things owned in their Church as necessary points which have as
little foundation as this, viz., St. Peter’s being at Rome,” &c.e

Cajetan says :-
“There is no authority of Scripture or ancient Fathers, Greek or Latin, that brings them to our
knowledge.”f

Hilary, Bishop of Poictiers, declared-

“That no man, after this life, can be helped or delivered by the good works or merits of
others, because every man must necessarily provide oil for his own lamp.” g

From these testimonies we learn how baseless in point of Scripture and antiquity is the
Romish doctrine of indulgences. This being so, we do well to reject and condemn it.

[Preston’s footnotes:]
a) Morinus de Pænit., lib. x., c. xx.
b) In Sentent., lib. iv., dist. 20, q.3.
c) Roff. C Luther, art. Xviii. Stillingfleet’s Idolatry, &c.
d) Ad. Hæres., lib. viii., v. indul.
e) In Ep. Wisseli, quote by Bp. Stillingfleet.
f) Opusc., tract xv. De Indul., c. i., tom. i., p. 129.
g) Com. In Matt., c. xxvii., p. 591.1

As shown in the previous chapter, the treasury of merit and indulgences are related, as is apparent from the
fact that Thomas Aquinas connects the dispensing of indulgences to the abundance of merits. This shows that
the Latins did not have a theologically developed view on indulgences until after the beginning of the
thirteenth century.2

The Anglican clergyman James Brogden (1806 – 1684) writes:

1 William Preston, Romanism Weighed in the Balance of the Scriptures and Fathers, and Found Wanting, Ch.
VIII, Section XXX, pp. 306 – 307, London: The Book Society, 1875.
2 Any Orthodox apparent similarity to Latin indulgences, in the form of “absolution certificates”

(συγχωροχάρτια – synchorochartia), did not accept the Latin theological understanding of this practice, with
all the closely connected issues brought up in this review of Latin theological innovations, including
Purgatory, the papal treasury of merit, legalism (especially on the topic of sin), scholasticism, the immediate
judgment, and Latin soteriology, as well as the Latin errors with regard to the sacrament of Confession and
the excessive powers given to the papacy, besides the numerous abuses in practice. See two articles:
http://orthochristian.com/7185.html and (in Russian) https://www.pravenc.ru/text/389591.html#part_10.
Also see the important discussion of this topic in Nikolaos Chrissidis, Between Forgiveness and Indulgence:
Funerary Prayers of Absolution in Russia, in Nickolas Lupinin, Donald Ostrowski, and Jennifer B. Spock
(editors), Tapestry of Russian Christianity: Studies in History and Culture, pp. 261 – 293, Columbus, OH: The
Ohio State University Department of Slavic and East European Languages and Cultures, 2016.
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It seems probably, indeed, that Gregory VII. (commonly known by his former name,
Hildebrand) was the first that granted any indulgences; and that was above a thousand years after
Christ. Cardinal Tolet., casuum. 1. 7. c. 21. I., saith, that “Paschal II. was the first that granted
indulgences for the dead.” That must be about the year 1100. And Ibid. lib. 6. c. 24. 3., he saith, that
“the first that granted plenary indulgences was Pope Boniface VIII.,” who lived about the year 1300:
so ancient is this new Catholic faith.1

Indulgences were first applied to souls in Purgatory by Latin Pope Sixtus IV on 3 August 1476, as the New
Catholic Encyclopedia states under the heading “Indulgences For The Dead”:

Devotion to the Holy Souls was developed largely under the influence of the monastery of Cluny. The
rapid spread of this devotion provided the occasion for the promulgation of indulgences applicable to
the souls in purgatory. Sixtus IV did this for the first time in the form of a plenary indulgence, in
1476. In the bull Salvator noster (Enchiridion symbolorum, 1398), Sixtus specified that this
indulgence is applicable by way of petition (per modum suffragii). 2

The Sigillion of the Orthodox Council of Constantinople of 1583 states the following on papal indulgences:

That whoever says that the Pope is the head of the Church, and not Christ, and that he has
authority to admit persons to Paradise with his letters of indulgence or other passports, and can
forgive sins as many as a person may commit if such person pay money to receive from him
indulgences, i.e., licenses to sin, let every such person be anathema. 3

For further reading, see Joseph Mendham’s works on this subject: The Church of Rome’s Traffic in Pardons
Substantiated (1839), The Spiritual Venality of Rome (1836), The Venal Indulgences and Pardons of the
Church of Rome (1839), and Additions to Three Minor Works (1848). Also see Pusey, Eirenicon, [Part I], pp.
198 – 205, Oxford: John Henry and James Parker, 1865; Richard Gibbings, The Taxes of the Apostolic
Penitentiary; or, the Prices of Sins in the Church of Rome, Dublin: McGee, 1872; Henry Charles Lea, A History
of Auricular Confession and Indulgences in the Latin Church, Vol. III, Part II, Indulgences, Philadelphia, PA:
Lea Brothers & Co., 1896; and Robert W. Shaffern, The Penitents’ Treasury: Indulgences in Latin
Christendom, 1175 – 1375, Scranton, PA: University of Scranton Press, 2007.

Ch. VII The Full Reward for the Just Before the Last Judgment

The Orthodox Encyclical of 1895 mentions this as a Latin error and innovation, as already quoted in the
chapter on Purgatory: “setting forth also a full reward for the just before the universal resurrection and
judgment.”4

The first official Roman Catholic definition of this doctrine was by Latin Pope Benedict XII, in his edict
“Benedictus Deus” (29 January 1336), where he makes it a dogma of the Latin faith that the saints enjoy the
Beatific Vision of God immediately after death and before the Last Judgment:

1 James Brogden, Illustrations of the Liturgy and Ritual of the United Church of England and Ireland, 1842,
Vol. III, pp. 420 – 421. This bull of Paschal II is a forgery, see Henry Charles Lea, A History of Auricular
Confession and Indulgences in the Latin Church, Vol. III, Part II, Ch. IX, p. 458, Philadelphia, PA: Lea Brothers &
Co., 1896.
2 Indulgences, Indulgences For The Dead, in New Catholic Encyclopedia, Vol. VII, p. 438, Detroit, IL: Thomson

Gale (in association with The Catholic University of America, Washington, DC), 2nd Ed., 2003. The text of
Salvator Noster is in Beresford James Kidd (editor), Documents Illustrative of the Continental Reformation,
Part I, Document No. II, pp. 3 – 4, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1911. Kidd also calls this document “the first
application of indulgences to souls in purgatory” and “the earliest Indulgence for the dead”.
3 The Rudder, p. 14.
4 Anthimos VII, Encyclical, Art. XII.
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By this edict which will prevail forever, with apostolic authority we declare: that according
to the common arrangement of God, souls of all the saints who departed from this world before the
passion of our Lord Jesus Christ; also of the holy apostles, the martyrs, the confessors, virgins, and
the other faithful who died after the holy baptism of Christ had been received by them, in whom
nothing was to be purged, when they departed, nor will there be when they shall depart also in the
future; or if then there was or there will be anything to be purged in these when after their death
they have been purged; and the souls of children departing before the use of free will, reborn and
baptized in that same baptism of Christ, when all have been baptized, immediately after their
death and that aforesaid purgation in those who were in need of a purgation of this kind, even before
the resumption of their bodies and the general judgment after the ascension of our Savior, our Lord
Jesus Christ, into heaven, have been, are, and will be in heaven, in the kingdom of heaven and in
celestial paradise with Christ, united in the company of the holy angels, and after the passion and
death of our Lord Jesus Christ have seen and see the divine essence by intuitive vision, and even face
to face, with no mediating creature, serving in the capacity of an object seen, but divine essence
immediately revealing itself plainly, clearly, and openly, to them, and seeing thus they enjoy the same
divine essence, and also that from such vision and enjoyment their souls, which now have departed,
are truly blessed and they have eternal life and rest; and also [the souls] of those who afterwards will
depart, will see that same divine essence, and will enjoy it before the general judgment; and that such
vision of the divine essence and its enjoyment makes void the acts of faith and hope in them,
inasmuch as faith and hope are proper theological virtuas; and that after there has begun or will be
such intuitive and face-to-face vision and enjoyment in these, the same vision and enjoyment exist
continuously and will continue even up to the last judgment and from then even unto eternity.
Moreover, we declare that according to the common arrangement of God, the souls of those
who depart in actual mortal sin immediately after their death descend to hell where they are
tortured by infernal punishments, and that nevertheless on the day of judgment all men with their
bodies will make themselves ready to render an account of their own deeds before the tribunal of
Christ, “so that everyone may receive the proper things of the body according as he has done whether
it be good or evil” [II Cor. 5:10].1

It is worth remarking that Benedict XII’s immediate predecessor Pope John XXII (pope from 1316 – 1334)
argued (both before and after he was elected pope) that those who died in the faith did not see God’s
presence until the Last Judgment. This led to a controversy and has been much discussed in the question on
papal infallibility, but the defences of John XXII say that even though his view was heretical, the doctrine had
not been formally defined by the Church until Benedict XII, and that John XXII did not teach this doctrine in
his formal teaching capacity as pope.

St. Mark of Ephesus states:

And we say that neither do the Saints receive the Kingdom and the unutterable blessings already
prepared for them, nor are sinners already sent to hell, but both await their fate which will be
received in the future age after the resurrection and Judgement; while they, together with the Latins,
desire immediately after death to receive according to their merits2

Benedict XII teaches that the reward for the just is the same both before and after the Last Judgment, but the
Church Fathers and Orthodox Church teach that the just have only an incomplete enjoyment for now, and will
experience the full glory and complete splendour of the Kingdom after the final judgment.

This is also a deep topic to discuss, and I also recommend the works listed at the end of the chapter on
Purgatory above, which treat of the question of life after death.

1 Denzinger, nn. 530 – 531, pp. 197 – 198.

2 Archimandrite Amvrossy Pogodin, Encyclical Letter of Saint Mark of Ephesus, § VI, in Orthodox Word, Vol.
III, No. II, p. 58, March-April-May, 1967, Platina, CA: St Herman of Alaska Brotherhood, 1967.
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Ch. VIII The Essence-Energies Distinction and the Hesychastic or “Palamite” Controversy

St. Mark of Ephesus states:

And we affirm, in agreement with the Fathers, that the Will and Energy of the Uncreated and Divine
Nature are uncreated; while they, together with the Latins and Thomas, say that Will is identical with
Nature, but that the Divine Energy is created, whether it be called Divinity, or the Divine and
Immaterial Light, or the Holy Spirit, or something else of this nature, and in some fashion, these poor
creatures “worship” the created “Divinity” and the created “Divine Light” and the created “Holy
Spirit.”1

Roman Catholics teach the doctrine of absolute divine simplicity and of uncreated grace, while the
Cappadocian Fathers taught of God’s uncreated energy.

There is much to discuss here, and even a high-level view would be too lengthy, as this subject is outside the
scope of this book. [JOHN COFFMAN – Can you write three or four paragraphs here?]

For more information, see the following recommended works: David Bradshaw, Aristotle East and West:
Metaphysics and the Division of Christendom, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004; David
Bradshaw, The Concept of the Divine Energies, in Philosophy and Theology, Vol. XVIII, Issue 1, pp. 93 – 120,
2006 [as well as Bradshaw’s other works on this topic]; C. Athanasopoulos and C. Schneider (editors), Divine
Essence and Divine Energies: Ecumenical Reflections on the Presence of God in Eastern Orthodoxy,
Cambridge: The Institute for Orthodox Christian Studies, 2013; See Fr. John Meyendorff’s books and articles
on St. Gregory Palamas, as well as Fr. John S. Romanides’s lengthy review of Meyendorff in John S. Romanides,
Notes on the Palamite Controversy and Related Topics, in two parts in The Greek Orthodox Theological
Review, Vol. VI [Winter 1960 – 1961] and Vol. IX [Winter 1963 – 1964]; Holy Apostles Convent (compiler and
translator), The Lives of the Pillars of Orthodoxy: Saint Photios the Great, Patriarch of Constantinople, Saint
Gregory Palamas, Archbishop of Thessalonica, and Saint Mark Evgenikos, Metropolitan of Ephesus, [Chapter
on] St. Gregory Palamas, pp. 177 – 371, Buena Vista, CO: Holy Apostles Convent, 1990 (Reprinted 1996 &
2000); Archbishop Chrysostomos, Orthodox and Roman Catholic Relations from the Fourth Crusade to the
Hesychastic Controversy, Etna, CA: Center for Traditionalist Orthodox Studies, 2001. See the Synodicon of
Orthodoxy and the commentary upon it in Esther Williams (translator), Metropolitan Hierotheos (Vlachos) of
Nafpaktos, The Mind of the Orthodox Church, Ch. IX, Levadia, Greece: Birth of the Theotokos Monastery, 2nd
Ed., 2000. Also see other works on Palamas, as well as Palamas’s own writings (all English translations of his
works are listed in the bibliography). There are many other articles and books on this subject.

Ch. IX Scholasticism

Much could be said about the Latin innovations in their theological methodology and system of philosophy.
This is another subject that is outside the scope of this work, but there is no doubt that the Latins of the
second millennium adopted a different theological approach than the Christians of the first millennium, as
shown in other parts of this work. Henry Nutcombe Oxenham writes the following at the beginning of his
chapter on “St. Anselm and the Schoolmen”:

The transition from the period we have been hitherto considering [the first millennium] to the
scholastic era is a more complete change than can easily be expressed. We seem at first sight to have
passed from a world of realities to a world of abstractions, where the forms of language or of logic

1 Pogodin, Encyclical Letter of Saint Mark of Ephesus, § VI, p. 58.

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have taken the place of substantive ideas. The Fathers stand to the Schoolmen something in the
relation of Plato to the Alexandrian Neo-Platonists, or Aristotle to his Latin copyists of the days of the
Empire. The very difference of name, “Fathers” and “Doctors,” serves to mark their difference of
position. … The Schoolmen, accordingly, were not employed, like the Fathers, in elaborating and
fixing particular dogmas, but in reducing the whole existing body of doctrine to what they considered
a rational and consistent intellectual system. Their ambition was to construct a philosophy of belief,
or, as a modern writer phrases it, “to inaugurate a supernatural rationalism in the Church.” … They
wrote for the learned few who alone could understand their language and method, whereas Sermons
and Homilies held a prominent place in patristic literature.1

It is suitable to quote Ivan Vasilyevich Kireyevsky, as translated and commented upon by Fr. Seraphim Rose:

And here he [Kireyevsky] thinks we have come to the very core of our subject. “In the period
between the end of the Eleventh Century and the end of the Twelfth, a decisive turning point was
reached in the West. It was a time characterized by several transitions. There was first, the
transition from a predominantly essential and exemplarist outlook to a naturalistic one, an interest in
existence.” …

“Another transition was that from a culture where tradition reigned and the habit of
synthesis became ingrained, to an academic milieu where continual questioning and research was
the norm, and analysis the normal result of study. The East followed the road of tradition, and we
have shown how one of the principle differences among the various peoples of the Orthodox faith is
in fact that they are not trained, as are the Latins, by the schools. The Latin theologians, inured to
Scholasticism, have often been baffled at seeing the Greeks refuse to yield to their compelling
arguments from reason, but instead taking refuge in the realm of Patristic texts and conciliar
canons, …” which was the way all Christians reasoned before the Schism. “But this remained foreign
to the East which knew no Scholasticism of its own and was to experience neither the Reformation or
the 16th-18th-century rationalism. In other words, the East remained foreign to the three influences
that shaped modern Catholicism.” And that’s scholasticism, reformation and rationalism.

In “the first half of the Thirteenth Century, a new kind of theological teaching and study
appeared and established itself in the West. Until this time, the dominant type of teaching or study
had been of a contemplative or monastic nature, linked with the liturgical life of the abbeys or
cathedrals. Now there was added a new type of teaching and study, of an academic and rational
nature which was soon to take the place of the former. … In the East, on the other hand, the teaching
and studying of theology, and even of philosophy, kept its religious status.”2

Many of the theological innovations and errors discussed in this chapter (as well as various other issues not
discussed here) are related to the transformation in Latin theology that took place in the first few centuries of
the second millennium, followed by later developments in later centuries.

Ch. X Modernism and the Latin Second Vatican Council

The Roman Catholic communion underwent a significant theological and practical change in the 20th century
and after the Latin Second Vatican Council (often referred to as Vatican II, 1962 – 1965), which was accepted
by every Roman Catholic bishop at the time. This has been the subject of extensive discussion within Roman

1 Henry Nutcombe Oxenham, The Catholic Doctrine of the Atonement, Ch. IV, pp. 175 – 177, London: W. H.
Allen & Co., 3rd Ed., 1881. The first and second editions (of 1865 and 1869) simply had “We seem to have
passed” (p. 72 & p. 162, respectively), but Oxenham later added the words “at first sight”, apparently
attempting to minimise his earlier admission of change in the Latin scholastic era.
2 Fr. Seraphim Rose, Orthodox Survival Course, Lecture II, pp. 5 – 6, [published digitally]. See the rest of

Rose’s words on this subject in his valuable lecture on the Middle Ages, pp. 5 – 8.
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Catholicism, and much could be said about it from the Orthodox perspective, as well as the current state of the
papacy and Roman Catholicism. This subject is technically outside the scope of this work, since I aim to focus
on more historical differences, and have attempted to engage the traditionally-minded Roman Catholics, but
it cannot be completely ignored.

I recommend the following Orthodox book on this topic: Fr. Peter Alban Heers, The Ecclesiastical Renovation
of Vatican II: An Orthodox Examination of Rome’s Ecumenical Theology Regarding Baptism and the Church,
Simpsonville, SC: Uncut Mountain Press, 2015. Much more has been written and spoken on this topic.

Ch. XI Variations of Roman Catholicism

There are many internal inconsistencies in theology and significant variations within Roman Catholicism,
across religious orders, countries, and centuries. Much could be remarked upon this subject, and some will be
found incidentally noticed in this work, but this work will not enter into this subject in-depth.

Church history contains many examples of the differences between Roman Catholic schools of thought, and
their intense clashes on multiple different subjects, which have caused significant trouble within Roman
Catholicism, such as between the Gallicans and Ultramontanes, the Dominicans and Franciscans, the Jesuits
and Jansenists, and many others. However, Roman Catholics have often urged the problem of disunity against
Protestants, such as in bishop Bossuet’s (1627 – 1704) highly regarded book against Protestantism (James
Benign Bossuet, History of the Variations of the Protestant Churches, New York, NY: D. & J. Sadlier, 2 Vols.,
1845), where Bossuet begins his work with the following assertion:

When in expositions of faith, variations were seen among Christians, they were ever
considered as a mark of falsehood and inconsistency, if I may so speak, in the doctrine propounded.
Faith speaks with simplicity; the Holy Ghost sheds pure light; and the truth which he teaches has a
language always uniform.1

Bossuet goes on to insist on the importance of consistency, immutability, universality, and antiquity in
matters of faith, saying that these characteristics are found wanting among Protestants. However, Bossuet
does not consider that this criticism applies also to the many discordancies and factions within Roman
Catholicism, of which much information will be found in any history of the second-millennium Latins and
their councils.

Ch. XII Filioque Added to the Creed and Notes on the Schism

“Every word of God is pure: he is a shield unto them that put their trust in him. Add thou not unto his words, lest
he reprove thee, and thou be found a liar.” (Prov. xxx 5 – 6)

“Respecting the divine and holy mysteries of the faith, not even a tittle ought to be delivered without the
authority of the Holy Scriptures. Neither ought anything to be propounded on the basis of mere credulity, or
through the medium of plausible ratiocination. Neither yet repose the slightest confidence in the bare assertion
of me your Catechist, unless you shall receive from the Holy Scriptures full demonstration of the matters
propounded; for the security of our Faith depends not upon verbal trickery, but upon demonstration from the
Holy Scriptures” – St. Cyril of Jerusalem, having given a summary of the Creed

Inquiry of the Frankish Delegates: “Would not those same makers of the Creed have then done well, if by adding
only four syllables they had made clear to all following ages so necessary a mystery of faith?” Pope Leo III’s

1James Benign Bossuet, History of the Variations of the Protestant Churches, Vol. I, Preface, 2, p. 3, New York,
NY: D. & J. Sadlier, 1845.
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response: “As I dare not to say that they would not have done well if they had done so, because, without doubt,
they would have done with it as with the rest which they either omitted or put in, knowing what they did, and
being enlightened not by human but divine wisdom, so neither do I dare to say that they understood this point
less than we: on the contrary, I say that they considered why they left it out, and why, when once left out,
they forbade either it or any thing else to be added afterwards. Do thou consider, what ye think of
yourselves: for as for me, I say not that I will not set myself up above (those holy Councils), but God forbid that I
should either equal myself to them.” … Delegates: “So then, as I see this is the judgement of your Fatherhood,
that first of all these words on which our question turns, be taken out of the Creed …” Pope Leo III: “Such
doubtless is our judgement …”

“they expunge from the Creed that the Holy Ghost proceeds from the Son” – Bull of Excommunication by
Pope Leo IX and the Papal Legates against the Greek Church, at Constantinople, A.D. 1054, after which they
shook the dust off their feet, crying out with a loud voice, “May the Lord see and judge.”

“the Son should be signified, according to the Greeks indeed as cause, and according to the Latins as principle of
the subsistence of the Holy Spirit, just like the Father.” – Latin Council of Florence, Bull of Union with the Greeks

“And we speak also of the Spirit of the Son, not as through proceeding from Him” – St. John of Damascus

“the Father alone is cause.” – St. John of Damascus

“On this basis [of the Latin Fathers and Cyril of Alexandria] they [at Rome] showed that they themselves do not
make the Son Cause of the Spirit. They know, indeed, that the Father is the sole cause of the Son and of the
Spirit,” – St. Maximus the Confessor

“… acknowledge the Catholic faith, as established by the three hundred and eighteen Holy Fathers of Nicea, and
the one hundred and fifty other reverend bishops who subsequently assembled in the fair city of Constantinople,
and which Athanasius, Theophilus, and Cyril of holy memory, Bishops of the City of Alexandria, adopted, and
whom also the Synod of Ephesus (over which Cyril, of blessed memory presided, and in which the error of
Nestorius was rejected), unanimously followed, which recently the venerated Synod of Chalcedon approved, and
which agrees in every respect with the decisions of former ecclesiastical councils, neither taking anything from,
or adding anything to the Holy Symbol, …” – Corpus Juris Civilis

“And we will allow the defined Faith, the symbol of the Faith set forth by our holy Fathers who assembled some
time ago at Nice, to be shaken by no one. Nor would we permit ourselves or others, to alter a single word of
those set forth, or to add one syllable, remembering the saying: ‘Remove not the ancient landmark which thy
fathers have set,’ for it was not they who spoke but the Spirit himself of God and the Father, who proceedeth also
from him, and is not alien from the Son, according to his essence.” – St. Cyril of Alexandria

“For my part, that I may make known my opinion, if they (the Latins) corrected the addition to the holy Symbol, I
would ask nothing more …” – Patriarch Peter of Antioch

“Now I beseech you, brethren, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that ye all speak the same thing …” (1 Cor. i.
10.)
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This famous interpolation of the Ecumenical Creed has had enormous consequences throughout history.

The Latin word “Filioque” means “And the Son”, to express the idea that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the
Son. The Latins added this word to the Symbol of Faith, known as the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed or the
Nicene Creed, because of their lack of care for the perfect preservation of Apostolic Tradition and the words
of Christ. The Orthodox Church correctly teaches that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father alone and we
have preserved the ancient Creed, which literally transcribes the words about the Procession from the words
of our Savior.

Our Lord only teaches that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father, saying, “But when the Comforter is come,
whom I will send unto you from the Father, even the Spirit of Truth, which proceeds from the Father, he shall
testify of me” (John xv 26). Christ’s words in the Gospel are perfect and there is no need to add to them with
respect to the procession.

The creed of the First Ecumenical Council (at Nicaea in 325) did not have the Filioque, not mentioning the
procession at all, simply saying of the Holy Spirit, “We believe … And in the Holy Spirit”. 1 When the creed was
completed at the Second Ecumenical Council (at Constantinople in 381), the creed did not have the Filioque,
and only mentioned the procession from the Father, saying of the Holy Spirit, “We believe … And in the Holy
Ghost, the Lord and Giver-of-life, who proceedeth from the Father, who with the Father and the Son
together is worshiped and glorified, who spake by the prophets.”2

Canon 7 of the Third Ecumenical Council (at Ephesus in 431) condemns composing a different Creed, showing
that it is no trivial matter to modify the Creed:

When these things had been read, the holy Synod decreed that it is unlawful for any man to
bring forward, or to write, or to compose a different (ἑτέραν) Faith as a rival to that established by
the holy Fathers assembled with the Holy Ghost in Nicæa.
But those who shall dare to compose a different faith, or to introduce or offer it to persons
desiring to turn to the acknowledgment of the truth, whether from Heathenism or from Judaism, or
from any heresy whatsoever, shall be deposed, if they be bishops or clergymen; bishops from the
episcopate and clergymen from the clergy; and if they be laymen, they shall be anathematized.3

The doctrine of the procession of the Holy Spirit, “who proceeds from the Father”, is stated without the words
“and the son” in the Creeds and confessions of faith of the Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, and Seventh Ecumenical
Councils, which the Latins claim to accept.

This controversy erupted in the beginning of the 9th century. It is important to remember that the Orthodox
saint Pope Leo III taught that the Filioque should not be added to the Creed.

St. Photius is an important defender of the traditional Creed, but the Filioque was explicitly condemned
before him. The Catholic Encyclopedia writes: “At the beginning of ninth century, John, a Greek monk of the
monastery of St. Sabas [Mar Saba], charged the monks of Mt. Olivet with heresy, they had inserted the
Filioque into the Creed.”4

In the year 807, the monk John had told the Latin monks, “You Franks are all heretics: a worse heresy than
yours does not exist.” On Christmas Day of 807, John publicly repeated his charge, adding, “Your books are

1 Percival, Seven Ecumenical Councils, p. 3

2 Percival, Seven Ecumenical Councils, p. 163
3 Percival, Seven Ecumenical Councils, p. 231
4 A. J. Maas, Filioque, in CE, Vol. VI, p. 73.
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heretical”, and an attempt was made by the monks of Mar Saba to eject the Franks from the Church of the
Nativity, where they were keeping the festival.1 This statement of the monk John turned out to be prophetic.
Patriarch Thomas of Jerusalem wrote a letter of complaint to Pope Leo III, asking him to forbid the filioque,
which Leo forwarded to the Emperor Charlemagne. 2

As a result of this dispute, Charlemagne called a Church Council in Aachen (also called Aix-la-Chapelle or
Aquisgranum) in 809. The Catholic Encyclopedia states:

The decrees of this last council [of Aachen] were examined by Pope Leo III, who approved of the
doctrine conveyed by the Filioque, but gave the advice to omit the expression in the Creed. The
practice of adding the Filioque was retained in spite of the papal advice, and in the middle of the
eleventh century it had gained a firm foothold in Rome itself. Scholars do not agree as to the exact
time of its introduction into Rome, but most assign it to the reign of Benedict VIII (1014-15). …
It is true that these councils had forbidden to introduce another faith or another Creed, and
had imposed the penalty of deposition on bishops and clerics, and of excommunication on monks and
laymen for transgressing this law; but the councils had not forbidden to explain the same faith or to
propose the same Creed in a clearer way.3

The Creed is essentially a traditional aspect of the apostolic Faith, yet the Catholic Encyclopedia admits both
the late date of the Filioque insertion into the Creed at Rome and the important fact that the Latins do not
follow the advice of the Pope.

If the Creed was to be modified or explained, it must have been done with the consent of the Universal
Church, which is through an Ecumenical Council, and certainly not only by the Western Church. There
actually was an Ecumenical Council (the Eighth – see the section below on St. Photius), which condemned the
Filioque, with the consent of all the Patriarchates. The Latins answer that the Pope himself is the Supreme
Judge of the Universal Church, so he can ignore the East and “propose the same Creed in a clearer way”.
However, it is important to insist upon the testimony of Pope Leo III, who “gave the advice to omit the
expression in the Creed”. In addition, Papal Supremacy is refuted in the next section.

It is thus proper to ask the question, “Why do Latins persist in adding the Filioque to the creed, contrary to
the clear ‘advice’ of Pope Leo III, and despite its insertion into the creed at Rome over 1000 years after the
birth of Christ?”

The Latin Council of Florence declares that the Pope is the “true Vicar of Christ, the head of the whole Church,
and the father and teacher of all Christians; and that full power was given to him, in Blessed Peter, by our
Lord Jesus Christ to feed, to rule, and to govern the universal Church”.4 If the Pope is the divinely appointed
“teacher of all Christians”, one should expect that his followers would listen to his ‘advice’ to omit the Filioque
in the Creed, especially in the authoritative context of a Papal examination into the decrees of a local Church
Council and his judgment of the creed contained therein. In addition, the Papal ‘advice’ deals with an issue
affecting the entire Church (the Creed describes the one faith that binds all members of the universal Church),
yet the Latins stubbornly reject the wisdom of Pope Leo III and obstinately persist in their rebellion against
the holy Creed. The fact that “The practice of adding the filioque was retained in spite of the papal advice”
shows that the addition of the Filioque spread through disobedience of the Western ecclesiastical authorities.

1 Henry Barclay Swete, On the History of the Doctrine of the Procession of the Holy Spirit, Ch. IX, p. 217,
Cambridge: Deighton, Bell, and Co., 1876. Note that part of this information is derived from the forged letter
of the pilgrim monks of the Mount of Olives to Charlemagne and Pope Leo III, which is discussed in the
chapter Forgeries of Adémar de Chabannes. However, it likely still reflects the general situation.
2 See Joseph Patrich, Sabas, Leader of Palestinian Monasticism, in Dumbarton Oaks Studies XXXII, Part V, 2 C,

pp. 349 – 351, Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 1995.
3 A. J. Maas, Filioque, p. 74.
4 Denzinger, n. 694, p. 220.
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The Latin Council of Florence declares, “We define in addition that the explanation of the words “Filioque” for
the sake of declaring the truth and also because of imminent necessity has been lawfully and reasonably
added to the Creed.”1 Again, why would Pope Leo have advised against doing what was “lawful and
reasonable”?

However, the Catholic Encyclopedia naturally plays down the force of Pope Leo III’s disapproval of the
Filioque. Percival (who accepts the Filioque) writes in a historical excursus on the Filioque interpolation:

In 809 a council was held at Aix-la-Chapelle by Charlemagne, and from it three divines were
sent to confer with the Pope, Leo III, upon the subject. The Pope opposed the insertion of the
Filioque on the express ground that the General Councils had forbidden any addition to be
made to their formulary. Later on, the Frankish Emperor asked his bishops what was “the meaning
of the Creed according to the Latins,” and Fleury gives the result of the investigations to have been,
“In France they continued to chant the creed with the word Filioque, and at Rome they continued not
to chant it.”

So firmly resolved was the Pope that the clause should not be introduced into the creed that
he presented two silver shields to the Confessio in St. Peter’s at Rome, on one of which was engraved
the creed in Latin and on the other in Greek, without the addition. This act the Greeks never forgot
during the controversy. Photius refers to it in writing to the Patriarch of Acquileia. About two
centuries later St. Peter Damian mentions them as still in place; and about two centuries later on,
Veccur, Patriarch of Constantinople, declares they hung there still.

It was not till 1014 that for the first time the interpolated creed was used at mass with the
sanction of the Pope. In that year Benedict VIII. acceded to the urgent request of Henry II. of
Germany and so the papal authority was forced to yield, and the silver shields have disappeared from
St. Peter’s.2

The Latin Council of Florence’s claim that there was an “imminent need” to add the Filioque is unjustified.
The Seven Ecumenical Councils saw no need to add the filioque, and there were no major Trinitarian
controversies after the Sixth Ecumenical Council at the end of the 7th century, besides the Filioque. If this
addition was needed so imminently, why did Rome wait until the 11th century to add it? It would appear that
this “imminent need” was the “urgent request of Henry II. of Germany”, which implies that Rome
compromised the Divine Creed for a political reason, to conform to the request of the secular authority.

The learned Orthodox scholar Dr. Edward Siecienski relates

Leo replied that many things necessary for salvation are not included in the creed and, while he gave
permission for the singing of the creed, he never allowed ‘for the adding, subtracting, or altering of
the Creed while it is sung.’ He concluded the audience by ordering the filioque’s removal and
recommending ‘that gradually in the Palace the custom of singing the Creed be dispensed with.’ Leo’s
hope was that if the creed were no longer sung in Aachen, soon ‘all will dispense with it’ and the issue
of the interpolation would resolve itself. It was at this time that Pope Leo, ‘out of the love he bore for
the orthodox faith,’ placed two silver shields in Rome with the uninterpolated creed in both Greek
and Latin.’3

Thus the Pope himself interpreted the canons of the Church to mean that the Creed should not be altered in
any way, and especially not added with the Filioque. This is the correct interpretation of those canons by the
Church.

1 Denzinger, n. 691, p. 219.

2 Percival, Seven Ecumenical Councils, pp. 166 – 167.
3 Anthony Edward Siecienski, The Filioque: History of a Doctrinal Controversy, Ch. V, pp. 99 – 100, Oxford

Studies in Historical Theology, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010, 2010.

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The Latin Catechism of the Council of Trent expounds the eighth article of the Creed thus:

With regard to the words immediately succeeding: “who proceedeth from the Father and the
Son,” the faithful are to be taught, that the Holy Ghost proceeds by eternal procession, from the
Father and the Son, as from one principle: a truth propounded to us by an ecclesiastical rule, from
which the least departure is unwarrantable, confirmed by the authority of the Sacred Scriptures, and
defined by the Councils of the Church.1

The Catechism of Trent goes on to misinterpret some New Testament passages to show the filioque, but this
work will not go deeply into the theological side of the matter here. The Trent Catechism is correct that “the
least departure” from the ecclesiastical rule “is unwarrantable”, and that we ought rather to follow the rule of
the most ancient councils. However, as this very article is a quote from the Sacred Scriptures, literally copied
by the Councils of the Church, we ought to preserve its exact wording.

The Orthodox Patriarchal Encyclical of 1895 summarizes the errors of the Latins’ addition to the Creed:

So then the one holy, catholic and apostolic Church of the seven Ecumenical Councils believed and
taught in accordance with the words of the Gospel that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father; but
in the West, even from the ninth century, the holy Creed, which was composed and sanctioned by
Ecumenical Councils, began to be falsified, and the idea that the Holy Spirit proceeds ‘also from the
Son’ to be arbitrarily promulgated. And certainly Pope Leo XIII is not ignorant that his Orthodox
predecessor and namesake, the defender of Orthodoxy, Leo III, in the year 809 denounced
synodically this anti-evangelical and utterly lawless addition, ‘and from the Son’ (filioque); and
engraved on two silver plates, in Greek and Latin, the holy Creed of the first and second Ecumenical
Councils, entire and without any addition; having written moreover, ‘These words I, Leo, have set
down for love and as a safeguard of the Orthodox faith’ (‘Haec Leo posui amore et cautela fidei
orthodoxa’).2

Each of these silver plates (also referred to as tablets or shields) weighed 100 pounds and had engraved the
Holy Creed of the Council of Constantinople in its genuine form, without the Filioque, and were placed on the
tombs and altars of Saints Peter and Paul in Rome, for all to see. This was done by Pope Leo III to condemn
the Filioque insertion in the Carolingian creed and to preserve the orthodox faith. These facts on Pope Leo III
are confirmed by the Papal librarian Anastasius Bibliothecarius (810 – 879), who flourished in the next
generation after Leo III. In addition, Latin writers of the 11th and 12th centuries – Peter Damian, Abelard,
and Peter Lombard – confirm this information, volunteering a statement which they would have been little
likely to invent, that in the Creed which Leo set up the Filioque was omitted: the Father alone was mentioned
in reference to the procession of the Holy Spirit.3 Yet Roman Catholics later removed these shields and their
whereabouts are currently unknown.

With respect to this fact, Anastasius is a reliable source for the actions of Pope Leo III, as Anastasius took the
Latin side and supported the Filioque, so his witness is proof of the words and actions of Pope Leo III in
discarding the adulterous addition to the Creed.

The important conference between Pope Leo III and the Legates of the Council held at Aachen (809), along
with some historical notes is here quoted at length:

1 John Donovan (translator), The Catechism of the Council of Trent, Published by Command of Pope Pius the
Fifth, p. 88, Dublin: W. Folds and Son, 1829.
2 Anthimos VII, Encyclical, Art. VII.
3 Henry Barclay Swete, On the History of the Doctrine of the Procession of the Holy Spirit, Ch. IX, p. 224,

Cambridge: Deighton, Bell, and Co., 1876.

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V. As all the British Divines above quoted, as well as others who have treated of the same
subject, in common with all Eastern writers, attach great weight to the decision of Pope Leo III., and
refer more or less at length to his conference with the Legates of the Council held at Aquisgranum, it
may not be amiss to subjoin here some account both of the occasion which led to the controversy at
that time, and of the conference itself; the first taken from Father Le Quien’s Dissertations prefixed to
his edition of the Works of St. John Damascene, (vol. I. viii.) the latter abridged from the relation of
the Abbot Smaragdus, as quoted in the Treatise of Adam Zoernikaff: –

“In the year DCCCIX, certain Frankish monks on Mount Olivet at Jerusalem, having
been publicly accused of heresy by a Monk of St. Sabba, named John, because they recited the Creed
with the addition of the word ‘Filioque,’ and having defended themselves at the time by alleging that
they followed the faith of the Roman Church, wrote a long and lamentable Letter of complaint to
Pope Leo III.; in which letter, besides quoting other authorities, they mentioned that they had heard
the Creed sung in the Chapel of the Emperor Charles the Great with that addition, and besought the
Pope to communicate with the Emperor upon the subject, and to send them a distinct answer.
Whereupon the Pope wrote to the Emperor Charlemange, telling him of the complaint which had
been made, and adding, that he had received at the same time a letter from Thomas, Patriarch of
Jerusalem, and had sent back a declaration of his own faith to serve them all as a rule: and a copy of
this his declaration to the Easterns he sent together with his Letter to Charlemagne.”

Charlemagne, on the receipt of Pope Leo’s Letters, caused a Council to be held at

Aquisgranum, A.D. DCCCIX.: and delegates were sent in consequence to Rome, to obtain the Pope’s
consent to the insertion of the clause ‘Filioque’ into the Constantinopolitan Creed. The following are
some passages of the Conference of these delegates with Pope Leo, as related by Smaragdus, Abbot of
St. Michael’s in Lorraine. (Tom. vii. Conc. col. 1194.)

‘Delegates. But since, as you say, this is most certainly to be believed, and most
firmly held, and in case of necessity most constantly defended, must it not be right to teach it to all
who as yet know it not, and on those that know it to impress it still more? The Pope. Even so. D. If so,
suppose any one be ignorant of this, or believe it not, can he be saved? P. Whosoever by his more
subtle understanding is able to attain unto this, and being able, refuses to know it, or knowing to
believe it, he cannot be saved. For there are many things, and this among others, which are of the
deeper mysteries of our holy faith, to the searching out of which many have sufficiency, but many
others, being hindered by defect of age or understanding, have not sufficiency. And therefore, as I
have said already, he who can and will not, he cannot be saved. D. If then it is so, or rather, since it is
so, and this is to be believed, and not kept back in silence, why may it not be sung, and be taught by
being sung? P. It may, I say, it may be sung in teaching, and be taught by being sung: but neither by
writing nor by singing may it be unlawfully inserted into that, which it is forbidden us to
touch. D. Since then we both know that for this reason ye think or declare it unlawful to insert
those words as to be sung or written in the Creed, that they who made the same Creed did not put
them in like the rest, and the subsequent great Synods (i.e. the Fourth of Chalcedon, and the Fifth and
Sixth of Constantinople) forbade that any man under any pretext of necessity or devotion for the
salvation of men should make any new Creed, or take away, add, or change any thing from the old, we
must not waste time any longer on this point. But this I inquire: this I beg you to declare: since this
thing is good to be believed, if they had inserted it, would it in that case have been good to sing too, as
now it is good to believe? P. Good assuredly, and very good, as being so great a mystery of faith, as no
man may disbelieve, who can attain unto it. D. Would not those same makers of the Creed have then
done well, if by adding only four syllables they had made clear to all following ages so necessary a
mystery of faith? P. As I dare not to say that they would not have done well if they had done so,
because, without doubt, they would have done with it as with the rest which they either omitted or
put in, knowing what they did, and being enlightened not by human but divine wisdom, so neither do
I dare to say that they understood this point less than we: on the contrary, I say that they
considered why they left it out, and why, when once left out, they forbade either it or any thing
else to be added afterwards. Do thou consider, what ye think or yourselves: for as for me, I
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say not that I will not set myself up above (those holy Councils), but God forbid that I should
either equal myself to them. D. God forbid, O Father, that we either should think or say any thing of
such a kind, either of pride, or through desire to be praised of men in divine things, as if we either
preferred or equaled ourselves to them; but it is only from a sense of the quality of these times, and
from a charitable compassion for the weakness of our brethren: … For if your Fatherhood know how
many thousands now know it, because it is sung, who would else have never known it, perhaps ye
would hold with us, and even let it be sung with your own consent. P. Suppose for a moment that I
consented, still, I pray, answer me this: Are all such like mysteries of faith, which are not contained in
the Creed, and without which whoever hath sufficiency thereto cannot be a Catholic, are all such, I
say, to be put into the Creed, and added at will, for the compendious instruction of the more
simple? D. By no means: for all points are not equally necessary. P. If not all, yet certainly there are
very many of this kind, that they who are capable must believe them, or cease to be Catholics. D. Will
ye mention any one, I will not say higher, but at least such as may be compared with this, which is
wanting in the Creed? P. In truth that I will, and without any difficulty. D. Mention first one, and if
need be, then add a second. P. Since what we now do, we do by way of friendly contention, and what
we seek is for the spiritual good of both sides, (and would that in all such questions, whether lesser
or greater, pertaining to the interests of the Church and Catholicism, inquiry were always carried on
in this way with a mind for peace and without perverseness!) lest we should chance to say any thing
rashly concerning such venerable mysteries, ye shall let us have space to consider, and then we will
give you whatever the Lord shall have given us on this point.” And the delay of a night having been
allowed as sufficient, the Pope said thus: “Is it more to salvation to believe, or more dangerous not to
believe, that the Holy Ghost proceeds from the Son as well as from the Father, than it is to believe that
the Son is Divine Wisdom begotten of Divine Wisdom, that He is Divine Truth begotten of Divine
Truth, and yet that Both are but One and the same Divine Wisdom, and One and the same Divine
Truth, essentially One God? while yet it is certain that this has not been put by the holy Fathers into
the aforesaid Creed? If then these two truths which I have alleged are enough to satisfy you, as they
should satisfy wise men, and make you agree with us, and acknowledge that all those Catholic
Fathers our elders, who either put not your clause into the Creeds, or forbade the putting of it
or of any thing else into them, left it not out, nor forbade its insertion, either from ignorance at the
time, or from negligence in providing for the future, – if so, I say, I will very gladly omit to heap up
further testimonies. Ye must know however, that not only with respect to the Divine essence, but
also with respect to the mystery of the Lord’s Incarnation, we have by God’s help, and from the
authority of the same Fathers, so many and so signal points to instance, as are enough not only to
satisfy wise men, but also to confound the unwise. … D. … Yet … it is one thing by arrogant
overstepping to despise what is good, another thing of good will to make what is good better. P. That
too, though sometimes good to do, yet needs caution, and is not to be done every where; as might be
proved by many testimonies; but it is clear of itself, how much better it is, that every one should take
care that what is good be also so, as is profitable: or if ever he strive to make that which is good
better, let him look first and take great heed, lest by presuming beyond his duty he make even that
which was salutary in itself hurtful by corrupting it. Unless, may be, any one will pretend of this
present or other similar points, which he may without any danger to himself teach and learn, that the
lawful order of teaching is to be left, and they are to be then and so introduced, that never afterwards
either the teacher or the learner shall be innocent, but both shall always and deservedly be judged
blameable of the crime of transgression. Which, perhaps, if thou dost not disdain to listen to me,
touches thee not undeservedly, who art for bringing it to pass that whereas hitherto every one who
had wisdom in the Church of God might know this truth for himself and teach it to them that had not
wisdom without though of any fault, now, for the future, I say not only the simple shall be unable to
learn it, but even he that hath wisdom shall not be able to sing it without transgression, or teach it, as
ye would have done, to any other; and while ye choose to seek to profit many by an unlawful road,
ye leave none, in this point at least, whom, if he follow you, ye shall not hurt. For as for what ye
said before, that he who should do any such thing of devotion, seeking edification, is not to be taken
or judged of in the same way as he, who should presume to make a contumacious order of so doing;
this excuse or father, if ye will let me say it, this subterfuge, make not to the point: it is not to your
purpose. For the Fathers made no such distinction as this in their decree: nor did they allow the
well-intentioned, and forbid only the ill-intentioned to do this; but simply and absolutely forbade,
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that any should do it. D. Hast thou not thyself given permission to sing that same Creed in the
Church? Or is it from us that this custom of singing it hath proceeded? For it is from hence that the
custom of singing it came to us; not from us hither: and so we sing it even to this day. P. I gave
permission to sing it; but not in the singing to add, take away, or change any thing. And to speak
somewhat more expressly, since ye compel me, as long as ye were content in this point with what the
holy Roman Church holds, as to singing or celebrating in such holy mysteries as these, there was no
manner of need that either we should trouble ourselves in such matters, or force upon others
occasion of trouble. But as for what ye say, that ye sing it thus for this cause, that ye heard others in
those parts so sing it before yourselves, what is this to us? For we do not sing that Creed at all, but
read it only, and use to teach it by reading: and yet we presume not in reading or teaching to add
anything by way of insertion to the same Creed. But whatever truths are understood to be
wanting from the said Creeds though all but fit to be there, these we presume not, as I have
repeatedly said, to insert into them; but at fit time and place we take care to minister and teach
them to those who are capable. D. So then, as I see this is the judgement of your Fatherhood, that
first of all these words on which our question turns, be taken out of the Creed, and then
afterwards it may freely and lawfully, whether by singing or delivery, be learned and taught of all. P.
Such doubtless is our judgement: and we by all means urge that ye for your parts adhere to
the same.’

“The same Pope further set up two silver tablets having the Creed engraved on them in
Greek and Latin with out the addition in the Church of St. Peter, with a notice in these words, ‘Hæc
Leo posui amore et cautelâ orthodoxæ fidei:’ that all might know that the Roman Church agreed not
to those, who altered this common Confession of the faith by any addition or explanation.” – Tract.
Zoernikavii, vol. i. p. 381. ed. 1774.1

The argument of the Catholic Encyclopedia, that “the councils had not forbidden to explain the same faith or
to propose the same Creed in a clearer way,” is refuted by the angelic words of Pope Leo III, “they forbade
either it or any thing else to be added afterwards”.

It is worth noting that while it is clear that Pope Leo III rejected the interpolation of the Filioque into the
Creed, it appears that Leo III considered the doctrine of the Filioque to be Orthodox, and necessary to
salvation. However, the Orthodox Church is far from considering Papal judgements to be infallible, but it is a
serious problem for the Latins to have their Supreme Judge judge in opposition to their later Church (viz.
Pope Leo III vs. the Latin Council of Florence). Moreover, I strongly disagree that Pope Leo III held the
heretical doctrine of the Filioque, because the word Filioque in Latin does not necessarily carry heretical
meaning, as can be easily shown from the extremely important words of St. Maximos the Confessor near the
end of this section. There is a big language barrier as well, because the Filioque usually has a heretical
meaning when translated into Greek, but can be more easily interpreted in an Orthodox manner in Latin. Of
course, the later councils are more theologically specific on what the Filioque actually means, which is briefly
discussed at the end of this section.

Pope John VIII also taught that the filioque should not be added to the creed. Writing to St. Photius, Pope John
VIII has these words:

1[William Palmer], A Harmony of Anglican Doctrine with the Doctrine of the Catholic and Apostolic Church of
the East, Appendix, Note V, pp. 137 – 141 [Sect. V, pp. 33 – 37, in an earlier version of this book published the
same year and place], Aberdeen: A. Brown and Co., 1846. Note that other English translations of this
conference are found in Richard S. Haugh, Photius and the Carolingians: The Trinitarian Controversy,
Belmont, MA: Nordland Publishing Company, 1975; George Broadley Howard, The Schism Between the
Oriental and Western Churches: With Special Reference to the Addition of the Filioque to the Creed, 58., pp.
27 – 29, London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1892.
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Reverend Sir, that we may give you satisfaction touching that addition in the Creed, [and from the
Son], we let you know, that not only we have no such addition, but also we condemn them as
transgressors of the direct word, and [who] were the first authors of this addition. … We
carefully labour, and endeavour to bring it to pass, that all our bishops may think as we do: but no
man can suddenly alter a thing of such consequence, and therefore it seemeth reasonable to us, that
no man be violently constrained by you to leave out this addition.1

Another error of the Latins is to permit various creeds in their communion, by allowing the Eastern Rite
Catholic Uniats to recite the creed without the filioque (though of course they must hold the doctrine of the
filioque). The Roman Catholic historian Reuben Parsons writes, “Permission to abstain from the use of the
clause [filioque] was accorded to the Greeks by Gregory X., in the Council of Lyons; by Eugene IV., in the
Council of Florence; by Clement VIII.; and by Benedict XIV.” 2 Thus the supposedly catholic Church of the
Latins does not even say the same creed, the symbol of Christian unity and catholicity, in its various locations
throughout the whole world.

Latin Pope Nicholas III, however, certainly felt the weight of this problem, for he insisted that there can be no
diversity in the Creed, and sent legates in 1278 to Constantinople, demanding all Eastern clerics insert the
filioque in the Creed, and that they chant the filioque in their confessions of faith:

Pope Nicholas III (1277 – 1280), for example, insisted that the interpolated creed be adopted in
Byzantium, and that oaths acknowledging papal primacy be imposed on all the Byzantine clergy. As a
further sign of compliance, it was suggested that a permanent papal cardinal-legate be established in
the Byzantine capital. To the old papal thesis of obedience, a new note of uniformity was added.
“Unity of faith,” wrote Nicholas in his memorandum to his legates, before they left for
Constantinople, “does not permit diversity in its confessors or in confession, … especially in the
chanting of the creed.”3

The Latin Council of Trent calls the Nicene Creed the foundation of the Church, in its “Decree Concerning the
Symbol of Faith,” in the following remarkable declaration:

In the name of the holy and undivided Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.

This holy, ecumenical and general Council of Trent, lawfully assembled in the Holy Ghost, the
same three legates of the Apostolic See presiding, considering the magnitude of the matters to be
dealt with, … Wherefore, that this pious solicitude [of the council] may begin and continue by the
grace of God, it ordains and decrees that before all else a confession of faith be set forth; following
herein the examples of the Fathers, who in the more outstanding councils were accustomed at the
beginning of their work to use this shield against heresies, with which alone they have at times
drawn unbelievers to the faith, overcome heretics and confirmed the faithful. For this reason it has
thought it well that the symbol of faith which the holy Roman Church uses as the cardinal principle
wherein all who profess the faith of Christ necessarily agree and as the firm and sole foundation

1 Richard Field, Of the Church, Vol. I, Book III, Ch. I, pp. 111 – 112, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1847.
2 Reuben Parsons, Studies in Church History, Vol. II, Ch. V, pp. 89 – 90, Philadelphia, PA: John Joseph McVey,

Third Ed., 1909.

3 Deno John Geanakoplos, The Emperor Michael Palaeologus and the West, 1258 – 1282: A Study in

Byzantine-Latin Relations, p. 313, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1959. Siecienski, The Filioque, p.
140. Papadakis, Crisis in Byzantium, p. 26. Jules Gay, Les Registres de Nicolas III, col. 128B, Paris:
Bibliothèque des Ecoles Françaises d’Athènes et de Rome, 1904.
 164

against which the gates of hell shall never prevail, be expressed in the same words in which it is read
in all the churches, which is as follows: I believe … 1

The Latin Council proceeded to recite the Creed with the Filioque. Is this the same “shield” that Pope Leo III
hung on the tomb of St. Peter? Was not this “foundation” broken by a wedge? This passage, when it says
“expressed in the same words in which it is read in all the churches,” appears to forget that the Uniate
Easterners are permitted to use different words (that is, to omit the Filioque) in their recitation of the Creed.

The early Church clearly believed that the Creed should not be altered, and that the Holy Spirit proceeds from
the Father. Remember that Pope Leo III interpreted the following evidence as against the interpolation of the
Creed. This evidence thus cannot be interpreted any other way (as the Catholic Encyclopedia and the whole
modern Roman Catholic communion does) without rejecting the belief of Pope Leo III, who says of these
ancient fathers on the Filioque, “they forbade either it or any thing else to be added afterwards”.
The following is an extract from the Acts of Session II (10 October 451) of the Fourth Ecumenical Council,
where the Nicene Creed, the Constantinopolitan Creed, and the letter of St. Cyril to John of Antioch were read
and approved by the Holy Fathers of the Council. At first, some of the officials suggested that a new Creed be
made to combat the Monophysite heresy, but the bishops of this Council protested strongly against such an
action, holding that the Nicene and Constantinopolitan Creeds are sufficient:

[The officials said,] ‘Therefore apply yourselves without fear, favour or enmity to produce a
pure exposition of the faith, so that even those who appear not to share the views of all may be
restored to harmony by acknowledging the truth. We wish you to know that the most divine and pious
master of the world and we ourselves preserve the orthodox faith handed down by the 318, by the 150,
and by the other holy and glorious fathers, and believe in accordance with it.’

3. The most devout bishops exclaimed: ‘No one makes a new exposition*, nor do we attempt or
presume to do so. For it was the fathers who taught, what they expounded is preserved in
writing, and we cannot go beyond it.’ …

5. The most devout bishops exclaimed: ‘This is what we all say. What has already been expounded
is sufficient. It is not permissible to produce another exposition.’ …

7. The most devout bishops exclaimed: ‘We will not produce a written exposition. There is a
canon which declares that what has already been expounded is sufficient. The canon forbids
the making of another exposition. Let the [will] of the fathers prevail.’ …

9. Cecropius the most devout bishop of Sebastopolis said: ‘The faith was well defined by the 318 holy
fathers and confirmed by the holy fathers Athanasius, Cyril, Celestine, Hilary, Basil, Gregory, and now
again by the most holy Leo. We request that the creed of the 318 holy fathers and the letter of the most
sacred Leo be read.’

1 “In nomine sanctae et individuae Trinitatis, Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti. Haec sacrosancta oecumenica et
generalis Tridentina synodus, in Spiritu Sancto legitime congregata, in ea praesidentibus eisdem tribus
Apostolicae Sedis legatis, magnitudinem rerum tractandarum considerans, … Itaque ut haec pia ejus
sollicitudo principium et progressum suum per Dei gratiam habeat, ante omnia statuit et decernit,
praemittendam esse confessionem fidei, partum exempla in hoc secuta, qui sacratioribus conciliis hoc scutum
contra omnes haereses in principio suarum actionum apponere consuevere, quo solo aliquando et infidels ad
fidem traxerunt, haereticos expugnarunt et fideles confirmarunt. Quare symbolum fidei, quo sancta Romana
ecclesia utitur tamquam principium illud, in quo omnes qui fidem Christi profitentur necessario conveniunt,
ac fundamentum firmum et unicum contra quod portae inferi nunquam praevalebunt, totidem verbis quibus
in omnibus ecclesiis legitur, exprimendum esse censuit. Quod quidem ejusmodi est: Credo …” Session III, 4
February, 1546. Schroeder, Trent, p. 15. Latin on pp. 294 – 295.
 165

10. The most glorious officials and the exalted senate said: ‘Let the exposition of the 318 holy fathers
who assembled at Nicaea be read.’

Eunomius the most devout bishop of Nicomedia read from a document:

We believe … [the Nicene Creed, containing the article ‘and in the Holy Spirit.’]

12. The most devout bishops exclaimed: ‘This is the faith of the orthodox. This we all believe. …’

13. The most glorious officials and the exalted senate said: ‘Read out as well the exposition of the 150
holy fathers.’

Aetius the most devout archdeacon of Constantinople read from a document:

The holy creed defined by the 150 holy fathers, agreeing with the holy and great council at Nicaea.
14. We believe … [the Constantinopolitan Creed, containing the article ‘and in the Holy Spirit, the lord
and life-giver, who proceeds from the Father, who with the Father and the Son is worshipped and
glorified together.’]

15. All the most devout bishops exclaimed: ‘This is the faith of all. This is the faith of the orthodox. We
all believe accordingly.’

16. Aetius the most devout archdeacon said: ‘There is also the letter written by the most holy Cyril, …’

17. The most glorious officials and the exalted senate said: ‘Let the letters of Cyril of sacred memory be
read.’

Aetius archdeacon of imperial Constantinople read: …

The Letter of Cyril to John of Antioch:

Cyril to my lord, beloved brother, and fellow minister John, greeting in the Lord.

“Let the heavens rejoice, and let the earth be glad” for the middle wall of partition has been taken
away, and grief has been silenced, and all kind of difference of opinion has been removed; Christ the
Saviour of us all having awarded peace to his churches, through our being called to this by our most
devout and beloved of God kings, who are the best imitators of the piety of their ancestors in keeping the
right faith in their souls firm and immovable, for they chiefly give their mind to the affairs of the holy
Churches, in order that they may have the noted glory forever and show forth their most renowned
kingdom, to whom also Christ himself the Lord of powers distributes good things with plenteous hand
and gives to prevail over their enemies and grants them victory.

… Concerning the Virgin Mother of God, we thus think and speak; and of the manner of the
Incarnation of the Only Begotten Son of God, necessarily, not by way of addition but for the sake of
certainty, as we have received from the beginning from the divine Scriptures and from the tradition of the
holy fathers, we will speak briefly, adding nothing whatever to the Faith set forth by the holy Fathers
in Nice. For, as we said before, it suffices for all knowledge of piety and the refutation of all false doctrine
of heretics. But we speak, not presuming on the impossible; but with the confession of our own weakness,
excluding those who wish us to cling to those things which transcend human consideration.

… Let your holiness be convinced nor let anyone else be doubtful that we altogether follow the
teachings of the holy fathers, especially of our blessed and celebrated Father Athanasius, deprecating the
least departure from it.
 166

I might have added many quotations from them also establishing my words, but that it would
have added to the length of my letter and it might become wearisome. And we will allow the defined
Faith, the symbol of the Faith set forth by our holy Fathers who assembled some time ago at Nice, to be
shaken by no one. Nor would we permit ourselves or others, to alter a single word of those set forth,
or to add one syllable, remembering the saying: ‘Remove not the ancient landmark which thy fathers
have set,’ for it was not they who spoke but the Spirit himself of God and the Father, who
proceedeth also from him, and is not alien from the Son, according to his essence. And this the words of
the holy initiators into mysteries confirm to us. For in the Acts of the Apostles it is written: “And after they
were come to Mysia, they assayed to go into Bithynia; but the Spirit of Jesus suffered them not.” And the
divine Paul wrote: “So then they that are in the flesh cannot please God. But ye are not in the flesh, but in
the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you. Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is
none of his.”

20. After the reading the most devout bishops exclaimed: ‘We all believe accordingly. … As is
contained in the letters of Cyril, so we hold. …’

[Price & Gaddis’s Footnote]: * ‘Exposition’ here and in the following paragraphs means ‘creed’. The
reference here, and repeatedly in the following discussion, is to the ban on the composition of new
creeds enunciated in Canon 7 of Ephesus I.1

This clearly shows that the Constantinopolitan Creed was identified with the Nicene Creed, and Canon VII of
Ephesus applies to both, so the Latins cannot argue that because Constantinople expanded upon the Nicene
Creed, then it is acceptable for them to expand upon the Constantinopolitan Creed. The Council fathers who
say “There is a canon which declares that what has already been expounded is sufficient. The canon forbids
the making of another exposition.” apply this canon to both Creeds of Nicaea and Constantinople. The
Chalcedonian Fathers, immediately after quoting the Constantinopolitan Creed, approvingly quote St. Cyril
against “adding one syllable” to the Nicene Creed, so this Council could not have held Cyril’s words to apply
against Constantinople’s Creed, which did expand that of Nicaea, and indeed, what Cyril says about Nicaea
also applies to Constantinople, as Cyril himself seems to imply, when he quotes Constantinople’s statement on
the procession of the Holy Spirit. Cyril’s statement that the Spirit “is not alien from the Son” has no bearing on
the procession, as the Scriptural passages he cites show. See the following important extract from the Fifth
Session (22 October 451) of the same Council of Chalcedon, which contains the Council’s definition of faith:

But since the evil one does not desist from choking with his weeds the seeds of piety, and is
always inventing something new against the truth, …

This then we have done, having by a unanimous decree repelled the doctrines of error, renewed
the unerring faith of the fathers, proclaimed to all the creed of the 318, and endorsed as akin the
fathers who received this compendium of piety, that is, the 150 who subsequently assembled at great
Constantinople and set their seal on the same faith. Upholding also on our part the order and all the
decrees on the faith of the holy council that formerly took place at Ephesus, of whom the leaders were
the most holy in memory Celestine of Rome and Cyril of Alexandria, we decree the preeminence of the
exposition of the correct and irreproachable faith by the 318 holy and blessed fathers who convened at
Nicaea under the then emperor Constantine of pious memory, and also the validity of the definition of
the 150 holy fathers at Constantinople for the uprooting of the heresies which had then sprung up and
for the confirming of our same catholic and apostolic faith.

The symbol of the 318 fathers at Nicaea

32. We believe … [the Nicene Creed.]

The same of the 150 holy fathers who assembled at Constantinople

1Richard Price and Michael Gaddis, The Acts of the Council of Chalcedon, Vol. II, Session II, pp. 9 – 14, in
Translated Texts for Historians, Vol. XLV, Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2005. The full letter of Cyril
to John of Antioch is translated in Percival, Seven Ecumenical Councils, pp. 251 – 253.
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33. We believe … [the Constantinopolitan Creed.]

34. This wise and saving symbol of divine grace sufficed for the perfect knowledge and
confirmation of piety, for on the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit its teaching is complete,
while to those who receive it faithfully it also sets forth the incarnation of the Lord. … this holy, great
and ecumenical council now present, wishing to close off for them every device against the truth and
expound the firmness of the proclamation from of old, has decreed first and foremost that the creed of
the 318 holy fathers is to remain inviolate. Furthermore, it confirms the teaching on the essence of
the Holy Spirit that was handed down at a later date by the 150 fathers who assembled in the
imperial city because of those who were making war on the Holy Spirit; this teaching they made
known to all, not as though they were inserting something omitted by their predecessors, but rather
making clear by written testimony their conception of the Holy Spirit against those who were
trying to deny his sovereignty.

Following, therefore, the holy fathers, we all in harmony teach confession of one and the same
Son our Lord Jesus Christ, … [as] the symbol of the fathers has handed down to us.

Now that these matters have been formulated by us with all possible care and precision,
the holy and ecumenical council has decreed that no one is allowed to produce or compose or
construct another creed or to think or teach otherwise. As for those who presume either to
construct another creed or to publish or teach or deliver another symbol to those wishing to convert to
the knowledge of the truth from paganism or Judaism or from any heresy whatsoever, the council
decrees that, if they are bishops or clerics, they are to be deposed, bishops from the episcopate and
clerics from the clerical state, while, if they are monks or laymen, they are to be anathematized.

35. After the reading of the definition all the most devout bishops exclaimed: ‘This is the faith of the
fathers. …

[End of Session V.]1

The Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed is correctly called the Nicene Creed, and is is clear from the Council of
Chalcedon that this Creed is complete and in its final form, and cannot be modified in the future. Again, it is
clear that Canon VII of Ephesus cannot be held in any way against the Constantinopolitan Creed, for
Chalcedon repeats that canon’s prohibition against “another creed” after quoting that of Constantinople. It is
very important that Chalcedon says that “on the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit its teaching is
complete”, for although there were later Trinitarian controversies, the teaching on the procession of the Holy
Spirit is specifically said to be “clear”, which means that the Creed could not have left out a matter so
important as the equal procession of the Holy Spirit from the Son as well (if this doctrine were true), which
would have meant the Creed was imprecise and unclear. Moreover, although the Monophysite heretics
professed to accept the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed, the Chalcedonian Fathers refused to make a new
creed to specifically counter their heresy, and held that “what has already been expounded is sufficient” with
regard to the Creed, although this Council still wrote a definition of faith on the matter.

The Address to Marcian by the fathers of the Council of Chalcedon contains the following important
statement, directly bearing upon this subject:

Again it [the Nicene Creed] said, “and in the Holy Spirit”, transmitting a conception of the
doctrine of the Spirit that is sufficient for the pious. For it is clear that in prescribing belief equally in
the Father and the Son and the Spirit, it enjoined placing one’s hopes [in them] as in God, revealing to
those who receive it one nature in the Trinity. But because the creed at that time expounded the
teaching on the Spirit so simply, since no one yet disputed about him, those of the spawn of Arius

1 Price and Gaddis, The Acts of the Council of Chalcedon, Volume II, Session V, pp. 201 – 205. Also see
footnote 55 on p. 205.
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who had preserved the corruption in themselves, being hard-pressed by refutation relating to the
Son, transferred their blasphemy to the Spirit, thinking their misrepresentation to be irrefutable, and
impudently assigned to him the lowly status of being a creature. Accordingly those who
subsequently championed the truth repelled their corruption with counter-devices, showing that
according to the understanding of the faith he is Lord and God and has his procession from the
Father.1

This letter says that the Nicene Creed’s statement “and [we believe] in the Holy Spirit” is sufficient for the
pious, since it teaches belief in the Holy Spirit as One of the Holy Trinity. However, after being refuted with
regard to their heresy about Christ, the Arians or Pneumatomachians had begun blaspheming the Holy Spirit,
so the 150 fathers of Constantinople, called “those who subsequently championed the truth”, made clear the
“understanding of the faith”, and specified that the Holy Spirit “is Lord and God and has his procession from
the Father.” It is difficult to suppose that an issue so relevant as the equal procession from the Son would
have been omitted here, if the Council had believed this. The Holy Spirit “has his procession from the Father”,
and this is the Orthodox faith and it is fully true, precise, sufficient, complete, and nothing whatsoever ought
to be added to this article in the Creed.

The first edict confirming the Council of Chalcedon by the emperors Flavius Valentinian and Flavius Marcian
states:

For anyone who strives to reopen and publicly dispute matters that have been judged once and for all
and settled correctly insults the judgement of the most religious council, because what has now been
decreed about the Christian faith is acknowledged to have been defined according to the apostolic
teaching and the decrees of the 318 and 150 holy fathers. A penalty will not be lacking for those
who despise this enactment, because they not only go against a well-composed creed …2

The end of Session I of the Acts of the Council of Chalcedon relates the following:

The most glorious judges and the whole senate said; Let each one of the most reverend
bishops of the present synod, hasten to set forth how he believes, writing without any fear, but
placing the fear of God before his eyes; knowing that our most divine and pious lord believes
according to the ecthesis of the three hundred and eighteen holy fathers at Nice, and according to
the ecthesis of the one hundred and fifty after them, and according to the Canonical epistles
and ectheses of the holy fathers Gregory, Basil, Athanasius, Hilary, Ambrose, and according to the two
canonical epistles of Cyril, which were confirmed and published in the first Council of Ephesus, nor
does he in any point depart from the faith of the same.3

Justinian’s Law Code contains the following decree, given at Constantinople on August 1, 455, from Emperors
Valentinian and Marcian to Palladius, Praetorian Prefect:

All those who, in this Imperial City, or in that of Alexandria, or in any of the dioceses of Egypt, or in
any other provinces, follow the profane perversity of Eutyches, and hence do not acknowledge the
Catholic faith, as established by the three hundred and eighteen Holy Fathers of Nicea, and the
one hundred and fifty other reverend bishops who subsequently assembled in the fair city of
Constantinople, and which Athanasius, Theophilus, and Cyril of holy memory, Bishops of the City of

1 Price and Gaddis, The Acts of the Council of Chalcedon, Vol. III, 1. Address to Marcian, p. 113.
2 Price and Gaddis, The Acts of the Council of Chalcedon, Vol. III, 3. First Edict Confirming Chalcedon, p. 129.
3 Percival, Seven Ecumenical Councils, p. 248. Also translated in Price and Gaddis, The Acts of the Council of

Chalcedon, Vol. I, Session I, p. 365. Also see Vol. I, Session I, pp. 157 – 158, where the Constantinopolitan
Fathers are spoken of as having rightfully made additions and clarifications to the original Nicene Creed, on
account of the new heresies, with the Orthodox bishop Diogenes saying, “additions were made to it [the
Nicene Creed] by the holy fathers on account of the evil opinions of Apollinarius, Valentinus, Macedonius and
those like them, and there were added to the creed of the holy fathers the words … The holy fathers who
came after clarified the words “was enfleshed” of the holy fathers at Nicaea by adding …”
 169

Alexandria, adopted, and whom also the Synod of Ephesus (over which Cyril, of blessed memory
presided, and in which the error of Nestorius was rejected), unanimously followed, which recently
the venerated Synod of Chalcedon approved, and which agrees in every respect with the decisions of
former ecclesiastical councils, neither taking anything from, or adding anything to the Holy
Symbol, but condemning the fatal dogmas of Eutyches, knowing that they are Apollinarian heretics,
for Eutyches and Dioscorus, with sacrilegious intent, sanctioned the most infamous sect of
Appollinaris. … [Heretics] who do not profess the faith of the aforesaid venerable fathers, and who
are not communicants of the reverend Proterius, bishop of the city of Alexandria, who is of the
orthodox faith, are forbidden to appoint or have bishops, presbyters or other clergymen. 1

The Definition of Faith of the Sixth Ecumenical Council (in Session XVIII) states the following:

And this our holy and Ecumenical Synod inspired of God has set its seal to the Creed which was put
forth by the 318 Fathers, and again religiously confirmed by the 150, which also the other holy
synods cordially received and ratified for the taking away of every soul-destroying heresy.

The Nicene Creed of the 318 holy Fathers. We believe, etc.

The Creed of the 150 holy Fathers assembled at Constantinople. We believe, etc.

The holy and Ecumenical Synod further says, this pious and orthodox Creed of the Divine grace
would be sufficient for the full knowledge and confirmation of the orthodox faith. But as the author
of evil …

… according as the Prophets of old have taught us and as our Lord Jesus Christ himself hath
instructed us, and the Creed of the holy Fathers hath delivered to us; defining all this we likewise
declare that in him are two natural wills and two natural operations indivisibly, inconvertibly,
inseparably, inconfusedly, according to the teaching of the holy Fathers. …

These things, therefore, with all diligence and care having been formulated by us, we define
that it be permitted to no one to bring forward, or to write, or to compose, or to think, or to teach a
different faith. Whosoever shall presume to compose a different faith, or to propose, or teach, or hand
to those wishing to be converted to the knowledge of the truth, from the Gentiles or Jews, or from any
heresy, any different Creed; or to introduce a new voice or invention of speech to subvert these
things which now have been determined by us, all these, if they be Bishops or clerics let them be
deposed, the Bishops from the Episcopate, the clerics from the clergy; but if they be monks or
laymen: let them be anathematized.2

Even though it seems that some in the West had already added the Filioque to the Creed by the time of the
Sixth Ecumenical Council (680 – 681), it is apparent that Pope Agatho (Pope from 678 – 681), who was
probably more than 100 years old at this time, along with the Roman Synod of 125 bishops, did not use the
Filioque when explaining the doctrine of the Trinity in the face of the Monothelite heresy:

1 Corpus Juris Civilis, Codex Justinianus, Book I, Title V, 8. Samuel Parsons Scott, The Civil Law, Including the
Twelve Tables: The Institutes of Gaius, the Rules of Ulpian, the Opinions of Paulus, the Enactments of
Justinian, and the Constitutions of Leo, Vol. VI, p. 67, New York, NY: AMS Press, 1973. Also translated in
Timothy G. Kearley (editor), Fred Heinrich Blume, The Annotated Justinian Code, published online at the
University of Wyoming College of Law web site, 2nd Ed., 2009, (http://www.uwyo.edu/lawlib/blume-
justinian/ajc-edition-2/books/book1/book%201-5rev.pdf).
2 Percival, Seven Ecumenical Councils, pp. 344 – 346.
 170

The Letter of Agatho and of the Roman Synod of 125 Bishops which was to Serve as an Instruction to
the Legates Sent to Attend the Sixth Synod:

We believe in God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and
invisible; and in his only-begotten Son, who was begotten of him before all worlds; very God of Very
God, Light of Light, begotten not made, being of one substance with the Father, that is of the same
substance as the Father; by him were all things made which are in heaven and which are in earth;
and in the Holy Ghost, the Lord and giver of life, who proceedeth from the Father, and with the
Father and the Son together is worshipped and glorified; the Trinity in unity and Unity in trinity; a
unity so far as essence is concerned, but a trinity of persons or subsistences; and so we confess God
the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost; not three gods, but one God, the Father, the Son, and
the Holy Ghost: not a subsistency of three names, but one substance of three subsistences; and of
these persons one is the essence, or substance or nature, that is to say one is the godhead, one the
eternity, one the power, one the kingdom, one the glory, one the adoration, one the essential will and
operation of the same Holy and inseparable Trinity, which hath created all things, hath made
disposition of them, and still contains them.1

The Letter of Pope Agatho to the Emperor:

For, among men placed amid the Gentiles, and earning their daily bread by bodily labour with
considerable distraction, how could a knowledge of the Scriptures, in its fulness, be found unless
what has been canonically defined by our holy and apostolic predecessors, and by the venerable five
councils, we preserve in simplicity of heart, and without any distorting keep the faith come to us
from the Fathers, always desirous and endeavouring to possess that one and chiefest good, viz.: that
nothing be diminished from the things canonically defined, and that nothing be changed nor added
thereto, but that those same things, both in words and sense, be guarded untouched?2

In the Third Session of the Seventh Ecumenical Council, “A Copy of the Synodals of Theodore, most holy
Patriarch of Jerusalem” was read, which contains the following confession of faith:

We believe, O ye most Blessed, as before time and from the beginning we have believed, in
one God the Father Almighty, wholly without beginning or end of days, the Maker of all things visible
and invisible. And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God even the Father, and who
knew no other original than the Father, and who from Him alone derived His substance: Light of
Light, very God of very God. And in One Holy Spirit, who proceedeth eternally from the Father,
and who by Himself is acknowledged as the Light and as God, and who is truly co-eternal,
consubstantial, and of the same tribe with the Father and the Son, and as of the same Nature and
Essence so also of the same Godhead: a Trinity, consubstantial, equal in honour and dignity, united in
one Deity, and conjoined in one common dominion, without any personal or hypostatical confusion
or division.3

This document continues with a confirmation of the previous Ecumenical Councils:

We receive, consent to, and heartily embrace the six holy Ecumenic Councils, which were
assembled at various times and in divers places by the Holy Spirit against all heresies; to which the
Churches of the orthodox throughout the world, loudly declaring their adherence, are confirmed in

1 Percival, Seven Ecumenical Councils, p. 340.

2 Percival, Seven Ecumenical Councils, pp. 329 – 330. Note that this letter is cited by Latin Pope Gregory XVI
in his encyclical letter of 15 August, 1832 as an authority.
3 Mendham, The Seventh General Council, the Second of Nicæa, held A.D. 787, Session III, pp. 103 – 105,

London: William Edward Painter, 1850.

 171

right and divinely-inspired doctrine: and we admit those whom they admitted and reject those whom
they rejected. …

The First of which Councils was that assembled in Nice, …

The Second was that of the one hundred and fifty fathers which was convened at
Constantinople against Macedonius the adversary of the Holy Ghost, and his crew of impious semi-
Arians: which holy Council, having as its guide and direction this same Holy Spirit, did determine
that the Holy Spirit had its procession, without time and eternally from the Father, and was
consubstantial with the Father and the Son, and is together with them to be worshipped and
glorified. And further, it subjected to its most awful anathemas those who had uttered unpardonable
blasphemies against this same Comforter, together with the foolish Apollinarius, who, being himself
without sense, did foolishly assert that the Saviour as Man was in like manner without sense. 1

After reviewing all the previous Ecumenical Councils, this document states its view on the sufficient and
unalterable authority of these Councils:

These six holy Councils are all that we consider Ecumenic; and indeed, besides these, we wish for no
other, since there is not now left anything, whether of Apostolic Tradition or of legitimate
exposition of the Fathers, which needs any amendment or any addition or improvement of
any kind whatever. Therefore, with our whole heart and soul we anathematize collectively and
distributively all evil-minded heretics as the seed tares, followers of Satan, and soul-destroying
teachers, from their abandoned head Simon Magus, down to their most execrable tail; and specially
those whom the six holy Œcumenic Councils have anathematized. Together with these I denounce
Severus head of the Monophysite Acephali, together with his followers; Peter the Fuller, who
audaciously dared to make addition to the Trisagion, and presumed to impute suffering to the
impassable Deity; and all who follow his blasphemies. Nor do we reject, but altogether approve, all
the various local Synods which have been convened, and the canonical regulations and soul-profiting
ordinances which, under the influence of the Holy Spirit, have been set forth in them. 2

In the Seventh Session, in “The Definition of the Holy Great and Œcumenic Synod, the Second Assembled at
Nice”, which defines the true doctrine on the veneration of icons and reviews the previous Ecumenical
Councils, the following is recorded in the Acts:

Wherefore God our Master, not enduring to see His people who obey Him destroyed by a
pest like this, hath by His own good will, and by the sacred zeal and consent of Constantine and Irene
the most faithful Sovereigns, summoned us together from every quarter, the chiefs of the Christian
priesthood, in order that the divine tradition of the Catholic Church might be established by our
common vote – we, therefore, having with all exactness made the most careful and diligent enquiry,

1 Mendham, The Seventh General Council, Session III, pp. 106 – 108. Regarding these Synodals of Patriarch
Theodore of Jerusalem, see the chapter on the Council of Trullo, where I quote from the Acts showing that the
Papal legates spoke in terms of approbation of this letter, and that it was unanimously approved by the entire
Seventh Ecumenical Council. Moreover, I note that these Synodals were “read and approved” at the Lateran
Council in 769 under Pope Stephen III with 52 bishops, and that afterwards Pope Hadrian I repeatedly
appealed to this letter. These Synodals are also quoted in the Appendix on the Condemnation of Pope
Honorius.
2 Mendham, The Seventh General Council, Session III, p. 113. It is worth noting here that Theodore denounces

Peter the Fuller, “who audaciously dared to make addition to the Trisagion”, and to consider how much more
would Theodore have denounced those who made addition to the “exposition of the Fathers”. At the Seventh
Council, Patriarch Tarasius makes an interesting statement that the Holy Ghost “proceedeth from the Father
by the Son” (Mendham, The Seventh General Council, Session III, p. 91. See the notes in this location, pp. 91 –
93), and this statement is censured by the Caroline Books (or other Frankish theologians), to which Adrian
replies, but this is a matter that requires more in-depth research and theological analysis than what I am
currently able to enter into.
 172

and having followed truth as our great aim, neither taking away anything nor adding anything, have
endeavoured in all things to preserve all that belongs to the Church complete and entire. Wherefore
following the Six Œcumenic Councils – in the first place, with the Council which was assembled in the
splendid city of Nice, and with the Council which after that was convened in this God-protected royal
city –

We believe in one God … And in the Holy Ghost, the Lord and Giver of Life, who proceedeth
from the Father, who with the Father and the Son together is to be worshipped and glorified, who
spake by the Prophets. …

And, to be brief, we affirm that we preserve all the traditions of the Church which have been handed
down to us in her, whether written or unwritten, without innovation: …

We follow the ancient order of the Church: we observe the laws of the fathers: we anathematise those
who add anything or take anything from the Church …1

It seems that the Filioque became used at a time when it was thought to be part of the original creed, perhaps
due to a lack of precision and care for accurate preservation of the original documents. Henry Percival
writes:

It is quite possible that when these words were first used there was no knowledge on the
part of those using them that there had been made any addition to the Creed. As I have already
pointed out, the year 589 is the earliest date at which we find the words actually introduced into the
Creed. Now there can be no doubt whatever that the Council of Toledo of that year had no suspicion
that the creed as they had it was not the creed exactly as adopted at Constantinople. This is capable
of the most ample proof.

In the first place they declared, “Whosoever believes that there is any other Catholic faith
and communion, besides that of the Universal Church, that Church which holds and honours the
decrees of the Councils of Nice, Constantinople, I. Ephesus, and Chalcedon, let him be anathema.”
After some further anathemas in the same sense they repeat “the creed published at the council of
Nice,” and next, “The holy faith which the 150 fathers of the Council of Constantinople explained,
consonant with the great Council of Nice.” And then lastly, “The holy faith which the translators of
the council of Chalcedon explained.” The creed of Constantinople as recited contained the words
“and from the Son.” Now the fathers at Toledo were not ignorant of the decree of Ephesus
forbidding the making of “another faith” (ἑτέραν πίστιν) for they themselves cite it, as follows from
the acts of Chalcedon; “The holy and universal Synod forbids to bring forward any other faith; or to

1 Mendham, The Seventh General Council, Session VII, pp. 437 – 440. Percival’s translation of this decree
notes that Anastasius’s translation gives the Creed here with the word “Filioque” (Migne, PL, Vol. CXXIX, p.
458) and that “Cardinal Julian in the Fifth Session of the Council of Florence gave evidence that there was then
extant a very ancient codex containing these words” (Percival, Seven Ecumenical Councils, p. 549, n. 1.)
However, this manuscript was in Latin, and the Filioque here is an interpolation with no basis in the Greek
manuscript tradition, and this reading was rejected by the Greek delegation (see Christiaan Kappes, A Latin
Defense of Mark of Ephesus at the Council of Ferrara-Florence (1438-39), pp. 177 & 211 – 212, nn. 126 – 128,
in The Greek Orthodox Theological Review, Vol. LXIX, Boston, MA: Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of
Theology, 2014). On the phrase “neither taking away anything nor adding anything”, Richard Price, the
Roman Catholic scholar who translated and annotated the Acts of Nicaea II, comments “The insistence on
strict fidelity to the creed goes back in credal and canonical legislation to what became numbered as Canon 7
of the First Council of Ephesus (431),” and that this language echoes Deuteronomy xii 32 (xiii 1. LXX) (Richard
Price, The Acts of the Second Council of Nicaea (787), Vol. II, p. 562, n. 43, in Translated Texts for Historians,
Vol. LXVIII, Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2018). Price has no mention of the interpolation in the
Constantinopolitan Creed brought up at Florence, and simply gives the reading “who proceeds from the
Father,” (p. 563.)
 173

write or believe or to teach other, or be otherwise minded. But whoso shall dare either to expound
or produce or deliver any other faith to those who wish to be converted etc.” …

We have however further proof that the Council of Toledo thought they were using the
unaltered creed of Constantinople. In these acts we find they adopted the following; “for reverence of
the most holy faith and for the strengthening of the weak minds of men, the holy Synod enacts, with
the advice of our most pious and most glorious Lord, King Recarede, that through all the churches of
Spain and Gallæcia, the symbol of faith of the council of Constantinople, i.e. of the 150 bishops, should
be recited according to the form of the Eastern Church, etc.”1

I do not wish here to go in-depth to the theological problems of the Filioque, as this chapter simply states the
indisputable historical facts of the case, but for those who would like to see the doctrine summarily refuted, I
highly recommend reading Photius’s Encyclical to the Eastern Patriarchs in 866 or 867.2

It would be beyond the scope of this work to fully address the theology of the filioque and the testimony of
various Church Fathers on the procession of the Spirit from the Father, as this would require a detailed
discussion of theology, history, interpretation, ancient commentary, textual criticism, the original languages,
and an analysis of the existing works, which would be inadequately and only superficially addressed in a
small article. For readers who are especially curious, the best works on this subject are the following:

I Adami Zœrnikavii, Tractatus Theologici Orthodoxi de Processione Spiritus Sancti a Solo Patre, Königsberg,
1774, (2 Vols).

This Latin work is a nearly unknown masterpiece of over 1000 pages, and was written by the learned scholar,
Orthodox monk, and convert from Lutheranism, Adam Zoernikov (variously spelled Zoernikaff, Zoernikav,
Zernikoff, Zoernickau, Zœrnikaw, or Zernikow, born in 1652). Protestants have also held this treatise in high
regard. For example, Dr. John Mason Neale writes,

The work of Zoernikaff is among the very rarest which a theologian can want, and ought to be
reprinted. I have every reason to believe that the copy which I studied for my “Introduction to the
Eastern Church” was the only one in England. No words can exaggerate the learning of Zoernikaff; it
is only a pity that his quotations from the Greek Fathers are given in Latin. 3

Neale also wrote a note when he acquired this treatise:

I have just got ‘Zoernikov on the Procession’ – a small, closely written octavo of 1080 pages. It is
extremely interesting, and seems quite to exhaust the subject. Depend upon it, the Greeks are right. 4

1 Henry Percival, Seven Ecumenical Councils, pp. 167 – 168. Moreover, the Acts of the 589 Council of Toledo
were interpolated with the filioque, according to the manuscript evidence, as scholars agree (see the section
on this interpolation in the Forgeries book,) and it was likely added in a later Council of Toledo, of the mid-
seventh century.
2 Holy Transfiguration Monastery (translators), On the Mystagogy of the Holy Spirit, pp. 49 – 54, [Boston,

MA]: Studion Publishers, 1983.

3 John Mason Neale, Voices from the East: Documents on the Present State and Working of the Oriental

Church, p. 61, London: Joseph Masters, 1859. Neale was unable to find this book in the British Museum, and
Palmer of Magdalen lent him his copy, but thanks to modern digitization, this work can be found here:
(https://books.google.com/books?id=LWBKAAAAcAAJ).
4 Eleanor A. Towle, John Mason Neale: A Memoir, Ch. XV, p. 173, London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1906.
 174

William Palmer (1811 – 1879) an Anglican deacon and scholar of Magdalen College, Oxford, wrote in 1846, in
his personal journal, that he had “come to give up the Latin language & theology on the point of the
Procession in consequence of reading carefully Zoernikav’s Treatise”. 1

II Theophanis Procopowicz, Tractatus de Processione Spiritus Sancti, Gotha, 1772.

Theophan (also spelled Feofan Procopovich or Prokopovič , 1681 – 1736) was an eminent scholar and the
Archbishop of Novgorod. This Latin treatise is over 700 pages, and borrows from and complements the work
of Zoernikav.2

III Dositheus of Jerusalem, Tome of Reconciliation, Tome of Love, and Tome of Joy.

Patriarch Dositheos II Notaras (1641 – 1707) of Jerusalem was an important scholar and theologian of the
Church. Dositheus compiled three volumes in Greek, which, along with analysis of his own, contain excellent
treatises against the Latins in general, including the following:

(1) An anonymous treatise Against the Latins, dating from the first decade of the fifteenth century.
(2) Antirrhetics against the Council of Florence, by John Eugenikos (1394 – 1454/1455), the younger
brother of St. Mark of Ephesus.
(3) A Manual on the Procession of the Holy Spirit, by the learned scholar George Koressios (also
Giorgios Coresi or Georges Corézi) of Chios (1570 – 1659/1660).
(4) An opusculum on the filioque, Against the Latins, by the monk Makarios Makres (1383 – 1431).
(5) An Apologia of the bishops and clergy of Constantinople to the Emperor John VIII Against the
decisions of the Council of Florence.
(6) An anthology of texts made by Theodore Agallianos (1400 – 1468/1474), archivist of the Great
Church under the last emperor, Constantine XII.
(7) An anonymous tract against the Filioque.
(8) A treatise Against the Latins by the learned monk and controversialist Matthew Blastares (or
Vlastares) (1290 – 1360).
(9) Gennadius Scholarius (or Georgios Kourtesios Scholarios, 1400 – 1473), Patriarch of
Constantinople from 1454 – 1464, on the Holy Ghost.
(10) Gennadius Scholarius on the addition to the Creed.
(11) Gregory II of Cyprus (1241 – 1290), Patriarch of Constantinople from 1283 – 1289, on the
procession of the Holy Ghost.
(12) Nicephorus Blemmides (or Nikephoros Blemmydes, 1197 – 1272), a scholar and monk, on the
Latin heresy.3

IV Germanus II of Constantinople, Against the Latins

1 Robin Wheeler, Palmer’s Pilgrimage: The Life of William Palmer of Magdalen, Ch. VIII, p. 236, Oxford: Peter
Lang, 2006. It is to be regretted that Palmer later converted to Roman Catholicism, but Wheeler’s biography
is worth reading.
2 This work can be found here: (https://books.google.com/books?id=jzJAAAAAcAAJ).
3 Dositheos’ collections are also rare works, and digitized copies can be found here: I Tomos Katallagès (Tome

of Reconciliation, http://data.onb.ac.at/ABO/%2BZ180610109, Jassy, 1692, 500+ pages). II Tomos Agapès

(Tome of Love, http://data.onb.ac.at/ABO/%2BZ180610201, Jassy, 1698, 900+ pages). III Tomos Charas
(Tome of Joy, http://data.onb.ac.at/ABO/%2BZ180610304, Jassy, 1705, 800+ pages). List of treatises and
their description from Norman Russell, From the “Shield of Orthodoxy” to the “Tome of Joy”: The Anti-
Western Stance of Dositheos II of Jerusalem, in George E. Demacopoulos and Aristotle Papanikolaou,
Orthodox Constructions of the West, pp. 71 – 82, in Orthodox Christianity and Contemporary Thought, Vol. V,
New York, NY: Fordham University Press, 2013. Neale, A History of the Holy Eastern Church, Part I, Vol. II,
Book V, Dissertation III, p. 1096, London: Joseph Masters, 1850.
 175

Germanus II Nauplius was the Patriarch of Constantinople from 1223 – 1240, although he lived in exile at
Nicaea.1

V St. Gregory Palamas, Apodictic Treatise on the Procession of the Holy Spirit.

St. Gregory Palamas (1296 – 1359) was an eminent monk, theologian, and the Metropolitan of Thessalonica
from 1347 - 1359.2

VI Nilus Cabasilas, De Processione Spiritus Sancti.

St. Nilus Cabasilas (also Neilos Kabasilas, Nilus Kavasilas, Neilus, or Nil Kovacile, Nili Archiepiscopi
Thessalonicensis, ~ 1295 – 1363, Metropolitan from 1359 – 1363) was a theologian and the immediate
successor of St. Gregory Palamas as the Metropolitan of Thessalonica. Nicholas Cabasilas (~ 1319 – 1392),
nephew of Nilus Cabasilas, and successor in the Archbishopric of Thessalonica, edited his uncle’s work, and
added a preface of his own.3

VII Joseph Bryennios, Three Treatises on the Procession of the Holy Spirit

Fr. Joseph Bryennios (~ 1350 – 1439) was a monk at the Studion Monastery, theologian, and ambassador to
the Latin Council of Constance.4

VIII Two Articles in Christianskoe Chtenie.

Two articles on the procession of the Holy Spirit in Christianskoe Chtenie (Христианское чтение, or
Christian Reading), a bi-monthly journal of the Spiritual Academy of St. Petersburg, to be found in the March
and April numbers for 1849 (in Russian). Dr. Neale calls these “very able articles”.5

IX Galiatowski on the Procession of the Holy Spirit.

Ioannitium Galiatowski (also Joannikij Galiatowskij, Joannicyusz Galatovskii, Joanicjusz Galatowski,

Ioannichie Galiatowsky, or Joanikija Galatowskoho) (1620 – 1688) was Rector of the Ecclesiastical Academy
of Kiev, and a pre-eminent Belarusian theologian of the 17th century. This work is written in Polish, and is in
response to certain Jesuits. The title is: Stary Kościół Zachodni nowemu Kościołowi Rzymskiemu
pochodzenie Ducha Ś. od Oyca Samego, nie od Syna pokazuje, Novgorod-Seversky, 1678. Galiatowski wrote in
defence of Orthodoxy against other errors of the Latins as well, and he later published responses to Latin
criticism of this treatise.6

X Metropolitan Macarius on the Holy Spirit

1 His treatise Against the Latins is found in Migne, Patrologia Graeca, Vol. CXL, pp. 621 – 757.
2 This work has been translated into English by Christopher J. Henson, and published by Uncut Mountain
Press in 2016. This work can be ordered here (https://uncutmountainpress.com/books/apodictic-treatise-
on-the-procession-of-the-holy-spirit/).
3 J. M. Hussey and P. A. McNutty (translators), Nicholas Cabasilas, A Commentary on the Divine Liturgy,

Foreword, p. x, Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2002. The critical edition, with a French
translation is: Théophile Kislas (editor), Nil Cabasilas, Sur le Saint-Espirit, Paris: Les Éditions du Cerf, 2001.
4 Three volumes of his works were published by Eugenius Bulgaris, Leipzig: Breitkopf, 1768 – 1784 (in

Greek). I am aware of copies in the Universitätsbibliothek München and the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek,
along with manuscripts in the Vatican Library.
5 Neale, A History of the Holy Eastern Church, Part I, Vol. II, Book V, Dissertation III, p. 1096, London: Joseph

Masters, 1850.
6 This work is also rare, and you can check the nearest library here:

(www.worldcat.org/search?qt=worldcat_org_all&q=Stary+Kościół+Zachodni).
 176

Metropolitan Macarius Bulgakov of Moscow and Kolomna (1816 – 1882, Metropolitan from 1879 – 1882),
was Dean of the Kiev Ecclesiastical Academy and a learned Church historian. He wrote Théologie Dogmatique
Orthodoxe (2 Vols.), Paris: Joel Cherbuliez, 1859 – 1860, which is an excellent work on Orthodox dogmatic
theology, translated into French from the Russian. 1

XI Papadakis, Crisis in Byzantium

A relevant historical study I recommend is Aristeides Papadakis, Crisis in Byzantium: The Filioque
Controversy in the Patriarchate of Gregory II of Cyprus (1283 – 1289), Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s
Seminary Press, Rev. Ed., 1997.

XII St. Photios the Great, Mystagogia of the Holy Spirit.

This is the classic Orthodox work on the procession. There have been more recent translations, but the 1983
edition by Holy Transfiguration Monastery includes an article by Dr. Fr. Michael Azkoul, and an account of the
life of St. Photius by St. Justin Popovich.2

XIII Dragas on the Eighth Ecumenical Council

An informative article is Fr. George Dion. Dragas, The Eighth Ecumenical Council: Constantinople IV
(879/880) and the Condemnation of the Filioque Addition and Doctrine, in The Greek Orthodox Theological
Review, Vol. XLIV, Nos. 1 – 4, 1999, pp. 357 – 369.

XIV Alexakis on the Filioque at Florence

Alexander Alexakis, The Greek Patristic Testimonia Presented at the Council of Florence (1439) in Support of
the Filioque Reconsidered, in Review des Études Byzantines, Vol. LVIII, pp. 149 – 165, Paris: Peeters, 2000.

XV Emperor St. Manuel II Palaeologus (1350 – 1425, emperor from 1391), On the Procession of the Holy
Spirit.

This treatise is in Greek, see Charalambos Dendrinos, An Annotated Critical Edition (Editio Princeps) of
Emperor Manuel II Palaeologus’ Treatise ‘On the Procession of the Holy Spirit’, Dissertation, London:
University of London, 1996; Charalambos Dendrinos, Emperor Manuel II Palaeologus’ Unpublished Treatise
‘On the Procession of the Holy Spirit’, in Elizabeth Jeffreys, Fiona Haarer, Judith Gilliland (editors),
Proceedings of the 21st International Congress of Byzantine Studies, London 21 – 26 August 2006, Vol. III, pp.
124 – 125, Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006; Charalambos Dendrinos, Imperatoris Manuelis Palaeologi Apologia de
processione Spiritus Sancti, Tractatus de ordine in Trinitate, Epistula ad dominum Alexium Iagoup, Turnhout:
Brepols, 2019 (in Corpus Christianorum Series Graeca, Vol. LXXI).

XVI Emperor Theodorus on the Procession

Henry Barclay Swete (editor), Theodorus Lascaris Junior, De Processione Spiritus Sancti Oratio Apologetica,
London: Williams & Norgate, 1875 (in Greek). Theodore II Doucas Lascaris (or Ducas Laskaris, 1221/1222 –
1258) was the Emperor of Nicaea from 1254 to 1258.

More works on the Filioque can be found in the bibliography.

1 The part bearing upon the filioque is Vol. I, Part I, Chapter II, §§ 24 – 50, pp. 193 – 423. This work is
available here: (https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/008626106).
2 Holy Transfiguration Monastery (translators), On the Mystagogy of the Holy Spirit, pp. 49 – 54, [Boston,

MA]: Studion Publishers, 1983. The Mystagogy is also available online here:
(http://www.myriobiblos.gr/texts/english/photios_mystagogy.html).
 177

Although this work will not focus on the theological side here, it would do well to mention a few passages:
Saint Gregory the Theologian (or Nazianzen, 329 – 391), in a manner somewhat different than the prying
manner of the Latin scholastic theologians, says,

You ask what is the procession of the Holy Spirit? Do you tell me first what is the unbegottenness of
the Father, and I will then explain to you the physiology of the generation of the Son, and the
procession of the Spirit, and we shall both of us be stricken with madness for prying into the mystery
of God.1

The shallowness of the Latin argument is apparent from the note in the Douay-Rheims Bible on the important
text of John xv 26:

But vvhen the Paraclete commeth vvhom I vvil send you from the Father, the Spirit of truth, vvhich
procedeth from the Father, he shal giue testimonie of me: and you shal giue testimonie, because you
are vvith me from the beginning.

Whom I vvil send.) The Holy Ghost is sent by the Sonne, therfore he procedeth from him also, as
from the Father: though the late Schismatical Greekes thinke otherwise. 2

Another edition of the Roman Catholic commentary from Rheims says:

Whom I will send: This proves, against the modern Greeks, that the Holy Ghost proceedeth from the
Son, as well as from the Father: otherwise he could not be sent by the Son. 3

The Douay-Rheims version of the Bible is the standard and authorized Roman Catholic English translation of
the Bible, with its first edition in the late 16th century, and it is annotated and approved by many of the most
official Roman Catholic authorities. I do not want to get wrapped up in the theological controversy here, but
it should be pointed out by brief reply that this interpretation of Scripture is invalid – Jesus saying that He
“will send” the Holy Spirit in no way “proves” that the Holy Spirit proceeds from Him throughout all eternity.
This is a good example of the incompetence of the Roman Catholic communion in interpreting Scripture.

Saint John of Damascus (c. 676 – c. 754) clearly rejects the idea of the Spirit as being from the Son, in Chapters
VIII (“Concerning the Holy Trinity”) and XII (“Concerning what is affirmed about God as though He had body”)
in Book I of his great work An Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith:

For the Father alone is ingenerate, no other subsistence having given Him being. And the Son alone is
generate, for He was begotten of the Father’s essence without beginning and without time. And only
the Holy Spirit proceedeth from the Father’s essence, not having been generated but simply
proceeding. For this is the doctrine of Holy Scripture. But the nature of the generation and the
procession is quite beyond comprehension. …

Likewise we believe also in one Holy Spirit, the Lord and Giver of Life: Who proceedeth from
the Father and resteth in the Son: the object of equal adoration and glorification with the Father and
Son, since He is co-essential and co-eternal: the Spirit of God, direct, authoritative, the fountain of
wisdom, and life, and holiness: God existing and addressed along with Father and Son: uncreate, full,
creative, all-ruling, all-effecting, all-powerful, of infinite power, Lord of all creation and not under any
lord: deifying, not deified: filling, not filled: shared in, not sharing in: sanctifying, not sanctified: the
intercessor, receiving the supplications of all: in all things like to the Father and Son: proceeding from

1 Gregory Nazianzen, Oratio XXXI (Theologica V), 8, Migne, PG, XXXVI, p. 141 B. Translated in Fellowship of St.
Alban and St. Sergius (translators), Vladimir Lossky, The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church, Ch. III,
Cambridge: James Clarke & Co., 1957 (originally written in French in 1944).
2 The New Testament, p. 263, Rhemes: Iohn Fogny, 1582.
3 The Holy Bible, p. 1053, Dublin: Richard Grove, 1825.
 178

the Father and communicated through the Son, and participated in by all creation, through Himself
creating, and investing with essence and sanctifying, and maintaining the universe: having
subsistence, existing in its own proper and peculiar subsistence, inseparable and indivisible from
Father and Son, and possessing all the qualities that the Father and Son possess, save that of not
being begotten or born. For the Father is without cause and unborn: for He is derived from nothing,
but derives from Himself His being, nor does He derive a single quality from another. Rather He is
Himself the beginning and cause of the existence of all things in a definite and natural manner. But
the Son is derived from the Father after the manner of generation, and the Holy Spirit likewise is
derived from the Father, yet not after the manner of generation, but after that of procession. And we
have learned that there is a difference between generation and procession, but the nature of that
difference we in no wise understand. Further, the generation of the Son from the Father and the
procession of the Holy Spirit are simultaneous.

All then that the Son and the Spirit have is from the Father, even their very being: and unless
the Father is, neither the Son nor the Spirit is. And unless the Father possesses a certain attribute,
neither the Son nor the Spirit possesses it: and through the Father, that is, because of the Father’s
existence, the Son and the Spirit exist, and through the Father, that is, because of the Father having
the qualities, the Son and the Spirit have all their qualities, those of being unbegotten, and of
birth and of procession being excepted. For in these hypostatic or personal properties alone do
the three holy subsistences differ from each other, being indivisibly divided not by essence but by the
distinguishing mark of their proper and peculiar subsistence. …

Further, it should be understood that we do not speak of the Father as derived from any one, but we
speak of Him as the Father of the Son. And we do not speak of the Son as Cause or Father, but we
speak of Him both as from the Father, and as the Son of the Father. And we speak likewise of the
Holy Spirit as from the Father, and call Him the Spirit of the Father. And we do not speak of
the Spirit as from the Son: but yet we call Him the Spirit of the Son. For if any one hath not the
Spirit of Christ, he is none of His, saith the divine apostle. And we confess that He is manifested and
imparted to us through the Son. For He breathed upon His Disciples, says he, and said, Receive ye the
Holy Spirit. It is just the same as in the case of the sun from which come both the ray and the
radiance (for the sun itself is the source of both the ray and the radiance), and it is through the ray
that the radiance is imparted to us, and it is the radiance itself by which we are lightened and in
which we participate. Further we do not speak of the Son of the Spirit, or of the Son as derived from
the Spirit. …

God then is called Mind and Reason and Spirit and Wisdom and Power, as the cause of these,
and as immaterial, and maker of all, and omnipotent. And these names are common to the whole
Godhead, whether affirmative or negative. And they are also used of each of the subsistences of the
Holy Trinity in the very same and identical way and with their full significance. For when I think of
one of the subsistences, I recognise it to be perfect God and perfect essence: but when I combine and
reckon the three together, I know one perfect God. For the Godhead is not compound but in three
perfect subsistences, one perfect indivisible and uncompound God. And when I think of the relation
of the three subsistences to each other, I perceive that the Father is super-essential Sun, source of
goodness, fathomless sea of essence, reason, wisdom, power, light, divinity: the generating and
productive source of good hidden in it. He Himself then is mind, the depth of reason, begetter of the
Word, and through the Word the Producer of the revealing Spirit. And to put it shortly, the Father
has no reason, wisdom, power, will, save the Son Who is the only power of the Father, the immediate
cause of the creation of the universe: as perfect subsistence begotten of perfect subsistence in a
manner known to Himself, Who is and is named the Son. And the Holy Spirit is the power of the
Father revealing the hidden mysteries of His Divinity, proceeding from the Father through the Son in
a manner known to Himself, but different from that of generation. Wherefore the Holy Spirit is the
perfecter of the creation of the universe. All the terms, then, that are appropriate to the Father,
as cause, source, begetter, are to be ascribed to the Father alone: while those that are
appropriate to the caused, begotten Son, Word, immediate power, will, wisdom, are to be ascribed to
the Son: and those that are appropriate to the caused, processional, manifesting, perfecting power,
 179

are to be ascribed to the Holy Spirit. The Father is the source and cause of the Son and the Holy
Spirit: Father of the Son alone and producer of the Holy Spirit. The Son is Son, Word, Wisdom, Power,
Image, Effulgence, Impress of the Father and derived from the Father. But the Holy Spirit is not the
Son of the Father but the Spirit of the Father as proceeding from the Father. For there is no impulse
without Spirit. And we speak also of the Spirit of the Son, not as through proceeding from Him,
but as proceeding through Him from the Father. For the Father alone is cause.1

Compare with the Roman Catholic Confession of Faith in the Constitutions of the Latin Fourth Lateran Council
in 1215 (considered the Latin Twelfth Ecumenical Council), Ch. I: “The Father [is] from no one, the Son from
the Father only, and the Holy Spirit equally from both; without beginning, always, and without end; the
Father generating, the Son being born, and the Holy Spirit proceeding;” 2

The official definition of the Roman Catholic Council of Florence states:

In the name of the holy Trinity, Father, Son and holy Spirit, we define, with the approval of this holy
universal council of Florence, that the following truth of faith shall be believed and accepted by all
Christians and thus shall all profess it: that the holy Spirit is eternally from the Father and the
Son, and has his essence and his subsistent being from the Father together with the Son, and
proceeds from both eternally as from one principle and a single spiration. We declare that when
Holy Doctors and Fathers say that the Holy Spirit proceeds [ἐκπορεύεσθαι] from the Father through
the Son, this bears the sense that thereby also the Son should be signified, according to the
Greeks indeed as cause [αἰτίαν], and according to the Latins as principle [άρχήν] of the subsistence
[ύπἁρξεως] of the Holy Spirit, just like the Father.3

This is denied by St. John of Damascus, who, as quoted above, says, “we do not speak of the Spirit as from the
Son”. In regard to the second sentence of the Florentine definition, St. John of Damascus is a Greek Father

1 Stewart Dingwall Fordyce Salmond (translator), John of Damascus, Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, Book I,
Ch. VIII & XII, in NPNF, Series II, Vol. IX, pp. 8 – 15. It is noteworthy that regarding the last sentence, at the
Latin Council of Florence, one Gregorius, a Greek monk who sided with the Latins, urged against Mark of
Ephesus that those words of John of Damascus (that “the Father alone is cause”) are “not found in any of the
ancient copies”, arguing that it had been afterwards foisted in by the Greeks, to bring John of Damascus over
to the Orthodox Greek opinion (John Daillé, A Treatise on the Right Use of the Fathers, Book I, Ch. IV, p. 81,
2nd American Ed., Philadelphia, PA: Presbyterian Board of Publication, 1856). However, these words are
found in all the English translations and in many modern discussions upon John of Damascus, and no hint of a
textual variant is given at this location in the Nicene and Post Nicene Fathers series, which has frequent
footnotes on the text elsewhere and notes where there is a difference in the manuscripts, and I was not able
to find any other evidence that these words are interpolated. The original Greek words are also in the recent
Greek editions of John of Damascus, such as that published by Archimandrite Dorotheos Paparis
(http://users.uoa.gr/~nektar/orthodoxy/paterikon/iwannhs_damaskhnos_ekdosis_akribhs.htm). These
exact Greek words (“καὶ Υἱοῦ δὲ Πνεῦμα οὐχ ὡς ἐξ αὐτοῦ, ἀλλ᾿ ὡς δι᾿ αὐτοῦ ἐκ τοῦ Πατρὸς ἐκπορευόμενον·
μόνος γὰρ αἴτιος ὁ Πατήρ.”) are quoted by the German Roman Catholic theologian Joseph Pohle (1852 –
1922), who attempts to interpret them in a Latin way, as if John of Damascus was merely saying that the
Father is the principal cause (and the Son a lesser cause), and Pohle does not enter into any further discussion
of the theology of John (Arthur Preuss (translator), Joseph Pohle, The Divine Trinity: A Dogmatic Treatise,
Part I, Ch. III, § 2, Art. II, e., p. 188, St. Louis, MO: B. Herder, 1912). These words are also found in Migne’s
edition, PG, Vol. XCIV, p. 849. Thus, Gregorius made an unsubstantiated claim and a false allegation, where
the text here is indeed authentic.
2 “Pater a nullo, Filius autem a solo Patre, ac Spiritus sanctus ab utroque pariter, absque initio semper & fine.

Pater generans, Filius nascens, & Spiritus sanctus procedens;” Denzinger, n. 428, p. 169. Mansi, Vol. XXII, p.
981. Lateran Council IV, Ch. I, De Fide Catholica (The Catholic Faith).
3 Norman P. Tanner, Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, Vol. I, Council of Florence, Laetentur Caeli: Bull of

Union with the Greeks (Session VI, 6 July 1439), pp. 526 – 527, Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press,
1990. Also in Denzinger, n. 691, p. 219.
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who does use the terminology of procession “through the Son”, but explicitly says that the Holy Spirit does not
proceed from the Son, “For the Father alone is cause.”

St. Maximus the Confessor (580 – 662), who was born in the East and stayed some years at Rome and was the
friend of Pope Martin, concurs that the Son is not the cause of the Spirit, and commenting of the early Latin
use of the Filioque, which not yet necessarily heretical, gives us this extremely important testimony:

For the procession they [those at Rome] brought the witness of the Latin Fathers, as well, of course,
as that of St Cyril of Alexandria in his sacred study on the Gospel of St John. On this basis they
showed that they themselves do not make the Son Cause (αίτία) of the Spirit. They know, indeed,
that the Father is the sole cause of the Son and of the Spirit, of one by generation and of the other
by procession (ἐκπόρευσις) – but they explained that the latter comes (προϊέναι) through the Son,
and they showed in this way the unity and the immutability of the essence.1

This is reiterated in the letter of Anastasius Bibliothecarius to John the Deacon (Praefatio ad Johannem
Diaconum), written c. 875, which takes a strongly anti-Greek position, but reveals that the official Latin
theology at this time remained as it was in the days of Maximus (in contradiction of Florence’s decree):

In addition we have translated from the letter of the same holy Maximus to the priest Marinus, the
detail regarding the procession of the Holy Spirit. There he agreed that the Greeks struggled against
us in vain since we do not say that the Son is the cause or origin of the Holy Spirit, as they claim;
but not ignorant of the unity of substance of the Father and the Son, just as he proceeded from the
Father, so we confess him to proceed from the Son, understanding the procession evidently as a
sending forth. He interprets rightly, instructing experts of each language in the ways of peace, while
he clearly teaches both us and the Greeks that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Son in one sense and
does not in another sense, signifying the difficulty of expressing the idiom of one language in
another.2

1 Laurent Cleenewerck, His Broken Body, Laurent Cleenewerck, Section V, II, 3. p. 333, Washington, DC: Euclid
University Press, Rev. Ed., 2009. Also see the article Traditions Regarding the Procession of the Holy Spirit, in
Eastern Churches Journal, Vol. II, No. 3, pp. 35 – 46, 1995. For more on St. Maximos and the filioque, see the
following works and articles: Larchet, Maxime le Confesseur, médiateur entre l’Orient et l’Occident, pp. 11 –
75, Paris, 1998; Larchet, La Question Du Filioque: À Propos De La Récente “Clarification” Du Conseil
Pontifical Pour La Promotion De L’Unité Des Chrétiens, Theologica, Vol. LXX, No. 4., Athens, 1999; Siecienski,
The Filioque: History of a Doctrinal Controversy, Chapter IV, pp. 73 – 86, Oxford, 2010; Siecienski, “Maximus,
the Filioque, and the Papacy: From Prooftext to Mediator”, chapter in Maximus the Confessor: Saint Between
East and West; Siecienski, “Maximus the Confessor and Ecumenism”, chapter XXVIII in The Oxford Handbook
of Maximus the Confessor, pp. 548 – 563; Siecienski, “The Authenticity of Maximus the Confessor’s Letter to
Marinus: The Argument from Theological Consistency”, Vigiliae Christianae 61.2, pp. 189 – 227, Amsterdam,
2007; Siecienski, The Use of Maximus the Confessor’s Writing on the Filioque at the Council of Ferrara-
Florence (1438-1439), Ann Arbor, Michigan, 2005. Although some have thought that Maximus’s letter to
Marinus has been interpolated, Siecienski defends its authenticity, see his article on the subject and an
overview in Filioque, Ch. IV, pp. 79 – 80 & Ch. VII, p. 148.
2 “Praeterea interpretati sumus ex epistola eiusdem sancti Maximi ad Marinum scripta presbiterum

circumstantiam de Spiritus Sancti processione, ubi frustra causari contra nos innuit Grecos, cum nos non
causam uel principium Filium dicamus Spiritus Sancti ut autumant, sed unitatem substantiae Patris et Filii
non nescientes sicut procedit ex Patre, ita eum procedere fateamur ex Filio missionem nimirum
processionem intelligentes, pie interpretans utriusque linguae gnaros ad pacem erudiens dum scilicet et nos
et Grecos edocet secundum quiddam procedere, et secundum quiddam non procedere Spiritum Sanctum ex
Filio difficultatem exprimendi de alterius in alterius linguae proprietatem significans.” Critical Latin with
parallel English translation in Bronwen Neil, Seventh-Century Popes and Martyrs: The Political Hagiography
of Anastasius Bibliothecarius, Part II, Texts and Translations, 1., pp. 158 – 159, in Studia Antiqua
Australiensia, Vol. II, Sydney: Brepols, 2006. Another translation is in Siecienski, Filioque, Ch. V, p. 108.
 181

The Catholic Encyclopedia calls Maximus “one of the chief doctors of the theology of the Incarnation and of
ascetic mysticism … St. Maximus was present at the great Lateran council held by [Pope] St. Martin at his
instance in 649.”1

The Catholic Encyclopedia writes of St. John of Damascus’s life and work:

Under the tutelage of [the erudite monk] Cosmas, John made such rapid progress that, in the
enthusiastic language of his biographer, he soon equalled Diophantus in algebra and Euclid in
geometry. Equal progress was made in music, astronomy, and theology. On the death of his father,
John Damascene was made protosymbulus, or chief councillor, of Damascus … the Damascene had
heard a call to a higher life, and with his foster-brother entered the monastery of St. Sabas, some
eighteen miles south-east of Jerusalem. After the usual probation, John V, Patriarch of Jerusalem,
conferred on him the office of the priesthood. … [St.] Theophanes, writing in 813, tells us that he was
surnamed Chrysorrhoas (golden stream) by his friends on account of his oratorical gifts. In the
pontificate of Leo XIII he was enrolled among the doctors of the Church. His feast is celebrated on 27
March.

John of Damascus was the last of the Greek Fathers. His genius was not for original theological
development, but for compilation of an encyclopedic character. In fact, the state of full development
to which theological thought had been brought by the great Greek writers and councils left him little
else than the work of an encyclopedist; and this work he performed in such manner as to merit the
gratitude of all succeeding ages.

The most important and best known of all his works is that to which the author himself gave the
name of “Fountain of Wisdom” (pege gnoseos). This work has always been held in the highest esteem
in both the Catholic and Greek Churches. Its merit is not that of originality, for the author asserts, at
the end of the second chapter of the “Dialectic”, that it is not his purpose to set forth his own views,
but rather to collate and epitomize in a single work the opinions of the great ecclesiastical writers
who have gone before him. A special interest attaches to it for the reason that it is the first attempt at
a summa theologica that has come down to us. The “Fountain of Wisdom” is divided into three parts,
namely, “Philosophical Chapters” (Kephalaia philosophika), “Concerning Heresy” (peri aipeseon), and
“An Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith” (Ikdosis akribes tes orthodoxou pisteos). …

“Concerning the Orthodox Faith” [which is cited here against the Filioque], the third book of the
“Fountain of Wisdom”, is the most important of John Damascene's writings and one of the most
notable works of Christian antiquity. Its authority has always been great among the theologians of
the East and West. Here, again, the author modestly disavows any claim of originality – any purpose
to essay a new exposition of doctrinal truth. He assigns himself the less pretentious task of collecting
in a single work the opinions of the ancient writers scattered through many volumes, and of
systematizing and connecting them in a logical whole. It is no small credit to John of Damascus that
he was able to give to the Church in the eighth century its first summary of connected theological
opinions. At the command of Eugenius III it was rendered into Latin by Burgundio of Pisa, in 1150,
shortly before Peter Lombard’s “Book of Sentences” appeared. This translation was used by Peter
Lombard and St. Thomas Aquinas, as well as by other theologians, till the Humanists rejected it for a
more elegant one. The author follows the same order as does Theodoret of Cyrus in his “Epitome of
Christian Doctrine”. But, while he imitates the general plan of Theodoret, he does not make use of his
method. He quotes, not only form the pages of Holy Writ, but also from the writings of the Fathers.
As a result, his work is an inexhaustible thesaurus of tradition which became the standard for the
great Scholastics who followed. In particular, he draws generously from Gregory of Nazianzus,
whose works he seems to have absorbed, from Basil, Gregory of Nyssa, Cyril of Alexandria, Leo the
Great, Athanasius, John Chrysostom, and Epiphanius. The work is divided into four books. This
division, however, is an arbitrary one neither contemplated by the author nor justified by the Greek
manuscript. It is probably the work of a Latin translator seeking to accommodate it to the style of the

1 John Chapman, Maximus of Constantinople, in CE, Vol. X, pp. 78 – 80.

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four books of Lombard’s “Sentences”. The first book of “The Orthodox Faith” treats of the essence
and existence of God, the Divine nature, and the Trinity. … Though John of Damascus wrote
voluminously on the Scriptures, as in the case of so much of his writing, his work bears little of the
stamp of originality.1

It is very important that John of Damascus was not an original writer, because this further shows that his
statements are not just his unique beliefs, but they represent the beliefs of antiquity.

It is also interesting that the Latin Peter Damian (1007 – 1072) (considered a saint by Roman Catholics)
quotes the Nicene Creed as saying the Holy Spirit “proceeds properly from the Father”, and makes an
argument from the word “properly” to say that the Holy Spirit does not proceed from the Father alone.
Damian writes against the Greeks in his Letter 91 (dated to 1062), to Patriarch St. Constantine III Lichoudes
(Patriarch from 1059 – 1063) of Constantinople:

In the creed of the Council of Nicaea, moreover, it says, “We also believe in the Holy Spirit, who
proceeds properly from the Father, and who just as the Son is true God”; and a little further on, “And
that the Holy Spirit is also true God we find in Scripture, and that he proceeds properly from the
Father, and that he always exists with the Father and the Son.” And again it says, “The Son is from the
Father, and the Holy Spirit proceeds properly and truly from the Father.” …

Hence, when in the creed of the Council of Nicaea, to which we referred above, the Holy Spirit is said
to proceed not just from the Father without any qualification, but with the added word, “properly” –
“and [we believe] in the Holy Spirit,” it says, “who proceeds properly from the Father” – this
“properly” is not referred to the Father in such a way that the Holy Spirit proceeds from him alone,
but that from him is given to the Son the attribute that he proceeds also from him. 2

Holding that the Holy Spirit “proceeds properly (proprie) from the Father” would appear to contradict the
Latin Fourth Lateran Council, which claims that “holy Spirit is from both [Father and Son] equally (pariter)”
(cited above).

St. Gregory (Palamas) of Cyprus (1296 – 1359), one of the greatest Orthodox theologians of the second
millennium, explains the Orthodox doctrine in his Confession of Faith:

Indeed, we affirm the immediate procession, because the Spirit derives its personal hypostatic
existence, its very being, from the Father Himself and not from the Son, nor through the Son. Were
this not the case, the Son would also be indisputably the cause of the Paraclete, a fact which is
impious and which was never said or written by any of the Fathers. For all that, we say that the Spirit
proceeds through the Son, and this without destroying our faith in the immediate procession. For, on
the one hand, it proceeds and has its existence from the Father, of whom is born the Son Himself;
while, on the other, it goes forth and shines through the Son, in the same manner as the sun's light is
said to go forth through its rays, while the sun remains the light's source, the cause of its being, and
the natural principle of its origin; and yet, the light passes forth, emanates, and shines through to rays
from which it derives neither being nor existence. And, although the light passes through the rays, it
in no wise derives the origin of its being through or from the rays, but immediately and exclusively
from the sun – whence the rays themselves, through which the light is made manifest. 3

St. Gregory of Cyprus further explains:

1 John Damascene, in CE, Vol. VIII, pp. 459 – 461.

2 See the chapter on Peter Damian’s Misquotation of the Fathers in Favour of the Filioque.
3 Aristeides Papadakis, Crisis in Byzantium: The Filioque Controvery in the Patriarchate of Gregory II of

Cyprus (1283 – 1289), Ch. V, p. 125, Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, Rev. Ed., 1997.
 183

We do not say that the Son is from the Father in as much as He is begotten by the divine essence, but
rather in as much as He is begotten by the Father as person. For the essence is common to the three
persons, but begetting is proper to the Father personally. That is why the Son is not begotten by the
Spirit. Consequently the Spirit is also from the Father; He possesses the divine essence, proceeding
from the person of the Father. For the essence is always and absolutely common to the three persons.
Therefore the act of spiration is proper to the Father as a person and the Spirit does not proceed
from the Son, for the Son does not have the personal properties of the Father.1

St. Philaret of Chernigov (1805 – 1866), a revered Russian Orthodox theologian and scholar, who was the
Archbishop of Chernigov, has written the following commentary on John xv 26, in a collection of homilies
recently translated into English:

The Spirit of Truth, Who proceedeth from the Father. What is the meaning of “proceedeth”?
Does this mean the same as being sent? No – first of all because the Savior would have used identical
terms, whereas here there is obviously an ascent to a more important idea. Second, He had
previously said Whom I will send, and now He was saying Who proceedeth. The difference in tense
points to a difference in actions: the former speaks of the Comforter, and the latter of the Spirit. As
the former, being the expression of a temporal condition, is proper to the Comforter – to Him Who by
His very name shows His relationship to people – so the latter is proper to the Holy Spirit, as One
Who is eternal, depicting His perpetual relationship to the Father. In this way the words Who
proceedeth from the Father express a personal attribute of God the Holy Spirit. Thus have all the
Fathers of the Church understood the Savior’s words. At a former time the teachers of the West, in
defense of their fabricated teaching on the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Father and the Son,
pointed to the Savior’s words Whom I will send unto you from the Father. Now the teachers of the
West acknowledge such an explanation of the Savior’s words to be incorrect. Now they all repeat
that it is the temporal sending of the Holy Spirit by the Son of God that is being spoken of here. But at
the present time they use another turn of phrase to defend their teaching. They say, “In the words
Who proceedeth from the Father the eternal procession of the Holy Spirit is indicated, but not His
exclusive procession from the Father.” How do they know that? How do they know that the Holy
Spirit does not proceed from the Father alone? Where is it said that the Holy Spirit proceeds from
the Son as well? Nowhere. It is known that the Savior’s words, which we are now considering, are
the only words of God’s revelation which speak of the eternal procession of the Holy Spirit. Other
passages which speak of the relationship of the Holy Spirit to God the Father and God the Son, speak
only of His temporal relationship to the other Persons of the Holy Trinity. It is clear that God’s word
offers Western philosophizing no justification whatever. 2

The Orthodox Council of Blachernae (1285) defines:

4. To [John Beccus and his followers], who affirm that the Paraclete, which is from the Father, has its
existence through the Son and from the Son, and who again propose as proof the phrase “the Spirit
exists through the Son and from the Son.” In certain texts [of the Fathers], the phrase denotes the
Spirit's shining forth and manifestation. Indeed, the very Paraclete shines forth and is manifest
eternally through the Son, in the same way that light shines forth and is manifest through the
intermediary of the sun's rays; it further denotes the bestowing, giving, and sending of the Spirit to
us. It does not, however, mean that it subsists through the Son and from the Son, and that it receives
its being through Him and from Him. For this would mean that the Spirit has the Son as cause and
source (exactly as it has the Father), not to say that it has its cause and source more so from the Son
than from the Father; for it is said that that from which existence is derived likewise is believed to

1 St. Gregory Palamas, Logos Apodeiktikos I, 6. Translated in Millard Edmund Hussey, The Doctrine of the
Trinity in the Theology of Gregory Palamas, Ch. II, p. 25, Dissertation: Fordham University, New York, NY,
1972.
2 St. Philaret (Gumilevsky) of Chernigov, On the Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ, Homily XIX, pp. 144 – 145,

Platina, CA: St. Herman of Alaska Brotherhood, 2015 (Originally published in Moscow in Russian in 1858).
 184

enrich the source and to be the cause of being. To those who believe and say such things, we
pronounce the above resolution and judgment, we cut them off from the membership of the
Orthodox, and we banish them from the flock of the Church of God.”

5. To the same, who say that the preposition “through” everywhere in theology is identical to the
preposition “from” and, as a result, maintain that there is no difference in saying that the Spirit
proceeds “through the Son” from saying that it proceeds “from the Son” – whence, undoubtedly, the
origin of their idea that the existence and essence of the Spirit is from the Son. And they either infer a
double or a single procession of origin, and join the Son to the Father according to this explanation of
“cause,” both of which are beyond all blasphemy. For there is no other hypostasis in the Trinity
except the Father’s, from which the existence and essence of the consubstantial [Son and Holy Spirit]
is derived. According to the common mind of the Church and the aforementioned saints, the Father
is the foundation and the source of the Son and the Spirit, the only source of divinity, and the only
cause. If, in fact, it is also said by some of the saints that the Spirit proceeds “through the Son,” what
is meant here is the eternal manifestation of the Spirit by the Son, not the purely [personal]
emanation into being of the Spirit, which has its existence from the Father. Otherwise, this would
deprive the Father from being the only cause and the only source of divinity, and would expose the
theologian [Gregory of Nazianzus] who says “everything the Father is said to possess, the Son,
likewise, possesses except causality” (Gregory of Nazianzus, Oratio 34, PG 36.252A; cf. also
Mouzalon’s use and explanation of this proof-text, in PG 142.293A-B.) as a dishonest theologian. To
these who speak thus, we pronounce the above-recorded resolution and judgment, we cut them off
from the membership of the Orthodox, and we banish them from the flock of the Church of God. 1

St. Photius

Saint Photius the Great, Patriarch of Constantinople, was the great defender of orthodoxy against the error of
the Filioque. St. Photius was closely related to champions of the Orthodox faith. His great uncle was Saint
Tarasius, who was the Patriarch of Constantinople and took the leading role during the Seventh Ecumenical
Council, and this council called St. Tarasius “the most holy archbishop and ecumenical patriarch”. The
parents of Photius were persecuted for their adherence to the Seventh Ecumenical Council. The Catholic
Encyclopedia confirms this,

It is certain that the future patriarch belonged to one of the great families of Constantinople; the
Patriarch Tarasius (784-806), in whose time the seventh general council (Second of Nicæa, 787) was
held, was either elder brother or uncle of his father (Photius: Ep. ii, P.G., CII, 609). The family was
conspicuously orthodox and had suffered some persecution in Iconoclast times (under Leo V, 813-
20).2

St. Photius presided over the Eighth Ecumenical Council in 879, with 383 bishops comprising the
representatives of all the five patriarchates, including that of Rome, which explicitly condemned the Filioque.
The legates of Pope John VIII included Cardinal Peter, who “declared the pope’s willingness to recognise
Photius as his brother, and produced the presents which he had brought for the latter from Rome. … The acts
of this council were subscribed by the emperor [Basil].” 3 The entire Eighth Council is strong evidence against
the Latins. Pope John VIII agreed with St. Photius and condemned the filioque. This Council represented the
whole Church and was accepted by the West until after the Schism, when the Latins rejected this Council and

1 Aristeides Papadakis. Crisis in Byzantium, Ch. X, pp. 219 – 220. Palamas’s quotes are referred to and
discussed in an article on the Filioque by Steven Todd Kaster:
https://sites.google.com/site/thetaboriclight/filioque.
2 Adrian Fortescue, Photius of Constantinople, in CE, Vol. XII, p. 43.
3 Edward H. Landon, A Manual of Councils of the Holy Catholic Church, Vol. I, pp. 218 – 219, Edinburgh: John

Grant, Rev. Ed., 1909.

 185

reverted to the anti-Photian Council. The Eighth Ecumenical Council is extremely important and on its own
proves that the Latins are in error with regard to the Filioque. 1

On this Ecumenical Synod, the Catholic Encyclopedia writes:

In 878, then, Photius at last obtained lawfully the place he had formerly usurped. Rome
acknowledged him and restored him to her communion. There was no possible reason now for a
fresh quarrel. But he had identified himself so completely with that strong anti-Roman party in the
East which he mainly had formed, and, doubtless, he had formed so great a hatred of Rome, that now
he carried on the old quarrel with as much bitterness as ever and more influence. Nevertheless he
applied to Rome for legates to come to another synod. There was no reason for the synod, but he
persuaded John VIII that it would clear up the last remains of the schism and rivet more firmly the
union between East and West. His real motive was, no doubt, to undo the effect of the synod that had
deposed him. The pope sent three legates, Cardinal Peter of St. Chrysogonus, Paul, Bishop of Ancona,
and Eugene, Bishop of Ostia. The synod was opened in St. Sophia's in November, 879. This is the
‘Pseudosynodus Photiana’ which the Orthodox count as the Eighth General Council. Photius had it all
his own way throughout. He revoked the acts of the former synod (869), repeated all his accusations
against the Latins, dwelling especially on the filioque grievance, anathematized all who added
anything to the Creed, and declared that Bulgaria should belong to the Byzantine Patriarchate. The
fact that there was a great majority for all these measures shows how strong Photius’ party had
become in the East. The legates, like their predecessors in 861, agreed to everything the
majority desired (Mansi, XVII, 374 sq.).2

The Encyclopædia Britannica’s entry on Photius concludes with the following note:

After the allusions in his own writings the chief contemporary authority for the life of Photius is his
bitter enemy Nicetas the Paphlagonian, the biographer of his rival Ignatius. In modern times his life
has been written with great prejudice and animosity by Baronius, and by Weguelin in the Memoirs of
the Berlin Academy, and more fairly by Hankins (De Byzantinarum Rerum Scriptoribus, pt. 1). But all
previous writers are superseded by the classical work of Cardinal Hergenröther, Photius, Patriarch
von Constantinopel (3 vols., Ratisbon, 1867-69). As a dignitary of the Roman Catholic Church
Cardinal Hergenröther is inevitably biased against Photius as an ecclesiastic, but his natural candour
and sympathy with intellectual eminence have made him just to the man, while his investigation of
all purely historical and literary questions is industrious and exhaustive in the highest degree.3

Regarding Latin Cardinal Hergenröther’s study, learned Orthodox scholars have interacted with and
published rejoinders to his work, and written on the history of St. Photius. I wish to give here a small
selection of Orthodox literature in English and non-English languages covering Photius and related studies.
See Andronicus K. Demetrakopulos (or Dimitracopulos), Historia tou schismatos tes latinikes apo tes
orthodoxou ekklesias (Leipzig, 1867) [and his other valuable works]; Georgios P. Kremos, Historia tou
schismatos ton duo ekklesion (2 Vol., Athens, 1905 – 1907); Athanasios Papadopoulos-Kerameus,
Monumenta graeca et latina ad historiam Photii patriarchae pertinentia (2 Vols., St. Petersburg, 1899 – 1901);
Nektarios of Aegina, Melete Istorike Peri Ton Aition To Schismatos (Historical Study Concerning the Causes of
the Schism: On its Perpetuation and on the Possibility or Impossibility of Unity of the Two Churches, Eastern
and Western), 2 Vols., Athens: Paraskeva Leone, 1911 – 1912.

1 See the sources listed below, as well as a good article by Professor David C. Ford, St. Photios the Great, The
Photian Council, and Relations with the Roman Church, https://orthochristian.com/97929.html, 18 October
2016.
2 Adrian Fortescue, Photius of Constantinople, in CE, Vol. XII, p. 45. It is very significant that “Rome

acknowledged him and restored him to her communion” after the anti-Photian council of 869, which
indicates that Rome did not accept that pseudo-council (compare the decrees of the 869 Council of
Constantinople against Photius and his followers).
3 Photius, in Encyclopædia Britannica, Vol. XVIII, p. 802, 1902.
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In English, the learned and ecumenically-minded Czech Roman Catholic scholar and priest Francis Dvornik
(1893 – 1975), who is sympathetic to Photius, has written an excellent work, The Photian Schism: History and
Legend, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1948. Also see Dvornik’s Photian and Byzantine
Ecclesiastical Studies, London: Variorum Reprints, 1974 and The Patriarch Photius in the Light of Recent
Research, 1958. Dvornik’s work has been highly praised as an objective study that moderates previous
criticisms of St. Photius. I also recommend the excellent academic study by the Dutch Roman Catholic
Redemptorist priest Johan A. Meijer, A Successful Council of Union: A Theological Analysis of the Photian
Synod of 879 – 880, in Analecta Vlatadon, Vol. XXIII, Thessaloniki: Patriarchal Institute for Patristic Studies,
1975. Also see Holy Apostles Convent (compiler and translator), The Lives of the Pillars of Orthodoxy: Saint
Photios the Great, Patriarch of Constantinople, Saint Gregory Palamas, Archbishop of Thessalonica, and Saint
Mark Evgenikos, Metropolitan of Ephesus, Buena Vista, CO: Holy Apostles Convent, 1990 (Reprinted 1996 &
2000). Also see The Life of Saint Photius by St. Justin Popovich (in Holy Transfiguration Monastery
(translators), On the Mystagogy of the Holy Spirit, pp. 49 – 54, [Boston, MA]: Studion Publishers, 1983). A
good article is by the Jesuit Clarence Gallagher (1929 – 2013), Patriarch Photius and Pope Nicholas I and the
Council of 879, in The Jurist: Studies in Church Law and Ministry, Vol. LXVII, No. 1, 2007, pp. 72 – 88,
Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2007. Another good article is by the Orthodox
professor Dr. John Lawrence Boojamra (1942 – 1999), The Photian Synod of 878 – 879 and the Papal
Commonitorium (879), in Byzantine Studies / Études Byzantines, Vol. IX, 1982, pp. 1 – 23, Tucson, AZ:
Arizona State University, 1982. Another good article is by the Orthodox professor Dr. David C. Ford, St.
Photios the Great, the Photian Council, and Relations with the Roman Church, 18 October 2016,
(OrthoChristian.com/97929.html). The study of John N. Karmires, Professor in the University of Athens, The
Schism of the Roman Church (Athens, 1950) [Translated by Z. Xintaras] is necessary reading, and see the
referenced sources. Also see the bibliographies in the article on Photius in the New Schaff-Herzog
Encyclopedia (F. Kattenbusch, Photius, in The New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge, Vol.
IX, p. 49, New York, NY: Funk and Wagnalls Company, 1911) and in the Handbook of Church History (Hubert
Jedin and John Patrick Dolan (editors), Handbook of Church History, Vol. III, p. 515, New York, NY: Herder and
Herder, 1969.)

For Orthodox perspectives on Church history that address this topic, and the general topic of Orthodox –
Roman Catholic differences, see the ecclesiastical histories (written in Greek) of Dr. A. Diomede Cyriacus [or
Diomedes Kyriakos] and Archimandrite Philaret Bapheidos (or Bapheides), professors of the University of
Athens. (Dr. Cyriacus’ history was first published at Athens in 1881 in two volumes, and a later edition was
published in 1898 in three volumes (Athens: Anestes Konstantinides). The best English notice of Cyriacus’
work is the review in The Church Quarterly Review (Dr. Cyriacus’ Ecclesiastical History, The Church
Quarterly Review, April – July 1882, Vol. XIV, Art. IV, pp. 309 – 331, London: Spottiswoode & Co., 1882).
Bapheidos’ work was published in three volumes (Constantinople: Lorentz & Keil, libraries de S. M. I le Sultan,
1884 – 1928).) An excellent treatise against the Latins is Nektarios Pelopidis, Περί τῆς ἀρχῆς τοῦ Παπᾶ
ἀντιρρήσεις, Iassi 1682 (London 1702; Paris 1718). Nektarios (or Nectarius, 1602 – 1676) was the Patriarch
of Jerusalem from 1661 – 1669.

Also see Jevsevije Popović, Opća crkvena istorija, Sremski Karlovci: Srpska Manastirska Štamparija, 1912, (2
Vol.). This work, titled General Church History, is the magnum opus of Popović, and is in Serbo-Croatian
(Cyrillic), and was translated from the German edition of 1900. Jevsevije Popović (1838 – 1922) was a highly
learned Orthodox professor of theology at the University of Chernivtsi. I also recommend the works of
Nikodim Milas (1845 – 1915) a Serbian Orthodox bishop and a highly learned scholar of Canon Law, who
wrote: Pravila Pravoslavne Crkve s Tumačenjima: Novi Sad, 1895-96, (2 Vol.), or “Rules of the Orthodox
Church with Interpretations” (in Serbo-Croatian (Cyrillic)); Rimokatoliškata propaganda, 1889, “Roman
Catholic Propaganda” (in Serbo-Croatian (Cyrillic), translated into Russian in 1889, Bulgarian in 1890, and
later editions have been published); Pravoslavna Dalmacija: Istorijski Pregled, 1901, “Orthodoxy in
Dalmatia: An Historical Overview” (in Serbo-Croatian (Cyrillic)), which was published in response to a Papal
Encyclical by Pope Leo XIII urging for reunion; Pravoslavno Crkveno Pravo, 1890, (6 Vol.), “Orthodox Canon
Law” (in Serbo-Croatian (Cyrillic), translated into Russian, German, and Bulgarian, along with later editions),
which is the magnum opus of Bishop Milas.
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An anonymous French member of the Orthodox Church wrote Orthodoxie et Papisme: Examen De l’ouvrage
du Père Gagarin sur la réunion des Eglises catholique grecque et catholique romaine, Paris: A. Franck, 1859.
A highly learned work is by Anatoly (Martinovsky) (Анатолий (Мартыновский), 1793 – 1872), Archbishop
of Mogilvev, writing under the pseudonym Avdii Vostokov, titled Об отношеніях римской церкви к другим
христіанским церквам и ко всему человеческому роду (“On the Relationship of the Roman Church to
Other Christian Churches and to the Entire Human Race”), Saint Petersburg, 2nd Ed., 1864 (1st Ed. 1857), (2
Vols.) This last work is recommended by St. Ambrose of Optina.

Hergenröther recognises the value of Photius’s work and talents:

The study of his works almost tempts the reader to doubt the identity of the Photius who speaks in
them with the Photius of history. … Catholic as well as non-Catholic critics down to the present day
have ever formed the most favourable judgment as to his learning and the value of his works; and if
they have felt compelled to condemn him in a moral point of view, have only adjudged him a still
higher place in the ranks of literature. … The extraordinary manysidedness of his mind and of his
learning, quite unusual in his day, must ever impress the student of his works. Few men, throughout
the whole of the Middle Ages shone in so many departments of knowledge; and if, after the manner of
his time, he was more of a compiler than of an original and creative author, he has given proof, even
as a compiler, of independent judgment, whilst he has shown himself in other writings to be also a
creative and fruitful thinker. … None can deny to Photius the praise of a marvelously elastic and
versatile genius, a rare fund of reading, and the painstaking industry and store of varied knowledge
which mark the many of many sciences. … Without leaving us a complete dogmatic system, Photius
shows himself in the treatment of individual dogmas an able theologian, a schoolman in the full sense
of the word, and one of the most influential representatives of Greek scholasticism, which developed
itself long before that of the West, though soon outstripped by it. 1

Adrian Fortescue in the Catholic Encyclopedia also gives the Roman Catholic perspective on St. Photius:

That Photius was one of the greatest men of the Middle Ages, one of the most remarkable
characters in all church history, will not be disputed. His fatal quarrel with Rome, though the
most famous, was only one result of his many-sided activity. During the stormy years he spent on the
patriarch’s throne, while he was warring against the Latins, he was negotiating with the Moslem
Khalifa for the protection of the Christians under Moslem rule and the care of the Holy Places, and
carrying on controversies against various Eastern heretics, Armenians, Paulicians etc. His interest in
letters never abated. Amid all his cares he found time to write works on dogma, Biblical criticism,
canon law, homilies, an encyclopædia of all kinds of learning, and letters on all questions of the day.
Had it not been for his disastrous schism, he might be counted the last, and one of the greatest, of
the Greek Fathers. There is no shadow of suspicion against his private life. He bore his exiles and
other troubles manfully and well. He never despaired of his cause and spent the years of adversity in
building up his party, writing letters to encourage his old friends and make new ones. … The
Catholic remembers this extraordinary man with mixed feelings. We do not deny his eminent
qualities and yet we certainly do not remember him as a thrice blessed speaker for God. One may
perhaps sum up Photius by saying that he was a great man with one blot on his character – his
insatiable and unscrupulous ambition. … His erudition is vast, and probably unequalled in the
Middle Ages, but he has little originality, even in his controversy against the Latins. 2

Fortescue fairly concedes Photius’s greatness, but his claim, often repeated by Roman Catholics and some
Protestants, that St. Photius was ambitious, is false, and this erroneous assertation has been refuted in
Guettée’s “The Papacy”, where Guettée points out that the Latins used biased testimony (written by Photius’s
enemies) and forged sources for their erroneous information about St. Photius. When one examines the
actual letters and correspondence of Photius, it is clear that he was humble to the point of refusing the

1 The Dublin Review, Vol. XIV, No. XXVIII [New Series], April, 1870, Art. XI, pp. 553 – 554, London: Burns,
Oates, & Co., 1870. This article is a review of Hergenröther’s third volume on Photius, and quotes from it.
2 Adrian Fortescue, Photius of Constantinople, in CE, Vol. XII, pp. 45 – 46.
 188

position of Patriarch, and was forced into the episcopate by the Emperor and clergy. Photius much preferred
to live a quiet life, as a lay scholar, with his books and friends, yet despite his strong resistance, he was
elevated to the bishopric of Constantinople, certainly a position that he was not “ambitious” to gain. It is
widely known how much Photius loved books and quiet study, as evidenced by the production of his
extremely valuable Bibliotheca, and many other works.

St. Photius wrote to Pope Nicholas,

In childhood I took a resolution that age has only strengthened, to keep myself aloof from business
and noise, and to enjoy the peaceful delights of private life; still (I should confess it to your Holiness,
since in writing to you I owe you the truth) I have been obliged to accept dignities from the imperial
court, and thus break my resolutions. Yet have I never been so bold as to aspire to the dignity of the
priesthood. … The assembly of the clergy was large, and my entreaties could not be heard by many
of them; those who heard them took no heed of them; they had but one intention, one determined
resolve – that of imposing the episcopate upon me in spite of myself. 1

In another letter to Pope Nicholas, Photius grieves that he was

created a bishop in spite of our tears, our complaints, our affliction, our despair. … I have lost a
sweet and tranquil life; I have lost my glory, (since there be who love earthly glory;) I have lost my
precious leisure, my intercourse so pure and delightful with my friends, that intercourse whence
grief, double-dealing, and recrimination were excluded. 2

Photius further writes,

I took it [the episcopal chair] against my will, and against my will do I remain in it. The proof is that
violence was done to me from the first; that from the first I desired as I do this day to leave it.3

The well-known Roman Catholic historian Warren H. Carroll (1932 – 2011), appears unfamiliar with these
letters and writes from a prejudiced perspective:

But in the intruded Patriarch Photius of Constantinople he [Pope Nicholas I] had to deal with an even
more difficult problem and an opponent who was then, and still is widely regarded as the most
intelligent and cultured cleric in Christendom of his time, for whom humility seems never to have
been more than pretense, who spent much of his mature life-time struggling to hold or to regain
Christendom’s second see. There is no point in Photius’ life when we can reasonably imagine his
saying: “If I could now choose, I would not hold a bishop’s office.”4

The charge of ambition more aptly applies to St. Photius’s contemporary, Pope Nicholas I The French Jesuit
Louis Maimbourg (1610 – 1686), meaning to praise Pope Nicholas, asserts that:

during his pontificate of nine years, he raised the papal power to a height it had never before
reached, especially in respect to emperors, kings, princes, and patriarchs, whom he treated more

1 Arthur Cleveland Coxe (translator), Abbé Guettée, The Papacy; Its Historic Origin and Primitive Relations
with the Eastern Churches, Ch. VI, pp. 277 – 278, New York, NY: Carleton, 1867 [1866].
2 Guettée, The Papacy, Ch. VI, p. 289.
3 Guettée, The Papacy, Ch. VI, p. 291. Much more evidence of Photius’s humility can be found in the

biographies of Photius (I highly recommend The Lives of the Pillars of Orthodoxy, listed above).
4 Warren H. Carroll, A History of Christendom, Vol. II, The Building of Christendom, Ch. XIII, p. 352, Front

Royal, VA: Christendom College Press, 1987. In the last sentence, Carroll is quoting from a letter of Hincmar
of Rheims to Pope Nicholas I. Carroll’s claim here, that Photius pridefully wanted the bishopric, is directly
refuted by the very letters of St. Photius.
 189

roughly than any of his predecessors, whenever he thought himself wronged in the prerogatives of
his pontifical power.1

The Catholic Encyclopedia similarly writes of Pope Nicholas I, “One of the great popes of the Middle Ages, who
exerted decisive influence upon the historical development of the papacy and its position among the Christian
nations of Western Europe.”2 The article on the False Isidorian Decretals mentions Nicholas I’s rule as “a
pontificate so filled with enterprises of daring and of moment.”3 More will be said about Nicholas’s
connection with the Pseudo-Isidorian Decretals in the chapter on that forgery.

The Great Schism of 1054

The next significant revival of the filioque controversy took place during the famous schism of the Latins from
the Church in the 11th century, when controversy erupted between Pope Leo IX and the Blessed Michael
Cerularius, Patriarch of Constantinople, about many of the issues discussed in this work. Unfortunately, there
is no comprehensive and dedicated treatise on the 1054 schism from the Orthodox perspective in the English
language, and it is a great desideratum.

A translation of some of the texts exchanged back and forth in this controversy can be found in the following
works, and it is good to compare the different translations of the documents: Louis Marie de Cormenin, The
Public and Private History of the Popes of Rome, from the Earliest Period to the Present Time, Vol. I, Vacancy
in the Holy See, A.D. 1054, pp. 344 – 347, Philadelphia, PA: T. B. Peterson, 1846; William H. Neligan
(translator), Artaud de Montor, The Lives and Times of the Roman Pontiffs: From St. Peter to Pius IX., Vol. I, St.
Leo IX., pp. 284 – 285, New York, NY: D. & J. Sadlier & Co., 1867; William L. North (translator), Cardinal
Bishop Humbert of Silva Candida, A Brief or Succinct Account of What the Ambassadors of the Holy Roman
and Apostolic See Did in the Royal City, Original translation on Carleton College MARS (Medieval and
Renaissance Studies) Website, www.acad.carleton.edu/curricular/MARS/Schism.pdf; Bryn Geffert and
Theofanis G. Stavrou (editors), Eastern Orthodox Christianity: The Essential Texts, Part II, Great Schism, pp.
242 – 246, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2016; Tia M. Kolbaba (translator), Michael Kerularios:
Letter to Patriarch Peter of Antioch (concerning Schism of 1054),
https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/source/1054michael-kerularious-to-peter-of-antioch1.asp, published
online on April 2019; Michael Cerularius and the Synod of Constantinople, The Edict, 1054, in Jaroslav
Pelikan and Valerie Hotchkiss (editors), Creeds and Confessions of Faith in the Christian Tradition, Vol. I, pp.
311 – 317, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003. Also see Muriel Heppell (translator), The Paterik of
the Kievan Caves Monastery, Discourse 37, pp. 211 – 214, in Harvard Library of Early Ukrainian Literature,
English Translations, Vol. I, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989.

The excommunication of Michael Cerularius by the Papal legates (with Pope Leo IX’s authority) is given in the
following text:

We, Humbert, Peter and Frederick, envoys sent by the Holy See to this imperial city to judge it,
declare that we have found much good and much evil. The columns of the empire, the men elevated
to high dignity, and the principal citizens, are orthodox; but the monk Michael, who calls himself
patriarch, and his adherents, are filled with heresies and crimes. They simoniacally sell the gifts of
God; they make eunuchs, like the Valesians, and elevate those unfortunate persons not only to the
clerkships, but even to the episcopacy; they affirm, like the Donatists, that, without the pale of the
Greek church there is no true church of Jesus Christ in the world, no true sacrifice of the mass, no true
baptism; like the Nicolaites, they permit ministers of the altar to marry; like the Severians, they speak

1 Maimbourg, History of the Greek Schism, Paris, 1678. Cited in Guettée, The Papacy, Ch. VI p. 282. Note that
Maimbourg held some Gallican tendencies, and five of his works were placed on the Roman Catholic Index of
Forbidden Books, though not this work cited by Guettée.
2 Johann Peter Kirsch, Pope St. Nicholas I, in CE, Vol. XI, p. 54.
3 Louis Saltet, False Decretals, in CE, Vol. V, p. 779.
 190

ill of the law of Moses; like the Macedonians, they cut off from the creed the affirmation that the Holy
Spirit proceeds from the Son; like the Manicheans, they maintain that all that is leaven is animated;
and finally, like the Nazarenes, they practise Judaical purification, and refuse communion to the
faithful who cut their hair and beard.

Michael has been warned by the pontiff Leo to renounce these errors; he has, however,
despised the sage advice of his father; he has refused to commune with us, and to grant us churches
in which to celebrate divine service; he wishes to abase the dignity of the Holy See, and has dared to
take the title of universal bishop. We, therefore, by the authority of the Holy Trinity, of the apostolic
throne, of the seven œcumenical councils, and of all the Catholic church, subscribe the anathema
which Leo the Ninth pronounced against Cerularius, and we declare him an infamous clerk, an
usurping patriarch, an ignorant neophyte, who has clothed himself in the monastic garb to shun the
chastisement which his crimes deserve. With him we condemn Leo, scandalously called bishop of
Acrida, Constantine, sacellary of St. Sophia, who has trampled with profane feet upon the body and
blood of Christ, which were consecrated by Latin priests. Finally, we excommunicate all their
followers, be they who they may; we proscribe them from the temple of God, and we devote them to
Satan and his angels, if they refuse to humble themselves before the supreme power of the pope!
Amen! amen! amen!1

The Blessed Michael Cerularius then wrote to Patriarch Peter III of Antioch in 1054:

Impious barbarians, sallying from the darkness of the West, have come to this pious city, from
whence the sources of an orthodox faith have flown through the whole world. They have
endeavoured to corrupt the holy doctrine by the impurity of their dogmas; they wish to constrain us
to Judaize like themselves; they maintain that monks should eat strangled food, and they eat lard
during the whole year, and even during the first weeks of Lent.

They have dared to add those heretical words to the Nicene creed, ‘I believe in the Holy
Spirit, the Lord and giver of life, who proceedeth from the Father and the Son;’ they prohibit the
marriage of priests, and condemn ecclesiastical eunuchs. These infamous persons permit, that at the
moment of the communion the handsomest young clerks should place impure kisses upon the mouth
of the officiating priest. Their bishops wear rings to recall to the remembrance of the faithful that
their churches are their spouses, and yet they go to war, soil their hands with the blood of their
brethren, and after having murdered Christians, still dare to perform divine service. They administer
baptism by a simple immersion, and by placing salt in the mouth of the neophyte; and, finally, instead
of saying with St. Paul, ‘a little leaven leaveneth the whole lump,’ they maintain that it corrupts it.
What heightens their iniquity is, that they have not come to be edified by the purity of our doctrine
and our ritual; but on the contrary, with the impious thought of instructing us, and of causing us to
embrace their sacrilegious principles under penalty of anathema. We have avoided communing with
these envoys of Satan, and have refused to treat of doctrinal questions with these accursed legates,
unless you and the patriarchs were assembled with us in council. These madmen have then, in order
to overcome us, penetrated by force into our cathedral and placed on the high altar an
excommunication against our orthodox church. We might have burned and destroyed this infamous
writing, but we preferred to judge it publicly, that the condemnation of the authors of such a
sacrilege might be a signal reparation, and one worthy of the majesty of our ministry. The emperor
has ranged himself on our side, he has constrained the legates of Rome to go into the great saloon of
the council to abjure their errors, and to apologize to us; but they have threatened their self-
destruction, if we wished to draw a retraction from them. We send you these details, in order that

1Louis Marie de Cormenin, The Public and Private History of the Popes of Rome, from the Earliest Period to
the Present Time, Vol. I, Vacancy in the Holy See, A.D. 1054, p. 346, Philadelphia, PA: T. B. Peterson, 1846.
 191

you may be rightly informed of what has passed in our city, and that you may reply with the
circumspection becoming a defender of the orthodox faith, if one writes from Rome against our See.1

It is worth adding that the Papal excommunication against the Orthodox had lost some of its legal validity
because Pope Leo IX had died by this time, which is an incidental evidence that the Latins were not acting by
the will of God in “excommunicating” the Holy Eastern Church.

The Roman Catholic historian Franz Xaver von Funk (1840 – 1907) writes:

Nicephorus the Sacellar, in carrying out his instructions, went so far as to trample on the hosts of the
Latins, simply because they were made of unleavened bread. Simultaneously Leo, bishop of Achrida
in Bulgaria, attacked the Latins in writing. In a circular letter addressed to John, bishop of Trani in
Apulia, he describes them as half Hebrew and half pagan, insasmuch as they observe the law of
unleavened bread and of the Sabbath, partake without scruples of things strangled, and omit the
alleluia in Lent. Nicetas, a monk of the monastery of Studium for his part raised the question of
clerical celibacy and other points on which the practice of the two Churches diverged.

This hail of objections was more than the Latins could patiently endure, and Cardinal
Humbert, of Silva Candida, undertook to answer them, which he did with considerable spirit and
some learning. His defence was indeed good, but the attack which he ventured on the Greek
positions was less well advised. Thus he assailed priestly marriage as the Nicolaite ‘heresy,’ accused
the Greeks of having expunged the Filioque from the Creed, and of being infected with
Macedonianism, &c. With such feelings animating either side it was no easy task to arrive at an
understanding. Leo IX sent, indeed, his legates to Constantinople, but on account of the hindrances
put in their way by Michael Cerularius they could not obtain a hearing. The legates accordingly, in
the summer of 1054, excommunicated him, together with Leo of Achrida, Nicephorus, and all their
adherents. They doubtless had a hope that their adversary would either relent or fall. Their hope
was never to be realised, though the emperor Constantine Monomachus, who had been all along on
the side of peace, did his best to promote an understanding. The patriarch was obdurate, and by
stirring up the people to embrace his cause, he succeeded finally in gaining the day. A Council which
he assembled reissued with approval the manifesto of Photius to the bishops of the West, and laid the
whole Latin Church under an anathema. Peter, patriarch of Antioch, besought Michael to contrive at
a reconciliation, but his request was not heeded, and as it was part of Peter’s plan that the Latins
should abandon all practices objected to by the East, his mediation was foredoomed to fail. The
breach once made was never mended, and the example of Constantinople was soon followed by the
other Eastern Churches.2

Pope Leo IX sent three legates to Constantinople: “Cardinal Humbert, Cardinal Frederick (his own cousin and
Chancellor of the Roman Church, afterwards [Pope] Stephen IX, 1057-58), and Archbishop Peter of Amalfi.”3

The “Bull of Excommunication” which the Papal legates laid on the altar of the Hagia Sophia in Constantinople
in 1054, said against the Greeks, “they expunge from the Creed that the Holy Ghost proceeds from the
Son”.4 The 1848 Encyclical of the Eastern Patriarchs insists on the significant fact that “Pope Leo IX wrote to

1 Louis Marie de Cormenin, The Public and Private History of the Popes of Rome, from the Earliest Period to
the Present Time, Vol. I, Vacancy in the Holy See, A.D. 1054, pp. 346 – 347, Philadelphia, PA: T. B. Peterson,
1846. Kolbaba’s translation is more accurate.
2 Luigi Cappadelta (translator), Franz Xaver von Funk, A Manual of Church History, Vol. I, The Middle Ages,

Part I, Ch. III, § 95, pp. 279 – 280, London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co., (authorized tr. from the 5th
German Ed.), 1910.
3 Adrian Fortescue, Michael Cærularius, in CE, Vol. X, p. 273.
4 William H. Neligan (translator), Artaud de Montor, The Lives and Times of the Roman Pontiffs: From St.

Peter to Pius IX., Vol. I, St. Leo IX., p. 284, New York, NY: D. & J. Sadlier & Co., 1867.
 192

the blessed Michael Cerularius, accusing the Greeks of changing the Creed of the Catholic Church, without
blushing either for his own honor or for the truth of history.” 1

The Anglican Edward H. Landon writes:

Cerularius had previously written a letter in his own name and that of Leo, Archbishop of Acrida, to
John, Bishop of Trani, in Apulia, in which he publicly accused the Latin Church of error. Amongst
other things laid to their charge was the use of unleavened bread in the holy communion; single
immersion in holy baptism; the use of signs by bishops, &c. To this letter Leo IX. returned an angry
answer, and held a council at Rome, in which the Greek Churches were excommunicated. 2

Note that the three Greek “errors” cited by Pope Leo IX above in bold, namely permitting married priests, the
non-inclusion of the filioque in the Creed, and the use of leaven in the Eucharist, are all permitted in the
Eastern Rite Churches in full communion with Rome, providing more evidence of inconsistent Latin
standards. With good reason then, it was that “the example of Constantinople was soon followed by the other
Eastern Churches.”

John Lingard (1771 – 1851), an English Roman Catholic priest, scholar and historian, who was honoured by
Latin Popes Pius VII and Leo XII, writes,

Where then are we to search for the universal church? Perhaps among the Greeks, whose church
seems to be looked on with a very favourable eye by some Irish antiquaries. But … the non-united
Greeks, as to the question of schism, were evidently in the fault, having chiefly through the
intemperate conduct of Michael Cerularius in the eleventh century, quarreled with the Latin church
on the ground of mere trifles, notwithstanding the most zealous exertions of the good Pope Leo the
9th to prevent a separation, and having afterwards, … kept up the division through scarcely any other
motive than the jealousy of ecclesiastical power, and a personal antipathy against the Latins in
general; accordingly the Greeks, not the Latins, were the party that separated. Thirdly, the church of
England can gain nothing by setting up the Greek as the exclusively Catholic church, whereas there is
not a single article of doctrine, whereon she differs from the Roman church, with the sole exception
of the Pope’s supremacy, on which the Greek church does not agree with the latter. 3

Lingard is sorely mistaken in his understanding of the controversy, as the Latins were the party that changed
the ancient creed.

1 Encyclical Epistle, op. cit., § 18.

2 Edward H. Landon, A Manual of Councils of the Holy Catholic Church, Vol. I, p. 220, Edinburgh: John Grant,
Rev. Ed., 1909. For Leo IX’s “angry answer”, Landon gives the following footnote: Anno 1051. “Misit Leo Papa
Epistolam ad Constantinum Imp. Græc. animum ejus sibi concilians, ad Græcorum hæreses confutandas qui ut
Simoniaci, donum Dei vendebant: ut valesii hospites suos castrates etiam ad Episcopatum promovebant: ut
Arriani Latinos baptizatos rebaptizabant: ut Donatistæ, in schola græca orthodoxam Ecclesiam esse jactabant:
ut Nicolaitæ, nuptias sacerdotibus concedebant: ut Severiani, maledictam dicebant legem Moysi: ut
Pneumatomachi, Processionem St Spiritus a Symbolo abscindebant: ut Nazareni, Iudaismum in baptizandis
pueris observabant, de fermento sacrificabant, et Latinos Azymos vocabant et eorum ecclesias claudebant et
Romanam Ecclesiam anathematizabant eique Constantinopolitanam Ecclesiam præponebant.” Cronicon
Turonense, in Martenne, Vet. Scrip. Coll. vol. v.
3 John Lingard (under the pseudonym Irenæus), The Protestant Apology for the Roman Catholic Church,

Introduction Concerning the Nature, Present State, and True Interests of the Church of England, pp. lxxiv –
lxxv, Dublin: H. Fitzpatrick, 1809. Italics in the original.
 193

It is worth remarking that Peter of Antioch, who corresponded with Michael Cerularius, expressed the
charitable opinion that much of the differences between the Latins and Orthodox (including those mentioned
in this work, such as on celibacy, rings, beards, unleavened bread, fasting, mode of baptism, and various other
innovations or customs) could be looked over in charity and for the sake of peace, as long as the Latins
removed the Filioque from the Creed, saying, “For my part, that I may make known my opinion, if they (the
Latins) corrected the addition to the holy Symbol, I would ask nothing more, leaving with the rest, as a thing
indifferent, even the question about Azymes.”1 Cerularius may have been in error in some points on which he
criticised the Latins, and Peter of Antioch (although he disapproved of the Latin innovations, including the use
of unleavened bread) was a peacemaker who sought unity in the Church, but the addition of the Filioque was
absolutely unacceptable to the Patriarchs, and as the Latins were unwilling to correct their error, this became
the occasion of the schism.

To restate the case against the Filioque:

1. The Filioque is a man-made addition to the perfect words of Christ respecting the procession of the Spirit.
It is fundamentally an addition to the Gospel.

2. The Filioque is a non-conciliar addition to the Creed of the Holy Church, violating the ancient Canons. It
first made its way in by carelessness, and was later defended by forgeries (see the Forgeries book).

3. The Church ought to preserve the ancient faith, not adding any novelties, as Pope Agatho so well
expressed: “nothing be changed nor added thereto, but that those same things, both in words and sense, be
guarded untouched.”

4. Pope Leo III and Pope John VIII rejected the insertion of the Filioque into the Creed.

5. The Eighth Ecumenical Council, accepted by the entire Church, rejected the Filioque and all its supporters.

6. The Latins, unaware of history, even accused the Orthodox of having removed the Filioque, thus
condemning themselves.

Thus the Orthodox are truly wise to reject the filioque and preserve unaltered the traditional Creed and faith
of the first thousand years of the Catholic Church, holding to the words of Christ in the Gospel and the Symbol
of Faith in the Ecumenical Councils, ratified by the Holy Spirit, the Church Fathers, the Saints, the Apostles
and their successors, and the judgments of the Popes of Rome, all of whom are disregarded by those who add
the Filioque to the creed.

Part III Other Innovative Customs and Practices

Ch. I The Gregorian Calendar

“Consensiones vero episcoporum sanctorum Canonum apud Nicaeam conditorum repungnantes, unita nobiscum
vestrae fidei pietate, in irritum mittimus, et, per auctoritatem Beati Petri Apostoli, generali prorsus definitione
cassimus.” – Pope Leo I

The Julian calendar was in general use in Europe and Northern Africa until 1582, when Latin Pope Gregory
XIII promulgated the Gregorian calendar, newly invented by Latin astronomers. This new system of

1William Edward Scudamore, Notitia Eucharistica, Part II, Chapter XV, Section IV, p. 875, London: Rivingtons,
2nd. Ed., 1876.
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chronology is problematic because it changes the date of Easter, which had certain bounds fixed by the
Council of Nicaea.

The early Church, in the Ecumenical Council of Nicaea and other synods, established the date of Easter
according to the Julian Calendar. The result of the Latin change of calendar is that the tradition of Easter is
changed, which goes against what the ancient Christians have established. The First Canon of the Blessed and
Holy Fathers Assembled at Antioch in Syria in 341 declares:

Whosoever shall presume to set aside the decree of the holy and great Synod which was assembled
at Nice in the presence of the pious Emperor Constantine, beloved of God, concerning the holy and
salutary feast of Easter; if they shall obstinately persist in opposing what was [then] rightly ordained,
let them be excommunicated and cast out of the Church; this is said concerning the laity. But if
anyone of those who preside in the Church, whether he be bishop, presbyter, or deacon, shall
presume, after this decree, to exercise his own private judgment to the subversion of the people and
to the disturbance of the churches, by observing Easter [at the same time] with the Jews, the holy
Synod decrees that he shall thenceforth be an alien from the Church, as one who not only heaps sins
upon himself, but who is also the cause of destruction and subversion to many; and it deposes not
only such persons themselves from their ministry, but those also who after their deposition shall
presume to communicate with them. And the deposed shall be deprived even of that external
honour, of which the holy Canon and God’s priesthood partake.

Ancient Epitome:

Whoso endeavours to change the lawful tradition of Easter, if he be a layman let him be
excommunicated, but if a cleric let him be cast out of the Church.1

Percival gives the following notes on this Canon:

The connexion between these canons of Antioch and the Apostolical Canons is so evident
and so intimate that I shall note it, in each case, for the convenience of the student. Zonaras and
Balsamon both point out that from this first canon it is evident that the Council of Nice did take action
upon the Paschal question, and in a form well known to the Church.

It is curious that as a matter of fact the entire clergy and people of the West fell under
the anathema of this canon in 1825, when they observed Easter on the same day as the Jews.
This was owing to the adoption of the Gregorian calendar, and this misfortune while that
calendar is followed it is almost impossible to prevent.a

Compare Apostolic Canons; Canon VII.

[Percival’s Footnote:] a) There seems but little doubt that the Gregorian Calendar will be introduced
before many years into Russia.2

Also note that this decision of Nicaea is not recorded among the canons of Nicaea, but not all decisions of
councils are enumerated as canons. Another example is the decision against mandatory priestly celibacy,
made by the Nicene council in agreement with St. Paphnutius, which is mentioned in the section on clerical
celibacy.

1Percival, Seven Ecumenical Councils, p. 108.

2Percival, Seven Ecumenical Councils, p. 108. The footnote (written 1899) contains an interesting prediction,
but this did not happen until Russia’s Communist Revolution in February 1918, although Greece adopted the
Gregorian calendar in March 1923. It should also be noted that Percival and almost all Protestants follow the
Gregorian Calendar, having adopted it by the mid-18th century. There has been debate in the Orthodox
Church concerning the modern use of the Gregorian Calendar, but She is protected from this anathema, and
celebrates the proper date of Easter.
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Apostolic Canon VII also agrees with Nicaea’s decision:

If any bishop, presbyter, or deacon, shall celebrate the holy day of Easter before the vernal
equinox, with the Jews, let him be deposed. 1

In an excursus on the Gregorian Calendar, the Roman Catholic scholar Hefele has the following comments:

But even the Gregorian Calendar itself is not quite exact; for, according to the calculations of Lalunde
[a French astronomer], which are now generally admitted, the duration of a tropical year is shorter
by 24 seconds than the Gregorian Calendar, so that after 3600 years it would differ by one day from
the astronomical year. Besides this, the Gregorian Calendar has not fixed the months with perfect
accuracy. A somewhat defective cycle was selected on account of its greater simplicity; so that,
astronomically speaking, the Easter full moon may rise two hours after the time calculated by the
calendar: thus, it might be at one o’clock on the Sunday morning, whilst announced by the calendar
for eleven o’clock on Saturday night. In this case Easter would be celebrated on that same Sunday,
when it ought to be on the following Sunday.

We remark, finally, that the Gregorian Calendar occasionally makes our Christian
Easter coincide with the Jewish passover, as for instance in 1825. This coincidence is entirely
contrary to the spirit of the Nicene Council; but it is impossible to avoid it, without violating
the rule for finding Easter which is now universally adopted.2

As the true “spirit of the Nicene Council” was the Holy Spirit, it is inappropriate for the Papal Calendar to be
“entirely contrary” to it. It will be seen later (in the discussion on Canon 28 of Chalcedon) with what vigour
Pope Leo spoke against those who would change the decrees of the Nicene Council. For example, Pope Leo
says:

These holy and venerable fathers who in the city of Nicæa, after condemning the blasphemous Arius
with his impiety, laid down a code of canons for the Church to last till the end of the world, survive
not only with us but with the whole of mankind in their constitutions; and, if anywhere men venture
upon what is contrary to their decrees, it is ipso facto null and void; so that what is universally laid
down for our perpetual advantage can never be modified by any change, nor can the things which
were destined for the common good be perverted to private interests. 3

The Protestant writer William Stuart Auchincloss (1842 – 1928) summarises:

The Council of Nicaea decided three points:

1. Easter day should always fall on a Sunday.

2. It should never be celebrated on the same day as the Passover.
3. The Sunday must fall after the Vernal Equinox.

… The Gregorian method of calculation introduced in the sixteenth century, which still lacks the
endorsement of the Greek Church, conflicts at times with the second point of the Council of Nicaea by
bringing Easter and the Passover on one and the same day.

For example:

1 Percival, Seven Ecumenical Councils, p. 594. This is also numbered the eighth canon in some collections.
2 Hefele, History of Councils, Vol. I, Book II, Ch. II, Sec. 37., pp. 331 – 332.
3 NPNF, Vol. XII, Letter CVI, p. 78, New York, NY: The Christian Literature Company, 1895.
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In 1825 Easter and the Passover fell on April 3d.

“ 1903 “ “ “ “ “ 12th.
“ 1923 “ “ “ will fall on April 1st.
“ 1927 “ “ “ “ “ 17th.
“ 1981 “ “ “ “ “ 19th.

The present practise, therefore, clashes with a primitive custom and does that which was positively
forbidden by the Council of Nicaea.1

Ch. II Fasting on Saturday

In his Encyclical to the Eastern Patriarchs in 866, St. Photius writes, “The first error of the Westerners was to
compel the faithful to fast on Saturday. (I mention this seemingly small point because the least departure
from Tradition can lead to a scorning of every dogma of our faith.)”2 This controversy was brought up again
in the time of the Great Schism in 1054. Although there had been different practices in the early Church, the
Council of Trullo settles the matter.

In his work, Adversus Calumnis Graecorum (Against the Calumnies of the Greeks), the Latin Cardinal
Humbert writes:

However, you [Greeks], if you do not judaize, tell (us) why do you have something in common with
the Jews with the similar observance of the Sabbath? … Wherefore, because you observe Sabbath
with the Jews and with us Sunday, Lord’s day, you appear by such observance to imitate the sect
of the Nazarenes, who in this manner accept the Christianity that they might not give up Judaism. …
Wherefore, we [Latins], holding unto the present time the apostolic tradition concerning the Sabbath,
and desiring to hold (it) to the end, are careful to subscribe to that which our ancient and venerable
fathers declared and confirmed, among whom the most blessed Pope Sylvester, … 3

Cardinal Humbert then quotes an apocryphal passage attributed to Pope St. Sylvester. It is interesting that
Humbert criticises not fasting on Saturday, when this is now formally permitted to the East.4

The Sixth Ecumenical Council in Trullo declares, in its LV canon:

Since we understand that in the city of the Romans, in the holy fast of Lent they fast on the
Saturdays, contrary to the ecclesiastical observance which is traditional, it seemed good to the holy
synod that also in the Church of the Romans the canon shall immovably stand fast which says: “If any
cleric shall be found to fast on a Sunday or Saturday (except on one occasion only) he is to be
deposed; and if he is a layman he shall be cut off.”5

1 William Stuart Auchincloss, Christianity and the Britons, p. 10, New York, NY, (Philadelphia, PA: Dornan),
1907.
2 Holy Transfiguration Monastery (translators), On the Mystagogy of the Holy Spirit, p. 50, [Boston, MA]:

Studion Publishers, 1983.

3 R. L. Odom, The Sabbath in the Great Schism of A.D. 1054, in AUSS, Vol. I, pp. 77 – 79, 1963. Migne, PL, Vol.

CXLIII, pp. 936 – 937.

4 Fortescue notes that the Latin Pope “Benedict XIV (1740 – 1758) declared that it [Saturday fasting] does not

bind in countries where a contrary custom has been prescribed against it (De Synodo, xi 5, n. 5.), and now
throughout the greater part of the Catholic Church the faithful have never even heard of it.” Adrian Fortescue,
The Orthodox Eastern Church, Part II, Ch. V, § 2., p. 178, London: Catholic Truth Society, 2nd Ed., 1908.
5 Percival, Seven Ecumenical Councils, p. 391.
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The Ancient Epitome of this canon states: “The Romans fast the Sabbaths of Lent. Therefore this Synod
admonishes that upon these days the Apostolical canon is of force.”1

The Constantinopolitan chronicler and theologian Johannes Zonaras (fl. 12th century) comments on this
canon:

The synod took in hand to correct this failing (σφάλμα) of the Latins; but until this time they
have arrogantly remained in their pertinacity, and so remain to-day. Nor do they heed the ancient
canons which forbid fasting on the Sabbath except that one, to wit the great Sabbath, nor are they
affected by the authority of this canon. Moreover the clerics have no regard for the threatened
deposition, nor the laymen for their being cut off.2

Canon LXVI of the Apostolical Canons states: “If any of the clergy be found fasting on the Lord’s day, or on the
Sabbath, excepting the one only, let him be deposed. If a layman, let him be excommunicated.” 3

The ancient spurious epistle of Ignatius to the Philippians (thought to date from the fourth century) states the
following, “After the week of the passion, do not neglect to fast on the fourth and sixth days, distributing at
the same time of thine abundance to the poor. If any one fasts on the Lord’s Day or on the Sabbath, except on
the paschal Sabbath only, he is a murderer of Christ.” 4

The Roman Catholic scholar Mgr. Pierre Batiffol (1861 – 1929) writes that in the era of Augustine, “Saturday
fasting was observed in some African churches and not in others. In Rome and in some other churches of the
West it was observed. Elsewhere and throughout the East nobody fasted on Saturdays.”5

Augustine wrote a lengthy letter on this subject to the priest Casulanus, who had asked Augustine about this
question, asking for his response to a treatise written by a person in Rome, who had argued that all Christians
everywhere must fast on the Sabbath, following the usage of Rome. After responding to many points,
Augustine writes to Casulanus:

Ch. XI. 25. As to the succeeding paragraphs with which he concludes his treatise, they are, like some
other things in it which I have not thought worthy of notice, even more irrelevant to a discussion of
the question whether we should fast or eat on the seventh day of the week. But I leave it to yourself
especially you have found any help from what I have already said, to observe and dispose of these.
Having now, to the best of my ability, and as I think sufficiently, replied to the reasonings of this
author, if I be asked what is my own opinion in this matter, I answer, after carefully pondering the
question, that in the Gospels and Epistles, and the entire collection of books for our instruction called
the New Testament, I see that fasting is enjoined. But I do not discover any rule definitely laid down
by the Lord or by the apostles as to days on which we ought or ought not to fast. And by this I am
persuaded that exemption from fasting on the seventh day is more suitable, not indeed to obtain,
but to foreshadow, that eternal rest in which the true Sabbath is realized, and which is obtained only
by faith, and by that righteousness whereby the daughter of the King is all glorious within. …

Ch. XII. 27. As to the seventh day of the week there is less difficulty in acting on the rule above
quoted, because both the Roman Church and some other churches, though few, near to it or remote
from it, observe a fast on that day; but to fast on the Lord’s day is a great offence …

1 Percival, Seven Ecumenical Councils, p. 391.

2 Percival, Seven Ecumenical Councils, p. 391.
3 Percival, Seven Ecumenical Councils, p. 598.
4 The Apostolic Fathers, IV Ignatius, Spurious Epistles, Epistle of Ignatius to the Philippians, Ch. XIII, p. 119, in

ANF, Vol. I.
5 Pierre Batiffol, Augustine’s Vision of Unity, V, in Silas McBee (editor), The Constructive Quarterly: A Journal

of the Faith, Work and Thought of Christendom, Vol. V, March to December, 1917, p. 46, New York, NY: George
H. Doran Company, 1917.
 198

Ch. XIII. 30. The reason why the Church prefers to appoint the fourth and sixth days of the week for
fasting, is found by considering the gospel narrative. … The next day is the Jewish Sabbath, on which
Christ’s body rested in the grace, as in the original fashioning of the world God rested on that day
from all His works. Hence originated that variety in the robe of His bride which we are now
considering: some, especially the Eastern communities, preferring to take food on that day, that their
action might be emblematic of the divine rest; others, namely the Church of Rome, and some
churches in the West, preferring to fast on that day because of the humiliation of the Lord in death.
Once in the year, namely at Easter, all Christians observe the seventh day of the week by fasting, in
memory of the mourning with which the disciples, as men bereaved, lamented the death of the Lord
(and this is done with the utmost devoutness by those who take food on the seventh day throughout
the rest of the year); thus providing a symbolical representation of both events, – of the disciples’
sorrow on one seventh day in the year, and of the blessing of repose on all the others. …

Ch. XIV. 32. Since, therefore (as I have said above), we do not find in the Gospels or in the apostolical
writings, belonging properly to the revelation of the New Testament, that any law was laid down as
to fasts to be observed on particular days; and since this is consequently one of many things, difficult
to enumerate, which make up a variety in the robe of the King's daughter, that is to say, of the Church,
– I will tell you the answer given to my questions on this subject by the venerable Ambrose Bishop of
Milan, by whom I was baptized. When my mother was with me in that city, I, as being only a
catechumen, felt no concern about these questions; but it was to her a question causing anxiety,
whether she ought, after the custom of our own town, to fast on the Saturday, or, after the custom of
the Church of Milan, not to fast. To deliver her from perplexity, I put the question to the man of God
whom I have just named. He answered, “What else can I recommend to others than what I do
myself?” When I thought that by this he intended simply to prescribe to us that we should take food
on Saturdays – for I knew this to be his own practice – he, following me, added these words: “When I
am here I do not fast on Saturday; but when I am at Rome I do: whatever church you may come to,
conform to its custom, if you would avoid either receiving or giving offence.” This reply I reported to
my mother, and it satisfied her, so that she scrupled not to comply with it; and I have myself followed
the same rule. Since, however, it happens, especially in Africa, that one church, or the churches
within the same district, may have some members who fast and others who do not fast on the
seventh day, it seems to me best to adopt in each congregation the custom of those to whom
authority in its government has been committed. Wherefore, if you are quite willing to follow my
advice, especially because in regard to this matter I have spoken at greater length than was
necessary, do not in this resist your own bishop, but follow his practice without scruple or debate.1

In summary, Augustine pleads for a diversity of practices in the Church, although he prefers not fasting on
Saturday, and he notes that few churches fast on Saturday.

The learned Protestant historian August Neander (1789 – 1850) writes the following concerning the policy of
the Church of Rome and Pope Innocent I:

But that rigid hierarchical spirit of the Roman church, which, from a very early period, required
uniformity in things unessential, would, in this case also, put a restraint on religious freedom. In the
Roman church, it was affirmed that this custom came down from Peter, the first of the apostles, and
hence ought to be universally observed. The idle tale was there set afloat, when the origin of that
custom from the old opposition between the originally pagan and the originally Jewish communities
was no longer known, that the apostle Peter instituted a fast on the Sabbath in preparing for the
dispute with Simon Magus.a The Roman bishop Innocent decided, in his decretals addressed to the
Spanish bishop Decentius, (at the very time that men like Augustin expressed themselves with so
much liberality on this difference,) that the Sabbath, like Friday, must be observed as a fast day. b In

1Letters of St. Augustin, Letter XXXVI, Epistle to Casulanus, Ch. XI – XIV, 25. – 32., pp. 267 – 270, in NPNF,
Series I, Vol. I, New York, NY: The Christian Literature Company, 1892.
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defence of this rule, he offered a better reason at least than those monks; viz.: that, in its historical
import, the Sabbath necessarily belonged to the period of sorrow which preceded Sunday, the joyful
day of the feast of the resurrection; since on both the former days the apostles were plunged in grief,
and on the Sabbath had hid themselves for fear.

[Neander’s footnotes:] a.) That Roman spirit expresses itself after a characteristic manner in the
following language of a treatise which was probably composed by some member of the Roman
clergy, and was intended to procure the general recognition of the Roman custom: Petrus,
apostolorum caput, cœli janitor et ecclesiæ fundamentum, extincto Simone, qui diaboli fuerat,
nonnisi jejunis vincendi figura, (that Simon Magus could be vanquished by Peter only through fasting,
was represented as a typical allusion to the fact, that Satan also, whom Simon Magus represented,
could be conquered only by fasting,) id ipsum Romanos edocuit, quorum fides annuntiatur universe
orbi terrarium.
b.) Sabbato jejunandum esse ratio evidentissima demonstrat.1

John Cassian discusses the practice of Saturday fasting:

Ch. IX. The reason why a Vigil is appointed as the Sabbath day dawns, and why a dispensation from
fasting is enjoyed on the Sabbath all through the East.

And throughout the whole of the East it has been settled, ever since the time of the preaching of the
Apostles, when the Christian faith and religion was founded, that these Vigils should be celebrated as
the Sabbath dawns, for this reason – because, when our Lord and Saviour had been crucified on the
sixth day of the week, the disciples, overwhelmed by the freshness of His sufferings, remained
watching throughout the whole night, giving no rest or sleep to their eyes. Wherefore, since that
time, a service of Vigils has been appointed for this night, and is still observed in the same way up to
the present day all through the East. And so, after the exertion of the Vigil, a dispensation from
fasting, appointed in like manner for the Sabbath by apostolic men, is not without reason
enjoined in all the churches of the East, in accordance with that saying of Ecclesiastes, which,
although it has another and a mystical sense, is not misapplied to this, by which we are charged to
give to both days – that is, to the seventh and eighth equally – the same share of the service, as it says:
Give a portion to these seven and also to these eight. (Ecclesiastes xi. 2.) For this dispensation from
fasting must not be understood as a participation in the Jewish festival by those above all who are
shown to be free from all Jewish superstition, but as contributing to that rest of the wearied body of
which we have spoken; which, as it fasts continually for five days in the week all through the year,
would easily be worn out and fail, unless it were revived by an interval of at least two days.

Ch. X. How it was brought about that they fast on the Sabbath in the city [Rome].

But some people in some countries of the West, and especially in the city, not knowing the reason
of this indulgence, think that a dispensation from fasting ought certainly not to be allowed on the
Sabbath, because they say that on this day the Apostle Peter fasted before his encounter with Simon.
But from this it is quite clear that he did this not in accordance with a canonical rule, but rather
through the needs of his impending struggle. Since there, too, for the same purpose, Peter seems to
have imposed on his disciples not a general but a special fast, which he certainly would not have done
if he had known that it was wont to be observed by canonical rule: just as he would surely have been
ready to appoint it even on Sunday, if the occasion of his struggle had fallen upon it: but no canonical
rule of fasting would have been made general from this, because it was no general observance that
led to it, but a matter of necessity, which forced it to be observed on a single occasion. 2

1 Joseph Torrey (translator), Augustus Neander, General History of the Christian Religion and Church, Vol. II,
Section III, p. 299, Boston, MA: Crocker & Brewster, 1848.
2 Edgar C. S. Gibson (translator), The Works of John Cassian, Institutes, Book III, Ch. IX – X, pp. 217 – 218, in

NPNF, Series II, Vol. XI, New York, NY: The Christian Literature Company, 1894.
 200

Some of the earliest permissions for fasting on Saturday considered it an extension of the Friday fast, and a
few other Western saints and authors, such as Jerome, also tolerated fasting on Saturday, but it would require
many more pages to discuss this question in more detail. However, after the decision of the Sixth Ecumenical
Council in Trullo (the canons of which were approved by the Seventh Ecumenical Council – see the chapter on
Trullo), the debate is settled, and strict Saturday fasting is generally not permitted.

Ch. III Canonisation

Rome has also innovated with regard to canonisations of saints, and the role of the Bishop of Rome in this
matter increased after the schism. The first solemn Papal act of canonization took place in a Council of Rome
in 993:

The custom of specially venerating the memory of those who had died for the faith, dates
from the first ages of Christianity, and we find S. Cyprian in the III. century recommending his clergy
to keep careful records of the martyrs. Such catalogues or diptychs were diligently preserved, and,
until the XII. century, inscription on the local calendar was sufficient to proclaim a saint. Then, to
check the abuses arising out of a too ready desire to publicly invoke any one who had died in the
odour of sanctity, the Roman pontiffs reserved to themselves the power to make this
proclamation. …

Up to the pontificate of Pius IX. there had been 115 canonisations. The first act of the kind seems to
have been relative to S. Swidborg proclaimed a saint in 752 at the instance of Pepin, although the act
was not called ‘canonisation’ till John XV. declared Ulrich bishop of Augsburg a saint “in the Council
Hall of the Lateran” in 993. This was 20 years after the saint’s death; but canonisations within a
century of the death are very rare indeed. Thomas à Becket was canonised by Alexander III. 2 years
after his murder; and Francis of Assisi 12 years after his death, the first canonisation accompanied
with ritual pomp.1

The article on Beatification and Canonization in the Catholic Encyclopedia states:

Is the pope infallible in issuing a decree of canonization? Most theologians answer in the affirmative.
It is the opinion of St. Antoninus, Melchior Cano, Suarez, Bellarmine, Bañez, Vasquez, and, among the
canonists, of Gonzales Tellez, Fagnanus, Schmalzgrüber, Barbosa, Reiffenstül, Covarruvias (Variar.
resol., I, x, no 13), Albitius (De Inconstantiâ in fide, xi, no 205), Petra (Comm. in Const. Apost., I, in
notes to Const. I, Alex., III, no 17 sqq.), Joannes a S. Thomâ (on II-II, Q. I, disp. 9, a. 2), Silvester
(Summa, s.v. Canonizatio), Del Bene (De Officio Inquisit. II, dub. 253), and many others.2

According to the Latins, the Church was without an infallible Papal decree on who was a saint for nearly one
thousand years. In the early Church, metropolitans and local Christian communities decided who was to be
recognized as a Saint, yet later Popes declared that the sanction of the Roman church was required.

The Catholic Encyclopedia gives some remarkable information on this point:

We have seen that for several centuries the bishops, in some places only the primates and
patriarchs (August., Brevic. Collat. cum Donatistis, III, xiii, no 25 in P. L., XLIII, 628), could grant to
martyrs and confessors public ecclesiastical honour; such honour, however, was always decreed only
for the local territory over which the grantors held jurisdiction. Still, it was only the Bishop of
Rome’s acceptance of the cultus that made it universal, since he alone could permit or command in

1 Mildred Anne Rosalie Tuker and Hope Malleson, Handbook to Christian and Ecclesiastical Rome, Part IV, Ch.
II, pp. 382 – 385, New York, NY: The Macmillan Company, 1900.
2 Camillus Beccari, Beatification and Canonization, in CE, Vol. II, p. 366, New York, NY: The Universal

Knowledge Foundation, 1913.

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the Universal Church [Gonzalez Tellez, Comm. Perpet. in singulos textus libr. Decr. (III, xlv), in cap. i,
De reliquiis et vener. Sanct.]. Abuses, however, crept into this form of discipline, due as well to
indiscretions of popular fervour as to the carelessness of some bishops in inquiring into the lives of
those whom they permitted to be honoured as saints. Towards the close of the eleventh century
the popes found it necessary to restrict episcopal authority on this point, and decreed that the
virtues and miracles of persons proposed for public veneration should be examined in councils, more
particularly in general councils. Urban II, Calixtus II, and Eugenius III followed this line of action. It
happened, even after these decrees, that “some, following the ways of the pagans and deceived by the
fraud of the evil one, venerated as a saint a man who had been killed while intoxicated”. Alexander III
(1159-81) took occasion to prohibit his veneration in these words: “For the future you will not
presume to pay him reverence, as, even though miracles were worked through him, it would not
allow you to revere him as a saint unless with the authority of the Roman Church” (c. i, tit. cit., X. III,
xlv). Theologians do not agree as to the full import of this decretal. Either a new law was made
(Bellarmine, De Eccles. Triumph., I, viii), in which case the pope then for the first time reserved the
right of beatification, or a pre-existing law was confirmed. As the decretal did not put an end to all
controversy, and some bishops did not obey it in as far as it regarded beatification (which right they
had certainly possessed hitherto), Urban VII published, in 1634, a Bull which put an end to all
discussion by reserving to the Holy See exclusively not only its immemorial right of canonization, but
also that of beatification.1

Ch. IV Musical Instruments in Church

Musical instruments should not be permitted for use during the liturgy in Church. Only singing should be
permitted; the use of musical instruments is a late innovation not approved by the early Church.

The Latin Council of Trent implicitly accepts organ music in Church, though checking excesses, “They shall
also banish from the churches all such music which, whether by organ or in the singing, contains things that
are lascivious or impure;”.2

Thomas Aquinas in his Summa Theologica does not support the use of musical instruments, writing the
following about the practice of the Latin Church at his time in reply to the question, “Whether God should be
praised with song?”:

Obj. 4. Further, In the Old Law God was praised with musical instruments and human song,
according to Ps. xxxii. 2, 3: “Give praise to the Lord on the harp, sing to Him with the psaltery, the
instrument of ten strings. Sing to Him a new canticle.” But the Church does not make use of
musical instruments such as harps and psalteries, in the divine praises, for fear of seeming to
imitate the Jews. …

Reply Obj. 4. As the Philosopher says (Polit. viii.), “Teaching should not be accompanied with a flute
or any artificial instrument such as the harp or anything else of this kind: but only with such things as
make good hearers.” For suchlike musical instruments move the soul to pleasure rather than create a
good disposition within it. In the Old Testament instruments of this description were employed, both
because the people were more coarse and carnal – so that they needed to be aroused by such
instruments as also by earthly promises – and because these material instruments were figures of
something else.3

1 Camillus Beccari, Beatification and Canonization, in CE, Vol. II, pp. 365 – 366, New York, NY: The Universal
Knowledge Foundation, 1913. More evidence of novelty in papal practices can be found in this article.
2 “Ab ecclesiis vero musicas eas, ubi sive organa sive cantu lascivum aut impurum aliquid miscetur,”

Schroeder, Trent, Session XXII, p. 151. Latin on p. 424.

3 “Ecclesia nostra non assumit instrumenta musica, sicut citharas, et psalteria in divinas laudes, ne videatur

Judaizare.” Aquin. 2da 2dæ Quæst. 91. Artic. 2. Fathers of the English Dominican Province (translators), The
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The Anglican historian Bingham writes “Music in churches is as ancient as the Apostles, but instrumental
music not so.”1 Bingham points out that Roman Catholic writers such as Cajetan and Navarre make the same
inference. Bingham has written a good section on this subject, that the reader may wish to consult.
Numerous other historians have come to the same conclusion about this subject.

In the article on Plain Chant, the Catholic Encyclopedia writes on the history of music in the Church:

Although there is not much known about the church music of the first three centuries, and although it
is clear that the time of the persecutions was not favourable to a development of solemn Liturgy,
there are plenty of allusions in the writings of contemporary authors to show that the early
Christians used to sing both in private and when assembled for public worship. … One thing stands
out very clearly in this period, namely, the exclusion of musical instruments from Christian
worship. The main reason for this exclusion was perhaps the associations of musical instruments
arising from their pagan use. … In Rome they do not seem to have been admitted before the twelfth
century.2

A well-written article in the Catholic Encyclopedia on the qualities of Church Music states the following:

The first and most urgent condition which the Church imposes in regard to her music is that
it be in conformity with the place, time, and purpose of Divine worship; that it be sacred and not
profane, in other words that it be church, and not theatrical, music. … The attitude of reserve
maintained by the Church on this point is expressed in the “Motu proprio” as follows: “Although the
music proper to the Church is purely vocal music, music with the accompaniment of the organ is also
permitted. In some special cases, within due limits and within the proper regards, other instruments
may be allowed, but never without the special license of the ordinary, according to the Cæremoniale
episcoporum. As the chant should always have the principal place, the organ or instruments should
merely sustain and never suppress it. It is not permitted to have the chant preceded by long preludes
or to interrupt it with intermezzo pieces.” The pianoforte and noisy and frivolous instruments (e.g.
drums, cymbals, and bells) are absolutely excluded. Wind instruments by their nature more
turbulent and obtrusive, are admissible only as an accompaniment to the singing in processions
outside of the church. Within the edifice “it will be permissible only in special cases and with the
consent of the ordinary to admit a number of wind instruments, limited, judicious, and proportioned
to the size of the place, provided the composition and accompaniment to be executed be written in a
grave and suitable style and similar in all respects to that proper to the organ.” The restrictions
imposed by the Church in this regard were formerly still greater. Although Josephus tells of the
wonderful effects produced in the Temple by the use of instruments, the first Christians were of too
spiritual a fibre to substitute lifeless instruments for or to use them to accompany the human voice.
Clement of Alexandria severely condemns the use of instruments even at Christian banquets (P.G.,
VIII, 440). St. Chrysostom sharply contrasts the customs of the Christians at the time when they had
full freedom with those of the Jews of the Old Testament (ibid., LV, 494-7). Similarly write a series of
early ecclesiastical writers down to St. Thomas (Summa, II-II, Q. xci, a. 2).

In Carlovingian times, however, the organ came into use, and was, until the sixteenth
century, used solely for the accompaniment of the chant, its independent use developing only
gradually (Scarlatti, Couperin, Bach). Perfected organ-playing found increasing favour in the eyes of
the church authorities, and only occasionally was it found necessary to correct an abuse. … After the
sixteenth century, orchestral instruments found admittance into some churches and court chapels,

“Summa Theologica” of St. Thomas Aquinas, Vol. XI, Part II, Second Part, QQ. LXXX – C, Question XCI, Article II,
pp. 164 – 167, London: Burns, Oates & Washbourne, 1922. The Philosopher whom Aquinas is fond of quoting
is Aristotle (384 BC – 322 BC), an ancient Greek philosopher and polymath, a student of Plato and teacher of
Alexander the Great (the “mighty king” prophesied by Daniel (Dan. xi 3)).
1 Bingham, Origines Ecclesiasticæ, Book VII, Ch. VII, Sect. 14.
2 Henry Bewerunge, Plain Chant, in CE, Vol. XII, p. 144, New York, NY: The Encyclopedia Press, 1913.
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but restrictive regulations soon followed. While Lasso in Munich, Monteverde in Venice, and Scarlatti
in Naples had at their disposal large orchestras, smaller churches with more modest resources
satisfied themselves with the use of the trumpet or trombone in addition to the organ. The
cultivation of both sacred and profane music by the same musicians proved detrimental to church
music, and finally the Church had to wage open war on modern theatrical music in church
services. …

Richard Wagner says a vigorous word in favour of purely vocal music in church: “To the
human voice, the immediate vehicle of the sacred word, belongs the first place in the churches, and
not to instrumental additions or the trivial scraping found in most of the churches pieces today.
Catholic Church music can regain its former purity only by a return to the purely vocal style. If an
accompaniment is considered absolutely necessary, the genius of Christianity has provided the
instrument worthy of such function, the organ” (Gesammelte Werke, II, 337). There is no doubt but
that those qualities absolutely necessary to church music, namely modesty, dignity, and soulfulness,
are more inherent in the purely vocal style than in any other. Reserve and humble restraint befits the
house of God. Sentimental and effeminate melodies are incompatible with the dignified seriousness
of the polyphonic a capella style, and a composer's temptation to indulge in them is more easily
counteracted by this style than any other. Like the external attitude of the worshipper in church, the
vocally interpreted liturgical word and the organ-playing must be respectful and decorous. That
vocal music is in general more expressive than the mechanically produced tone of instruments is
undeniable. Religious feeling finds its most natural expression in vocal utterance, for the human
heart is the source of both devotion and song. …

The purely vocal style is the ideal of the Church. The papal choir, the Sistine, has always
excluded musical instrumental music. The more humble and subordinate the rôle of the organist, the
more faithful and conscientious he should be in filling it. … Under no circumstances must he permit
himself to carry reminiscences of the concert and opera into the church.

As to the use of instruments, other than the organ, we should remember that the special
permission of the ordinary is necessary, and that their nature must always be in keeping with the
occasion and the place. The employment of a full orchestra forms an exception (cf. Motu proprio,
cited above). The wisdom of these restrictions has been cheerfully recognized by such unprejudiced
authorities as Wagner and Beethoven — a fact which cannot be too often stated. The former
maintained that “genuine church music should be produced only by voices, except a ‘Gloria’ or
similar text.” As early in his career as 1848 this master ascribed the decadence of church music to
the use of instruments. “The first step toward the decadence of genuine Catholic church music was
the introduction of orchestra instruments. Their character and independent use have imparted to
religious expression a sensuous charm, which has proved very detrimental, and has affected
unfavourably the art of singing itself. The virtuosity of instrumentalists provoked imitation on the
part of singers, and soon a worldly and operatic taste held full sway in church. Certain parts of the
sacred text, e.g. the ‘Kyrie Eleison’, became a vehicle for operatic arias, and singers trained for Italian
opera were engaged as church singers” (Gesammelte Werke, II, 335). Every reform has, in
accordance with the will of the Church, to be carried out in such a manner that a greater evil may not
result – that is, gradually and without causing unnecessary friction (sensim sine sensu), but yet with
firmness, regardless of one’s personal views. …

It is as important today as ever that we carefully distinguish between simply religious music
– be it never so beautiful, artistic, and conducive to private devotion – and that kind of music which
the Church requires for her services. Outside of the Church each one may sing such melodies to
religious texts as best satisfy his own pious mood; he may even indulge his æsthetic predilections in
choosing his hymns. The house of God, however, demands an entirely different attitude; we must
realize that we are there to pray, that we may not force our personal mood on our fellow Christians,
but that, on the contrary, we must follow with devout attention and pious song, according to the will
and in the spirit of the Church, the liturgical action at the altar. And, in according to the Church our
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filial obedience, we need entertain no fear that she, the venerable mother and protector of the arts,
will assign to music a function unworthy of its powers.1

The Catholic Encyclopedia’s article on Musical Instruments in Church Music states the following:

For almost a thousand years Gregorian chant, without any instrumental or harmonic
addition, was the only music used in connexion with the liturgy. The organ, in its primitive and rude
form, was the first, and for a long time the sole, instrument used to accompany the chant. …
The Church has never encouraged, and at most only tolerated, the use of instruments. She enjoins in
the “Cæremoniale Episcoporum” that permission for their use should first be obtained from the
ordinary. She holds up as her ideal the unaccompanied chant and polyphonic, a capella, style. The
Sistine Chapel has not even an organ.

From time to time regulations have been issued governing the use of instruments and
condemning existing abuses. In 1728 Benedict XIII rebuked a community of Benedictine nuns in
Milan for using other instruments than the organ during high Mass and Vespers. He also forbade the
Franciscans to use any other instrument than the organ in their conventual churches. Benedict XIV in
his encyclical “Annus qui nunc vertentem” (19 February 1749) tolerates only the organ, stringed
instruments, and bassoons. Kettle-drums, horns, trombones, oboes, flutes, pianos, and mandolins are
prohibited. In the “Regolamento” of 1884, flutes, trombones, and kettle-drums are permitted on
account of the improved manner in which they are now used as compared with former times. In the
name of Gregory XVI, the Cardinal-Vicar of Rome, Patrizi, prohibited (1842) the use of instruments in
the Roman churches, with the exception of a few to be used in a becoming manner in accompanying
the singing, and then only after permission had been secured from the proper authority. This order
was renewed in 1856 by the same cardinal in the name of Pius IX. … Among those who have recently
written, within the prescribed limits, works for voices and instruments for liturgical use, are I.
Mitterer, G. J. E. Stehle, M. Brosig, Max Filke, George Zeller, L. Bonvin, S.J., C. Greith, F. X. Witt, P.
Griesbacher, J. G. Meuerer, and J. Rheinberger. The present trend is, however, decidedly away from
the instrumental idea and back to the purely vocal style. And it is recognized, and in many places
acted upon, that the new version of the liturgical chant, proposed to the world by Pius X, gains its full
beauty and effectiveness only when sung without instrumental accompaniment of any kind. 2

The Latin Popes have commendably checked excesses with regard to the use of musical instruments in
Church. However, it is apparent that their Popes have explicitly permitted the use of organs in Church
services, along with other instruments on certain occasions, which is a departure from the practice of the
Church of the Seven Ecumenical Councils.

The Catholic Dictionary, in its article on Organs, states the following:

It has never been adopted among the Greeks or Orientals. Chrysostom (in Ps. cl.) speaks of
musical instruments generally as only “permitted” in Jewish worship “on account of their
weakness.” Theodoret (in Ps. Cl. 5 and 6) holds much the same language, while the author of “Quæst.
et Respons. ad Orthodox.,” once attributed to Justin Martyr, but certainly written after the conversion
of the empire, says expressly that, whereas instruments were allowed in the temple, singing only

1 Gerhard Gietmann, Ecclesiastic Music, The Catholic Encyclopedia, Vol. X, pp. 650 – 657, New York, NY: The
Encyclopedia Press, 1913. Gietmann (1845 – 1912) was a German Jesuit professor of aesthetics who
contributed dozens of articles to the Catholic Encyclopedia.
2 Joseph Otten, Musical Instruments in Church Music, Catholic Encyclopedia, Vol. X, pp. 657 – 658, New York,

NY: The Encyclopedia Press, 1913. Otten (1852 – after 1917), who wrote this article, was a Dutch Roman
Catholic organist, choirmaster, conductor, and founder of the St. Louis Choral Symphony Society. Otten
promoted church music reform and wrote several dozen articles for the Catholic Encyclopedia concerning the
topic of music and musicians, and contributed to the “Catholic Fortnightly Review” (The Catholic
Encyclopedia and Its Makers, p. 131, New York, NY: The Encyclopedia Press, Inc., 1917).
 205

without instruments is permitted in Christian churches. (“Respons. ad Quæst.” 107.) The Greeks and
Russians at this day rigidly follow the same rule.

As to the West, we may at once put aside the fables that the organ was introduced into the
churches by Pope Vitalian or even Pope Damasus. There is little doubt that it was the presents of
organs made to Pepin and Charlemagne which led to the Church use of the instruments. For Walafrid
Strabo in the middle of the ninth century gives an account of the organ in the church at Aix-la-
Chapelle, probably the very organ sent to Charlemagne from Constantinople. Its tones were so sweet
and powerful, according to this writer, that they caused a woman to faint and die (Walafr. Strabo,
“Carm. de Apparatu Eccles. Aquisgranensis”). Further, it has been shown from ancient charters that
there was an organ in the church of Verona in Charlemagne's time. (Ughelli, “Italia Sacra,” tom. v. pp.
604. 610.) A great organ with fourteen bellows and 400 pipes was built by Elfeg, bishop of
Winchester, for the Benedictine abbey there (Mabillon, “Annal. Benedict.” tom. vi. p. 630), and
another at Ramsey is mentioned in the life of Oswald, archbishop of York. (Mab. ib. p. 727.) From the
eleventh and twelfth centuries organs were usual in cathedral and monastic churches, and Bingham's
assertion (“Antiq.” Vii. 7, § 14) that they were unknown there till after the time of St. Thomas Aquinas
is quite erroneous. True it is, however, that protests were occasionally made against the use of
organs. “Whence,” says Aelred (“Speculum Caritatis,” ii. 23), “whence, now that types and figures are
over, so many organs and cymbals in the church? Wherefore that horrible sound of bellows, more
like thunder than the sweetness of the voice?” More remarkable still is the opinion of St. Thomas (2
2ndæ xci. 2). He is answering the objection that as “the Church does not use musical instruments for
the praise of God, lest it should seem to Judaise, so by parity of reasoning” it should not permit
singing. He replies, “musical instruments” such as pipes, harps, &c., “minister to delight and do not
promote virtue, and were only permitted to the Jews because of their carnal dispositions; whereas
singing does help devotion.” It is evident that he did not approve of instrumental music. In the Papal
chapel it has never been employed. At Trent efforts were made to banish all music from Mass, but
the majority of the bishops, especially the Spaniards, opposed this measure (Pallavicino, “Istoria del
Concil. di Trento,” xviii. 6), and the Council (sess. xxii. Decret. de Observ. in Celebr. Miss.) simply
required that the music should be grave and devout. Similar injunctions were made by Benedict XIV.
in 1749.

The use of the organ is rejected in orthodox synagogues. The Protestants were divided on
the matter; the Lutherans and Anglicans retaining, the “Reformed” at first rejecting it. Thus, it was
not till the close of the last century that organs were introduced at Berne, and they are still absent in
most of the Scotch Presbyterian churches, though even there a change has begun.1

It is worth noting that the Iconoclast Emperor Constantine Copronymous first gifted the organ to Pepin in
757, although it was not intended for church use.2

St. John Chrysostom comments on the 41st Psalm:

Nor will anyone, in such singing, be blamed if he be weakened by old age, or young, or have a harsh
voice, or no knowledge at all of numbers. … Here there is no need for the cithara, or for stretched
strings, or for the plectrum, or for art, or for any instrument; but, if you like, you may yourself
become a cithara, mortifying the members of the flesh and making a full harmony of mind and body.

1 William E. Addis, Thomas Arnold, and Jas. L. Meagher, Organ, The Catholic Dictionary, p. 631, New York, NY:
Christian Press Association Publishing Co., 1896. Note that the invention of the organ is usually attributed to
Ctesibus (285 – 222 BC) and Archimedes (287 – 212 BC), and Jubal (Gen. iv 21) was the original inventor of
musical instruments.
2 John Wordsworth, The Ministry of Grace: Studies in Early Church History with Reference to Present

Problems, Ch. III, 19., p. 200, London: Longmans, Green, & Co., 2nd Ed., 1903.
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For when the flesh no longer lusts against the Spirit, but has submitted to its orders and has been led
at length into the best and most admirable path, then will you create a spiritual melody.1

In his commentary on the 149th Psalm, Chrysostom says:

It was only permitted to the Jews as sacrifice was, for the heaviness and grossness of their souls; God
condescended to their weakness, because they were lately drawn off from idols: but now instead of
organs, we may use our own bodies to praise him withal. 2

Theodoret plainly writes in Questions and Answers for the Orthodox:

107. Question: If songs were invented by unbelievers to seduce men, but were allowed to those
under the law on account of their childish state, why do those who have received the perfect teaching
of grace in their churches still use songs, just like the children under the law?
Answer: It is not simple singing that belongs to the childish state, but singing with lifeless
instruments, with dancing, and with clappers. Hence the use of such instruments and the others that
belong to the childish state is excluded from the singing in the churches, and simple singing is left.3

Eusebius writes:

Of old at the time those of the circumcision were worshipping with symbols and types it was not
inappropriate to send up hymns to God with the psalterion and cithara and to do this on Sabbath
days … We render our hymn with a living psalterion and a living cithara with spiritual songs. The
unison voices of Christians would be more acceptable to God than any musical instrument.
Accordingly in all the churches of God, united in soul and attitude, with one mind and in agreement of
faith and piety we send up a unison melody in the words of the Psalms.4

Clement of Alexandria (150 – 215) writes an entire chapter on the topic of musical instruments, in which he
states:

The Spirit, distinguishing from such revelry the divine service, sings, “Praise Him with the sound of
trumpet;” for with sound of trumpet He shall raise the dead. “Praise Him on the psaltery;” for the
tongue is the psaltery of the Lord. “And praise Him on the lyre.” By the lyre is meant the mouth
struck by the Spirit, as it were by a plectrum. “Praise with the timbrel and the dance,” refers to the
Church meditating on the resurrection of the dead in the resounding skin. “Praise Him on the chords
and organ.” Our body He calls an organ, and its nerves are the strings, by which it has received
harmonious tension, and when struck by the Spirit, it gives forth human voices. “Praise Him on the
clashing cymbals.” He calls the tongue the cymbal of the mouth, which resounds with the pulsation of
the lips. Therefore He cried to humanity, “Let every breath praise the Lord,” because He cares for
every breathing thing which He has made. For man is truly a pacific instrument; while other
instruments, if you investigate, you will find to be warlike, inflaming to lusts, or kindling up amours,
or rousing wrath.

In their wars, therefore, the Etruscans use the trumpet, the Arcadians the pipe, the Sicilians the
pectides, the Cretans the lyre, the Lacedæmonians the flute, the Thracians the horn, the Egyptians the
drum, and the Arabians the cymbal. The one instrument of peace, the Word alone by which we

1 Oliver Strunk, Source Readings in Music History, Ch. II, p. 70, New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Company, 1950.
Migne, PG, Vol. LV, p. 158.
2 Bingham, Origines Ecclesiasticae, Book VIII, Ch. VII, Sect. 14. Also see Robert Charles Hill (translator), St.

John Chrysostom: Commentary on the Psalms, Vol. II, pp. 376 et sqq., Brookline, MA: Holy Cross Orthodox
Press, 2007.
3 Everett Ferguson, A Cappella Music in the Public Worship of the Church, p. 56, Abilene, TX: Desert Willow

Publishing, 4th Ed., 2013.

4 Ferguson, op. cit., p. 61.
 207

honour God, is what we employ. We no longer employ the ancient psaltery, and trumpet, and
timbrel, and flute, which those expert in war and contemners of the fear of God were wont to make
use of also in the choruses at their festive assemblies; that by such strains they might raise their
dejected minds.1

It is worth noting that it is not always improper to have religious music with instruments; indeed, many fine
Orthodox composers and Western musicians have produced beautiful Christian music that lifts the heart to
God. However, it is an ancient tradition that musical instruments are not used during the liturgy proper.
Modern scholars are also in agreement that the Church Fathers unanimously rejected musical
instruments. Dr. Hyun-Ah Kim, an expert on Christian music at the University of Toronto’s Centre for
Reformation & Renaissance Studies, writes,

The New Testament has no direct statement against instrumental music; it is generally assumed that
primitive Christianity did not admit the use of musical instruments. As McKinnon demonstrates,
most vehement criticism on instrumental music is found in patristic writings, and the church fathers
were indeed one in this respect. …

The church fathers allowed only vocal music for liturgy. They believed that ‘the rational pertains to
the human voice’ as it is directly connected with the mind, whilst ‘the irrational to musical
instruments’.2

There are many more ancient authorities that could be cited in defence of purely vocal music for liturgy. For
further reading on this topic see: David W. Music, Instruments in Church: A Collection of Source Documents,
Studies in Liturgical Musicology, No. 7, Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 1998; David W. Music, Hymnology: A
Collection of Source Readings, Studies in Liturgical Musicology, No. 4, Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press,
1996; John Douglas Price, Old Light on New Worship: Musical Instruments and the Worship of God, a
Theological, Historical and Psychological Study, Avinger, TX: Simpson Publishing Company, 2007; James
William McKinnon, The Church Fathers and Musical Instruments, Ph. D. Dissertation, Columbia University,
1965; James William McKinnon, Music in Early Christian Literature, Cambridge Readings in the Literature of
Music, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989; Everett Ferguson, A Cappella Music in the Public
Worship of the Church, Abilene, TX: Desert Willow Publishing, 4th Ed., 2013. Also see Boniface Ramsay
(translator), Johannes Quasten, Music and Worship in Pagan and Christian Antiquity, in NPM Studies in
Church Music and Liturgy, Washington, DC: National Association of Pastoral Musicians, 1983.

Ch. V Sign of the Cross

The Orthodox way of making the sign of the cross is the more traditional way: from the right shoulder to the
left shoulder, using only three fingers.

According to pre-schism Popes, this was not a trivial matter. The Catholic Encyclopedia points out that Pope
Leo IV instructed, “Take heed to make this sign rightly, for otherwise you can bless nothing.”3 The next
paragraph of this article in the Catholic Encyclopedia admits that the early way of making the sign of the cross
was likely in the Greek manner, from right to left, and that the Latins changed this:

1 Clement of Alexandria, The Instructor (Pædagogus), Book II, Ch. IV, pp. 248 – 249, in ANF, Vol. II.
2 Hyun-Ah Kim, Humanism and the Reform of Sacred Music in Early Modern England: John Merbecke the
Orator and The Booke of Common Praier Noted (1550), Ch. 2, London: Routledge, 2016. Kim’s footnotes are
not reproduced here.
3 Herbert Thurston, Sign of the Cross, in CE, Vol. XIII, p. 786, New York, NY: Robert Appleton Company, 1912.
 208

At this period the manner of making it in the West seems to have been identical with that
followed at present in the East, i.e. only three fingers were used, and the hand traveled from
the right shoulder to the left. The point, it must be confessed, is not entirely clear and Thalhofer
(Liturgik, I, 633) inclines to the opinion that in the passages of Belethus (xxxix), Sicardus (III, iv),
Innocent III (De myst. Alt., II, xlvi), and Durandus (V, ii, 13), which are usually appealed to in proof of
this, these authors have in mind the small cross made upon the forehead or external objects, in which
the hand moves naturally from right to left, and not the big cross made from shoulder to shoulder.
Still, a rubric in a manuscript copy of the York Missal clearly requires the priest when signing himself
with the paten to touch the left shoulder after the right. Moreover it is at least clear from many
pictures and sculptures that in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries the Greek practice of extending
only three fingers was adhered to by many Latin Christians. Thus the compiler of the Ancren Riwle
(about 1200) directs his nuns at “Deus in adjutorium” to make a little cross first with the thumb and
then “a large cross from above the forehead down to the breast with three fingers”. However there
can be little doubt that long before the close of the Middle Ages the large sign of the cross was
more commonly made in the West with the open hand and that the bar of the cross was traced
from left to right.1

The Latin Pope Innocent III (Pope from 1198 – 1216) testifies to this traditional way, describing the
contemporary custom in the West, but also indicating a shift in the Latin practice. Innocent III, whose book,
De Sacro Altaris Mysterio, was probably written before he was elected to the papacy in 1198, speaks of this
matter in the following passage:

The sign of the cross is to be made with three fingers, because it is imprinted under the invocation of
the Trinity, of which the prophet says, Who hath comprehended the dust of the earth in three fingers so
that it descends from the upper part to the lower, and crosses over from the right hand to the left,
because Christ came down from heaven to earth, and crossed over from the Jews (right) to the Gentiles
(left). Others, however, make the sign of the cross from the left to right because we ought to go from
misery (left) to glory (right), like as Christ also passed from death unto life, and from the place of
darkness to paradise, especially so that they sign both themselves and others in one and the selfsame
manner. You can easily verify this – picture the priest facing the people for the blessing – when we
make the sign of the cross over the people, it is from left to right …2

The Roman Catholic Benedictine monk Cassian Folsom (1955 – current) comments on these words of Pope
Innocent “So the people, imitating the blessing of the priest, began to sign themselves from left to right. Be
that as it may, centuries have gone by since then, and we in the West make the sign of the cross from left to
right, with the palm open.”3

The prominent English Roman Catholic figure Charles Butler (1750 – 1832) mentions Cardinal Bona in
agreement on the antiquity of the Greek manner of the sign of the cross, after quoting an Orthodox Catechism
on the sign of the cross:

This form of making the sign of the cross differs from the form, in use in the Western Church. The
words are the same, and the figure of the cross is observed; but in the Western Church, the hand is
moved from the breast to the left shoulder, and thence to the right. Some have supposed that this
difference between the Greek and Western Churches is owing to the difference of opinion between

1 Ibid., p. 786.
2 Translation adopted from Ernest Beresford-Cooke, The Sign of the Cross in the Western Liturgies, p. 21,
Alcuin Club Tracts VII, London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1907.
3 Cassian Folsom, Sacred Signs and Active Participation at Mass: What Do These Actions Mean, and Why Are

They So Important?, Address to the Adoremus Conference in Los Angeles, 22 November 1997.
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them, on the Procession of the Holy Ghost: – But Cardinal Bona, (Op. 824), mentions the form used in
the Greek Church, as a form used in ancient times, in some parts of the Latin Churches. 1

Overbeck writes:

The way of making the Sign of the Cross was up to the middle of the fifteenth century the same in East
and West, i.e., the same as the Orthodox Church has preserved it until the present day. Pope Innocent
III. writes (1198) that this is the proper mode of making it. The present Roman way of making the
sign of the Cross seems to be copied from the Monophysites, according to the description given by the
Nestorian Metropolitan, Elias of Damascus (893), in his Arabic Nomocanon (Assemani Biblioth.
Oriental. Tom. iii. Par. i. p. 515). Thus the Latin schism was marked by the change of an ancient badge
of Catholicity.2

For further reading see Ernest Beresford-Cooke, The Sign of the Cross in the Western Liturgies, Alcuin Club
Tracts VII, London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1907; Herbert Thurston, The Sign of the Cross, in The Month: A
Catholic Magazine, Vol. CXVIII, No. 570, December 1911, pp. 586 – 602, London: Longmans, Green, and Co.,
1911.

Ch. VI Titles of the Pope and of Ecclesiastical Dignitaries

The titles ‘Pope’, ‘Servus servorum Dei’, and ‘Pontifex Maximus’, among others, were not at first exclusive to
the Bishops of Rome, and in the use of these titles one can see the history of the rise in Papal influence.

The Anglican scholar Edward Denny (1853 – 1928) has the following note, “On the title ‘Pope’”:

In early times the title ‘Pope was given to Bishops without restriction, and in no way
considered to belong exclusively to the Bishop of Rome. Even in the West, in which the Roman
Bishop obtained so prominent a position simple Bishops were called Popes certainly as late as the
latter half of the sixth century. For example, Fortunatus of Poitiers addresses an Epistle to Felix,
Bishop of Nantes, Domino Sancto et Apostolica sede dignissimo domno et Patri Felici Papæ,1 and from
an account given by Gregory of Tours of a certain dispute with reference to the appointment to the
See of Xaintes it would appear that both Bordeaux and Tours were called ‘Sedes Apostolica’ and their
Bishops ‘Papæ’ in the same century.2 Clovis in A.D. 508 addressed the Gallic Bishops as ‘Papæ.’3 A
few years earlier Sidonius Apollinaris styles French Bishops ‘Dominus Papa.’4 St. Augustine was
frequently entitled ‘Papa’ by his correspondents.5 St. Jerome was one of those who so addressed him,
and he similarly styles Chromatius, Bishop of Aquileia, Theophilus, Bishop of Antioch, and others. 6

To the Bishops of Alexandria this title seems to have appertained before it was used of other
Prelates. Not only do St. Athanasius7 and Arius both call Alexander, who held that See, Pope, but
earlier still Dionysius the Great speaks of his predecessor Heraclas as ‘the blessed Pope Heraclas.’8 In
the East it would appear to have been indeed considered to be the special title of the occupant of the
See of St. Mark, and is still retained by them to this day,9 their present style being ‘Pope and Patriarch
of the great city of Alexandria and Œcumenical Judge.’10

Amongst the Western Bishops of early date to whom the title was given was St. Cyprian, who
is called by the Presbyters of Rome in the addresses of their Epistles ‘Cyprian Pope,’ 11 and in the
letters themselves ‘blessed Pope,’12 and ‘most blessed and glorious Pope.’13 The Confessors also
likewise so styled him in writing to him.14 This evidence is remarkable, and its date being so near the

1 Charles Butler, An Historical and Literary Account of the Formularies, Confessions of Faith, Or Symbolic
Books, of the Roman Catholic, Greek, and Principal Protestant Churches, Appendix, Note I, II, 4., 4th Article, p.
106, London: A. J. Valpy, 1816.
2 Overbeck, A Plain View, p. 67.
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death of Heraclas, who was, as just said, so styled, it would appear to show that the title, which was
not then applied to the Bishops of Rome (the earliest instance in which it is so used is that of St.
Marcellinus, quite at the end of the same century, A.D. 296 – 304, was the customary title of the
Bishops of Alexandria and Carthage. Archbishop Benson even thinks that there is an instance of a
Bishop of the latter See being so styled earlier than the case of Heraclas, Bishop of the former See. He
considers that Tertullian in his De Pudicitia, c. 13, is calling the Bishop of Carthage ‘Benedictus
Papa,’15 ‘which is the very word used of Cyprian in Ep. viii. I.’ The Archbishop considers that
Tertullian addressed his De Pudicitia to a Carthaginian Bishop, and that it was ‘the much condemned
assumption of the authority of Episcopus Episcopum by a predecessor which makes Cyprian in
Council so anxious to disclaim the appearance of it.’16 The title would thus appear to be African in
origin, at least so far as the West is concerned.

Gregory VII. was the first to formally prohibit the use of this title in addressing any other
dignitary of the Church, in the Council of Rome, A.D. 1073, ‘that the name of Pope might be alone in
the whole Christian world.’17 His doing this, and the consequent restriction of the use of the title to
the Roman Bishops is an instance of the way in which those Bishops have arrogated to themselves
titles which once were the right of any member of the Episcopate.

[Denny’s Footnotes:]
1. P.L. lxxxviii. 119.
2. S. Greg., Episc. Turonensis, Historia Francorum, lib. iv. xxvi.; P.L. lxxi. 290.
3. Mansi, viii. 346.
4. Sidonius Apollinaris, Epp. i., ii., iii., v., vi., vii., etc.; P.L. lviii. 551 et seq.
5. S. August., Epp. lxviii., lxxxi., cxix., ccxvi.; P.L. lxxxiii. 237, 275, 449, 975.
6. S. Hieron., Epp. lxxxi., lxxxv., lxxxviii.; P.L. xxii. 735, 754, 758.
7. Theodoret, Hist. Eccl., i. 8; P.G. lxxxii. 1041.
8. Eusebius, Hist. Eccl., vii. 7; P.G. xx. 643.
9. Neale, History of the Eastern Church, General Introduction, vol. i. p. 113.
10. Orthdod. Confess. Eccl. Orient., p. 10. Lond., 1895.
11. S. Cyprian, Epp. xxx., xxxi.; Hartel, 549, 557.
12. Ep. viii., ibid., 485.
13. Ep. ad Cyprianum Papam, Presbyterorum … Romæ consistentium, Ep. xxx. 8, ibid., 556.
14. Ep. Universorum Confessorum Cypriano Papati inter Epp. S. Cypriani, Ep. xxiii., ibid., 536.
15. Vide infra, n. 1234.
16. Archbishop Benson, op. cit., p. 31.
17. Smith and Cheetham, Dict. of Christian Antiq., sub. v. ‘Papa,’ vol. ii. 1664.1

The entirety of the Catholic Encyclopedia’s article on the title of “Servus Servorum Dei”, or “Servant of the
Servants of God” is here quoted:

A title given by the popes to themselves in documents of note. Gregory the Great was the first to use
it extensively, and he was imitated by his successors, though not invariably till the ninth century.
John the Deacon states (P.L., LXXV, 87) that Gregory assumed this title as a lesson in humility to John
the Faster. Prior to the controversy with John (595), addressing St. Leander in April, 591, Gregory
employed this phrase, and even as early as 587, according to Ewald (“Neues Archiv für ältere
deutsche Geschichtskunde”, III, 545, a. 1878), while still a deacon. A Bull of 570 begins: “Joannes (III)
Episcopus, servus servorum Dei”. Bishops actuated by humility, e.g. St. Boniface [Jaffe, “Monum.
Mogun.” in “Biblioth. Rer. Germ.”, III (Berlin, 1866), 157, 177 etc.], and the archbishops of Benevento;
or by pride, e.g. the archbishops of Ravenna as late as 1122 [Muratori, “Antiq. Ital.”, V (Milan, 1741),

1Edward Denny, Papalism: A Treatise on the Claims of the Papacy as Set Forth in the Encyclical Satis
Cognitum, Notes, Note 22, n. 312., ¶¶ 1195. – 1198., pp. 624 – 626, London: Rivingtons, 1912. Also see J. Bass
Mullinger, Pope, III, (i), in William Smith and Samuel Cheetham (editors), A Dictionary of Christian
Antiquities, Vol. II, pp. 1663 – 1665. Gregory VII’s words are “ut papae nomen unicum sit in toto orbe
Christiano, nec liceat alicui se ipsum vel alium eo nomine appellare” (Mullinger, op. cit., p. 1664).
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177; “Dissertazioni”, II, disser. 36]; and even civil rulers, e.g. Alphonsus II, King of Spain (b. 830), and
Emperor Henry III (b. 1017), applied the term to themselves. Since the twelfth century it is used
exclusively by the pope.1

The Catholic Encyclopedia writes on the titles of the Pope:

The title pope, once used with far greater latitude (see below, section V), is at present
employed solely to denote the Bishop of Rome, who, in virtue of his position as successor of St. Peter,
is the chief pastor of the whole Church, the Vicar of Christ upon earth. …

V. Primacy of Honour: Titles and Insignia. – Certain titles and distinctive marks of honour
are assigned to the pope alone; these constitute what is termed his primacy of honour. These
prerogatives are not, as are his jurisdictional rights, attached jure divino to his office. They have
grown up in the course of history, and are consecrated by the usage of centuries; yet they are not
incapable of modification.
(1) Titles. – The most noteworthy of the titles are Papa, Summus Pontifex, Pontifex Maximus,
Servus servorum Dei. The title pope (papa) was, as has been stated, at one time employed with far
more latitude. In the East it has always been used to designate simple priests. In the Western
Church, however, it seems from the beginning to have been restricted to bishops (Tertullian, “De
Pud.” xiii). It was apparently in the fourth century that it began to become a distinctive title of the
Roman Pontiff. Pope Siricius (d. 398) seems so to use it (Ep. vi in P.L., XIII, 1164), and Ennodius of
Pavia (d. 473) employs it still more clearly in this sense in a letter to Pope Symmachus (P.L., LXIII,
69). Yet as late as the seventh century St. Gall (d. 640) addresses Desiderius of Cahors as papa (P.L.,
LXXXVII, 265). Gregory VII finally prescribed that it should be confined to the successors of
Peter. The terms Pontifex Maximus, Summus Pontifex, were doubtless originally employed with
reference to the Jewish high-priest, whose place the Christian bishops were regarded as holding, each
in his own diocese (I Clem., xl). As regards the title Pontifex Maximus, especially in its application to
the pope, there was further a reminiscence of the dignity attached to that title in pagan Rome.
Tertullian, as has already been said, uses the phrase of Pope Callistus. Though his words are ironical,
they probably indicate that Catholics already applied it to the pope. But here too the terms were
once less narrowly restricted in their use. Pontifex summus was used of the bishop of some notable
see in relation to those of less importance. Hilary of Arles (d. 449) is so styled by Eucherius of Lyons
(P.L., L, 773), and Lanfranc is termed “primas et pontifex summus” by his biographer, Milo Crispin
(P.L., CL, 10). Pope Nicholas I is termed “summus pontifex et universalis papa” by his legate Arsenius
(Hardouin “Conc.”, V, 280), and subsequent examples are common. After the eleventh century it
appears to be only used of the popes. The phrase Servus servorum Dei is now so entirely a papal
title that a Bull in which it should be wanting would be reckoned unauthentic. Yet this designation
also was once applied to others. Augustine (“Ep. ccxvii a. d. Vitalem” in P.L XXXIII, 978) entitles
himself “servus Christi et per Ipsum servus servorum Ipsius”. Desiderius of Cahors made use of it
(Thomassin, “Ecclesiæ nov. et vet. disc.”, pt. I, I. I, c. iv, n. 4): so also did St. Boniface (740), the apostle
of Germany (P.L., LXXIX, 700). The first of the popes to adopt it was seemingly Gregory I; he appears
to have done so in contrast to the claim put forward by the Patriarch of Constantinople to the title of
universal bishop (P.L., LXXV, 87). The restriction of the term to the pope alone began in the ninth
century.2

Another significant change is the titles used by Bishops, who call themselves by a title unknown to all
antiquity, “Bishops by the Grace of God, and of the Apostolic See”. The Catholic Encyclopedia has the
following article on “Dei gratia; Dei et Apostolicæ Sedis gratia” or “By the grace of God; By the grace of God
and the Apostolic See”:

1 Andrew B. Meehan, Servus Servorum Dei, The Catholic Encyclopedia, Vol. XII, p. 737, New York, NY: Robert
Appleton Company, 1912.
2 George H. Joyce, Pope, in CE, Vol. XII, pp. 260 – 270, New York, NY: Robert Appleton Company, 1912.
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[A] formulæ added to the titles of ecclesiastical dignitaries. The first (N. Dei gratiâ Episcopus
N.) has been used in that form or in certain equivalents since the fifth century. Among the signatures
of the Councils of Ephesus (431) and Chalcedon (451) we find names to which are added: Dei gratiâ,
per gratiam Dei, Dei miseratione Episcopus N. (Mansi, Sacr. Conc. Coll., IV, 1213; VII, 137, 139, 429
sqq.). Though afterwards employed occasionally, it did not become prevalent until the eleventh
century. The second form (N. Dei et Apostolicæ Sedis gratiâ Episcopus N.) is current since the
eleventh century; but came into general use by archbishops and bishops only since the twelfth and
thirteenth centuries. The first formula expresses the Divine origin of the episcopal office; the second
exhibits the union of the bishops and their submission to the See of Rome. Temporal rulers since
King Pepin the Short, in the eighth century, also made use of the first formula; from the fifteenth it
was employed to signify complete and independent sovereignty, in contradistinction to the
sovereignty conferred by the choice of the people. For this reason the bishops in some parts of
Southern Germany (Baden, Bavaria, Würtemberg) are not allowed to use it, but must say instead: Dei
Miseratione et Apostolicæ Sedis gratiâ.1

Ch. VII Exemptions and Dispensations

In the matter of exemptions one can trace the rise in papal influence against episcopal authority:

Exemption is the whole or partial release of an ecclesiastical person, corporation, or

institution from the authority of the ecclesiastical superior next higher in rank, and the placing of the
person or body thus released under the control of the authority next above the former superior, or
under a still higher one, or under the highest authority of all, the pope. Originally, according to canon
law, all the subjects of a diocese, and all diocesan institutions, were under the authority of the
bishop. On account of the oppressive manner in which bishops at times treated the monasteries,
these were soon taken under the protection of synods, princes, and popes. The papal protection
often developed later into exemption from episcopal authority. The first privilege of this kind was
given by Pope Honorius I, in 628, to the old Irish monastery of Bobbio, in Upper Italy (Jaffé, Regesta
Pont. Rom., no. 2017). Since the eleventh century, papal activity in the matter of reforms has been a
frequent source or occasion of exemptions; in this way the monks became more closely bound to
the popes, as against the bishops, many of whom were often inimical to the papal power. It thus
came to pass that not only individual monasteries, but also entire orders, obtained exemption from
the authority of the local ordinary. Moreover, from the reign of Urban II, the broadly general
“protection” of the Holy See (libertas Romana), which many monasteries enjoyed, came to be
regarded as exemption from the authority of the bishop. From the twelfth century, it may be said the
exemption of orders and monasteries became the rule. Exemptions were also granted to cathedral
chapters, collegiate chapters, parishes. communities, ecclesiastical institutions, and single
individuals. Under these circumstances the diocesan administration of the bishops was frequently
crippled (Trent, Sess. XXIV, De ref. c. xi); consequently the bishops complained of such exemptions,
while, on the other hand, the parties exempted were wont to accuse the bishops of violating acquired
privileges. The Council of Trent sought to correct the abuses of exemption by placing the exempt, in
many regards, under the ordinary jurisdiction of the bishops, or at least under the bishops as papal
delegates. This provision of the council was never fully executed, owing to the frequent opposition of
the monasteries. About the beginning of the nineteenth century, however, many monasteries were
suppressed by the process known as secularization, in part accepted by the Holy See. In some
countries more recent civil legislation does not permit exemption.2

1 Francis J. Schaefer, Dei gratia; Dei et Apostolicæ Sedis gratia, in CE, Vol. IV, p. 679. Also see Antonio Pereira
de Figueredo, Tentativa Theologica: Episcopal Rights and Ultra-Montane Usurpations, p. xxii, London: Joseph
Masters, 1847.
2 Johannes Baptist Sägmüller, Exemption, in CE, Vol. V, p. 706, New York, NY: Robert Appleton Company,

1909. Sägmüller (1860 – 1942) was a German Roman Catholic priest and a Professor of Theology at the
University of Tübingen.
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Much could also be written on papal dispensations, but a passage from the Catholic Encyclopedia may
provide similar reference:

Hence we find instances of ecclesiastical dispensations from the very earliest centuries; such early
instances, however, were meant rather to legitimize accomplished facts than to authorize beforehand
the doing of certain things. Later on antecedent dispensations were frequently granted; as early as
the eleventh century Yves of Chartres, among other canonists, outlined the theory on which they
were based. With reference to matrimonial dispensations now common, we meet in the sixth and
seventh centuries with a few examples of general dispensations granted to legitimize marriages
already contracted, or permitting others about to be contracted. It is not, however, until the
second half of the eleventh century that we come upon papal dispensations affecting
individual cases. The earliest examples relate to already existing unions; the first certain
dispensation for a future marriage dates from the beginning of the thirteenth century. In the
sixteenth century the Holy See began to give ampler faculties to bishops and missionaries in distant
lands; in the seventeenth century such privileges were granted to other countries. Such was the
origin of the ordinary faculties now granted to bishops.1

Ch. VIII Diocesan Affairs

With regard to the creation of a new diocese and the modification of an existing diocese, the Pope has
assumed greater authority since the eleventh century:

From the fourth century we have documentary evidence of the manner in which the dioceses were
created. According to the Council of Sardica (can. vi), this belonged to the provincial synod; the
Council of Carthage, in 407, demanded moreover the consent of the primate and of the bishop of the
diocese to be divided (canons iv and v). The consent of the pope or the emperor was not called
for. … In the Frankish Empire the boundaries of the dioceses followed the earlier Gallo-Roman
municipal system, though the Merovingian kings never hesitated to change them by royal authority
and without pontifical intervention. In the creation of new dioceses no mention is made of papal
authority. The Carlovingian kings and their successors, the Western emperors, notably the Ottos
(936-1002), sought papal authority for the creation of new dioceses. Since the eleventh century it
has been the rule that the establishment of new dioceses is peculiarly a right of the Apostolic
See. St. Peter Damian proclaimed (1059-60) this as a general principle (c. 1, Dist. xxii), and the same
is affirmed in the well-known “Dictatus” of Gregory VII (1073-1085). The papal decretals (see
Decretals, Papal) consider the creation of a new diocese as one of the causœ majores, i.e. matters of
special importance, reserved to the pope alone (c. 1, X, De translatione episcopi, I, 7; c. 1, X, De officio
legati, I, 30) and of which he is the sole judge (c. 5, Extrav. communes, De præbendis et dignitatibus,
III, 2). … We have noticed above that after the eleventh century the sovereign pontiff reserved to
himself the creation of dioceses. In the actual discipline, as already stated, all that touches the
diocese is a causa major, i.e. one of those important matters in which the bishop possesses no
authority whatever and which the pope reserves exclusively to himself.2

Ch. IX Papal Encyclicals

1 Jean Jules Besson, Dispensation, I Dispensation in General, in CE, Vol. V, p. 41, New York, NY: Robert
Appleton Company, 1909. Besson (1855 – after 1917) was a French Jesuit and a Professor of Canon Law at
the University of Toulouse, and director of the “Nouvelle Revue Théologique” (Tournai).
2 Alphonse Van Hove, Diocese, II – III, in CE, Vol. V, pp. 1 – 2, New York, NY: Robert Appleton Company, 1909.
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The Catholic Encyclopedia admits that term “Encyclical” has changed in modern times to almost exclusively
signify Latin Papal documents, whereas in the early Church this term was not applied only to Papal letters,
which indicates the rise in Papal power:

In modern times, usage has confined the term almost exclusively to certain papal documents which
differ in their technical form from the ordinary style of either Bulls or Briefs, and which in their
superscription are explicitly addressed to the patriarchs, primates, archbishops, and bishops of the
Universal Church in communion with the Apostolic See. By exception, encyclicals are also sometimes
addressed to the archbishops and bishops of a particular country. …

In the early centuries the term encyclical was applied, not only to papal letters, but to certain letters
emanating from bishops or archbishops and directed to their own flocks or to other bishops. Such
letters addressed by a bishop to all his subjects in general are now commonly called pastorals. 1

The British Roman Catholic scholar Sir Peter le Page Renouf (1822 – 1897), who was opposed to the dogma of
Papal Infallibility, writes:

An encyclical is in fact at the present day an essentially Papal document. A bishop or archbishop
however eminent in the Church who would venture to publish an encyclical would have the
appearance of taking upon himself the functions of Universal Teacher. But in ancient times all
bishops, or at least all metropolitans and patriarchs, wrote encyclicals.2

Ch. X The Cardinalate

The Cardinalate is an ancient office of ecclesiastical dignity, and although it has changed with the centuries
(along with similar Greek offices), it is noteworthy that the position of the cardinals underwent significant
changes in the Latin sect immediately after the schism. The Catholic Encyclopedia states on this subject:

V. Relations of the Cardinals to the Bishops. – The cardinals were, therefore, from a very early period,
assistants of the pope in his liturgical functions, in the care of the poor, the administration of papal
finances and possessions, and the synodal disposition of important matters. They took on a very
much greater importance, however, after the decree of Nicholas II (1059), “In nomine Domini”,
regulating papal elections. In accordance with this document the election of the pope and the
government of the Church, during the vacancy of the Apostolic See, fell more and more into their
hands; they passed to them exclusively after the Decretal of Alexander III, “Licet de vitandâ”, at the
third Lateran Council (1179). The increasing insignificance of the “regionary” and “palatine” clergy,
from the middle of the twelfth century, coupled with the disappearance of the judices palatini, tended
to enlarge the share of the cardinals in the administration of papal justice and finances, also of the
fiefs of the Holy See and of the States of the Church. We may add to this that after the cessation of
papal journeys to the different nations of Christendom and of the Roman synods under papal
presidency, the cardinals remained almost the only counsellors and legates of the popes. Henceforth
their functions were equivalent to those of the “permanent synod” and the syncelli at Constantinople
(Sägmüller, “Die Tätigkeit und Stellung der Kardinäle bis Papst Bonifaz VIII”, Freiburg, 1896, 16 sqq.,
208 sqq.; S. Keller, “Die sieben römischen Pfalzrichter im byzantinischen Zeitalter”, Stuttgart, 1904).3

1 Herbert Thurston, Encyclical, in CE, Vol. V, pp. 413 – 414.

2 Peter le Page Renouf, The Case of Pope Honorius Reconsidered with Reference to Recent Apologies, Ch. III,
pp. 80 – 81, London: Longmans, Green, Reader, and Dyer, 1869. Renouf’s two works on Honorius were placed
on the Roman Catholic index of prohibited books.
3 Johannes Baptist Sägmüller, Cardinal, The Catholic Encyclopedia, Vol. III, pp. 335 – 336, New York, NY: The

Encyclopedia Press, 1913.

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Ch. XI Papal Elections

It is significant that the mode of electing the Latin Bishop of Rome changed shortly after the Great Schism, and
became reserved to the cardinals. Overbeck writes:

Scarcely the schism was accomplished when Pope Nicholas II. (1059) deprived the clergy and people
of Rome of the right to elect their Bishop, and, without any ceremony, conferred it on the College of
Cardinals.1

The Catholic Encyclopedia has a good article on Papal Elections:

The method of electing the pope has varied considerably at different periods of the history of
the Church. As to the earliest ages, Ferraris (op. cit. infra) says that St. Peter himself constituted a
senate for the Roman Church, consisting of twenty-four priests and deacons. These were the
councillors of the Bishop of Rome and the electors of his successors. This statement is drawn from a
canon in the “Corpus Juris Canonici” (can. “Si Petrus”, caus. 8. Q. 1). Historians and canonists,
however, generally hold that the Roman bishopric was filled on its vacancy in the same manner as
other bishoprics, that is, the election of the new pope was made by the neighbouring bishops and the
clergy and faithful of Rome. Nevertheless, some maintain that the naming of the successor of St.
Peter was restricted to the Roman clergy, and that the people were admitted to a part in the elections
only after the time of Sylvester I (fourth century). After Constantine had given peace to the Church,
the Christian Roman emperors often took part in the institution of a new pope and at times their
influence was very marked. …

On the recovery of their influence in the Italian peninsula, the Eastern emperors required
that the choice of electors for a new pope must be made known to the Exarch of Ravenna, who in turn
forwarded it to Constantinople, and until the emperor’s confirmation was received, the candidate
was not to be acknowledged as Bishop of Rome. …

An epoch-making decree in the matter of papal elections is that of Nicholas II in 1059.

According to this constitution, the cardinal bishops are first to meet and discuss the candidates for
the papacy, and select the names of the most worthy. They are then to summon the other cardinals
and, together with them, proceed to an election. Finally, the assent of the rest of the clergy and the
laity to the result of the suffrage is to be sought. The choice is to be made from the Roman clergy,
unless a fit candidate cannot be found among them. In the election regard is to be had for the rights
of the Holy Roman emperor, who in turn is to be requested to show similar respect for the Apostolic
See. In case the election cannot be held in Rome, it can validly be held elsewhere. What the imperial
rights are is not explicitly stated in the decree, but it seems plain from contemporary evidence that
they require the results of the election to be forwarded to the emperor by letter or messenger, in
order that he may assure himself of the validity of the election. Gregory VII (1073), however, was the
last pope who asked for imperial confirmation. It will be seen that the decree of Pope Nicholas
reserves the actual election to the cardinals, but requires the assent (laudatio) of the lower clergy
and laity. …

Immediately on the canonical election of a candidate and his acceptance, he is true pope and
can exercise full and absolute jurisdiction over the whole Church. A papal election, therefore, needs
no confirmation, as the pontiff has no superior on earth. 2

1 Overbeck, A Plain View, p. 53.

2 William H. W. Fanning, Papal Elections, in CE, Vol. XI, pp. 456 – 457, New York, NY: The Universal Knowledge
Foundation, 1913. See the full article for more context on imperial confirmations. More information can be
found in the following Catholic Encyclopedia articles: George H. Joyce, Pope, VI, Election of the Popes, Vol. XII
pp. 270 – 272; Fanning, Acclamation (in Papal Elections), Vol. I, p. 99; Austin Dowling, Conclave, Vol. IV, pp.
192 – 195; Francis J. Schaefer, Capitulations (Episcopal and Pontifical), Vol. III, pp. 311 – 312; Johannes
 216

Ch. XII Papal Interdicts

As part of their diplomatic tools (or weapons) to compel obedience, Latin Popes have placed entire regions
and kingdoms under interdict, which no Pope did in the first millennium. The Catholic Encyclopedia states:

A general local interdict is – for a whole population, town, province, or region – the almost complete
suspension of the liturgical and sacramental Christian life. Examples of it exist as early as the ninth
century, under the name of excommunication (see in particular the Council of Limoges of 1031).
Innocent III gave this measure the name of interdict and made vigorous use of it. It will suffice to
recall the interdict imposed in 1200 on the Kingdom of France, when Philip II Augustus repudiated
Ingeburga to marry Agnes of Meran; and that on the Kingdom of England in 1208, to support the
election of Stephen Langton to the See of Canterbury against John Lackland, which lasted till the
submission of that king in 1213. It was a dangerous weapon, but its severity was mitigated little by
little, and at the same time it was less frequently employed. The last example of a general interdict
launched by the pope against a whole region seems to have been that imposed by Paul V in 1606 on
the territory of Venice, it was raised in the following year. A quite recent example of a general, local,
and personal interdict, but of a purely penal nature, is the interdict placed by Pius X on the town and
suburbs of Adria in Northern Italy, by decree of the Sacred Congregation of the Consistory, on 30
September, 1909, to punish the population of Adria for a sacrilegious attack made on the bishop, Mgr.
Boggiani, in order to prevent him from transferring his residence to Rovigo. 1

Edward Benjamin Krehbiel, an American history professor, who wrote one of the few dedicated books on
inderdicts, says:

As a matter of fact, the inderdict, from its possible beginning about 600 A.D. to its adoption by the
papacy [Hinschius, V, 24.], at the time of Leo IX, was under the supervision of the bishops, the
spiritual heads of clearly-defined districts. After this adoption its effectiveness increased with the
increase of papal power.2

Although the date of the origin of the interdict is debated, the Papal usage of the interdict in the second
millennium shows abundant novelties, and stems from the Papal desire to gain secular power.

Ch. XIII Papal Jubilees

On the subject of jubilee years instituted by the Latin Roman bishops, it is apparent that there has been
further novelty and variation. The Catholic Encyclopedia writes:

It is commonly stated that Pope Boniface VIII instituted the first Christian Jubilee in the year 1300,
and it is certain that this is the first celebration of which we have any precise record, but it is also
certain that the idea of solemnizing a fiftieth anniversary was familiar to medieval writers, no doubt
through their knowledge of the Bible, long before that date. …

Baptist Sägmüller, Right of Exclusion, Vol. V, pp. 677 – 678; N. A. Weber, Pope Nicholas II (Gerhard of
Burgundy), Vol. XI, pp. 55 – 56.
1 Auguste Boudinhon, Interdict, in CE, Vol. VIII. The Protestant Reformation appears to have helped put an

end to this practice.

2 Edward Benjamin Krehbiel, The Inderdict: Its History and Its Operation, Ch. I, p. 8, Washington, DC: The

American Historical Association, 1909.

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It is beyond all dispute that on 22 February, 1300, Boniface published the Bull “Antiquorum fida
relatio”, in which, appealing vaguely to the precedent of past ages, he declares that he grants afresh
and renews certain “great remissions and indulgences for sins” which are to be obtained “by visiting
the city of Rome and the venerable basilica of the Prince of the Apostles”. Coming to more precise
detail, he specifies that he concedes “not only full and copious, but the most full, pardon of all their
sins”, to those who fulfill certain conditions. …

As we have seen, Boniface VIII had intended that the Jubilee should be celebrated only once in a
hundred years, but some time before the middle of the fourteenth century, great instances, in which
St. Bridget of Sweden and the poet Petrarch amongst others had some share, were made to Pope
Clement VI, then residing at Avignon, to anticipate this term, particularly on the ground that the
average span of human life was so short as otherwise to render it impossible for many to hope to see
any Jubilee in their own generation. Clement VI assented, and in 1350 accordingly, though the pope
did not return to Rome himself, Gaetani Cardinal Ceccano was dispatched thither to represent His
Holiness at the Jubilee.

The celebration next following was held in 1390, and in virtue of an ordinance of Urban VI, it was
proposed to hold a Jubilee every thirty-three years as representing the period of the sojourn of Christ
upon earth and also the average span of human life.

Another Jubilee was accordingly proclaimed by Martin V in 1423, but Nicholas V, in 1450, reverted to
the quinquagesimal period, while Paul II decreed that the Jubilee should be celebrated every twenty-
five years, and this has been the normal rule ever since. 1

Pope Boniface VIII’s vague appeal to tradition was misleading, for such an institution was not solemnized
before the second millennium. It is also apparent how little regard his papal successors had for Boniface’s
original intention that the Jubilee be celebrated only once a century. Clement VI, in his bull Unigenitus of
1343, asserted a scriptural basis for the Jubilee, referencing the Mosaic law, which provided that all debts be
cancelled every fifty years, yet later popes lowered this even further. Many Protestant writers have noted,
with good reason, that the increased frequencies of jubilee years were prompted by the Roman court’s desire
for money, as an author in the Dublin University Magazine writes:

The Jubilee was an astonishing success. It proved so lucrative that every hundredth year appeared
far too long an interval to be allowed between its celebration. Accordingly, in 1343, Clement VI.
reduced the interval to every fiftieth year, in imitation of the Jewish Jubilee. In 1384, Urban VI. being
in want of money further reduced the interval to thirty-three years, and decreed that one should be
held in 1390, but he did not live to reap its advantages. … a Jubilee still continues to be a very
profitable source of Papal income.

For an exhaustive history of the Papal Jubilee, and a complete description of the crimes,
debaucheries, and disorders that attended its celebration, see Lettres Historiques et Dogmatiques sur
les Jubilés et des Indulgences, by M. le Chais [The Hague, 3 Vols., 1751].2

Ch. XIV Oath of Fealty and Allegiance to the Pope by Bishops at their Consecration

The early bishops of the Church, down to the tenth century, did not take an oath of allegiance and fealty to the
Bishop of Rome at their consecration. It appears that Latin Pope Gregory VII was the first to prescribe this
oath, as admitted by the Roman Catholic scholar Catalani, as Mendham writes,

1Herbert Thurston, Holy Year of Jubilee, in CE, Vol. VIII, pp. 532 – 533.
2A Papal Retrospect, Ch. IX, in The Dublin University Magazine, Vol. LXXXVI, No. DXV, November, 1875, pp.
609 – 610, Dublin: George Herbert, 1875.
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Accordingly, Catalani, the Commentator upon the Pontificale Romanum, edited in 1738, contends,
and with apparent reason, that the oath in question is to be ascribed to the Seventh Gregory, in the
11th century. His argument is, that such oaths were not in use until about this time, and that the
present originated from the particular occasion which follows.1

These oaths, since they were introduced, have altered with the centuries, and contain very strong statements
of feudal obedience and loyalty to the Pope. The oath is printed in full below, as it stood in the 18th century,
which is from the edition of the Pontificale Romanum by Catalani:

I, N. Elect of the Church of N. from henceforward will be faithful and obedient to Saint Peter
the Apostle, and to the Holy Roman Church, and to our Lord the Lord N. Pope N. and to his successors
canonically entering. I will neither advise, consent, or do any thing that they may lose life or member,
or that their persons may be seized, or hands anywise laid upon them, or any injuries offered to them
under any pretence whatsoever. The counsel with which they shall entrust me, by themselves, their
messengers or letters, I will not knowingly reveal to any to their prejudice. I will help them to keep
and defend the Roman Papacy, and the Regalities of Saint Peter, saving my order, against all men.
The Legate of the Apostolic See, going and coming, I will honourably treat and help in his necessities.
The rights, honours, privileges and authority of the Holy Roman Church, of our Lord the Pope and his
aforesaid successors, I will endeavour to preserve, defend, increase and advance. I will not be in any
counsel, action, or treaty in which shall be plotted against our said Lord, and the said Roman Church,
any thing to the hurt or prejudice of their persons, right, honour, state or power; and if I shall know
any such thing to be treated or agitated by any whatsoever, I will hinder it to my power; and as soon
as I can will signify it to our said Lord, or to some other by whom it may come to his knowledge. The
rules of the Holy Fathers, the Apostolic decrees, ordinances or disposals, reservations, provisions and
mandates I will observe with all my might, and cause to be observed by others. Heretics, schismatics,
and Rebels to our said Lord or his foresaid successors, I will to my power persecute and oppose. I
will come to a council when I am called, unless I be hindered by a Canonical impediment. I will by
myself in person visit the threshold of the Apostles every three years; and give an account to our
Lord and his foresaid successors of all my Pastoral Office, and of all things anywise belonging to the
state of my Church, to the discipline of my Clergy and people, and lastly to the salvation of souls
committed to my trust; and will in like manner humbly receive and diligently execute the Apostolic
commands. And if I be detained by a lawful impediment, I will perform all the things aforesaid by a
certain messenger hereto specially empowered, a member of my Chapter, or some other in
Ecclesiastical dignity or else having a Parsonage; or in default of these, by a priest of the Diocese; or
in default of one of the Clergy [of the Diocese] by some other sæcular or regular Priest of approved
integrity and religion, fully instructed in all things above mentioned. And such impediments I will
make out by lawful proofs to be transmitted by the aforesaid messenger to the Cardinal Proponent of
the Holy Roman Church in the Congregation of the Sacred Council. The possessions belonging to my
table I will neither sell nor give away, nor mortgage, nor grant anew in fee, nor anywise alienate, no,
not even with the consent of the Chapter of my Church, without consulting the Roman Pontiff. And if
I shall make any alienation, I will thereby incur the penalties contained in a certain constitution put
forth about this matter. So help me God and these holy Gospels of God. 2

In later centuries, Roman Catholics living under Protestant rule attempted to deny or minimise the force of
this oath. Mendham writes:

1 Joseph Mendham, The Life and Pontificate of Saint Pius the Fifth, Episcopal Oath of Allegiance To the Pope, p.
287, London: James Duncan, 1832. The oath ascribed to Gregory VII is given in Latin on p. 286. This was first
published by Mendham under the pseudonym Catholicus, The Episcopal Oath of Allegiance To the Pope, In
the Church of Rome, London: F. C. & J. Rivington, 1822.
2 Mendham, Life of Pius V, Oath of Allegiance, pp. 292 – 294. Latin original on pp. 291 – 292. Such a pledge at

consecration was unknown to the bishops of the first millennium, and would have contradicted their loyalty
to the state.
 219

The highest ecclesiastic authorities in the Papal-Hibernian [Irish] church have found it their
interest, and have not scrupled, on oath, to affirm, that the oath under consideration is canonical only.
I will satisfy myself, for proof, with the declaration of the Rev. P. Curties, D. D. Roman Catholic
Archbishop of Armagh, before the Committee of the House of Lords for inquiring into the state of
Ireland, March 24, 1825: ‘It’ (the episcopal oath, of which a copy was immediately after delivered)
‘means nothing more than canonical obedience, the obedience which the canons of the church or
general councils require to be paid to the Pope, as head of the church.’

Catalani, who did not anticipate their interest, and had no similar one of his own, has plainly
declared that the first oath of this kind by the Patiarch of Aquileia to Gregory VII. in 1079, ‘expressed,
not only a profession of canonical obedience, but an OATH OF FEALTY, not unlike that which VASSALS
took to their DIRECT LORDS’ – sed etiam juramentum fidelitatis non absimile illi quod Dominis suis
directis Vassalli præstabant.1

Ch. XV Confirmation of Bishops

There are many novelties connected with the confirmation, nomination, and jurisdiction of bishops in the
Roman Catholic sect, since the beginning of the second millennium, and especially since the papacy of Gregory
VII. Much could be written on this topic, but there is no doubt that the contemporary practice of the Latins
sharply deviates from that of the first millennium, and has come to depend on the Bishop of Rome. The
Catholic Encyclopedia states on this topic:

Whatever the manner of his nomination, the bishop possesses no power until his nomination has
been confirmed by the Holy See, whether in consistory or by pontifical letters. …

It is a controverted question whether the bishops hold their jurisdiction directly from God or from
the sovereign pontiff. The latter opinion, however, is almost generally admitted at the present day,
for it is more in conformity with the monarchical constitution of the Church, which seems to demand
that there should be no power in the Church not emanating immediately from the sovereign pontiff. 2

This is a large subject, and cannot be discussed in-depth here, since it deals with the entire organisation of the
Church, and its course over time. Still, it is clear that the Latin Bishops of Rome taking a much larger role than
they did in the early Church, which shows that their claims are not by Divine right. The Encyclopædia
Britannica gives the following overview:

In canon law confirmation is the act by which the election of a new bishop receives the assent of the
proper ecclesiastical authority. In the early centuries of the history of the Church the election or
appointment of a suffragan bishop was confirmed and approved by the metropolitan and his
suffragans assembled in synod. By the 4th canon of the first council of Nicaea (A.D. 325), however, it
was decreed that the right of confirmation should belong to the metropolitan bishop of each
province, a rule confirmed by the 12th canon of the council of Laodicaea. For the appointment of a
metropolitan no papal confirmation was required either in the West or East; but the practice
which grew up, from the 6th century onwards, of the popes presenting the pallium (q.v.), at first
honoris causa, to newly appointed metropolitans gradually came to symbolize the licence to exercise
metropolitan jurisdiction. By the 8th and 9th centuries the papal right of confirmation by this means
was strenuously asserted; yet as late as the 13th century there were instances of metropolitan
exercising their functions without receiving the pallium, and it was not till after this date that the
present rule and practice of the Roman Catholic Church was definitively established (see Hinschius,

1 Mendham, Life of Pius V, Oath of Allegiance, pp. 287 – 288. More authorities are given – see the entirety of
Mendham’s tract.
2 Alphonse Van Hove, Bishop, in CE, Vol. II, pp. 585 – 586. More is taught to the same effect by Roman Catholic

authorities.
 220

Kirchenrecht, ii. p. 28 and notes). The canonical right of the metropolitan to confirm the election of
his suffragans was still affirmed by Gratian; but from the time of Pope Alexander III. (1159–1181) the
canon lawyers, under the influence of the False Decretals, began to claim this right for the pope
(Febronius, De statu ecclesiae, 2nd ed., 1765, cap. iv. § 3, 2). From the 13th century onwards it was
effectively exercised, though the all but universal practice of the popes of reserving and providing to
vacant bishoprics, initiated by Clement V., obscured the issue, since in the case of papal nominations
no confirmation was required.1

Ch. XVI Crosier, or Pastoral Staff

The Catholic Encyclopedia describes another example of Papal inconsistency:

[The crosier] is an ecclesiastical ornament which is conferred on bishops at their consecration and on
mitred abbots at their investiture, and which is used by these prelates in performing certain solemn
functions. It is sometimes stated that archbishops do not use the crosier. This is not so, the truth
being that in addition to the pastoral staff they have also the right to have the archiepiscopal cross
borne before them within the territory of their jurisdiction. According to present-day usage the
Roman pontiff does not use the crosier. That this practice is now a departure from primitive
discipline is now thoroughly established, for in the early representations of the popes found on
tablets, coins, and other monuments, the crosier is to be seen (Kraus, Geschichte der christlichen
Kunst, II, 500). But in the eleventh century this must have disappeared, since Innocent III (d.
1216) intimates that it no longer prevailed (Epistola ad Patr. Const.). As a reason why the pope does
not use a crosier symbolists allege the giving by St. Peter of his staff to one of his disciples in order to
raise a dead companion to life.2

Aquinas writes:

Objection 8: Further, the fulness of power resides in the Roman Pontiff. But he has not a crozier.
Therefore other bishops should not have one. …

Reply to Objection 8: The Roman Pontiff does not use a pastoral staff because Peter sent his to
restore to life a certain disciple who afterwards became bishop of Treves. Hence in the diocese of
Treves the Pope carries a crozier but not elsewhere; or else it is a sign of his not having a restricted
power denoted by the curve of the staff.3

Another reason given why the pope did not use the staff is that the staff was seen as a symbol of investiture
by other bishops or secular rulers, whereas the Latins claim that the pope receives his power from God alone.
The Latin Pope Innocent III writes, “The Roman Pontiff does not use the shepherd’s staff.” 4

However, many Popes across the centuries have used staffs on some occasions. The changing Papal usage
demonstrates the inapplicability of Aquinas’s reasoning and Innocent III’s words, along with the other
symbolists, which merely support the custom of their centuries, rather than inherent and enduring facts.

1 Confirmation of Bishops, in Encyclopædia Britannica, Vol. VI, p. 906, New York, NY: The Encyclopædia
Britannica Company, 11th Ed., 1910.
2 Patrick Morrisroe, Crosier, in CE, Vol. IV, p. 515. However, this appears to contradict an article on the

Vatican website on The Staff,

http://www.vatican.va/news_services/liturgy/details/ns_lit_doc_20091117_ferula_en.html, Nov 17, 2009.
3 Summa, Supplement, Question 40, Article 7; Fathers of the English Dominican Province (translators), The

“Summa Theologica” of St. Thomas Aquinas, Third Part (Supplement), QQ. XXXIV – LXVIII, Question XL, Art.
VII, p. 73 – 75, London: Burns Oates & Washbourne, 1922. Also see Aquinas’s Super Sent., lib. 4 d 24 q. 3 a. 3
ad 8.
4 De Sacro altaris mysterio (Concerning the Sacred Mystery of the Altar), I, 62.
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Ch. XVII Episcopal Rings

Another issue, which the Blessed Michael Cerularius objects to, is that Latin bishops adorn their fingers with
rings, as if they were bridegrooms. Cerularius writes: “Their bishops wear rings on their hands, as if, indeed,
they took their churches as brides, and they say that they wear [the ring] as a pledge [arrabon].”1 This point
is sometimes brought up by later historians to mock the apparent insignificance and triviality of the Orthodox
complaints against the Latins, as if the Orthodox were looking for excuses to separate and criticise. However,
Cerularius simply mentions this in passing, and does not insist on this, and this chapter aims to show here
that the complaint of the impropriety of rings is not an unjust charge, although it is not considered an
important issue on its own.

Fortescue calls Cerularius’s objections “this amazing list of nonsense,” and writes:

In some cases one simply cannot, with the best will, make out what he means: why he objects to
bishops’ rings, shaving, or the verse at the end of our Gloria, unless on the general principle that the
whole world must confirm to Constantinople, down to the smallest trifles.2

The Catholic Encyclopedia’s article on rings says:

Rings.—I. IN GENERAL.—Although the surviving ancient rings, proved by their devices, provenance,
etc., to be of Christian origin, are fairly numerous (See Fortnum in “Arch. Journ.”, XXVI, 141, and
XXVIII, 275), we cannot in most cases identify them with any liturgical use. Christians no doubt, just
like other people, wore rings in accordance with their station in life, for rings are mentioned without
reprobation in the New Testament (Luke, xv, 22, and James, ii, 2): Moreover, St. Clement of
Alexandria (Pied., III, c. xi) says that a man might lawfully wear a ring on his little finger, and that it
should bear some religious emblem—a dove, or a fish, or an anchor though, on the other hand,
Tertullian, St. Cyprian, and the Apostolic Constitutions (I, iii) protest against the ostentation of
Christians in decking themselves with rings and gems. In any case the Acts of Sts. Perpetua and
Felicitas (c. xxi), about the beginning of the third century, inform us of how the martyr Saturus took a
ring from the finger of Pudens, a soldier who was looking on, and gave it back to him as a keepsake,
covered with his own blood.

Knowing, as we do, that in the pagan days of Rome every flamen Dialis (i.e., a priest specially
consecrated to the worship of Jupiter) had, like the senators, the privilege of wearing a gold ring, it
would not be surprising to find evidence in the fourth century that rings were worn by Christian
bishops. But the various passages that have been appealed to, to prove this, are either not
authentic or else are inconclusive. St. Augustine indeed speaks of his sealing a letter with a ring
(Ep. ccxvii, in P.L., XXXIII, 227), but on the other hand his contemporary Possidius expressly states
that Augustine himself wore no ring (P.L., XXXII, 53), whence we are led to conclude that the
possession of a signet does not prove the use of a ring as part of the episcopal insignia. However, in a
Decree of Pope Boniface IV (A.D. 610) we hear of monks raised to the episcopal dignity as anulo
pontificali subarrhatis, while at the Fourth Council of Toledo, in 633, we are told that if a bishop has
been deposed from his office, and is afterwards reinstated, he is to receive back stole, ring, and
crosier (orarium, anulum et baculum). St. Isidore of Seville at about the same period couples the ring
with the crosier and declares that the former is conferred as “an emblem of the pontifical dignity or
of the sealing of secrets” (P.L., LXXXIII, 783). From this time forth it may be assumed that the ring

1 Tia M. Kolbaba, The Byzantine Lists: Errors of the Latins, Ch. III, p. 53, Chicago, IL: University of Illinois
Press, 2000. Also see the quotations of Theophylact and Silbes on this page and Kolbaba’s commentary.
2 Fortescue, Orthodox Eastern Church, Part II, Ch. V, § 3., p. 191.
 222

was strictly speaking an episcopal ornament conferred in the rite of consecration, and that it was
commonly regarded as emblematic of the betrothal of the bishop to his Church.1

The Catholic Encyclopedia appeals to early 7th century and later evidence of Latin bishops having rings, but
this is too late to provide serious weight in favour of the antiquity of their position, and it is not certain that
these rings were always worn even at this time (as seen in the fact that St. Augustine wore no ring, but used
one to seal letters), and the signification of the ring changed in later centuries among the Latins, and appears
to have adopted the form that Cerularius objected to by the 8th or 9th century. I disagree with the Catholic
Encyclopedia when it assumes “from this time forth”, for the passage from St. Isidore does not necessary
show that the ring signified betrothal, and it is only in later centuries that this is explicitly stated.

It is strange that Fortescue says that “one simply cannot, with the best will, make out what he [Cerularius]
means” by Cerularius’s objection to Latin bishops wearing rings, when there is precedent from the Church
Fathers on similar grounds against rings.

The Anglican archaeologist and scholar Churchill Babington (1821 – 1889) says, “The Ante-nicene and Post-
nicene fathers alike find it necessary to declare against the prodigality of Christians in wearing rings and
gems.”2

The Apostolic Constitutions say:

Neither do thou wear over-fine garments to seduce any; neither do thou, with an evil subtilty, affect
over-fine stockings or shoes for thy feet, but only such as suit the measures of decency and
usefulness. Neither do thou put a gold ring upon thy fingers; for all these ornaments are the signs of
lasciviousness, which if thou be solicitous about in an indecent manner, thou wilt not act as becomes
a good man:3

Clement of Alexandria, writing on rings, states the purpose of rings is for sealing, not ornament:

The Word, then, permits them a finger-ring of gold. Nor is this for ornament, but for sealing things
which are worth keeping safe in the house in the exercise of their charge of housekeeping.

For if all were well trained, there would be no need of seals, if servants and masters were equally
honest. But since want of training produces an inclination to dishonesty, we require seals. …

And if it is necessary for us, while engaged in public business, or discharging other avocations in the
country, and often away from our wives, to seal anything for the sake of safety, He (the Word) allows
us a signet for this purpose only. Other finger-rings are to be cast off, since, according to the
Scripture, “instruction is a golden ornament for a wise man.” (Ecclus. xxi. 21) …

Wherefore we must adopt a mode of standing and motion, and a step, and dress, and in a word, a
mode of life, in all respects as worthy as possible of freemen. But men are not to wear the ring on the
joint; for this is feminine; but to place it on the little finger at its root. For so the hand will be freest

1 Maurice M. Hassett, Rings, in CE, Vol. XIII, p. 59.

2 Churchill Babington, Rings, in A Dictionary of Christian Antiquities, Vol. II, p. 1792. Babington references
several Church Fathers for this assertion, some of whom are quoted here. For more on the historical
Christian use of rings and gems, see this entire learned article, pp. 1792 – 1809, as well as Babington’s article
on Gems, Vol. I, pp. 712 – 723; the short articles on Finger Ring and Marriage Ring in the Oxford Dictionary of
Byzantium, Vol. III, pp. 1796 – 1797; and a discussion of the subject in O. M. Dalton, Catalogue of the Finger
Rings: Early Christian, Byzantine, Teutonic, Mediaeval and Later [in the British Museum], Introduction, pp.
xxxiv – xlii, London: Longmans & Co., 1912.
3 James Donaldson (translator and editor), Constitutions of the Holy Apostles, Book I, Sec. II, p. 392, in ANF,

Vol. VII.
 223

for work, in whatever we need it; and the signet will not very easily fall off, being guarded by the
large knot of the joint.1

St. Cyprian writes in On the Dress of Virgins:

Having put on silk and purple, they cannot put on Christ; adorned with gold, and pearls, and
necklaces, they have lost the ornaments of the heart and spirit. … For God neither made the sheep
scarlet or purple, nor taught the juices of herbs and shell-fish to dye and colour wool, nor arranged
necklaces with stones set in gold, and with pearls distributed in a woven series or numerous cluster,
wherewith you would hide the neck which He made; that what God formed in man may be covered,
and that may be seen upon it which the devil has invented in addition.2

St. Basil the Great says, in his Sermon to the Rich:

With your tongue you excuse yourself, but by your own hand you’re convicted; for even in silence
your hand proclaims your falsehood, sparkling round from the ring on your finger. How many people
could one of your fingers release from debt? How many broken-down homes could be rebuilt?3

St. Jerome, in his famous letter to Eustochium, complains of the Roman clergy:

There are others – I speak of those of my own order – who seek the presbyterate and the diaconate
simply that they may be able to see women with less restraint. Such men think of nothing but their
dress; they use perfumes freely, and see that there are no creases in their leather shoes. Their curling
hair shows traces of the tongs; their fingers glisten with rings; they walk on tiptoe across a damp
road, not to splash their feet. When you see men acting in this way, think of them rather as
bridegrooms than as clergymen. Certain persons have devoted the whole of their energies and life
to the single object of knowing the names, houses, and characters of married ladies. 4

Note that this is a matter that must be understood in moderation, since rings are certainly permissible and an
approved custom, and there are many archaeological examples of their use among ancient Christians, and it is
not wrong for clergy and laymen to wear rings. The main error the Church protests against is ostentation in
jewellery,5 and the tendency of certain rings to vanity, and it has been shown that this is not an invented
charge of the 11th century. Especially when connected with shaven beards, this increases the tendency to
effeminacy and vanity. In some of the ancient sources above, shaven beards are criticised in the same section
as rings.

1 William Wilson (translator), Clement of Alexandria, The Instructor (Pædagogus), Book III, Ch. XI, p. 285, in
ANF, Vol. II.
2 Ernest Wallis (translator), Cyprian, The Treatises of Cyprian, Treatise II, Ch. 13 – 14, pp. 433 – 434, in ANF,

Vol. V.
3 Peter Gilber (translator), St. Basil’s Sermon to the Rich, Ch. IV, https://bekkos.wordpress.com/st-basils-

sermon-to-the-rich/, published October 25, 2008. This sermon is also translated in C. Paul Shroeder
(translator), On Social Justice: St. Basil the Great, in Popular Patristics Series, Vol. XXXVIII, Crestwood, NY: St.
Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2009.
4 W. H. Fremantle, G. Lewis, and W. G. Martley (translators), St. Jerome: Letters and Select Works, The Letters

of St. Jerome, Letter XXII, Ch. 28., p. 34, in NPNF, Series II, Vol. VI. The editors note that this is “Perhaps the
most famous of all the letters [of Jerome].” This passage is also quoted by Rufinus in his Apology, Book II, Ch.
V, in NPNF, Series II, Vol. III, p. 462. In Jerome’s Letter to Sabinianus, among other criticisms, he writes, “What
I lament is that you do not lament yourself, that you do not realize that you are dead, that, like a gladiator
ready for Libitina, you deck yourself out for your own funeral. You wear not sackcloth but linen, you load
your fingers with rings, …” (Letter CXLVII, Ch. 8., p. 293, in NPNF, Series II, Vol. VI). Also see Jerome’s Letter to
Laeta (Letter CVII, Ch. 5., pp. 191 – 192, in NPNF, Series II, Vol. VI).
5 For a visualisation, see Raphael’s portrait (c. 1512) of the Latin Pope Julius II in the British National Gallery,

where Julius is wearing six finger rings with jewels of considerable size
(https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/raphael-portrait-of-pope-julius-ii).
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Ch. XVIII Clerical Beards

“if I be shaven, then my strength will go from me, and I shall become weak” (Judges xvi. 17)

It is fitting that the Orthodox clergy have beards, like Jesus and the Apostles, but the Latins do not follow
Apostolic tradition by requiring the beard to be shaved for most of their clergy in the Western Rite. The
Latins do permit bearded clerics in their Eastern Rite Churches, and with many exceptions in the West as
well.

The excommunication pronounced against the Greeks by Cardinal Humbert on July 15, 1054 states the
following: “and [like the Nazarenes] because they grow the hair on their head and beards, they will not
receive in communion those who tonsure their hair and shave their beards following the decreed practice
(institutio) of the Roman Church.”1 The excommunication compares the Orthodox hairstyles to the
Nazarenes, and objects to the alleged Orthodox intolerance of beardless Latins. It appears that until about the
beginning of the eighth century, Western priests generally had beards.

Herbert Thurston writes in the Catholic Encyclopedia:

With regard to the Christian clergy, no clear evidence is available for the early centuries. The
Apostles, in our most ancient monuments, are for the most part represented as bearded, but not
uniformly so.

… under Edgar [early 11th century in England] we find the canon: “Let no man in holy orders conceal
his tonsure, nor let himself be misshaven nor keep his beard for any time, if he will have God's
blessing and St. Peter’s and ours.” A similar practice obtained generally throughout the West and it
was one of the great subjects of reproach on the part of the Greek Church, from the time of Photius
onwards, that the Roman clergy systematically cut off their beards.

The legislation requiring the beard to be shaved seems to have remained in force throughout the
Middle Ages. Thus an ordinance of the Council of Toulouse, in 1119, threatened with
excommunication the clerics who “like a layman allowed hair and beard to grow”, and Pope
Alexander III ordained that clerics who nourished their hair and beard were to be shorn by their
archdeacon, by force if necessary. This last decree was incorporated in the text of the canon law
(Decretals of Gregory IX, III, tit. i, cap. vii). Durandus, finding mystical reasons for everything,
according to his wont, tells us that “length of hair is symbolical of the multitude of sins. Hence clerics
are directed to shave their beards; for the cutting of the hair of the beard, which is said to be
nourished by the superfluous humours of the stomach, denotes that we ought to cut away the vices
and sins which are a superfluous growth in us. Hence we shave our beards that we may seem
purified by innocence and humility and that we may be like the angels who remain always in the
bloom of youth.” (Rationale, II, lib. XXXII.)

In spite of this, the phrase barbam nutrire which was classical in the matter, and was still used by the
Fifth Council of Lateran (1512), always remained somewhat ambiguous. Consequently usage in the
sixteenth century began to interpret the prohibition as not inconsistent with a short beard. There
are still many ordinances of episcopal synods which deal with the subject, but the point upon which
stress is laid is that the clergy “should not seem to be aping the fashions of military folk” or wearing
flowing beards like goats (hircorum et caprarum more), or allowing the hair on their upper lip to

1William L. North (translator), Cardinal Bishop Humbert of Silva Candida, A Brief or Succinct Account of What
the Ambassadors of the Holy Roman and Apostolic See Did in the Royal City, p. 3, Original translation on
Carleton College MARS (Medieval and Renaissance Studies) Website,
www.acad.carleton.edu/curricular/MARS/Schism.pdf.
 225

impede their drinking of the chalice. This last has always been accounted a solid reason in favour of
the practice of shaving. To judge by the portraits of the popes, it was with Clement VII (1523)
that a distinct beard began to be worn, and many among his successors, for example Paul III,
allowed the beard to grow to considerable length. St. Charles Borromeo attempted to check the
spread of the new fashion, and in 1576 he addressed to his clergy a pastoral “De barbâ radendâ”
exhorting them to observe the canons. Still, though the length of clerical beards decreased during the
seventeenth century, it was not until its close that the example of the French court and the influence
of Cardinal Orsini, Archbishop of Beneventum, contributed to bring about a return to the earlier
usage. For the last 200 years there has been no change, and an attempt made by some of the clergy of
Bavaria in 1865 to introduce the wearing of beards was rebuked by the Holy See.
As already noted, in Eastern lands a smooth face carries with it the suggestion of effeminacy. For this
reason the clergy, whether Catholic or Schismatic, of the Oriental churches have always worn
their beards.1

Canon XCVI of the Sixth Ecumenical Council states:

Those who by baptism have put on Christ have professed that they will copy his manner of life which
he led in the flesh. Those therefore who adorn and arrange their hair to the detriment of those who
see them, that is by cunningly devised intertwinings, and by this means put a bait in the way of
unstable souls, we take in hand to cure paternally with a suitable punishment: training them and
teaching them to live soberly, in order that having laid aside the deceit and vanity of material things,
they may give their minds continually to a life which is blessed and free from mischief, and have their
conversation in fear, pure [and holy]; and thus come as near as possible to God through their purity
of life; and adorn the inner man rather than the outer, and that with virtues, and good and blameless
manners, so that they leave in themselves no remains of the left-handedness of the adversary. But if
any shall act contrary to the present canon let him be cut off. 2

St. Nikodemos the Hagiorite comments on this canon:

Note that the present Canon censures the priests of the Latins who shave off their moustache and
their beard and who look like very young men and handsome bridegrooms and have the face of
women. For God forbids men of the laity in general to shave their beard, by saying: “Ye shall not mar
the appearance of your bearded chin” (Lev. 19:27). But He specially forbids those in holy orders to
shave their beard, by saying to Moses to tell the sons of Aaron, or, in other words, the priests, not to
shave the skin of their bearded chin (Lev. 21:5). Not only did He forbid this in words, but He even
appeared to Daniel with whiskers and beard as the Ancient of Days (Dan. 7:9); and the Son of God
wore a beard while he was alive in the flesh. And our Forefathers and Patriarchs and Prophets and
Apostles all wore beards, as is plainly evident from the most ancient pictures of them wherein they
are painted with beards. But, more to the point, even the saints in Italy, like St. Ambrose, the father of
monks Benedict, Gregory Dialogus, and the rest, all had beards, as they appear in their pictures
painted in the church of St. Mark in Venice. Why, even the judgment of right reason decides the
shaving of the beard to be improper. For the beard is the difference which in respect of appearance
distinguishes a woman from a man.3

1 Herbert Thurston, Beard, in CE, Vol. II, p. 363.

2 Percival, Seven Ecumenical Councils, The Canons of the Council in Trullo, Canon XCVI, p. 406.
3 St. Nicodemus, The Pedalion, The One Hundred and Two Canons of the Holy and Ecumenical Sixth Council

Interpreted, Canon XCVI, p. 404, Chicago: The Orthodox Christian Educational Society, 1957. See the rest of
Nikodemus’s commentary, pp. 403 – 405.
 226

Ancient literature, paintings, and numismatic records that mention the beards of early Christians are
abundant, and would be too extensive to discuss at length here. One example is that Pope St. Gregory I had a
beard, according to his likeness in the monastery of St. Andrew, as described by John the Deacon.1
The question of who was the first Pope to be clean-shaven is a matter of some uncertainty. Some texts state
that Leo III (Pope from 795 – 816) was the first beardless Pope, and a statement on this is in The New
American Cyclopædia of 1859, in its article for Beard, which states:

The separation of the Greek from the Latin church, which began in the 8th century, was the signal for
great perturbations in the toilet of the face. Till then, the popes, emperors, noble, and except in
England, the priests, had scrupulously abstained from the use of the razor. Leo III., to distinguish
himself from the patriarch of Constantinople, removed his beard, and presented to astonished
Christendom the spectacle of a shaved pope. Thirty years later, Gregory IV., pursuing the same
system, fulminated a bull enjoining penalties upon every bearded priest. Godefroi, bishop of Amiens,
refused the offerings of any one who wore a beard. 2

This claim is supported by a late eighth-century mosaic on the exterior of the Church of St. Giovanni Laterano
in Rome, where Leo III is depicted without a beard. A Roman mosaic dating from the 9th century, in the
Church of St. Mark in Rome, representing Pope Gregory IV (Pope from 827 – 844), shows him without a
beard.3 Leo became Pope in 795, so beardless Popes are an innovation after the Seventh Ecumenical Council.
In an archeological discovery in the year 2010, a Roman catacomb of the early 4th century was found,
containing some of the earliest extant images of the apostles Peter and Paul. The images have been well
preserved and it is clear that they have beards. Another icon of St. Paul from the 6th century, in a cave in
Ephesus, is also remarkably clear, showing a bearded St. Paul. There is an abundance of other ancient
Christian art showing bearded saints and apostles in the Roman catacombs, although there are some striking
exceptions. It must be conceded in fairness that several ancient images of the apostles and even of Christ,
such as some found in the Roman catacombs, do not depict them as bearded. This reflects a traditional
difference between the ancient Greeks and Romans. The exceptions are usually for apostles who were in an
earlier stage of life. For example, the Apostle John is sometimes an exception, because he is occasionally
painted as the “Beloved Disciple”, the beardless young man who leaned against Christ’s breast, or as “the
Theologian”, the bearded wise man who lived to the end of the first century. Also, St. Thomas, St. Phillip, and
Judas Iscariot are other common exceptions, because they were also beardless youth during Christ’s ministry.
In many Roman Catholic artworks, Jesus and most of the Apostles have beards.

In the following edict from Rome against beards in 1865 (mentioned in the Catholic Encyclopedia article cited
above), there is a curious specimen of the Latin mentality (note how clerical beards are called both an
“antiquated custom” and an “innovation”, and how preference is given to the will of the “modern Church”, and
that “complete identity” is necessary with Rome on these matters):

It has come to the ears of the Pope that there are clergymen in some of the dioceses of Bavaria who,
led by the spirit of innovation, or rather thoughtlessness, wish to introduce again the antiquated
custom of growing the beard, and who, by their example, wish to induce others to do likewise.
Whatever might be said with respect to former centuries, it is perfectly well known that the modern
Church discipline disapproves of this custom; and if such an innovation were to be allowed, this
could only be done by the Supreme Pontiff of the Church. The latter, however, is all the more

1 Frederick Homes Dudden, Gregory the Great: His Place in History and Thought, Vol. I, Book II, Ch. II, p. 242,
Longmans, Green, & Co., 1905.
2 George Ripley and Charles A. Dana, The New American Cyclopædia, Vol. III, Beard, p. 13, New York, NY: D.

Appleton & Co., 1859. This claim is repeated in Samuel R. Wells, New Physiognomy, Ch. XVII, p. 289, New
York, NY: Fowler & Wells, 1866.
3 E. J. Millington (translator), Adolphe Napoléon Didron, Christian Iconography; or, The History of Christian

Art in the Middle Ages, Vol. I, Part I, p. 31, London: Henry G. Bohn, 1851. A picture of this mosaic is in the
book.
 227

unwilling to permit the same innovation, as in these sad times but too many were led astray by new
things, as one innovation brought another very easily. The authorities of the dioceses are
commanded not only to see that these beards are forthwith removed, but also that the unity of rule
and the complete identity within the Roman Church with respect to dress and shaving are not broken
again.1

The Orthodox Church has consistently maintained the tradition of clerical beards since ancient times, and in
conformity with the Apostolic customs, while the Latin ecclesiastical discipline has varied much with time,
with differences across Eastern and Western Rites, Latin Canon Law marked by uncertainty, and Popes
themselves differing on the matter.

It is worthwhile to place here some excerpts from the ancient Church on the subject. Throughout the works
of the ancient Christians and Greeks, beard is a symbol of manliness and wisdom.

The Apostolic Constitutions say:

Neither do thou put a gold ring upon your fingers; for all these ornaments are the signs of
lasciviousness, which if thou be solicitous about in an indecent manner, thou wilt not act as becomes
a good man: for it is not lawful for thee, a believer and a man of God, to permit the hair of thy head to
grow long, and to brush it up together, nor to suffer it to spread abroad, nor to puff it up, nor by nice
combing and platting to make it curl and shine; since that is contrary to the law, which says thus, in
its additional precepts: “You shall not make to yourselves curls and round rasures.” (Lev. xix. 27) Nor
may men destroy the hair of their beards, and unnaturally change the form of a man. For the law
says: “You shall not mar your beards.” (Lev. xxi. 5) For God the Creator has made this decent for
women, but has determined that it is unsuitable for men. 2

Clement of Alexandria writes at considerable length for beards, from which I only quote some extracts:

But for one who is a man to comb himself and shave himself with a razor, for the sake of fine
effect, to arrange his hair at the looking-glass, to shave his cheeks, pluck hairs out of them, and
smooth them, how womanly! …

The man, who would be beautiful, must adorn that which is the most beautiful thing in man,
his mind, which every day he ought to exhibit in greater comeliness; and should pluck out not hairs,
but lusts. … For it is not lawful to pluck out the beard, man’s natural and noble ornament.

What, then, will not women with strong propensities to lust practice, when they look on men
perpetrating such enormities? Rather we ought not to call such as these men, but lewd wretches
(βατάλοι), and effeminate (γύνιδες), whose voices are feeble, and whose clothes are womanish both
in feel and dye. And such creatures are manifestly shown to be what they are from their external
appearance, their clothes, shoes, form, walk, cut of their hair, look. “For from his look shall a man be
known,” says the Scripture, “from meeting a man the man is known: the dress of a man, the step of his
foot, the laugh of his teeth, tell tales of him.” (Sirach xix. 29-30)

For these, for the most part, plucking out the rest of their hair, only dress that on the head, all but
binding their locks with fillets like women. Lions glory in their shaggy hair, but are armed by their

1Wells, New Physiognomy, Ch. XVII, p. 290.

2James Donaldson (translator and editor), Constitutions of the Holy Apostles, Book I, Sec. II, p. 392, in ANF,
Vol. VII.
 228

hair in the fight; and boars even are made imposing by their mane; the hunters are afraid of them
when they see them bristling their hair.1

Tertullian writes c. 202:

Of course, now, I, a man, as being envious of women, am banishing them quite from their own
(domains). Are there, in our case too, some things which, in respect of the sobriety we are to
maintain on account of the fear due to God, are disallowed? If it is true, (as it is,) that in men, for the
sake of women (just as in women for the sake of men), there is implanted, by a defect of nature, the
will to please; and if this sex of ours acknowledges to itself deceptive trickeries of form peculiarly its
own,–(such as) to cut the beard too sharply; to pluck it out here and there; to shave round about (the
mouth); to arrange the hair, and disguise its hoariness by dyes; to remove all the incipient down all
over the body; to fix (each particular hair) in its place with (some) womanly pigment; to smooth all
the rest of the body by the aid of some rough powder or other: then, further, to take every
opportunity for consulting the mirror; to gaze anxiously into it:– while yet, when (once) the
knowledge of God has put an end to all wish to please by means of voluptuous attraction, all these
things are rejected as frivolous, as hostile to modesty. For where God is, there modesty is; there is
sobriety her assistant and ally. How, then, shall we practise modesty without her instrumental mean,
that is, without sobriety? How, moreover, shall we bring sobriety to bear on the discharge of (the
functions of) modesty, unless seriousness in appearance and in countenance, and in the general
aspect of the entire man, mark our carriage?2

St. Cyprian writes in his treatise On the Lapsed, in 251:

Among the priests there was no devotedness of religion; among the ministers there was no sound
faith: in their works there was no mercy; in their manners there was no discipline. In men, their
beards were defaced; in women, their complexion was dyed: the eyes were falsified from what God’s
hand had made them; their hair was stained with a falsehood. 3

Later in the same treatise, he writes:

And although it is written, “Ye shall not mar the figure of your beard,” he plucks out his beard, and
dresses his hair; and does he now study to please anyone who displeases God?4

In Testimonies Against the Jews, attributed to Cyprian and dated 248, the maxim occurs, “That the beard must
not be plucked.” citing Lev. xix 27 as a prooftext, “Ye shall not deface the figure of your beard.” 5

In the fragments of the works of Bishop Dionysius of Alexandria (200 – 265):

For Providence cares not only for the useful, but also for the seasonable and beautiful. Thus the hair
is a kind of protection and covering for the whole head, and the beard is a seemly ornament for the
philosopher. It was Providence, then, that formed the constitution of the whole body of man, in all its

1 William Wilson (translator), Clement of Alexandria, The Instructor (Pædagogus), Book III, Ch. III, pp. 275 –
277, in ANF, Vol. II. See the context on pp. 275 – 289. St. Clement writes much against the shaving of beards
in this interesting book, in which he also discusses other subjects, including finger-rings, which is quoted in
the previous section.
2 Sydney Thelwall (translator), Tertullian, On the Apparel of Women, Book II, Ch. VIII, p. 22, in ANF, Vol. IV.
3 Robert Ernest Wallis (translator), The Treatises of Cyprian, Treatise II, On the Lapsed, VI, p. 438, in ANF, Vol.

V.
4 Cyprian, On the Lapsed, XXX, p. 445.
5 Robert Ernest Wallis (translator), The Treatises of Cyprian, Treatise XII, Three Books of Testimonies Against

the Jews, Book III, LXXXIV, p. 553, in ANF, Vol. V.

 229

necessary parts, and imposed on all its members their due connection with each other, and measured
out for them their liberal supplies from the universal resources.1

The Christian author Lactantius (260 – 330) says:

Then the nature of the beard contributes in an incredible degree to distinguish the maturity of
bodies, or to the distinction of sex, or to the beauty of manliness and strength; so that it appears that
the system of the whole work would not have been in agreement, if anything had been made
otherwise than it is.2

Throughout history, this has not been strictly followed with regard to laymen, especially after the Western
reforms of Tsar Peter the Great in 1698. After his grand tour of the countries of Europe, Tsar Peter strongly
encouraged Western fashions among the nobility of Russia, and imposed a beard tax on members of the
upper classes who desired to remain attached to their facial hair. Of course, priests were exempted from this
tax. Moreover, peasants were allowed to wear beards in the villages.

The authors cited above are generally speaking for all men, not just clergy, and it must be admitted that
keeping a beard is not strictly necessary for laymen. In the Christian tradition, there has been variation with
regard to some hair and beard styles, although the Orthodox have still had good reason to criticise the Latins,
especially when the Latins go on the offensive and disparage beards, such as the influential Latin bishop
William Durand, who says, “length of hair is symbolical of the multitude of sins”. 3 To some extent, hairstyle is
a matter of fashion, yet there is a distinction between the clerical and lay rank. This is one of the issues on
which there can be compromise with the styles and fashions of society over the centuries, since it is
reasonable to have some moderation and economy here, as the disposition of the heart is the most important,
and the Church of Christ does not condemn those who are clean-shaven.4

Ch. XIX Military and Secular Bishops

In the Middle Ages, many Latin bishops engaged in direct military combat. This is inappropriate for those in
Holy Orders, and is condemned by the universal canons of the Church. It is worth noting that the Orthodox
Church has many saints who valiantly fought in war and defended their nation.5

Blessed Michael Cerularius writes to Patriarch Peter III of Antioch in 1054: “[Latin] Bishops, going forth to
battle, stain their hands with blood, killing and being killed.” 6

1 Stewart Dingwall Fordyce Salmond (translator), The Works of Dionysius, Extant Fragments, Part I, IV, p. 88.,
in ANF, Vol. VI.
2 William Fletcher, (translator), Lactantius, On the Workmanship of God, or the Formation of Man, Ch. VII, p.

288, in ANF, Vol. VII.

3 Cited in the Catholic Encyclopedia article above.
4 For further reading see John Sanidopoulos, The Blessed Rasson: A Plea for a Proper Orthodox Clerical Attire

and Appearance in the Contemporary World, Charlotte, NC: Apologia, 1999.

5 See Christopher Walter, The Warrior Saints in Byzantine Art and Tradition, London: Routledge, 2016 and

James Thornton, Pious Kings and Right-believing Queens: An Encyclopedia of the Royal and Imperial Saints of
the Orthodox Church, Belmont, MA: Institute for Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies, 2013.
6 Tia M. Kolbaba (translator), Michael Kerularios: Letter to Patriarch Peter of Antioch (concerning Schism of

1054), https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/source/1054michael-kerularious-to-peter-of-antioch1.asp, ¶ 13.,

published online on April 2019. From Migne, PG, Vol. CXX, p. 793 A. Kolbaba notes here: “This is another
complicated topic. In general, Byzantines were more adamant than Latins about clerics taking no part in war,
but there were exceptions. See Kolbaba, Byzantine Lists, 48-51.” (Kolbaba, op. cit., n. 22.) One example is St.
Sergius of Radonezh (1314 – 1392), who sent two warrior monks, Alexander Peresvet and Rodion Oslyabya,
 230

Adrian Fortescue, negatively commenting on Michael Cerularius’s criticisms of the Latins, still admits: “But in
one point he has happened to hit on a real abuse – the 11th-century Latin bishop was too much disposed to go
a-fighting.”1

Apostolic Canon LXXXIII states:

If a bishop, presbyter, or deacon, shall serve in the army, and wish to retain both the Roman
magistracy and the priestly office, let him be deposed; for the things of Cæsar belong to Cæsar, and
those of God to God.2

Canon VII of the Council of Chalcedon (the Fourth Ecumenical Council in 451) states:

We have decreed that those who have once been enrolled among the clergy, or have been made
monks, shall accept neither a military charge nor any secular dignity; and if they shall presume to do
so and not repent in such wise as to turn again to that which they had first chosen for the love of God,
they shall be anathematized.3

It is also worth noting that this canon was reaffirmed by Pope Zachary:

In 747 Pepin and the bishops of France sent a list of twenty-seven questions to Pope Zachary. In
replying to the ninth question the pope said: “Concerning the question of clerics and monks not
persevering, chapter VII. of the canon of Chalcedon decreed that those who have once been enrolled
among the clergy or have embraced the monastic life, are not to accept any civil or military charge,
nor any secular dignity; and that those who attempt this, be anathematized unless they do penance
and return to that which they have first chosen for God.”4

A connected issue, likewise inappropriate according to these canons, is the historical prevalence of prince-
bishops and prince-archbishops (as well as prince-abbots and prince-provosts), that is, bishops who are also
the civil rulers of a secular principality or territory. The prince-bishop had great power and wielded the same
authority over his principality as a secular prince, and had a seat in the Imperial Diet. Though prince-bishops
are no longer prevalent today, having almost completely ceased by the mid-19th century, this was a common
and approved position for many Latin bishops under Roman Catholic emperors for hundreds of years.5

to join the Russian troops at the Battle of Kulikovo (1380). At the Siege of Troitsky monastery (1608 – 1610),
the Orthodox monks helped the Russian garrison defend their monastery against Polish troops.
1 Fortescue, Orthodox Eastern Church, Part II, Ch. V, § 3., p. 191.
2 Percival, Seven Ecumenical Councils, p. 599. Also numbered LXXXII.
3 Percival, Seven Ecumenical Councils, p. 272. Also see Canon XIII of St. Basil and the commentaries upon it.
4 George Zurcher, The Apple of Discord, or Temporal Power in the Catholic Church, Ch. V, p. 76, Buffalo, NY:

The Apple of Discord Co., 1905. Concilia Germaniae, T. I, p. 80. Ed. 1759. The Council of Tours, in 461,
repeated this canon of Chalcedon in its Canon V (Mansi, Conciliorum, Vol. VII, p. 945).
5 The only Orthodox example I am aware of is the Prince-Bishopric of Montenegro, which existed from 1516

until 1852. However, it is important to point out that this occurred as a principality in the times of the
Ottoman Empire, which continued to lay claim to Montenegro. These bishops, sometimes with a few bishops
from the surrounding territories, had occasionally organised and aided battles and uprisings against the
Ottomans (in a strategic capacity, not in direct combat, and working with proper military commanders). The
ruler was elected by the people, and for the sake of unity in those times, the people elected the bishop as their
civil ruler as well. The bishops themselves did not desire secular power, and wanted to only have spiritual
authority, and their hope was to bring Montenegro under the Russian Empire. This was an exceptional
situation and not ideal, but it was due to the pressure and threat from the Ottoman Empire, and it was
certainly better than having a non-Christian ruler. There were also other Orthodox bishops who shared
political leadership during exceptional circumstances, but this was not the regular state of affairs. In a similar
way, the Patriarch of Constantinople became the ethnic head of the Orthodox under their Turkish oppressors.
Another example has been the Archbishop of Cyprus. This is not really comparable to the Latin bishops of the
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Ch. XX The Stigmata

The stigmata is allegedly when pious Christians “bear on hands, feet, side, or brow the marks of the Passion of
Christ with corresponding and intense sufferings.”1

Concerning this, it is worthy of note that the stigmata had never occurred for over 1200 years after the birth
of Christ, and is exclusive to the Roman Catholic communion. There were no stigmatics known until Francis
of Assisi (1181/1182 – 1126), considered a saint by Roman Catholics, who reportedly received the visible
marks of the wounds of the Crucified Christ, in the September of 1224, and Roman Catholics claim that there
have been at least 321 stigmatics since then.

The stigmata is completely unknown to the early Church, and it is without warrant to hold that of all the
saints and monks of the first twelve hundred years, none were considered worthy of receiving the stigmata.
There are absolutely no reports of the stigmata before the thirteenth century.

The Catholic Encyclopedia reports these significant facts:

Dr. Imbert has attempted to count the number of stigmatics, with the following results:

(1) None are known prior to the thirteenth century. The first mentioned is St. Francis of Assisi, in
whom the stigmata were of a character never seen subsequently; in the wounds of feet and hands
were excrescences of flesh representing nails, those on one side having round back heads, those on
the other having rather long points, which bent back and grasped the skin. …

(2) Dr. Imbert counts 321 stigmatics in whom there is every reason to believe in a Divine action. He
believes that others would be found by consulting the libraries of Germany, Spain, and Italy.

(3) In this list there are 41 men.

(4) There are 62 saints or blessed of both sexes, of whom the best known (numbering twenty-six)
were: St. Francis of Assisi (1186 – 1226); St. Lutgarde (1182 – 1246), a Cistercian; St. Margaret of
Cortona (1247 – 97); St Gertrude (1256 – 1302), a Benedictine; St. Clare of Montefalco (1268 – 1308),
an Augustinian; Bl. Angela of Foligno (d. 1309), Franciscan tertiary; St. Catherine of Siena (1347 –
80), Dominican tertiary; St. Lidwine (1380 – 1433); St. Frances of Rome (1384 – 1440); St. Colette
(1380 – 1447), Franciscan; …

(5) There were 29 stigmatics in the nineteenth century.2

Middle Ages and later, and in any case, the canons cited here surely tell against the bishop of Rome having
secular authority over other kingdoms, and the excessive secular responsibilities of many Latin bishops, who
acted as feudal lords. Also see Fleury’s remarks on this subject, in Pusey, Eirenicon, [Part I], pp. 321 – 324.
1 Augustin Poulain, Mystical Stigmata, in CE, Vol. XIV, p. 294.
2 Augustin Poulain, Mystical Stigmata, in CE, Vol. XIV, p. 295. Antoine Imbert-Gourbeyre (1818 – 1912) was a

French professor and medical doctor who wrote a monograph on the stigmata in 1873, where he identified
145 persons branded with the stigmata, and by 1894 he had collected 321 examples of stigmatization. Recent
authors have estimated that there have been about 400 people who have claimed or are alleged to be
stigmatic since the 13th century. It is interesting that there have been alleged cases of stigmatics outside the
Roman Catholic communion and even outside the Christian profession.
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As none of these stigmatic Saints lived in the first millennium of the Church, this is another example of Latin
discontinuity with the early Church.1 There are also some stigmatics who became famous after the Catholic
Encyclopedia was written, such as Padre Pio (1887 – 1968).

If any Roman Catholic tries to defend the stigmata from the Bible, as some have tried to do, based on an
improper application of the words of St. Paul, “I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus” (Gal. vi. 6), they
are not interpreting scripture in accordance with the consensus of the Church Fathers, of whom none were
familiar with the Roman stigmata.

Ch. XXI Visions or Stories of Latins Receiving Milk from Mary’s Breast

There are reports of a few Latins who are said to have received milk from the breast of the Theotokos in a
miracle or vision. The influential Latin abbot Bernard of Clairvaux (1090 – 1153), considered a saint by
Roman Catholics, is the most famous person to allegedly experience this. This is shown in many popular
artworks of Bernard and this event is known as the Lactation of Bernard (Lactatio Bernardi).2 This story of
Bernard is mentioned by (among others) the Toulousian Latin priest and poet Raimon de Cornet (fl. 1324 –
1340) in the following verse:

The mother of God gave a drink

Of her milk to the good brother,
For she saw him to be devoted.
Such a man was that brother.3

The historian James France (1930 – 2020) writes that “Stories of the Virgin offering her milk to others than
her Son as a reward for their faithfulness go back to the twelfth century. … The twelfth-century Benedictine
Gautier de Coincy records how Our Lady healed a gravely ill cleric by giving him her breast.”4 However, the
Orthodox have considered this as inappropriate and an example of prelest, or spiritual delusion and pride. 5
There is no record of such a story occurring anywhere for over a thousand years after Christ.

Ch. XXII Roman Catholic Monasticism

The Catholic Encyclopedia admits that the East did not change its monastic practices since the fourth century,
meaning that the Orthodox maintain the ancient traditions of monasticism, while the West is full of monastic
“development”.

1 Also see Mother Magdalena (translator), Mitrofan Vasilyevich Lodyzhenskii, Light Invisible: Satisfying the
Thirst for Happiness, Ch. IV, Jordanville, NY: Holy Trinity Publications, 2011. This chapter is an excellent
comparison of Francis of Assisi with St. Seraphim of Sarov.
2 One popular example is Spanish artist Alonso Cano’s (1601 – 1667) Saint Bernard and the Virgin (c. 1645 –

1652), which is in the Prado Museum (https://www.museodelprado.es/en/the-collection/art-work/saint-

bernard-and-the-virgin/25b83887-3b11-4a99-a9b1-3b3050733d6a).
3 St. John E. Flynn, The Saint of the Womanly Body: Raimon de Cornet’s Fourteenth Century Male Poetics,

Appendix, in Barbara K. Gold, Paul Allen Miller, and Charles Platter (editors), Sex and Gender in Medieval and
Renaissance Texts: The Latin Texts, p. 105 (Latin on previous page), Albany, NY: State University of New York
Press, 1997. There are variations of the story.
4 James France, Medieval Images of Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, Ch. VIII, pp. 206 – 207, Kalamazoo, MI:

Cistercian Publications, 2007. See the whole of Ch. VIII, pp. 205 – 238, titled “Mary Offering Bernard Her
Milk”, which seems to be the most extensive review of this story in English.
5 This applies to the stigmata as well.
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Gradually nearly all the Eastern monasteries accepted the Rules of St. Basil. Their inner organization
evolved a hierarchy of officials among whom the various offices were distributed; the prayers, meals,
work, punishments were portioned out according to the ascetic works of St. Basil, and so the whole
monastery arrived at a working order.

That order obtains still. In its inner life Eastern monasticism has been extraordinarily
stationary. There is practically no development to describe. Its history from the fourth century
down to our own time is only a chronicle of the founding and endowment of new monasteries, of the
part taken by monks in the great religious controversies and in one or two controversies of their
own, of the emperors, empresses, patriarchs, and other great persons who, freely or under
compulsion, ended their career in the world by retiring to a monastery. …

The schism made little difference to the inner life of the Byzantine monasteries. Like the lower clergy
and the people they quietly followed their bishops, who followed the patriarchs, who followed the
Oecumenical patriarch into schism. After that their life went on as before, except that, having lost the
advantage of intercourse with the West, they gradually drifted into the same stagnation as the rest of
the Orthodox Church.1

The Latins use the derogatory term “stagnation” to describe the state of the Orthodox Church, but this is
actually a witness to the unchangeability and immoveability of the Orthodox Church, which maintains
inviolate the ancient practices and traditions, shunning novelty. This pattern is repeatedly seen, that the
Latins tend to innovate and the Orthodox hold on to Apostolic and ancient traditions.

Ch. XXIII Western Iconography

The Orthodox are more traditional in their style of iconography. The Catholic Encyclopedia notes the change
in Western art in the second millennium:

A more important fact is that at this time [after the Iconoclast controversy] the Byzantine style
conquered the West and became truly universal. … With the twelfth century, however, it had
fulfilled its purpose, and the further development of religious painting was in the West. … Through
the medium of the monks and the Crusades all Europe was rendered fruitful by the Byzantine School.
From the Byzantine a Western art was to develop, in which the loss in external luxury was gradually
supplied by pliancy and power of expression. 2

Another article states, “The same taste and the same characteristics of the art of Byzantium (Constantinople)
have ever since” [the eleventh century] “maintained their supremacy in the East.”3 Again, the East stays the
“same” and the West “develops”.

There are other issues with Western iconography, such as the excessive display of nude human bodies in
Latin sacred spaces and art, which does not fit Christian modesty.4 The question of the propriety of images of

1 G. Roger Hudleston, Monasticism, III Eastern Monasticism, in CE, Vol. X, pp. 468 – 470.
2 Louis Gillet, Painting, in CE, Vol. XI, p. 397.
3 Gerhard Gietmann, Byzantine Art, in CE, Vol. III, p. 96.
4 Edmund C. Ryder of Binghampton University notes, “This aversion is notable because there is no Byzantine

counterpart for the Western artistic tradition of erotic marginalia in illuminated manuscripts, or of the
apotropaic architectural sculptures known as Sheela-na-Gigs, in which women ostentatiously reveal their
vulva to the viewer.” (Edmund C. Ryder, Nudity and Classical Themes in Byzantine Art, in Heilbrunn Timeline
of Art History, New York, NY: The Metropolitan Museum of Art,
http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/nuby/hd_nuby.htm, September 2008.) The practice of carving sheela
na gigs on church buildings and castles began in the 11th century, and they are found across several countries
in Western Europe.
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God the Father and large freestanding statues in Churches is debated within Orthodoxy, and much could be
written about those subjects, but they are not within the scope of the present work.

See the following video documentary on Orthodox icons: Bishop Jovan Purić, The Icon, Ostrog Monastery &
Academy of the Serbian Orthodox Church for Fine Arts and Conservation, Run Time 3 hrs. 35 min. (in Seven
Parts), 2011.

Ch. XXIV Devotion to the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary

The Roman Catholic community of the second millennium enjoins devotion and worship directed to a specific
physical body part, which is not a tradition of the first millennium Church. The French Jesuit and professor of
theology at the Institut Catholique de Paris, Jean Vincent Bainvel (1858 – 1937), wrote an article in the
Catholic Encyclopedia on Devotion to the Heart of Jesus:

II. Historical Ideas on the Development of the Devotion. – (1) From the time of St. John and St. Paul
there has always been in the Church something like devotion to the love of God, Who so loved the
world as to give it His only-begotten Son, and to the love of Jesus, Who has so loved us as to deliver
Himself up for us. But, accurately speaking, this is not the devotion to the Sacred Heart, as it pays no
homage to the Heart of Jesus as the symbol of His love for us. From the earliest centuries, in
accordance with the example of the Evangelist, Christ’s open side and the mystery of blood and water
were meditated upon, and the Church was beheld issuing from the side of Jesus, as Eve came forth
from the side of Adam. But there is nothing to indicate that, during the first ten centuries, any
worship was rendered the wounded Heart.

(2) It is in the eleventh and twelfth centuries that we find the first unmistakable indications of
devotion to the Sacred Heart. Through the wound in the side the wounded Heart was gradually
reached, and the wound in the Heart symbolized the wound of love. It was in the fervent atmosphere
of the Benedictine or Cistercian monasteries, in the world of Anselmian or Bernardine thought, that
the devotion arose, although it is impossible to say positively what were its first texts or who were its
first votaries.1

Jean Bainvel’s article on Devotion to the Heart of Mary states:

Just as devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus is only a form of devotion to the adorable Person of
Jesus, so also is devotion to the Holy Heart of Mary but a special form of devotion to Mary. In order
that, properly speaking, there may be devotion to the Heart of Mary, the attention and the homage of
the faithful must be directed to the physical heart itself. …

It is only in the twelfth, or towards the end of the eleventh, century, that slight indications of a
regular devotion are perceived in a sermon by St. Bernard (De duodecim stellis), from which an
extract has been taken by the Church and used in the Offices of the Compassion and of the Seven
Dolours.2

1 Jean Bainvel, Devotion to the Heart of Jesus, in CE, Vol. VII, p. 165. An article in The Ecclesiastical Review
notes that “All these pious practices [“relative to public devotion in honor of the Sacred Heart of Jesus”] have
her [the Church’s] official sanction in the indulgences attached to them by successive Sovereign Pontiffs (Pius
VI, VII, IX, Leo XIII, Pius X).” (The Ecclesiastical Review, Fifth Series., Vol. VIII (XLVIII)., No. 6, June, 1913, p.
724, Philadelphia, PA: American Ecclesiastical Review, The Dolphin Press, 1913.)
2 Jean Bainvel, Devotion to the Heart of Mary, in CE, Vol. VII, p. 168.
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There are serious theological objections to this devotion to a specific part of Jesus’s and Mary’s body,1 but this
chapter present here only the admitted historical fact of the absence of such a tradition in the first
millennium.

Ch. XXV Use of the Vernacular Language

How shall the unlearned say Amen to thy thanksgiving? For he knoweth not what thou sayest. – St. Paul

Another error of the Church of Rome is that her stated services have been offered up in a language
unintelligible to the common people, that is, Latin, and has restricted the use of the vernacular for a long time.
The Church should permit prayers to be said and the Bible to be read in the vernacular, the native language of
the people in a country or region. This is right because not everyone is fluent in Hebrew and Greek and thus
able to read the Bible in its original languages. In contrast to the ancient Church, the Latins have at numerous
points prohibited the vernacular for the laity. Popes after the Schism decreed that the laity are not permitted
to read the New Testament unless they have special permission by a bishop or inquisitor, although this was
generally permitted by the 19th century.

It may be objected that the Orthodox Church in Greece uses an archaic Greek, and the Russians use the old
Church Slavonic language, but the Orthodox Church is much more friendly to using the vernacular language,
and her services are understood by the common people (as noted in the account of George Frederick Wright
quoted in the chapter on the Russian Church.).

Roman Catholic defenders of using an unknown language are very prone to fall into hypocrisy, because many
of their Eastern Rites in full communion with Rome, such as the Maronites, are permitted, and do conduct
their liturgy and services in the vernacular tongue, e.g., Arabic.

The Orthodox missionaries exemplify this, such as St. Innocent of Alaska (see an account of St. Innocent in the
chapter on Orthodox Missionary Activity). It is certain that the use of unknown tongues is not an Apostolic
tradition. The Catholic Encyclopedia writes:

(1) During the course of the first millennium of her existence, the Church did not promulgate any
law concerning the reading of Scripture in the vernacular. The faithful were rather encouraged to
read the Sacred Books according to their spiritual needs (cf. St. Irenæus, Against Heresies III.4).

(2) The next five hundred years show only local regulations concerning the use of the Bible in the
vernacular. On 2 January, 1080, Gregory VII wrote to the Duke of Bohemia that he could not allow
the publication of the Scriptures in the language of the country. The letter was written chiefly to
refuse the petition of the Bohemians for permission to conduct Divine service in the Slavic
language. The pontiff feared that the reading of the Bible in the vernacular would lead to
irreverence and wrong interpretation of the inspired text (St. Gregory VII, “Epist.”, vii, xi). The
second document belongs to the time of the Waldensian and Albigensian heresies. The Bishop of
Metz had written to Innocent III that there existed in his diocese a perfect frenzy for the Bible in the
vernacular. In 1199 the pope replied that in general the desire to read the Scriptures was
praiseworthy, but that the practice was dangerous for the simple and unlearned (Epist., II, cxli;
Hurter, “Gesch. des. Papstes Innocent III”, Hamburg, 1842, IV, 501 sqq.). After the death of Innocent
III, the Synod of Toulouse directed in 1229 its fourteenth canon against the misuse of Sacred
Scripture on the part of the Cathari: “prohibemus, ne libros Veteris et Novi Testamenti laicis
permittatur habere” [“the laity should not be permitted to have the books of the Old and New
Testaments”] (Hefele, “Concilgesch”, Freiburg, 1863, V, 875). In 1233 the Synod of Tarragona issued
a similar prohibition in its second canon, but both these laws are intended only for the countries
subject to the jurisdiction of the respective synods (Hefele, ibid., 918). …

1 Some are quoted in http://philorthodox.blogspot.com/2009/06/on-latin-cultus-of-sacred-heart.html.

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(3) It is only in the beginning of the last five hundred years that we meet with a general law of the
Church concerning the reading of the Bible in the vernacular. On 24 March, 1564, Pius IV
promulgated in his Constitution, “Dominici gregis”, the Index of Prohibited Books. According to the
third rule, the Old Testament may be read in the vernacular by pious and learned men, according to
the judgment of the bishop, as a help to the better understanding of the Vulgate. The fourth rule
places in the hands of the bishop or the inquisitor the power of allowing the reading of the New
Testament in the vernacular to laymen who according to the judgment of their confessor or their
pastor can profit by this practice.1

It is remarkable that in the first instance of papal regulation against the vernacular, Latin Pope Gregory VII is
refusing what Pope John VIII specifically approved, when Pope John VIII, according to the Catholic
Encyclopedia,

sanctioned the use of the Slavonic language in the Mass and the offices of the Church, saying among
other things:

‘We rightly praise the Slavonic letters invented by Cyril in which praises to God are set forth, and we
order that the glories and deeds of Christ our Lord be told in that same language. Nor is it in any wise
opposed to wholesome doctrine and faith to say Mass in that same Slavonic language (Nec sanæ fidei
vel doctrinæ aliquid obstat missam in eadem slavonica lingua canere), or to chant the holy gospels or
divine lessons from the Old and New Testaments duly translated and interpreted therein, or the
other parts of the divine office: for He who created the three principal languages, Hebrew, Greek, and
Latin, also made the others for His praise and glory’ (Boczek, Codex, tom. I, pp. 43-44).2

The Catholic Encyclopedia says of Pope Adrian II (Pope from 867 – 872), “Of enduring influence, for good or
evil, was the endorsement he gave to their [Cyril and Methodius] rendering of the liturgy in the Slavonic
tongue.”3

Yet Roman Catholic authorities in later centuries made many laws limiting the reading of the Bible and
prohibiting having services in the vernacular. Much could be said on the issue of liberty in Bible-reading, and
the Catholic Encyclopedia says, “What these decrees (e.g., of the synod of Toulouse in 1129, Tarragona in
1234, Oxford in 1408) aimed at was the restriction of Bible-reading in the vernacular.”4

Learned Anglicans have well defended their Article XXIV, which states, “It is a thing plainly repugnant to the
word of God, and the custom of the primitive church, to have public prayer in the church, and to administer
the sacraments in a tongue not understood of the people.” The following is a full quotation of the chapter on
this article by the Anglican scholar and bishop William Beveridge (1637 – 1708), who has written a famous
discourse on the Thirty-nine Articles of the Anglican communion:

It is a thing plainly repugnant to the word of God, and the custom of the primitive church, to have public
prayer in the church, and to administer the sacraments in a tongue not understood of the people.

It was determined in the council of Trent, that “Though the mass” (so they call both their public
prayers, and the sacrament of the Lord’s supper too, called often by the ancients the eucharist)
“contains a great instruction of the faithful people, yet it doth not seem expedient to the Fathers that
it should be every where celebrated in the vulgar tongue.” And as if they had not said enough there,

1 A. J. Maas, Scripture, VI Attitude of the Church towards the Reading of the Bible in the Vernacular, in CE, Vol.
XIII, p. 640.
2 Andrew J. Shipman, Slavonic Language and Liturgy, in CE, Vol. XIV, p. 41. Note that the terms “Slavik” and

“Slavonic” are synonymous.

3 James F. Loughlin, Pope Adrian II, in CE, Vol. I, p. 156.
4 Joseph Hilgers, Censorship, in CE, Vol. III, p. 520.
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they add presently, “If any one say that the rite or custom of the church of Rome, whereby part of the
canon and words of the consecration are uttered with a low voice, is to be condemned; or that mass
ought to be celebrated in the vulgar tongue, or that water ought not to be mixed with the wine in the
cup that is to be offered up, because it is contrary to Christ’s institution; let him be accursed.” In
which words they first transgress the ancient law of Justinian the emperor, that public prayers and
offerings should be performed with a loud voice, so as to be heard of the people; and then they add
sin unto sin, and command that they be not made in any tongue but an unknown tongue. First, they
decree it should be so performed, that the people might not hear it; and then, that it should be so
performed, that if they did hear it, they might not understand it.
Now against this vain and sinful custom and practice of the church of Rome, our church doth
here set down this article, that those public services should be administered in a language
understood by the people; and that the contrary is repugnant to the word of God, and the practice of
the primitive church.
First, that it is repugnant to the word of God is plain; for that commands that all things be
done to edifying, 1 Cor. xiv. 26: and what edifying can there be, when the people know not what is
said? Nay, the apostle, as if he foreknew what wild practices and opinions would arise in the church,
spends almost a whole chapter in shewing that public duties should not be performed in an unknown
tongue; For he that speaketh in an unknown tongue, speaketh not to men, but God; for no man
understandeth him, 1 Cor. xiv. 2. For if I pray in an unknown tongue, my spirit prayeth, but my
understanding is unfruitful, ver. 14. Else when thou shalt bless with the spirit, how shall he that
occupieth the room of the unlearned say Amen at thy giving of thanks, seeing he understandeth not
what thou sayest? ver. 16. I thank my God I speak with tongues more than ye all; yet in the church I had
rather speak five words with my understanding, that by my voice I might teach others also, than ten
thousand words in an unknown tongue, ver 18. 19. Certainly our adversaries are not of Paul’s mind,
who had rather speak then thousand words in an unknown tongue, (as to the people,) than five
words in a known.
And again, If the church come together in one place, and all speak with tongues, and there
come in those that are unlearned and unbelievers, will not they say that ye are mad? ver. 23. Yes,
certainly, any one that comes to the popish masses, and hears a sound, but understandeth not a word
of what is said, will surely thing them to be mad, mad people that go to pray to the eternal God, and
yet know not what is said. And this doth not only make for public prayers, but for all public services
whatsoever; and the sacraments amongst the rest, which our Saviour, and his apostles after him,
administered in a known tongue. But we have a generation now sprung up that thinks themselves
wiser than their Maker and Redeemer, and know better what language his sacraments are to be
administered in than himself did.
But I wish they would at length consider, whether all such services as are performed in an
unknown tongue are not blind performances. The apostle said, I will pray with my spirit, and I will
pray with my understanding also, 1 Cor. xiv. 15. And God’s service should be a reasonable service,
Rom. xii. 1. And therefore there is no language scarce in the world but the scriptures are translated
into it, that so all that profess the Christian religion, be they of what language they will, may know the
mind and will of God, and understand the duties he requireth of them; and so perform a reasonable
service to him. But if there be no necessity of understanding what the priests say or do in their public
services, surely the time spent in such translations was but vainly spent. But I would know no
further, how, if I understand not what is said, I shall known whether the priest prays for me or
against me? Yea, how shall I know whether he prays or swears? Or whether he blesseth the bread or
curseth it? Whether he desires God to pardon me or to punish me? to save or to damn me?
Certainly, he may do the one as well as the other, for aught that I know, unless I understand the
language he speaks in.
Neither is this vain practice only repugnant to the holy scriptures and right reason, but to the
primitive church also. Justin Martyr saith in his time, “After this we rise all unanimously, and send up
our prayers; and as we said before, our prayers being finished, the bread, and water, and wine is
offered, and the president pours out prayers and thanksgivings as he is able, and then the people cry
out, saying Amen.” Now, if the people did not understand that was said, how, as the apostle saith,
could they say Amen? And therefore Aventinus records of Methodius Illyricus, “That he forced the
Dalmatians and other Illyrians, that the Latin tongue being abolished, they should use the vulgar
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tongue in celebration of the holy mysteries.” And hence it was also, that in the primitive church their
liturgies or common prayer books were still made in the language that was understood by them that
were to use it; as St. Chrysostome, being himself a Grecian, composed his liturgy in the Greek
language, and so St. Basil too. To which we may also add, besides that ascribed to St. James, the
liturgies of St. Mark and St. Peter; all which were composed in a known language understood of the
people. And in all of them there are still some things to be said by the people, which it would be
impossible they should know when to say, unless they understood what went before: nay, and what
is observable also, there are many things in these liturgies which the priest is expressly commanded
to say with a loud voice; and why so, but that the people might be sure to hear and understand them?
And thus Origen saith, “The Greeks pray to God in the Greek, the Romans in the Roman, and every
one in his own tongue.”
But this is so plain, “that,” as Lyra saith, “in the primitive church, the blessings, and other
common prayers were made in the vulgar tongue,” that the papists themselves, who are now the only
persons that are against it, cannot but acknowledge it. For Aquinas himself saith, “In the primitive
church it was a madness for any one to say prayers in an unknown tongue, because then they were
ignorant of the ecclesiastical rites, and knew not what was done there.” So Harding too: “In the time
of the primitive church,” says he, “the people celebrated holy things in the vulgar tongue.” So that by
their own confession, it is a thing repugnant to the custom of the primitive church to have public
prayers or the sacraments administered in an unknown tongue. 1

The Anglican priest Charles Jerram (1770 – 1853) discusses this issue in a sermon:

This obvious construction of the text is confirmed by the interpretations of those of the
ancient Fathers who have written comments upon this Epistle. St. Ambrose explains the second
verse, which says, “he that speaketh in an unknown tongue, speaketh not unto men, but unto God,” by
observing, that “God knoweth all things; but men do not, and therefore they derive no profit from this
unknown tongue.” And that part of my text which asks, “Else, when thou shalt bless with the spirit,
how shall he that occupieth the room of the unlearned say Amen at thy giving of thanks, seeing he
understandeth not what thou sayest,” he expounds, “That is, if thou speak the praise of God in a
language unknown to the hearers. For the unlearned, hearing that which he does not understand,
does not understand the object of the prayer, and therefore does not answer Amen.” Upon the 26th
verse, “Let all things be done to edifying,” he says, “This is the conclusion, that nothing should be
done in the church in vain; and that this should be chiefly aimed at, that the unlearned also might
profit, lest any part of the body should be dark through ignorance.” Again, upon the words, “If there
be no interpreter, let him keep silence in the church,” he says, “That is, let him pray secretly, or speak
to God within himself; for in the church he might to speak what may profit all men.”
St. Jerome, commenting on the passage, “How shall he that occupieth the room of the
unlearned say Amen at thy giving of thanks?” says, “It is the laymen whom St. Paul here supposes to
stand in the place of the unlearned; the man who holds no ecclesiastical office: How shall he answer
Amen to the prayer which he does not understand?” And he gives the same construction to the
passage, “If I pray in an unknown tongue … my understanding is unfruitful, as I have just stated,” and
which indeed is his own translation of it in the Vulgate. “This,” says he, “is Paul’s meaning: If any man
speak in strange and unknown tongues, his mind is made unfruitful, not to himself, but to the hearer;
for he knows not what is spoken.”
I might add, that even Cardinal Cajetan, who lived in the time of Luther, and who was a very
zealous supporter of the Church Rome against the Reformers, in reference to this chapter, says:
“From this doctrine Paul, it is concluded that it is better, for the edification of the church, that public
prayers which are offered up in the hearing of the people should be said in a language common to the
clergy and the people, than that they be said in Latin.” And Erasmus, when commenting on this
chapter, exclaims, “In this respect, it is wonderful how the custom of the church is changed.” Nay,
even Father Paul, who has given a history of the Council of Trent, says, in that part of it which relates
to Mass being performed in an unknown tongue, “He that would know what language is to be used in

1William Beveridge, Theological Works, Vol. VII, On the Thirty-Nine Articles, pp. 429 – 433, Oxford: John
Henry Parker, 1845. The copious Greek and Latin footnotes are excluded.
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the church, needeth only, without any more discourse, to read the xivth chapter of St. Paul’s First
Epistle to the Corinthians, which will sufficiently inform him, though his mind be ever so much
prepossessed with the contrary opinion.” …
The Council of Trent, we have already seen, has denounced a curse on “any that shall say that
the Mass ought to be celebrated in the vulgar tongue alone;” and states, that “it did not seem
expedient to the Fathers that it should be every where performed in the vernacular language.” …
We have seen already, that the interpretation which two of the Fathers have given of the
passage on which my discourse is founded, is altogether irreconcilable with the practice we are
considering; and to these several others might be added. But we have direct testimony on the
subject. Origen, in his 8th Book against Celsus, has these remarkable words, evidently relating to
public worship; “The Greeks (pray) in the Greek language, the Latins in the Latin; and thus each in his
own dialect prays to God, and celebrates in hymns his praises, according to the best of his power.
And the Lord of every dialect hears them praying in every dialect, as (if I may so speak) being of one
voice, in significancy, though expressed in various tongues. For God over all is not of those to whom
has been allotted one dialect, be it Greek or barbarian, and who have no knowledge of the rest, and
care not for those who speak in other tongues.”
Cyprian informs us, that “the priest, having made a preface before prayer, prepares the
minds of the brethren, by saying, ‘Lift up your hearts,’ and the people answer, ‘We lift them up unto
the Lord.’” But this supposes that the prayers were offered up in a language they understood. In
another place he says, “Let us pour forth our fervent prayers with tears, and cries, and groans:” and
this he says in reference to the prayers accompanying the Lord’s Supper; and the exhortation
necessarily implies, that they were in the vernacular tongue.
Justin Martyr has handed down to us a very minute account of the manner in which the
sacrament of the Lord’s Supper was administered in his time: and it is impossible to doubt that it was
always in the vulgar tongue: every part of it affords the strongest evidence of this fact. He says, in his
Second Apology, after a statement of several particulars in their public worship, that bread, and a cup
of water and wine, are presented to the president or bishop; and that he, having received them,
returns praise and glory to the Universal Father, in the name of the Son and of the Holy Spirit; and at
great length offers thanks to God for having deigned to bestow such benefits upon them; and that
“when he has finished his prayers and thanksgivings, all the persons present proclaim their assent by
saying Amen.”
This account of the manner of conducting Divine Service, and the administration of the
Lord’s Supper, is in perfect accordance with those of other Fathers, who represent the people as
joining in the prayers and praises of the church, and giving their cordial assent to the whole by
pronouncing with a loud voice their hearty Amen.
And who can help connecting this extraordinary coincidence of expression with that of St.
Paul in my text – “Else, when thou shalt bless with the spirit, how shall he that occupieth the room of
the unlearned say Amen to thy giving of thanks, seeing he understandeth not what thou sayest” –
with the idea that the churches derived this custom from Apostolical institution; and that the prayers
and thanksgivings of the primitive congregations were universally in a language which the people
understood, and that, if for no other reason, in order that the people might confirm them by their
loud Amen? But the Roman Catholic Church have deprived their congregations of this Apostolical
institution, and this invaluable privilege of the universal church. They have locked up the prayers
and praises which accompany the sacred services of religion, and the administration of the Lord’s
Supper in a dead language; and cut off the whole congregation of unlearned Christians from the
privilege of saying Amen, to prayers and thanksgivings in which they have as deep an interest as the
priests themselves, and in which they have an equal right to join. With what show of justice a church
like this lays claim to be the one and exclusive Catholic and Apostolical church, it would be difficult to
conceive. One thing is certain, that in the first six centuries no such unchristian prohibition existed.
The Fathers, with one consent, declare the contrary, and reprobate in the strongest terms any such
exclusion. St. Cyprian says, “To pray otherwise than as Christ has taught, is not only ignorance, but a
crime, since he himself has said, ‘Ye reject the command of God, that you may establish your
tradition.’ – “If you come together,” says St. Ambrose, “to instruct the church, those things ought to be
spoken which the hearers understand; for what does he profit the people, who speaks in an unknown
tongue to them?” – “We ought to understand,” says St. Augustine, “in order that we may sing unto God
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with human reason, and not, as it were, with the chattering of birds. Parrots and pies, and birds of
this kind, are often taught by men to utter sounds which they understand not.”1

Part IV Notes on Orthodoxy

Ch. I The Sun Rises in the East

Paradise was planted in the East. Those in the East were the first on whom the light of Christianity dawned.
It should not go unmentioned that the region known as the East is the heart of Christianity, which remained
Orthodox when Rome and the West fell away from the origin of the light of the Gospel. Almost every event
recorded in the Old and New Testaments takes place in the East. Jesus of Nazareth was born in the East and
spent his entire life there. The epistles of the New Testament are mostly written in and to Eastern cities. The
oldest manuscripts of the Bible have been preserved in the East. It is standard for Church buildings and
worship to face the East. All the Ecumenical Councils of the first thousand years of the Church were held in
the East. Of the first Seven Ecumenical Councils, three were held in Constantinople, two in Nicaea, one in
Ephesus, and one in Chalcedon, all Eastern cities that are quite close to one other. The epicenter of all Seven
Councils is practically the city of Constantinople. The Latin councils of the second millennium were all held in
the west, around the area of Rome.

After Rome left the Church, the Orthodox continued to hold Councils in the East, while the Latins held all their
“Ecumenical Councils” in the West. In this work it is shown that that the Western councils break from the
traditional practice of the church.

Ch. II Greek Language

In addition, the language of the East was Greek, while the West spoke the language of Latin. The word
“Catholic” is Greek, not Latin, and many words used by the Latins are originally from the Greek. Nearly the
entire New Testament is written in Greek. Also, the Old Testament was translated to Greek, called the
Septuagint or LXX, and “the Apostles constantly quote from the Greek version of the Old Testament, and not
directly from the Hebrew, as can be seen by comparing the LXX. and the original.” 2 Very many in the West,
including Popes and even some Western Church Fathers, were not fluent in Greek, so the East would naturally
comprehend the Gospel better. The West made use of imperfect translations, such as the Latin Vulgate.

Also, Greek was without doubt the original Christian language at Rome:

In the first period, while Greek was still the Christian language at Rome, we find the usual Greek
names used there, as in the East. … As soon as the Faith was brought to the West the Holy Eucharist
was celebrated here, as in the East. At first the language used was Greek. Out of that earliest Liturgy,
the language being changed to Latin, developed the two great parent rites of the West, the Roman
and the Gallican.3

The Anglican reformer John Jewel (1522 – 1571) wrote:

1 Charles Jerram, On Praying in an Unknown Tongue, in Lectures on the Points in Controversy between
Romanists and Protestants, pp. 40 – 47, Philadelphia, PA: Presbyterian Board of Publication, 1840. Jerram’s
footnotes are omitted.
2 Littledale, Plain Reasons, p. 95.
3 Mass, in CE, Vol. IX, pp. 791 – 791.
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If we be schismatics because we have left them [the Latins], by what name then shall be called
themselves, which have forsaken the Greeks, from whom they first received their faith – forsaken the
primitive Church – forsaken Christ himself, and their Apostles – even as if children should forsake
their parents? … Now then, since it is manifest, and out of all peradventure, that these men are fallen
from the Greeks, of whom they received the gospel, of whom they received the faith, the true religion,
and their Church itself; what is the matter, why they will not now be called home again to the same
men – as it were, to their originals and first founders? And why be they afraid to take a pattern of the
Apostles’ and old fathers’ times, as though they had been void of understanding? Do these men, ween
ye, see more, or set more by the Church of God, than they did, who first delivered us these things?1

Ch. III Orthodox Missionary Activity

“and I saw the souls of them that were beheaded for the witness of Jesus” (Rev. xx 4)

“Who in the West hears anything of the truly apostolical labors of the Archbishop of Kamchatka, who is ever
sailing over the ocean, or driving in reindeer sledges over his vast but thinly-settled diocese, thousands of miles in
extent, everywhere baptizing the natives, for whom he has introduced the use of letters, and translated the
Gospel into the tongue of the Aleontines?” – Andrew Nicolaievitch Mouravieff

1William R. Whittingham (editor), John Jewel, The Apology for the Church of England, Ch. X, §§ 7 – 8, pp. 182
– 186, New York, NY: Henry M. Onderdonk, 1846.
 242

In view of the considerable numbers of Orthodox faithful, it is illogical to discount the seriousness of the
Orthodox Church as the true Church. Sometimes Roman Catholic scholars dismiss the Orthodox Church for
its supposed lack of missionary activity, saying that they do not have to seriously consider the Orthodox
Church, while these Roman Catholics almost completely focus on controversy with Protestants. Following the
early Church, the Orthodox Church after the Latin Schism continued to evangelise the world.

Great success in gaining converts is no proof of the true Church, as evidenced by the extremely quick
expansion of the Islamic religion, which penetrated into Spain and other Christian lands just 100 years after
the death of Mohammed, as well as the rapid growth of Protestantism. However, the Orthodox Church has
had successful missions, even though Roman Catholics, Muslims, and Communists have very heavily
persecuted it, as testified by the blood of numerous Orthodox martyrs and slaughtered saints. Many
Orthodox have suffered for their faith under repressive political regimes in China and Asia. Even now, in
Syria and the Middle East, Orthodox Christians are facing extreme persecution. Also, although not as
violently, there has been persecution of Orthodox Christians by Protestants and modern society. One
demonstration of the holy and divine mission of the Orthodox Church is the unprecedented and relentless
extent to which the forces of evil have attempted to destroy it throughout the ages, but all in vain, and
Orthodoxy has always been triumphant.

Also, there have always been a greater number of Orthodox believers than any single Protestant
denomination, yet Roman apologists have disproportionately directed their attention in arguing against the
Protestant sects, and vice versa. The vast numbers of Orthodox faithful certainly should not preclude it from
serious consideration of those seeking the true faith.

Littledale argues that the “Present Weakness of the Eastern Church [is] no Disproof” of the fact that Rome is
not the Mother of all the Churches:

And even in its weakness the Eastern Church has made one missionary conquest, since its quarrel
with Rome, greater than all Roman missionary efforts put together, namely, the conversion of the
Russian Empire. Rome is evidently not the mother of the Churches of Russia.1

The entire Russian land, as well as Alaska, joined the Orthodox faith after the dispute with Rome. The Russian
Empire, an Orthodox State, at its greatest extent controlled a larger land area than any Roman Catholic
Empire in human history, owning 22.8 million km2 of land in 1866, about 1/6th of all world land area, and
had 176.4 million people in 1913, almost 1/10th of world population. When Napoleon with 12 nations
attempted to attack Russia, they retreated in shame, and the Russian army under Tsar Alexander I marched
victoriously into Paris the next year in 1814. And as to the fall of Orthodox Russia, the philosopher Alexander
Solzhenitzyn (1918 – 2008), persecuted by the Soviet Union, explains, “Men have forgotten God; that’s why all
this has happened.”2 The next chapter will go more in-depth on the conversion of Russia.

There is a great lack of knowledge in the West about Orthodox missions. The missionary conquests of the
Orthodox Church show the wonderful providence of God, and there are some interesting examples
throughout history of important converts to Orthodoxy. These include Adam Zoernikov, a highly learned
convert from Lutheranism, who was born in 1652, and Colonel Philip Ludwell III of Williamsburg, Virginia,
who was received into the Orthodox Church in 1738, in the Church at the Russian Embassy in London, later
bringing his daughters into the Church as well.

1 Littledale, Plain Reasons, LXXIII, p. 136. Much could be written about the problems of Roman Catholic
missionary efforts and their comparison with Orthodox missions, but that is outside the scope of this chapter.
2 Alexis Klimoff (translator), Alexander Solzhenitzyn, Acceptance Address by Mr. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (or

Templeton Address), May 10, 1983, at the London Guildhall, https://www.templetonprize.org/laureate-

sub/solzhenitsyn-acceptance-speech/ (and https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/12/aleksandr-
solzhenitsyn-men-have-forgotten-god-speech/).
 243

Concerning Muslim missions, it must be noted that the law in Islamic countries prohibited their Christian
citizens to evangelize Muslims, by penalty of death. There are stories of Muslims pretending to desire
conversion to Christianity, and then informing the state on the Christians who catechise them. Muslims who
left their religion would be subject to decapitation, while Christians were offered great worldly temptations to
apostatize from the true faith.

Many successful Orthodox missions have been made into the interior of Asia and other places. Since the 9th
century there have been fruitful missions among the people in the lands of Moravia, Serbia, Bulgaria,
Moldavia, the Vikings, Ukraine, Russia (including many ethnic groups and indigenous peoples in Siberia, the
Far North, the Far East, and Kamchatka), Greece, Albania, Kazan, Tartary, Lapland, the Caucasus, Uzbekistan,
Kazakhstan, Urmia, China, Alaska, Hawaii, Japan, Korea, and the United States, as well as India, the Middle
East, and various parts of Africa. Over the centuries, hundreds of thousands of Roman Catholic Uniates have
become Orthodox. In recent decades, Orthodoxy has become more popular in Canada, Australia, Mexico,
Latin America, and the Armenian diaspora. Many saints have dedicated their lives to sharing the Gospel.

Also, as well as several influential Rabbis, more people of Jewish background converted to Orthodoxy
(74,500) in the 19th century than to all Protestant communions combined, or to Roman Catholicism, or to any
other faith, according to the Jewish Encyclopedia, from which the following table is copied. This is 30% more
than the number of Jewish converts to the Roman Catholic communion:

Became Protestant Became Roman Catholic Became Greek Catholic

72,742 57,300 74,5001

Of course, superior numbers are no proof of truth, and sometimes only a remnant hold on to the true faith, as
is clear from various incidents in Church history, such as in the days of Arianism, when the expression was
spoken of “Athanasius against the world” (“Athanasius contra Mundum”).

Even in this day, and despite the state of popular opinions in the modern world,2 there is a fresh surge of pure
hearts and sharp minds joining the Holy Orthodox Church.

Mission Literature

Much of the literature on Orthodox missions is not in English, but for an overview on Orthodox missions, see
the short articles Luke A. Veronis, Eastern Orthodox Missions, in The Encyclopedia of Christianity, Vol. II,
Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans & Brill, 2000, and “A History of Orthodox Missions Among the Muslims” by Yurij
Maximov (https://orthodoxwiki.org/A_History_of_Orthodox_Missions_Among_the_Muslims), and their
bibliographies. OrthodoxWiki has a good article on the “Timeline of Orthodoxy in China”
(https://orthodoxwiki.org/Timeline_of_Orthodoxy_in_China), as well as related articles on Orthodox
missions. A good bibliography is James J. Stamoolis, A Selected Bibliography of Eastern Orthodox Mission
Theology, The Occasional Bulletin of Missionary Research, Vol. I, No. III, pp. 24 – 27, Ventnor, NJ: Overseas
Ministries Study Center, July 1977. A great presentation on Orthodox missions is a recent video by Ubi
Petrus: Do Eastern Orthodox Evangelize? | A History of Orthodox Missions
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2KslrBGk2-I, see their Patreon for the full video). The following is a
comprehensive list of English literature on Orthodox missions (as far as I know):

1 The Jewish Encyclopedia, Vol. XI, Statistics, p. 530, New York, NY: Funk and Wagnalls Company, 1912. The
context confirms that “Greek Catholic” is applied to the Orthodox Church, and not Eastern Rite Roman
Catholics.
2 See, for example, the Pew Research Center’s 2013 Global Attitudes survey on Global Views on Morality,

http://www.pewglobal.org/2014/04/15/global-morality/.
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Luke Alexander Veronis, Missionaries, Monks and Martyrs: Making Disciples of All Nations, Minneapolis, MN:
Light & Life Publishing Co., 1994; Luke Alexander Veronis, Eastern Orthodox Missions: An Overview of
Inspiring Missionaries Throughout the Centuries, Dissertation: Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, CA,
1994; Luke Alexander Veronis, Go Forth: Stories of Mission and Resurrection in Albania, Ben Lomond, CA:
Conciliar Press, 2009; Jim Forest, The Resurrection of the Church in Albania: Voices of Orthodox Christians,
Geneva: WCC, 2002; Richard and Clara Winston (translators), Ernst Benz, The Eastern Orthodox Church: Its
Thought and Life, Garden City, Ch. VII, pp. 103 – 137, NY: Anchor Books, 1963 [Originally Hamburg, 1957];
Christopher Birchall, Embassy, Emigrants and Englishmen: The Three Hundred Year History of a Russian
Orthodox Church in London, Chicago, IL: Holy Trinity Publications, 2014; Petros Vassiliadis (editor),
Orthodox Perspectives on Mission, Regnum Edinburgh Centenary Series, Vol. XVII, Oxford: Regnum Books
International, 2013; Carnegie Samuel Calian, The Scope and Vitality of Orthodox Missionary Activity,
Occasional Bulletin from the Missionary Research Library, Vol. XV, Nos. 5 – 6, May – June 1964, New York, NY:
Missionary Research Library, 1964; Fr. Alexander Schmemann, The Missionary Imperative in the Orthodox
Tradition, in Gerald H. Anderson, The Theology of the Christian Mission, pp. 250 – 257, New York, NY:
McGraw-Hill, 1961; John Breck, Fr. John Meyendorff, and Eleana Silk (editors), The Legacy of St. Vladimir,
Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1990; A. P. Vlasto, The Entry of the Slavs into Christendom,
Cambridge University Press, 1970; George P. Majeska, Patriarch Photius and the Conversion of the Rus’,
Russian History, Vol. XXXII, Issue I, pp., 413 – 418, Leiden: Brill, 2005; Deborah Hoffman (translator), Sergey
A. Ivanov, Pearls Before Swine: Missionary Work in Byzantium, Collège de France – CNRS Centre de
Recherche D’Histoire et Civilisation de Byzance, Monographies, Vol. XLVII, Paris: ACHCByz (Association des
amis du Centre d’histoire et civilisation de Byzance), 2015; Nikos A. Nissiotis, Orthodoxy and Mission,
London: WCC, 1961; Georges Lemopoulos, Your Will Be Done: Orthodoxy in Mission, Geneva: WCC, 1989;
Georges Lemopoulos, You Shall Be My Witnesses: Mission Stories from the Eastern and Oriental Orthodox
Churches, Katerini: Tertios, 1993; Mara Kozelsky, Christianizing Crimea: Shaping Sacred Space in the Russian
Empire and Beyond, DeKalb, IL: Northern Illinois University Press, 2010; Fr. Mikhail Vasilievich Chevalkov
(translated by John Warden), Testament of Memory: A Siberian Life, Jordanville, NY: Holy Trinity
Publications, 2011 [originally published in 1864]; Dimitri Obolensky, The Byzantine Commonwealth: Eastern
Europe 500 – 1453, London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1971; Fr. John Meyendorff, Orthodox Missions in the
Middle Ages, in History’s Lessons for Tomorrow’s Mission Milestones, pp. 99 – 104, Geneva: World’s Student
Christian Federation, 1960; Fr. John Meyendorff, The Orthodox Church and Mission: Past and Present
Perspectives, St. Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly, Vol. XVI, pp. 59 – 71, Yonkers, NY: St. Vladimir’s Orthodox
Theological Seminary, 1972; Fr. Euchene K. Smirnoff [Eugenii Konstantinovich Smirnov], A Short Account of
the Historical Development and Present Position of Russian Orthodox Missions, London: Rivingtons, 1903; J.
A. S. Edwards and F. W. Puller, Conquests of the Russian Church, Westminster: Society for the Propagation of
the Gospel in Foreign Parts, 1917; Georgy Petrovich Fedotov, The Russian Religious Mind, Vol. II, Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 1966 [Vol. IV in the Collected Works of George P. Fedotov, Belmont, MA:
Nordland Publishing Company, 1975]; Dr. Serge Bolshakoff, The Foreign Missions of the Russian Orthodox
Church, London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1943; Dr. Serge Bolshakoff, Orthodox Missions
To-day, International Review of Mission, Vol. XLII, Issue 3, July 1953, pp. 275 – 284, Geneva: WCC, 1953;
Jeffers Engelhardt, Right Singing and Conversion to Orthodox Christianity in Estonia, Chapter V in Mathijs
Pelkmans (editor), Conversion after Socialism: Disruptions, Modernisms and Technologies of Faith in the
Former Soviet Union, New York, NY: Berghahn Books, 2009; James John Stamoolis, Eastern Orthodox Mission
Theology Today, Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2001; James John Stamoolis, An Examination of Contemporary
Eastern Orthodox Missiology, Dissertation: University of Stellenbosch, 1980; James John Stamoolis, The
Imperative of Mission in Orthodox Theology, Orthodoxy, Vol. XXXIII, No. 1., Spring 1988, Old Greenwich, CT:
Society of Clerks Secular of Saint Basil, 1988; Nikita Struve, Orthodox Missions: Past and Present, St.
Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly, Vol. VI, No. I, Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary,
1962; Nektarios Hatzimichalis, Orthodox Ecumenism and External Mission: Towards a Theology of the
Catholicity of the External Mission, Athens: Patmos: 1967; Valentin Kozhuharov, Towards an Orthodox
Christian Theology of Mission: An Interpretive Approach, Veliko Tarnovo: VESTA Publishing House, 2006;
Archbishop Anastasios Yannoulatos, Orthodoxy and Mission, St. Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly, Vol. VIII,
No. III, Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary, 1964; Archbishop Anastasios
Yannoulatos, The Purpose and Motive of Mission: from an Orthodox Theological Point of View, Athens: Typo-
Techniki Offset, 1968; Archbishop Anastasios Yannoulatos, Mission in Christ’s Way: An Orthodox
Understanding of Mission, Boston, MA: Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 2010; Archbishop Anastasios
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Yannoulatos, In Albania: Cross and Resurrection, Yonkers, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2015; George
Lempoulos, Your Will Be Done: Orthodoxy in Mission, Geneva: WCC, 1989 [see Yannoulatos’s article on
Orthodox Mission: Past, Present and Future]; Anthony-Emil N. Tachiaos, Cyril and Methodius of Thessalonica:
The Acculturation of the Slavs, Yonkers, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2001; Ion Bria, Martyria/Mission:
The Witness of the Orthodox Churches Today, Geneva: WCC, 1980; Ion Bria, The Witness of St. Methodius:
Orthodox Mission in the 9th Century, Geneva: WCC, 1986; Ion Bria, Go Forth in Peace: Orthodox Perspectives
on Mission, Geneva: WCC, 1986; Ion Bria, The Liturgy After the Liturgy: Mission and Witness from an
Orthodox Perspective, Geneva: WCC, 1996; Stephen Tromp Wynn Hayes, Orthodox Mission Methods: A
Comparative Study, Dissertation: University of South Africa, 1998; Amos Masaba Akunda, Orthodox Christian
Dialogue with Banyore Culture, Dissertation: University of South Africa, 2010; Alla Semionovna Babiy, A
Historical Survey of the Non-Russian and Foreign Mission Activity of the Russian Orthodox Church,
Dissertation: University of South Africa, Pretoria, 2000; Paul E. Barkey, The Russian Orthodox Church in
Mission: A Comparative Study of Orthodox Missions in China, Alaska, Japan and Korea, Dissertation: Fuller
Theological Seminary, 1986; George Timkowski, Travels of the Russian Mission Through Mongolia to China,
and Residence in Pekin, In the Years 1820 – 1821, London: Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, & Green, 1827 (2
Vol.); Michael Alex Protopopov, The Russian Orthodox presence in Australia: The History of a Church told
from recently opened archives and previously unpublished sources, Doctoral thesis: Australian Catholic
University, 2005; Otis Cary, A History of Christianity in Japan, Vol. I, Roman Catholic and Greek Orthodox
Missions, 1909; Michael Van Remortel & Peter Chang, Saint Nikolai Kasatkin and the Orthodox Mission in
Japan, Point Reyes Station, CA: Divine Ascent Press, 2003; John Bartholomew, The Missionary Activity of St.
Nicholas of Japan, Dissertation: St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary, 1987; Ilya Kharin, After
Nicholas: Self-Realization of the Japanese Orthodox Church, 1912 – 1956, Gloucester, UK: Wide Margin, 2014;
Kevin Baker, A History of the Orthodox Church in China, Korea, and Japan, Lewiston, NY: The Edwin Mellen
Press, 2006; Dina V. Doubrovskaia, The Russian Orthodox Church in China, chapter in Stephen Uhalley and
Xiaoxin Wu, China and Christianity: Burdened Past, Hopeful Future, Part II, pp. 163 – 176, London: M. E.
Sharpe, 2001; Fr. John Bartholomew & Nina Tkachuk Dimas (translators), Fr. Dionisy Pozdnyaev, Orthodoxy
in China (1900 – 1997), available online at (orthodox.cn/history/martyrs/index_en.html, note that only a
partial English translation has been made; for more on Orthodoxy in China, see
orthodox.cn/localchurch/index_en.html and the links therein); Hieromonk Damascene, Christ the Eternal
Tao, Platina, CA: Valaam Books, 2012; Charles Reuben Hale, Missions of the Russian Church in China and
Japan, American Church Review, Vol. XXX, Oct. 1878, pp. 590 – 600; Charles Reuben Hale, The Orthodox
Missionary Society of Russia, Privately Printed, 1878; Charles Reuben Hale, The Russian Church: A Paper
Read before the Church Congress held at Leicester, England, Privately Printed, 1881; Albert Parry, Russian
(Greek Orthodox) Missionaries in China, 1689 – 1917: Their Cultural, Political, and Economic Rôle,
Dissertation: University of Chicago, 1938; Eric Widmer, The Russian Ecclesiastical Mission in Peking During
the Eighteenth Century, Harvard East Asian Monographs, Vol. LXIX, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,
1976; Narobon Kamnoy, The Orthodox Church Role in Russian Federation and the Expansion of its
Proselytizing Role to Thailand, Dissertation: Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok, 2012; Fr. John Meyendorff,
Byzantine Views of Islam, Dumbarton Oaks Papers, Vol. XVIII, pp. 113 – 132, Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 1964; Theofanis G. Stavrou, The Russian Imperial Orthodox Palestine Society, 1882 – 1914,
Dissertation: Indiana University, Bloomington, IN, 1961; Theofanis G. Stavrou, Russian Interests in Palestine,
1882 – 1914: A Study of Religion and Educational Enterprise, Thessaloniki: Institute for Balkan Studies, 1963;
The Russian Ecclesiastical Mission in Jerusalem, The Russian Presence in Palestine (1843 – 1970): Brief
Sketch of Russian Political and Church Activities in the Middle East, Jerusalem: [publisher not identified],
1970; Derek Hopwood, The Russian Presence in Syria and Palestine 1843 – 1914: Church and Politics in the
Near East, Oxford: Clarendon, 1969; Athelstan Riley (editor), Birkbeck and the Russian Church, London:
Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1917 [especially Chapter XVI, Russian Missions to the
Mohammedans, pp. 206 – 217]; Mara Kozelsky, A Borderland Mission: The Russian Orthodox Church in the
Black Sea Region, Russian History, Vol. XL, Issue I, pp. 111 – 132, Leiden: Brill, 2013; Lucien J. Frary, Russian
Missions to the Orthodox East: Antonin Kasputin (1817 – 1894) and his World, Russian History, Vol. XL, Issue
I, pp. 133 – 151, Leiden: Brill, 2013; Nadejda Gorodetzky, The Missionary Expansion of the Russian Orthodox
Church, International Review of Mission, Vol. XXXI, Issue 4., Oct. 1942, Geneva: WCC, 1942; Georges
Vasilievich Florovsky, Russian Missions: An Historical Sketch, The Christian East, Vol. XIV, No. 1., pp. 30 – 41,
Westminster: Faith Press, 1933 [also printed in The Collected Works of Georges Florovsky, Vol. IV, Aspects of
Church History, II, pp. 139 – 155, Belmont, MA: Nordland Publishing Company, 1975]; Michael Johnson,
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Archbishop Evdokim and the Orthodox Church in America, 1914 – 1917, Dissertation: St. Vladimir’s Orthodox
Theological Seminary, Yonkers, NY, 1976; Fr. Dmitry Grigorieff, The Orthodox Church in America: An
Historical Survey, The Russian Review, Vol. XXXI, No. 2, April 1972, pp. 138 – 152, Malden, MA: Blackwell,
1972 [condensed & revised version of Grigorieff’s article in St. Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly, Vol. XIV, No.
4, Yonkers, NY: St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary, 1970]; Michel Najim, Orthodox Mission in the
United States of America, Oklahoma City, OK: Theosis Press, 1993; Donald E. Shadid, The Antiochian
Archdiocese of North America: Traditions, Missionary Tasks, and Vision of the Future, Dissertation: St.
Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary, Crestwood, NY, 1984; Brigit Farley, Circuit Riders to the Slavs and
Greeks: Missionary Priests and the Establishment of the Russian Orthodox Church in the American West,
1890 – 1910, Washington, DC: Kennan Institute, 2000; Constantine Nasr, Antony Bashir: Metropolitan &
Missionary, Orthodox Christian Profiles Series, No. III, Yonkers, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2012;
Peter E. Gillquist, Becoming Orthodox: A Journey to the Ancient Christian Faith, Ben Lomond, CA: Conciliar
Press, 2009, 3rd Ed.; Peter E. Gillquist, Coming Home: Why Protestant Clergy are Becoming Orthodox, Ben
Lomond, CA: Conciliar Press, 2nd Ed., 1995; D. Oliver Herbel, Turning to Tradition: Converts and the Making
of an American Orthodox Church, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014; George Peter Liacopulos, A
Comparative Study of Selected Orthodox Missiological Approaches Emergin in Contemporary American
Society, Dissertation: Princeton Theological Seminary, Princeton, NJ, 1996; George Peter Liacopulos, Lights of
the Modern World: Orthodox Christian Mission and Evangelism in the United States, Minneapolis, MN: Light &
Life Publishing Co., 2000; Ramón Jacinto González, The Orthodox Church in Mexico: Historical Context,
Mission, and Vision, Dissertation: St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary, Crestwood, NY, 1995;
Toward a Strategy for Orthodox Christian Mission in a Mexican Setting, Dissertation: The Holy Cross Greek
Orthodox School of Theology, Brookline, MA, 2008; David Smith, Building Bridges Between an Orthodox
Monastery-orphanage in Guatemala and North American Orthodox Christians, Dissertation: Pittsburgh
Theological Seminary, Pittsburgh, PA, 1999; David Kiplagat Kongai and Archimandrite Neophytos, Historical
Development and Mission of the African Orthodox Church in Kenya: The Crisis Identity in Church Missions,
Dissertation: Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology, Brookline, MA, 2005; Stephen Tromp Wynn
Hayes, Orthodox Mission in Tropical Africa, Missionalia, Vol. XXIV, pp. 383 – 398, Pretoria: South African
Missiological Society, 1996; Francis Kimani Githieya, The New People of God: The Christian Community in the
African Orthodox Church (Karing’a) and the Arathi (Agikuru spirit churches), Dissertation: Emory University,
Atlanta, GA, 1992; Metropolitan Makarios (Tillyrides), Adventures in the Unseen (3 Vol.) [on modern
Orthodox missions in Africa], Rollinsford, NH: Orthodox Research Institute, 2004 – 2011; Metropolitan
Makarios (Tillyrides), Signs of Life (Vol. I): The Light and Hope of Christ Dawn in Africa, Brookline, MA: Holy
Cross Orthodox Press, 2013, 2nd Ed. [only one volume has been printed so far]; Metropolitan Makarios
(Tillyrides), In Africa: Orthodox Christian Witness and Service, Brookline, MA: Holy Cross Orthodox Press,
2015; Peter Alban Heers (translator), Demetrios Aslanidis and Monk Damascene Grigoriatis, Apostle to Zaire:
The Life and Legacy of Blessed Father Cosmas of Grigoriou, Thessalonica: Uncut Mountain Press, 2002.

(Concerning Alaska and Russian America): Barbara Smith, Russian Orthodoxy in Alaska, 1980, Anchorage,
AK; Vyacheslav Ivanov, The Russian Orthodox Church of Alaska and the Aleutian Islands and Its Relation to
Native American Traditions – An Attempt at a Multicultural Society, 1794 – 1912, Washington, DC: United
States Government Printing Office, 1997; Michael George Kovach, The Russian Orthodox Church in Russian
America, Dissertation: University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA, 1957; Richard Pierce, The Russian Orthodox
Religious Mission in America, 1794 – 1837, Materials for the Study of Alaskan History, No. 11., Kingston, ON:
The Limestone Press: 1978; Lydia Black (translator), The Journal of Iakov Netsvetov [St. Jacob Netsvetov]:
The Atka Years, 1828 – 1844, Kingston, ON: The Limestone Press, 1984, Materials for the Study of Alaskan
History, No. 16; Lydia Black (translator), The Journal of Iakov Netsvetov: The Yukon Years, 1845 – 1863,
Kingston, ON: The Limestone Press, 1984, Alaska History, No. 26; Ivan Veniaminov [St. Innocent of Alaska],
Notes on the Islands of the Unalashka District, Alaska History, No. 27., Translated by Lydia T. Black and R. H.
Geoghegan, Edited by Richard A. Pierce, Kingston, ON: The Limestone Press, 1984; (Other books in the
Materials for the Study of Alaskan History / Alaska History series, published by The Limestone Press); [Also
see the Publications of the Hakluyt Society]; Sergei Kan (translator), Tlingit Indians of Alaska by Anatolii
Kamenskii, Rasmuson Library Historical Translation Series, Vol. II, Fairbanks, AK: University of Alaska Press,
1985; Jerome Kisslinger (translator), Journals of the Priest Ioann Veniaminov in Alaska, 1823 to 1836,
Rasmuson Library Historical Translation Series, Vol. VII, Fairbanks, AK: University of Alaska Press, 1993;
Andrei A. Znamenski, Through Orthodox Eyes: Russian Missionary Narratives of Travels to the Denaína and
 247

Ahtna, 1850s – 1930s, Rasmuson Library Historical Translation Series, Vol. XIII, Fairbanks, AK: University of
Alaska Press, 2003; (Other books in the Rasmuson Library Historical Translation Series, published by the
University of Alaska Press); George M. Soldatow (translator), The Right Reverend Nestor: Bishop of the
Aleutians and Alaska, 1879 – 1882, Selected Letters, Documents, and Diary (2 Vol.), Minneapolis, MN: AARDM
Press, 1993; Lydia Black, Russians in Alaska, 1732 – 1867, Anchorage, AK: University of Alaska Press; Lydia
Black, Orthodoxy in Alaska, Christianizations of Alaska, Veniaminov’s Stewardship, and Orthodoxy in Alaska
After 1867, The Patriarch Athenagoras Orthodox Institute Distinguished Lectures, No. 6., Berkeley, CA: The
Patriarch Athenagoras Orthodox Institute, 1996; Lydia Black and Katherine L. Arndt, A Good and Faithful
Servant: The Year of Saint Innocent: An Exhibit Commemorating the Bicentennial of the Birth of Ioann
Veniaminov, 1797 – 1997, Fairbanks, AK: University of Alaska Fairbanks: Alaska State Veniaminov
Bicentennial Committee, 1997; Ivan Platonovich Barsukov, The Life and Work of Innocent, the Archbishop of
Kamchatka, the Kuriles and the Aleutian Islands, and later the Metropolitan of Moscow, San Francisco: Cubery
& Co., 1897; Paul D. Garrett, St. Innocent: Apostle to America, Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Press, 1979;
Sarah Elizabeth Cowie, Saint Innocent of Alaska: Apostle and Missionary, Ben Lomond, CA: Conciliar Press,
2005; Lev Puhalo, Innokenty of Alaska: The Life of Bishop Innocent Veniaminov, Chilliwack, BC: Synaxis
Press, 1976; Dan Pakulak, Ivan Veniaminov: A Study in Russian Orthodox Missionary Work, Dissertation:
Queen’s University, Kingston, OT, 1977; Vsevolod Rochcau, Innocent Veniaminov and the Russian Mission to
Alaska, 1820 – 1840, article in St. Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly, Vol. XV, No. III, pp. 105 – 120, Crestwood,
NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1971; Yasuo Ushimaru, Bishop Innocent: Founder of American Orthodoxy,
Bridgeport, CT: Metropolitan Council Publications Committee, 1964; Andrew Wermuth, From Earth to
Heaven: The Apostolic Adventures of Saint Innocent of Alaska, American Paradise Series, Vol. II, Ouzinkie, AK:
St. Herman of Alaska Press, 1997; Paul C. Cloyd and Anthony S. Donald, Russian Bishop’s House, Sitka
National Historical Park, Alaska, Denver, CO: National Park Service, 1982; Katherine L. Arndt, Historical
Context Study Supplemental Report: The Bishop’s House as Documented in the Alaska Russian Church
Archives and the Published Correspondence of Innokentii, Sitka, AK: Sitka National Historical Park, National
Park Service, 2nd Ed., 2004; Sergei Korsun & Lydia Black (translated by Fr. Daniel William Marshall from the
Russian), Herman: A Wilderness Saint, Jordanville, NY: Holy Trinity Publications, 2012; Saint Herman of
Alaska Brotherhood & Archbishop Alypy (Gamanovich), Saint Herman of Alaska: His Life and Service, Platina,
CA: St. Herman of Alaska Press, 2009; Frank Alfred Golder, Father Herman: Alaska’s Saint, Platina, CA: St.
Herman of Alaska Brotherhood, Third Ed., 2004 (first ed. Willits, CA: Eastern Orthodox Books, 1968);
Canonization of Saint Herman of Alaska: Kodiak, Alaska, 9 August, 1980 A.D., Sitka, AK: Bishop Innocent
Diocesan Press, 1970; Saint Herman of Alaska Brotherhood, 190 Years Since the Arrival of Orthodoxy to
America: 1794 – 1984, The Orthodox Word, Vol. XX, No. VI, November – December 1984, pp. 236 – 273,
Platina, CA: Saint Herman of Alaska Press, 1984; St. Herman of Alaska Brotherhood, New Valaam at Monks’
Lagoon on St. Herman’s Spruce Island: A Chronicle of Monastic Life on New Valaam, Alaska, Spruce Island: AK,
St. Herman of Alaska Press, 1997; Evan P. Nicolai, Iakov Georgevich Netsvetov: First Aleut-Russian Creole
Priest and Missionary to the Native Peoples of the Yukon and Kuskokwim Regions, Dissertation: St. Vladimir’s
Orthodox Theological Seminary, Yonkers, NY, 1992; Ivan Petrov (translator), A Daily Journal Kept by the Rev.
Father Juvenal, One of the Earliest Missionaries to Alaska, The Kroeber Anthropological Society Papers, No. VI,
pp. 26 – 59, Berkeley, CA: 1952; Constance Tarasar, Orthodox America 1794 – 1976, Syosset, NY: Orthodox
Church in America, 1975; Bishop Gregory (Afonsky), History of the Orthodox Church in Alaska, 1794 – 1914,
Kodiak, AK: St. Herman’s Seminary, 1977; Mark Stokoe and Leonid Kishkovsky, Orthodox Christians in North
America 1794 – 1994, Syosset, NY: Orthodox Christian Publication Center, 1995; Fr. Michael J. Oleksa,
Orthodox Alaska: A Theology of Mission, Yonkers, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1992; Fr. Michael J.
Oleksa, Alaskan Missionary Spirituality, Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2010, 2nd Ed.; Fr.
Michael J. Oleksa, The Orthodox Mission in America, International Review of Mission, Vol LXXI, Issue 281,
January 1982, pp. 78 – 87, Geneva: WCC, 1982; Fr. Michael J. Oleksa, The Death of Hieromonk Juvenaly, St.
Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly, Vol. XXX, No. III, Yonkers, NY: St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary,
1986; Jesse D. Murray, Together and Apart: The Russian Orthodox Church. The Russian Empire, and
Orthodox Missionaries in Alaska, 1794 – 1917, Russian History, Vol. XL, Issue I, pp. 91 – 110, Leiden: Brill,
2013; Basil M. Bensin, History of the Russian Orthodox Greek Catholic Church of North America, New York,
NY: Colonial Printing & Publishing Co., 1941; Basil M. Bensin, Russian Orthodox Church in Alaska, 1794 –
1967: Special Publication for the Centennial Celebration of the Purchase of Alaska by the United States from
the Russian Empire in 1867, Sitka, AK: Russian Orthodox Greek Catholic Church of North America, 1967; Paul
E. Barkey, The Russian Orthodox Church in its Mission to the Aleuts, Dissertation: Fuller Theological
 248

Seminary, 1988; Charles Reuben Hale, Innocent of Moscow: The Apostle of Kamchatka and Alaska, Privately
Printed, 1888; Sergei Kan, Memory Eternal: Tlingit Culture and Russian Orthodox Christianity Through Two
Centuries, Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press, 2014; Andrei A. Znamenski, Shamanism and
Christianity: Native Encounters with Russian Orthodox Missions in Siberia and Alaska, 1820 – 1917,
Contributions to the Study of World History, Vol. LXX, Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1999; Gerasim Eliel,
Russian Icons in a Native Church: Conflict in Culture in Western Alaska, Dissertation: St. Vladimir’s Orthodox
Theological Seminary, 2012; S. A. Mousalimas, The Transition from Shamanism to Russian Orthodoxy in
Alaska, Providence, RI: Berghahn Books, 1995; S. A. Mousalimas, From Mask to Icon: Transformation in the
Arctic, Brookline, MA: Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 2003; Barbara Sweetland Smith, Russian Orthodoxy in
Alaska: A History, Inventory, and Analysis of the Church Archives in Alaska with an Annotated Bibliography,
Anchorage, AK: Published for the Alaska Historical Commission, 1980; Barbara Sweetland Smith and Patricia
J. Petrivelli, A Sure Foundation: Aleut Churches in World War II, Achorage, AK: Aleutian/Pribilof Islands
Association, 1994; Barbara Sweetland Smith, Heaven on Earth: Orthodox Treasures of Siberia and North
America, Anchorage, AK: Anchorage Museum of History and Art, 1994; Barbara Sweetland Smith, The Church
of the Holy Apostles, Saints Peter and Paul on Saint Paul Island, Pribilof Islands: A History, 1821 – 2001,
Anchorage, AK: Aleutian/Pribilof Islands Restitution Trust, 2007; Barbara Sweetland Smith, The Church of
the Holy Great Martyr, Saint George the Victorious, on Saint George Island, Pribilof Islands: A History, 1833 –
1998, Anchorage, AK: Aleutian/Pribilof Islands Restitution Trust, 2007.

For works on recent Orthodox martyrs see: Nomikos Michael Vaporis, Witnesses for Christ: Orthodox
Christian Neomartyrs of the Ottoman Period, 1437 – 1860, Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press,
2000; Leonidas J. Papadopoulos, Slain For Their Faith: Orthodox Christian Martyrs under Moslem
Oppression, Ellensburg, WA: St. John of Kronstadt Press, 2013 [This volume is a successor to Papadopoulos
and Lizardos, New Martyrs of the Turkish Yoke, Seattle, WA: St. Nektarios Press, 1985]; Hieromonk Patapios
(translator), Constantine Cavarnos, The Significance of the New Martyrs in the Life of the Orthodox Church,
Etna, CA: Center for Traditionalist Orthodox Studies, 1992; Archimandrite Damascene (Orlovsky), New
Confessors of Russia, Vol. I (no other volumes have been printed), Platina, CA: St. Herman of Alaska
Brotherhood, 1998; Fr. Seraphim Rose & Ivan Andreyev, Russia’s Catacomb Saints: Lives of the New Martyrs,
Platina, CA: St. Herman of Alaska Press, 1982; Vladimir Moss, The Holy All-Russian New Martyrs; Vladimir
Moss, The Russian Golgotha: The Holy New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia, 5 Vols. (Dr. Moss’s books are
available online at OrthodoxChristianBooks.com. Also note that this series was planned to be published as
The Russian Golgotha, but only one volume has appeared in print (Wildwood, AB: Monastery Press, 2006));
Archpriest Michael Polsky, The New Martyrs of Russia, Wildwood, AB: Monastery Press, Expanded Ed., 2000;
Fr. Geoffrey Korz, The Chinese Martyrs of the Boxer Rebellion, AGAIN Magazine, Vol. XXII, No. III, July-
September 2000; Accounts of the Martyrs of the Chinese Orthodox Church who fell victim in Beijing in 1900,
Translated by Nina Tkachuk Dimas, 2004 (first published in Russian in 1906), available online at
(orthodox.cn/history/martyrs/index_en.html). There is a valuable forthcoming book by Uncut Mountain
Press on Orthodox Christians martyred by Roman Catholics.

Concerning Orthodox Christians under Islamic authorities see: Steven Runciman, The Great Church in
Captivity: A Study of the Patriarchate of Constantinople from the Eve of the Turkish Conquest to the Greek
War of Independence, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968; Samuel Noble and Alexander Treiger,
The Orthodox Church in the Arab World, 700 – 1700: An Anthology of Sources, DeKalb, IL: Northern Illinois
University Press, 2014; Kenneth Baxter Wolf, Christian Martyrs in Muslim Spain, Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2014 (originally published 1988) (this is part of the Cambridge Iberian and Latin American
Studies series, but appears to be the only volume about Orthodox Christians); Sidney H. Griffith, The Church
in the Shadow of the Mosque: Christians and Muslims in the World of Islam, Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 2008; Millicent Garrett Fawcett, The Martyrs of Turkish Misrule, with a Supplement by Miss
A. P. Irby, in Papers on the Eastern Question, No. XI, London: Cassell, Petter & Galpin, 1877; Robert M. De Witt
(editor), The Massacres in Syria: A Faithful Account of the Cruelties and Outrages Suffered by the Christians of
Mount Lebanon, During the Late Persecutions in Syria, New York, NY: Robert M. De Witt, 1860; Brittany
Pheiffer Noble and Samuel Noble (translators), Constantin Alexandrovich Panchenko, Arab Orthodox
Christians Under the Ottomans: 1516 – 1831, Jordanville, NY: Holy Trinity Publications, 2016; Brittany
Pheiffer Noble and Samuel Noble (translators), Constantin A. Panchenko, Orthodoxy and Islam in the Middle
East: The Seventh to the Sixteenth Centuries, Jordanville, NY: Holy Trinity Publications, 2021.
 249

Statistics of Christians in the era preceding the deaths of the Romanov family

The Catholic Encyclopedia gives the following statistics and table in 1912:

The total number of Christians amount to 618 millions, or 39.6 per cent of the entire population of
the earth. Of the Christians, not quite one-half – 292 ¾ millions, or 47.4 per cent – belong to the
Catholic Church; 186 millions, or 30.1 per cent are Protestants; 127 ½ millions, or 20.6 per cent,
Greek Orthodox; the rest are Oriental Schismatics or belong to sects not separately mentioned in the
table – Raskolniks, Jansenists, Old Catholics etc. …

Parts of the Catholics. Protestants. Greek Russian Oriental Total of

World. (Orthodox) Schismatics. Christians.
Europe 188,577,058 106,200,177 113,735,718 232,000 410,826,865
Asia 12,661,498 2,354,817 13,806,000 2,919,000 32,272,905
Australia 1,244,055 3,997,047 …………………. …………………. 5,241,102
and Oceania
Africa 2,689,839 2,634,660 …………………. 5,823,989 11,148,488
America 87,614,635 70,868,923 …………………. …………………. 158,482,558
Totals 292,787,085 186,055,624 127,541,718 8,974,989 617,972,9181

Note that the Catholic Encyclopedia is slightly underestimating the Orthodox populations, for it counts no
Orthodox for Africa, America, Australia, Oceania, and other countries or areas.

The Orthodox population for Australia and Oceania was small. The 1911 census of Australia gives 2,646
Orthodox Christians, and the 1911 New Zealand census gives 265.2

In the United States, the 1916 report on Religious Bodies (by the United States Department of Commerce
Bureau of the Census), gives 249,840 Orthodox Christians, while the 1906 report gives 129,606 members.3
There were about 117,000 Orthodox Christians in Canada in 1916,4 while the 1911 British census gives
88,522. There were 630 Orthodox Christians in Mexico in the 1910 census.5 Areas in America under the
British Empire reported 8 Orthodox in St. Lucia, 13 in Trinidad and Tobago, and 2 in the Falkland Islands
(including South Georgia). There was a modest Orthodox community in Argentina, with a Russian Orthodox
Church built 1901 in Buenos Aires. There were also several hundred Orthodox Christians in Cuba. 6

1 H. A. Krose, Statistics, in CE, Vol. XIV, pp. 280 – 281. The Catholic Encyclopedia gives an estimate of 1,561
millions of the human family for the years 1906 – 1908, and modern world population estimates give about
1.8 billions for the year 1916.
2 Census of England and Wales: 1911, General Report, Appendix D., Table VIII, p. 369, London: Published by

His Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1917.

3 Sam L. Rogers, Religious Bodies: 1916, Part I, Table LXVII, p. 526, Washington, DC: Government Printing

Office, 1919.
4 Sam L. Rogers, Religious Bodies: 1916, Part II, p. 260, Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1919.
5 Chester Lloyd Jones, Mexico and Its Reconstruction, Ch. II, p. 22, New York, NY: D. Appleton and Company,

1922.
6 This is estimated from official reports of the nationalities of immigrants to Cuba. I have not had access to

Á ngel C. Betancourt, Census of the Republic of Cuba, 1919, Havana, Maza, Arroyo y Caso, s. en c., Printers,
[1920].
 250

The Catholic Encyclopedia statistics give 23,000 Orthodox Christians in Japan, but later sources give 37,000 in
1921 (compared to 138,000 Protestants and 76,000 Roman Catholics),1 which appears not to have grown
after 1917. The Catholic Encyclopedia does not include any number for Orthodox in Korea or China. The
number of Orthodox Christians in Korea before 1917 appears to have been only a few hundred. 2 Bishop
Innocent (then Archimandrite Innocent) reports in 1916 that in the Russian mission in China, “The total
number of baptized Chinese is 5,587.”3 The 1911 Census of the United Kingdom reports 17 Orthodox in Hong
Kong (including Leased Territory).4

In Europe, the Catholic Encyclopedia does not provide Orthodox figures for several countries and places,
which will be noted here. Ireland had 30 Orthodox in 1911, and Gibraltar had 1. 5 For Denmark, the Catholic
Encyclopedia states 100, but the 1911 census of Denmark has 256 Orthodox.6 The Catholic Encyclopedia says
there were 808,321 Orthodox in Bosnia in 1909, whereas the 1910 census reported a total of 832,118. 7 The
Catholic Encyclopedia has no figures for Belgium, but there were two Orthodox Churches (a Russian in
Brussels and a Greek in Antwerp) in 1900. The number of Orthodox Christians in France in the early 1900’s
is not given, but a French Handbook of the Orthodox Church reports that there were about 20,000 Orthodox
in France at the end of the 19th century.8 Italy had Serbian and Greek Orthodox communities (with Greek
Churches in Trieste, Venice and Livorno, as well as a Serbian Church in Trieste).9 Sweden (with a Russian
Church in Stockholm founded in 1617), Norway (with a Russian chapel built in 1565 near the Russian border
for the Skolt Sámi), Switzerland, and the Netherlands had a very small number of Orthodox Christians in the
early 1900s. I was unable to find data on the number of Orthodox Christians in England, Wales, and Scotland
before 1917, but there were significant, though small, Orthodox communities in the United Kingdom, and the
1911 British census reports that 119,142 people in England, Wales, and Scotland were born in Russia, and
2,042 were born in Greece.10

The Catholic Encyclopedia has not given any Eastern Orthodox statistics for Africa, and has only counted the
Oriental Schismatics. In Egypt there were 76,953 Greek Orthodox Christians.11 Regarding the British Empire
in Africa in 1911, there were 1,945 Eastern Orthodox Christians in the Union of South Africa, 1 in Basutoland,
39 in the colony of Sierra Leone, and 1 in the Seychelles Islands and Dependencies. 12 In Tunisia there was a

1 The Hundred and Seventeenth Report of the British and Foreign Bible Society: For the year ending March
MCMXXI, p. 204, London: The Bible House, 1921.
2 Kristina V. Biryukov, Russian Orthodox Mission in Korea until 1917, Pacific Science Review, Vol. XVI, pp. 148

– 155, 2014.
3 Sidney David Gamble and John Stewart Burgess, Peking: A Social Survey, Ch. XVI, p. 377, New York, NY:

George H. Doran Company, 1921.

4 Census of England and Wales: 1911, General Report, Appendix D., Table VIII, p. 364, London: Published by

His Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1917.

5 Census of England and Wales: 1911, General Report, Appendix D., Table VIII, p. 362, London: Published by

His Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1917.

6 The Lutheran World Almanac and Annual Encyclopedia for 1922, p. 115, New York, NY: The National

Lutheran Council, 1922.

7 Frank Moore Colby and Allen Leon Churchill (editors), The New International Year Book: A Compendium of

the World’s Progress for the Year 1911, Bosnia and Herzegovina, p. 120, New York, NY: Dodd, Mead and
Company, 1912.
8 www.sedmitza.ru/text/7363779.html (in Russian). There was a significant Greek community in Marseilles

(see the next note).

9 See Matthieu Grenet, La Fabrique Communautaire: les Grecs à Venise, Livourne et Marseille, v. 1770 – v.

1830, Dissertation: European University Institute, Florence, 2010. Trieste was part of the Austro-Hungarian
Empire at this time.
10 Census of England and Wales: 1911, General Report, Appendix D., Table VII, p. 352, London: Published by

His Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1917.

11 Frank Moore Colby and Allen Leon Churchill (editors), The New International Year Book: A Compendium of

the World’s Progress for the Year 1911, Egypt, p. 233, New York, NY: Dodd, Mead and Company, 1912.
12 Census of England and Wales: 1911, General Report, Appendix D., Table VIII, pp. 364 – 365, London:

Published by His Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1917.

 251

community of several hundred Orthodox Greeks.1 There were a few Greek Orthodox in Tripoli, Libya, as
there had been a small Church there since 1647.2 Ethiopia had a sizeable Greek Orthodox community, with
some missionary activity.3

Adding these numbers and approximations to the Catholic Encyclopedia figures (127,541,718 + 2,646 + 265 +
249,840 + 117,000 + 630 + 8 + 13 + 2 + 2000 + 500 + 300 + (37,000 – 23,000) + 5,587 + 17 + 30 + 1 + (256 –
100) + (832,118 – 808,321) + 400 + 20,000 + 1000 + 400 + 5,000 + 76,953 + 1,945 + 1 + 39 + 1 + 400 + 200 +
1000), there is a total population of 128,065,849 Orthodox Christians around the world before the fall of the
Russian Empire in 1917. There are likely more additions and corrections that could be made to the Catholic
Encyclopedia statistics, but it appears that this is a fair estimate.

The former Jesuit Joseph McCabe wrote an entire book arguing that Rome had only 180,000,000 to
200,000,000 followers in 1909, and that the usual Roman Catholic statistics were highly inflated, 4 and do not
take into account the tens of millions of alleged Roman Catholics who did not attend Mass or other Church
services, among many other serious statistical errors. Of course, the same criticism applied to the Orthodox
statistics would lower that number as well, but not to the same degree.

The American Protestant Episcopal bishop and scholar Charles Reuben Hale (1837 – 1900) wrote admirably
of Orthodox missions:

It has long been the habit of persons unfriendly to the Orthodox Churches of the East to speak of
them as well nigh dead Churches. The charge has been but too eagerly repeated by such as,
determined upon a certain course of public policy, through a blind selfishness which must surely
bring, if persisted in, a dread Nemesis, were not inclined to think well of Eastern Christians, whom it
would have been inconvenient to recognize as brethren. A favorite specification in the accusation
brought against Christians of the East has been that they were utterly wanting in a missionary spirit.
In these days, we know something of what enslavement to the Turk involves. And what, in common
justice, to say nothing of Christian charity, have we a right to expect from those groaning under such
bondage? Does not Mouravieff well demand, as to these, in Question Religieuse d’Orient et d’Occident,

“Have we the conscience to ask that they should make converts, when now for more than four
hundred years, they have been struggling, as in a bloody sweat, to keep Christianity alive under
Moslem tyranny? And, in that time, how many martyrs, of every age and condition, have shed a halo
around the Oriental Church? Not less than an hundred martyrs of these later days are
commemorated in the services of the Church, and countless are the unnamed ones who have suffered
for the faith, in these four hundred years of slavery. In 1821, Gregory, Patriarch of Constantinople,
was hung at the door of his cathedral, on Easter Day. Another Patriarch, Cyril, they hung at
Adrianople. Cyprian, Archbishop of Cyprus, with his three Suffragan Bishops, and all the Hegumens
of the Cyprian monasteries, were hanged upon one tree before the palace of the ancient kings. Many
other prelates and prominent ecclesiastics were put to death in the islands and in Anatolia. Mount

1 Nataliya Zherlitsyna, The Orthodox Greek Community in Tunisia Under the Auspices of the Russian Empire
(with Reference to AVPRI), in African Studies in Russia: Works of the Institute for African Studies of the
Russian Academy of Sciences, Yearbook 2014 – 2016, pp. 105 – 109, Moscow: Institute for African Studies
RAS, 2017.
2 Constantin G. Patelos et al., The Orthodox Church in the Ecumenical Movement: Documents and Statements

1902 – 1975, p. 242, Geneva: World Council of Churches Publications, 1978.

3 Theodore Natsoulas, The Hellenic Presence in Ethiopia: A Study of a European Minority in Africa (1740 –

1936), Abba Salama, Vol. VIII, Athens: [publisher not identified], 1977; Anestis John Ghanotakis, The Greeks
of Ethiopia, 1889 – 1970, Dissertation: Boston University, 1979.
4 Joseph McCabe, The Decay of the Church of Rome, New York, NY: E. P. Dutton and Company, 1907.
 252

Athos was devastated. And yet, none apostatized from the faith of Christ. Are not such martyrdoms
the best way of making converts? It was thus that, in the first three centuries, the Church was
founded in those lands. How can it be said that, among people who could so die for the faith, there
was no real spiritual life? Has not the Greek Church shown by her deeds the steadfastness of her
faith?”

The kingdom of Greece, in its sixty years of independence, has labored nobly to repair the desolations
of many generations. But surely we, who find excuse in the circumstances of the times for the
apparent lack of interest of the American Church in the missionary cause during the first half century
of our separate national life, must readily admit that the Hellenic Church has had, and still has, ample
scope for her energies at home.

We now come to the Church in Russia, and what do we find? A large part of what now makes up the
Russian Empire was, when it became such, inhabited by Mahometans and heathen. Yet everywhere
the Gospel is, and long has been, preached, and God’s blessing has manifestly followed the
proclamation of His word. Says Mouravieff, to quote again from Question Religieuse, etc.:

“The loving principles of the extension of Christianity are at work here. The Russian Church, as
dominant throughout a great empire, diffuses gradually the light of Christ’s Gospel within her own
borders. Her more immediate duty is to labor for the conversion of the heathen, Jews, Mahometans,
and schismatics, who belong to her, scattered over the one-ninth part of the habitable globe. In those
dioceses where there are heathen or Mahometans, the languages spoken by them are taught in the
theological seminaries, so that not only those specially devoted to the work, but the parochial clergy
also, may be enabled to act as missionaries. Russia has sowed the seeds of Christianity over a vast
field, ever establishing new parishes, which most naturally become also mission stations. In this
mode of working, there is little to excite attention, or to create talk. Where and how have so many of
our heathen become Christians? It is not every one who knows. But multitudes of these are now
enjoying the blessings of Christianity and civilization. There is yet, however, much to be done for the
conversion, and establishment in the faith, of many tribes who are more or less in darkness, and the
Church still labors for and with them.”

But the missions of the Russian Church are not confined to the heathen or false believers within her
own borders. For many years she has had a mission at Pekin, and the most successful mission work
in Japan would seem to be that carried on by her.

If information in regard to Russian missionary work is not forced upon the attention, it is yet not
unattainable to those who seek for it. The literature of Russian missions is not a small one. The
writer, in giving at the head of this paper a list of works now before him, has mentioned but a small
part of those bearing on the subject. Let us cast a hasty glance at these. We shall find them filled, not
so much with talk about missions as with records of faithful missionary work. …

“Who in the West,” asks Mouravieff, “hears anything of the truly apostolical labors of the Archbishop
of Kamchatka, who is ever sailing over the ocean, or driving in reindeer sledges over his vast but
thinly-settled diocese, thousands of miles in extent, everywhere baptizing the natives, for whom he
has introduced the use of letters, and translated the Gospel into the tongue of the Aleontines?”
Few, indeed, have heard; doubtless there are many who would be glad to hear.1

1Charles Reuben Hale, Innocent of Moscow: The Apostle of Kamchatka and Alaska, pp. 1 – 7, Privately
Printed, 1888. Italics in original. I highly recommend reading the rest of this pamphlet. Saint Innocent has
become more widely known in the West, but many others are still relatively unknown, such as Saint Tryphon
of Pechenga (1495 – 1583), Enlightener of the Sami, who succeeded, despite vigorous opposition by the
pagan priesthood, in converting thousands of the Sámi and Samoyedic peoples around Lapland and the Kola
Peninsula.
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Ch. IV The Russian Church

The Russian people accepted Christianity under the reign of Equal-to-the-Apostles Holy Great Prince Saint
Vladimir Sviatoslavich, the Enlightener of the Russian Land (956 – 1015). And the Church in those lands, ever
since its inception, adopted the Orthodox faith from the Constantinopolitan Church, and maintained its
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communion with the Orthodox Church when Rome fell away from the faith about forty years after Vladimir’s
death. Moreover, Vladimir is recognized as a saint by the Roman Catholic communion, and his feast is
commemorated by some Eastern Rite Roman Catholics.1

There is a beautiful account in the Russian Primary Chronicle (compiled 1113) on the Christianization of
Russia, around the year 988:

6495 (987). Vladimir summoned together his boyars [vassals] and the city-elders, and said
to them, “Behold, the Bulgars came before me urging me to accept their religion. Then came the
Germans and praised their own faith; and after them came the Jews. Finally the Greeks appeared,
criticizing all other faiths but commanding their own, and they spoke at length, telling the history of
the whole world from its beginning. Their words were artful, and it was wondrous to listen and
pleasant to hear them. They preach the existence of another world. ‘Whoever adopts our religion
and then dies shall arise and live forever. But whosoever embraces another faith, shall be consumed
with fire in the next world.’ What is your opinion on this subject, and what do you answer?” The
boyars and the elders replied: “You know, oh Prince, that no man condemns his own possessions, but
praises them instead. If you desire to make certain, you have servants at your disposal. Send them to
inquire about the ritual of each and how he worships God.”

Their counsel pleased the prince and all the people, so that they chose good and wise men to
the number of ten, and directed them to go first among the Bulgars and inspect their faith. The
emissaries went their way, and when they arrived at their destination they beheld the disgraceful
actions of the Bulgars and their worship in the mosque; then they returned to their own country.
Vladimir then instructed them to go likewise among the Germans, and examine their faith, and finally
to visit the Greeks. They thus went into Germany, and after viewing the German ceremonial, they
proceeded to Tsar’grad [Constantinople], where they appeared before the Emperor. He inquired on
what mission they had come, and they reported to him all that had occurred. When the Emperor
heard their words, he rejoiced, and did them great honour on that very day.

On the morrow, the Emperor sent a message to the patriarch to inform him that a Russian
delegation had arrived to examine the Greek faith, and directed him to prepare the church and the
clergy, and to array himself in his sacerdotal robes, so that the Russes [Russians] might behold the
glory of the God of the Greeks. When the Patriarch received these commands, he bade the clergy
assemble, and they performed the customary rites. They burned incense, and the choirs sang hymns.
The Emperor accompanied the Russes to the church, and placed them in a wide space, calling their
attention to the beauty of the edifice, the chanting, and the pontifical services and the ministry of the
deacons, while he explained to them the worship of his God. The Russes were astonished, and in
their wonder praised the Greek ceremonial. Then the Emperors Basil and Constantine invited the
envoys to their presence, and said, “Go hence to your native country,” and thus dismissed them with
valuable presents and great honour.

Thus they returned to their own country, and the Prince called together his boyars and the
elders. Vladimir then announced the return of the envoys who had been sent out, and suggested that
their report be heard. He thus commanded them to speak out before his retinue. The envoys
reported, “When we journeyed among the Bulgars, we beheld how they worship in their temple,
called a mosque, while they stand ungirt. The Bulgar bows, sits down, looks hither and thither like
one possessed, and there is no happiness among them, but instead only sorrow and a dreadful
stench. Their religion is not good. Then we went among the Germans, and saw them performing
many ceremonies in their temples; but we beheld no glory there. Then we went on to Greece, and the
Greeks led us to the edifices where they worship their God, and we knew not whether we were in
heaven or on earth. For on earth there is no such splendor or such beauty, and we are at a loss how
to describe it. We know only that God dwells there among men, and their service is fairer than the

1Andrew J. Shipman, Saint Vladimir the Great, The Catholic Encyclopedia, Vol. XV, pp. 497 – 498, New York,
NY: Robert Appleton Company, 1912.
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ceremonies of other nations. For we cannot forget that beauty. Every man, after tasting something
sweet, is afterward unwilling to accept that which is bitter, and therefore we cannot dwell longer
here.” Then the boyars spoke and said, “If the Greek faith were evil, it would not have been adopted
by your grandmother Olga, who was wiser than all other men.” Vladimir then inquired where they
should all accept baptism, and they replied that the decision rested with him. 1

The Anglican priest Arthur Penrhyn Stanley (1815 – 1881), Regius Professor of Ecclesiastical History at
Oxford, Fellow of the Royal Society, and Dean of Westminster, writes in his history of the Eastern Church:

The “Greek Church,” properly so called, includes the widespread race which speaks the
Greek language, from its southernmost outpost in the desert of Mount Sinai, through all the islands
and coasts of the Levant and the Archipelago; having its centre in Greece and in Constantinople. It
represents to us, in however corrupt and degraded a form, the old, glorious, world-inspiring people
of Athens, Thebes, and Sparta. It is the means by which that people has been kept alive through four
centuries of servitude. It was no Philhellenic enthusiast, but the grey-headed Germanus, Archbishop
of Patras, who raised the standard of Greek independence: the first champion of that cause of Grecian
liberty, in behalf of which in our own country the past generation was so zealous, and the present
generation is so indifferent. The sanctuary of the Greek race, which is in a great degree the sanctuary
and refuge of the whole Eastern Church, is Athos – “the Holy Mountain.” The old Greek mythology
which made the peak of Samothrace the seat of the Pelasgic worship, and the many-headed range of
Olympus the seat of the Hellenic gods, left the beautiful peninsula and noble pyramid of Athos to
receive the twenty monasteries which shelter the vast communities of Greek, Ionian, Bulgarian,
Servian, and Russian monks.

The Greek Church reminds us of the time when the tongue, not of Rome, but of Greece, was
the sacred language of Christendom. It was a striking remark of the Emperor Napoleon, that the
introduction of Christianity itself was, in a certain sense, the triumph of Greece over Rome; the last
and most signal instance of the instance of Horace, “Græcia capta ferum victorum cepit.” The early
Roman Church was but a colony of Greek Christians or Grecised Jews. The earliest Fathers of the
Western Church, Clemens, Irenæus, Hermas, Hippolytus, wrote in Greek. The early Popes were not
Italians but Greeks. The name of “Pope” is not Latin but Greek – the common and now despised name
of every pastor in the Eastern Church. It is true that this Grecian colour was in part an accidental
consequence of the wise diffusion of the Greek language by Alexander’s conquests through the East,
and was thus a sign not so much of the Hellenic, as of the Hebrew and Oriental character of the early
Christian communities. But the advantage thus given to the Byzantine Church has never been lost or
forgotten. It is a perpetual witness that she is the mother and Rome the daughter. It is her privilege
to claim a direct continuity of speech with the earliest times, to boast of reading the whole code of
Scripture, old as well as new, in the language in which it was read and spoken by the Apostles. The
humblest peasant who reads his Septuagint or Greek Testament in his own mother tongue, on the
hills of Bœotia, may proudly feel that he has an access to the original oracles of divine truth, which
Pope and Cardinal reach by a barbarous and imperfect translation; that he was a key of knowledge,
which in the West is only to be found in the hands of the learned classes.

The Greek Church is thus the only living representative of the Hellenic race, and speaks in
the only living voice which has come down to us from the Apostolic age. But its main characteristic is
its lineal descent from the first Christian Empire. “Romaic,” not “Hellenic,” is the name by which,
from its long connection with the Roman Empire of Byzantium, the language of Greece is now known.
“Roman” (Ῥωμαῖος), not “Greek,” is the name by which (till quite recently) a Greek would have
distinguished himself from the Mussulman population around him. “The Church of Rome,” in the
language of the far East, is not, as with us, the Latin Church, but the community which adheres to the

1Samual Hazzard Cross and Olgerd P. Sherbowitz-Wetzor (translators and editors), The Russian Primary
Chronicle: Laurentian Text, pp. 110 – 111, Cambridge, MA: The Mediaeval Academy of America, 1953.
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orthodox faith of the “New Rome” of Constantinople. Not Athens, not Alexandria, not even Jerusalem,
but Constantinople, is the sacred city to which the eyes of the Greek race and of the Eastern Church
are turned at this day. We can hardly doubt that it was the point to which the eyes of the whole
Christian world were turned, when at the opening of the fourth century it rose as the first Christian
city, at the command of the first Christian Emperor, on a site which, by its unequalled advantages,
was naturally marked out as the capital of a new world, as the inauguration of a new era. The
subsequent rise of the Papal city on the ruins of the old Pagan metropolis must not blind us to the
fact that there was a period in which the Eastern and not the Western Rome was the true centre of
Christendom. The modern grandeur of S. Peter’s must not be permitted to obscure the effect which
was produced on the taste and the feelings of the sixth century by the erection of S. Sophia. The
learning of the Greek Church, which even down to the eleventh century excelled that of the Latin, in
the fifteenth century directly contributed more than any other single cause to the revival of letters
and the German Reformation. In Asia and in Constantinople it has long sunk under the barbarism of
its conquerors. But in the little kingdom of independent Greece, the Greek clergy is still, within
narrow limits, an enlightened body. In it, if in any portion of Eastern Christendom, lives the liberal,
democratic spirit of ancient Hellas. Athens, with all the drawbacks of an ill-adjusted union between
new and old ways of thought, is now the centre of education and improvement to the Greek clergy
throughout the Levant. …

If Oriental Christendom is bound to the past by its Asiatic and its Greek traditions, there can
be no doubt that its bond of union with the present and the future is through the greatest of Sclavonic
nations, whose dominion has now spread over the whole East of Europe, over the whole North of
Asia, over a large tract of Western America. If Constantinople be the local centre of the Eastern
Church, its personal head, and has been for four centuries, the great potentate who, under the
successive names of Grand-Prince, Czar, and Emperor, has reigned at Moscow and St. Petersburg.
Not merely by its proximity of geographical situation, but by the singular gift of imitation with which
the Sclavonic race has been endowed, is the Russian Church the present representative of the old
Imperial Church of Constantine. The Sclavonic alphabet is Greek. The Russian names of emperor,
saint, and peasant are Greek. Sacred buildings, which in their actual sites in the East have been
altered by modern innovations, are preserved for our study in the exact models made from them in
earlier days by Russian pilgrims. And in like manner, customs and feelings which have perished in
Greece and Syria, may still be traced in the churches and monasteries of the North. When Napoleon
called Alexander I, in bitter scorn, a Greek of the Lower Empire, it was a representation of the Czar’s
position in a fuller sense than Napoleon intended or would have admitted. For good or for evil, as a
check on its development or as a spur to its ambition, the Church and Empire of Russia have
inherited the religion and the policy of the New Rome of the Bosphorus far more fully than any
western nation, even under Charlemagne himself, inherited the spirit or the forms of the Old Rome
beside the Tiber.1

The French Protestant pastor Boissard, who has a special sympathy with “Holy Russia”, in his book on the
Russian Church, writes:

The Russian Church, whose destiny though the ages we have endeavoured in these pages to
trace, seems to have received from Providence a special mission in the work of the religious
development of humanity. After that Jerusalem, the land of promise, had swiftly lost the supremacy
which belonged to her as the cradle of the Christian churches, Constantinople, heiress of her
influence, projected on the Christian East the rays of a vivid light. Through the care of her patriarchs,
the profound idolatry of the countries in the north of Europe had given place to the reign of the
Gospel. And when, in her turn, new Rome had disappeared before the wave of Mussulman invasion, a
mighty empire, brought in the tenth century to the knowledge of the Evangelical faith, received the
deposit of the persecuted Church, and protected under the domes of her sanctuaries the doctrine, the

1Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, Lectures on the History of the Eastern Church, Lecture I, pp. 65 – 68, London: J.M.
Dent & Co., 1910; pp. 13 – 18 of the 1864, 3rd ed., London: John Murray.
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traditions, the discipline, and the worship of the first ages of Christianity, which the chair of
Constantinople had confided to her fidelity. …

If antiquity of faith may be invoked in favour of truth of doctrine, this privilege belongs to the
Oriental Church. It is a remarkable fact, that this Church, after all the vicissitudes through which she
has been called to pass, and the hardships she has had to encounter, proclaims, of herself, that she
has remained faithful to her confession, that she has preserved, without change, the doctrine of the
Apostles, and the decisions of the seven œcumenical councils. When the relation between her and
Rome was consummated, under the patriarchate of Photius, it was in vain that Rome used every
artifice to bring her back under the universal empire that she assumed to wield over Christendom; in
vain the great movement of the Crusades was directed against the Greek Church rather than against
the usurpers of the holy places; in vain, the councils of Lyons and Florence, convened less with a
conciliatory design, than in the interests of a determined policy, pronounced the problematic fusion
of the two great Christian communions. The Oriental Church, whatever may have been the rents and
transformations it has successively undergone, rests firm upon its foundation, and its future, in the
judgment of human prevision, seems not to be less assured than that of Rome. …

It is said that the rupture with the West has condemned the Eastern Church to isolation, or
that she has defiled, in her bosom, the source of vital strength that results from the harmony of the
whole body? If we throw a glance over the parallel development of the two Churches, we remark at
the outset that the great schism was, for that of the East a rampart raised up against very many
dangers. It preserved her from the spiritual despotism and the dogmatic or disciplinary innovations
to which her rival has been far from a stranger; from those alterations of doctrine and deviations
from morals that inflicted upon the Roman Church the fruitful protest of the sixteenth century; from
the celibacy of the priesthood, which, while it doubtless makes the clergy a militant army in the
service of the Papacy, contributes a permanent and deadly peril to purity of life and morals; from the
sacrilegious commerce in indulgences which obliterates the human conscience; from the horrors of
the Inquisition, that odious infraction of the imprescriptable right of religious liberty; finally, from
the discredit that, in the present day, attaches to a weapon formerly redoubtable, which Rome now
hesitates to use – the power of excommunication. …

In these diverse points of view the great schism, far from having been an obstacle to the
progress of Christianity, seems to us to have efficiently served the cause of the Gospel. Living for long
ages by her own life, the Church of the East has been able to repudiate the errors of Rome, who,
monopolizing to her own profit the Holy Scriptures, proclaims that to her alone pertains the right of
presenting the faith to the peoples of the earth. The Oriental Communion places everywhere, and,
above all things, the sovereign authority of the sacred Scriptures themselves. She favours and
stimulates the reading of them by the faithful. Whilst others hinder men from drawing at this Divine
source of the knowledge of duty and truth, she digs for it new channels by the dissemination of
biblical translations in the vulgar tongue. She invites all her members to make, of the sacred books,
the daily aliment of their moral and religious needs. Here is a mighty force, and a guarantee for the
truth; to be the pure reflection of the Word of God is, for every church, to partake of its infallibility. 1

A curious Protestant appreciation of the Orthodox Church, written at the end of the 19th century:

The Greek Church is the most ancient and the most venerable of all the Churches of Christendom. The
Greek Church stretches away back in a direct and an unbroken line to the days of our Lord and His
apostles. The New Testament from Matthew to Revelation was all written in Greek. And the Old
Testament itself has now for more than two thousand years been far more widely read in its
Septuagint Greek than even in its original Hebrew. The great Ecumenical Councils also all sat in
Greek cities, and carried on their great debates in the Greek tongue. In no other tongue, indeed, could
they have carried on their great debates; and in no other tongue could their great Creeds have been

1L. Boissard, L’Eglise de Russie, Paris: Cherbuliez, 1867, (2 Vol.); translated in The London Quarterly Review,
Vol. XXXII, No. LXIII, April and July, 1869, Literary Notices, pp. 236 – 238, London: Elliot Stock, 1869.
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composed and handed down to us. The Greek tongue is by far the most powerful as well as the most
exquisite intellectual instrument that has ever been perfected by the genius of man. And the finest
use to which that fine tongue has ever been put has been the composition of the New Testament and
the construction of the great Creeds of the Greek Church. …

And, accordingly, the Greek Church in Russia, like Russia among the nations, is the most conservative,
stationary, and that to stagnation almost, of all the Churches in Christendom. The massiveness, the
immobility, the inelasticity of the Greek Church in Russia is a proverb among all her sister Churches.
No innovation has ever invaded the Russian Church. No development, either in doctrine or in
discipline, has ever disturbed the venerable and vast calm of The Holy Orthodox Church. She is the
true home of use and wont; she is the true harbour and house of refuge for all those who are
determined neither to go forward nor to go backward, but always to stand still. ‘The straws of
custom,’ says Stanley, ‘show which way the spirit of an institution blows. The primitive posture of
standing in prayer still retains its ground in the East;1 whilst in the West it is only preserved in the
extreme Protestant communities by way of antagonism to Rome. Organs and all musical instruments
are as odious to a Greek or a Russian churchman as they are to a Scottish Presbyterian. Even the
schism that convulsed the Church almost at the same time that Latin Christendom was rent by the
German Reformation, was not a forward but a retrograde movement, a protest not against abuses,
but against innovations.’

The Russian Church is The One, Apostolic, Holy, Orthodox, Catholic Church, and all outside of her
communion and obedience are schismatics and heretics. We are accustomed in the West and North
to insolent enough assumptions, and to lofty enough pretensions; but the East looks down on us all
alike. We are all so many rank dissenters and turbulent non-conformists to her. Rome and Geneva,
Canterbury and Edinburgh, are all in the same condemnation to her. The Pope is the oldest of her
prodigal sons, and General Booth is the youngest; only the Pope is by far the worse, in her eyes, of the
two. The first Pope, in her eyes, was the first Protestant. He was the real and original father of all
liberalism in politics and all rationalism in philosophy and in theology. 2 In the words of Canonist
Theodore Balsamon,—‘We excommunicate the Pope for all his errors : and with him, all the West
who heretically adhere to him. All the Westerns, therefore, are to be treated simply as so many
schismatics, and an anathema must be provided for their abjuration.’ And that anathema is provided
and pronounced to satiety surely in every Greek Church on every first Sunday in Lent : and that
Sunday is sanctified by the name of Orthodox Sunday. On that orthodox and denunciatory day some
sixty anathemas are hurled at all heretics and schismatics from Arius of Alexandria down to our own
day. Anathema ! Anathema ! Anathema ! But on the other hand, for all the orthodox Greek
Emperors,—Everlasting remembrance ! Everlasting remembrance ! Everlasting remembrance !

Till I had gone to the originals for myself I was wont to think that the Commination Services of
Orthodox Sunday must be something altogether savage and wholly insufferable to the mind of Christ.
But I was greatly disappointed when I felt myself forced to surrender all my indignation and
contempt at the Greek Church on account of Orthodox Sunday, and to admit that, with many

1 Canon 20 of the First Ecumenical Council at Nicaea decrees, “Forasmuch as there are certain persons who
kneel on the Lord’s Day and in the days of Pentecost, therefore, to the intent that all things may be uniformly
observed everywhere (in every parish), it seems good to the holy Synod that prayer be made to God
standing.” Also see Canon 90 of Trullo.
2 One example of how Roman Catholics are the original authors of liberalism, by which is meant the denial of

the singularity, objectivity, and eternality of truth, is found in the words of the influential Cardinal Nicholas of
Cusa (1401 – 1464), the highly influential polymath and Latin Papal legate sent to Bohemia in the middle of
the 15th century, endeavouring to induce the Bohemians to accept the interpretation of the modern Latin
Church as to half communion, saying: “Nor is it surprising, if the practice of the church interprets the
Scriptures at one time in one manner and at another in another – for the Scriptures follow the church, which
is the earlier of the two, and on account of which Scripture (is given), and not conversely.” (Card. Cusan. Epis.
vii ad Bohem. Opp. tom. ii pp. 857, 858. Basil, 1565; cited in Collette, 1864, “The Novelties of Romanism”, p.
32).
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imperfections from my point of view, and with many things that, if I were their ecclesiastical and
devotional censor, I would strike out,—yet, with all that, there is a great deal on Orthodox Sunday
that is not only as true as the word of God, but is also both tender and charitable, stately and noble,
sweet and beautiful. Let us give the Greek Church, even on Orthodox Sunday, her full and even liberal
due.1

1 Alexander Whyte, Father John of the Greek Church, pp. 10 – 14, London: Oliphant Anderson & Ferrier, 1898.
 260

George Frederick Wright (1838 – 1921), an American scientist and Protestant seminary professor, wrote a
lovely article on the “Influence of the Russian Liturgy”:
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In a journey across Asia three years ago, occupying several months, I was deeply impressed
by the many evidences of the leavening power of Christianity throughout the Russian Empire. In
Japan, one of the most successful and influential Christian missions is that of the Russian Church,
under the leadership of Bishop Nicolai, at Tokyo. My first attendance upon a Russian church service
was at Port Arthur, where I found myself crowding for standing room with an indiscriminate
company of Cossacks of the rank and officers of every grade, including Admiral Alexieff, and hearing,
as ever afterwards in the Russian service, the crying of infants in arms, who are regularly brought by
their parents to the church service, to receive the communion. Later, while journeying upon the
construction train which penetrated Manchuria, I spent some days in the company of a benevolent-
hearted inferior church official who was collecting money for alms to be administered by the church.
Everywhere his reception was most cordial by all classes.

In all the villages and cities of Siberia and Turkestan, the priest, with his family, evidently
occupied a position of great respect and influence, and was looked to with unfailing confidence by the
poorer classes for sympathy and help. Repeatedly fairs of the Red Cross Society were encountered,
engaged in raising money to provide nurses and assistance, not only for the hospitals in the army, but
for those which are erected at the prominent points frequented by emigrants and exiles. In all the
post-houses throughout a fourteen-hundred-mile drive through Turkestan, copies of the New
Testament, furnished by the Imperial Bible Society at St. Petersburg, and bearing the imprint of the
British and Foreign Bible Society, were found in the waiting-rooms.

In the wilds of Transbaikalia, as well as in the deserts of Turkestan, penetrated by the

railroad, cars were met, provided with priests, and singers, and all the paraphernalia necessary for a
church service. At one place in Transbaikalia, where a church car was sidetracked for a few days to
meet the wants of the locality, our train stopped long enough for such a service. The third and
fourth-class passengers immediately surrounded it, and participated with the greatest reverence. In
the larger churches in Irkutsk and Krasnoyarsk, we encountered beautiful young women of good
estate, conducting classes of untrained boys to the services, and watching over them with all the
interest displayed by those connected with the “settlements” in our own country. In fact, everywhere
we were surrounded by that indefinable atmosphere which we characterize as Christian civilization,
and which is in as striking contrast with heathen civilization as light is with darkness.

In broader lines, also, the influence of this leavening power of Christianity is seen
everywhere throughout the Empire. It was the Tsar of Russia who summoned the peace congress
through which the Tribunal of the Hague was established. It was the Tsar of Russia who initiated,
and pushed to completion, the emancipation of the serfs, – a work far greater and far more
successfully accomplished than that of the emancipation of the slaves of America. Russia, indeed, is
full of philanthropists and those engaged in promoting social reforms, of whom Tolstoy is one of the
most extreme and unpractical examples.

All this, and much more, can be said illustrating the leavening power of Christianity in the
Empire, without abating our condemnation of the many great evils still inherent in the church polity
and in the body politic. For, there can be no question that in some way the main facts of Christianity
are held up before the Russian people of all classes, and that these facts have a most powerful,
controlling force in the lives of the masses of the people.

The manner of the dissemination of this Christian truth is an interesting object of study.
Preaching occupies but a small place in the Russian church services. Though the Bible is freely
disseminated, the illiteracy of the people interferes with its general reading. But it is read extensively
in the church service; while pictures of Bible scenes fairly cover the walls of the churches, and every
one learns their meaning. Russian pilgrims to Palestine are far more numerous than from any other
country, and are mostly from the peasant class. These make the rounds of the sacred places with
apparent discrimination and intelligence. In the appropriate season of the year crowds of them, may
be found wending their way on foot from Jerusalem to the Jordan, to Bethlehem and Hebron, and to
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the well of Sychar. Dense crowds may be seen gathering about the sacred places, listening to
addresses from well-informed guides with far more interest and with closer attention than is shown
in a personally conducted Cook’s tour of visitors. The information which these pilgrims, on their
return, scatter throughout Russia, can hardly be overestimated.

But most prominent of all must be mentioned the liturgy of the Russian Church as it is
artistically set to music by composers of the highest rank, and most effectively and beautifully
rendered by trained choirs.

The favorite liturgy is that written by the “golden-mouthed” St. John Chrysostom, the most
famous of the fathers of the Greek Church of the fourth century. This, like all the Russian church
services, is translated into the language of the people. The dialect, indeed, is archaic, which has led
many to suppose that it is unintelligible to the common people. The same might be said with some
degree of truth concerning the English Prayer Book, though it is by no means so archaic as is the
Russian liturgy. Still, in both cases; by reason of frequent repetition, the language evidently becomes
comprehensible to all; so that it cannot be doubted that every peasant in the Empire becomes from
his earliest years familiar with this noble embodiment of the great facts and doctrines of Christianity.

The mere reading of the words can but be a means of grace; while to have it given, as it is in
all the Russian churches, by well-trained choirs in the effective setting of the music of the greatest
masters, is impressive beyond expression, and is in striking contrast to the diluted sentimentalism
characterizing so much of the popular Sunday-school music of America, and to the musical
compositions which are current so largely in Protestant services, but which are adapted rather for
the concert-hall than for worshiping congregations.

Tchaikovsky (1840-1893) was the ranking genius among Russian musical composers of the
last half century, and was scarcely inferior to any, except Wagner in Western Europe. His operas,
symphonies, sonatas, and shorter pieces for the piano are everywhere popular among the highest
class of musicians; but it is not generally known that he devoted a considerable portion of his
strength and genius to the perfecting of the Russian sacred music. Several volumes of Bortniansky’s
compositions, which are most widely used in the Russian Church, have been harmonized by him in
accordance with modern ideas. One of his own principal works, also, is an original composition
adapted to the entire liturgy.

I have stood in the Russian churches, great and small, in Siberia and Turkestan, and in
Moscow and St. Petersburg, and have been not only entranced myself by this service, but filled with
wonder and delight while seeing horny-handed peasants, with careworn faces, listening with
streaming eyes to these profound, inspiring, comforting, and most beautiful conceptions of Christian
truth as they were wafted to our ears upon the dignified, appropriate, and tender strains of music of
the great Russian composer. Who could help being moved to better things as he is led thus to adore
“the Maker of all things, who for us sinful men, and our salvation, came down from heaven, and was
incarnate of the Spirit and the Virgin Mary; and became like unto men, and was crucified under
Pontius Pilate, and suffered, and was buried, but rose on the third day according to the Word, and
ascended into heaven most high, and now sitteth on the right hand of God, and who shall come again
to judge the quick and dead”! To see, as I often did in these services, men and women, both of low
and of high estate, advance to kneel and kiss the gilded feet of the painting of the Man of sorrows, was
to witness something far more than a mere formality.

This liturgy I have translated into English, adjusting the words to the rhythm of the music,
for use by the Oberlin choir. In order to introduce us to one of the secrets of the power of the Russian
Church, and to justify the words of encomium just passed upon it, the translation is reproduced
below.

We are far from contending that the so nearly exclusive dependence of the Russian Church
upon the sacraments and liturgy and upon pictorial representation is altogether safe and wise. But, if
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the non-liturgical churches attain their object more successfully, their preaching and their Sunday-
school and Bible-class instruction must continue to be animated by a well-grounded and fervent
belief in the doctrines and objective facts of the Bible. Jesus Christ must be evidently set forth before
the eyes of the people crucified among them as was done by Paul before the Galatians. Only a
thoroughly prepared, perfectly sincere, and highly spiritual ministry, whose intellect and entire being
is possessed by the reality of the Christian doctrines, can compete successfully with such an
organization and liturgy as those of the Russian Church. The agnostic criticism which is rapidly
throwing a haze of doubt over the historical facts of Christianity, if it succeeds, will lead to the
decadence of preaching, and bring dearth upon our non-liturgical churches; for it obscures the
lifegiving truth of the gospel, and turns the story of redemption into apples of Sodom, which crumble
to dust with our handling.1

Ch. V Commentary on some Roman Catholic criticism of joining the Orthodox Church

There is often found a severe lapse of critical reasoning when Roman Catholics criticize the Orthodox Church,
dismissing it outright as a church for one to even consider joining.

The book Roads to Rome is an anthology of 65 conversion stories to the Roman Catholic communion (none
are from Orthodoxy), edited by a former Anglican priest, John Godfrey Raupert (1858 – 1929), who joined the

1George Frederick Wright, Influence of the Russian Liturgy, in The Bibliotheca Sacra: A Religious and
Sociological Quarterly, January 1904, Vol. LXI, No. CCXLI, Art. VIII, pp. 166 – 170, Oberlin, OH: Bibliotheca
Sacra Company, 1904.
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Roman communion, with an introduction by Cardinal Vaughan (1832 – 1903), the Latin Archbishop of
Westminster. This chapter will examine the only three of the records in this book that contain criticism or
discussion of the Orthodox Church.

First is the testimony of George Angus, an Oxford-educated Anglican Lieutenant who became a Roman
Catholic priest:

Was there any society claiming to be the Visible Body with its Visible Head? If so – where?
The Church of England? No. She claims to be a Church, but not the Church. The Greek Church? No,
again. For if she claims to be the Church, she neglects her obvious duty of trying to persuade
all men to belong to her. In a word, she does not “go and make disciples of all nations,” nor
does she even attempt to preach the gospel to all men.
There remained, then, the Roman Church – using popular language. About her position there
could be no doubt. She is a Visible Body with a Visible Head.1

As shown in the chapter on Orthodox missions, Angus’s characterization is unfair and inaccurate. The
problem with making a mortal man the Visible Head of the Church is that he is mortal, and can die, and thus
leave the Church “headless” and a corpse. The office of Pope does not immediately transfer to another
person, like some Old Testament offices. There have been sedevacante (vacant seat) periods of days, weeks,
months, or even years between Popes. Some of the most significant papal vacancies were 3 years and 7
months (between Marcellinus and Marcellus I), 2 years and 9 months (between Clement IV and Gregory X), 2
years and 4 months (between Clement V and John XXII), and 2 years and 3 months (between Nicholas IV and
Celestine V). The Roman Catholic succession lists show that there were a total of over forty years of
interregnums, from the year 235 (when exact dates first appear in papal history) to the current day. So the
Latins must admit that the Church can be alive and well without a Visible Head, at least for a little while.
There is also the issue of disputed papal elections and anti-Popes (see the short chapter on Doubtful Petrine
Succession). Furthermore, the early Church did not countenance the monarchical theory, as is shown in the
following Book.

Another testimony is from H. G. Worth, an Oxford-educated former Anglican priest who joined Rome. His
argument is not well-articulated, and is especially lacking in logic when he dismisses the Orthodox Church:

Before we proceed, we must consider what schism is. It is the being cut off from the unity of
the Church.
The popular Anglican idea of schism is that it consists in being out of communion with any
particular Bishop. They say that Roman Catholics in England are in schism because they are not in
communion with the Anglican Bishops, whereas Anglican chaplains in France are in schism because
they are not in communion with the Catholic Bishops of that country.
We must not, however, forget that, according to the teaching of the ancient Fathers, those
who communicate with schismatics are guilty of schism. If, therefore, the Roman Catholic Church is
schismatic in England, she is guilty of schism everywhere. The Pope and all the foreign Bishops who
are in communion with him, recognize the Roman Catholic Bishops of England, not the Anglican; if,
then, the former are in schism, the Pope and all the Bishops and people who submit to him are in
schism also.
On the other hand, it is clear that, on Anglican principles, the English Bishops in Canada are
schismatic, therefore the Anglican Bishops who are in communion with them are in schism.
Now, the result of this must be either that the whole of Western Christendom is in
schism and the Greek Church is the sole representation of the Catholic Church, or that there is
no Catholic Church remaining anywhere; or else either the Roman Catholic Church or the Anglican
Church is schismatic.

1John Godfrey Raupert, Roads to Rome, Being Personal Records of Some of the More Recent Converts to the
Catholic Faith, pp. 1 – 2, London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1901.
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If we accept the first two alternatives, we are forced to own that the gates of hell have
prevailed against the Church, and that our Lord, when He said that this should never come to pass,
spoke falsely. As also when He said that the Holy Ghost would guide the Church into all truth.
It remains, then, for us to consider, that either the Roman Catholic Church or the Anglican is
schismatic, and that everywhere. Which is it?1

I would ask Dr. Worth, why does accepting that “the Greek Church is the sole representation of the Catholic
Church” entail that “the gates of hell have prevailed against the Church”. If large groups of people leave the
Church it certainly does not mean that the gates of hell have prevailed.

The Orthodox Church truly is the sole representation of the Catholic Church, and we are by no means forced
to own that the gates of hell have prevailed against the Church, only that many in the West have abandoned
the practices and beliefs of the ancient Church, which is the thesis of this work.

I would also like to respond to another objection which I have seen Roman Catholics urge against the
Orthodox. In relation to the Orthodox insistence on the importance of Councils, some Roman Catholics have
asked, “By what authority do you know if a Council is a true or Ecumenical Council?”, and these Roman
Catholics say that it is the Bishop of Rome who judges the validity of a Council, to which I respond with a
question, “By what authority do you know if a claimant to the Papacy is a true Pope?” The answer in both
cases must be whether they are canonical and teach in accordance with Church doctrine, and accepted as
such by the Church.

Lastly there is the record from the Rev. O. R. Vassall, an Oxford-educated Anglican who became a Roman
Catholic priest:

The term “Catholic” is to-day as generally understood in Constantinople, St. Petersburg, or London, as
in Vienna, Paris, or Rome. The schismatic Greek Church may call itself “Orthodox;” but the title
“Catholic” it has never ventured to arrogate to itself (for it, at least, is no sham).2

The Latins have successfully won the term “Catholic” in the public image, and that is indeed one of their
accomplishments, but I do not think this should be stressed upon too greatly, since we are known as the
“Orthodox”, and Roman Catholics cannot admit that we are truly “Orthodox”. I do not advise using the
unqualified term “Catholic” to refer to the Roman communion, but prefer “Roman Catholic” out of courtesy
(as opposed to “Popery”, “Papist”, “Papistry”, “Papistical”, or “Romanism”). Vassall is charitable enough to
admit that the Orthodox Church is “no sham”.

However, it is false that the Orthodox Church has never called itself “Catholic”, and this is indeed a surprising
claim. There are proofs of this everywhere, and one does not have to look far. One of the official titles we use
is “Orthodox Catholic Church”, and other names are “Greek Catholic”, “Eastern Catholic”, “Catholic Eastern
Church”, “Catholic Church of the East”, “Orthodox Greek Church”, or “Holy Orthodox-Catholic Apostolic
Church”.

This is apparent in the very English titles of many books, for example: “The Longer Catechism of The
Orthodox, Catholic, Eastern Church” (1845), “Dissertations on Subjects Relating to the ‘Orthodox’ or ‘Eastern
Catholic’ Communion” (1853), “Exposition of the Orthodox Faith of the Eastern Catholic Church” (1865), “The
Great Catechism of the Holy Catholic, Apostolic, and Orthodox Church” (1867), “A Plain View of the Claims of
the Orthodox Catholic Church as Opposed to all Other Christian Denominations” (1881), “The Marriage
Service of the Holy Orthodox Catholic Church” (1875), “The Catechism of the Orthodox, Catholic, Eastern
Church” (1901), “The Shorter Catechism of the Eastern Orthodox Catholic Church” (1909), “The Austro-
German Hypocrisy and the Russian Orthodox Greek Catholic Church” (1915), and “Service Book of the Holy
Orthodox-Catholic Apostolic Church” (1922). In “The Russian Catechism, Composed and Published by Order
of the Czar”, published in London (1st ed. 1723, 2nd ed. 1725), an English reader would find reference to the

1 Roads to Rome, pp. 332 – 333.

2 Roads to Rome, p. 278.
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“Orthodox Catholick Church”. I also point to “The Patriarchal Encyclical of 1895” and the “Encyclical of the
Eastern Patriarchs, 1848”, which constantly affirm that we are the one and only Catholic Church.

There are many references to the “Greek Catholic Church” all throughout English literature, and constantly in
Greek and Russian literature. Since the time of the Apostles, the Orthodox Church has always referred to
herself as “Catholic”, in all her liturgies, encyclicals and texts, and indeed is the same “One Holy Catholic and
Apostolic Church” of the same Creed that the fathers of the Nicene and Constantinopolitan Councils believed
in, without any alteration.
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Book II The Papacy

“The Lord on high, to whom belongs all power in Heaven and upon the earth, gave the one holy and apostolic
church, beyond the pale of which there is no salvation, to govern in the fulness of power, this to but one single one
upon the earth, that is to the prince of the Apostles, Peter, and to the successor of Peter, the Roman Pontifex.
Him did he place over all the nations and over all the reigns as prince, that he might extirpate, destroy,
scatter, annihilate, plant and build, so as to keep the faithful flock together by the bond of reciprocal love in the
unity of spirit, and guard and keep the same undefiled for their Saviour. … Based upon the authority of God we
do therefore declare, from Apostolic fulness of power, that the said heretic Elizabeth [Queen of England and
Ireland] and her adherents are under the Anathema, and separated from the union of the body of Christ. Aye,
the same be moreover deprived of her assumed right over that reign, and of all property, of all dignity,
and of all privileges. And in the same manner shall all classes, subjects, and the people of the country, and
whosoever did swear to her be absolved from such oath, and from all duties of vassalage and obedience for
ever, from which we hereby absolve them; we depose the said Elizabeth of her assumed rights of all the above
mentioned things, and forbid the administrations, the subjugated nations, and others to obey her edicts and
laws.” – Latin Pope Pius V, Regnans in Excelsis (Feb. 25, 1570)1

“The Lord, moved to anger by this intolerable corruption, has, for some time past, allowed the Church to be
without a pastor. For I bear witness in the name of God that this Alexander VI is in no way Pope and cannot be.
For quite apart from the execrable crime of simony, by which he got possession of the tiara through a
sacrilegious bargaining, and by which every day he puts up to auction and knocks down to the highest bidder
ecclesiastical benefices, and quite apart from his other vices – well-known to all – which I will pass over in
silence, this I declare in the first place and affirm it with all certitude, that the man is not a Christian, he
does not even believe any longer that there is a God; he goes beyond the final limits of infidelity and impiety.”
– Girolamo Savonarola (who was called a holy martyr by Catharina Ricci and Philip Neri, who are considered
saints by Roman Catholics), Letter to the Emperor

1Alfred Sommers (translator), Johann Friedrich von Schulte, The Power of the Roman Popes over Princes, p.
30. See Joseph Mendham, The Life and Pontificate of Saint Pius the Fifth, Ch. V, pp. 139 – 150, London: James
Duncan, 1832.
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Ch. I Introduction and Miscellaneous Matter

This is one of the most important issues separating the Latins from the Church. Latin Pope Gregory XI,
writing in 1374 to the Orthodox John Cantacuzene (1292 – 1383), who had become a monk after being
emperor, makes a very distinct statement of the ground of the separation between East and West: “It was the
refusal to acknowledge our primacy, which caused the division between the Latins and the Greeks, and has
maintained the schism.”1

To solve the question of the Papal Primacy, we must look to the early Church. The early Fathers did not
believe the Bishop of Rome to be the infallible Vicar of Christ and Supreme Head of the Church, who possesses
a universal and absolute jurisdiction over the entire Church, and over all secular rulers.

First, the position of the Orthodox Church will be stated, which is that the Roman bishop is granted the
“canonical chief seat”2 and “honorary prerogative of presidency, considering him simply as the bishop first in
order, that is, first among equals”,3 which is important to keep in mind as one reads quotes from the fathers
brought forth to demonstrate the Papal monarchy.

When the Roman See was orthodox, the Church honoured the bishop of Rome mainly for the following three
reasons: the civil greatness of the city of Rome, as the most important city and capital of the Roman Empire,
where many Christians gathered together from around the world (though to a large extent superseded by
Constantinople); the Roman bishop’s succession from the Apostles Peter and Paul, who founded that Church
and were martyred in that city (though many early Roman martyrologies, histories, and lists of succession are
not reliable, and other bishops are likewise successors of these apostles); and the alleged general orthodoxy
of the bishops of Rome during important controversies, although from an early date the Roman Bishops
frequently and publicly propagated falsehoods, forgeries, and errors, and were deceived by false canons and
evil men, disrupting the unity and peace of the Church.

For example, it is worth noticing the main reason Theodoret of Cyrus (c. 393 – 458/466) gives for Rome’s
preeminence: “For that holy see has precedence over all churches in the world, for many reasons; and above
all for this, that it is free from all taint of heresy, and that no bishop of heterodox opinion has ever sat upon its
throne, but it has kept the grace of the apostles undefiled.”4 The chief reason Theodoret gives, that Rome has
never had a heretic for its bishop, has been nullified by the case of Pope Honorius (not to mention other
Popes), which is discussed at length in Appendix III, showing that Rome’s precedence was not of permanent
and divine origin.

According to the fathers, the bishop of Rome does have a limited primacy, but it is not a supremacy.
Archbishop Nilus Cabasilas writes:

And that the primacye of the bishop of Rome is not lose and free, as though it were a monarchye, but
vnited with others as the dignities of felowes in office, are conioyned togyther betweene them selues:
yet may be easily proved. … But lefte this bee the summe and chiefe of all our talke and disputation,
that so longe as the Pope doth keepe the conueniente order in tymes paste ordeyned, so longe as he

1 John H. Hopkins, “The End of Controversy,” Controverted: A Refutation of Milner’s “End of Controversy,” in a
Series of Letters, Vol. I, Letter VIII, p. 157, New York, NY: Dana and Company, 1856. Fleury, Vol. XX, p. 250.
2 Encyclical Epistle, op. cit., § 16.
3 Anthimos VII, Encyclical, Art. XV.
4 Theodoret, Letter CXVI To the presbyter Renatus, p. 295, in NPNF, Series II, Vol. III. Also see Theodoret’s

Letter CXIII To Leo, bishop of Rome, p. 293 [which lists Rome’s civil greatness, her eminent faith, and the
tombs of Peter and Paul]. See The Church Quarterly Review, Vol. XLIX, October 1899, Art. I, Rivington on the
Roman ‘Primacy’, pp. 27 – 28 & p. 28, n. 1., London: Spottiswoode & Co., 1900. Theodoret’s claim about
Rome’s historical orthodoxy was already false at the time he said this. It should also be noted that Theodoret
of Cyrus’s writings were condemned at the Fifth Ecumenical Council.
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holdeth and maynteyneth the veritie celestiall, and so longe as he cleaueth and stycketh faste to
Christe, the hygh and trewe Lorde and head of the churche, I gladly permytte hym to be heade of the
Churche, and chiefe priest and successoure to Peter, or yf he lyste, to all the Apostles, all menne to
obeye hym, and nothynge touchynge his honour to be diminished. But yf he be fallen from the truthe,
and wyll not retourne vnto it agayne, he oughte but to bee reputed as a personne condempned and
reprobate.1

One evidence of the ecclesiastical order of the early Church is found in Canon XXXIV of the Apostolical Canons,
which states:

The bishops of every nation must acknowledge him who is first among them and acknowledge him as
their head, and do nothing without his consent; but each may do those things only which concern his
own parish, and the country places which belong to it. But neither let him (who is the first) do
anything without the consent of all; for so there will be unanimity, and God will be glorified through
the Lord in the Holy Spirit.2

This canon shows the importance of unity and the principle that the chief bishop of each country may not do
anything without the consent of the rest. The declaration of the Latin First Vatican Council appears to have a
different spirit:
And indeed all the venerable Fathers have embraced and the holy orthodox Doctors have
venerated and followed their [the Pope’s] Apostolic doctrine; knowing most fully that this See of holy
Peter remains ever free from all blemish of error according to the divine promise of the Lord our
Saviour made to the Prince of His disciples: I have prayed for thee that thy faith fail not, and, when
thou art converted, confirm thy brethren.

This gift then, of truth and never-failing faith was conferred by Heaven upon Peter and his
successors in this Chair, that they might perform their high office for the salvation of all; that the
whole flock of Christ kept away by them from the poisonous food of error, might be nourished with
the pasture of heavenly doctrine; that the occasion of schism being removed the whole Church might
be kept one, and, resting on its foundation, might stand firm against the gates of hell. …

Therefore faithfully adhering to the tradition received from the beginning of the Christian
faith, for the glory of God Our Saviour, the exaltation of the Catholic Religion, and the salvation of
Christian people, the Sacred Council approving, We teach and define that it is a dogma divinely
revealed: that the Roman Pontiff, when he speaks ex cathedra, that is, when in discharge of office of
Pastor and Doctor of all Christians, by virtue of his supreme Apostolic authority he defines a doctrine
regarding faith or morals to be held by the Universal Church, by the divine assistance promised to
him in blessed Peter, is possessed of that infallibility with which the divine Redeemer willed that His
Church should be endowed for defining doctrine regarding faith or morals: and that therefore such
definitions of the Roman Pontiff are irreformable of themselves, and not from the consent of the
Church.

[Latin]

Itaque Nos traditioni a fidei Christianae exordio perceptae fideliter inhaerendo, ad Dei
Salvatoris nostril gloriam, religionis Catholicæ exaltationem et Christianorum populorum salute,
sacro approbante Concilio, docemus et divinitus revelatum dogma esse definimus; Romanum
Pontificem, cum ex Cathedra loquitur, id est, cum omnium Christianorum Pastoris et Doctoris
munere fungens, pro suprema sua Apostolica auctoritate doctrinam de fide vel moribus ab universa
Ecclesia tenendam definit, per assistentiam divinam, ipsi in beato Petro promissam, ea infallibilitate

1 Thomas Gressop (translator), Nilus Cabasilas, A briefe treatise, conteynynge a playne and fruitfull
declaration of the Popes vsurped primacye, [pages unnumbered], London: Henry Sutton for Rafe Newbery,
1560.
2 Percival, Seven Ecumenical Councils, p. 596.
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pollere, qua divinus Redemptor Ecclesiam suam in definienda doctrina de fide vel moribus
instructam esse voluit; ideoque eiusmodi Romani Pontificis definitions ex sese, non autem ex
consensus Ecclesiae irreformabiles esse.1

The Latin First Vatican Council also taught that the Pope is superior to an Ecumenical Council:

Further, from this supreme power possessed by the Roman Pontiff of governing the Universal
Church, it follows that he has the right of free communication with the Pastors of the whole Church,
and with their flocks, that these may be taught and ruled by him in the way of salvation. Wherefore we
condemn and reject the opinions of those who hold that the communication between this supreme
Head and the Pastors and their flocks can lawfully be impeded; or who make this communication
subject to the will of the secular power, so as to maintain that whatever is done by the Apostolic See, or
by its authority, for the government of the Church, cannot have force or value unless it be confirmed by
the assent of the secular power. And since by the divine right of Apostolic primacy, the Roman Pontiff
is placed over the Universal Church, we further teach and declare that he is the supreme judge of the
faithful, and that in all causes, the decision of which belongs to the Church, recourse may be had to his
tribunal, and that none may re-open the judgment of the Apostolic See, than whose authority there is
no greater, nor can any lawfully review its judgment. Wherefore they err from the right course who
assert that it is lawful to appeal from the judgments of the Roman Pontiffs to an Œcumenical Council,
as to an authority higher than that of the Roman Pontiff.

If then any shall say that the Roman Pontiff has the office merely of inspection or direction, and
not full and supreme power of jurisdiction over the Universal Church, not only in things which belong
to faith or morals, but also in those which relate to the discipline and government of the Church spread
throughout the world; or assert that he possesses merely the principal part, and not all the fullness of
this supreme power; or that this power which he enjoys is not ordinary and immediate, both over each
and all the churches and over each and all the Pastors and the faithful; let him be anathema.

[Latin]

Porro ex suprema illa Romani Pontificis protestate gubernandi universam Ecclesiam ius eidem
esse consequitur, in huius sui muneris exercitio libere communicandi cum pastoribus et gregibus totius
Ecclesiae, ut iidem ab ipso in via salutus doceri ac regi possint. Quare damnamus ac reprobamus
illorum sententias, qui hanc supremi capitis cum pastoribus et gregibus communicationem licite
impediri posse dicunt, aut eandem reddunt saeculari potestati obnoxiam, ita ut contendant, quae ab
Apostolica Sede vel eius auctoritate ad regimen Ecclesiae constituuntur, vim ac valorem non habere,
nisi potestatis saecularis placito confirmentur.

Et quoniam divino Apostolici primatus iure Romanus Pontifex universae Ecclesiae praeest,
docemus etiam et declaramus, eum esse iudicem supremum fidelium, et in omnibus causis ad examen
ecclesiasticum spectantibus ad ipsius posse iudicium recurri; Sedis vero Apostolicae, cuius auctoritate
maior non est, iudicium a nemine fore retractandum, neque cuiquam de eius licere iudicare iudicio.
Quare a recto veritatis tramite aberrant, qui affirmant, licere ab iudiciis Romanorum Pontificum ad
Oecumenicum Concilium tamquam ad auctoritatem Romano Pontifice superiorem appellare.

Si quis itaque dixerit, Romanum Pontificem habere tantummodo officium inspectionis vel
directionis, non autem plenam et supremam potestatem iurisdictionis in universam Ecclesiam, non
solum in rebus, quae ad fidem et mores, et etiam in iis, quae ad disciplinam et regimen Ecclesiae per
totum orbem diffusae pertinent; aut eum habere tantum potiores partes, non vero totam plenitudinem
huius supremae potestatis; aut hanc eius potestatem non esse ordinariam et immediatam sive in
omnes ac singulas ecclesias, sive in omnes et singulos pastores et fideles; anathema sit. 2

1 Henry Edward Manning, The Vatican Council and its Definitions: A Pastoral Letter to the Clergy, Appendix,
Ch. IV, pp. 239 – 240, Fourth Ed., New York, NY: P. J. Kennedy, 1896. Latin on p. 229.
2 Manning, Vatican Council, Appendix, Ch. III, p. 235 – 236. Latin on pp. 226 – 227.
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The highly learned scholar Johann Joseph Ignaz von Döllinger (1799 – 1890) writes the following on some
relations of the Latins with the Orthodox Church:

To the Greeks, at all events, the notion of such theocratic sovereignty, interfering forcibly in all the
details of the Church’s life, and systematically ignoring all legal limitations, such as existed in the
West, was strange and incomprehensive. Their Patriarchs moved within a far narrower sphere, and
acted by fixed rules. The whole Papal system of indulgences was entirely unknown to them. Many
rights and means of power gradually acquired by the Popes could never have come into use in their
simple system of Church-government. And it was just these very claims of the Papal system which
for centuries had been their main ground for resisting any overtures for reunion. As early as 1232
the Patriarch Germanus had written to the Cardinals, – “Your tyrannical oppression and the
extortions of the Roman Church are the cause of our disunion.” Humbert, General of the Dominicans,
made the same statement in the memorial he drew up for the Council of Lyons in 1274: – “The
Roman Church knows only how to make the yoke she has laid on men’s shoulders press heavily; her
extortions, her numberless legates and nuncios, and the multitude of her statutes and punishments,
have deterred the Greeks from reunion.” And this was the universal opinion in the West. The French
clergy appealed to it in their representation to Clement IV. in 1266; and Burshop Durandus of Mende
urged it upon Clement V. The English Sir John Mandeville related, after his return from the East, that
the Greeks had answered laconically to John XXII.’s demand for submission, “Thy plenary power over
thy subjects we firmly believe; thine immeasurable pride we cannot endure, and thy greed we cannot
satisfy. With thee is Satan, with us the Lord.” In 1339, the Minorite John of Florence sent to the East
by Benedict XIII., had an interview with the Patriarch of Constantinople and his Synod, and it was
again said that the cause of the disunion was the insatiable pride of the Bishop of Rome.1

I will begin with Ignatius of Antioch, whom the Catholic Encyclopedia claims is a witness to Papal supremacy.
They cite the epistle of Saint Ignatius that is directed to the Church of Rome in the year 107, where he says
that the Roman Church “presides over love”. The Catholic Encyclopedia interprets this passage to mean that
Ignatius “refers to its presiding over all other Churches”.2

This is the full opening of Ignatius’ letter (shorter version) to the Roman Church:

Ignatius, who is also called Theophorus, to the Church which has obtained mercy, through the majesty
of the Most High Father, and Jesus Christ, His only-begotten Son; the Church which is beloved and
enlightened by the will of Him that willeth all things which are according to the love of Jesus Christ our
God, which also presides in the place of the region of the Romans, worthy of God, worthy of honour,
worthy of the highest happiness, worthy of praise, worthy of obtaining her every desire, worthy of
being deemed holy, and which presides over love, is named from Christ, and from the Father, which I

1 Janus [Johann Joseph Ignaz von Döllinger with the collaboration of “Old Catholic” professors Johannes
Nepomuk Huber (1830 – 1879) and Johann Friedrich (1836 – 1917)], The Pope and the Council, Ch. III, Sec.
25, pp. 320 – 322, London: Rivingtons, 3rd Ed., 1870 (translated from the German). I will quote more from
Döllinger later in this work. Döllinger was a very learned Roman Catholic priest, historian, professor, and
theologian, who separated from Rome after the Latin First Vatican Council of 1870 proclaimed Papal
Infallibility as a dogma, which he could not reconcile with his knowledge of ecclesiastical history. Döllinger
taught Church history for 47 years as a Roman Catholic and was deservedly reputed to be one of the most
learned men in the Roman communion. His extensive knowledge and study of Church history furnished him
with abundant proofs that Papal Infallibility and the doctrines on the Papal power defined at the Latin Vatican
Council were a novelty, unknown to the early Church and even rejected by many eminent Roman Catholics
throughout the second millennium.
2 George Hayward Joyce, Pope, in CE, Vol. XII, p. 263.
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also salute in the name of Jesus Christ, the Son of the Father: to those who are united, both according to
the flesh and spirit, to every one of His commandments; who are filled inseparably with the grace of
God, and are purified from every strange taint, [I wish] abundance of happiness unblameably, in Jesus
Christ our God.1

The Protestant editors of this volume on the Apostolic Fathers comment:

The Epistle to the Romans is utterly inconsistent with any conception on his part, that Rome was the
see and residence of a bishop holding any other than fraternal relations with himself. It is very
noteworthy that it is devoid of expressions, elsewhere made emphatic, which would have been much
insisted upon had they been found herein. Think what use would have been made of it, had the words
which he addresses to the Smyrnæans (chap. viii.) to strengthen their fidelity to Polycarp, been found
in this letter to the Romans, especially as in this letter we first find the use of the phrase “Catholic
Church” in patristic writings. He defines it as to be found ‘where Jesus Christ is,’ words which certainly
do not limit it to communion with a professed successor of St. Peter. 2

For comparison, the letter to the Smyrneans, Chapter 8, reads:

See that ye all follow the bishop, even as Jesus Christ does the Father, and the presbytery as ye would
the apostles; and reverence the deacons, as being the institution of God. Let no man do anything
connected with the Church without the bishop. Let that be deemed a proper Eucharist, which is
[administered] either by the bishop, or by one to whom he has entrusted it. Wherever the bishop shall
appear, there let the multitude [of the people] also be; even as, wherever Jesus Christ is, there is the
Catholic Church. It is not lawful without the bishop either to baptize or to celebrate a love-feast;
but whatsoever he shall approve of, that is also pleasing to God, so that everything that is done
may be secure and valid.3

In addition, the Roman “presidency over love” is a far weaker statement than that Ignatius uses in his epistle
to the Magnesians, who resided on the west coast of what is now Turkey. To the Magnesians he writes:

Since therefore I have, in the persons before mentioned, beheld the whole multitude of you in faith and
love, I exhort you to study to do all things with a divine harmony, while your bishop presides in the
place of God, and your presbyters in the place of the assembly of the apostles, along with your
deacons, who are most dear to me, and are entrusted with the ministry of Jesus Christ, who was with
the Father before the beginning of time, and in the end was revealed. Do ye all then, imitating the same
divine conduct, pay respect to one another, and let no one look upon his neighbour after the flesh, but
do ye continually love each other in Jesus Christ. Let nothing exist among you that may divide you; but
be ye united with your bishop, and those that preside over you, as a type and evidence of your
immortality. … As therefore the Lord did nothing without the Father, being united to Him, neither by
Himself nor by the apostles, so neither do ye anything without the bishop and presbyters. … Be ye
subject to the bishop, and to one another, as Jesus Christ to the Father, according to the flesh, and the
apostles to Christ, and to the Father, and to the Spirit; that so there may be a union both fleshly and
spiritual. … Knowing as I do that ye are full of God, I have but briefly exhorted you. Be mindful of me
in your prayers, that I may attain to God; and of the Church which is in Syria, whence I am not worthy
to derive my name: for I stand in need of your united prayer in God, and your love, that the Church
which is in Syria may be deemed worthy of being refreshed by your Church. 4

It is notable that St. Ignatius here applies his praise specifically to the Magnesian bishop, not just the Church
at Magnesia. By writing that their bishop presides “in the place of God”, he is essentially calling their bishop a

1 ANF, Vol. I, p. 73.

2 ANF, Vol. I, p. 46.
3 ANF, Vol. I, pp. 89 – 90.
4 ANF, Vol. I, p. 61.
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“Vicar of Christ”. Had Ignatius written likewise of the Bishop of Rome, Roman Catholic apologists may have
claimed that it was strong evidence of an early second-century witness to Papal supremacy.

In addition, Saint John Chrysostom, who was the Bishop of Antioch before becoming the Bishop of
Constantinople, taught that St. Ignatius was a direct and full successor of St. Peter in the See of Antioch,
seemingly ignorant that Peter’s succession was confined to the Roman episcopate. In the “Eulogy on the Holy
Martyr Saint Ignatius”, St. Chrysostom writes in praise of Saint Ignatius, the archbishop of Antioch who was
martyred in 107 at the Colosseum in Rome:

And I will speak of a fourth crown, arising for us out of this episcopate. What then is this?
The fact that he was entrusted with our own native city. For it is a laborious thing indeed to have the
oversight of a hundred men, and of fifty alone. But to have on one’s hands so great a city, and a
population extending to two hundred thousand, of how great virtue and wisdom dost thou think
there is a proof? For as in the care of armies, the wiser of the generals have on their hands the more
leading and more numerous regiments, so, accordingly, in the care of cities. The more able of the
rulers are entrusted with the larger and more populous. And at any rate this city was of much
account to God, as indeed He manifested by the very deeds which He did. At all events the master of
the whole world, Peter, to whose hands He committed the keys of heaven, whom He commanded to
do and to bear all, He bade tarry here for a long period. Thus in His sight our city was equivalent to
the whole world. But since I have mentioned Peter, I have perceived a fifth crown woven from him,
and this is that this man succeeded to the office after him. For just as any one taking a great stone
from a foundation hastens by all means to introduce an equivalent to it, lest he should shake the
whole building, and make it more unsound, so, accordingly, when Peter was about to depart from
here, the grace of the Spirit introduced another teacher equivalent to Peter, so that the building
already completed should not be made more unsound by the insignificance of the successor. We
have reckoned up then five crowns, from the importance of the office, from the dignity of those who
ordained to it, from the difficulty of the time, from the size of the city, from the virtue of him who
transmitted the episcopate to him. … For not to those alone who dwell in Rome, but to all the cities
lying in the intervening space, he went forth as a wonderful teacher, persuading them to despise the
present life, and to think naught of the things which are seen, and to love those which are to come, to
look towards heaven, and to pay no regard to any of the terrors of this present life. For on this and
on more than this, by means of his works, he went on his way instructing them, as a sun rising from
the east, and hastening to the west. But rather more brilliant than this, for this is wont to run on high,
bringing material light, but Ignatius shone below, imparting to men’s souls the intellectual light of
doctrine. And that light on departing into the regions of the west, is hidden and straightway causes
the night to come on. But this on departing to the regions of the west, shone there more brilliantly,
conferring the greatest benefits to all along the road. And when he arrived at the city, even that he
instructed in Christian wisdom. For on this account God permitted him there to end his life, so that
this man’s death might be instructive to all who dwell in Rome.1

In contrast, Latin Pope Benedict XIV (1675 – 1758) writes: “No one who is not Bishop of Rome can be styled
Successor of Peter, and for that reason the words of the Lord ‘Feed My sheep’ can never be applied to him”.2

Chrysostom elsewhere writes, commenting on the words of Christ:

1NPNF, First Series, Vol. IX, pp. 138 – 139.

2“nullus, qui Episcopus Romanus non sit, potest dici verus Petri Successor, ac propteres nunquam ad eum
referri possunt verba Christi Domini Pasce oves meas Joan. 21.” Benedicti XIV. Opera Omnia, Vol. XI, De
Synodo Dioecesana, Lib. II, Cap. I, p. 19, Prati: Typographia Aldina, 1844. English translation in Richard
Frederick Littledale, The Petrine Claims, Ch. VIII, p. 333, London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge,
1889.
 275

‘Peter, lovest thou me,’ saith He; ‘Feed my sheep:’ and having asked him a third time, declared this to
be an infallible proof of love. But not to priests only is this said, but to every one of us also, who are
also entrusted with a little flock. For do not despise it, because it is a little flock: For ‘my Father,’ He
saith, ‘hath pleasure in them.’ Each of us hath a sheep, let him lead that to the proper pastures. 1

In regards to other Apostles receiving the keys, Chrysostom writes of St. John:

For the son of thunder, the beloved of Christ, the pillar of the Churches throughout the
world, who holds the keys of heaven, who drank the cup of Christ, and was baptized with His
baptism, who lay upon his Master’s bosom with much confidence, this man comes forward to us
now; … All heaven is his stage; his theater, the habitable world; his audience, all angels; and of men
as many as are angels already, or desire to become so … By this Apostle stand the powers from
above, …2

In another homily, Chrysostom writes:

How again can the rites which we celebrate be other than heavenly? For when He says, “Whose
soever sins ye retain they are retained, whose soever sins ye remit, they are remitted” (John xx. 23):
when they have the keys of heaven, how can all be other than heavenly?3

Next, when the Catholic Encyclopedia says that the Papacy was clear when “the Apostolic tradition was still
fresh and vigorous in every part of Christendom”, even citing St. Cyprian as a testimony to Papal Supremacy,
St. Cyprian (martyred 258) himself would certainly disagree, as the evidence plainly shows, and as is proven
in the following section.

Two important historical cases are sufficient to prove that the early Church did not believe in Papal
Supremacy – the cases of St. Cyprian against Pope Stephen of Rome (and St. Augustine’s commentary about
his conduct) and Canon 28 of the Council of Chalcedon against Papal supremacy (and this Canon’s reiteration
by the Ecumenical Council in Trullo).

1 NPNF, First Series, Vol. X, p. 468.

2 NPNF, First Series, Vol. XIV, Homilies of St. John Chrysostom on the Gospel of St. John, Homily I, pp. 1 – 2.
Much exalted praise of St. John is contained in this homily.
3 NPNF, First Series, Vol. XIV, Homilies of St. John Chrysostom on the Epistle to the Hebrews, Homily XIV, p.

434.
276
 277

Ch. II Doubtful Petrine Succession

There are many issues with the integrity of the succession of the Bishops of Rome from St. Peter.
The English Jesuit and professor George Hayward Joyce (1864 – 1943), who contributed over a dozen articles
to the Catholic Encyclopedia, writes the following on the “Chronological Lists of Popes”:

In the numbering of the successors of St. Peter, certain differences appear in various lists.
The two forms Anacletus and Cletus, as we have seen, very early occasioned the third pope to be
reckoned twice. There are some few cases, also, in which it is still doubted whether particular
individuals should be accounted genuine popes or intruders, and, according to the view taken by
the compiler of the list, they will be included or excluded. In the accompanying list the Stephen
immediately following Zacharias (752) is not numbered, since, though duly elected, he died before
his consecration. At that period the papal dignity was held to be conferred at consecration, and
hence he is excluded from all the early lists. Leo VIII (963) is included, as the resignation of Benedict
V, though enforced, may have been genuine. Boniface VII is also ranked as a pope, since, in 984 at
least, he would seem to have been accepted as such by the Roman Church. The claim of Benedict X
(1058) is likewise recognized. It cannot be affirmed that his title was certainly invalid, and his name,
though now sometimes excluded, appears in the older catalogues. It should be observed that there is
no John XX in the catalogue. This is due to the fact that, in the “Liber Pontificalis”, two dates are given
in connexion with the life of John XIV (983). This introduced confusion into some of the papal
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catalogues, and a separate pope was assigned to each of these dates. Thus three popes named John
were made to appear between Benedict VII and Gregory V. The error led the pope of the
thirteenth century who should have been called John XX to style himself John XXI (Duchesne,
“Lib. Pont.” II, xvii). Some only of the antipopes find mention in the list. No useful purpose would be
served by giving the name of every such claimant. Many of them possess no historical importance
whatever. From Gregory VII onward not merely the years but the precise days are assigned on which
the respective reigns commenced and closed. Ancient authorities furnish these details in the case of
most of the foregoing popes also: but, previously to the middle of the eleventh century, the
information is of uncertain value. With Gregory VII a new method of reckoning came in. The
papal dignity was held to be conferred by the election, and not as previously by the coronation, and
the commencement of the reign was computed from the day of election. This point seems therefore a
convenient one at which to introduce the more detailed indications. 1

This presents us with cases of the doubt, error, and novelty in the Papal system. An interesting discussion on
the doubtful legal validity of the Petrine succession in Rome is given by Anglican clergyman and scholar
Richard Frederick Littledale (1833 – 1890).2

Roman Catholics also try to argue that the immoral and sinful popes in no way injure the Papal position.
Roman Catholic writers admit that true popes may not be in Heaven and that it is quite likely that some popes
are now lost, for example Latin Pope Alexander VI, but they argue that as Alexander did not teach heresy, he
was still a true pope. However, it is widely reported that Alexander VI was a gambler and a drunkard, and
thus is worthy of deposition according to Apostolic Canon XLII: “If a bishop or presbyter, or deacon, is
addicted to dice or drinking, let him either give it over, or be deposed.” 3 In addition, the Catholic
Encyclopedia reports, “That he obtained the papacy through simony was the general belief (Pastor, loc. cit.)
and is not improbable (Raynaldus, Ann. eccl. ad an. 1492, n. 26)”. 4 Much could be written on the question of
simony. Apostolic Canon XXIX (XXX) declares that “If any bishop, presbyter, or deacon shall obtain
possession of that dignity by money, let both him and the person who ordained him be deposed, and also
altogether cut off from all communion, as Simon Magus was by me Peter.5 Latin Pope Pascal II (pope from
1099 – 1118) says, “All crimes are accounted as nothing in comparison with the simoniacal heresy.”6
Furthermore, at the Roman Synod held by Latin Pope Gregory VII in 1078, it was enacted (Canon V) that
“Ordinations performed for money … we declare to be null and void.” 7 The influential Latin canonist Lucio
Ferraris (d. 1763) writes that “All simoniacal elections are void, even without any formal judicial sentence,
and though the elected person may be wholly ignorant of the facts.” 8 The Catholic Encyclopedia notes
another instance of Papal change: “Pope Julius II declared simoniacal papal elections invalid, an enactment
which has since been rescinded, however, by Pope Pius X (Constitution ‘Vacante Sede’, 25 Dec., 1904, tit. II,
cap. Vi, in ‘Canoniste Contemp.’, XXXII, 1909, 291).” 9 And Bellarmine says, “A doubtful Pope is to be accounted
no Pope.”10

1 George H. Joyce, Pope, § VII, The Catholic Encyclopedia, Vol. XII, p. 272, New York, NY: Robert Appleton
Company, 1911.
2 Richard Frederick Littledale, The Petrine Claims: A Critical Inquiry, London: Society for Promoting Christian

Knowledge, 1889.
3 Percival, Seven Ecumenical Councils, p. 597.
4 James F. Loughlin, Pope Alexander VI (Rodrigo Borgia), in CE, Vol. I, p. 289.
5 Percival, Seven Ecumenical Councils, p. 595. This canon is quoted in the Seventh Ecumenical Council, Can. V,

p. 559. Also see Trullo, Can. XXII, p. 376.

6 Littledale, The Petrine Claims, Ch. VIII, p. 311. Pope John VIII also uses the expression “simoniaca hæresis”

(ep. 95, ad episc. Gall. In Mansi, Vol. XVII, p. 83).

7 Littledale, The Petrine Claims, Ch. VIII, p. 311.
8 Littledale, The Petrine Claims, Ch. VIII, p. 311.
9 N. A. Weber, Simony, in CE, Vol. XIV, p. 2.
10 “Dubius Papa habetur pro non-Papa.” De Concil. lib. ii cap. 19, sect. xix. In Littledale, The Petrine Claims, Ch.

VIII, p. 307.
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Indeed, influential Latins believed that their Pope Alexander VI was no true Pope, such as the Dominican
monk and preacher Girolamo Savonarola (1452 – 1498), who said, in his Letter to the Emperor:

The Lord, moved to anger by this intolerable corruption, has, for some time past, allowed the Church
to be without a pastor. For I bear witness in the name of God that this Alexander VI is in no way Pope
and cannot be. For quite apart from the execrable crime of simony, by which he got possession of the
[papal] tiara through a sacrilegious bargaining, and by which every day he puts up to auction and
knocks down to the highest bidder ecclesiastical benefices, and quite apart from his other vices –
well-known to all – which I will pass over in silence, this I declare in the first place and affirm it with
all certitude, that the man is not a Christian, he does not even believe any longer that there is a God;
he goes beyond the final limits of infidelity and impiety.1

Pope Alexander VI excommunicated Savonarola, and, at least partly in consequence of papal pressure, the
Florentine government condemned Savonarola to death. Although Rome has not canonised Savonarola and
Roman Catholics have had different views of this man, Catharina Ricci and Philip Neri (who are considered
saints by Roman Catholics) have reverenced Savonarola and called him a holy martyr.2

However, this work will not enter into any discussion of Papal immorality or the disreputable conduct of
several Popes here, as that can easily send us off topic and would more appropriately be addressed in a
separate volume on that subject.

1 A. H. C. Downes (translator), [Cardinal] Charles Journet, The Church of the Word Incarnate: An Essay in
Speculative Theology, Vol. I, p. 484, London: Sheed and Ward, 1955. Footnote: “These were neither new nor
isolated accusations. cf. Schnitzer, Savonarola, Italian translation by E. Rutili, Milan 1931, vol. ii, p. 303.”
2 Henry Boynton Smith (translator), Joseph Ignaz von Döllinger, The Prophetic Spirit and the Prophecies of

the Christian Era [published with Fables Respecting the Popes in the Middle Ages], Ch. VIII, p. 418, New York,
NY: Dodd & Mead, 1872.
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Ch. III St. Gildas and Rome

This chapter will discuss a reference to St. Gildas and the ancient British Church by Paul Bottalla (1823 –
1896), a Latin controversialist and university professor of church history and theology. In the context of the
subjection of the British Church to the Patriarchate of Rome, Bottalla writes:

Thus the new Church owed to the Pope the whole of its organization, the names of the episcopal
cities, and their subordination. Nor was force or violence employed in procuring this result, nor was
it any way necessary.a On the other hand, as we have seen, Mr. Ffoulkes confesses that the British
Church was subject to the Patriarchal jurisdiction of Rome at the time of St. Augustine’s arrival, and
we shall see directly that this subjection dated back to the very first foundation of that Church. This
jurisdiction was therefore perfectly legitimate and in force throughout the whole of what is now
called England.

It is true that, owing to the isolated position of the British Church, which after the Saxon
invasion was cut off from all free intercourse with the Catholic world, its discipline became much
relaxed, and the standard of morals sank very low, through the influence of the example set by pagan
conquerors; but still the Britons held fast to all the articles of the orthodox faith, and amongst the rest
to the belief that St. Peter was the only source of all priestly authority in the Church.b Nevertheless, it
was not a matter of astonishment if the Bishops of the Britons looked with no favourable eye upon
the appointment of St. Augustine, with extensive jurisdiction over themselves as well as over the
Saxon converts. St. Augustine was reputed severe in his government, and to him was committed the
unpopular task of curbing the license which had crept in during times of past disorder. The
appointment was regarded as a novelty unknown in the old institutions of the Church, and as a
disgraceful badge of subjection to the hated Saxon conqueror; yet all the opposition raised fails to
prove that the British Prelates refused to recognise the right of the Pope, or that they withdrew
themselves from his obedience.

[Bottalla’s Footnotes:]
a) V. Beda, Hist. Eccl., l. i., cap. xxix., p. 76, seq. Londini, 1838.
b) Gildas, Epistola, p. 116. Edit. of Stevenson.1

I wish to focus on the reference to St. Gildas the Wise (500/516 – 570), an eminent British monk and
historian who built monasteries and churches. Bottalla adduces Gildas in favour of the “belief that St. Peter
was the only source of all priestly authority in the Church.” However, when one examines the words of
Gildas, it is clear that this is an improper interpretation. I will provide the entire section of the place referred
to, and allow the reader to judge if the passage is not more in favour of the Orthodox understanding of
Scripture, or if it supports the Papal claims. St. Gildas writes:

§ 109. But let us see what followeth; “Well governing (saith he) his house, having his children
subjected with all chastity.” Imperfect therefore is the chastity of the parents, if the children be not
also endued with the same. But how shall it be, where neither the father, nor the son, depraved by
the example of his evil parent, is found to be chaste? “But if any one knoweth not how to rule over
his own house, how shall he employ his care over the church of God?” These are the words, that with
apparent effects, should be made good and approved. “Deacons in like manner, that they should be
chaste, not double tongued, not overgiven to much wine, not followers of filthy gain, having the
mystery of faith in a preconscience, and let these also be first approved, and so let them administer,
having no offence.” And now trembling truly to make any longer stay on these matters, I can for a
conclusion affirm one thing certainly, which is, that all these are changed into contrary actions, in so
much that clerks (which not without grief of heart, I here confess,) are shameless and deceitful in
their speeches, given to drinking, covetous of filthy lucre, having faith (or to say more truly)
unfaithfulness in an impure conscience, ministering not upon probation of their good works, but

1Paul Bottalla, The Papacy and Schism: Strictures on Mr. Ffoulkes’ Letter to Archbishop Manning, III, pp. 83 –
84, London: Burns, Oates, and Company, 1869.
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upon foreknowledge of their evil actions, and being thus defiled with innumerable offences, they are
notwithstanding admitted unto the holy office: ye have likewise heard on the same day (wherein ye
should with far more right and reason have been drawn to prison or punishment, than preferred
unto priesthood) when our Lord demanded whom his disciples supposed him to be, how Peter
answered, “Thou art Christ, the Son of the living God;” and our Lord in respect of such his confession,
said unto him: “Blessed art thou Simon Bar-jonas, because flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto
thee, but my Father who is in heaven.” Peter therefore, instructed by God the Father, did rightly
confess Christ; but ye being taught by the devil your father, do with your lewd actions, wickedly deny
our Saviour. It is said to the true priest, “Thou art Peter, and upon this rock will I built my church:”
but ye resembled “the foolish man, who hath builded his house upon the sand.” And verily it is to be
noted, that God joined not in the workmanship with the unwise, when they build their house upon
the deceitful uncertainty of the sands, according unto that saying: “They have made kings unto
themselves, and not by me.” Similarly that (which followeth) soundeth in like sort, speaking thus:
“And the gates of hell (whereby infernal sins are to be understood) shall not prevail.” But of your
frail and deadly frame, mark what is pronounced: “The floods came, and the winds blew, and dashed
upon that house and it fell, and great was the ruin thereof.” To Peter and his successors, our Lord
doth say: “And I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven.” But unto you; “I know you
not, depart from me all ye workers of iniquity,” that being separated with the goats of the left-hand,
ye may together with them go into eternal fire. It is also promised unto every good priest;
“Whatsoever thou shalt loose upon earth, shall be likewise loosed in heaven: and whatsoever thou
shalt bind upon earth, shall be in like sort bound in heaven.” But how shall ye loose any thing, that it
may be loosed also in heaven, since yourselves for your sins are severed from heaven, and hampered
in the hands of your own heinous offences, as Solomon saith: “With the cords of his sins, every one is
tied?” And with what reason shall ye bind any thing on this earth, that above this world may be
likewise bound, unless it be your only selves, who entangled in your iniquities, are so detained on
this earth, that ye cannot ascend into heaven but without your conversion unto our Lord in this life,
will fall down into the miserable prison of hell?

§ 110. Neither yet let any priest flatter himself upon the knowledge of the particular cleanness of his
own body, since their souls (over whom he hath government) shall in the day of judgment be
required at his hands as the murderer of them, if any through his ignorance, sloth, or fawning
adulation have perished, because the stroke of death is not less terrible, that is given by a good man,
than that which is inflicted by an evil person: otherwise would the apostle never have said that which
he left unto his successors, as a fatherly legacy; “I am clear and clean from the blood of all: for I have
not forborne to declare unto you all the counsel of God.” 1

Instead of supporting the Roman interpretation, St. Gildas teaches that the words spoken by our Lord in
Matthew xvi. 16 – 19 to St. Peter apply to “the true priest”, and the phrase “To Peter and his successors”
evidently refers to “every good priest”. By implying that every good and true priest is a successor of Peter,
Gildas passes over the Latin view that focuses on the Bishops of Rome as the true successors of Peter, and that
priestly authority is derived from communion with the Roman Bishop. Nowhere in the greater context does
Gildas mention Rome at all, and nowhere in his extant works is there any reference to the Bishop of Rome.

In § 110, Gildas mentions successors of St. Paul, and elsewhere Gildas speaks of successors of the apostles,
such as in § 108:

O ye enemies of God, and not priests! O ye traders of wickedness, and not bishops! O ye betrayers
and not successors of the holy apostles! O ye adversaries and not servants of Christ! 2

Gildas does not see St. Peter in the Papal sense, and he is perfectly in harmony with Orthodox ecclesiology.
For more references to St. Peter, see §§ 66 – 67, where Gildas writes:

1 J. A. Giles, The Works of Gildas and Nennius, The Works of Gildas, Surnamed the Wise, III, The Epistle, §§ 109
– 110, pp. 100 – 102, London: James Bohn, 1841.
2 Giles, Gildas, III, The Epistle, § 108, p. 99.
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Britain hath priests, but they are unwise … despising the commandments of Christ, and being careful
with their whole hearts to fulfil their own lustful desires, some of them usurping with unclean feet
the seat of the apostle Peter; but for the demerit of their covetousness falling down into the pestilent
chair of the traitor Judas; … wallowing (after the fashion of swine) in their old and unhappy puddle of
intolerable wickedness, after they have attained unto the seat of the priesthood or episcopal dignity
(who neither have been installed or resident on the same), for usurping only the name of priesthood,
they have not received the orders or apostolical preeminence, but how can they who are not as yet
fully instructed in faith, nor have done penance for their sins, be any way supposed meet and
convenient to ascent unto any ecclesiastical degree (that I may not speak of the highest) which none
but holy and perfect men, and followers of the apostles and (to use the words of the teacher of the
Gentiles) persons free from reprehension, can lawfully and without the foul offence of sacrilege
undertake. … but herein they do more willfully, and desperately err in that they buy their deceitful
and unprofitable ecclesiastical degrees, not of the apostles or their successors, but of tyrannical
princes … whilst of sinners they make them not penitents (which were more consonant to reason),
but sacrilegious and desperate offenders, and in a sort install Judas, that traitor to his master, in the
chair of Peter, and Nicholas, the author of that foul heresy, in the seat of St. Stephen, the martyr …1

Gildas’ references to the chair or seat of St. Peter have nothing to do with the Bishop of Rome, but are a
symbol of apostolicity, and he sees the priests and bishops as successors of the apostles in general.

Some studies on the ancient British Church and its history, with some notice to its variance from Rome, are
Archbishop James Ussher, Britannicarum Ecclesiarum Antiquitates, London: Benjamin Tooke, 2nd Ed.,
1687; Bishop Edward Stillingfleet, Origines Britannicae: or, the Antiquities of the British Church, Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1842; Bishop Thomas Burgess, Tracts on the Origin and Independence of the
Ancient British Church, on the Supremacy of the Pope, and the Inconsistency of all Foreign Jurisdiction with
the British Constitution, and on the Differences between the Churches of England and Rome, London: F. C. & J.
Rivington, 2nd Ed., 1815; William Hales, An Essay on the Origin and Purity of the Primitive Church of
the British Isles, and its Independence upon the Church of Rome, London: R. Wilks, 1819; Rice Rees, An Essay
on the Welsh Saints, or the Primitive Christians usually considered to have been the Founders of Churches in
Wales, London: Longman & Co., 1836; Henry Joseph Monck Mason, The Testimony of St. Patrick Against the
False Pretenses of Rome to Primitive Antiquity in Ireland, Dublin: William Curry, Jun. and Company, 1846;
Chronicles of the Ancient British Church, Previous to the Arrival of St. Augustine, London: Wertheim and
Macintosh, 2nd Ed., 1851; Andrew Philips, Orthodox Christianity and the English Tradition, Frithgarth:
English Orthodox Trust, 1995; Andrew Philips, Orthodox Christianity and the Old English
Church, Fellixstowe: [digitally published], 3rd Ed., 2006; Vladimir Moss, The Fall of Orthodox England: The
Spiritual Roots of the Norman Conquest, 1043 – 1087, London: St. Michael’s Press, 2007.

1 Giles, Gildas, III, The Epistle, §§ 66 – 67, pp. 59 – 62.

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Ch. IV A Short Commentary on Paul Bottalla

Bottalla writes against the Orthodox Church:

Before the time of Photius, many heresies had been expelled from the Eastern Church by the Decrees
of General Councils; in all these questions the Roman Church was always found on the side of truth
and primitive tradition, and was a sure guide in the search for the Apostolic doctrine. And
subsequently to the rise of the schismatical Patriarch, the errors propagated by him and his followers
were condemned again and again at Constantinople, Lyons, Rome, and Florence; and the decisions of
these Universal Synods still always justified the wisdom of the Roman Church. The Roman Catholic
Church has been ever unchangeable in its doctrine; the Greeks have often contradicted themselves,
frequently turning back to teach the errors which they once anathematized; they have repeatedly
retracted their charges against the Church of Rome and rejection of the Papal authority, and they are
unable to cite any General Council in justification of their peculiar doctrines. If then the Church of
Christ is really infallible, the Church of Rome must be the Church of Christ. Infallibility cannot be
separated from truth, and truth is never changeable. The Greeks have constantly changed their
doctrines and their professions of faith; they cannot then have any claim to the infallibility of the
Church; infallibility remains the attribute of the Roman Catholic Church alone; and the infallible
voices of Lyons and Florence condemn Photius and Cerularius as schismatics and rebels.1

Bottalla begins with an erroneous claim, for Pope Honorius I of Rome was found on the side of heresy by the
Sixth Ecumenical Council (see the Appendix on that subject), and although Rome was frequently an Orthodox
guide, it was far from an infallible guide. It is outside the bounds of this work to discuss the history of the
pseudo-councils that attempted to form a union between the Latins and the Orthodox. I am able to cite all the
General Councils in defence of Orthodoxy, particularly the Council in Trullo and the Seventh Ecumenical
Council. The Orthodox have held to the profession of faith of the Council of Constantinople, but it was the
Latins who changed this profession of faith by the addition of the filioque. In this work I have attempted to
argue against the claim that the Roman Catholic communion is “on the side of truth and primitive tradition”,
and I believe I have shown that it is rather the Orthodox who have maintained the primitive traditions of the
Church.

Ch. V Patriarch St. Nicephorus on Councils and the Pentarchy

For reference, here are some quotations from Patriarch St. Nicephorus I of Constantinople (or Nikephoros, c.
758 – 828, Patriarch from 806 – 815) on Councils and the Pentarchy. Nicephorus writes in his Apologeticus
Major:

For so the ecclesiastical rule from of old commands: those matters in the Church of God which are
doubtful or disputed are to be solved in ecumenical councils and defined by the agreement and
determination of the illustrious patriarchs on the apostolic thrones. 2

1 Paul Bottalla, The Papacy and Schism: Strictures on Mr. Ffoulkes’ Letter to Archbishop Manning, XIII, pp. 119
– 120, London: Burns, Oates, and Company, 1869.
2 Apologeticus Major, PG Vol. C, 597 A-C, translated in Patrick O’Connell, The Ecclesiology of St Nicephorus I

(758 – 828) Patriarch of Constantinople: Pentarchy and Primacy, Ch. IX, 7., p. 131, Orientalia Christiana
Analecta, 194, Rome: Pontifical Oriental Institute, 1972; There is no written canon or rule or law that
explicitly states what Nikephoros says, although statements to this effect can be found in the early Fathers
and Councils; The preceding context does mention the importance of the Church of Rome, but certainly to a
degree far from Vatican I. Another translation of this passage reads: “Thus a law of the Church which goes
back to the beginning prescribes that all doubts and controversies arising in the Church be resolved and
defined by ecumenical councils, with the agreement and sanction of the bishops of the greater apostolic
thrones” (Scott Butler and John Collorafi, Keys Over the Christian World, Ch. XVII, p. 391, [Publisher and
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Relating to Iconoclasm and the Pentarchy, the life of St. Nikephoros by the Deacon Ignatius (written between
843 – 846) contains the following letter from Nikephoros to the Emperor:

What Rome is it, first called the seat of the apostles, that accords with you in rejecting the revered
image of Christ? Rather, Rome joins us in laboring and rejoicing to honor that <image>. What
Alexandria is it, venerable precinct of the evangelist Mark, that ever joined <you> in refusing to set
up the bodily and material likeness of the Mother of God? Rather, Alexandria assists and agrees with
us in this <point>. What Antioch is it, far-famed seat of Peter, the chief <of the apostles>, that concurs
<with you> in insulting the representation of the saints? Rather, Antioch shares with us the long
tradition of honoring these <images>. What Jerusalem is it, renowned home of <James>, the brother
of the Lord, that conspires <with you> in destroying the traditions <handed down> from the
<church> fathers?1

Nicephorus writes on Patriarch St. Tarasius and the Second Council of Nicaea:

Therefore after him (i.e. patriarch Paul) Tarasius of holy memory, on being promoted to the
patriarchal throne, resisted and said to the emperors of that time and to the senate and to the whole
people of the city: ‘Unless I receive fulness of assurance that there will be an ecumenical council, with
the other sees also taking part, so that the new-found error in the Church may be put right, I will not
agree to becoming patriarch.’ So he received full assurance from all and thus was consecrated
patriarch. And by God’s co-operation he attained his goal. A synod was held legitimately and
canonically, since there were there present representatives and synodical letters from those
who held the patriarchal dignity on the other thrones. 2

Ch. VI St. Cyprian and Pope Stephen of Rome

St. Cyprian of Carthage was the highest ranking bishop, after Rome, in the West, and his writings are
especially valuable in connection with the question of the Papacy and the unity of the Church.

St. Cyprian had a dispute with Pope Stephen concerning heretical baptism. St. Cyprian believed that there is
no baptism outside the Church, while Stephen said that heretics can validly baptize. Cyprian, along with
dozens of other African bishops and saints assembled in the Councils of Carthage, rejected the Bishop of
Rome’s decision on this matter. It is clear that St. Cyprian resolutely refused to conform to the ordinances of
the Bishop of Rome.

The topic of Cyprian’s view of the Papacy has been discussed many times but the question is simple, “Did St.
Cyprian believe that the decisions of the Bishop of Rome must always be followed?” Would St. Cyprian have

printing location not given (USA)], 2003). Another translation is in Dvornik, Byzantium and the Roman
Primacy, p. 102.
1 Elizabeth A. Fisher (translator), Alice-Mary Maffry Talbot (editor), Byzantine Defenders of Images: Eight

Saints’ Lives in English Translation, B., Ch. V, pp. 81 – 82, Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library
and Collection, 1998.
2 O’Connell, The Ecclesiology of St Nicephorus, Ch. IX, 3., pp. 123 – 124. O’Connell gives several key words in

the original Greek, and comments “Here again the holding of an ecumenical council is regarded as impossible
without the patriarchal sees taking part.” (p. 124). See the rest of O’Connell’s work for a valuable discussion
of Nikephoros’s ecclesiology and the importance of agreement between the leading bishops in the Church,
and not simply the Bishop of Rome alone. Also consult two articles by Ubi Petrus, What Makes a Council
Ecumenical? Parts I & II (A Florilegium), https://ubipetrusibiecclesia.com/2020/07/03/what-makes-a-
council-ecumenical/ and https://ubipetrusibiecclesia.com/2021/03/05/what-makes-a-council-ecumenical-
part-ii-a-florilegium/. Also see two textual manipulations in the Forgeries book, “Scott’s Misquotation of St.
Stephen the Younger” and “Allies’s Misquotation of the Seventh Ecumenical Council”.
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subscribed to the Latin Vatican Council’s decrees on the infallibility and monarchy of the Pope? A study of St.
Cyprian’s letters with regard to the baptism of heretics controversy abundantly proves the negative answer.
St. Cyprian clearly defied the judgment of the Bishop of Rome, and Cyprian was supported by numerous other
bishops of his day, manifesting the true ecclesiastical belief of the early Church, that there is no “bishop of
bishops”, which we Orthodox continue to follow inviolate. St. Cyprian, in word and deed, shows that it is not
necessary to be in communion with Rome to be in the Catholic Church, although he is regarded as a saint by
the Latins.

The Catechism of the Council of Trent, in its article on the ninth article of the Creed, “I believe the holy
Catholic Church”, writing on the unity of the Church, notes in the margin, “A visible head [is] necessary to
preserve unity.”, referring to the Bishop of Rome, and in this section quotes from Cyprian’s treatise on the
Unity of the Church.1 This book not fully discuss the question of St. Cyprian and his view of the Bishop of
Rome here, since that is largely covered in the works I recommend in the bibliography on the Papal
controversy,2 and would require a review of the latest textual criticism (since the manuscripts differ in some
important parts), although I do highly recommend reading all the works and correspondence of St. Cyprian.
Also, it would send us far off course to discuss the later history of the controversy over heretical baptism, but
it suffices to say that the Church has permitted various opinions on this question, and depending on the
circumstances.3

In St. Cyprian’s dispute with Pope Stephen over the validity of heretical baptism, it is clear that Cyprian did
not believe that unity consisted in agreeing with Stephen. It is clear that Cyprian’s theory of unity has not the
least connection with a theory depending on agreement with the Roman See, as can be seen from this striking
epistle (there are many other similar writings by Cyprian, his contemporaries, and the Councils he presided
over, on the question of heretical baptism, none of whom found the decision of the Bishop of Rome a final
authority).

Epistle LXXIII “To Pompey, Against the Epistle of Pope Stephen About the Baptism of Heretics”:

1. Cyprian to his brother Pompeius, greeting. Although I have fully comprised what is to be said
concerning the baptism of heretics in the letters of which I sent you copies, dearest brother, yet, since
you have desired that what Stephen our brother replied to my letters should be brought to your
knowledge, I have sent you a copy of his reply; on the reading of which, you will more and more
observe his error in endeavouring to maintain the cause of heretics against Christians, and
against the Church of God. For among other matters, which were either haughtily assumed, or
were not pertaining to the matter, or contradictory to his own view, which he unskilfully and without
foresight wrote, he moreover added this saying: “If any one, therefore, come to you from any heresy
whatever, let nothing be innovated (or done) which has not been handed down, to wit, that hands be
imposed on him for repentance; since the heretics themselves, in their own proper character, do not
baptize such as come to them from one another, but only admit them to communion.”

1 J. Donovan (translator), The Catechism of the Council of Trent, Published by Command of Pope Pius the
Fifth, Part I, Art. IX, pp. 74 – 75, Dublin: W. Folds and Son, 1829.
2 Three good essays are George Ayliffe Poole, The Testimony of Saint Cyprian Against Rome: An Essay

Towards Determining the Judgment of Saint Cyprian Touching Papal Supremacy, London: James Duncan,
1838; Edward White Benson, Cyprian: His Life, His Times, His Work, London: Macmillan & Co., 1897;
Geoffrey D. Dunn [a Roman Catholic scholar], Cyprian and the Bishops of Rome: Questions of Papal Primacy in
the Early Church, Early Christian Studies, Vol. XI, Sydney: St. Paul’s Publications, 2007
3 A good discussion of the early Church’s view on heretical baptism is given in C. Dodgson, Tertullian (Vol. I):

Apologetic and Practical Treatises, in A Library of Fathers of the Holy Catholic Church Anterior to the Division
of the East and West, Ch. VIII, Note G., pp. 280 – 297, Oxford: John Henry Parker, 1842. Also see George
Dragas, The Manner of Reception of Roman Catholic Converts into the Orthodox Church with Special
Reference to the Decisions of the Synods of 1484 (Constantinople), 1755 (Constantinople) and 1667
(Moscow), The Greek Orthodox Theological Review, Vol. XLIV, Nos. 1 – 4., pp. 235 – 271, Brookline, MA: Holy
Cross Orthodox Press, 1999.
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2. He forbade one coming from any heresy to be baptized in the Church; that is, he judged the
baptism of all heretics to be just and lawful. And although special heresies have special baptisms
and different sins, he, holding communion with the baptism of all, gathered up the sins of all, heaped
together into his own bosom. And he charged that nothing should be innovated except what had
been handed down; as if he were an innovator, who, holding the unity, claims for the one Church one
baptism; and not manifestly he who, forgetful of unity, adopts the lies and the contagions of a
profane washing. Let nothing be innovated, says he, nothing maintained, except what has been
handed down. Whence is that tradition? Whether does it descend from the authority of the Lord and
of the Gospel, or does it come from the commands and the epistles of the apostles? For that those
things which are written must be done, God witnesses and admonishes, saying to Joshua the son of
Nun: “The book of this law shall not depart out of thy mouth; but thou shalt meditate in it day and
night, that thou mayest observe to do according to all that is written therein.” Also the Lord, sending
His apostles, commands that the nations should be baptized, and taught to observe all things which
He commanded. If, therefore, it is either prescribed in the Gospel, or contained in the epistles or Acts
of the Apostles, that those who come from any heresy should not be baptized, but only hands laid
upon them to repentance, let this divine and holy tradition be observed. But if everywhere heretics
are called nothing else than adversaries and antichrists, if they are pronounced to be people to be
avoided, and to be perverted and condemned of their own selves, wherefore is it that they should not
be thought worthy of being condemned by us, since it is evident from the apostolic testimony that
they are of their own selves condemned? So that no one ought to defame the apostles as if they had
approved of the baptisms of heretics, or had communicated with them without the Church’s baptism,
when they, the apostles, wrote such things of the heretics. …

3. But if it is evident that subsequently heresies became more numerous and worse; and if, in time
past, it was never at all prescribed nor written that only hands should be laid upon a heretic for
repentance, and that so he might be communicated with; and if there is only one baptism, which is
with us, and is within, and is granted of the divine condescension to the Church alone, what
obstinacy is that, or what presumption, to prefer human tradition to divine ordinance, and not
to observe that God is indignant and angry as often as human tradition relaxes and passes by the
divine precepts …

4. Certainly an excellent and lawful tradition is set before us by the teaching of our brother Stephen,
which may afford us a suitable authority! For in the same place of his epistle he has added and
continued: “Since those who are specially heretics do not baptize those who come to them from one
another, but only receive them to communion.” To this point of evil has the Church of God and
spouse of Christ been developed, that she follows the examples of heretics; that for the purpose of
celebrating the celestial sacraments, light should borrow her discipline from darkness, and Christians
should do that which antichrists do. But what is that blindness of soul, what is that degradation of
faith, to refuse to recognise the unity which comes from God the Father, and from the tradition
of Jesus Christ the Lord and our God! For if the Church is not with heretics, therefore, because it is
one, and cannot be divided; and if thus the Holy Spirit is not there, because He is one, and cannot be
among profane persons, and those who are without; certainly also baptism, which consists in the
same unity, cannot be among heretics, because it can neither be separated from the Church nor from
the Holy Spirit. …

7. But as no heresy at all, and equally no schism, being without, can have the sanctification of saving
baptism, why has the bitter obstinacy of our brother Stephen broken forth to such an extent, as to
contend that sons are born to God from the baptism of Marcion; moreover, of Valentinus and Apelles,
and of others who blaspheme against God the Father; and to say that remission of sins is granted in
the name of Jesus Christ where blasphemy is uttered against the Father and against Christ the Lord
God? …

8. In which place, dearest brother, we must consider, for the sake of the faith and the religion of the
sacerdotal office which we discharge, whether the account can be satisfactory in the day of judgment
for a priest of God, who maintains, and approves, and acquiesces in the baptism of blasphemers,
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when the Lord threatens, and says, “And now, O ye priests, this commandment is for you: if ye will
not hear, and if ye will not lay it to heart to give glory unto my name, saith the Lord Almighty, I will
even send a curse upon you, and I will curse your blessings.” Does he give glory to God, who
communicates with the baptism of Marcion? Does he give glory to God, who judges that remission of
sins is granted among those who blaspheme against God? Does he give glory to God, who affirms that
sons are born to God without, of an adulterer and a harlot? Does he give glory to God, who does
not hold the unity and truth that arise from the divine law, but maintains heresies against the
Church? Does he give glory to God, who, a friend of heretics and an enemy to Christians,
thinks that the priests of God, who support the truth of Christ and the unity of the Church, are
to be excommunicated? …

10. But it happens, by a love of presumption and of obstinacy, that one would rather maintain his
own evil and false position, than agree in the right and true which belongs to another. Looking
forward to which, the blessed Apostle Paul writes to Timothy, and warns him that a bishop must not
be “litigious, nor contentious, but gentle and teachable.” Now he is teachable who is meek and gentle
to the patience of learning. For it behoves a bishop not only to teach, but also to learn; because he
also teaches better who daily increases and advances by learning better; which very thing, moreover,
the same Apostle Paul teaches, when he admonishes, “that if anything better be revealed to one
sitting by, the first should hold his peace.” But there is a brief way for religious and simple minds,
both to put away error, and to find and to elicit truth. For if we return to the head and source of
divine tradition, human error ceases; and having seen the reason of the heavenly sacraments,
whatever lay hid in obscurity under the gloom and cloud of darkness, is opened into the light of the
truth. If a channel supplying water, which formerly flowed plentifully and freely, suddenly fail, do we
not go to the fountain, that there the reason of the failure may be ascertained, whether from the
drying up of the springs the water has failed at the fountainhead, or whether, flowing thence free and
full, it has failed in the midst of its course; that so, if it has been caused by the fault of an interrupted
or leaky channel, that the constant stream does not flow uninterruptedly and continuously, then the
channel being repaired and strengthened, the water collected may be supplied for the use and drink
of the city, with the same fertility and plenty with which it issues from the spring? And this it
behoves the priests of God to do now, if they would keep the divine precepts, that if in any respect the
truth have wavered and vacillated, we should return to our original and Lord, and to the evangelical
and apostolical tradition; and thence may arise the ground of our action, whence has taken rise both
our order and our origin.

11. For it has been delivered to us, that there is one God, and one Christ, and one hope, and one faith,
and one Church, and one baptism ordained only in the one Church, from which unity whosoever will
depart must needs be found with heretics; and while he upholds them against the Church, he
impugns the sacrament of the divine tradition. The sacrament of which unity we see expressed also
in the Canticles, in the person of Christ, who says, “A garden enclosed is my sister, my spouse, a
fountain sealed, a well of living water, a garden with the fruit of apples.” But if His Church is a garden
enclosed, and a fountain sealed, how can he who is not in the Church enter into the same garden, or
drink from its fountain? Moreover, Peter himself, showing and vindicating the unity, has
commanded and warned us that we cannot be saved, except by the one only baptism of one
Church. “In the ark,” says he, “of Noah, few, that is, eight souls, were saved by water, as also baptism
shall in like manner save you.” In how short and spiritual a summary has he set forth the sacrament
of unity! For as, in that baptism of the world in which its ancient iniquity was purged away, he who
was not in the ark of Noah could not be saved by water, so neither can he appear to be saved by
baptism who has not been baptized in the Church which is established in the unity of the Lord
according to the sacrament of the one ark.1

St. Augustine’s Commentary on St. Cyprian and Rebaptism

1 ANF, Vol. V, Ep. LXXIII, pp. 386 – 389.

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There are many other points that could be brought up from Cyprian’s works and related correspondence to
show his view of the position of the Bishop of Rome, ecclesiology, and the unity of the Church. However, I
think it will suffice to place the extremely important statements by St. Augustine, who has commented
extensively on the whole affair, which demonstrates that St. Augustine holds that an Ecumenical Council is the
highest authority in the Church, and thus above the Bishop of Rome, and that St. Cyprian would have accepted
the decision of such a general council. I quote extensively from the seven books of St. Augustine On Baptism,
Against the Donatists, written about the year 400:

Book I., Chapter VII. – 9. For, in the next place, that I may not seem to rest on mere human
arguments, – since there is so much obscurity in this question, that in earlier ages of the Church,
before the schism of Donatus, it has caused men of great weight, and even our fathers, the bishops,
whose hearts were full of charity, so to dispute and doubt among themselves, saving always the
peace of the Church, that the several statutes of their Councils in their different districts long varied
from each other, till at length the most wholesome opinion was established, to the removal of all
doubts, by a plenary Council of the whole world: – I therefore bring forward from the gospel clear
proofs, by which I propose, with God’s help, to prove how rightly and truly in the sight of God it has
been determined, that in the case of every schismatic and heretic, the wound which caused his
separation should be cured by the medicine of the Church; but that what remained sound in him
should rather be recognized with approbation, than wounded by condemnation. …

Chapter XVIII. – 27. On the question of baptism, then, I think that I have argued at sufficient length;
and since this is a most manifest schism which is called by the name of the Donatists, it only remains
that on the subject of baptism we should believe with pious faith what the universal Church
maintains, apart from the sacrilege of schism. And yet, if within the Church different men still held
opinions on the point, without meanwhile violating peace, then till some one clear and simple
decree should have been passed by an universal Council, it would have been right for the charity
which seeks for unity to throw a veil over the error of human infirmity, as it is written “For charity
shall cover the multitude of sins.” For, seeing that its absence causes the presence of all other things
to be of no avail, we may well suppose that in its presence there is found pardon for the absence of
some missing things.

28. There are great proofs of this existing on the part of the blessed martyr Cyprian, in his letters, –
to come at last to him of whose authority they carnally flatter themselves they are possessed, whilst
by his love they are spiritually overthrown. For at that time, before the consent of the whole
Church had declared authoritatively, by the decree of a plenary Council, what practice should be
followed in this matter, it seemed to him, in common with about eighty of his fellow bishops of the
African churches, that every man who had been baptized outside the communion of the Catholic
Church should, on joining the Church, be baptized anew. And I take it, that the reason why the Lord
did not reveal the error in this to a man of such eminence, was, that his pious humility and charity in
guarding the peace and health of the Church might be made manifest, and might be noticed, so as to
serve as an example of healing power, so to speak, not only to Christians of that age, but also to those
who should come after. For when a bishop of so important a Church, himself a man of so great merit
and virtue, endowed with such excellent of heart and power of eloquence, entertained an opinion
about baptism different from that which was to be confirmed by a more diligent searching into the
truth; though many of his colleagues held what was not yet made manifest by authority, but was
sanctioned by the past custom of the Church, and afterwards embraced by the whole Catholic world;
yet under these circumstances he did not sever himself, by refusal of communion, from the others
who thought differently, and indeed never ceased to urge on the others that they should “forbear one
another in love, endeavouring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.” … Whilst, then,
that holy man entertained on the subject of baptism an opinion at variance with the true view, which
was afterwards thoroughly examined and confirmed after most diligent consideration, his
error was compensated by his remaining in catholic unity, and by the abundance of his charity; and
finally it was cleared away by the pruning-hook of martyrdom. …
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Book II., Chapter I. – 2. Wherefore, if Peter, on doing this [“compelling a man to be circumcised after
the Jewish fashion”], is corrected by his later colleague Paul, and is yet preserved by the bond of
peace and unity till he is promoted to martyrdom, how much more readily and constantly should
we prefer, either to the authority of a single bishop, or to the Council of a single province, the
rule that has been established by the statutes of the universal Church? For this same Cyprian, in
urging his view of the question, was still anxious to remain in the unity of peace even with those who
differed from him on this point, as is shown by his own opening address at the beginning of the very
Council which is quoted by the Donatists. …

Chapter III. – 4. Now let the proud and swelling necks of the heretics raise themselves, if they dare,
against the holy humility of this address. Ye mad Donatists, whom we desire earnestly to return to
the peace and unity of the holy Church, that ye may receive health therein, what have ye to say in
answer to this? You are wont, indeed, to bring up against us the letters of Cyprian, his opinion, his
Council; why do ye claim the authority of Cyprian for your schism, and reject his example when it
makes for the peace of the Church? But who can fail to be aware that the sacred canon of Scripture,
both of the Old and New Testament, is confined within its own limits, and that it stands so absolutely
in a superior position to all later letters of the bishops, that about it we can hold no manner of doubt
or disputation whether what is confessedly contained in it is right and true; but that all the letters of
bishops which have been written, or are being written, since the closing of the canon, are liable to be
refuted if there be anything contained in them which strays from the truth, either by the discourse of
some one who happens to be wiser in the matter than themselves, or by the weightier authority and
more learned experience of other bishops, or by the authority of Councils; and futher, that the
Councils themselves, which are held in the several districts and provinces, must yield, beyond all
possibility of doubt, to the authority of plenary Councils which are formed for the whole Christian
world; and that even of the plenary Councils, the earlier are often corrected by those which follow
them, when, by some actual experiment, things are brought to light which were before concealed,
and that is known which previously lay hid, and this without any whirlwind of sacrilegious pride,
without any puffing of the neck through arrogance, without any strife of envious hatred, simply with
holy humility, catholic peace, and Christian charity?

Chapter IV. – 5. Wherefore the holy Cyprian, whose dignity is only increased by his humility, who so
loved the pattern set by Peter as to use the words, “Giving us thereby a pattern of concord and
patience, that we should not pertinaciously love our own opinions, but should rather account as our
own any true and rightful suggestions of our brethren and colleagues, for the common health and
weal,” – he, I say, abundantly shows that he was most willing to correct his own opinion, if any one
should prove to him that it is as certain that the baptism of Christ can be given by those who have
strayed from the fold, as that it could not be lost when they strayed; on which subject we have
already said much. Nor should we ourselves venture to assert anything of the kind, were we not
supported by the unanimous authority of the whole Church, to which he himself would
unquestionably have yielded, if at that time the truth of this question had been placed beyond dispute
by the investigation and decree of an plenary Council. For if he quotes Peter as an example for his
allowing himself quietly and peacefully to be corrected by one junior colleague, how much more
readily would he himself, with the Council of his province, have yielded to the authority of the whole
world, when the truth had been thus brought to light? For, indeed, so holy and peaceful a soul would
have been most ready to the arguments of any single person who could prove to him the truth; and
perhaps he even did so, though we have no knowledge of the fact. For it was neither possible that all
the proceedings which took place between the bishops at that time should have been committed to
writing, nor are we acquainted with all that was so committed. For how could a matter which was
involved in such mists of disputation even have been brought to the full illumination and
authoritative decision of a plenary Council, had it not first been known to be discussed for some
considerable time in the various districts of the world, with many discussions and comparisons of the
views of the bishop on every side? …

Chapter VII. – 12. … But according to the teaching which springs from a more careful investigation
into the truth, which, after great doubt and fluctuation, was brought at last to the decision of a
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plenary Council, we ought to believe that it rather began to be corrupted than to receive correction at
the hands of Agrippinus. Accordingly, when so great a question forced itself upon him, and it was
difficult to decide the point, whether remission of sins and man’s spiritual regeneration could take
place among heretics or schismatics, and the authority of Agrippinus was there to guide him, with
that of some few men who shared in his misapprehension of this question, having preferred
attempting something new to maintaining a custom which they did not understand how to defend;
under these circumstances, considerations of probability forced themselves into the eyes of his soul,
and barred the way to the thorough investigation of the truth. …

Chapter VIII. – 13. … But amid the perplexities of so obscure a question, and seeing everywhere
around him a strong universal custom, he would rather have put restraint upon himself by prayer
and stretching forth his mind towards God, so as to have perceived or taught that for truth which was
afterwards decided by a plenary Council. But when he had found relief amid his weariness in the
authority of the former Council which was held by Agrippinus, he preferred maintaining what was in
a manner the discovery of his predecessors, to expending further toil in investigation. For at the end
of his letter to Quintus, he thus shows how he has sought repose, if one may use the expression, for
his weariness, in what might be termed the resting-place of authority.

Chapter IX. – 14. “This, moreover,” says he, “Agrippinus, a man of excellent memory, with the rest,
bishops with him, who at that time governed the Church of the Lord in the province of Africa and
Numidia, did establish and, after the investigation of a mutual Council had weighed it, confirm; whose
sentence, being both religious and legitimate and salutary in accordance with the Catholic faith and
Church, we also have followed.” By this witness he gives sufficient proof how much more ready he
would have been to bear his testimony, had any Council been held to discuss this matter which either
embraced the whole Church, or at least represented our brethren beyond the sea. But such a Council
had not yet been held, because the whole world was bound together by the powerful bond of custom;
and this was deemed sufficient to oppose to those who wished to introduce what was new, because
they could not comprehend the truth. Afterwards, however, while the question became matter for
discussion and investigation amongst many on either side, the new practice was not only invented,
but even submitted to the authority and power of a plenary Council, – after the martyrdom of
Cyprian, it is true, but before we were born. But that this was indeed the custom of the Church, which
afterwards was confirmed by a plenary Council, in which the truth was brought to light, and many
difficulties cleared away, is plain enough from the words of the blessed Cyprian himself in that same
letter to Jubianus, which was quoted as being read in the Council. For he says, “But some one asks,
What then will be done in the case of those who, coming out of heresy to the Church, have already
been admitted without baptism?” where certainly he shows plainly enough what was usually done,
though he would have wished it otherwise; and in the very fact of his quoting the Council of
Agrippinus, he clearly proves that the custom of the Church was different. Nor indeed was it
requisite that he should seek to establish the practice by this Council, if it was already sanctioned by
custom; and in the Council itself some of the speakers expressly declare, in giving their opinion, that
they went against the custom of the Church in deciding what they thought was right. Wherefore let
the Donatists consider this one point, which surely none can fail to see, that if the authority of
Cyprian is to be followed, it is to be followed rather in maintaining unity than in altering the custom
of the Church; but if respect is paid to his Council, it must at any rate yield place to the later
Council of the universal Church, of which he rejoiced to be a member, often warning associates that
they should all follow his example in upholding the coherence of the whole body. For both later
Councils are preferred among later generations to those of an earlier date; and the whole is always,
with good reason, looked upon as superior to the parts. …

Chapter XV. – 20. … There was at one time a doubt upon the subject of baptism; those who held
different opinions yet remained in unity. In course of time, owing to the certain discovery of the
truth, that doubt was taken away. The question which, unsolved, did not frighten Cyprian into
separation from the Church, invites you, now that it is solved, to return once more within the fold.
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Book III., Chapter I. – 1. I think that it may now be considered clear to every one, that the authority of
the blessed Cyprian for the maintenance of the bond of peace, and the avoiding of any violation of
that most wholesome charity which preserves unity in the Church, may be urged on our side rather
than on the side of the Donatists. For if they have chosen to act upon his example of rebaptizing
Catholics, because he thought that heretics ought to be baptized on joining the Catholic Church, shall
not we rather follow his example, whereby he laid down a manifest rule that one ought in no wise, by
the establishment of a separate communion, to secede from the Catholic communion, that is from
the body of Christians dispersed throughout the world, even on the admission of evil and
sacrilegious men, since he was unwilling even to remove from the right of communion those whom
he considered to have received sacrilegious men, since he was unwilling even to remove from the
right of communion those whom he considered to have received sacrilegious men without baptism
into the Catholic communion, saying, “Judging no one, nor depriving any of the right of communion if
he differ from us?”

Chapter II. – 2. Nevertheless, I see what may still be required of me, viz., that I should answer those
plausible arguments, by which, in even earlier times, Agrippinus, or Cyprian himself, or those in
Africa who agreed with them, or any others in far distant lands beyond the sea, were moved, not
indeed by the authority of any plenary or even regionary Council, but by a mere epistolary
correspondence, to think that they ought to adopt a custom which had no sanction from the ancient
custom of the Church, and which was expressly forbidden by the most unanimous resolution of the
Catholic world in order that an error which had begun to creep into the minds of some men, through
discussions of this kind, might be cured by the more powerful truth and universal healing power of
unity coming on the side of safety. …

3. … And so we, as I had begun to say, are safe in the communion of that Church, throughout the
whole extent of which the custom now prevails, which prevailed in like manner through its whole
extent before the time of Agrippinus and Cyprian, and whose unity neither Agrippinus nor Cyprian
ever deserted, nor those who agreed with them, although they entertained different views from the
rest of their brethren – all of them remaining in the same communion of unity with the very men
from whom they differed in opinion.

Chapter III. – 4. Let us therefore, seeing that we adhere to the example of Cyprian, go on now to
consider Cyprian’s Council. What says Cyprian? “Ye have heard,” he says, “most beloved colleagues,
what Jubianus our fellow-bishop has written to me, consulting my moderate ability concerning the
unlawful and profane baptism of heretics, and what answer I gave him, – giving a judgment which we
have once and again and often given, that heretics coming to the Church ought to be baptized and
sanctified with the baptism of the Church. Another letter of Jubianus has likewise been read to you,
in which, agreeably to his sincere and religious devotion, in an answer to our epistle, he not only
expressed his assent, but returned thanks also, acknowledging that he had received instruction.” In
these words of the blessed Cyprian, we find that he had been consulted by Jubianus, and what answer
he had given to his questions and how Jubianus acknowledged with gratitude that he had received
instruction. Ought we then to be thought unreasonably persistent if we desire to consider this same
epistle by which Jubianus was convinced? For till such time as we are also convinced (if there are
any arguments of truth whereby this can be done), Cyprian himself has established our security by
the right of Catholic communion.

5. For he goes on to say: “It remains that we severally declare our opinion on this same subject,
judging no one, nor depriving any one of the right of communion if he differ from us,” He allows me,
therefore, without losing the right of communion, not only to continue inquiring into the truth, but
even to hold opinions differing from his own. “For no one of us,” he says, “setteth himself up as a
bishop of bishops, or by tyrannical terror forces his colleagues to a necessity of obeying.” What could
be more kind? what more humble? Surely there is here no authority restraining us from inquiry into
what is truth. “Inasmuch as every bishop,” he says, “in the free use of his liberty and power, has the
right of forming his own judgment, and can no more be judged by another than he can himself judge
another,” – that is, I suppose, in those questions which have not yet been brought to perfect clearness
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of solution; for he knew what a deep question about the sacrament was then occupying the whole
Church with every kind of disputation, and gave free liberty of inquiry to every man, that the truth
might be made known by investigation. …

Chapter IV. – 6. … I have read the letter, I confess, and should certainly been a convert to his views,
had I not been induced to consider the matter more carefully by the vast weight of authority,
originating in those whom the Church, distributed throughout the world amid so many nations, of
Latins, Greeks, barbarians, not to mention the Jewish race itself, has been able to produce, – that
same Church which gave birth to Cyprian himself, – men whom I could in no wise bring myself to
think had been unwilling without reason to hold this view, – not because it was impossible that in so
difficult a question the opinion of one or of a few might not have been more near the truth than that
of more, but because on must not lightly, without full consideration and investigation of the matter to
the best of his abilities, decide in favor of a single individual, or even of a few, against the decision of
so very many men of the same religion and communion, all endowed with great talent and abundant
learning. …

Chapter X. – 14. Cyprian, indeed, says that on this subject not one, but two or more Councils were
held; always, however, in Africa. For indeed in one he mentions that seventy-one bishops had been
assembled, – to all whose authority we do not hesitate, with all the due deference to Cyprian, to
prefer the authority, supported by many more bishops, of the whole Church, spread
throughout the whole world, of which Cyprian rejoiced that he was an inseparable member. …

Book IV., Chapter V. – 8. … I do not doubt that if he had had the opportunity of discussing this
question, which has been so long and so much disputed in the Church, with the pious and learned
men to whom we owe it that subsequently that ancient custom was confirmed by the authority of a
plenary Council, he would have shown, without hesitation, not only how learned he was in those
things which he grasped with all the security of truth, but also how ready he was to receive
instruction in what he had failed to perceive. …

Chapter VI. – 9. … Nor do I find the reason why the same Cyprian found this very custom, which after
his time was confirmed by nothing less than a plenary Council of the whole world, already so
strong before his time, that when with all his learning he sought an authority worth following for
changing it, he found nothing but a Council of Agrippinus held in Africa a very few years before his
own time. And seeing that this was not enough for him, as against the custom of the whole world, he
laid hold on these reasons which we just now, considering them with great care, and being confirmed
by the antiquity of the custom itself, and by the subsequent authority of a plenary Council, found to
be truth-like rather than true; which, however, seemed to him true, as he toiled in a question of the
greatest obscurity, and was in doubt about the remission of sins, – whether it could fail to be given in
the baptism of Christ, and whether it could be given among heretics. In which matter, if an imperfect
revelation of the truth was given to Cyprian, that the greatness of his love in not deserting the unity
of the Church might be made manifest, there is not any reason why any one should venture to claim
superiority over the strong defenses and excellence of his virtues and the abundance of graces which
were found in him, merely because, with the instruction derived from the strength of a general
Council, he sees something which Cyprian did not see, because the Church had not yet held a
plenary Council on the matter. Just as no one is so insane as to set himself up as surpassing the
merits of the Apostle Peter, because, taught by the epistles of the Apostle Paul, and confirmed by the
custom of the Church herself, he does not compel the Gentiles to Judaize, as Peter once had done. …

10. … with how much more force we now say, What the custom of the Church has always held, what
this argument has failed to prove false, and what a plenary Council has confirmed, this we follow! …

Chapter IX. – 13. By this patience of Christian love he not only endured the difference of opinion
manifested in all kindliness by his good colleagues on an obscure point, as he also himself received
toleration, till, in process of time, when it so pleased God, what had always been a most wholesome
custom was further confirmed by a declaration of the truth in a plenary Council, …
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Book V., Chapter I. – 1. … And, after this confession, they will be unable to discover any reason which
will justify them in maintaining that they were bound to separate from the churches of the whole
world, which, as we read, were equally founded by the apostles, seeing that, while the others could
not have perished from any admixture of offenders, of whatsoever kind, they, though they would not
have perished if they remained in unity with them, brought destruction on themselves in schism, by
separating themselves from their brethren, and breaking the bond of peace. For the sacrilege of
schism is most clearly evident in them, if they had no sufficient cause for separation. …

Chapter IV. – 4. … And let any one, who is led by the past custom of the Church, and by the
subsequent authority of a plenary Council, and by so many powerful proofs from holy Scripture, and
by much evidence from Cyprian himself, and by the clear reasoning of truth, … whichever of the two
opinions be true, – that which Cyprian then held, or that which was maintained by the universal voice
of the Catholic Church, which Cyprian did not abandon, …

Chapter XVII. – 23. … Lastly, that prescribing to no one, and prejudging no one, lest each bishop
should not do what he thinks right in the free exercise of his own will, he has left for us also,
whatsoever we may be, a place for treating peacefully of those things with him. For he is present, not
only in his letters, but by that very charity which existed in so extraordinary a degree in him, and
which can never die. Longing, therefore, with the aid of his prayers, to cling to and be in union with
him, if I be not hindered by the unmeetness of my sins, I will learn if I can through his letters with
how great peace and comfort the Lord administered His Church through him; and, putting on the
bowels of humility through the moving influence of his discourse, if, in common with the Church at
large, I entertain any doctrine more true than his, I will not prefer my heart to his, even in the point in
which he, though holding different views, was yet not severed from the Church throughout the world.
For in that, when that question was yet undecided for want of full discussion, though his
sentiments differed from those of many of his colleagues, yet he obtained so great moderation, that
he would not mutilate the sacred fellowship of the Church of God by any stain of schism, a greater
strength of excellence appeared in him than would have been shown if, without that virtue, he had
held views on every point not only true, but coinciding with their own. Nor should I be acting as he
would wish, if I were to pretend to prefer his talent and his fluency of discourse and copiousness of
learning to the holy Council of all nations, whereat he was assuredly present through the unity of his
spirit, especially as he is now placed in such full light of truth as to see with perfect certainty what he
was here seeking in the spirit of perfect peace. For out of that rich abundance he smiles at all that
here seems eloquence in us, as though it were the first essay of infancy; there he sees by what rule of
piety he acted here, that nothing should be dearer in the Church to him than unity. … are now
received, as is the reasonable custom, confirmed by a plenary Council of the whole Christian world,
do I set against him my own view, but that of the holy Catholic Church, which he so loved and loves, …

Chapter XXII. – 30. … And so even what Cyprian wrote to Quintus, and what, in conjunction with his
colleagues Liberalis, Caldonius, Junius, and the rest, he wrote to Saturninus, Maximus, and others, is
all found, on due consideration, to be in no wise meet to be preferred as against the agreement of the
whole Catholic Church, of which they rejoiced that they were members, and from which they neither
cut themselves away nor allowed others to be cut away who held a contrary opinion, until at length,
by the will of the Lord, it was made manifest, by a plenary Council many years afterwards, what was
the more perfect way, and that not by the institution of any novelty, but by confirming what was old.

Chapter XXIII. – 31. Cyprian writes also to Pompeius about this selfsame matter, and clearly shows in
that letter that Stephen, who, as we learn, was then bishop of the Roman Church, not only did
not agree with him upon the points before us, but even wrote and taught the opposite views.
But Stephen certainly did not “communicate with heretics,” merely because he did not dare to
impugn the baptism of Christ, which he knew remained perfect in the midst of their perversity. For if
none have baptism who entertain false views about God, it has been proved sufficiently, in my
opinion, that this may happen even within the Church. “The apostles,” indeed, “gave no injunctions
on the point;” but the custom, which is opposed to Cyprian, may be supposed to have had its origin in
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apostolic tradition, just as there are many things which are fairly held to have been enjoined by the
apostles, which yet are not mentioned in their writings. …

Chapter XXV. – 36. I am unwilling to go on to handle again what Cyprian poured forth with signs of
irritation against Stephen, as it is moreover, quite unnecessary. For they are but the selfsame
arguments which have already been sufficiently discussed; and it is better to pass over those points
which involved the danger of baneful dissension. But Stephen thought that we should even hold
aloof from those who endeavored to destroy the primitive custom of receiving heretics;
whereas Cyprian, moved by the difficulty of the question itself, and being most largely endowed with
the holy bowels of Christian charity, thought that we ought to remain at unity with those who
differed in opinion with ourselves. Therefore, although he was not without excitement, though of a
truly brotherly kind, in his indignation, yet the peace of Christ prevailed in their hearts, that in such a
dispute no evil of schism should arise between them. But it was not found that “hence grew more
abundant heresies and schisms,” because what is of Christ in them is approved, and what is of
themselves is condemned; for all the more those who hold this law of rebaptizing were cut into
smaller fragments.

Chapter XXVI. – 37. To go on to what he says, “that a bishop should be ‘teachable,’” adding, “But he is
teachable who is gentle and meek to learn as well, since he is indeed the better teacher who daily
grows and advances by learning better things;” – in these words assuredly the holy man, endowed
with pious charity, sufficiently points out that we should not hesitate to read his letters in such a
sense, that we should feel no difficulty if the Church should afterwards confirm what had been
discovered by further and longer discussions; because, as there were many things which the learned
Cyprian might teach, so there was still something which the teachable Cyprian might learn. …

Chapter XXVII. – 38. … They observe most constantly the rule of faith which has been sought out
with diligence; and if in aught they stray from it, they submit to speedy correction under Catholic
authority, although, in Cyprian’s words, they be tossed about, by reason of their fleshly appetite, with
the various conflicts of phantasies. …

Book VI., Chapter I. – 1. … yet that such persons both have, and give, and receive the sacrament of
baptism, was sufficiently manifest to the pastors of the Catholic Church dispersed over the whole
world, through whom the original custom was afterwards confirmed by the authority of a
plenary Council; …

Chapter I. – 3. … For neither were the blind Pharisees, although they sometimes enjoined what was
right to be done, to be compared to the Apostle Peter, though he at times enjoined what was not
right. But not only is their dryness not to be compared to his greenness, but even the fruit of others
may not be deemed equal to his fertility. For no one now compels the Gentiles to Judaize, and yet no
one now in the Church, however great his progress in goodness, may be compared with the
apostleship of Peter. Wherefore, while rendering due reverence, and paying, so far as I can, the
fitting honor to the peaceful bishop and glorious martyr Cyprian, I yet venture to say that his view
concerning the baptism of schismatics and heretics was contrary to that which was afterwards
brought to light by a decision, not of mine, but of the whole Church, confirmed and
strengthened by the authority of a plenary Council: just as, while paying the reverence he
deserves to Peter, the first of the apostles and most eminent of martyrs, I yet venture to say that he
did not do right in compelling the Gentiles to Judaize; for this also, I say, not of my own teaching, but
according to the wholesome doctrine of the Apostle Paul, retained and preserved throughout the
whole Church. …

Chapter VII. – 10. … We, therefore, maintaining on the subject of the identity of all baptisms what
must be acknowledged everywhere to be the custom of the universal Church, and what is confirmed
by the decision of general Councils, …
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Chapter VIII. – 12. … Whence also it is shown that at that time those men held the truer views who
did not depart from the primitive custom, which is since confirmed by the consent of a general
Council. …

Chapter XIII. – 20. Januarius of Lambæse said: “Following the authority of the holy Scriptures, I
pronounce that all heretics should be baptized, and so admitted into the holy Church.”

21. To him we answer, that, following the authority of the holy Scriptures, a universal Council of the
whole world decreed that the baptism of Christ was not to be disavowed, even when found among
heretics. …

Chapter XXII. – 39. … For he saw that a greater number agreed with this view, from whose
communion, however, he and his friends could not separate themselves, lest unity should be
impaired, and so he added, “so far as lies within our power,” – showing beyond all doubt that he did
not willingly communicate with those whom he held to be without baptism, but that yet all things
were to be endured for the sake of peace and unity; just as was done also by those who thought that
Dativus and his party were in the wrong, and who held what afterwards was taught by a fuller
declaration of the truth, and urged by ancient custom, which received the stronger confirmation of a
later Council; yet in turn, with anxious piety, they showed toleration towards each other, though
without violation of Christian charity they entertained different opinions, endeavoring to keep the
unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace, till God should reveal to one of them, were he otherwise
minded, even the error of his ways. …

Chapter XXXV. – 68. If this man proved that those who differed from him, and held the view that has
since been held by the whole world under the sanction of a Christian Council, were following custom
so as to despise truth, we should have reason for fearing these words; but seeing that this custom is
found both to have had its origin in truth and to have been confirmed by truth, we have nothing to
fear in this judgment. …

Chapter XXXIX. – 75. Eugenius of Ammadera said: “I too pronounce this same judgment, that heretics
should be baptized.”

76. To him we answer: But this is not the judgment which the Church pronounces, to which also God
has now revealed in a plenary Council the point in which ye were then still otherwise minded, but
because saving charity was in you, ye remained in unity. …

Chapter XLII. – 81. Adelphius of Thasbalte said: “It is surely without cause that they find fault with
the truth in false and invidious terms, saying that we rebaptize, since the Church does not rebaptize
heretics, but baptizes them.”

82. Truly enough it does not rebaptize them, because it only baptizes those who were not baptized
before; and this earlier custom has only been confirmed in a later Council by a more careful
perfecting of the truth. …

Book VII., Chapter I. – 1. Let us not be considered troublesome to our readers, if we discuss the same
question often and from different points of view. For although the Holy Catholic Church throughout
all nations be fortified by the authority of primitive custom and of a plenary Council against those
arguments which throw some darkness over the question about baptism, whether it can be the same
among heretics and schismatics that it is in the Catholic Church, yet, since a different opinion has at
one time been entertained in the unity of the Church itself, by men who are in no wise to be despised,
and especially by Cyprian, whose authority men endeavor to use against us who are far removed
from his charity, we are therefore compelled to make use of the opportunity of examining and
considering all that we find on this subject in his Council and letters, in order, as it were, to handle at
some considerable length this same question, and to show how it has more truly been the decision
of the whole body of the Catholic Church, that heretics or schismatics, who have received baptism
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already in the body from which they came, should be admitted with it into the communion of the
Catholic Church, being corrected in their error and rooted and grounded in the faith, that, so far as
concerns the sacrament of baptism, there should not be an addition of something that was wanting,
but a turning to profit of what was in them. … yet following, as our weakness will allow, the
authority of the Catholic Church of which he was himself a conspicuous and most noble member, …

Chapter XX. – 38. Zozimus of Tharassa said: “When a revelation has been made of the truth, error
must give way to truth; inasmuch as Peter also, who before was wont to circumcise, gave way to Paul
when he declared the truth.”

39. The answer is: This may also be considered as the expression of our judgment too, and this is just
what has been done in respect of this question of baptism. For after that the truth had been more
clearly revealed, error gave way to truth, when that most wholesome custom was further confirmed
by the authority of a plenary Council. It is well, however, that they so constantly bear in mind that it
was possible even for Peter, the chief of the apostles, to have been at one time minded otherwise than
the truth required; which we believe, without any disrespect to Cyprian, to have been the case with
him, and that with all our love for Cyprian, for it is not right that he should be loved with greater love
than Peter. …

Chapter XXVII. – 53. … We should therefore do right in maintaining the custom which has since been
confirmed by a plenary Council, even if the truth were still concealed, which we believe to have been
already made manifest. …

Chapter LIII. – 102. … But the safe course for us is, not to advance with any rashness of judgment in
setting forth a view which has neither been started in any regionary Council of the Catholic Church
nor established in a plenary one; but to assert, with all the confidence of a voice that cannot be
gainsaid, what has been confirmed by the consent of the universal Church, under the direction of our
Lord God and Saviour Jesus Christ. …

Chapter LIV. – 103. … Whence Cyprian and those who thought with him could not impose limits on
the Catholic Church, which they would not mutilate. But in that they were otherwise minded we feel
no fear, seeing that we too share in their veneration for Peter; yet in that they did not depart from
unity we rejoice, seeing that we, like them, are founded on the rock.1

Pope Stephen had already decided the question that baptism by heretics or schismatics was valid,2 yet
Augustine says that the matter was not settled until the decision of a universal Council of the entire Christian
Church. Therefore, according to Augustine, the matter was not resolved by the judgment of the Bishop of
Rome, and Cyprian did not sin by refusing obedience to the Pope’s decrees, as only a general Council has the
final authority, representing the entire Christian world. Augustine’s insistence on the authority of a plenary
Council shows that he considered such a council above the Bishop of Rome, and he did not view Church unity
as consisting under a monarchy, with the world subject to the Roman Bishop.

1 J. R. King (translator), The Seven Books of Augustin, Bishop of Hippo, On Baptism, Against the Donatists [De
Baptisimo Contra Donatistas], pp. 416 – 514, Philip Schaff (editor), A Select Library of the Nicene and Post-
Nicene Fathers of The Christian Church, Series I, Vol. IV, New York, NY: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1909. The
Council that Augustine repeatedly refers to is the Council of Arles in 314. See the footnotes of the translated
text for additional information.
2 The question of the validity of the baptism of heretics is a large topic, and though this has been debated

within Orthodoxy, the Church does not hold to one inflexible rule on this matter, especially with the changing
modes of baptism by non-Orthodox over the centuries.
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It is interesting that a Roman Catholic priest and controversialist, James Austin Mason (1785 – 1844), writing
against John Wesley, when discussing this subject, makes claims which directly contradict what the Latin
First Vatican Council defined as a matter of faith for Roman Catholics:

His [Mr. Wesley’s] next charge is, that the Church of Rome requires all persons to believe the
doctrines which she proposes. Here again he guilefully hides from your view the first and necessary
definition of the Church: if by the Church of Rome he mean the Church at Rome, the assertion is false,
himself being the witness, as I shall hereafter show; for we are not obliged to believe the Pope and his
cardinals, or the Church at Rome, on their sole unsupported authority; any doctrine to be of faith
must be that of the universal Church as before defined. [p. 15.] …

This subject was agitated in the days of Pope Stephen, and he decided that it was not lawful to re-
baptize them if it was ascertained that the person had been properly baptized. On this occasion St.
Cyprian opposed the Pope, and St. Augustine remarks, we durst not affirm with St. Stephen the
validity of such baptism, had it not been for the most perfect agreement of the Catholic Church, to
whose authority St. Cyprian would have submitted if in his time a General Council had decided the
question. Here are three things worthy of notice. 1. That this point was cleared up by tradition. 2. St.
Cyprian opposed the Pope as long as he thought he acted by private authority and private judgment;
and this completely disproves Mr. Wesley’s assertion, that “the Church of Rome, in its proper and
confined sense, requires all persons to receive her doctrines on her own private authority.” 3. We see
what is the authority of the Church which these two doctors and saints considered definite in matters
of faith and morals – or, as Mr. Wesley calls them, manners – viz. the voice of the Catholic Church;
[pp. 19 – 20.]1

The editor of the Anglican periodical “The Foreign Church Chronicle and Review” comments:

Stranger yet that men should seek to prove by some of his [Cyprian’s] sayings that submission to the
Bishop of Rome is necessary to salvation! Not so thought St. Augustine, another African Bishop, and a
younger contemporary of Ambrose. The writers of the Address say shortly, as we are accustomed to
hear from the Roman pulpits, “As Cyprian teaches, so teach also Jerome, Augustine, Chrysostom, and
Ambrose.” Quite true, but not in the sense here meant. That St. Augustine, the greatest of all the
Fathers, did not think submission to the Roman Church necessary to salvation, is proved by the way
in which he judges of St. Cyprian’s conduct. With regard to heretical baptism, St. Augustine thought
differently from St. Cyprian. A modern Romish bishop in his place would have lamented that St.
Cyprian had not humility enough to submit to the Roman See, and so escape excommunication and
preserve the unity of the Church. But of such a sacrifice of his own reason St. Augustine knows
nothing. He praises the holy martyr, that though in error on this point, he stood firm, and would
yield only to conviction. The only thing he laments is that no one had succeeded in convincing him
(De Baptismo contra Donat. I. 2, V. 13; l. c. tom. cxxxviii. p. 277). Nor does St. Augustine blame that
African Synod for having agreed with Cyprian of Carthage, and not with Stephen of Rome. He held
that the decrees of a provincial synod were to be corrected by a general council, and those of a
general council, if it erred, by another general council. 2

St. Cyprian wrote of Pope Stephen:

you will more and more observe his [Pope Stephen’s] error in endeavouring to maintain the cause of
heretics against Christians, and against the Church of God … He forbade one coming from any heresy
to be baptized in the Church; that is, he judged the baptism of all heretics to be just and lawful. …

1 James Austin Mason, Strictures on Wesley’s Pretended Roman Catechism, Part I, pp. 15 – 20, London: P. & M.
Andrews, 1828.
2 The Foreign Church Chronicle and Review, Vol. VIII, No. 30., June 2, 1884, Bishop Herzog’s “Open Letter”, p.

88, London: Rivingtons, 1884.

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Does he give glory to God, who judges that remission of sins is granted among those who blaspheme
against God?

It is clear to us that Cyprian and Augustine did not agree with the Latin First Vatican Council’s definition that

indeed all the venerable Fathers have embraced and the holy orthodox Doctors have venerated and
followed their [the Pope’s] Apostolic doctrine; knowing most fully that this See of holy Peter remains
ever free from all blemish of error … none may re-open the judgment of the Apostolic See, than
whose authority there is no greater, nor can any lawfully review its judgment. Wherefore they err
from the right course who assert that it is lawful to appeal from the judgments of the Roman Pontiffs
to an Œcumenical Council, as to an authority higher than that of the Roman Pontiff.

From Augustine’s statement that “For at that time, before the consent of the whole Church had declared
authoritatively, by the decree of a plenary Council, what practice should be followed in this matter …”, and the
wider context, there is no doubt that Augustine held that the greatest authority in the Church comes from
general councils.

All this harmonises with other works of Augustine, such as the following passage in his letter on the Donatist
controversy:

But when they actually found that the communion of the whole world with Cæcilianus [formerly
Bishop of Carthage] continued as before, and that letters of communion from churches beyond the
sea were sent to him, and not to the man whom they had flagitiously ordained, they became ashamed
of being always silent; for it might be objected to them: Why did they suffer the Church in so many
countries to go on in ignorance, communicating with men that were condemned; and especially why
did they cut themselves off from communion with the whole world, against which they had no charge
to make, by their bearing in silence the exclusion from that communion of the bishop whom they had
ordained in Carthage? They chose, therefore, as it is reported, to bring their dispute with Cæcilianus
before the foreign churches, in order to secure one of two things, either of which they were prepared
to accept: if, on the one hand, by any amount of craft, they succeeded in making good the false
accusation, they would abundantly satisfy their lust of revenge; if, however, they failed, they might
remain as stubborn as before, but would now have, as it were, some excuse for it, in alleging that they
had suffered at the hands of an unjust tribunal – the common outcry of all worthless litigants, though
they have been defeated by the clearest light of truth – as if it might not have been said, and most
justly said, to them: “Well, let us suppose that those bishops who decided the case at Rome were
not good judges; there still remained a plenary Council of the universal Church, in which these
judges themselves might be put on their defense; so that, if they were convicted of mistake,
their decisions might be reversed.” Whether they have done this or not, let them prove: for we
easily prove that it was not done, by the fact that the whole world does not communicate with them;
or if it was done, they were defeated there also, of which their state of separation from the Church is
a proof.1

The “bishops who decided the case at Rome” were Pope Melchiades along with other bishops. This entire
letter is additional strong evidence against the idea that Augustine and the Church in his time held the Vatican
I position.

1 Augustine, Letter 43, Ch. VII, § 19, in NPNF, Series I, Vol. I, p. 282.
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Ch. VII. The History of Canon XXVIII of Chalcedon and the Ecumenicity of the Council in Trullo

Section I Introduction to Canon XXVIII of Chalcedon

“The church of Antioch too, in which first at the preaching of the blessed Apostle Peter the Christian name arose,
must continue in the position assigned it by the Fathers, and being set in the third place must never be lowered
therefrom.” – Pope Leo I (Letter CVI to Anatolius)

“Also, renewing the order of the other patriarchs which has been handed down in the canons, the patriarch of
Constantinople should be second after the most holy Roman pontiff, third should be the patriarch of Alexandria,
fourth the patriarch of Antioch, and fifth the patriarch of Jerusalem, without prejudice to all their privileges and
rights.” – Latin Council of Florence (Session VI – 6 July 1439)

“I assent to all the acts of the four General Councils — Nicea, Constantinople, Ephesus, and Chalcedon touching
the confirmation of the faith and the constitution of the Church, and I suffer no disturbance of their wise
decisions, for I know that such as attempt to interfere with a single tittle of their decrees have fallen away from
the Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church of God.” – Patriarch St. John II of Constantinople to Pope Hormisdas

“We therefore ordain that the canons of the holy church which were enacted or confirmed by the four holy
councils, that is to say, of the 318 at Nicea, of the 150 holy fathers at Constantinople, and of the first held at
Ephesus, at which Nestorius was condemned, and of that held at Chalcedon at which Eutyches and Nestorius
were anathematized, shall have the force of law. We accept the dogmas of the aforesaid four holy councils as
divine scriptures, and uphold their canons as laws. We further ordain that in accordance with their
determinations, the holy pope of ancient Rome is the first of all the priests, the archbishop of Constantinople, the
new Rome, occupies the place next after the holy apostolic seat of ancient Rome, and has precedence over the
others.” – Emperor St. Justinian the Great (Novella CXXXI)

The circumstances surrounding the 28th Canon of the Council of Chalcedon vindicate the claims of the
Orthodox Church with respect to Papal primacy. This chapter shall discuss in-depth the controversy over
Canon XXVIII of the Council of Chalcedon (the Fourth Ecumenical Council).

The decision of the Council of Chalcedon concerning the rank and privileges of the See of Constantinople was
rejected by Pope Leo, who claimed that giving Constantinople the second rank would be contrary to the
decrees of the Council of Nicaea, which are binding for all ages.

Overbeck comments on Canon 28:

This canon was signed by 200 bishops and accepted by the council of 600 bishops. Now if these men
had known anything of a Divine right of Papacy, could they have dared to place Constantinople on the
same level with Rome? Or would they not have hinted at the dogmatic line of demarcation? Or were
they ignorant men and bad theologians?1

Much can be said about the role of the Roman Bishop as viewed by the Council of Chalcedon and by the
fathers of that era, but that would take too wide a view, and I wish to focus on the 28th canon of Chalcedon.
Also, much can be said on this canon, its interpretation, its passing at the Council, and the controversy in the
sixteenth session, but this chapter focuses on its aftermath and later history.

Canon XXVIII of Chalcedon declares:

1 Overbeck, A Plain View, p. 42.

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Following in all things the decisions of the holy Fathers, and acknowledging the canon, which
has been just read, of the One Hundred and Fifty Bishops beloved-of-God (who assembled in the
imperial city of Constantinople, which is New Rome, in the time of the Emperor Theodosius of happy
memory), we also do enact and decree the same things concerning the privileges of the most holy
Church of Constantinople, which is New Rome. For the Fathers rightly granted privileges to the
throne of old Rome, because it was the royal city. And the One Hundred and Fifty most religious
Bishops, actuated by the same consideration, gave equal privileges (ἴσα πρεσβεῖα) to the most holy
throne of New Rome, justly judging that the city which is honoured with the Sovereignty and the
Senate, and enjoys equal privileges with the old imperial Rome, should in ecclesiastical matters also
be magnified as she is, and rank next after her; so that, in the Pontic, the Asian, and the Thracian
dioceses, the metropolitans only and such bishops also of the Dioceses aforesaid as are among the
barbarians, should be ordained by the aforesaid most holy throne of the most holy Church of
Constantinople; every metropolitan of the aforesaid dioceses, together with the bishops of his
province, ordaining his own provincial bishops, as has been declared by the divine canons; but that,
as has been above said, the metropolitans of the aforesaid Dioceses should be ordained by the
archbishop of Constantinople, after the proper elections have been held according to custom and
have been reported to him.1

The Ancient Epitome of Canon XXVIII reads:

The bishop of New Rome shall enjoy the same honour as the bishop of Old Rome, on account
of the removal of the Empire. For this reason the [metropolitans] of Pontus, of Asia, and of Thrace, as
well as the Barbarian bishops shall be ordained by the bishop of Constantinople. 2

Following this decision of the Council, which has come to be known as Canon XXVIII, there was a discussion in
Session XVI of the Council, in which the Council made a very important statement on the Papal privileges.

The decision of the Council of Chalcedon in Session XVI contains perhaps the most important statement by
the Church on the subject of the Papal primacy, but has surprisingly not been the focus of many
commentaries and discussions, compared to Canon XXVIII, which is itself explained in the following passage
from that session. Here are placed six English translations (along with any Greek they give in parenthesis) of
the Acts, since the meaning of the Greek is disputed and rendered differently.

In Richard Price:

The most glorious officials said: ‘From the proceedings and from the individual testimonies, we
resolve that, above all, primacy and exceptional honour should be preserved for the most God-
beloved archbishop of Senior Rome according to the canons, but that the most sacred archbishop of
imperial Constantinople New Rome is to enjoy the same privileges of honour, and that he is to have
power, on the basis of his authority, to consecrate the metropolitans in the dioceses of Asiana,
Pontica and Thrace, … This is the result of our consideration; let the holy and ecumenical council
deign to inform us of its own good pleasure.’

The most devout bishops said: ‘This is a just decision. This we all say. This is pleasing to all. This is a
just judgement. Let the decree have force. This is a just decision. Everything has been decided
properly. We beg you, dismiss us. By the prosperity of the emperors, release us. We all abide by the
decision. We all say the same.’ …

The most glorious officials said: ‘All our resolutions have been confirmed by the council.’ 3

1 Percival, Seven Ecumenical Councils, p. 287.

2 Percival, Seven Ecumenical Councils, p. 287. Also see Percival’s notes and excursus on this canon.
3 Richard Price and Michael Gaddis, The Acts of the Council of Chalcedon, Vol. III, Session XVI, 43. – 47., pp. 90

– 91, Translated Texts for Historians, Vol. XLV, Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2005.
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In Henry Robert Percival:

The most glorious judges said: From what has been done and brought forward on each side, we
perceive that the primacy of all (πρὸ πάντων τὰ πρωτεῖα), and the chief honour (τὴν ἐξαίρετον
τιμὴν) according to the canons, is to be kept for the most God-beloved archbishop of Old Rome, but
that the most reverend archbishop of the royal city Constantinople, which is new Rome, is to enjoy
the honour of the same primacy, and to have the power to ordain the metropolitans in the Asiatic,
Pontic, and Thracian dioceses, … Thus the matter appears to us to stand. Let the holy Synod
vouchsafe to teach its view of the case.

The most reverend bishops cried out: This is a just sentence. So we all say. These things please us all.
This is a just determination. Establish the proposed form of decree. This is a just vote. All has been
decreed as should be. We beg you to let us go. By the safety of the Emperor let us go. We all will
remain in this opinion, we all say the same things. …

The most glorious judges said: The whole synod has approved what we proposed. 1

In Philip Schaff, who begins, “After the debate on this point, the imperial commissioners thus summed up the
result:”

From the whole discussion, and from what has been brought forward on either side, we acknowledge
that the primacy over all (πρὸ πάντων τὰ πρωτεῖα) and the most eminent rank (καὶ τὴν ἐξαίρετον
τιμήν) are to continue with the archbishop of old Rome; but that also the archbishop of New Rome
should enjoy the same precedence of honor (τά πρεσβεῖα τῆς τιμῆς), and have the right to ordain the
metropolitans in the dioceses of Asia, Pontus, and Thrace, &c.2

In Peter L’Hullier (1926 – 2007), an Orthodox Archbishop and professor of Canon Law:

After what has happened and after having heard what was said from various speakers, we declare
that in conformity with the canons the primatial rights and exceptional honour (τὰ πρωτεῖα καὶ τήν
ἐξαίρετον τιμὴν) of the dearly beloved-of-God archbishop of Old Rome have been preserved, but that
it is necessary that the very venerable archbishop of the imperial city of Constantinople, New Rome,
enjoy the same prerogatives of honour, and, therefore, he should have the authority to ordain the
metropolitans in the dioceses of Asia, Pontus and Thrace.3

In the Orthodox Metropolitan Maximos of Sardes, also translating from Schwartz:

From what has been done and from each deposition we decree that the primacy and exceptional
honour of the God-beloved Archbishop of Old Rome are to be preserved in accordance with the canons,
and the most holy Archbishop of the imperial capital Constantinople, the New Rome, must enjoy the
same prerogatives of honour and have himself authoritative power to consecrate the metropolitans in
the Asian, Pontic and Thracian dioceses in the following way …

And all the bishops proclaimed with one accord: This is a just decision. We all say these things, they

1 Percival, Seven Ecumenical Councils, p. 295.

2 Philip Schaff, History of the Christian Church, Vol. III, Third Period, Ch. V, § 56, p. 281, New York, NY: Charles
Scribner’s Sons, Sixth Ed., 1908.
3 Peter L’Hullier, The Church of the Ancient Councils: The Disciplinary Work of the First Four Ecumenical

Councils, Ch. IV, pp. 291, Crestwood, NY: Saint Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1996. It is interesting that H’Hullier
omits the Greek words “πρὸ πάντων” as well as their translation, which Price gives as “above all”, and which
in other versions occur before “primatial”. Hullier cites Schwartz, “ACO II, I, 3, pp. 98-9 (457-8).”, but I have
not yet examined that volume.
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are pleasing to all. All participated in the resolution. 1

In Charles Joseph Hefele:

the imperial commissioners summed up: “From all that has been discussed and brought forward from
every side, we perceive that the first right of all (πρὸ πάντων τὰ πρωτεῖα) and the chief rank of honour
(καὶ τὴν ἐξαίρετον τιμήν) is to be accorded to the Archbishop of Old Rome, but that the Archbishop of
New Rome must enjoy the same prerogatives of honour (τῶν αὐτῶν πρεσβείων τῆς τιμῆς), and have
the right to ordain the metropolitans in the dioceses of Asia, Pontus, and Thrace, … So we understand
the matter. The Synod shall now say whether this is its opinion.”

The bishops exclaimed: “This is the right view; so say we all; we all so will it; that is the right judgment
which is decreed; this shall prevail; we pray dismiss us. Prosperity to the Emperors! Dismiss us; we all
abide by this declaration; we all say this.”

The commissioners closed the business with the words: “What we previously proposed, the whole
Synod has agreed to;”2

After the Council of Chalcedon, there remained controversy over the 28th Canon. Pope Leo was earnestly in
support of Chalcedon’s doctrinal decisions, but he reacted very strongly against the decision placing the See
of Constantinople above the Sees of Antioch and Alexandria. Leo’s reaction to this canon provides us with a
strong case of Papal contradiction.

In a letter to the Emperor Marcian Augustus (22 May 452), Leo tries to make the point that Constantinople is
not an Apostolic See, and Leo also criticizes what he considers to be the self-seeking of Anatolius, the bishop
of Constantinople:

But now that these things, about which so great a concourse of priests assembled, have been
brought to a good and desirable conclusion, I am surprised and grieved that the peace of the
universal Church which had been divinely restored is again being disturbed by a spirit of self-
seeking. … For even if he [Anatolius] had been lawfully and regularly ordained for conspicuous
merit, and by the wisest selection yet without respect to the canons of the Fathers, the ordinances of
the Holy Ghost, and the precedents of antiquity, no votes could have availed in his favour. I speak
before a Christian and a truly religious, truly orthodox prince (when I say that) Anatolius the bishop
detracts greatly from his proper merits in desiring undue aggrandizement.

Let the city of Constantinople have, as we desire, its high rank, and under the protection of
God’s right hand, long enjoy your clemency’s rule. Yet things secular stand on a different basis from
things divine: and there can be no sure building save on that rock which the Lord has laid for a
foundation. He that covets what is not his due, loses what is his own. Let it be enough for Anatolius
that by the aid of your piety and by my favour and approval he has obtained the bishopric of so great
a city. Let him not disdain a city which is royal, though he cannot make it an Apostolic See; and let
him on no account hope that he can rise by doing injury to others. For the privileges of the
churches determined by the canons of the holy Fathers, and fixed by the decrees of the Nicene
Synod, cannot be overthrown by any unscrupulous act, nor disturbed by any innovation. And
in the faithful execution of this task by the aid of Christ I am bound to display an unflinching
devotion; for it is a charge entrusted to me, and it tends to my condemnation if the rules

1 Gamon McLellan (translator), Maximos Metropolitan of Sardes, The Oecumenical Patriarchate in the
Orthodox Church: A Study in the History and Canons of the Church, Ch. IV, p. 208, in Analecta Vlatadon, Vol.
XXIV, Thessaloniki: Patriarchal Institute for Patristic Studies, 1976.
2 Henry Nutcombe Oxenham (translator and editor), Charles Joseph Hefele, A History of the Councils of the

Church, Vol. III, Book XI, Sec. 201, pp. 427 – 428, Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1883.
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sanctioned by the Fathers and drawn up under the guidance of God’s Spirit at the Synod of
Nicæa for the government of the whole Church are violated with my connivance (which God
forbid), and if the wishes of a single brother have more weight with me than the common good of the
Lord’s whole house.1

Hefele summarises this letter:

There is a difference between the secular and ecclesiastical order (alia tamen ratio est rerum
scecularium, alia divinarum), and it is the apostolical origin of a church, its being founded by an
apostle, which gives it a right to a higher hierarchical rank.2

Now Pope Leo here maintains that Constantinople was not an Apostolic See and could never become one,
which means that Constantinople can never rise in rank above a See founded by an apostle, such as Antioch or
Alexandria.

In a letter to the Empress Pulcheria Augusta, Leo writes with even more intensity. Pope Leo uses his
apostolic power to declare the assent of the bishops null and void, using the strongest words in the Latin
language to condemn the idea that Constantinople could ever rise in rank above the apostolic sees of Antioch
and Alexandria:

For my brother and fellow-bishop Anatolius not sufficiently considering your Grace’s kindness and
the favour of my assent, whereby he gained the priesthood of the church of Constantinople, instead of
rejoicing at what he has gained, has been inflamed with undue desires beyond the measure of his
rank, believing that his intemperate self-seeking could be advanced by the assertion that certain
persons had signified their assent thereto by an extorted signature: notwithstanding that my
brethren and fellow-bishops, who represented me, faithfully and laudably expressed their dissent
from these attempts which are doomed to speedy failure. For no one may venture upon anything
in opposition to the enactments of the Fathers’ canons which many long years ago in the city
of Nicæa were founded upon the decrees of the Spirit, so that any one who wishes to pass any
different decree injures himself rather than impairs them. And if all pontiffs will but keep them
inviolate as they should, there will be perfect peace and complete harmony through all the churches:
there will be no disagreements about rank, no disputes about ordinations, no controversies about
privileges, no strifes about taking that which is another’s; but by the fair law of love a reasonable
order will be kept both in conduct and in office, and he will be truly great who is found free from all
self-seeking, as the Lord says, “Whosoever will become greater among you, let him be your minister,
and whosoever will be first among you shall be your slave; even as the Son of Man came not to be
ministered unto but to minister.” And yet these precepts were at the time given to men who wished
to rise from a mean estate and to pass from the lowest to the highest things; but what more does the
ruler of the church of Constantinople covet than he has gained? or what will satisfy him, if the
magnificence and renown of so great a city is not enough? It is too arrogant and intemperate thus
to step beyond all proper bounds and trampling on ancient custom to wish to seize another’s
right: to increase one man’s dignity at the expense of so many metropolitans’ primacy, and to
carry a new war of confusion into peaceful provinces which were long ago set at rest by the

1 Charles Lett Feltoe (translator and editor), The Letters and Sermons of Leo the Great Bishop of Rome, Letter
CIV, §§ II – III, in NPNF, Series II, Vol. XII, p. 75. The Roman Catholic translator of Leo’s letters notes here
“Canon 6 of the Council of Nicaea (Mansi, II 679); but the version used by Leo, as given by Turner, Monumenta
I(1), p. 148, made Alexandria the second see, Antioch the third. The bishops at this time were trying to flatter
the emperor by making Constantinople second in name also. It had often been that in practice, since its
bishops often presided even when those of the other two were present. As usual, Leo addresses the emperor
as being on his side, opposed to the culprit, Anatolius; actually, the emperor and Pulcheria were much in favor
of the canon, as were most Eastern bishops, including Leo’s staunch friend, Julian of Cos (cf. Letter 100 and
107).” (Edmund Hunt, St. Leo the Great: Letters, Letter 104, p. 179, n. 5, in The Fathers of the Church: A New
Translation, Vol. XXXIV, New York: Fathers of the Church, Inc., 1957.)
2 Hefele, History of Councils, Vol. III, p. 413.
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enactments of the holy Nicene Synod: to break through the venerable Fathers’ decrees by alleging
the consent of certain bishops, which even the course of so many years has not rendered effective.
For it is boasted that this has been winked at for almost 60 years now, and the said bishop thinks that
he is assisted thereby; but it is vain for him to look for assistance from that which, even if a man
dared to wish for it, yet he could never obtain. …

And by this careful course I promise he will bind my heart also to him, and the love of the Apostolic
See, which we have ever bestowed on the church of Constantinople, shall never be violated by any
change. Because if sometimes rulers fall into errors through want of moderation, yet the churches of
Christ do not lose their purity. But the bishops’ assents, which are opposed to the regulations of
the holy canons composed at Nicæa in conjunction with your faithful Grace, we do not
recognize, and by the blessed Apostle Peter’s authority we absolutely dis-annul in
comprehensive terms, in all ecclesiastical cases obeying those laws which the Holy Ghost set
forth by the 318 bishops for the pacific observance of all priests in such sort that even if a
much greater number were to pass a different decree to theirs, whatever was opposed to their
constitution would have to be held in no respect.1

It is important to note that Leo claims that the bishops who assented to this canon were “extorted”, which is
an error that is refuted by consulting the Acts of Session XVI of the Council of Chalcedon, where the Roman
Legate Lucentius, a bishop, made the same assertion, and the response is: “The most reverend bishops cried
out: No one was forced.” The legates that reported to Pope Leo must have repeated this falsehood,
notwithstanding its clear refutation by the signatories themselves at the council. This is very important,
because it demonstrates that the Roman legates were willing to consciously lie to deceive the Pope and to
promote the Roman position, and these legates continued to allege that the bishops were forced to sign, even
after that claim was fully refuted at the Council, by those very bishops.

In a letter to Anatolius, Pope Leo writes,

For your purpose is in no way whatever supported by the written assent of certain bishops given, as
you allege, 60 years ago, and never brought to the knowledge of the Apostolic See by your
predecessors; and this transaction, which from its outset was doomed to fall through and has now
long done so, you now wish to bolster up by means that are too late and useless, viz., by extracting
from the brethren an appearance of consent which their modesty from very weariness yielded to
their own injury.2

When Leo writes “to break through the venerable Fathers’ decrees by alleging the consent of certain bishops,
which even the course of so many years has not rendered effective”, he is referring to the Third Canon of the
First Council of Constantinople (the Second Ecumenical Council), which states, “The Bishop of Constantinople,
however, shall have the prerogative of honour after the Bishop of Rome; because Constantinople is New
Rome.” By referring to the Second Ecumenical Council as “certain bishops”, Leo is implying that Council’s
non-Ecumenicity, and Leo considers their decision worthless. Leo’s assertion that the canons of the Second
Ecumenical Council were “never brought to the knowledge of the Apostolic See” is refuted by the assertion of
Eusebius, bishop of Dorylœum, who said that he had read the third Constantinopolitan canon to the “holy
pope of Rome in presence of clerics of Constantinople, and that he had accepted it”. However, Percival, along
with others, have not lent much weight to Eusebius’s statement, saying “But quite possibly this evidence is of
little value.”3 It is possible that this incident did happen, and Leo simply forgot about it, but it is difficult to

1 “Consensiones Episcoporum, Sanctorum Canonum apud Nicæam regulis repugnantes, unita nobiscum
vestræ fidei pietate in irritum mittimus, et per auctoritatem Beati Petri Apostoli generali prorsus definitione
cassamus.” Charles Lett Feltoe (translator and editor), The Letters and Sermons of Leo the Great Bishop of
Rome, Letter CV, § II, in NPNF, Series II, Vol. XII, pp. 76 – 77.
2 Charles Lett Feltoe (translator and editor), The Letters and Sermons of Leo the Great Bishop of Rome, Letter

CVI, § V, in NPNF, Series II, Vol. XII, p. 79.

3 Percival, Seven Ecumenical Councils, p. 288. Percival gives no reason for this assertion, and Eusebius was a

pious and excellent Orthodox bishop who boldly opposed heretics, so he could not be accused of lying here.
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believe Leo’s claim that Rome was never made aware of the Second Ecumenical Council.1 This is also a proof
that Ecumenical Canons and Councils took effect without the approval of the Bishop of Rome.

The Anglican Thomas William Allies comments:

Remarkable enough it is that when, in the Council of Chalcedon, appeal was made to this
third Canon, the Pope St. Leo declared that it had never been notified to Rome. As in the mean time it
had taken effect throughout the whole East, as in this very council [1st Constantinople] Nectarius, as
soon as he is elected, presides instead of Timothy of Alexandria, it puts in a strong point of view the
real self-government of the Eastern Church at this time: for the giving the Bishop of Constantinople
precedence over Alexandria and Antioch was a proceeding which affected the whole Church, and so
far altered its original order; one in which certainly the West might claim to have a voice.

Tillemont goes on: “It would be very difficult to justify St. Leo, if he meant that the Roman
Church had never known that the Bishop of Constantinople took the second place in the Church, and
the first in the East, since his legates, whose conduct he entirely approves, had just themselves
authorized it as a thing beyond dispute, and Eusebius of Dorylæum maintained that St. Leo himself
had proved it.” The simple fact is, that, exceedingly unwilling as the Bishops of Rome were to
sanction it, from this time, 381, to say the least, the Bishop of Constantinople appears uniformly as
first bishop of the East.2

Henry Percival writes:

Among the bishops who gave their answers at the last session to the question whether their
subscription to the canons was voluntary or forced was Eusebius, bishop of Dorylæum, an Asiatic
bishop who said that he had read the Constantinopolitan canon to “the holy pope of Rome in
presence of clerics of Constantinople, and that he had accepted it” (L. and C., Conc., iv. 815). But quite
possibly this evidence is of little value. But what is more to the point is that the Papal legates most
probably had already at this very council recognized the right of Constantinople to rank immediately
after Rome. For at the very first session when the Acts of the Latrocinium were read, it was found
that to Flavian, the Archbishop of Constantinople, was given only the fifth place. Against this the
bishop protested and asked, “Why did not Flavian receive his position?” and the papal legate
Paschasinus answered: “We will, please God, recognize the present bishop Anatolius of
Constantinople as the first [i.e. after us], but Dioscorus made Flavian the fifth.” It would seem to be in
vain to attempt to escape the force of these words by comparing with them the statement made in
the last session, in a moment of heat and indignation, by Lucentius the papal legate, that the canons
of Constantinople were not found among those of the Roman Code. It may well be that this statement
was true, and yet it does not in any way lessen the importance of the fact that at the first session (a
very different thing from the sixteenth) Paschasinus had admitted that Constantinople enjoyed the
second place. It would seem that Quesnel has proved his point, notwithstanding the attempts of the
Ballerini to counteract and overthrow his arguments.

It would be the height of absurdity for any one to attempt to deny that the canon of
Constantinople was entirely in force and practical execution, as far of those most interested were
concerned, long before the meeting of the council of Chalcedon, and in 394, only thirteen years after
the adoption of the canon, we find the bishop of Constantinople presiding at a synod at which both
the bishop of Alexandria and the bishop of Antioch were present.

1 I suspect that a considerable part of the correspondence of Leo is corrupted (one indication to this effect is
the allegation that the First Council of Constantinople took place “60 years ago”, whereas it was in 381 and
the Council of Chalcedon was in 451 (and this letter of Leo is written 22 May 452), which is 70 years apart, so
it would be strange for Anatolius himself to be mistaken in this point.
2 Thomas William Allies, The Church of England Cleared from the Charge of Schism, by the Decrees of the

Seven Ecumenical Councils and the Traditions of the Fathers, Ch. II, Sect. II, p. 94, Oxford: John Henry Parker,
2nd Ed., 1848. Regarding this author’s later conversion to Roman Catholicism, see the Appendix.
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St. Leo made, in connexion with this matter, some statements which perhaps need not be
commented upon, but should certainly not be forgotten. In his epistle to Anatolius (no. cvi.) in
speaking of the third canon of Constantinople he says: “That document of certain bishops has never
been brought by your predecessors to the knowledge of the Apostolic See.” And in writing to the
Empress (Ep. cv., ad Pulch.) he makes the following statement, strangely contrary to what she at least
knew to be the fact, “To this concession a long course of years has given no effect!”1

In a letter to Bishop Maximus of Antioch, Leo still assigns to Antioch the third place in order of precedence,
reaffirming the inviolability of the Nicene canons:

For it is right that you should share this responsibility with the Apostolic See, and realize that the
privileges of the third See in Christendom (privilegia tertiæ sedis) give you every confidence in
action, privileges which no intrigues shall in any way impair: because my respect for the Nicene
canons is such that I never have allowed nor ever will the institutions of the holy Fathers to be
violated by any innovation. For different sometimes as are the deserts of individual prelates, yet the
rights of their Sees are permanent: and although rivalry may perchance cause some disturbance
about them, yet it can not impair their dignity. Wherefore, brother, if ever you consider any action
ought to be taken to uphold the privileges of the church of Antioch, be sure to explain it in a letter
of your own, that we may be able to reply to your application completely and appropriately.
But at the present time let it be enough to make a general proclamation on all points, that if in any
synod any one makes any attempt upon or seems to take occasion of wresting an advantage against
the provisions of the Nicene canons, he can inflict no discredit upon their inviolable decrees: and it
will be easier for the compacts of any conspiracy to be broken through than for the regulations of the
aforesaid canons to be in any particular invalidated. … On this, however, my judgment lays especial
stress that, although a majority of priests through the wiliness of some came to a decision which is
found opposed to those constitutions of the 318 fathers, it must be considered void on principles of
justice: since the peace of the whole Church cannot otherwise be preserved, except due respect be
invariably shown to the canons.

… For whatever is laid before bishops for inquiry beyond the particular subjects which come before
synodal councils may admit of a certain amount of free discussion, if the holy Fathers have laid down
nothing thereon at Nicæa. For anything that is not in agreement with their rules and
constitutions can never obtain the assent of the Apostolic See. But how great must be the
diligence with which this rule is kept, you will gather from the copies of the letter which we sent to
the bishop of Constantinople, restraining his cupidity; and you shall take order that it reach the
knowledge of all our brethren and fellow-priests.2

In a circular letter dated 21 March 453, and addressed to all the bishops who had been present at the Synod
of Chalcedon, Pope Leo writes,

I doubt not, brethren, that you all know how willingly I have confirmed the doctrinal decree of the
Synod of Chalcedon. You would have been able to learn this not only from the assent of my legates,
but also from my letters to Anatolius of Constantinople, if he had brought the answer of the apostolic
see to your knowledge. But that no one may doubt my approving of that which was decreed at the
Synod of Chalcedon by universal consent in regard to the faith, I have directed this letter to all my
brethren and fellow-bishops who were present at the Synod named, and the Emperor will, at my
request, send it to you, so that you may all know that, not merely by my legates, but also by my own
confirmation of it, I have agreed with you in what was done at the Synod, but only, as must always be
repeated, in regard to the subject of the faith, on account of which the General Council (generale
concilium) was assembled at the command of the Emperors, in agreement with the apostolic see. But

1Percival, Seven Ecumenical Councils, pp. 288 – 289.

2Charles Lett Feltoe (translator and editor), The Letters and Sermons of Leo the Great Bishop of Rome, Letter
CXIX, §§ III – V, in NPNF, Series II, Vol. XII, pp. 86 – 87.
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in regard to the regulations of the fathers of Nicaea, I admonish you that the rights of the
individual churches must remain unaltered, as they were there established by the inspired
fathers. No unlawful ambition must covet that which is not its own, and no one must increase
by the diminution of others. And that which pride has obtained by enforced assent, and thinks to
have confirmed by the name of a Council, is invalid, if it is in opposition to the canons of the aforesaid
fathers (of Nicaea). How reverentially the apostolic see maintains the rules of these fathers, and that
I by God's help shall be a guardian of the Catholic faith and of the ecclesiastical canons, you may see
from the letter by which I have resisted the attempts of the Bishop of Constantinople.1

One of Pope Leo’s letters to his Italian friend at Constantinople, Bishop Julian of Cos (Ep. cxvii.) says:

What therefore our most clement Emperor deemed needful I have willingly complied with,
by sending letters to all the brethren, who were present at the Synod of Chalcedon, in which to show
that I approved of what was resolved upon by our holy brethren about the Rule of Faith; on their
account to wit, who in order to cloke their own treachery, pretend to consider invalid or doubtful
such conciliar ordinances as are not ratified by my assent: albeit, after the return of the brethren
whom I had sent in my stead, I dispatched a letter to the bishop of Constantinople; so that, if he had
been minded to publish it, abundant proof might have been furnished thereby how gladly I approved
of what the synod had passed concerning the Faith. But, because it contained such an answer as
would have run counter to his self-seeking, he preferred my acceptance of the brethren’s resolutions
to remain unknown, lest at the same time my reply should become known on the absolute
authority of the Nicene canons. Wherefore take heed, beloved, that you warn our most gracious
prince by frequent reminders that he add his words to our and order the letter of the Apostolic See to
be sent round to the priests of each single province, that hereafter no enemy of the Truth may
venture to excuse himself under cover of my silence.2

Pope Leo’s letter CXXVII, dated 9 January 454, to Julian of Cos states:

I must show him [Bishop Proterius of Alexandria] favor worthy of the sincerity of his faith so that he
may in no way destroy the honor of his church, but may possess the privileges of his see, following
the example of the Fathers in antiquity in accord with the unchanged provisions of the canons. …

In your letter you mentioned that the letter I sent to the Council of Chalcedon was in fact read to the
bishops and clergy present, but only up to that section where it is apparent that my views
corroborated the actions taken concerning the faith. I was, therefore, astonished that the rest of what
followed was not likewise brought to the attention of those listening to the reading. All of them
should have been especially informed that we had taken to task unprincipled self-seeking and novel
usurpations so that the practice of antiquity, which is set forth in the canons, may be preserved
inviolate, as we have always written.3

The Roman Catholic editor notes here, “That is, in Letter 114 they read only the first paragraph, [and] did not
go on to read about his disapproval of Anatolius and canon 28 of Chalcedon.”

Pope Leo’s letter to Bishop Proterius of Alexandria (dated 10 March 454) states:

Accordingly, both in the rule of Faith and in the observance of discipline, let the standard of
antiquity be maintained throughout, and do thou, beloved, display the firmness of a prudent ruler,

1 Hefele, History of Councils, Vol. III, pp. 443 – 444. Leo, Ep. 114. Hefele comments, “There is no doubt that
Leo in this letter, on the one side, declares canon 28 of the Council of Chalcedon as invalid, and, on the other
side, that he formally recognizes as œcumenical this Synod itself,” (p. 444).
2 Charles Lett Feltoe (translator and editor), The Letters and Sermons of Leo the Great Bishop of Rome, Letter

CXVII, § I, in NPNF, Series II, Vol. XII, p. 84.

3 Edmund Hunt, St. Leo the Great: Letters, Letter 127, pp. 212 – 213, in The Fathers of the Church: A New

Translation, Vol. XXXIV, New York: Fathers of the Church, Inc., 1957. .
 309

that the church of Alexandria may get the benefit of my earnest resistance to the unprincipled
ambition of certain people in maintaining its ancient privileges, and of my determination that all
metropolitans should retain their dignity undiminished, as you will ascertain from the tenor of my
letters, which I have addressed, whether to the holy Synod or to the most Christian Emperor, or to
the Bishop of Constantinople; for you will perceive that I have made it my special care to allow no
deviation from the rule of Faith in the Lord’s churches, nor any diminution of their privileges through
any individual’s unscrupulousness. And as this is so, hold fast, brother, to the custom of your
predecessors, and keep due authority over your comprovincial bishops, who by ancient constitution
are subject to the See of Alexandria; so that they resist not ecclesiastical usage, and refuse not to meet
together under your presidency, either at fixed times or when any reasonable cause demands it: and
that if anything has to be discussed in a general meeting which will be to the benefit of the Church,
when the brethren have thus met together, they may unanimously come to some resolution
thereupon. For there is nothing which ought to recall them from this obedience, seeing that both for
faith and conduct we have such good knowledge of you, brother, that we will not allow you to lose
any of your predecessor’s authority, nor to be slighted with impunity. 1

Pope Leo’s letter to Emperor Marcian (29 May 454) says:

Therefore, venerable Augustus, let the bishop mentioned [Anatolius] realize how much more
he should grow in humility than in self-exaltation. Being mindful of the limits decreed by the Fathers,
let him in future preserve the integrity of the canons set up for the peace of the universal Church by
observing them as he should. … I rejoice that … men finally cease from injustice toward the holy
Fathers and refrain from violating the canons. 2

In a letter to Bishop Anatolius of Constantinople, Pope Leo again writes that nothing can cancel or modify the
Nicene canons, saying that that the Nicene canons are for universal application and not to be wrested to
private interpretations, and Leo stresses that the rank of the Churches is fixed forever:

And so after the not irreproachable beginning of your ordination, after the consecration of the bishop
of Antioch, which you claimed for yourself contrary to the regulations of the canons, I grieve,
beloved, that you have fallen into this too, that you should try to break down the most sacred
constitutions of the Nicene canons: as if this opportunity had expressly offered itself to you for
the See of Alexandria to lose its privilege of second place, and the church of Antioch to forego
its right to being third in dignity, in order that when these places had been subjected to your
jurisdiction, all metropolitan bishops might be deprived of their proper honour. By which
unheard of and never before attempted excesses you went so far beyond yourself as to drag into an
occasion of self-seeking, and force connivance from that holy Synod which the zeal of our most
Christian prince had convened, solely to extinguish heresy and to confirm the catholic Faith: as if the
unlawful wishes of a multitude could not be rejected, and that state of things which was truly
ordained by the Holy Spirit in the canon of Nicæa could in any part be overruled by anyone.
Let no synodal councils flatter themselves upon the size of their assemblies, and let not any
number of priests, however much larger, dare either to compare or to prefer themselves to
those 318 bishops, seeing that the Synod of Nicæa is hallowed by God with such privilege, that
whether by fewer or by more ecclesiastical judgments are supported, whatever is opposed to
their authority is utterly destitute of all authority. …

For it was on this ground that our brothers sent by the Apostolic see, who presided in our stead at
the synod with commendable firmness, withstood their illegal attempts, openly protesting against
the introduction of any reprehensible innovation contrary to the enactments of the Council of
Nicæa. …

1 Charles Lett Feltoe (translator and editor), The Letters and Sermons of Leo the Great Bishop of Rome, Letter
CXXIX, § III, in NPNF, Series II, Vol. XII, pp. 96 – 97.
2 Edmund Hunt, St. Leo the Great: Letters, Letter 136, p. 224, in The Fathers of the Church: A New Translation,

Vol. XXXIV, New York: Fathers of the Church, Inc., 1957.

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These holy and venerable fathers who in the city of Nicæa, after condemning the blasphemous Arius
with his impiety, laid down a code of canons for the Church to last till the end of the world,
survive not only with us but with the whole of mankind in their constitutions; and, if anywhere men
venture upon what is contrary to their decrees, it is ipso facto null and void; so that what is
universally laid down for our perpetual advantage can never be modified by any change, nor
can the things which were destined for the common good be perverted to private interests; and thus
so long as the limits remain, which the Fathers fixed, no one may invade another’s right but each
must exercise himself within the proper and lawful bounds, to the extent of his power, in the breadth
of love; of which the bishop of Constantinople may reap the fruits richly enough, if he rather relies on
the virtue of humility than is puffed up with the spirit of self-seeking. …

The rights of provincial primates may not be overthrown nor metropolitan bishops be defrauded of
privileges based on antiquity. The See of Alexandria may not lose any of that dignity which it
merited through S. Mark, the evangelist and disciple of the blessed Peter, nor may the
splendour of so great a church be obscured by another’s clouds, Dioscorus having fallen through his
persistence in impiety. The church of Antioch too, in which first at the preaching of the blessed
Apostle Peter the Christian name arose, must continue in the position assigned it by the Fathers,
and being set in the third place must never be lowered therefrom. For the See is on a different
footing to the holders of it; and each individual’s chief honour is his own integrity. And since that
does not lose its proper worth in any place, how much more glorious must it be when placed in the
magnificence of the city of Constantinople, where many priests may find both a defence of the
Fathers’ canons and an example of uprightness in observing you?1

From the correspondence of Pope Leo, it is clear that Leo has made a dogmatic decision, invoking the
authority of St. Peter, that the Nicene canons can never be violated, and he specifically states that this means
that the ranks of Alexandria and Antioch can never be lowered for Constantinople to rise.

By the dogmatic authority of Pope Leo, supreme legislator of the Roman Catholic communion, Roman
Catholics must reject the following decree from the Latin Council of Florence as “ipso facto null and void”,
because Florence defines, with the full confirmation of Latin Pope Eugene IV:

In the name of the holy Trinity, Father, Son and holy Spirit, we define, with the approval of this holy
universal council of Florence, …

Also, renewing the order of the other patriarchs which has been handed down in the canons, the
patriarch of Constantinople should be second after the most holy Roman pontiff, third should
be the patriarch of Alexandria, fourth the patriarch of Antioch, and fifth the patriarch of
Jerusalem, without prejudice to all their privileges and rights.2

It is thus clear that the Pope does not legislate by St. Peter’s authority.

We can thank Pope Leo for annulling the definitions of the Latin Council of Florence, for Leo declared the
Nicene canon to be “inspired by the Holy Ghost” and “valid to the end of time”. Pope Leo decreed that “by the
blessed Apostle Peter’s authority we absolutely dis-annul in comprehensive terms” the action of any council
that would change the Nicene canon, and that “even if a much greater number were to pass a different decree
to theirs, whatever was opposed to their constitution would have to be held in no respect.” Leo clearly states

1 Charles Lett Feltoe (translator and editor), The Letters and Sermons of Leo the Great Bishop of Rome, Letter
CVI, §§ II – V, in NPNF, Series II, Vol. XII, pp. 78 – 79.
2 Norman P. Tanner, Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, Vol. I, Council of Florence, Laetentur Caeli: Bull of

Union with the Greeks (Session VI, 6 July 1439), pp. 526 – 527, Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press,
1990.
 311

that the Nicene canon means that the Church of Antioch “must continue in the position assigned it by the
Fathers, and being set in the third place must never be lowered therefrom.”

This session of Florence was presided over and fully confirmed by Latin Pope Eugene IV, acting as “bishop,
servant of the servants of God, for an everlasting record”. It is extremely significant that this Nicene canon
was set at naught by Leo’s alleged successor in the Apostolic See, showing that Peter is not behind the Papacy.
By lowering Antioch to the fourth place, Pope Eugene IV and the Latin Council of Florence have “broken down
the most sacred constitutions of the Nicene canons” and are “utterly destitute of all authority”.

Immediately preceding this declaration of the order of the Patriarchates, the Florentine Council teaches the
most critical errors of the Latins. In this same session, there are dogmatic definitions teaching Papal
Supremacy, Purgatory, the use of unleavened bread in the Eucharist, and the Filioque. Just before a decree
“contrary to the enactments of the Council of Nicæa”, “ipso facto null and void”, and annulled “by the blessed
Apostle Peter’s authority”, there is also find formally defined, “the Roman pontiff holds the primacy over the
whole world”, “souls are cleansed after death by cleansing pains”, “the body of Christ is truly confected in
both unleavened and leavened wheat bread”, and “those words ‘and from the Son’ was licitly and reasonably
added to the creed for the sake of declaring the truth and from imminent need”.1

Pope Leo the Great has interpreted, by St. Peter’s authority, that the Council of Nicaea’s canons mean that the
positions of the chief sees should never be changed. Leo declares in the strongest terms that Antioch, “being
set in the third place must never be lowered therefrom”, yet Florence revises this order to: “fourth the
patriarch of Antioch”.

Pope Leo is regarded a saint for his orthodox definition of faith and his fight against the heretics (and his
defence of Christians in Rome during the barbarian invasions), but he was greatly mistaken in matters of
ecclesiastical organisation. Leo believed he was fighting for the Canons of Nicaea, but he was wrong in this
regard. Indeed, Leo should be greatly honoured for proving the nullity of the Latin Council of Florence, and
for making the Orthodox Church triumphant.

There are several other instances of Rome explicitly accepting Constantinople as the second see, such as
Canon XXI of the Latin Fourth Council of Constantinople in 869 (the Latin Eighth Ecumenical Council), Canon
V of their Fourth Lateran Council in 1215 (the Latin Twelfth Ecumenical Council)2 along with a statement of
Innocent III, their Second Council of Lyons from 1272 – 1274 (the Latin Fourteenth Ecumenical Council),3 and
perhaps the inauthentic Latin version of Pope Hadrian I’s letter to the Emperor at the Seventh Ecumenical
Council (which unhistorically says, “For he never could have ranked second, save for the authority of our holy
Catholic and Apostolic Church, as is plain to all.”),4 and more could be written on the historical question of
Rome’s recognition of Constantinople’s second rank as decreed in Canon III of the Second Ecumenical
Council.5

1 Tanner, Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, Vol. I, pp. 526 – 527.

2 Denzinger, n. 436, p. 173. Mansi, Vol. XXII, p. 990.
3 I was not able to verify that the Latin Fourteenth Ecumenical Council also reaffirmed Constantinople’s

second rank, since this is not recorded in the Constitutions of this Council, but this is stated in a Roman
Catholic work (William E. Addis and Thomas Arnold, A Catholic Dictionary, Patriarchate of Constantinople, p.
221, New York, NY: The Catholic Publication Society Co., Fifth Ed., 1885).
4 Percival, Seven Ecumenical Councils, p. 537. This letter is quoted in the chapter below on the Latin Version

of the Papal Letters in Nicaea II.

5 Also see the quote from Hefele in the next section, where he says, “At last the loud protest of Rome became

silent”.
 312

It is critical to remark on the reasons why Pope Leo rejected the 28th canon: not because it infringed on his
Roman See, which he does not allege as a reason in his correspondence (although this was likely his fear), but
because it went against the canons of Nicaea, which are alleged to have permanently fixed the canonical order
of the Sees. Leo attempted to destroy the foundation of the 28th Canon, but his interpretation of the Nicene
Canons was mistaken. Other errors of Rome at this time are an interpolation into Nicene Canon VI and the
repeated confusion of the Sardican with the Nicene Canons, as well as a refusal to accept the canons of the
Second Ecumenical Council. The Roman Catholic translator of Leo’s letters writes that “At times it is not clear
just what canon he is insisting on, or else he uses a somewhat corrupted version of a given canon.” 1
Moreover, Pope Leo elsewhere argued for clerical continence, which shows that he was not aware of the
decision of the Council of Nicaea that permitted priests to keep their wives. It is worth noting, as Feltoe
points out in a note upon Leo’s request for a Latin translation of the acts of Chalcedon, that “It is, of course,
well known that Leo knew no Greek whatsoever.”2

It is to Pope Leo’s discredit that he insisted so strongly on upholding his interpretation of the Nicene Canons,
when his own Roman Church had corrupted the Sixth canon of Nicaea (not to mention the other Latin
falsifications regarding the Council of Nicaea), and Leo failed to ascertain the correct text of the canons (and
Leo’s own letters show that he mistook the Sardican canons for the Nicene), or to reprimand his official
legates for tampering with decrees inspired by the Holy Spirit. None of Leo’s papal successors ever
apologized for this corruption of the Nicene Canons. Leo’s errors (though he always maintained the true
faith) alone are proof that even the greatest Popes are unreliable guides in ecclesiastical affairs. Thankfully, it
is doubtful whether many of the letters ascribed to Pope Leo are really his and uncorrupted, but it is certain
that he rejected this decision of Chalcedon, and that his reasons for doing so were invalid. I believe this was
ordained by God to provide an unanswerable contradiction for Roman Catholicism.

In addition, Pope Gelasius I (Pope from 492 – 496) continued to strongly insist that Constantinople cannot be
elevated to the second see, claiming to follow in the path of Pope Leo I and uphold the canons of the Church.
Pope Gelasius I, addressing the bishops of Dardania (Ep. xiii.) in 494 writes:

If it is a question of the dignity of the cities, certainly greater is the dignity of the priests of the second
and third sees, than that of the priests of the city, which not only is not numbered among the (great)
sees, but is not reckoned even among those having metropolitan rights. For if you call it the “imperial
city”, the power of the secular government is one thing, and the distribution of ecclesiastical dignities
another.3

Gelasius writes much more against the position of Constantinople in his letter, echoing the words of Pope Leo.
Note that this letter contains strong claims by Gelasius in favour of the Roman see, but these arguments are
undermined by the fact that Gelasius insisted that Constantinople must not be allowed to advance past
Alexandria and Antioch, showing that Gelasius misunderstood the ecclesiastical nature of the Church. Pope
Gelasius also asserts that the canons support the high position of the Roman see, and here Gelasius appears to
be referring to the Sardican canons, which he misinterprets with an incorrect sense, and moreover, it is
known that by this time certain people in Rome had already corrupted the canons to favour Roman primacy
(e.g., the interpolation in the 6th Nicene canon, and the confusion of the Sardican canons with the Nicene),
and the Popes were deceived by these corrupted canons. Pope Gregory the Great also expressed reluctance
to accept the Second Ecumenical Council and to admit the second rank to the See of Constantinople, which

1 Edmund Hunt, St. Leo the Great: Letters, Letter 104, p. 179, n. 5, in The Fathers of the Church: A New
Translation, Vol. XXXIV, New York: Fathers of the Church, Inc., 1957. Hunt’s footnote here is “Cf. Letter 4 n.
10, Letter 16 n. 28, and Letter 44 n. 8.” Hunt’s note 5 on Letter 104, which was previously quoted, mentions
that Leo had a different version of Nicaea’s canon VI.
2 Charles Lett Feltoe (translator and editor), The Letters and Sermons of Leo the Great Bishop of Rome, Letter

CXIII, § IV, in NPNF, Series II, Vol. XII, p. 83, n. 7.

3 Reuben Parsons, Studies in Church History, Vol. I, p. 245, New York, NY: Fr. Pustet & Co., 2nd Ed., 1906.
 313

can be seen in his correspondence with the Bishop of Constantinople (and in his letter to Eulogius of
Alexandria and Anastasius of Antioch).

It is extremely important to note that there are many missing documents and records from the East of this
time period, and that all there is to guide us is only the skewed Latin perspective on these matters, which is
frequently unreliable, and the direct Greek responses to the Papal claims at this time are not extant. Dvornik
writes:

It would be interesting to know what impression Gelasius’ uncompromising attitude made

on the Eastern Church in general, and particularly in Constantinople. Unfortunately, authentic
documents emanating directly from the East in answer to the Pope’s defense of his
uncompromising position are missing, but Gelasius’ writings give at least a few indications of how
this attitude was received by Eastern bishops.

The first treatise, in which Gelasius dealt with some objections sent by the Easterners to
Felix III gives an insight into the thinking of the Eastern clergy. Their position, insofar as it can be
determined, implies that the idea that the universality of the Church should be represented by and
merged with the universality of the Empire still predominated in the East, but they declared that
such an uncompromising attitude on the part of the Pope, endangered the whole Church, and that it
was in the interest of the Empire to show a more compromising spirit even in matters which
concerned the Creed.

The Pope’s definitions of the extent of his primacy must have frequently bewildered the
Easterners; one special instance being his letter to the Emperor Anastasius. In this Gelasius
complained that the Easterners termed him “proud and arrogant.” This, however, did not mean that
they rejected outright his claims to the primacy, because, in his first treatise, Gelasius quoted the
Easterners as saying that the Pope “is diminishing his own privileges because of his stubbornness.”

Moreover, they apparently found the Roman see’s condemnation of bishops, without
announcement to the Easterners and without synodal procedure, very strange and contrary to
tradition.1

The fact that the Easterners said that the Pope “is diminishing his own privileges because of his
stubbornness” contradicts any idea that they believed the Pope has permanent and undiminishable universal
privileges, but rather that his limited privileges are contingent upon his virtue, and that the Pope is not
necessarily to be obeyed simply because he is Bishop of Rome, but is to be honoured in so far as the Pope
honours the truth. Later, Dvornik writes again, “The letters of Eastern prelates to Gelasius are not preserved,
and it is impossible to reconstruct from his replies the titles they bestowed on him.” 2 Moreover, many Greek
documents have been translated from the Latin. Without the authentic and original Greek letters relating to
this era, no argument can be made for the Papacy from the Latin collections, since those are often corrupted,
and are inadmissible for controversial purposes.

It is interesting that Dvornik says, of Gelasius’s epistle to Dardania, “The Pope then quoted some instances
when, according to his interpretation, though not with strict historical truth, the Roman see had exercised
this power”.3 Dvornik admits that Gelasius was not in accordance with strict historical truth. In other works
of Gelasius (assuming he is really the author), there are false references to ecclesiastical canons.

1 Francis Dvornik, The Idea of Apostolicity in Byzantium, p. 118.

2 Dvornik, The Idea of Apostolicity in Byzantium, p. 122.
3 Dvornik, The Idea of Apostolicity in Byzantium, p. 118.
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Aeneas of Paris (d. 870), in his Liber adversus Graecos, which Siecienski calls “a rabidly anti-Byzantine work”,
claimed that “the See of Alexandria … [is] second only to the See of Rome.” 1

The letter of Anastasius Bibliothecarius to John the Deacon (Praefatio ad Johannem Diaconum), written c.
875, states:

For the writings of the Greeks testify that this holy council [of Chalcedon] issued some chapters of
canons, almost all of which, however, the whole Latin church rejected because the apostolic see
rejected them. But why do I speak only of this, when the Holy See does not accept even the second
ecumenical council which was the first celebrated at Constantinople on the question of the primacy
of churches.2

Pope Nicholas I also addressed the ranking of the Patriarchal Sees. Letter 99 in the collection of Nicholas’s
letters (the Responses of Pope Nicholas I to the Questions of the Bulgars), written 866, and addressed to St.
Boris of Bulgaria (or Boris-Michael, Tsar or Khan of Bulgaria from 852 – 889) states:

Chapter XCII.

You desire to know how many patriarchs there truly are. In truth, those men should be considered
patriarchs who achieve the apostolic see through the succession of bishops, i.e. those who rule over
those churches which the apostles are shown to have established, namely the churches of Rome,
Alexandria, and Antioch. Rome, because both princes of the holy apostles, Peter and Paul, established
it by their preaching and sanctified it with their own blood which was shed for the love of Christ;
Alexandria, because the evangelist Mark, who was the disciple and son by baptism of Peter,
established it after being sent by Peter and dedicated it with his blood to the Lord Christ; and
Antioch, because it was there that in a great assembly of the saints the faithful were first called
Christians and because the blessed Peter governed it for some years before he came to Rome. The
bishops of Constantinople and of Jerusalem, although they are called patriarchs, do not possess as
much authority as the above [sees]. For, as regards the church of Constantinople, none of the
apostles founded it nor did the synod of Nicaea, which is more venerable and celebrated than all
other synods, make any mention of it; rather its bishop was given the title of patriarch more through
the favor of princes than by reason, since Constantinople was called “New Rome.” As for the bishop
of Jerusalem, although he is both called a patriarch and should be honored as such in accordance with
ancient custom and the synod of Nicaea, with his proper dignity of metropolitan preserved, in [the
acts of this] same great synod, he is in no way called the bishop of Jerusalem, but rather the bishop of
Helia. For on the one hand, the true Jerusalem, which is our mother, is only in heaven; [cf. Gal. 4:26]
in accordance with what the Lord predicted, on the other hand, the earthly Jerusalem was destroyed
by the Roman emperor Aelius Hadrian down to its foundations so that not a single stone was left atop
another stone,[cf. Mt. 24:2] and it was reconstructed by this same Roman emperor Aelius Hadrian in
another place so that the place of the Lord's cross, which was outside the gate, is now found within
[the city] and that city is called Aelia after the aforementioned Aelius Hadrian.*

1 Anthony Edward Siecienski, The Papacy and the Orthodox: Sources and History of a Debate, Ch. V, pp. 225 –
226, Oxford Studies in Historical Theology, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017. PL, Vol. 121, p. 689.
2 “Nam et hanc quoque sanctam synodum canonica quaedam capitula promulgasse Grecorum scripta

testantur quae tamen pene omnia quia sedes apostolica non approbauit tota latinitas reprobauit. Sed quid de
hac sola dicimus cum et secundam uniuersalem synodum quae primo Constantinopoli celebrate est, in causa
primatus ecclesiarum sedes apostolica non admittat,” Critical Latin with parallel English translation in
Bronwen Neil, Seventh-Century Popes and Martyrs: The Political Hagiography of Anastasius Bibliothecarius,
Part II, Texts and Translations, 1., pp. 154 – 157, in Studia Antiqua Australiensia, Vol. II, Sydney: Brepols,
2006.
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Chapter XCIII.

You also ask which patriarch is second to that of Rome. According to what the holy Roman Church
maintains, the canons of Nicaea indicate, the holy bishops of Rome defend, and reason itself dictates,
the patriarch of Alexandria is the patriarch second to the pope.

[North’s note:] * Nicholas’s claim that the emperor Hadrian (AD 117-138) destroyed Jerusalem is
erroneous; Titus destroyed the city in AD 70 at the end of the Jewish War. 1

It is clear that Pope Nicholas I is in outright revolt against the holy canons, and in open sedition against the
laws of the empire. In the next several pages extracts from Emperor St. Justinian’s Law Code are cited, which
states (to the same effect in multiple places), “the archbishop of Constantinople, the new Rome, occupies the
place next after the holy apostolic seat of ancient Rome”. Much could be said about Pope Nicholas and his
afore-quoted erroneous claims, but these statements reveal that he did not care for truth, but simply wanted
to reduce the influence of the Bishop of Constantinople and gain power for Rome, especially here in the newly
converted Bulgarian lands.

It is worth reiterating that two years after Pope Nicholas’s death, at the Latin’s pseudo Eighth Ecumenical
Council in 869, in Canon xxi., Rome conceded the second place to Constantinople. This canon states:

We believe that the saying of the Lord that Christ addressed to his holy apostles and disciples,
Whoever receives you receives me, and whoever despises you despises me, was also addressed to all
who were likewise made supreme pontiffs and chief pastors in succession to them in the catholic
church. Therefore we declare that no secular powers should treat with disrespect any of those who
hold the office of patriarch or seek to move them from their high positions, but rather they should
esteem them as worthy of all honour and reverence. This applies in the first place to the most holy
pope of old Rome, secondly to the patriarch of Constantinople, and then to the patriarchs of
Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem.2

The canon goes on to speak of Rome’s high authority and relation to an ecumenical council. The Catholic
Encyclopedia states: “Here, for the first time, Rome recognized the ancient claim of Constantinople to the
second place among the five great patriarchates.”3 However, this canon implies that the positions of the
patriarchates are pre-existing (when it says that “no secular powers should … seek to move them from their
high positions”), and that it is not recognizing or decreeing anything new (also see the next canon). It is
certainly wicked and shameful when Pope Nicholas claims that Constantinople did not hold the second place
among the patriarchates, and Nicholas’s false assertion proves himself completely detached from the proper
ecclesiastical order, repeatedly affirmed at every post-Nicene Ecumenical Council.

Pope Leo IX, although writing after the Latin Eighth Ecumenical Council, still insists that Constantinople
cannot have the second place. In a letter to Patriarch Peter of Antioch in 1052, Pope Leo IX, writes: “Antioch
must keep the third place,” and that “we have heard that certain people are trying to diminish the ancient
dignity of the Antiochene Church.”4 It is noteworthy that many Popes still refused to accept the correct

1 William L. North (translator), Medieval Sourcebook: The Responses of Pope Nicholas I to the Questions of
the Bulgars A.D. 866 (Letter 99), Ch. XCII – XCIII, https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/basis/866nicholas-
bulgar.asp, 1998. Nicholas I also denies the rank of Constantinople in his letter to the Emperor Michael.
2 Norman P. Tanner, Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, Fourth Council of Constantinople: 869 – 870, Can.

XXI.
3 Thomas J. Shahan, The Fourth Council of Constantinople, in CE, Vol. IV, p. 311.
4 Adrian Fortescue, The Orthodox Eastern Church, Part II, Ch. V, p. 188, London: Catholic Truth Society,

Second Ed., 1908. The same thing is also asserted in a letter of Leo IX to Cerularius.
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ranking of the Patriarchates, and for hundreds of years persisted in their stubbornness, only to finally give up
this matter in later Councils.

Section II Later History of Canon 28

In Latin Pope Leo XIII’s Encyclical “Satis Cognitum”, on the unity of the Church, addressed “To Our Venerable
Brethren, the Patriarchs, Primates, Archbishops, Bishops, and other Ordinaries in Peace and Communion with
the Apostolic See”, Leo declares:

The 28th Canon of the Council of Chalcedon, by the very fact that it lacks the assent and
approval of the Apostolic See, is admitted by all to be worthless.1

The English Roman Catholic priest and apologist Henry Ignatius Dudley Ryder (1837 – 1907) wrote of the
28th Canon of Chalcedon, “The entire Western Church repudiated it, and the Greeks themselves, until the
rebellion of Photius, did not venture to insert it in their codices.”2

Paul Bottalla writes, “But the Canon of Chalcedon, faithfully as it expressed the ambitious spirit of the clergy
of Constantinople, was never enforced as a law before the time of the schismatic Photius.”3

Sidney Herbert Drane-Scott (1876 – 1949), an Anglican priest who strangely accepted and defended the
Roman Catholic doctrine of the papacy, yet remained Anglican, as part of the Anglo-Catholic or Anglo-Papalist
movement, writes, “The key to the troublous situation is to be found in the XXVIIIth Canon of Chalcedon,
though this famous canon was never placed in any Eastern Code of Canon Law till Photius did so.” 4

As for the truth of Leo XIII’s declaration and the statements by Ryder, Bottalla, and Scott, the later history of
Canon 28 of Chalcedon shall be considered, where it is apparent that the papal annulling was not of much
force, according to Leo XIII’s predecessor Leo I, as Percival notes, “for Leo [the First] himself confesses, in a
letter written about a year later to the Empress Pulcheria (Ep. cxvi.), that the Illyrian bishops had since the
council subscribed the xxviiith canon.”5

Pope Leo’s letter CXVII, dated 21 March 453, to Bishop Julian of Cos says:

This too we would have you know, that bishop Anatolius after our prohibition so persisted in
his rash presumption as to call upon the bishops of Illyricum to subscribe their names: this news was
brought us by the bishop who was sent by the bishop of Thessalonica to announce his consecration.
We have declined to write to Anatolius about this, although you might have expected us to do so,
because we perceived he did not wish to be reformed. I have made two versions of my letter to the
Synod, one with a copy of my letter to Anatolius subjoined, one without it; leaving it to your judgment

1 “canonem vero XXVIII Concilii Chalcedonis, quod assensu et auctoritate caruit Sedis Apostolicae, velut
incassum quiddam constat iacuisse.” The Unity of the Church: Encyclical Letter of Pope Leo XIII, June 29,
1896, Authorized Translation, 15., p. 39, London: Catholic Truth Society, 1896. Also see Claudia Carlen, The
Papal Encyclicals: 1740 – 1981, Vol. II, 1878 – 1903, Pope Leo XIII, Satis Cognitum (June 29, 1896),
Washington, DC: McGrath Publishing Company, 1981. Latin in Denny, Papalism, Appendix A., p. 716.
2 Henry Ignatius Dudley Ryder, Catholic Controversy: A Reply to Dr. Littledale’s ‘Plain Reasons’, pp. 54 – 55,

Eighth Ed., London: Burns & Oates, [Undated, 1890s, first published 1881].
3 Paul Bottalla, The Pope and the Church Considered in Their Mutual Relations, Part I, Section IV, VIII, p. 104,

London: Burns, Oates, and Co., 1868.

4 Sidney Herbert Scott, The Eastern Churches and the Papacy, Ch. XI, p. 211, London: Sheed & Ward, 1928.

Scott’s book, originally written in 1926 as his doctoral dissertation at Oxford and titled “The Relations of the
Eastern Churches to Rome before the Schism of Photius”, has been often used by Roman Catholic apologists.
5 Percival, Seven Ecumenical Councils, p. 289.
 317

to deliver the one which you think ought to be given to our most clement prince and to keep the
other.1

Feltoe titles this section of the letter “Anatolius shows no contrition in his subsequent acts.” Hefele
summarises this letter: “he [Leo] says that to Anatolius he writes no longer, since he persists in his
presumption, and has induced the Illyrian bishops also to subscribe the 28th canon.”2 The Dictionary of Early
Christianity notes, “He [Julian of Cos] displeased Leo by not resisting the 28th canon of the council in favour of
the claims of Constantinople (Ep. xcviii. 1098), and by writing to Leo begging him to give his assent to it (Ep.
cvii. 1172). After this, however, he is in as good favour as ever.”3

In an earlier letter (CXIII), dated 11 March 453, to Bishop Julian of Cos, Pope Leo writes:

See then, beloved brother, that you bestow the necessary thought on the cares of the Apostolic See,
which by her rights as your mother commends to you, who were nourished at her breast, the defence
of the catholic Truth against Nestorians and Eutychians, in order that, supported by the Divine help,
you may not cease to watch the interests of the city of Constantinople, lest at any time the storms of
error arise within her. … the bishop of Constantinople does not possess catholic vigour, and is not
very jealous either for the mystery of man’s salvation or for his own reputation: whereas, if he had
any spiritual activity, he ought to have considered by whom he was ordained, and whom he
succeeded in such a way as to follow the blessed Flavian rather than the instruments of his
promotion. And, therefore, when our most religious Princes deign in accordance with my entreaties
to reprimand our brother Anatolius on these matters, which deservedly come under blame, join your
diligence to theirs, beloved, that all causes of offences may be removed by the application of the
fullest correction and he cease from injuring our son Aetius.4

Feltoe titles this section of the letter “He asks Julian to act for him as Anatolius is deficient in vigour.”

Anatolius, who was Bishop of Constantinople during the Council of Chalcedon, is said to have later (in April
454, elsewhere dated 29 May 454) written a letter to Pope Leo which contains the following important
paragraph:

As for those things which the universal Council of Chalcedon recently ordained in favor of
the church of Constantinople, let Your Holiness be sure that there was no fault in me, who from my
youth have always loved peace and quiet, keeping myself in humility. It was the most reverent clergy
of the church of Constantinople who were eager about it, and they were equally supported by the
most reverend priests of those parts, who agreed about it. Even so, the whole force of confirmation
of the acts was reserved for the authority of Your Blessedness. Therefore, let Your Holiness know for
certain that I did nothing to further the matter, knowing always that I held myself bound to avoid the
lusts of pride and covetousness.5

1 Charles Lett Feltoe (translator and editor), The Letters and Sermons of Leo the Great Bishop of Rome, Letter
CXVII, § V, in NPNF, Series II, Vol. XII, p. 85.
2 Hefele, History of Councils, Vol. III, Book XI, § 206, p. 446.
3 Charles Gore, Julianus Bishop of Cos, in William Smith and Henry Wace (editors), A Dictionary of Christian

Biography, p. 473, middle of right column, London: John Murray, 1882 [p. 578 of the one-volume edition,
London: John Murray, 1911].
4 Charles Lett Feltoe (translator and editor), The Letters and Sermons of Leo the Great Bishop of Rome, Letter

CXIII, § II, in NPNF, Series II, Vol. XII, pp. 82 – 83.

5 “De his autem quæ Constantinopolitanæ gratia sedis sancita sunt in Chalcedonensi super universali synodo,

pro certo beatitudo vestra hoc habeat, nullam esse culpam in me, homine qui semper otium et quietem, in
humilitate me continens, ab ineunte mea ætate dilexerim, sed Constantinopolitanæ Ecclesiæ reverentissimus
clerus est, qui hoc habuit studium, et istarum partium religiosissimi sacerdotes qui in hoc fuere concordes et
sibi pariter adjutores; cum et sic gestorum vis omnis et confirmatio auctoritati vestæ beatitudinis fuerit
reservata. Hoc igitur bene compertum sanctitas vestra cognoscat, nihil ex me istius causa factum esse negotii,
qui semper omnem jactantiæ levitatem et aliena appetendi cupiditatem mihi vitandam crediderim.” Sidney
 318

Many Roman Catholics have put this letter forward as proof that Anatolius and the Church at that time
believed that the Pope needed to ratify the 28th Canon for it to be valid. However, I believe this letter has
clearly been interpolated and corrupted to favour the Pope (like many Latin documents in Leo’s collection),
and in no way agrees with the sentiment of Anatolius and the Church of Constantinople at this time. This
letter has been preserved only in the Latin collection of Pope Leo’s letters, and Anatolius was ignorant of
Latin, although his Greek signature is alleged to have been on the document. If any part is true, Anatolius
merely wrote polite and diplomatic words (perhaps simply conceding to not actively seek out additional
power and influence for Constantinople, while not rejecting Canon 28) to appease the irrational insistence of
Pope Leo (who persisted in a false interpretation of the Nicene canons which Leo’s own successors rejected)
for the sake of peace in the Church, and to avoid potential schism with the leading orthodox bishop in times of
widespread heresy, but Anatolius never believed that the Pope was supreme. Given the documented pro-
Papal corruption of Pope Leo’s letters, my suspicion is not unfounded, and indeed, is most likely. This letter
also contrasts with all the previous correspondence of Leo with Anatolius and others about this subject, and
appears wholly uncharacteristic for Anatolius, and moreover Anatolius was supported in this matter by the
Orthodox Byzantine Emperors, and so would have had no secular motivation to change course. It is also
recorded that Anatolius continued to affirm Canon 28 in the years 457 or 458. 1 Anatolius is also venerated as
a saint by Roman Catholics as well as the Orthodox, and the evidence shows him a great defender of
Orthodoxy and friend of other saints, which means that Pope Leo’s statement, among others, denigrating
Anatolius and claiming that Anatolius “does not possess catholic vigour, and is not very jealous either for the
mystery of man’s salvation or for his own reputation: whereas, if he had any spiritual activity …” should be
considered false or spurious, especially as Leo never fully reconciled with Anatolius (assuming the
correspondence is authentic).2

The letter of Anatolius to Pope Leo (Ep. 132) is preserved only in the collection of early Papal letters titled
“Collectio (ecclesiae) Thessalonicensis”. This collection is said to have been collected at a Roman Synod in
December 531. The collection was put together primarily to show papal authority:

The collection was arranged to demonstrate that the Bishop of Rome had ecclesiastical jurisdiction
over Eastern Illyricum, even after the division of the Prefecture of Illyricum meant that the eastern
half was administered politically by the Eastern Empire following the death of Theodosius I in 395
rather than by the Western Empire.3

Hoskin notes:

Of these letters, nos. 100, 136, 132, 6, 5, 13 were unknown to modern readers of Leo prior to
Holstenius’ use of them in his edition of 1662. These previously unknown letters are particular
rarities; Epp. 100, 132, 6, 5, 13, and Credebamus post exist only in T; Ep. 136 exists only in T,
Ratisbonensis (E), and Grimanica (G).4

Letter 132 exists only in this collection, and this collection only exists in three manuscripts, one of the ninth
or tenth centuries, another of the sixteenth century, and the third of the seventeenth century. The two latter
are merely copies of the first. So the whole evidence for the text of Anatolius’s letter to Pope Leo rests on a

Herbert Scott, The Eastern Churches and the Papacy, p. 198, London: Sheed & Ward, 1928. Letters of Pope
Leo, Ep. 132, c. 4. Migne, PL, Vol. LIV, p. 1084. Hefele comments, “The letter, with the exception of the
subscription, was originally sent to Leo in Latin, and is No. 132 among those of Leo, in Baller.” (Hefele, History
of Councils, Book XI, § 206, p. 447, n. 1.)
1 See below, where Pseudo-Zacharias Rhetor is quoted on Anatolius.
2 It is true that there are examples of other saints having public disagreements, and there is precedent for this

from the Bible, but I believe that Leo was either misinformed through deceitful and trouble-stirring legates or
someone else wrote or tampered with his letters, if they are not completely spurious.
3 Matthew Hoskin, Prolegomena to a Critical Edition of the Letters of Pope Leo the Great: A Study of the

Manuscripts, Ch. II, p. 161, Dissertation, Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh, 2015.

4 Matthew Hoskin, op. cit., p. 162.
 319

single 9th or 10th century manuscript (Vat. lat. 5751), described as “incomplete and muddled, perhaps due to
a mixed-up exemplar with misplaced folios.”1

Jasper and Fuhrmann write:

The Collectio ecclesiae Thessalonicensis contains: twenty-four letters written by popes from Damasus
(366-384) to Hillary (461 – 468); an exchange of letters between Emperors Honorius and
Theodosius II (post-421); and two letters to Pope Leo I from Emperor Marcian (450) and Patriarch
Anatolius of Constantinople (454). The sole purpose of the collection was to establish proof of the
popes’ uninterrupted ecclesiastical and jurisdictional sovereignty over Eastern Illyricum from the
end of the fourth century.2

Letter 132 is also referred to in Letters 135 (Leo I to Anatolius, 29 May 454) and 136 (Leo I to Marcian, 29
May 454), which I also consider spurious or unreliable.3

Also, Pope Gelasius I (Ep. xiii., ad Episc. Dardanos) makes a reference to this statement of Anatolius, but there
are many issues with this testimony. It is evident that Gelasius is an unreliable guide to ecclesiastical affairs
and documents, and Gelasius’s own works have been corrupted with much spurious material; see the chapter
on the Spurious Works of Popes Leo I and Gelasius I. It is also possible that the document was corrupted
before the time of Gelasius, and as it was shown that Gelasius made a serious error in that very letter, this is
not a sufficient attestation. Gelasius may have been referring to an authentic letter of Anatolius, but
misrepresented it. The letter of Pope Gelasius to the Bishops of Dardania, said to confirm the letter of
Anatolius to Leo, is not among those generally recognized as inauthentic. It is primarily preserved in the
collection of Papal letters titled “Collectio Avellana”, which likewise exists in only a handful of manuscripts,
which also contain various forged material (At least eight spurious epistles are mentioned, but most of the
243 or 244 documents are said to be authentic, although more than 200 of the texts have been handed down
only in this collection, compiled in Italy in the mid-sixth century, and this collection forms the sole record of
much of the papal correspondence in the fifth and sixth centuries).4 The Avellana collection consists of two
early 11th century manuscripts, and nine exemplars from the 15th to 17th centuries. This letter to Dardania
is extant in two versions, a shorter and a longer. The shorter is described as in a “shortened and garbled
form”,5 and is not considered authentic (this indicates that this letter was liable to corruption, and casts doubt
on its accurate preservation).

Besides the Collectio Avellana, the critical edition for the text of the longer version is reliant on the ninth-
century Berlin manuscript Staatsbibliothek 79 (which goes back to a common source with the Avellana), two
manuscripts from the 12th century (Vatican 3832 and 1364), and one from the 16th (Vatican 4983). 6 As a

1 Hoskin, op. cit., p. 165. For one of the problems of this collection, see the section on A Forged
Correspondence Between Emperors Honorius and Theodosius II.
2 Detlev Jasper and Horst Fuhrmann, Papal Letters in the Early Middle Ages, Part I, Ch. IV, 1., p. 81,

Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2001. For more information about the Vat. lat.
5751 manuscript, which is called “the only reliable manuscript” of this collection, see nn. 355, 358, and the
rest of the section in the cited work.
3 As I note in the section on the spurious works of Popes Leo and Gelasius, the Roman Catholic scholar Silva-

Tarouca considered Letter 137 spurious, which is likewise from Leo I to Marcian and on 29 May 454. Silva-
Tarouca considered Letter 157 suspect, which is from Leo I to Anatolius on 1 December 457. This shows that
similar letters have been considered unreliable. Letters 135 and 136 do not mention or reference the most
important words of Anatolius in Letter 132, “the whole force of confirmation of the acts was reserved for the
authority of Your Blessedness”.
4 Paola Paolucci, A New Digital Critical Edition of the Collectio Avellana, in Rita Lizzi Testa and Giulia Marconi

(editors), The Collectio Avellana and Its Revivals, Ch. XII, p. 253 (also see Ch. II, p. 13), Newcastle upon Tyne:
Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2019.
5 Ziegler, Pope Gelasius I, p. 415. See the section on the Spurious Works of Popes Leo I and Gelasius I.
6 Ottonis Gventher, Corpvs Scriptorvm Ecclesiasticorvm Latinorvm, Vol. XXXV, Part I, 95., p. 369, Prague: F.

Tempsky, 1895.
 320

related fact on the connection of the two collections here dealt with, Jasper and Fuhrmann write the following
about the Collectio Thessalonicensis and the Collectio Avellana, “One may conclude that both collections must
have been available to the papal chancery.”1

In summary, the entire manuscript evidence for the letters of Anatolius to Leo and of Gelasius to Dardania,
cited to show that Constantinople conceded to Roman claims, only goes back to two ninth-century Latin
manuscripts and a handful of later ones (although of course their sources are older), where they are clumped
with numerous other forged and interpolated documents. Therefore great weight cannot be attached to such
letters. It also must be noted that many of the post-conciliar documents in Greek are merely translations
from a Latin original,2 and are therefore not of unquestionable reliability. The later history of the controversy
shows that Anatolius and the Patriarchs of Constantinople had no intentions of giving up the 28th canon.

Still, the extant text of Pope Gelasius’s letter to the bishops of Dardania admits that Patriarch Acacius of
Constantinople and Emperor Leo I did not consider the 28th canon to have been absolutely and permanently
nullified, as Pope Leo I had claimed to do. It is thus clear that the Church did not consider Pope Leo I’s
decision as a permanent nullification of the canon, and indeed, subsequent history confirms this. I also must
call attention again to what Dvornik has noted (quoted above), on the absence of documents from the Eastern
side in this controversy, and the nearly total reliance on the unreliable Latin and Papal collections.

Even more could be brought forward from the letters of Pope Leo on the subject of Anatolius and the rank of
Constantinople, but what has been produced is sufficient.

Hefele continues on an excursus on the later history of Canon 28:

On the other hand, Anatolius and his successors practically retained the privileges conceded to
their see at Chalcedon, and never gave actual effect to their courteous words and the assurances
which they made to the Pope. Indeed, Bishop Acacius of Constantinople set himself with peculiar
energy (472) to exercise to the utmost the extended privileges of his see. The consequence was, that
several of the successors of Leo, particularly Simplicius and Felix III., also protested against this, and
the latter pronounced a sentence of deposition upon Acacius. In the controversy which grew out of
this, Pope Gelasius, in his letter, Ad episcopos Dardaniae, expressed himself very strongly, not only on
the rights of the Roman see, but also on the arrogated right of Constantinople, and remarked, in
particular, that if the accidental and secular circumstance that the Emperor resided anywhere should
make the church of that place a patriarchal church, then must Ravenna, Milan, Sirmium, and Trier
(Trèves) be also patriarchates, since these cities had also long been residences.

As, however, the bishops of Constantinople were protected and supported on this point by
the Byzantine Emperors, they remained in possession of the contested prerogatives, and even
began to make the patriarchs of Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem more and more dependent upon
them. The Emperor Justinian also, in his 131st Novel, c. 1, again expressly confirmed the high rank of
the see of Constantinople, and the Trullan Synod, in its 36th canon, renewed precisely the 28th canon
of Chalcedon. At last the loud protest of Rome became silent, although, as the Ballerini maintain, an
express recognition of that canon has never been given by Rome. This must, however, be limited by
the fact that at the time when the Latin Empire and a Latin patriarch was established at
Constantinople, the fourth Lateran Synod, under Pope Innocent III, A.D. 1215, in its 5th canon,
declared that the patriarch of Constantinople should take rank immediately after Rome, and before
Alexandria and Antioch.3

1 Jasper and Fuhrmann, Papal Letters in the Middle Ages, p. 106. Much information has been taken from this
source.
2 Price, The Acts of the Council of Chalcedon, Vol. III, Appendix 1., p. 186.
3 Hefele, History of Councils, Vol. III, Book XI, Sec. 208, p. 448 – 449. Latin Pope Innocent III claimed that this

rank was granted to Constantinople for the sake of peace and tranquility (in cap. antiqua de privileg., see
Percival, Seven Ecumenical Councils, p. 179).
 321

Regarding the Latin Empire and Latin patriarch established at Constantinople, as a slight detour this work
will note that the Latin Fourth Lateran Synod took place after many so-called Crusaders sieged, pillaged, and
desecrated Constantinople, establishing a Latin Patriarchate in this city. Latin Pope Innocent III writes in a
furious letter to Peter, a Cardinal Priest and Legate of the Roman See, shortly after the sack of Constantinople
in 1204:

How, indeed, is the Greek church to be brought back into ecclesiastical union and to a
devotion for the Apostolic See when she has been beset with so many afflictions and persecutions
that she sees in the Latins only an example of perdition and the works of darkness, so that she now,
and with reason, detests the Latins more than dogs? As for those who were supposed to be
seeking the ends of Jesus Christ, not their own ends, whose swords, which they were supposed to use
against the pagans, are now dripping with Christian blood – they have spared neither age nor sex.
They have committed incest, adultery, and fornication before the eyes of men. They have exposed
both matrons and virgins, even those dedicated to God, to the sordid lusts of boys. Not satisfied with
breaking open the imperial treasury and plundering the goods of princes and lesser men, they also
laid their hands on the treasures of the churches and, what is more serious, on their very possessions.
They have even ripped silver plates from the altars and have hacked them to pieces among
themselves. They violated the holy places and have carried off crosses and relics. …

Furthermore, under what guise can we call upon the other Western peoples for aid to the
Holy Land and assistance to the Empire of Constantinople? When the Crusaders, having given up the
proposed pilgrimage, return absolved to their homes; when those who plundered the aforesaid
Empire turn back and come home with their spoils, free of guilt; will not people then suspect that
these things have happened, not because of the crime involved, but because of your deed? Let the
Lord’s word not be stifled in your mouth. Be not like a dumb dog, unable to bark. Rather, let them
speak these things publicly, let them protest before everyone, so that the more they rebuke you
before God and on God's account, the more they will find you simply negligent. As for the absolution
of the Venetian people being falsely accepted, against ecclesiastical rules, we will not at present argue
with you.1

1 Quomodo enim Græcorum Ecclesia, quantumcunque afflictionibus et persecutionibus affligatur, ad unitatem

ecclesiasticam et devotionem sedis apostolicæ revertetur, quæ in Latinis non nisi perditionis exempla et
opera tenebrarum aspexit, ut jam merito illos abhorreat plus quam canes? Illi etenim, qui non quæ sua
sunt, sed quæ Jesu Christi quærere credebantur, gladios, quos exercere debuerant in paganos, Christianorum
sanguine cruentantes, nec religioni nec ætati nec sexui pepercerunt, incestus, adulteria et fornicationes in
oculis hominum exercentes, et tam matronas quam virgines etiam Deo dicatas, exponentes spurcitiis
garsionum. Nec suffecit eisdam imperials divitias exhaurire ac dirumpere spolia principum ac minorum, nisi
ad thesauros Ecclesiarum, et, quod gravius est, ad ipsarum possessiones extenderent manus suas, tabulas
argenteas etiam de altaribus rapientes, et inter se confringentes in frusta, violantes sacraria, cruces et
reliquas asportantes. … Nos quoque, qua fronte de cætero populos Occidentis ad terræ sanctæ subsidium et
præsidium imperii Constantinopolitani poterimus invitare; quibus, etsi non ob propriam culpam, tamen
propter factum tuum, aliqui imputabunt forsitan, quod crucesignati, relicto peregrinationis proposito,
absoluti, ad propria revertuntur, et, qui prædictum imperium spoliarant, illo immunito relicto, referti spoliis
terga vertant? Non sit ergo in ore tuo verbum Domini alligatum, nec sis tanquam canis mutus non valens
latrare; sed hæc loquere publice, ac coram omnibus protestare, ut tanto te amplius pro Deo et propter Deum
objurgantem inveniant, quanto magis te invenerunt hactenus negligentem. Super absolution autem populi
Venetorum, contra formam ecclesiasticam perperam acceptatam, non arguimus te ad præsens, cum per alias
litteras, super hoc ad te specialiter destinatas, te duxerimus arguendem. James Arthur Brundage, The
Crusades: A Documentary Survey, Ch. XI, p. 209, Milwaukee, WI: The Marquette University Press, 1962. Also
referred to in Overbeck, A Plain View, p. 57. Pope Innocent III, Epist. CXXVI Migne, PL, Vol. CCXV, pp. 701 –
702. The rest of this letter and the chronicles of the era are worth reading. Pusey mentions “the capture of
Constantinople under the banner of the Cross, amid excesses from which even the Saracens abstained; the
establishment of Latin Emperors of Constantinople and multiplication of Latin Patriarchs and Bishops,
sometimes scandalous in their lives, oppressive to the Greeks, whom they ejected, banished, or at times
destroyed.” (Edward Bouverie Pusey, Eirenicon, [Part I], p. 62, Oxford: John Henry and James Parker, 1865.)
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The following statement is of the utmost importance in properly understanding and interpreting the ancient
view of the primacy of Rome. Saint John II the Cappadocian, the Patriarch of Constantinople (517 – 520),
writes to Pope Hormisdas:

Know therefore, most holy one, that according as I have written to you, agreeing in the truth with
thee, I, too, loving peace, renounce all the heretics repudiated by thee: for I hold that the most holy
churches of God, that is yours of Elder Rome and this of New Rome, are one; I define the See of the
Apostle Peter and this of the Imperial city to be one See. … I assent to all the acts of the four
General Councils – Nicea, Constantinople, Ephesus, and Chalcedon touching the confirmation of the
faith and the constitution of the Church, and I suffer no disturbance of their wise decisions, for I
know that such as attempt to interfere with a single tittle of their decrees have fallen away from the
Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church of God.

Upon which Denny comments:

John identifies his own See with that of Rome, thus claiming himself to possess whatever authority
‘the See of the Apostle Peter’ possessed. Further, he was careful to mention his assent to the acts of
the four Ecumenical Councils touching ‘the constitution’ of the Church as well as to those touching
her faith. By so doing he asserted the validity of, amongst others of Canon XXVIII. of Chalcedon.1

Patriarch John II is saying that those who reject Canon XXVIII of Chalcedon have fallen away from the Holy
Church. Some Roman Catholic scholars, such as Batifol, Chapman, and Dvornik have challenged this
conclusion, but the facts indisputably show that any agreement of John with Rome must include a recognition
of Constantinople’s rank. This point must be insisted upon: Anyone who now dares to reject Canon XXVIII of
Chalcedon cannot be a member of the Church, according to Patriarch St. John II of Constantinople.

Emperor Saint Justinian the Great (483 – 565), one of the greatest Christian Emperors, similarly disregards
the judgment of Pope Leo I. and other Papal claims and frequently affirms the privileges of the Imperial City
of Constantinople in his official Law Code for the Christian Empire.

It is admirably remarked by the Emperor Justinian, in his 131st Novel, cap. i & ii:

We therefore ordain that the canons of the holy church which were enacted or confirmed by
the four holy councils, that is to say, of the 318 at Nicea, of the 150 holy fathers at Constantinople,
and of the first held at Ephesus, at which Nestorius was condemned, and of that held at Chalcedon at
which Eutyches and Nestorius were anathematized, shall have the force of law. We accept the
dogmas of the aforesaid four holy councils as divine scriptures, and uphold their canons as laws.
We further ordain that in accordance with their determinations, the holy pope of ancient
Rome is the first of all the priests, the archbishop of Constantinople, the new Rome, occupies the
place next after the holy apostolic seat of ancient Rome, and has precedence over the others. 2

In the law code of Justinian there are some documents with statements that exalt the Bishop of Rome, such as
that “he is the head of the Holy priests of God”, “the head of all churches”, and “We have therefore hastened to
make all priests of the whole Orient subject to the seat of Your Holiness and to unite them with it.”3 These

1 Denny, Papalism, p. 407.

2 Corpus Juris Civilis, Codex Justinianus, Novella CXXXI, Cap. i & ii Fred Heinrich Blume, The Annotated
Justinian Code, edited by Timothy G. Kearley and published online at the University of Wyoming College of
Law web site, 2009, 2nd Ed., (http://www.uwyo.edu/lawlib/blume-justinian/ajc-edition-2/novels/121-
140/novel%20131_replacement.pdf). This is clear evidence of the widespread acceptance of Canon 3 of
Constantinople and Canon 28 of Chalcedon, despite Papal disapproval.
3 See Corpus Juris Civilis, Codex Justinianus, Book I, Title I.
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documents (a letter of Justinian to Patriarch Epiphanius, and a letter from Pope John to Justinian [only extant
in Latin], found in Book I, Title I in the Law Code) lie under grave suspicion of forgery and interpolation.
Several scholars in the past, such as Comber and Andrews, have doubted of their authenticity, and this is also
my opinion, although it does not appear that the authenticity of these letters has been formally inquired into
in the last hundred years, and others have maintained its authenticity. Moreover, Justinian’s letter to Pope
Agapetus and Pope John’s letter to various Senators, which refer to Justinian’s letter to John, cannot be held as
completely authentic. The first external direct attestation to the text of the Latin of Pope John’s letter to
Justinian is in the writings of Pope Nicholas I, who is notoriously unreliable. Moreover, those who have
suspected this document as a counterfeit have pointed out that it is not found in some copies and books.
Those who think I am too quick to identify certain documents as unreliable must read the portion of this work
on Forgeries, to see the extent to which literary corruption of ecclesiastical records has occurred. Even if
these are authentic passages, they can only be understood in a limited manner, when one compares what
Justinian has written and done elsewhere. These statements should be interpreted in the context that
Constantinople was understood to have a similar role of leadership, which it shared with Rome to a large
degree. I have not seen any study specifically on the question of papal primacy in Justinian’s Law Code,
although the latest critical edition is valuable for reference.1

I will continue to show Constantinople’s identification with Rome and its privileges. Emperor Justinian
decrees:

Again, if any rules included in the old books have fallen into disuse by this time, we by no
means permit you to set them down, but we want only such rules to be maintained which have been
put in force in the most usual course of courts, or have been approved by long custom in this revered
city, in accordance with the work of Salvius Julianus, which points out that all cities ought to follow
the custom of Rome, the head of the world, and not Rome follow that of other cities. And by Rome
we should understand not merely the old city, but our own royal city, too, which, by the grace of
God, was built under the best of auguries.2

The Civil Law promulgated by Emperor Justinian reiterates the following decree in the section “Concerning
the Most Sacred Churches, their Property and their Privileges”, from the Emperors Honorius and Theodosius
to Philip, Prefect of Illyria, given July 14, 421:

We direct that all innovations shall be annulled and that the ancient customs, and the
ecclesiastical canons, which have been in force to this day, shall also be observed throughout all the
provinces of Illyria, and if any doubt arises, it should be referred to a church assembly and its holy
judgment, with the knowledge of the reverend bishop of the holy faith, situated at Constantinople,
which city enjoys the prerogative of Ancient Rome. 3

1 Bruce W. Frier, The Codex of Justinian: A New Annotated Translation, with Parallel Latin and Greek Text,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 3 Vols., 2016.
2 Corpus Juris Civilis, Codex Justinianus, Book I, Title XVII, 1., 10. A second translation is “Where, however,

any laws contained in the ancient books have already fallen into desuetude, We, under no circumstances,
permit you to insert them; for We only wish those to remain in force which frequent decisions have
established, or the long-continued custom of this Fair City has confirmed; in accordance with the statement of
Salvius Julianus, which says that all cities should observe the customs and laws of Rome, which is the capital
of the world, but that Rome should not observe the customs of other cities. We understand by Rome, not only
the ancient City, but also our Imperial Capital, which, by the grace of God, was founded under the most
fortunate auspices.” Fred Heinrich Blume, The Annotated Justinian Code, edited by Timothy G. Kearley and
published online at the University of Wyoming College of Law web site, 2009, 2nd Ed.,
(www.uwyo.edu/lawlib/blume-justinian/ajc-edition-2/books/book1/book 1-17rev.pdf). Second translation
in Samuel Parsons Scott, The Civil Law, Vol. XII, Cincinnati, OH: The Central Trust Company, 1932. Blume’s
edition and translation is generally held to be better than that of Scott.
3 Corpus Juris Civilis, Codex Justinianus, Book I, Title II, 6. A second translation is “All innovation having been

abolished, We command that ancient custom and the former ecclesiastical canons which have been in force
up to this time shall be observed through all the provinces of Illyria; and if any doubt should arise with
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Justinian’s Law Code states:

Looking after all things ecclesiastical and particularly those pertaining to the holy and great
church of this felicitous city, mother of all, head of all others, we forbid in the future the grant of any
church property by perpetual lease (colonario jure) the name of which shall be abolished and
(henceforth) unknown to the laws.1

Another item in Justinian’s Law Code, “Concerning the privileges of the City of Constantinople” (De privilegiis
urbis Constantinopolitanae), and decreed by Emperors Honorius and Theodosius to Philippus, Praetorian
Prefect of Illyria on July 14, 421, states:

The city of Constantinople shall enjoy not only the prerogatives of the Italian rights but also
those of ancient Rome itself.2

It was also ordered in the Imperial Constitutions:

We order that these rules shall be observed not only in this our royal city, but also in all our
provinces, although other usages may be now adopted there through ignorance; for it is necessary
that all the provinces should conform to the practice of our royal city, which is supreme above all
others.3

Furthermore, the Emperor Leo, in a Rescript to the Prefect of the Prætorium in December 477, registered in
Justinian’s Code, says:

We order that everything that has been done in any manner against the God of the orthodox
religion shall be entirely null and void, and all things as to the faith of the orthodox religion and the
status of the holy churches and chapels (martyriorum) shall be fully restored and recalled to the
condition which existed before the departure of our Clemency. The innovations made by the tyrants,

reference to them, it must be removed by the knowledge of the Holy Law possessed by that most reverend
man, the Patriarch of the Church of the City of Constantinople (which enjoys the prerogatives of Ancient
Rome), and the judgment of the ecclesiastical assembly of that City.” Fred Heinrich Blume, The Annotated
Justinian Code, edited by Timothy G. Kearley and published online at the University of Wyoming College of
Law web site, 2009, 2nd Ed., (http://www.uwyo.edu/lawlib/blume-justinian/ajc-edition-
2/books/book1/Book%201-2rev.pdf). Second translation in Samuel Parsons Scott, The Civil Law, Vol. XII,
Cincinnati, OH: The Central Trust Company, 1932.
1 “Η εν Κωνσταντινουπολη εκκλησία πασών των άλλων έστί κεφαλή.” “Constantinopolitana Ecclesia omnium

aliarum est Caput.” The key passage has also been translated, “The Church of Constantinople is the head of all
the other Churches.” Corpus Juris Civilis, Codex Justinianus, Book I, Title II, 24. Fred Heinrich Blume, The
Annotated Justinian Code, edited by Timothy G. Kearley and published online at the University of Wyoming
College of Law web site, 2009, 2nd Ed. (http://www.uwyo.edu/lawlib/blume-justinian/ajc-edition-
2/books/book1/book%201-2rev.pdf). If Justinian’s similar remarks of Rome are authentic, this shows that
despite these flattering titles, Rome has no more than the priority of rank.
2 Corpus Juris Civilis, Codex Justinianus, Book XI, Title XXI (XX), 1. Another translation is “The City of

Constantinople shall not only enjoy the privileges enjoyed by Italy, but also those of ancient Rome.” Fred
Heinrich Blume, The Annotated Justinian Code, edited by Timothy G. Kearley and published online at the
University of Wyoming College of Law web site, 2009, 2nd Ed., (http://www.uwyo.edu/lawlib/blume-
justinian/_files/docs/book%20-11pdf/book11-21.pdf). Kearley writes in this location, “Constantinople was
called Byzantium before the time of Constantine the Great, and had existed as a town for centuries.
Constantine made it the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire and from that time on it grew and flourished,
and many of the institutions there were modeled after Rome. By the instant law, the city was given the same
legal status as Rome.”
3 Lib. IV, Tit. XI, 7. Thomas Collett Sandars, The Institutes of Justinian: With English Introduction, Translation

and Notes, p. 474, New York, NY: Longmans, Green, and Co., 13th Impression, 1910.
 325

contrary thereto, against the venerable churches of which the blessed and reverend Acacius,
sustainer of our piety, is bishop and patriarch, and against the other churches situated in the
different provinces, and against their reverend bishops, either as to the right of ordaining priests or
as to the expulsion of any bishops undertaken by any one during those times, or as to any prerogative
in connection with precedence in rank in or outside of, the council of bishops, or as to any privilege of
a metropolitan bishop or patriarch in those impious times, shall be entirely annulled, so that, with the
things which issued pursuant to that kind of wicked orders, pragmatic sanctions, impious
constitutions or rescripts being abolished and rescinded, whatever was conceded or directed by the
past emperors of blessed memory, prior to our reign, and thereafter by our clemency, in regard to the
holy churches and chapels and the pious bishops, clergymen or monks, shall be preserved inviolate.

1. And we order and ordain that the holy church of this religious city, mother of our piety and the
holy seat of all Christians of the orthodox faith, and the holy (ecclesiastical) see of the same city shall,
in deference to the imperial city, in perpetuity firmly possess all privileges and honors in regard to
the ordination of bishops, precedence of place and all others which they are known to have had
before or during our reign.1

The 28th Canon of Chalcedon, although separated from the other 27 canons, is also included as a decision of
the Council of Chalcedon in the canon law collection called “Syntagma XIV Titulorum”, or Syntagma in 14
Titles, which scholars date to 580. This important canon law collection was a revision of John Scholasticus’
pioneering work in codification of Church law, made by an anonymous 6th century canonist in
Constantinople.

The 28th Canon was also included in early Syriac, Coptic, and Latin translations of the Greek canonical
lists. Professor Judith Herrin writes:

Canon 28 was to have a fascinating history. In the east it took its place among the canons
issued at Chalcedon and was reproduced in later Greek records. Lists of canons already circulated,
and one had been cited during the council proceedings, for instance in session XI when two canons of
the council of Antioch of c. 330 were read out and identified as numbers 95 and 96 of this list. …

The most influential of these lists was the Syntagma kanonon, originally compiled at Antioch
by Bishop Meletius (362 – 81), which consisted of canons numbered in a continuous series. It
included the rulings issued by the ecumenical councils and the most significant local fourth-century
councils (Ancyra, Neocaesarea, Gangra, Antioch and Laodicea). After 451 the canons issued at
Chalcedon were added to it, and in the early sixth century the imperial chancellery added those
of Sardica (342/3) and 133 canons of Carthage (419). The oldest surviving witnesses to
this Syntagma kanonon are a Syriac translation made after 501 for the church of Hierapolis and a
later Coptic translation.a By this process of dissemination throughout the Greek east,
the Syntagma kanonon was evidently regarded as an authentic and uniformly binding list of canons.

In the course of the fifth century, however, these Latin [canonical] lists were rivalled by
three independent translations of Greek collections probably made in Rome. b One of these, the so-
called Prisca version, is marked by its omission of the canons of Nicaea (which were so well known
that it was not necessary to include them), its much fuller version of the canons of Sardica, taken
from the original Latin record, and its inclusion of Canon 28 of Chalcedon. c So despite the fact that
the other two Latin translations ignored Canon 28, through the Prisca translation it became known in
some parts of the west. Further, the third canon of Constantinople (381), which established the

1 “Sacrosanctam quoque hujus religiosissimæ civitatis Ecclesiam, et matrem nostræ pietatis, et Christianorum
orthodoxæ religionis omnium, et ejusdem regiæ Urbis sanctissimam sedem, &c.” Corpus Juris Civilis, Codex
Justinianus, Book I, Title II, 16. Fred Heinrich Blume, The Annotated Justinian Code, edited by Timothy G.
Kearley and published online at the University of Wyoming College of Law web site, 2009, 2nd Ed.,
(http://www.uwyo.edu/lawlib/blume-justinian/ajc-edition-2/books/book1/book%201-2rev.pdf).
 326

superiority of Constantinople over the sees of Antioch, Alexandria and Jerusalem, and was cited in
Canon 28, was included in all three new Latin versions.d

[Herrin’s Footnotes:] a) Turner (1929/30), 9-20. Pace Dvornik (1958), 82, who claims that Canon 28
was not included in any Greek collections before the Syntagma in 14 Titles of the late sixth century, it
must have been in the earlier witness now lost, because it was included in these translations.
b) Turner (1928/9), 340-2.
c) Turner (1929/30), 10-17.
d) L’Huillier (1996), 212; Turner (1928/9), 339-40.1

Peter L’Hullier (1926 – 2007), an Orthodox Archbishop and professor of Canon Law, writes concerning the
28th canon:

Moreover, it is certain that from the end of the fifth century the motion on the prerogatives of the
archbishop of Constantinople appeared in certain Greek collections; this is indirectly attested to by
the fact that this text was inserted in two manuscripts of the Prisca.

[Hullier’s footnote:] We are dealing here with the manuscript of Chieti and with that of Justell; they
are dated from the sixth century and come from Italy. Canon 3 of Constantinople is combined with
the motion adopted at Chalcedon.2

These Italian manuscripts represent the old Latin collection of canons, anterior to the collection of St.
Dionysius Exiguus (470 – 544), an abbot of the city of Rome. In this old Latin collection, dating to the fifth
century, the 27 canons of Chalcedon are followed by the four canons of Constantinople, followed lastly by the
28th canon of Chalcedon, which is not numbered as such, but presented as “De primatu ecclesiae
Constantinopolitanae”.3

Archbishop L’Hullier writes that this canon has been recopied with great precision, and that there are no
significant textual variants in the manuscript tradition. 4

The 28th canon is not found in several canonical collections for a while after the Council of Chalcedon, but this
is simply because it was not formally a canon (among the 27) of the Council, although it was still a decision of
the Council. Moreover, the canon was not received by everyone in the Church, as Rome had protested so
strongly against it. Some historians have taken the fact that the early canonists refer to only 27 canons as
proof that the 28th canon was not accepted by the Church, due to Pope Leo’s disapproval. However, what has
come to be called the 28th canon was not originally technically decreed as a canon, but as a supplemental
decision of the Council. This is also evidenced by contemporaries, who do not refer to it as a canon.

1 Judith Herrin, The Quinisext Council (692) as a Continuation of Chalcedon, in Richard Price and Mary
Whitby (editors) Chalcedon in Context: Church Councils 400 – 700, p. 153, Translated Texts for Historians,
Contexts, Vol. I, Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2009. Dvornik erroneously claimed that “So it
happened that the contested canon was not listed in the first collections of canon law in the Byzantine Church.
It appeared only at the end of the sixth century, in the Syntagma of Fourteen Titles” (Francis Dvornik, The
Idea of Apostolicity in Byzantium, p. 102). This is false, because the Prisca, a fifth-century Latin translation of
a Greek canonical collection, includes the 28th Canon, and an early sixth-century Syriac translation of the
Syntagma kanonon included the 28th Canon, as well as a later Coptic translation. So the Chalcedonian
decision referred to as the 28th canon was immediately considered authoritative in the fifth century.
2 Peter L’Hullier, The Church of the Ancient Councils: The Disciplinary Work of the First Four Ecumenical

Councils, Ch. IV, pp. 205, 306, n. 136., Crestwood, NY: Saint Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1996. Also see Francis
Dvornik, Byzantium and the Roman Primacy, pp. 47 et sqq., New York, NY: Fordham University Press, 1966.
3 Edmund S. Ffoulkes, Codex Canonum Ecclesiae, in William Smith and Samuel Cheetham (editor), A

Dictionary of Christian Antiquities, Vol. I, p. 399, London: John Murray, 1893.

4 L’Hullier, The Church of the Ancient Councils, Ch. IV, pp. 269, 321, n. 559.
 327

Several canonists and authors from the East and West (such as Dionysius Exiguus, Isidore, the Prisca, the
Greek by John (Scholasticus) of Antioch, Theodore the Reader of Constantinople, and the Arabic by Joseph
Ægyptius) counted only 27 canons in the collections of Chalcedon’s canons.1

It is important to note that almost all of these collections include the canons of Constantinople I as well, which
Rome had not accepted). This is for two reasons: primarily because this was not technically enumerated as a
canon, but was rather another decision of the Council of Chalcedon; and also partially because this decision
was not initially received by everyone in the Church, as Rome had protested so strongly against it, and Leo
had been considered the honorary leader of the Council of Chalcedon, and some other bishops and
Monophysites were reluctant to give Constantinople the second place. Also, as seen above, there was also a
false rumour in circulation, which Pope Leo repeated, and which appears to have been promoted by the
Roman legates (who successfully deceived Pope Leo), that the Council’s decision was not made freely, and
that the bishops were compelled or extorted to sign.

It should be noted that the Council of Chalcedon decreed 27 canons proper, with three other decisions that
came to be referred to as canons 28 – 30. L’Hullier has pointed out that the text which is referred to as the
28th Canon of Chalcedon is not, strictly speaking, a canon, and is not numbered as the 28th canon in the
manuscript tradition, although it is recorded as an official enactment of the Council of Chalcedon. L’Hullier
writes: “Although this text was never numbered as canon 28, as the ancient manuscript tradition attests, the
habit has grown up of mentioning in the indices that the Council of Chalcedon issued 30 canons.” 2 A similar
situation has occurred with the canons and decisions of other councils (e.g., Nicaea’s decision on clerical
celibacy and the date of Easter, which were authentic decisions of that Council, but not recorded in that
Council’s canons; also the canons of the First Council of Constantinople).

I will now cite some passages from the magnum opus of the Roman Catholic scholar Aloys Grillmeier, “Christ
in Christian Tradition”, first published in 1965, and which has been highly praised by other scholars.
Grillmeier (1910 – 1998) was a learned German Jesuit cardinal, professor, priest and theologian, who was
influential at the Latin Second Vatican Council. He published a dozen major books and several hundred
academic articles:

A decisive turning-point was the death of Emperor Marcian (26 January, 457), with whom the Pope
worked harmoniously to have the doctrinal decision of the Council of 451 recognised, even if the two
of them could not agree on the question of the so-called Canon 28.3

1 William Bright, The Canons of the First Four General Councils, Notes on the Canons of Chalcedon, Canon
XXVIII, pp. 219 – 220, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2nd Ed., 1892. Percival, Seven Ecumenical Councils, p. 287.
Dionysius Exiguus still includes the 3rd Canon of the First Council of Constantinople (Percival, Seven
Ecumenical Councils, p. 179). Note that the Prisca does include Canon 28, but it is there appended to the end
of the 3rd Canon of the First Council of Constantinople. Also, what is said to be a work by the 14th century
priest Joseph the Egyptian is not actually his work, but simply an Arabic manuscript that had been in his
possession, and which is now in the Bodleian Library (I am not aware of any recent studies on this
manuscript). It is an Arabic paraphrase of the canons of the first four Ecumenical Councils, and it contains
dozens of spurious Nicene canons (Hefele, History of Councils, Vol. I, Book II, Ch. II, Sec. 41., pp. 362 – 363).
The 9th century Slavonic Nomocanon, alleged to be the production of St. Methodius or his disciples, has a
commentary on the 28th canon, attempting to contradict it and argue for Papal primacy (Scott Butler and
John Collorafi, Keys Over the Christian World, Ch. XI, p. 236, [Publisher and printing location not given (USA)],
2003), but its authenticity is suspect and it is clearly a production of antagonistic Papal missionaries after the
Photian schism. Several Syriac manuscripts list only 27 canons, such as three in the British Museum, Add.
12,155, Add. 14,528, & Add. 14,526 (William Wright, Catalogue of Syriac Manuscripts in the British Museum,
Part II, 857, 906, & 907, pp. 949, 1031, & 1035, London: Longmans & Co., 1871).
2 Peter L’Hullier, The Church of the Ancient Councils: The Disciplinary Work of the First Four Ecumenical

Councils, Ch. IV, pp. 205, 267, 306, n. 135., Crestwood, NY: Saint Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1996.
3 Pauline Allen and John Cawte (translators), Aloys Grillmeier, Christ in Christian Tradition, Vol. II, Part I, Ch.

II, Sect. I, p. 115, Atlanta, GA: John Knox Press, 1986.

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A footnote from the same work says:

W. de Vries, ‘Strukturen der Kirche …, OCP 35 (1969) 98. Ibid., 98-111 (cf. idem Occident et Orient
(Paris 1974) 136-149), deals with ‘Primacy from the Eastern viewpoint’ and comes to the conclusion:
‘the primacy is no doubt more clearly recognized at Chalcedon than at other councils. But even here
Rome (with its further claims) could not carry the day. The consciousness of the collegial authority
of the bishops at the Council was too strong for this’ (111). When de Vries, ibid., says that the so-
called Canon 28, despite the well-known difficulties from Leo’s side, became ‘immediately the law in
force in the East’, one may take this statement further. This Canon was in practice the law in force
since 381.1

The Chronicle of Pseudo-Zachariah Rhetor, an anti-Chalcedonian history, makes several references to Canon
28 of Chalcedon. Zacharias Rhetor (or Zacharias Scholasticus / Zacharias of Mytilene, 465 – 536), was an
anti-Chalcedonian bishop and historian. His ecclesiastical history was written towards the end of the
5th century, and is composed from a biased standpoint. The original Greek version of his history is now lost,
but a revised version of it in Syriac has been preserved in a collection of ecclesiastical histories by
a Monophysite monk from Amida, who is now known as Pseudo-Zacharias Rhetor. It is apparent that the
author of this chronicle does not approve of Chalcedon’s decision to recognize Constantinople’s honours and
privileges as the second see:

[Emperor Leo] learned of the evil things that were taking place in Egypt, in Alexandria, in Palestine,
and everywhere [else], and that many had been stirred up because of the Council, and that also in
Ephesus many had been killed at the arrival of John who succeeded Bassianus after he had resigned
and fled so as not to sign [the statement of faith] at Chalcedon. Now John betrayed the rights and
honours of the see of [Ephesus] because he desired preeminence, so that they in Ephesus call him
[even] today ‘The Traitor,’ and they erased his name from the Book of Life. Then Emperor Leo, who
accepted the letter from Timothy of Alexandria, wanted to assemble a council, but Anatolius, the
bishop of the imperial city, prevented him not because he was able to find fault with anything that
Timothy had written, but he was wary lest, when the council assembled, it would annul everything
that had been done at Chalcedon, not concerning the faith, but concerning the rights and honours
that had been given illegally to the see of the imperial city. Thus Anatolius persuaded the emperor
not to assemble a council, but to solicit the will of the bishops concerning the council and the
ordination of Timothy through written letters called encyclicals. So [the emperor] began to write to
the bishops an encyclical letter concerning Timothy and concerning the Council of Chalcedon to the
following effect.2

The anti-Chalcedonian Patriarch Timothy II of Alexandria (or Timothy Aelurus / Timothy the Cat, +477) also
rejected the canonical decisions of Chalcedon:

When he [Timothy Aelurus] arrived at Ephesus he convened a synod and restored Paul who
had been been bishop there, but who was ejected at that time because he did not accept the

1 Grillmeier, Christ in Christian Tradition, Vol. II, Part I, Ch. II, Sect. II, 2. p. 129, n. 43. Wilhem de Vries (1904 –
1997), cited here by Grillmeier, was a learned German Roman Catholic Jesuit priest, professor, and scholar of
Syriac Christianity, and was also an advisor at the Latin Second Vatican Council.
2 Geoffrey Greatrex (editor), Robert R. Phenix and Cornelia B. Horn (translators), Sebastian P. Brock and

Witold Witakowski (contributors), The Chronicle of Pseudo-Zachariah Rhetor: Church and War in Late
Antiquity, Book IV, 173. – 174., pp. 139 – 140, in Translated Texts for Historians, Vol. LV, Liverpool: Liverpool
University Press, 2011. This clearly shows that Anatolius was in no way minded to give up the privileges of
his see, and certainly that Anatolius had not already conceded the decision to Pope Leo. Emperor Leo I
became emperor on 7 February 457, so this event is after the date of April or May 454, when Anatolius is
alleged to have written to the Pope and surrendered the cause of Canon 28 of Chalcedon. Anatolius died on 3
July 458.
 329

[decisions] of Chalcedon. He returned to him the canonical rights of his see, which the assembly
of Chalcedon had stripped from him, and had given in partiality to the throne of the imperial
city. When he arrived in Alexandria … he did not require of them anything except that they condemn
the Council [of Chalcedon] and the Tome [of Leo] …1

Evagrius Scholasticus (536 – 594) was an Orthodox Syrian scholar and important historian, and an aide of
Patriarch Gregory of Antioch. The Ecclesiastical History of Evagrius Scholasticus summarizes this part of
Zacharias Rhetor’s chronicle:

He [Timothy Aelurus] also restored to the city of the Ephesians the patriarchal right which the
Synod at Chalcedon had removed from it, as I have narrated. Leaving there, he came to the city of
the Alexandrians, and continued in this manner to demand that those who came into his presence
should anathematize the Synod at Chalcedon.2

If the Bishop of Rome had taken such an action, it would have likely been adduced in favour of Papal
supremacy. Here is the Bishop of Alexandria convening a synod in Ephesus, claiming to restore the canonical
rights of the Bishop of Ephesus against those of Constantinople (overturning the 28th Canon of Chalcedon),
rejecting the doctrine of the Council of Chalcedon and the Tome of Leo (agreed to by hundreds of bishops),
and demanding that Christians in Alexandria anathematise Chalcedon and Leo’s Tome. This is important in
showing that any bishop had the right to overturn and reject what they believed was error.

Patriarch Timothy III of Alexandria (or Timothy Wobblecap / Wobble Cap / Salophaciolus / Salophakiolos,
+481) had a dispute with Patriarch Gennadius I of Constantinople concerning the rank of their sees:

They say concerning this Wobblecap that he tried to persuade the Alexandrians to be
associated with him, and as though to reject the Council [of Chalcedon] he wrote in the diptychs the
name of Dioscorus. When Leo of Rome heard these things, he forbade it. On one occasion, when he
went up to Constantinople, he had a great dispute before the emperor with Gennadius who was the
bishop after Anatolius. [Timothy] said, ‘I do not accept the Council, that it should make your see [of
Constantinople] second after that of Rome, and that it should profane the honour of my own see,’
whereupon the emperor laughed when he saw them, and heard that the two priests were vying for
preeminence.

And he wrote to give information to the [bishop] of Rome concerning this dispute, and he
wrote on that occasion that it is fitting that each see should be restored to [the honour] that it had
[had] earlier, and he made this known to the emperor. So much concerning this
Timothy Wobblecap.3

I must emphasize the fact that Anatolius’s immediate successor Gennadius (Patriarch of Constantinople from
458 – 471) upheld Canon 28 of Chalcedon, as seen above. This proves that Constantinople continued to
receive and defend the 28th Canon, against Rome’s wishes. It also shows that it wasn’t simply the Pope’s
disapproval of this canon that led to its non-universal acceptance at first, but, importantly, also because
Alexandria and the non-Chalcedonians attacked it. Nor can Papal apologists point to Leo’s rejection of
Chalcedon’s canon as a unique Papal prerogative, for the heretical anti-Chalcedonian Patriarch of Alexandria
also rejected this canon (as well as the council of Chalcedon) and “restored to the city of the Ephesians the
patriarchal right which the Synod at Chalcedon had removed from it”, showing his great influence outside his
own See.

1 Geoffrey Greatrex (editor), Robert R. Phenix and Cornelia B. Horn (translators), Sebastian P. Brock and
Witold Witakowski (contributors), The Chronicle of Pseudo-Zachariah Rhetor: Church and War in Late
Antiquity, Book V, 216 – 217., pp. 183 – 185, in Translated Texts for Historians, Vol. LV, Liverpool: Liverpool
University Press, 2011.
2 Michael Whitby (translator), The Ecclesiastical History of Evagrius Scholasticus, Book III, 106., p. 140, in

Translated Texts for Historians, Vol. XXXIII, Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2000.
3 Greatrex, The Chronicle of Pseudo-Zachariah Rhetor, Book IV, 183 – 184., p. 151.
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Wobblecap professed to hold to the Orthodox confession of the Council of Chalcedon, but it is to
his dishonour that he engaged in this dispute concerning the second place, for he should have accepted his
place with humility, and he likely hurt the cause of Chalcedonian Christianity in Egypt, and moreover was
proven incorrect by the universal consent of the Church. This internal division weakened the unity of the
Church in the East and made Monophysites reluctant to accept Chalcedon. Many Monophysites justified their
rejection of Chalcedon by the errors of Pope Leo I’s legates, which led many to reject the definition of faith at
the Council, and weakened the unity of the Church in the East.

There is a very important passage by a learned Monophysite, John Philoponus of Alexandria (c. 490 – 570),
writing against the Council of Chalcedon (the work is lost but is partly preserved in Michael the Syrian’s
Chronicle), where he emphatically criticises the actions of Pope Leo I and his legates, commenting on the
instruction given to the legate Paschasinus by Leo, which clearly shows that the Pope was not considered the
monarch of the Church (otherwise the criticism would be to no effect):

‘We have received order from the archbishop Leo, that Dioscorus be not seated into the assembly but
that he be cast out, …’ What ecclesiastical canon, what imperial law gave to the Bishop of Rome a
power to do whatever he wants, legitimately promulgate a decree outside of the synod, act illegally,
and do what he pleases even though no one is in agreement with him? This is what only tyrants do.
If they push forward the apostolic authority of Peter, and if they believe the keys of heaven have been
given to them: let them consider the other cities crowned with the apostolic halo. I do not mention
ours which is leading the see of Mark the Evangelist, but that of the Ephesians, instituted by John the
Apostle, is led by another, by the one of Constantinople, because the seat of the Empire has been
transferred there. What then! If the bishop of Rome would come to think wrong, will we change the
faith of everybody because of this apostolic throne? Why don’t the ones from Antioch the great not
claim the primacy: firstly because Peter, on whom the Romans base their great claims, there
exercised authority; and then because there the honourable name of the Christians enjoyed the right
of citizenship? Why not the one of Jerusalem? Because he alone held authority in the imperial city,
he obtained the primacy over all others, by some usage, because of the greatness of the city and of the
imperial authority. But no ecclesiastical canon has instituted, no imperial law has established the
bishop of Rome as autocrat of the whole world. 1

Evagrius Scholasticus also mentions the 28th Canon of Chalcedon when giving an account of the actions of the
Council of Chalcedon:

And it was also decided that the throne of New Rome, though in second place to the elder Rome,
should take precedence over the rest.2

The very end of the second book of the history, concluding a review of the Council of Chalcedon, states:

And at the conclusion it was determined that the see of Constantinople should be ranked
immediately after that of Rome.3

1 Jean Baptiste Chabot (translator to French), Chronique de Michel le Syrien, Vol. II, Book VIII, Ch. XIII, pp. 101
seq., Paris: Ernest Leroux, 1901. I thank a French friend for this translation. Dvornik makes brief comments
on this passage in Francis Dvornik, The Idea of Apostolicity in Byzantium, pp. 135 – 136, n. 88a, Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 1958. It is interesting that Philoponus criticizes the Bishop of Rome for acting
with a level of authority that previous Bishops of Alexandria had themselves done against Chalcedon (as has
just been seen), and Philoponus appears to agree with the rationale behind Chalcedon’s 28th Canon.
2 Whitby, The Ecclesiastical History of Evagrius Scholasticus, Book II, 50., p. 76.
3 Whitby, The Ecclesiastical History of Evagrius Scholasticus, Book II, 93., p. 126. It is noteworthy that

Evagrius Scholasticus does not call this determination a canon, while he makes previous references to the
canons being established. This is the case in other sources. The footnotes to the passages above in the cited
editions of Pseudo-Zacharias Rhetor and Evagrius Scholasticus are also worth reading.
 331

Jason Osequeda, in his recent doctoral dissertation on the historical authority of the Patriarchate of
Constantinople, writes the following, quoting and commenting upon Ferrandus of Carthage:

By the time of the Three Chapters controversy of the sixth century, Canon 28 came to be
seen as necessary to the preservation of the council itself. Ferrandus of Carthage argued that “If
there is disapproval of any part of Chalcedon, then the approval of the whole council is endangered …
The whole Chalcedonian council, because the whole is the Chalcedonian council, is true. No one
holds fault with any part of it. Whatever was said, done, decided and confirmed there was done by
the ineffable and secret power of the Holy Spirit.”* If one part was condemned, then so was the
whole. His argument was about the letter of Ibas, but in insisting on full-scale acceptance of all that
was done at Chalcedon, consequently this meant accepting Canon 28.

* Ferrandus of Carthage, Letter 6.3, in PL 67. p. 23: Si pars aliqua displicet in concilio Chalcedonensi,
cum pericuko displicendi totum placet … Totum concilium Chalcedonense, verum est: nulla pars illius
habet ullam reprehensionem; quiquid ibi dictum, gestum, judicatum novimus atque firmatum, sancti
Spiritus operata est ineffabilis et secreta potentia.1

The responses to the Codex Encyclicus (a collection of Chalcedonian documents) issued by Emperor Leo also
show a strong connection with Chalcedon and orthodoxy. Osequeda writes:

The emperor received letters expressing unanimous support for Chalcedon in the replies to his
Codex. … While there is a clear affirmation of Nicaea underlying the logic of the letters, within the
replies to the Codex Encyclicus lies a clear understanding that orthodoxy and Chalcedon were
inextricably linked: “If we declare worthless that which the assembled Fathers established at
Chalcedon, we would without a doubt also destroy what was decided at Nicaea.”* The bonds of
orthodoxy depended on maintaining the canons of Chalcedon. If one string was pulled, all of what
the ecumenical councils had determined was orthodox would unravel.

* ACO 2.5 p. 45.2

Certainly the focus here is on the faith and doctrinal decisions of the Chalcedonian fathers, but the whole
Council was inspired, and to call the 28th canon “worthless” (as Latin Pope Leo XIII does in Satis Cognitum) is
to challenge the integrity of the entire Council, and of all “that which the assembled Fathers established at
Chalcedon”.

Furthermore, there is this very important testimony from the middle of the sixth century:

The Archdeacon of Carthage (a Western See) – Liberatus – when writing some hundred years later,
attests the success of the efforts of the See of Constantinople to maintain the position and rights
accorded therein to it, when he states ‘that although the Apostolic See even now contradicts, that
which was established by the Synod endures in every way through the patronage of the Emperor.’3

1 Jason Osequeda, Because It is New Rome: The Authority of the Patriarchate of Constantinople, [AD] 379 –
553, I, pp. 84 – 85, Dissertation: The University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, 2018. Ferrand or Ferrandus of
Carthage (d. 546 or 547) was a north African deacon and Orthodox theologian.
2 Osequeda, Because It is New Rome, II, pp. 103 – 105.
3 Denny, Papalism, p. 210. Original Latin of Liberatus: “Licet sedes apostolica nunc usque contradicat quod a

synodo firmatum est imperatoris patrocinio permanet quoquo modo.” (Church Quarterly Review, Vol. XXIX,
1889, p. 133). The Catholic Encyclopedia writes of Liberatus: “Archdeacon; author of an important history of
the Nestorian and Monophysite troubles. In 535 he was sent to Rome, as legate of a great African national
synod of two hundred and seventeen bishops, to consult Pope Agapetus I (535-6) about a number of
questions (Harduin, II, 1154; Mansi, VIII, 808). … He was frequently employed by the African bishops as their
ambassador in the disputes that arose from that question. … In spite of Liberatus's controversial purpose
and his indignation against Monophysites and all aiders and abettors of the condemnation of the Three
 332

John Jewel writes of this matter as follows:

The council of Chalcedon decreed, that the bishop of Constantinople should be in dignity next unto
the bishop of Rome, and should consecrate the metropolitans of Asia, Pontus, and Thracia. This
decree Leo the bishop of Rome very much misliked, and would never assent unto it: yet, that
notwithstanding, it is in force and continueth still. Liberatus thereof writeth thus: Cum Anatolius
consentiente concilio primatum obtinuisset, legati vero Romani episcopi contradicerent, a judicibus et
episcopis omnibus illa contradictio suscepta non est. Et licet sedes apostolica nunc usque contradicat,
[tamen] quod a synodo firmatum est, imperatorio patrocinio permanet: “When Anatolius by consent of
the council had obtained the primacy, and the bishop of Rome’s legates stood against it, their
gainsaying of the judges and bishops there was not received. And albeit the apostolic see of Rome
even hitherto stand against it, yet the decree of the council by the maintenance of the emperor
standeth still in force.”1

The 17th century Roman Catholic scholar Tillemont similarly says, “this canon remained and was
implemented, despite the opposition of [Pope] St. Leo and his successors, because of the emperors’
patronage.”2

The learned Portuguese Roman Catholic scholar and priest Antonio Pereira de Figueredo (1725 – 1797) says:

And all know that notwithstanding the opposition made by the Apostolical See to this twenty-eighth
Canon of Chalcedon, the Archbishops of that metropolis of the Eastern Empire always preserved the
power which the Council had given to them, and amongst them were S. Euphemius, S. Macedonius, S.
Mennas, S. Eutychius, S. Ignatius, and many other holy Patriarchs. 3

So far was the ancient Christian world from believing that “it is absolutely necessary for salvation that every
human creature be subject to the Roman Pontiff.”4

Chapters, his short history is well and fairly written. It forms an important document for the history of the
two heresies.”
1 John Ayre (editor), The Works of John Jewel, Vol. I, Of the Supremacy, Art. IV, p. 413, Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press, 1845. Jewel’s Latin is a paraphrase, see Migne, PL, Vol. LXVII, pp. 1013 D – 1014 A. The full
passage from Liberatus is: “Et alia, in qua, post discessum judicum et senatorum et latorum apostolicæ sedis,
regulæ constitæ sunt ecclesiasticæ, et quædam privilegia deputata Constantinopolitanæ Ecclesiæ, usurpante
sibi hoc Anatolio ejusdem urbis episcopo, occasione accepta ex Dioscori damnatione. Quod alia die
cognoscentes legati papæ Leonis (quæ est ultima et duodecima dies concilii), petiverunt ut rursus cum
judicibus ad concilium convenirent: quibus requirentibus a concilio quid pridie fuerit ordinatum, lectis gestis
cognoverunt quid Anatolius, consentiente concilio, egerat et obtinuerat: quibus ejus præsumptioni
contradicentibus, a judicibus et episcopis omnibus illa contradictio suscepta non est; et licet sedes apostolica
nunc usque contradicat, quod a synodo firmatum est, imperatoris patrocinio, permanet quoque modo.”
2 “ce canon subsista et fut exécuté, malgrée l’opposition de S. Léon et de ses successeurs, parceque les

empereurs s’appuyoient.” Tillemont, xv, 715, 730. According to the Catholic Encyclopedia, Louis-Sébastien
Le Nain de Tillemont (1637 – 1698) was a French historian and priest who devoted almost his entire life to
the study of history, and “he is an accurate and learned historian.” (Georges Bertrin, Tillemont, in CE, Vol. XIV,
p. 724.)
3 Edward H. Landon (translator), Antonio Pereira de Figueredo, Tentativa Theologica: Episcopal Rights and

Ultra-Montane Usurpations, The First Principle, XII, pp. 53 – 54, London: Joseph Masters, 1847.
4 Latin Pope Boniface VIII, Bull ‘Unam Sanctam’, November 18, 1302.
333
 334

Section III The Council in Trullo

“holy men assembled in Council, by the direction of God, have delivered this canon to the Church” – Pope Gregory
II on the 82nd Canon of the Council of Trullo

“your faith, as expressed in aforementioned synodals, had been found sincere and orthodox, according to the rule
of the sacred Symbol and of the six holy Œcumenical Councils, and furthermore sound as it respected holy
images, … our soul filled with joy when we found how consonant with your confession with the orthodox faith.
For we found in the above-mentioned synodical epistle of your Holiness, after the fullness of your faith in,
and confession of, the sacred Symbol and the six holy Œcumenic Councils, a paragraph concerning holy
and venerable images worthy of the highest praise and reception. For you there say, ‘I receive also all that
was determined by the six holy Œcumenical Councils, with all the Canons, legitimately and by divine inspiration
enacted therein, among which is the following – [the 82nd Canon of Trullo:] In certain sacred pictures, the Lamb,
as pointed out by the finger of the forerunner (John the Baptist) is represented which was a type of grace, and
under the law prefigured the True Lamb, Christ our God. But while we duly value the ancient types and shadows,
as types and prefigurations of the truth, we value more highly the grace and truth itself, receiving the same as
the completion of the law. In order, therefore, that the perfect image may be presented to the contemplation of
all, we decree that in all pictures from henceforth, the figure of our Lord Jesus Christ, the true Lamb of God that
taketh away the sin of the world (John i. 29), should be pourtrayed in His human form, instead of the Lamb as
heretofore; that we being stirred up by the sight thereof, may be led to meditate upon the depth of the
humiliation of God the Word, and to the remembrance of His conversation in the flesh; and of His passion, and of
His saving death, and of the redemption thereby accomplished in behalf of the world.’ By this proof of the
orthodoxy of your faith, your fraternal Holiness hath separated itself from, and utterly rejected, the officious
meddling of wicked men and the garrulity of the heretics, even as their pernicious zeal never met with any
countenance from us nor from divine grace, but was ever accounted by both as vain and frivolous.” – Epistle of
Pope Adrian I to Patriarch St. Tarasius, read and approved at the Seventh Ecumenical Council

“Some persons, labouring under the malady of ignorance, have taken offence at these Canons, and ask,
‘Are these really the Canons of the Sixth Council?’ Let all such know, therefore, that the sixth holy Œcumenic
Council was assembled under Constantine against those who maintained the one will and opinion in Christ; and
that after these fathers had anathematized the heretics, and clearly set forth the orthodox faith, they returned
home in the fourteenth year of Constantine. Four or five years after that event the same fathers were again
assembled by Justinian, the son of Constantine, who then laid down the above-mentioned canons. Let no one
have any scruple about them, since the same fathers who subscribed under Constantine were the very same who
subscribed in this roll which you see under Justinian, as is evident from the exact similarity of the hand-writing;
and it was but right that they who had presented to the world an Œcumenic Council should also enact
Ecclesiastical Canons.” – Patriarch St. Tarasius at the Seventh Ecumenical Council, which responded approvingly
to his speech

Despite Rome’s protest, whatever doubt still existed is completely settled by the Trullan council (also called
the Penthekte Synod), showing that the East at this time certainly did not believe that the Papal judgement
against the 28th canon annulled it, which is clear from the very words of the 28th canon itself. The Holy and
Ecumenical Quinisext Council in Trullo (692), in its Canon 36 renews exactly Canon 28 of Chalcedon,
decreeing:

Renewing the enactments by the 150 Fathers assembled at the God-protected and imperial city, and
those of the 630 who met at Chalcedon; we decree that the see of Constantinople shall have equal
privileges with the see of Old Rome, and shall be highly regarded in ecclesiastical matters as that
is, and shall be second after it. After Constantinople shall be ranked the See of Alexandria, then that of
Antioch, and afterwards the See of Jerusalem.1

1 Percival, Seven Ecumenical Councils, p. 382.

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The Ancient Epitome of this canon likewise states:

Let the throne of Constantinople be next after that of Rome, and enjoy equal privileges. After it
Alexandria, then Antioch, and then Jerusalem.1

The resistance of Rome to the 28th Canon of Chalcedon could not avail against the will of the Church. Hence
in his encyclical “On the Unity of the Church” addressed “To Our Venerable Brethren, the Patriarchs, Primates,
Archbishops, Bishops, and other Ordinaries in Peace and Communion with the Apostolic See”, Latin Pope Leo
XIII tells a mistruth when he declares of this canon “The 28th Canon of the Council of Chalcedon, by the very
fact that it lacks the assent and approval of the Apostolic See, is admitted by all to be worthless.”,2 because
along with the many saints who rejected the Pope’s rejection of this canon, an authority no less than the Sixth
Ecumenical Council specifically contradicts Leo XIII’s statement. There is no doubt that Popes recognized the
decrees from the Council in Trullo as coming from the Holy Sixth Ecumenical Council, as will be shown.
Roman Catholics may now reject many of its divine decrees, but they cannot truthfully say that “all” admit this
canon to be worthless, unless by “all”, they exclude the hundreds of Holy Fathers whom their Papal
predecessors recognized as acting with the authority of the Sixth Ecumenical Council. In fact, the truth is
exactly the opposite of what Pope Leo XIII says, because the Ecumenical Sixth Council is the Universal Church
speaking, that is, everyone.

In addition, Ryder’s statement has been refuted by the Council in Trullo, which did “insert it in their codices”
at least 150 years before “the rebellion of Photius”. Ryder cannot be ignorant of the Council in Trullo, for
when attempting to demonstrate the authority of the canons of the Council in Sardica, he writes just a few
pages earlier, “They appear amongst the canons of the Council in Trullo, which the Greeks accounted
ecumenical”.3 Similarly, Scott’s claim that “this famous canon was never placed in any Eastern Code of Canon
Law till Photius did so” is refuted, and he is also aware of the Trullan Canons. I will soon proceed to
demonstrate the ecumenical authority of the Council in Trullo.

There exists lots of inaccurate and incomplete information about the Council in Trullo, and this Council is of
the greatest importance in the controversy with the Latins, so it will be thoroughly discussed with regards to
its ecumenicity and the circumstances surrounding it.

Hefele has written the best summary of the Trullan Council from the Roman Catholic perspective that is
available in English, and this work will cite everything he has to say on the matter and then comment upon it.
After Hefele, other authors on Trullo will be quoted.

Sec. 327. The Quinisext or Trullan Synod, A.D. 692.

A little later, the Emperor Justinian II. summoned the Synod which is known under the name
of the Quinisext.a It was, like the last Œcumenical Synod, held in the Trullan hall of the imperial
palace in Constantinople, and therefore is also called the second Trullan, often merely the Trullan
κατ’ἐξοχήν. The name Quinisexta, however, or πενφέκτη, it received for the reason that it was
intended to be a completion of the fifth and sixth Œcumenical Synods. Both of these had drawn up
only dogmatic decrees, and had published no disciplinary canons, and therefore these must now be
added to them, and the complementary Synod, summoned for that purpose, should also be called
Œcumenical, and should be regarded and honoured as a continuation of the sixth. Undoubtedly it
was for this reason that it was held in the same locality as that was.b So the Greeks intended, and so
they regard it to this day, and designate the canons of the Quinisext as canons of the sixth Synod. The
Latins, on the other hand, declared from the beginning, as we shall see, against the Quinisext, and
called it, in derision, erratica.c

1 Percival, Seven Ecumenical Councils, p. 382.

2 Cited above.
3 Ryder, Catholic Controversy, p. 51.
 336

Three views have prevailed as to the time of the holding of this Synod. The Patriarch
Tarasius of Constantinople asserted, at the seventh Œcumenical Synod at Nicæa: “Four or five years
after the sixth Œcumenical Synod had the same bishops, in a new assembly under Justinian II.,
published the (Trullan) canons mentioned.”d Following him, the seventh Œcumenical Synod
repeated the same assertion.e Supporting themselves on this, several decided to ascribe the
Quinisext to the year 686. This assumption is disproved, however, by the chronological date given by
the Synod itself in its third canon, where it speaks of the 15th of January of the past 4th Indiction, or
the year of the world 6109. The Indict. iv. in no way agrees with A.D. 686; it must therefore be read
Indictio xiv. Besides, it is quite incorrect to assert that the same bishops were present at the sixth
Œcumenical Synod and at the Quinisext. A comparison of the subscriptions in the synodal Acts of the
two assemblies shows this at the first glance.

That the number of the year 6109, is incorrect, and the number 90 has dropped out, so that
6199 must have been read, the advocates of the second and third view are agreed. But the former
reckon the 6199 years after the Constantinopolitan era, according to which view they coincide with
A.D. 691; whilst, according to the third hypothesis, we should refer to the Alexandrian era, and
therefore to A.D. 706. The latter is certainly incorrect, for after the close of the Trullan Synod, the
Emperor sent its Acts. As we shall see (at the end of this section), for confirmation to Pope Sergius;
but he had died in the year 701. So, too, the Patriarch Paul of Constantinople, who presided over the
Trullan Council, died in 693. There remains then, only the second theory. The year 6199 of the
Constantinopolitan era coincides, as we have said, with the year 691 after Christ, and the 4th
Indiction ran from September 1, 690, to August 31, 691. If, then, our Synod, in the 3rd canon, speaks
of the 15th of January in the past Indiction iv., it means January, 691; but it belongs itself, accordingly,
to the 5th Indiction, i.e. it was opened after September 1, 691, and before September 1, 692. f

What we possess of the Acts of this Synod consists in its address to the Emperor, and in 102
canons with the subscription of the members.g In the former it is said: The evil enemy always
persecutes the Church, but God ever sends her protectors, and so the present Emperor, who wishes
to free his people from sin and destruction. As the two last Œcumenical Synods, under Justinian I.
and Constantine Pogonatus, gave no disciplinary ordinances, the moral life has in many ways fallen
into decay. Therefore the Emperor has convoked “this holy and God-chosen Œcumenical Synod” in
order to bring the Christian life again into order, and to root out the remains of Jewish and heathen
perverseness. At the close, the bishops called out to the Emperor the words which formerly the
second Œcumenical Synod addressed to Theodosius: “As thou by the letter of convocation (to this
Synod) hast honoured the Church, so mayest thou also seal up that which has been decreed.” h

[Hefele here reviews and discusses each of the 102 canons.]

These decrees were subscribed first by the Emperor, and this with vermilion. The second
place was reserved for the Pope, and left empty. Then followed the subscriptions of Paul of
Constantinople, Peter of Alexandria, Anastasius of Jerusalem, George of Antioch (he subscribed here,
remarkably, after the patriarch of Jerusalem), in the whole by 211 bishops, or representatives of
bishops; only Greeks and Orientals, also Armenians.i According to an expression of Anastasius, no
other Oriental patriarch besides the bishop of Constantinople appears to have been present (see
below); but in his biography of Pope Sergius (in Mansi, t. xii. p. 3), he himself mentions that the
decrees of this Synod were subscribed by three patriarchs, those of Alexandria, Constantinople, and
Antioch, as well as by the other bishops, qui eo tempore illis convenerant. Noticing only the
expression of Anastasius mentioned above, Christian Lupus maintained that the names of the
patriarchs of Alexandria and the rest had been added by a deception. Assemani partly agrees with
him, and tried to show (l.c. t. v. pp. 30, 69) from Greek authorities that, at the time of our Synod, the
patriarchal sees of Alexandria and Jerusalem were not occupied, on account of the incursions of the
Saracens. On the other hand, like Pagi (ad ann. 692, 8), he rejects the statement of Baronius, that
Callinicus had then taken possession of the see of Constantinople. Callinicus followed after Paul’s
death, A.D. 693.
 337

As for the Pope, so also room was left for the subscriptions of the bishops of Thessalonica, Sardinia,
Ravenna, and Corinth. Archbishop Basil of Gortyna, in Crete, added to his name the words: τὸν τόπον
ἐπέχων πάσης τῆς συνόδου τῆς ἁγίας ἐκκλησίας Ῥώμης. He had signed in a similar manner, at the
sixth Œcumenical Synod; and we have already there remarked that the island of Crete belonged to
the Roman patriarchate, and that Archbishop Basil seems at an earlier period to have received a
delegation on the part of the Roman Synod in the year 680. Whether this, which gave him authority
as representative at the sixth Synod, still continued, or whether he only continued it arbitrarily, is
uncertain. To the gross blunders of Balsamon, however, belongs his assertion (Beveridge, l.c. t. i. p.
154) that, besides Basil of Gortyna, other legates of the Pope, the bishops of Thessalonica, Corinth,
Ravenna, and Sardinia, had been present at the Quinisext and had subscribed its Acts. He transferred
them into the places left vacant, marked with τόπος τοῦ φεσσαλονίκης, etc., with real subscriptions.

But we learn from the Vita Sergii Papæ of Anastasius (Mansi, t. xii. p. 3), that the legati of Pope Sergius
by the Emperor decepti subscripserant. – Certainly; but by legati are here to be understood the
permanent papal representatives at Constantinople, and not those specially sent to the Synod, and
the instructed legati a latere.j It was natural that these representatives, having no authority for that
purpose, should not be personally present at the Synod. The fact, however, that they allowed
themselves to be deceived by the Emperor, and induced to subscribe, suggests to me the following
theory. Pope Nicolas I. writes, in his eighth letter to the Emperor Michael III. of Constantinople: “His
(the Emperor’s) predecessors had for a long time been sick with the poison of different heresies, and
had either made those who wanted to save them partakers of their error, as at the time of Pope
Conon, or had persecuted them.”k Here it is indicated that the Emperor Justinian II. had won over the
papal representatives to his error. As no such occurrence is known of the brief pontificate of Conon
(687), and Sergius was the successor of Conon, that which happened under Sergius might, by a slight
lapsus memoriæ, quite easily be transposed to the time of Conon, and certainly then with right, since
it was Conon who had sent these representatives to Constantinople. If it is objected to this, that the
representatives of Sergius, when they subscribed the Trullan canons, agreed to no heresy, it must be
considered (a) that the Emperor Justinian II. is designated as entirely orthodox by the ancients, as,
e.g., by Anastasius in his Vitæ Pontificum, and thus the error to which, according to the statement of
Pope Nicolas I., he misguided the representatives, can have been no heresy in the ordinary sense; (b)
but also, if Nicolas I. spoke of heresy, this would not be too strong, for the Trullan canons (13, 60, 36,
55) come very near to heresy, since they place Constantinople on an equality with Rome, thus
certainly deny the primacy, and threaten several points of the Roman discipline with anathema.

Sec. 328. Judgment of Rome on the Trullan Canons.

The Emperor Justinian II. immediately sent the Acts of this Synod to Rome, with the request
that Pope Sergius would subscribe them at the place left vacant for him. But Sergius would subscribe
them at the place left vacant for him. But Sergius refused to do so, because quædam capitula extra
ritum ecclesiasticum fuerant in eo (the Council) annexa, did not accept the copy destined for him,
rejected the synodal Acts as invalidi, and would rather die than novitatum erroribus consentire.l In
order to constrain him, Emperor sent the Protospathar (officer of the imperial bodyguard) Zacharias
to Rome, in order to bring the Pope to Constantinople. But the armies of the exarch of Ravenna and
of the duchy of Pentapolis took the side of the Pope; troops of soldiers drew to Rome, and in order to
prevent his abduction, and surrounded the Lateran. Immediately on hearing of the arrival of the
soldiers, the Protospathar had fled to the Pope and implored his help; now he even crept into his bed;
and the Pope quieted the soldiers by going out to them and talking with them in a friendly manner.
They withdrew again; the Protospathar, however, had to leave the city in shame. Thus relates
Anastasius, and in agreement with him, more briefly, Bede and the deacon Paul.m Justinian either
could not or would not take revenge on account of what had happened. Soon afterwards he was
deposed and banished, with his nose slit (hence his surname Ῥινότμητος). When he came again to
the throne (705), Sergius was already dead († 701), and Justinian now sent two metropolitans to
John VII. (the second successor of Sergius), with the request that he would arrange for a Council of
the apostolic Church (i.e. a Roman Council), in order to efface those of the Trullan canons which were
 338

unacceptable, and confirm the others. The Pope, a timid man, would neither strike out nor confirm.
He simply sent back again the copy which he had received.n

Justinian opened new negotiations with Pope Constantine, and invited him to come to him at
Nicomedia, without doubt on account of the Trullan canons. In the retinue of the Pope was also the
Roman deacon Gregory, subsequently his successor, as Gregory II., and Anastasius relates of him, that
he had then inquired of the Emperor de quibusdam capitulis (the objectionable canons of the Trullan)
optima responsione unamquamque solvit quæstionem. That he and Pope Constantine succeeded in
pacifying the Emperor, without his quite forgiving the matter, we see from the honours and favours
with which he loaded the Pope.o The process by which they came to an agreement is not recorded,
but undoubtedly Constantine already struck that fair middle path which, as we know certainly, John
VIII. (872 – 882) subsequently adhered to, in the declaration that “he accepted all those canons which
did not contradict the true faith, good morals, and the decrees of Rome.” That John VIII. had drawn
up this decree, we learn from the Præfatio which Anastasius prefixed to his translation of Acts of the
seventh Œcumenical Council. He there addresses Pope John VIII. thus: “Unde apostolatu vestro
decernente non solum illos solos quinquaginta canones (the first fifty apostolic, which Rome had
hitherto recognised, whilst they rejected the remaining thirty-five) ecclesia recipit, sed et omnes
eorum utpote Spiritus Sancti tubarum (i.e. the Apostles) quin et omnium omnino probabilium partum
et sanctorum conciliorum regulas et institutiones admittit; illas dumtaxat, quæ nec rectæ fidei nec
probis moribus obviant, sed nec sedis Romanæ decretis ad modicum quid resultant, quin potius
adversarios, i.e. hæreticos potenter impugnant. Ergo regulas, quas Græci a sexta synodo perhibent
editas (i.e. the Trullan, which the Greeks liked to call canones sextæ synodi), ita in hac synodo
principalis sedes admittit,p ut nullatenus ex his illæ recipiantur, quæ prioribus canonibus vel decretis
sanctorum sedis hujus pontificum, aut certe bonis moribus inveniuntur adversæ; quamvis omnes
hactenus ex toto maneant apud Latinos incognitæ, quia nec interpretatæ, sed nec in ceterarum
patriarchalium sedium, licet Græca utantur lingua, reperiantur archivis, nimirum quia nulla earum,
cum ederentur, aut promulgans aut consentiens aut saltem præsens inventa est.”q

Pope Hadrian I. seems to have been somewhat less prudent than John VIII. was ninety years
before. When the latter refers to the Trullan rules with the words, “Quas Græci a sexta synodo
perhibent editas,” and thereby gives expression to the justifiable doubt, Hadrian accedes to the Greek
tradition, without any such critical addition, in his letter to Tarasius of Constantinople (among the
Acts of the second session of the seventh Œcumenical Council): “Omnes sanctas sex synodos suscipio
cum omnibus regulis, quæ jure ac divinitus ab ipsis promulgatæ sunt, inter quas continetur, in
quibusdam venerabilium imaginum picturis Agnus digito Præcursoris exaratus ostendi” (82nd
Trullan canon). And in his letter to the Frankish bishops in defence of the seventh Œcumenical
Synod he says, c. 35: “Idcirco testimonium de sexta synodo Patres in septima protulerunt (namely, c.
82 of the Trullan Synod), ut clarifice ostenderent, quod, jam quando sexta synodus acta est, a priscis
temporibus sacras imagines et historias pictas venerabantur.” Probably Tarasius of Constantinople
had also written to the Pope what he persuaded the second of Nicæa to, that the same Fathers who
held the sixth Synod had added the appendix four or five years later (see above, p. 22). This
historical and chronological assertion, Hadrian, as well as the members of the seventh Œcumenical
Council, seem to have believed. That, however, the Pope would not approve of all the Trullan canons,
we read in his words quoted above: He approved those “quæ jure ac divinitus promulgatæ sunt.”
Hadrian I. seems to have done as subsequently Martin V. and Eugenius IV. did in the confirmation of
the decrees of Constance and Basle. They selected such expressions as did not expressly embrace the
confirmation of all the canons, but – properly explained – excluded a certain number of the decrees in
question from the papal ratification (see vol. i. pp. 51, 60).

That the seventh Œcumenical Synod at Nicæa ascribed the Trullan canons to the Sixth
Œcumenical Synod, and spoke of them entirely in the Greek spirit, cannot astonish us, as it was
attended almost solely by Greeks. They specially pronounced the recognition of the canons in
question in their own first canon; but their own canons have never received the ratification of the
holy see.r
 339

[Hefele’s Footnotes:]
a) Quinisexta Synodus, or Quinisextum Concilium.
b) This is contested by Assemani (Biblioth. jur. Orient. t. v. p. 85), since he belongs to those who
remove the sixth Œcumenical Synod into the Church of S. Sophia. See above, p. 43.
c) Baronius, ad ann. 692, 7. Only by mistake the Latins also sometimes ascribed the canons of
this Synod to the sixth Œcumenical Council. The Latin Canons which, in Hardouin, t. iii. p.
1711 sq., are ascribed in the margin to the sixth Œcumenical Council, belong to Theodulph or
Orleans. See Hardouin, t. iv. p. 916.
d) At the fourth session, in Hardouin, t. iv. p. 191; Mansi, t. xiii. p. 42.
e) At the sixth session, in Hardouin, t. iv. p. 335; Mansi, t. xiii. p. 219.
f) Pagi, ad ann. 692, 2 – 7; Assemani, l.c. t. p. 60 sqq.
g) Printed in Mansi, t. xi. pp. 930 – 1006; Hardouin, t. iii. pp. 1651 – 1712. To these synodal Acts
is prefixed a Greek and Latin Admonitio ad Lectorem, composed by the editors of the Roman
Collection of Councils (they say, in the index to the third volume, that it is latine et græce
nunc primium composita), which differs from the Greek translation of the Quinisext. An
extensive treatise on the Trullan Synod and its canons was given by Joseph Simon Assemani
in his Bibliotheca juris orientalis, Romæ 1786, t. v. pp. 55 – 348, and t. i. pp. 120, 408 sqq.; and
also the treatise, De hymno Trisagio (t. v.) partially touches on the 81st canon of our Synod.
A hundred years earlier, Christian Lupus (professor at Louvain) explained the Trullan
canons in his well-known work, Synodorum generalium, etc., decreta et canones. The older
Greek commentaries by Theodore Balsamon, Zonaras, and Aristenus, of the twelfth century,
are found in Beveridge, Pandectæ canonum sine synodicon, Oxon. 1672, t. i. pp. 151 – 283,
Beveridge’s own notes upon them, ibid. t. ii. pt. ii. p. 126 sqq. It is yet to be remarked that
some MSS., e.g. that of Baronius, counted 103, instead of 102, by dividing one of them into
two.
h) Mansi, l.c. p. 930 sqq.; Hardouin, l.c. p. 1651 sqq. Cf. vol. ii. p. 369.
i) The Libellus Synodicus speaks of 240 bishops; in Mansi, t. xi. p. 1018; Hardouin, t. v. p. 1539.
Assemani remarks (t. v. p. 73) correctly, that, by a slip of the pen in the subscriptions to the
Synod, two archbishops of Cæsarea are mentioned, Cyriacus and Stephen; the latter must
have been archbishop of Ephesus, as the addition of τῆς Ἀσιανῶν ἐπαρχίας shows. When,
however, Assemani finds two bishops of Ancyra in the subscriptions to the Synod, this rests
upon a misprint in the edition used by him.
j) Cf. Pagi, ad ann. 692, 9 – 12, and Assemani, l.c. v. p. 72.
k) Baron. ad ann. 686, 4; Pagi, ad ann. 686, 7.
l) All that must have appeared offensive to the Latins in the Trullan Synod is put together by
Assemani, l.c. t. i. p. 413 sqq.
m) Anastas. Vita Sergii, in Mansi, t. xii. p. 3; Baron. ad ann. 692, 34 sqq.
n) Thus relates Anastasius, Vita Joannis VII., in Mansi, t. xii. p. 163; Baron. ad ann. 692, 39, 40.
o) We learn all this from Anastasius, Vita Constantini, in Mansi, l.c. p. 179; and Vita Gregorii II.
ibid. 226.
p) According to this, Pope John VIII. must have pronounced his judgment on the Trullan canons
at a Synod. Lupus referred to the Synod of Troyes in the year 878, at which the Pope himself
was present. Pagi, ad ann. 692, 16.
q) In Mansi, t. xii. p. 982; Hardouin, t. iv. p. 19. Anastasius (or the Roman Synod under John
VIII.) is mistaken in regard to the last statement; for (a) as we saw, p. 237, the Greek
patriarchs were present at the Trullan Council; (b) and the Greeks received unhesitatingly
the Trullan canons, as canon 1 of the seventh Œcumenical Synod shows. Cf. Assemani, l.c. t.
v. p. 86.
r) Pagi, ad ann. 710, 2.1

Not only on the 28th Canon does the entire Trullan Council witness to the rejection of Roman Catholicism in
the East, as witnessed to by Hefele’s comments on the enactments of this council. For Canon 2, which
declared the authority of 85 Apostolic Canons, Hefele writes “This canon already contains a polemic against

1 Hefele, History of the Councils, Vol. V, Book XVII, Sec. 327 – 328, pp. 221 – 242.
 340

Rome, since that recognised only the first 50 apostolic canons.” For Canon 30 of Trullo, which criticizes
Western errors on clerical celibacy, Hefele comments, “An attack on the Western practice. By ‘barbarians’ the
Westerns are meant.”

It is worth emphasizing Hefele’s discussion of Pope Nicholas’s criticism of the predecessors of the Eastern
Emperors, as showing how far the East was from accepting Papal Supremacy and Roman discipline:

if Nicolas I. spoke of heresy, this would not be too strong, for the Trullan canons (13, 60, 36, 55)
come very near to heresy, since they place Constantinople on an equality with Rome, thus
certainly deny the primacy, and threaten several points of the Roman discipline with
anathema.”1

Hefele is certainly correct that the canons of Trullo are near to heresy, by the standard of Roman Catholicism.
However, the canons of this synod have always been recognized by the East, and were ascribed by Popes to
be divinely decreed by the Sixth Ecumenical Council, so there is a serious discrepancy in the Roman Catholic
system.

In addition, Canon 2 of Trullo implicitly confirms Canon 28 of Chalcedon, declaring:

But we set our seal likewise upon all the other holy canons set forth by our holy and blessed
Fathers, that is, by the 318 holy God-bearing Fathers assembled at Nice, and those at Ancyra, further
those at Neocæsarea and likewise those at Gangra, and besides, those at Antioch in Syria: those too at
Laodicea in Phrygia: and likewise the 150 who assembled in this heaven-protected royal city: and the
200 who assembled the first time in the metropolis of the Ephesians, and the 630 holy and blessed
Fathers at Chalcedon.2

Also, Canon 8 of Trullo implicitly confirms Canon 28 of Chalcedon, declaring:

we desire that in every point the things which have been decreed by our holy fathers may also be
established and confirmed,3

The 28th Canon of Chalcedon and the 36th Canon of Trullo well accord with the quotes above, to the effect
that “the city of Constantinople hath the prerogative of old Rome”, and with the 38th Canon of Trullo:

The canon which was made by the Fathers we also observe, which thus decreed: If any city be
renewed by imperial authority, or shall have been renewed, let the order of things ecclesiastical
follow the civil and public models.

The Roman Catholic canonist Van Espen notes, “The canon of the Fathers which the Synod wishes observed is
XVII of Chalcedon”.4 The 17th Canon of Chalcedon declares:

Outlying or rural parishes shall in every province remain subject to the bishops who now have
jurisdiction over them, particularly if the bishops have peaceably and continuously governed them
for the space of thirty years. But if within thirty years there has been, or is, any dispute concerning
them, it is lawful for those who hold themselves aggrieved to bring their cause before the synod of
the province. And if anyone be wronged by his metropolitan, let the matter be decided by the exarch
of the diocese or by the throne of Constantinople, as aforesaid. And if any city has been, or shall
hereafter be newly erected by imperial authority, let the order of the ecclesiastical parishes
follow the political and municipal example.”5

1 Hefele, History of the Councils, Vol. V, Book XVII, Sec. 327., pp. 238 – 239.
2 Percival, Seven Ecumenical Councils, p. 361.
3 Percival, Seven Ecumenical Councils, p. 369.
4 Percival, Seven Ecumenical Councils, p. 383.
5 Percival, Seven Ecumenical Councils, p. 280.
 341

These two canons (Canon XVII of Chalcedon was accepted by all canonists) are extremely important to
understanding the ecclesiastical mind and practice of the Church from the very beginning, from this key
principle: “let the order of things ecclesiastical follow the civil and public models”. Saints Peter and Paul went
to Rome because Rome was the capital city of the Roman Empire. Alexandria and Antioch were the second
and third most important cities, respectively, and Alexandria surpassed Antioch in rank even though Peter
himself was bishop in Antioch, because Alexandria was a greater city.

This same principle is found in Cyprian, who writes, “Since Rome from her greatness plainly ought to take
precedence of Carthage, he there committed still greater and graver crimes.” 1 Cyprian is referring to Novatus
at Rome, and here the Protestant editors comment,

‘From her greatness;’ he does not even mention her dignity as the one and only apostolic see of
Western Christendom. And this is the case in subsequent action of the Great Councils. Rome, though
not the root, was yet a ‘root and matrix.’2

Roman Catholics who have attempted to discredit the Trullan canons (although most ignore or give very little
attention to this council) have fallen into several contradictions, and this work will touch on just a few. Paul
Bottalla writes,

What, then, became of the canon [XXVIII of Chalcedon]? It needed no other general council to annul
it, and it never obtained a place in the Canon Law either of the West or of the East. … The pseudo-
synod in Trullo (A.D. 691), assembled by the authority of the Patriarch Callinicus, strove, in the Canon
xxxvi., to revive the decree of Chalcedon. But the Trullan Canons were never recognised by the
Universal Church, and that pseudo-synod, stained with Monothelitism, was reprobated in every part
of the Catholic world. If, in after times, the Bishops of Constantinople, puffed up with pride and
ambition, carried their pretensions to greater lengths, and extended their influence and jurisdiction
over the metropolitans and bishops of the provinces bordering upon their diocese, it was by a
usurpation which derived both shelter and support from the authority of many of the Byzantine
Emperors, who were the sources of so much trouble in the Church of Christ. But the Canon of
Chalcedon, faithfully as it expressed the ambitious spirit of the clergy of Constantinople, was never
enforced as a law before the time of the schismatic Photius.3

There are several errors here. A minor mistake is that Bottalla says the Trullan synod was “assembled by the
authority of the Patriarch Callinicus”, but Callinicus was the Patriarch of Constantinople from 693 – 705, and
the Patriarch at the time it was summoned was Paul. Moreover, it was primarily assembled by the authority
of the Emperor Justinian II Bottalla is absolutely wrong (and in opposition to historians of his own
communion) when he says that the Trullan synod was “stained with Monothelitism”. I will have occasion to
notice Bottalla in the section on the Monothelitism of Pope Honorius, where he denies that the Pope held to
the heretical doctrine. Now, he imparts to the Trullan council the very error it condemned. Bottalla appears
to have received his information on this subject from Binius, who tries hard to prove that all who signed it

1 “Quoniam pro magnitudine sua debeat Carthaginem Roma præcedere”

2 The Epistles of Cyprian, Epistle XLVIII, in ANF, Vol. V, p. 325, n. 4. Another translation and commentary is
given on p. 412, n. 3, “Cyprian facetiously remarks (see Ep. xlviii p. 325) that Novatus reserved his greater
crimes for the greater city; ‘since Rome, from her magnitude, ought to take precedence of Carthage.’” The
Anglican scholar John James Blunt (1794 – 1855) writes, “And in the 49th [Epistle], Cyprian replies to
Cornelius [Bishop of Rome], approving what he had done, confirming his ill opinion of Novatus by a report of
his proceedings at Carthage before he went to Rome, where his attempts to disturb the Church were the same
as those he had made at Carthage; ‘only,’ adds Cyprian, ‘as Rome, on account of its magnitude, ought to take
the lead of Carthage, his achievements there have been worse and more mischievous.’ Is this the ground on
which the modern Church of Rome would have its superiority established?” (John James Blunt, On the Right
Use of the Early Fathers, Lect. VI, p. 109, Third Ed., London: John Murray, 1869.)
3 Paul Bottalla, The Pope and the Church Considered in Their Mutual Relations, Part I, Section IV, VIII, pp. 103

– 104, London: Burns, Oates, and Co., 1868.

 342

were Monothelites, notwithstanding its express approbation of the sixth Council and condemnation of the
Monothelites. Cave has ably refuted this falsification, along with the consensus of later scholars.1 The
accusations of pride and ambition more properly belong to the Bishops of old Rome. Bottalla also says that
the Byzantine Emperors “were the sources of so much trouble in the Church of Christ”, and in the footnote he
cites the Code of Justinian and the parts of Justinian’s laws that reaffirm Constantinople’s second rank.
However, Justinian I was recognized by the Roman Popes as a great saint and holy defender of the Church of
Christ, along with other Christian Emperors.2

In his work against the Iconoclasts, Roman Catholic Professor Luigi Andruzzi writes the following section on
the Council in Trullo, saying that the 82nd canon has been accepted by the entire Latin Church, and
apparently unaware that this synod decreed many things he would find unacceptable, although Andruzzi has
written works against the Orthodox and defending papal infallibility:

1 Mendham, The Seventh General Council, p. 113. See Cave’s Hist. Lit. vol. i, p. 609. Johnson’s Vade Mecum,
vol. ii, p. 264. Du Pin’s Eccles. Hist. vol. vi, p. 85.
2 This is often asserted by Roman Catholics, who are reluctant to call them saints, and even disparage the

memory of St. Justinian and other Orthodox Emperors. For example, in the Catholic Encyclopedia’s article on
Emperor Justinian, it is claimed, “The Catholic cannot applaud the great emperor's ecclesiastical polity,
though in this, too, we recognize the statesman’s effort to promote peace and union within the empire. … In
all thus story Justinian appears as a persecutor of the Church, and takes his place, unhappily, among the semi-
Monophysite tyrants who caused the long series of quarrels and schisms that were the after-effect of
Monophysitism. His ecclesiastical tyranny is the one regrettable side of the character of so great a man.”
(Adrian Fortescue, Justinian I, in CE, Vol. VIII, pp. 579 – 580. Note that the author of this article wrote an
entire book on “The Orthodox Eastern Church”). Baronius also insults St. Justinian, and “makes this Emperor
to have been a perfect block, not past his A, B, C” (A Preservative Against Popery, Vol. V, p. 28). However,
Pope Agatho, in his letter to the Emperor Constantine IV, recorded in the Acts of the Sixth Ecumenical Council
says, “There are not lacking most telling passages in other of the venerable fathers, who speak clearly of the
two natural operations in Christ, not to mention St. Cyril of Jerusalem, St. John of Constantinople, or those
who afterwards conducted the laborious conflicts in defence of the venerable council of Chalcedon and of the
Tome of St. Leo against the heretics from whose error the assertion of this new dogma has arisen: that is to
say, John, bishop of Scythopolis, Eulogius, bishop of Alexandria, Euphræmius and Anastasius the elder, most
worthy rulers of the church of Theopolis, and above all that emulator of the true and apostolic faith, the
Emperor Justinian of pious memory, whose uprightness of faith exalted the Christian State as much as his
sincere confession pleased God. And his pious memory is esteemed worthy of veneration by all nations,
whose uprightness of faith was disseminated with praise throughout the whole world by his most august
edicts: one of these, to wit, that addressed to Zoilus, the patriarch of Alexandria, against the heresy of the
Acephali to satisfy them of the rectitude of the apostolic faith, we offer to your most tranquil Christianity,
sending it together with this paper of our lowliness through the same carriers.” (Percival, Seven Ecumenical
Councils, pp. 335 – 336). The Acclamations of the Fathers recorded in Session XVI of the Sixth Ecumenical
Council begins, “Many years to the Emperor! Many years to Constantine, our great Emperor! Many years to
the Orthodox King! Many years to our Emperor that maketh peace! Many years to Constantine, a second
Martian! Many years to Constantine, a new Theodosius! Many years to Constantine, a new Justinian! Many
years to the keeper of the orthodox faith! O Lord preserve the foundation of the Churches! O Lord preserve
the keeper of the faith!” (Percival, Seven Ecumenical Councils, p. 343). Pope Gregory I also praises Justinian I.
Moreover, Emperor Justinian II, who later assembled the Trullan Council, was indeed an Orthodox ruler and
had no low opinion of himself, as is found in his letter to Pope John V in 687: “I have learnt that the Acts of the
sixth Œcumenical Synod have been sent back by some to the Judices who had lent them to them. I did not,
indeed, foresee that anyone would venture to have these Acts without my permission; for God, in His
abundant mercy, has appointed me to be the keeper of the unfalsified faith of Christ.” (“Cognitum est nobis
quia synodalia gesta eorumque definitionem, quam et instituere noscitur sanctum sextum concilium … apud
quosdam nostros judices remiserunt. Neque enim omnino prævidimus, alterum aliquem apud se detinere ea,
sine nostra piissima serenitate, eo quod nos copiosa misericordia noster Deus custodies constituit ejusdem
immaculatæ Christianorum fidei.”) (Hefele, History of the Councils, Vol. V, Book XVII, Sec. 326, p. 220). Many
other Fathers have highly praised Justinian.
 343

Synodus Quinisexta in Trullo

Justiano secundo, cui nomen Rhinotmeto, rerum potiente, habitus Constantinopoli suit
Præsulum Conventus in Trullo, ubi Canones duo supra centum conditi sunt Anno Christi Domini 707.:
quam Synodum Quinisextam nuncuparunt quasi supplementum quintæ, & sextæ, a quibus nulli editi
sunt Canones. Adrianus tamen Papa in suo ad Carolum Magnum libello citat ex his Canonem 82. qui
ita sese habet: “In quibusdam picturis sanctarum Imaginum Agnus Præcursoris digito ostensus
depingitur, qui in typum Gratiæ assumptus est, verum nobis per Legem Christum Deum nostrum
demonstrans. Antiquas igitur figuras, & umbras ut Veritatis symbola, & characters, Ecclesiæ traditos,
amplectentes, Gratiam, & Veritatem præserimus, eam ut Legis implementum suscipientes. Ut ergo
quod perfectum est vel colorum expressionibus omnium oculis subjiciatur; ejus, qui tollit peccata
Mundi, Christi Dei nostril characterem secundùm humanam formam etiam in Imaginibus deinceps
pro veteri Agno erigi, ac depingi definimus; ut per ipsum, Dei Verbi humiliationis celsitudinem
contemplantes, ad memoriam ejus in carne conversationis, passionis, salutaris mortis, ejusque, quæ
inde facta est Mundo, redemptionis, deducamur.”

Hujuscemodi Canonem non modò Adrianus Papa cum tota Latina Ecclesia, sed etiam septima
Synodus OEcumenica actione IV. recitatum suscipit, & veneratur cum tota Græca Ecclesia, velint
nolint Heterodoxi.1

The learned Roman Catholic controversialist and former Anglican minister Alexander White (fl. mid-17th
century) writes:

Nay, although the fathers assembled in Trullo dispensed with the obligation of Continence from
wives, in all cases where priests had been married before receiving the sacerdotal order – or rather,
though these fathers, actuated by hatred towards the Roman Church, declared this license to have
formerly been, and then to be, allowed all priests so circumstanced; yet they would by no means
extend this same dispensation to such of the bishops as had been married before their elevation to
the episcopacy.2

The English Roman Catholic scholar John Chapman (1865 – 1933) writes:

A few years later he [Pope Honorius] is included in the list of heretics by the Trullan Synod, a Council
whose canons were not, however, and could not be received by Rome and the West. 3

That the 28th Canon “was never enforced as a law”4 before Photius is proven false by numerous facts of
history, including the fact that the Seventh Ecumenical Council of 787 confirmed the Trullan Synod, the
canons of which were recognized as the law of the Universal Church, which will be discussed in the following
pages.

1 Aloysio Andruzzi, Peremptorium Iconomachiæ, Lib. I, Caput IV, pp. 20 – 21, Venice: Typis Albritianæ
Societatis, 1729. It is interesting that Roman Catholics have used the authority of this council against the
Iconoclasts, but reject many of its other holy canons.
2 Edmond William O’Mahoney (translator), Alexander White, White’s Confutation of Church-of-Englandism,

and Correct Exposition of The Catholic Faith, On All Points of Controversy Between the Two Churches, Ch.
XXXI, p. 367, London: Charles Dolman, 1841. Originally published as Schismatis Anglicani redargutio, authore
Alexandro White ex eodem Schismate per Dei Gratiam ad fidem Cath. converso, Lovanii: Typis Hieronymi
Nempæi (Jerome Nempée), 1661. Besides the fact that the Church of Rome was represented at this council, if
the fathers of Trullo were “actuated by hatred towards the Roman Church”, Pope Adrian I would not have
classed it among the holy councils. The very words of the XIII canon (see the section on clerical celibacy) do
not express hatred, but rather a sober reproof of this practice of the Roman Church, and a love for apostolic
tradition, from which the Roman Church had deviated.
3 John Chapman, The Condemnation of Pope Honorius, § 24, p. 115, London: Catholic Truth Society, 1907.

Chapman is incorrect, for the Trullan Canons were explicitly received by Pope Adrian.
4 Bottalla, cited above.
 344

The Quinisext Council was assembled at the command of the Emperor Justinian II, and the Rudder (Pedalion)
states, “The number of Fathers who attended it was 327 according to Balsamon and Zonaras, but 340
according to the author of the Conciliar booklet,”1 including at least 215 bishops or representatives of
bishops, led by the four Patriarchs. Landon summarises:

The Emperor Justinian [II] first subscribed these canons. Then the four patriarchs signed, viz., Paul of
Constantinople, Peter of Alexandria, Anastasius of Jerusalem, George of Antioch, successor of
Macarius. Then followed all the other bishops, to the number of two hundred and eleven.
[Landon’s Footnote:] Some writers that there were no less than two hundred and forty bishops
present. The pope’s legates, according to Anastasius, in his ‘Vita Sergii Papae,’ were present, and
signed the acts.2

The Orthodox professor David Williams has written a good article on this council, stating, “More recent
scholarship on the earliest extant copy of the subscription list of the Acts of the Council puts the total number
of episcopal signatures at 226, that is 227 including the Emperor’s.”3

The canons of Trullo receive their authority from being a continuation of the Sixth Ecumenical Council, and
they are also confirmed by numerous authorities, including the Bishop of Rome and the Seventh Ecumenical
Council. The Fifth and Sixth Ecumenical Councils did not promulgate any canons, so the Trullan council
supplied these. The Episcopal priest and professor William Porcher DuBose (1836 – 1918) says:

One more supplementary council has had its legal enactments accepted in the code of the universal
church. The councils of Constantinople (553 – 680) paid no attention to laws affecting the
constitution of the church, so that Justinian II (685 – 695) convened a council in the Trullus at
Constantinople in A.D. 692, which passed one hundred and two canons.4

Fleury writes:

As the two last General Councils (in 553 and 681) had not made any Canons, the Orientals judged it
suitable to supply them eleven years after the Sixth Council, that is to say, the year 692, fifth
indiction. For that purpose the Emperor Justinian convoked a Council, at which 211 Bishops
attended, of whom the principal were the four Patriarchs, Paul of Constantinople, Peter of Alexandra,
Anastasius of Jerusalem, George of Antioch. Next in the subscriptions are named John of
Justinianopolis, Cyriacus of Cesarea in Cappadocia, Basil of Gortyna in Crete, who says that he
represents the whole Council of the Roman Church, as he had said in subscribing the Sixth Council.
But it is certain otherwise that in this latter council there were present Legates of the Holy See. This
council, like the Sixth, assembled in the dome of the palace called in Latin Trullus, which name it has
kept. It is also named in Latin Quinisextum, in Greek Penthecton, as one might say, the fifth-sixth, to
mark that it is only the supplement of the two preceding Councils, though properly it is a distinct one.
The intention was to make a body of discipline to serve thenceforth for the whole Church, and it was
distributed into 102 Canons.5

1 Denver Cummings (translator), Agapios and Nicodemos, The Rudder (Pedalion) of the Metaphorical Ship of
the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church of the Orthodox Christians, p. 287, Chicago, IL: Orthodox Christian
Educational Society, 1957.
2 Landon, A Manual of Councils, Vol. I, p. 211.
3 David-John Williams, The Council in Trullo, article on davidjohnwilliams.blogspot.com/2016/05/the-

council-in-trullo.html, May 19, 2016. Williams references R. Flogaus, ‘Das Concilium Quinisextum (691/692).
Neue Erkenntnisse über ein umstrittenes Konzil und seine teilnehmer’, Byzantinische Zeitschrift 102/1
(2009), 25-64.
4 William Porcher Du Bose, D.D., The Ecumenical Councils, p. lxxi, Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 2nd Ed., 1897.
5 Fleury, Histoire Ecclesiastique, Book XL, Ch. XLIX. Translated in Percival, Seven Ecumenical Councils, p. 356.
 345

The Indian Roman Catholic priest, scholar of Canon Law, and professor emeritus at the Pontifical Oriental
Institute in Rome, George Nedungatt (1932 – current), writes:

For 240 years after the Council of Chalcedon (451) no ecumenical council had issued any norms of
church discipline. Meanwhile the Eastern Roman (or Byzantine) Empire had undergone profound
social, demographic, and political changes, being especially convulsed with “the invasions of the
barbarians” (the Slavs, the Persians, and the Arabs). The Empire had practically shrunk to Asia Minor
in the East, and to Rome and Ravenna in the West. Ethnic minorities such as the Armenians were
asserting themselves and following their different traditions in liturgy and discipline. The Christian
Empire was in a crisis, and this was interpreted as divine punishment for moral failures. There was a
general decadence of order and of morals, which also affected even clerics and monks. Paganism,
Judaism, and certain heresies had revived or made deep inroads. As the church and the empire
constituted a single social unit, Emperor Justinian I (483–565) had enacted much legislation affecting
the church, but this legislation had not been conciliarly received. It was in this context that Emperor
Justinian II (685–695, 705–711) as “the Guardian of the Orthodox Faith” and the holder of the highest
sacral-political power convoked the Trullan Council. He was young, not yet twenty-five years old
(born ca. 668), sanguine and ardently orthodox. Church reform through disciplinary updating was
the agenda he set for the new council. …

Seen as a persistent threat to its primatial position and privileges, the so-called anti-Roman canons of
the Trullan Council were rejected by the “First See.” This rejection and the presence of the “anti-
Roman” canons led to the Trullan Council’s being regarded as not ecumenical from the late Middle
Ages till recently. Thus, for example, the Roman edition of the ecumenical councils (vol. 3, 1612)
included the Trullan canons as those of “the so-called sixth council” (pp. 302–334) with a “warning to
the reader” that it was not an ecumenical council (pp. 295–299). This example was followed by most
of the later Western editions like those of Philip Labbe and Gabriel Cossart, of Joseph Catalan, and
Mansi, each containing a “monitum” to the reader that the Trullan Council, whose canons were being
published, was not ecumenical. Mansi called this council “pseudo-sixth,” a “conciliabulum
reprobatum.” Hefele-Leclercq saw it as an anti-Roman council never really approved by any pope;
the approval by Pope Hadrian I was rated as imprudent and that by Nicaea II was attributed to the
fact that the participants were almost wholly Greek. …

The ecumenical status of the Trullan Council was commonly recognized by such classical Western
canonists of the second millennium as Ivo of Chartres, Pope Innocent III, and Gratian. For example,
Gratian, following Ivo’s lead, included 16 canons of the Council in Trullo in his Decretum. He
regarded this council as the second session of the Sixth Ecumenical Council: “the first was held under
Emperor Constantine IV, but it issued no canons; and the second, held under his son Emperor
Justinian II, issued the above-mentioned canons.” Referring to Pope Hadrian’s letter to Patriarch
Tarasius cited above, Gratian wrote: “sexta sinodus auctoritate Adriani corroboratur” (the sixth
synod is confirmed by the authority of Pope Hadrian) through reception. Thus it is clear that Gratian
saw the Trullan Council as belonging with “the sixth synod” as its second session and therefore as
ecumenical. Hence Gratian stated that its canons were formulated by “divine inspiration.” In fact, the
ecumenicity of the Council in Trullo was once standard doctrine in the West as in the East, but in the
subsequent East-West polemics, the West rejected this council and denigrated it in proportion to its
determined defence and exaltation in the East. …

In the East, the ecumenicity of the Council in Trullo was never in doubt.1

The Roman Catholic scholar Dr. Roman Cholij writes:

1George Nedungatt, The Council in Trullo Revisited: Ecumenism and the Canon of the Councils, Theological
Studies, September 2010, Vol. 71, no. 3, pp. 664 – 673.
 346

Some of the canons were included into the Collectio Tripartita of Pope Gregory VII (1073 – 1085)
from which they found their way into the Decretum Gratiani. Popes Innocent III (1198 – 1216) and
Gregory IX (1227 – 1241) also made use of them. An edition of the canons was published in 1540
and approved by Apostolic Brief of Pope Gregory VIII in 1580. Pope Sixtus V (1585 – 1590) accepted
the Trullan discipline as part of the canonical tradition of the East. It was variously cited by the
synods of the Oriental Catholic Churches and referred to by the great canonist-pope, Pope Benedict
XIV.

Pope Benedict, though recognizing Trullo, was emphatic in not attributing ecumenical value to the
Council. Those canons which had been accepted by Rome were accepted in virtue of their “intrinsic
good qualities” and not in virtue of the authority of the Council.1

Benedict XIV wrote “e ciò, non per l’autorità del Conciliabolo Trullano, ma per la loro intrinseca buona qualità
che in sé avevano precedentemente.”2 However, by denigrating the Holy Ecumenical Council in Trullo, and
calling it a “Conciliabolo”, a derogatory term for an unauthorised assembly, Benedict contradicts Pope Adrian,
who does not just support the 82nd canon by its intrinsic merit, but by the council which produced it,
deliberately including that council among the “sanctas sex synodus”.

Cholij writes that “Benedict’s predecessor, Pope Clement XII (1730 – 1740), held the same official view. In
1731 during a session of the special Commision [sic] of the Congregation of the Propagation of the Faith,
assembled to examine and correct the liturgical books of the Greeks, … The canons were not to be ascribed to
the VIth Ecumenical Council.”3

The eminent Council historian Mansi calls Trullo a “conciliabulum reprobatum”, and Binius and other Roman
Catholics have styled the council, in derision, “erratica”, “Conciliabulum”, “Pseudo-synodum”, “Synodum
erraticam”, “Conventum malignantium”, “Synagogam Diaboli”, etc. The Roman Catholic priest and professor
of theology Thomas Morton Harper (1821 – 1893) calls it a “factious conciliabulum”, an “unauthorized
convention”, and speaks of one of its canons as a “pseudo-canon” and of “its canons; utterly devoid of all
authority, as they undoubtedly are, in the Catholic Church”, along with a much distorted history of this
council,4 and the Roman Catholic priest and controversialist Luke Rivington (1838 – 1899), who extensively
cites Harper, states:

But can any student of history attach the smallest value to what the Quinisext Council did? … It is not
true, as Fleury asserted, that the Papal legates were ever present at the conciliabulum in Trullo. Mr.
Gore and Dr. Salmon do not, therefore, gain anything by their appeal to this Council. It only shows
the conviction, on all sides, that the Papal confirmation was necessary for the validity of an
œcumenical canon, and that they could not obtain it for the canons in question.5

However, Pope Hadrian I calls it a Holy Ecumenical Council, and cites one of its holy canons. Moreover,
delegates representing the Church of Rome were indeed present, according to the signatures, and the Seventh
Ecumenical Council confirmed its canons, as will be shown later.

1 Roman Cholij, Clerical Celibacy in East and West, Ch. I, 1., p. 8, Leominster: Gracewing Publishing, 1989.
Footnotes omitted.
2 Cholij, Clerical Celibacy in East and West, Ch. I, 1., p. 8, n. 31. Franciscus Heiner (or Franz Xaver Heiner,

editor), Benedicti XIV Papae Opera Inedita, Part III, Title IV, Ch. VII, p. 398, Friburgi Brisgoviae: Sumptibus
Herder, 1904.
3 Cholij, Clerical Celibacy in East and West, Ch. I, 1., pp. 8 – 9, n. 31. Cholij quotes the Latin here and references

the original source.

4 Thomas Harper, Peace through the Truth, Second Series, Part. I, III, Ch. II, xxviii, pp. 196 – 200, London:

Burns, Oates, & Co., 1874.

5 Luke Rivington, Dependence, Or, The Insecurity of the Anglican Position, Ch. III, pp. 62 – 64, London: Kegan

Paul, Trench, & Co., 1889.

 347

Hergenröther ignorantly writes of Trullo, “what flattery towards an unworthy emperor, what petty jealousy,
too, towards all non-Byzantines was displayed in the Council in Trullo, assembled in the year 692!”1 He
elsewhere mentions “the repeated attempts of the Emperor Justinian II. to obtain from Rome the approval of
the Council of Trullo, held in 692, but which found there no recognition, and which, therefore, no theologian
will designate, with Janus (p. 157), an Œcumenical Synod.”2 As will be shown later, Justinian II was
considered worthy by the Latins (in the Liber Pontificalis and by Pope Constantine), and Hergenröther is fully
refuted by the entire Seventh Ecumenical Council (certainly competent theologians, to the number of at least
350 bishops and 136 archimandrites), as shown in this chapter, which designated Trullo as an Ecumenical
Council on multiple occasions, and later Popes also referred to Trullo as an Ecumenical Council.

The Trullan Council was held within 11 years of the first assembly of the Sixth Ecumenical Council. Percival,
who does not take the Trullan Council to have ecumenical authority, admits,

It is true that it claimed at the time an ecumenical character, and styled itself such in several of its
canons, it is true that in the mind of the Emperor Justinian II., who summoned it, it was intended to
have been ecumenical. It is true that the Greeks at first declared it to be a continuation of the Sixth
Synod and that by this name they frequently denominate and quote its canons.3

It is important to point out here that Emperor Justinian II is an Orthodox Emperor, and was recognized by the
Pope as an Orthodox Emperor. The Liber Pontificalis gives a positive view of Emperor Justinian II in the life
of Pope Constantine (708 – 715), where the following is read:

On the day they saw each other, the Christian Augustus, crown on head, prostrated himself and
kissed the feet of the pontiff. Then they rushed together in mutual embrace, and there was great joy
among the people as everyone gazed at their good prince in his great humility. On Sunday he
performed mass for the emperor; the prince communicated at his hands and craved the pontiff to
pray for his sins. He renewed all the church’s privileges and gave the pontiff leave to return home. …
But after three months the doleful news resounded that the Christian and orthodox emperor
Justinian had been assassinated, and that the heretic Philippicus had been raised up to the imperial
dignity.4

The Trullan Synod itself testified to the orthodoxy and glory of Emperor Justinian II, in the address of the
bishops to the Emperor, prefixed to the canons:

To the most pious and Christ-loving Emperor Justinian, from the holy ecumenical council, which has
assembled in this God-guarded imperial city by divine assent and the decree of your most pious
Majesty. … It was your great desire, therefore, after the example of Christ, the good Shepherd,
searching for the sheep lost in the mountains, to bring together this holy nation, as a special people,
and to return it to the fold and convince it to keep the divine commandments and statutes, through
which we desist from dead deeds and are given life. … For this reason, then, have we assembled at
your command in this God-guarded imperial city, and have drawn up these sacred canons.
Wherefore, setting before you the words of our Fathers who formerly assembled in this God-guarded
city in the reign of our former Emperor Theodosius of pious memory, we pray your reverend Majesty
that, even as you have honoured the Church with your letters of convocation, so may you finally
confirm our resolutions through your pious signature.5

1 James Burton Robertson (translator), Joseph Hergenröther, Anti-Janus: An Historico-Theological Criticism of

the Work, Entitled “The Pope and the Council,” by Janus, Ch. IX, p. 190, Dublin: W. B. Kelly, 1870.
2 Hergenröther, Anti-Janus, Ch. VII, pp. 124 – 125.
3 Percival, Seven Ecumenical Councils, p. 356.
4 Raymond Davis, The Book of Pontiffs (Liber Pontificalis), 90. Constantine, 6. – 8., pp. 88 – 89, in Translated

Texts for Historians, Vol. VI, Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 3rd Ed., 2010.
5 George Nedungatt and Michael Featherstone (editors), The Council in Trullo Revisited, Part II, pp. 45 – 54, in

Kanonika, Vol. VI, Rome: Pontificio Instituto Orientale, 1995.

 348

The date of the Trullan Synod has been a matter of discussion. Note that Patriarch Tarasius, in his important
speech at the fourth session of the Seventh Ecumenical Council (which is cited later in this section), says that
“after four or five years” the Sixth Ecumenical Council met again, and the deacon Epiphanius repeats this in
the sixth session. However, the best consensus of scholarship, among Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and
Protestant, has established that the Council in Trullo assembled in the year 691 or 692 (more likely 692), and
perhaps took place from about the end of 691 to the beginning of 692, and thus ten or eleven years passed
from the first assembly of the Sixth Ecumenical Council, which finished its work in 681. This difference has
been mentioned by Hefele (though not directly) and others to discredit the accuracy of Tarasius. It is
interesting that the Orthodox Canonist St. Nicodemus the Hagiorite (who has written an excellent section on
the Trullan Council, which is cited in full later), passes over the words “after four or five years” with an
ellipsis in his recounting of the speech of Tarasius, perhaps thinking that there was an error in Tarasius’
chronology, since Nicodemus also dates Trullo to 691. However, there is a ready solution to this difficulty,
which resolves the matter, as Brunet’s has also noticed). In 687 there is mention of a “great assembly” ,
although one little known about, which took place after (the first assembly) of the Sixth Ecumenical Council:

In the year 685 died the Emperor Constantine Pogonatus, and was succeeded by his son,
Justinian II., who, in the second year of his reign (687), convoked a great assembly of clerics and
laymen, in order to protect the Acts of the sixth Œcumenical Council from falsification. We learn this
from his letter to Pope John V. in reference to this subject … The Emperor proceeds to say that he has
now convoked the patriarchs, the papal deputy, the archbishops and bishops, and many officials of
State and officers of the army, in order to have the Acts of the sixth Synod read to them and have
them sealed by them. He had then taken them out of their hands, in order to prevent all falsification,
and he was desirous, by God’s assistance, to carry the matter through. 1

The life of Pope Conon in the Liber Pontificalis, states the following:

He received an imperial mandate from the lord Justinian [II] in which the emperor intimated that he
had come across the acts of the sixth holy synod, which his father lord Constantine of pious memory
had held with God’s help, and had them at hand; his Piety undertook to preserve and maintain the
synod undefiled and unshaken for ever.2

The respected English Roman Catholic historian Horace Kinder Mann (1859 – 1928), in his magnum opus,
The Lives of the Popes in the (Early) Middle Ages (18 vol. in 19), writes:

This Pope [Conon] received an imperial rescript of Justinian II., writes ‘Anastasius,’ in which the
emperor says that he has recovered the acts, i.e., the original copies, of the Sixth General Council. …
The rescript adds that the emperor summoned together the patriarchs, the papal apocrisiarius, the
metropolitans and bishops who were staying in the city, the senate, and various State officials and
officers of the various army corps, stationed in different parts of the empire. Then he (the emperor)
caused the copies of the council to be read before them, and then caused all to sign them. The
documents were then handed over to the emperor’s care, that “it might never be in the power of
those who do not fear God, to corrupt or change them.” This decree had been sent to the Pope, that
he might know what was being done. This imperial letter is particularly interesting as showing the
great care taken by the ancients to preserve intact the decrees of the general councils. 3

Although this letter was addressed to Pope John V, news traveled slowly and Conon was Pope at that time.
According to Mann, this letter is dated February 17, 687. This assembly is also mentioned in the history of
Eutychius of Alexandria, who may possibly also be referring to the Council of Trullo:

1 Hefele, History of the Councils, Vol. V, Book. XVII, Sec. 326, pp. 219 – 220.
2 Raymond Davis, The Book of Pontiffs (Liber Pontificalis), 85. Conon, 3, pp. 79 – 80, in Translated Texts for
Historians, Vol. VI, Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 3rd Ed., 2010
3 Horace Kinder Mann, The Lives of the Popes in the Early Middle Ages, Vol. I, Part II, Conon, pp. 72 – 73,

London: B. Herder, 1914.

 349

After him [Constantine IV] reigned over Rum his son Justinian for twelve years. … There were
presented to Justinian, king of Rum, some people saying: “In the city there are those who find fault
with the Sixth Council which your father Constantine kept to, and assert that it is void.” Justinian
then summoned hundred and thirty bishops, confirmed what the sixth council had asserted and
anathematised those who resumed and contradicted the decisions; also they confirmed what was
claimed by the previous five councils, they excommunicated those whom [the bishops of such
councils] had already excommunicated and they returned each to his own home.1

Note that this assembly also supports the authenticity of the Acts in relation to the condemnation of
Honorius, which is discussed in detail in Appendix III.

So it appears that this assembly is what Tarasius is referring to, and it would not be out of place for it to have
begun the process of creating the numerous canons of the Council in Trullo, and also to have been looked
upon as continuing the Sixth Ecumenical Council. Moreover, the proper dating of the assemblies of the Sixth
Ecumenical Council obviates another Roman Catholic criticism of the Trullan Synod, namely, that it too hastily
decreed its many canons. This entire affair much rather strengthens the authority of the Council in Trullo,
connecting it closer with the many authorities involved with the Sixth Ecumenical Council.

The last session of the first assembly of the Sixth Council concluded in September 16, 681, which corresponds
with Tarasius’s statement that the fathers “returned home in the fourteenth year of Constantine”,2 who
became emperor in 668. Justinian II became joint emperor with his father Emperor Constantine IV in 681,
and ascended to the throne as sole emperor upon his father’s death in September 14, 685, so the second year
of Justinian II’s reign began in 686, and the assembly gathered at the beginning of the next year. It should also
be considered that the fathers did not immediately leave back to their homes at the end of the last session in
September of 681, but may have returned later (e.g., in the letter of Pope Leo II to the Emperor, it is said that
the papal legates who were at the Synod had come back in July 682 to Rome).3 This is all in harmony with
Tarasius’s statement that the members of the Sixth Ecumenical Council assembled again “four or five years
after”4 the fathers returned to their homes, that is, from July 682 to February 687 (4 years and 7 months).

Landon writes that “Basilius, Archbishop of Gortynia, and the Archbishop of Ravenna were present as legates
of the Apostolic see.”5 Acting as the legate of the Church of Rome,

Archbishop Basil of Gortyna, in Crete, added to his name the words: τὸν τόπον ἐπέχων πάσης τῆς
συνόδου τῆς ἁγίας ἐκκλησίας Ῥώμης. He had signed in a similar manner, at the sixth Œcumenical
Synod; and we have already there remarked that the island of Crete belonged to the Roman
patriarchate, and that Archbishop Basil seems at an earlier period to have received a delegation on
the part of the Roman Synod in the year 680.6

Percival translates the Greek, “Holding the place of the holy Church of Rome in every synod.” 7

Of the 226 bishops and episcopal representatives in Trullo, at least “43 had been present at the sixth
ecumenical council”,8 not to mention the numerous monks, scholars, and dignitaries that were doubtless

1 Migne, Vol. CXI, p. 1116 C. Roger Pearse (translator), https://www.roger-

pearse.com/weblog/2017/02/28/the-annals-of-eutychius-of-alexandria-10th-c-ad-chapter-18f-the-reign-of-
muawiyah/. Eutychius’s dates in this chapter appear to be inaccurate.
2 Mendham, The Seventh General Council, p. 161.
3 Hefele, History of the Councils, Vol. V, Book XVI, Ch. II, Sec. 324, p. 200.
4 Mendham, The Seventh General Council, p. 161.
5 Landon, A Manual of Councils, Vol. I, p. 208.
6 Hefele, History of the Councils, Vol. V, Book XVII, Sec. 327, pp. 237 – 238.
7 Percival, Seven Ecumenical Councils, p. 357.
8 Philip Schaff, History of the Church, Vol. IV, Ch. XI, § 114, p. 509, Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, New Ed., 1885.
 350

consulted at both assemblies. Every Father ratifying this Council is directly contradicting the judgment of
Rome against Canon 28 of Chalcedon.

Pope Leo II declared that the bishops of the Sixth Ecumenical Council’s first assembly are “reckoned among
the Holy Fathers and Doctors of the Church”. Therefore, by Papal admission, 43 “Holy Fathers and Doctors of
the Church” were present at the Trullan assembly of the Sixth Ecumenical Council. Leo II wrote to the
Emperor:

Wherefore as we have received and firmly proclaim five universal councils, the Nicene, the
Constantinopolitan, the first Ephesian, the Chalcedonian and the Constantinopolitan, all of which the
whole Church of Christ approves and follows, so too we do receive with the like veneration the Sixth
Council, which has lately been celebrated in your royal city, as being their interpreter and follower,
and we decree that it be worthily numbered with them as being gathered together by one and the
same grace of God; and we decree that those Bishops of Christ’s Church who met faithfully
together be reckoned among the Holy Fathers and Doctors of the Church. For in these as in
those one and the same Spirit of God wrought the salvation of souls.1

The British Byzantine scholar Joan Mervyn Hussey writes,

Of the 228 fathers at the council (220 of whom signed acta), 10 came from eastern Illyricum, still
under papal jurisdiction (1 from Hellas, 4 from Crete, 4 from Macedonia, and 1 from Epirus). The
council was also attended by the resident papal apocrisiarius, Basil bishop of Gortyna in Crete, who
signed the minutes.2

Trullo is the continuation of the Sixth Council, and it was not necessary for the ecumenical authority of Trullo
that every bishop who was at the first assembly of the Sixth Council had to attend the Trullan Council. In the
first assembly of the Sixth Council, not every bishop attended all of the 18 sessions. For example, the first
session of the Sixth Council, held November 7, 680, was attended by only 43 bishops. By March 22, 681, the
number of bishops present had increased to 80. In the eighteenth and last session of the first assembly,
September 16, 681, 165 bishops were present. Overall, it seems that 289 bishops were present,3 but the
highest number of bishops in attendance at a single session was 165, with a total of 174 signatures at this last
session, including three papal legates (two priests and one deacon). So it is normal that not every bishop who
is present at a council attends every session of that council. Likewise, not every bishop who was present at
the first assembly of the Sixth Council (consisting of 18 sessions as mentioned above) attended the next
assembly of the Sixth Council in Trullo.

Here is the entirety of the Catholic Encyclopedia’s entry on the Council in Trullo:

The council, held in 692, under Justinian II is generally known as the Council in Trullo, because it was
held in the same domed hall where the Sixth General Council had met. Both the Fifth and the Sixth
General Councils had omitted to draw up disciplinary canons, and as this council was intended to
complete both in this respect, it also took the name of Quinisext (Concilium Quinisextum, Synodos
Penthekti), i.e. Fifth-Sixth. It was attended by 215 bishops, all Orientals. Basil of Gortyna in Illyria,
however, belonged to the Roman patriarchate and called himself papal legate, though no evidence is

1 Peter Le Page Renouf, The Case of Pope Honorius Reconsidered with Reference to Recent Apologies, Ch. II, p.
58, London: Longmans, Green, Reader, and Dyer, 1869.
2 Joan Mervyn Hussey, The Orthodox Church in the Byzantine Empire, Part I, Ch. I, § 4, p. 27, Oxford:

Clarendon Press, 1986.

3 Hefele, History of the Councils, Vol. V, Book XVI, Ch. II, Sec. 315, p. 150. Hefele writes: “Theophanes,

however, speaks of 289 bishops being present.” Theophan. Chronogr., ed. Bonn, t. i p. 551. This is according
to the Greek annals, which are also read out in Session Three of the Seventh Ecumenical Council (see the
section on the condemnation of Honorius). However, there might be some discrepancies with this number.
 351

extant of his right to use a title that in the East served to clothe the decrees with Roman authority. In
fact, the West never recognized the 102 disciplinary canons of this council, in large measure
reaffirmations of earlier canons. Most of the new canons exhibit an inimical attitude towards
Churches not in disciplinary accord with Constantinople, especially the Western Churches. Their
customs are anathematized and “every little detail of difference is remembered to be condemned”
(Fortescue). Canon iii of Constantinople (381) and canon xxviii of Chalcedon (451) are renewed, the
heresy of Honorius is again condemned (can. i), and marriage with a heretic is invalid because Rome
says it is merely unlawful; Rome had recognized fifty of the Apostolic Canons; therefore the other
thirty-five obtain recognition from this council, and as inspired teaching.

In the matter of celibacy the Greek prelates are not content to let the Roman Church follow its own
discipline, but insist on making a rule (for the whole Church) that all clerics except bishops may
continue in wedlock, while they excommunicate anyone who tries to separate a priest or deacon
from his wife, and any cleric who leaves his wife because he is ordained (can. iii., vi, xii, xiii, xlviii).
The Orthodox Greek Church holds this council an œcumenical one, and adds its canons to the decrees
of the Fifth and Sixth Councils. In the West St. Bede calls it (De sextâ mundi ætate) a reprobate synod,
and Paul the Deacon (Hist. Lang., VI, p. 11) an erratic one. Dr. Fortescue rightly says (The Orthodox
Eastern Church, p. 96) that intolerance of all other customs with the wish to make the whole
Christian world conform to its own local practices has always been and still is a characteristic note of
the Byzantine Church. For the attitude of the popes, substantially identical, in face of the various
attempts to obtain their approval of their canons, see Hefele, “Conciliengesch.” (III, 345 – 48).1

Although the Catholic Encyclopedia claims that “no evidence is extant” of Basil of Gortyna’s right to use the
title of papal legate, he subscribed in the same manner at the first assembly of the Sixth Ecumenical Council,
which indicates that the Council and other papal legates accepted his claim to represent Rome, and no
evidence is extant of any objections to Basil signing in this manner. Next, the Catholic Encyclopedia claims
that “the West never recognized the 102 disciplinary canons of this council”, but it is shown in this section
that Pope Hadrian I recognized at least the 82nd canon, and he counted the Council in Trullo as the Holy Sixth
Ecumenical Council. As for the testimony of St. Bede and Paul the Deacon, see the next section. Also, it seems
that the Catholic Encyclopedia places a negative connotation on the supposed Byzantine “intolerance of all
other customs with the wish to make the whole Christian world conform to its own local practices”, but this is
a criticism that more fittingly applies to the Church of Rome, and the fathers at Trullo were justly opposed to
the erroneous customs that were proliferating in the West.

Pope Sergius, St. Bede, and Paul the Deacon

Some in the West did not like the Council in Trullo, but this is not especially surprising considering that these
canons censured several practices common in the West. I discuss the testimony of Pope Sergius I, St. Bede,
and Paul the Deacon, who mention opposition to the Council in Trullo.

Here is the relevant passage from the life of Pope Sergius I in the Liber Pontificalis:

In his time the emperor Justinian [II] ordered a council to be held in the imperial city, at which the
legates of apostolic see had forgathered, and to whose acts they were deceived into subscribing. He
too was under pressure to subscribe, but he absolutely refused since certain chapters which were
outside the usages of the church had been annexed to the acts. As if they were synodal definitions,
six copies of the acts had been written out, signed by the three patriarchs of Constantinople,
Alexandria, and Antioch and by the other prelates who had then forgathered there, confirmed by the
hand of the emperor and placed in the despatch-box called scevrocarnalis. He sent them to Rome to

1Thomas J. Shahan, Councils of Constantinople, in CE, Vol. IV, pp. 311 – 312. Thomas Joseph Shahan (1857 –
1932) was a respected American Roman Catholic ecclesiastical historian and was the Auxiliary Bishop of
Baltimore from 1914 – 1932.
 352

be confirmed and signed at the top by the pontiff Sergius as head of all sacerdotes. As has been said,
the blessed pontiff absolutely refused to agree with the emperor Justinian, nor did he tolerate those
copies to be received or opened for reading. Instead he rejected them and set them aside as invalid,
choosing to die sooner than consent to erroneous novelties. In scorn for the pontiff the emperor sent
the magistrianus Sergius to Rome, and he took John, the beloved of God and bishop of Portus, and
Boniface, counselor of the apostolic see, away to the imperial city. Then he sent Zacharias, his
ferocious chief spatharius, with a mandate to bring the pontiff as well to the imperial city. But God’s
mercy went before him, and St Peter, the apostle and prince of the apostles, supported him and
preserved his church unmutilated: the hearts of the Ravennate soldiery were stirred up, along with
those of the Pentapolitan duchy and of the parts all around, not to allow the pontiff of the apostolic
see to go up to the imperial city. When a crowd of the soldiery foregathered from every side,
Zacharias the spatharius was terrified, and fearing he might be killed by that mob of soliders he
craved that the gates of the city be shut and the pontiff be held. But in fear he took refuge in the
pontiff’s bedroom, and in tears he begged the pontiff to have mercy on him and not let anyone take
his life. The army of Ravenna entered the city by St Peter’s Gate with weapons, and the crowd came
to the Lateran Episcopium, burning to see the pontiff whom they understood from a rumour that was
going around had been smuggled out by night and put on a ship. Since both the upper and lower
doors of the patriarchate had been shut, they threatened to pull them to the ground if they were not
quickly opened; then in extreme terror and despair for his survival Zacharias the spatharius got
under the pontiff’s bed so that he went out of his mind and lost his senses. The blessed pope
comforted him and told him to have no fear. The pontiff went outside to the basilica named after the
lord pope Theodore; opening the doors and sitting on a seat beneath the Apostles, he honourably
received the common soldiers and the people who had come to see him. Giving a suitable and gentle
reply he calmed their feelings; though they, driven by enthusiasm, for love and reverence both for
God’s church and for the holy pope, did not give up picketing the patriarchate until they had expelled
the spatharius Zacharias out of Rome with injuries and insults. And at that very same time the one
who had sent him was by the Lord’s retribution deprived of his realm. Thus by Christ’s favour was
God’s church, with its prelate, preserved undisturbed.1

In the entry for Anno Mundi 4649, St. Bede writes:

Justinian the Younger, the son of Constantine, [ruled for] 10 years. He made a ten-year peace on land
and sea with the Saracens. But the province of Africa was brought under the control of the Roman
empire. It had then been occupied by the Saracens*, and Carthage itself was captured by them and
destroyed. [Justinian], sending out his protospatharius Zacharias, ordered that the Roman Bishop
Sergius, of blessed memory, be deported to Constantinople because he was unwilling to approve of
and subscribe to the errant synod that [Justinian] was holding in Constantinople. But the militia of
the city of Ravenna and of the surrounding regions forestalled the wicked orders of the emperor and
drove Zacharias from Rome with insults and injuries.** The same Pope Sergius ordained the
venerable man Willibrord, called Clement, as bishop of the Frisian people. Even now, as a pilgrim for
the eternal homeland (for he is one of the people of the English from Britain) he achieves there every
day innumerable daily losses for the devil and gains for the Christian faith***. Because he was guilty
of treason, Justinian was deprived of the glory of his kingdom, and withdrew to Pontus as an exile.

[Wallis’s Footnotes:] * Liber pontificalis 84.3 (1.366)

** Ibid. 86.6 – 8 (1.372 – 374)
*** Cf. Bede, HE 5.11 (584 – 586)2

1 Raymond Davies, The Book of Pontiffs (Liber Pontificalis), 86. Sergius I, 6 – 9, pp. 82 – 83, in Translated
Texts for Historians, Vol. VI, Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 3rd Ed., 2010. This account is likely
exaggerated or invented, and there are no other first-hand sources for this transaction. It is important to note
that the papal legates were present and subscribed to the Trullan Council.
2 Faith Wallis, Bede: The Reckoning of Time, A.M. 4649, pp. 232 – 233, in Translated Texts for Historians, Vol.

XXIX, Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1999.

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It is important to note that the translator (who does not appear to be Roman Catholic) has made a mistake
here (likely due to the alliteration of the word “erraticæ”), writing “heretical synod” (Professor Wallis
informed us that “errant” is probably the best translation), and the Catholic Encyclopedia is also incorrect
when it says that St. Bede calls Trullo a “reprobate synod”. The word that Bede uses to describe the synod is
“erraticæ”, which best translates to “errant” or “erratic”, a description also used in the Liber Pontificalis
before Bede, and by Paul the Deacon after Bede. This mistake (that Bede called Trullo “reprobate”) passed
into Shahan’s Catholic Encyclopedia article from Adrian Fortescue’s book on The Orthodox Eastern Church,
where Fortescue writes:

The Orthodox Eastern Church accepts this council as œcumenical, and adds its Canons to the decrees
of the fifth and sixth Councils. The West has always refused to acknowledge it. St. Bede calls it the
reprobate synod, Paul the Deacon, erratic; it interests us here as an example of Eastern ill-feeling
towards Rome and the Latins.1

Since I am disputing the translation, I place the Latin text of this passage from the collated edition of John
Allen Giles:

Justinianus minor filius Constantini annos X. Hic constituit pacem cum Saracenis decennio terra
marique. Sed et provincial Africa subjugata est Romano imperio, quæ fuerat tenta a Saracenis, ipso
quoque Carthagine ab eis capta et destructa. Hic beatæ memoriæ Pontificem Romanæ ecclesiæ
Sergium, quia erraticæ suæ Synodo, quam Constantinopoli fecerat, favere et subscribere noluisset,
misso et Zacharia Protospathario suo jussit Constantinopolim deportari. Sed prævenit militia
Ravennatæ urbis, vicinarumque partium jussa principis nefanda, et eundem Zachariam contumeliis
et injuriis ab urbe Roma repulit. Idem Papa Sergius ordinavit venerabilem virum Willibrordum
cognomine Clementem Fresonum genti Episcopum, in qua usque hodie pro æterna patria peregrinus
(est enim de Britannia gentis Anglorum) innumera quotidie diabolo detrimenta et Christianæ fidei
facit augmenta. Justinianus ob culpam perfidiæ regni Gloria privatus exul in Pontum secedit.2

Paul the Deacon (Paulus Diaconus, 720 – 799) says (here is the whole of Chapter XI):

Meanwhile the emperor Constantine died at Constantinople and his younger son Justinian* assumed
the sovereignty of the Romans and held the control of it for ten years. He took Africa away from the
Saracens and made peace with them on sea and land. He sent Zacharias his protospatarius and
ordered that Pope Sergius should be brought to Constantinople because he was unwilling to approve
and subscribe to the error of that synod which the emperor had held at Constantinople. But the
soldiery of Ravenna and of the neighboring part, despising the impious orders of the emperor, drove
this same Zacharias with reproaches and insults from the city of Rome.

[Foulke’s Footnote:] * Here Paul misunderstands Bede from whom he took the statement. Bede (A.
M. 4649) speaks of “Justinian the younger, a son of Constantine.” He succeeded to the throne in 685. 3

1 Adrian Fortescue, The Orthodox Eastern Church, Part I, Ch. III, pp. 95 – 96, London: Catholic Truth Society,
2nd Ed., 1908. The claim that “the West has always refused to acknowledge it” is false, as is shown in this
chapter.
2 John Allen Giles, The Complete Works of Venerable Bede, Vol. VI, De Temporum Ratione, Cap. LXVI, Sexta

Ætas, A.M. 4649, p. 328, London: Whittaker and Co., 1843. The St. Gallen manuscript agrees with this reading
as well (St. Gallen, Stiftsbibliothek, Cod. Sang. 251, p. 171, line 4 – Assorted works of natural history by the
Venerable Bede (http://www.e-codices.unifr.ch/en/list/one/csg/0251)). The critical edition of Theodor
Mommsen also has the word “aerraticae”, with no alternative readings (Theodor Mommsen, Monumenta
Germaniae Historica [hereafter MGH], Scriptores, Auctorum Antiquissimorum, Vol. XIII, Chronicum Minorum
Saec. IV V VI VII, Vol. III, Bedae Chronica, De Temporum Ratione, LXVI, A.M. 4649, p. 316, 565, 2, Berlin:
Weidmannos, 1898). I note the quality of these Latin sources when I discuss Bede’s testimony to the
condemnation of Honorius in Appendix III.
3 William Dudley Foulke (translator), Paul the Deacon, History of the Langobards (Historia Langobardorum),

Book VI, Ch. XI, pp. 258 – 259, Philadelphia, PA: The Department of History, University of Pennsylvania, 1907.
 354

It is clear that Bede has only repeated the Liber Pontificalis, and he has not given any specific objections to the
Trullan Council, nor does he appear to have examined this Council in any detail. As a Westerner, Bede takes
the alleged side of Pope Sergius by default. Paul the Deacon is simply repeating the summary of Bede and the
Liber Pontificalis, and does not appear to have any other sources for this event, so their testimony against the
Trullan Canons cannot be very strong, since it is not independent.

Bede uses the pro-papal Liber Pontificalis as a source, and Paul the Deacon is dependent on the first two.
Moreover, Paul the Deacon made several errors by misinterpreting the aforementioned sources, and this
strongly indicates that he is not an independent witness, but is merely repeating the words of his
predecessors.1

This account of the Liber Pontificalis, followed by Bede and Paul the Deacon, is also copied in some later
authors and chronicles, such as the Chronicle (Chronicon Venetum et Gradense, formerly known as the
Chronicon Sagornini) of John the Deacon (940/945 – c. 1018), secretary to the doge of Venice, written c.
1008,2 the Chronicon Vedastinum (or Chronicle of St. Vaast, c. 1024 – 1050), written by a monk of the French
Benedictine abbey of St. Vaast of Arras, 3 the Clear Chronicle (Cronica Clara) of Marianus Scotus of Mainz
(1028 – 1082/1083), an Irish monk in Germany, written c. 1082,4 the Chronicle of Hugh of Flavigny (a French
abbot born c. 1064, who wrote the Chronicon Hugonis c. 1085 – 1102),5 and in the Universal Chronicle of
Eccard (or Ekkehard, d. after 1125), a German Abbot of the monastery of Aura, written c. 1125.6

The fissures of the split between East and West are becoming apparent. I will later point out that the Seventh
Ecumenical Council fully affirmed the Trullan Canons, so this incident only serves to show how strongly the
Universal Church rejected the idea that the protest of Rome nullified the validity of these canons.

It is significant that Sergius’s successor, Pope John VII, did not act in a consistent manner. The Anglican
scholar Isaac Barrow (1630 – 1677) comments on the canons of Trullo and the Liber Pontificalis:

The canons of the sixth general council, exhibited by the Trullane (or Quinisext) synod, clearly and
expressly condemn several doctrine and practices of Rome;a I ask whether the pope confirmed them?
They will, to be sure, as they are concerned to do, answer, “No;” and indeed Pope Sergius, as
Anastasius in his Life reports,b refused them; yet did they pass for legitimate in the whole church: for
in their general synod (the second Nicene), without contradiction, one of them is alleged (out of the
very original paper, wherein the fathers had subscribed) as a “canon of the holy general sixth synod,”
and avowed for such by the patriarch Tarasius. In fine, if we believe Anastasius, Pope John VII.,

1 See William Dudley Foulke (translator), Paul the Deacon, History of the Langobards (Historia
Langobardorum), Appendix II, Sources of Paul’s History of the Langobards, (2) The Liber Pontificalis, Bede
and the Lost Chronicle, pp. 367 – 379, Philadelphia: The Department of History, University of Pennsylvania,
1907. This is also evident by comparing the passages from these authors, which have been cited here.
2 Georg Heinrich Pertz (editor), Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Scriptorum, Vol. VII, I Chronicon Venetum,

p. 10, lines 36 – 41, Hannover: Impensis Bibliopolii Avlici Hahniani, 1846.

3 Societas Aperiendis Fontibus Rerum Germanicarum Medii Aevi (editors), Monumenta Germaniae Historica,

Scriptorum, Vol. XIII, LIV Chronicon Vedastinum, p. 696, lines 31 – 34, Hannover: Impensis Bibliopolii
Hahniani, 1881.
4 Georg Waitz (editor), Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Scriptorum, Vol. V, XIX Mariani Scotti Chronicon, p.

545, lines 4 – 6, Hannover: Impensis Bibliopolii Avlici Hahniani, 1844.

5 Georg Heinrich (editor), MGH, Scriptorum, Vol. VIII, Vol. X Chronicon Hugonis Monachi Virdunensis et

Divionensis Abbatis Flaviniacensis, p. 325, lines 12 – 15, Hannover: Impensis Bibliopolii Avlici Hahniani,
1848.
6 Georg Waitz (editor), MGH, Scriptorum, Vol. VI, I Ekkehardi Chronicon Universale, p. 155, lines 54 – 58,

Hannover: Impensis Bibliopolii Avlici Hahniani, 1844.

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“being timorous, out of human frailty, directed these canons, without amendment, by two
metropolites, to the emperor;”c that is, he admitted them so as they stand.

[Selected footnotes by Barrow] a) Can. 2, 7, 13, 36, 55, 58, 67.

b) – in quibus diversa capitula Romanæ ecclesiæ contraria scripta inerrant. – Anast. in Vit. Joh. VII.
c) Sed hic humana fragilitate timidus hos nequaquam tomos emendus per suprafatos metropolitas
direxit ad princepem. – Anast. in Vit. Joh. VII.1

The following is the entire relevant extract from the life of Pope John VII:

Immediately after [Justinian II] entered the palace and obtained the imperium, he dealt with the
matter of the copies of the acts he had previously sent to Rome in the time of the lord pontiff Sergius
of apostolic memory, in which there were written various chapters in opposition to the Roman
church. He despatched two metropolitan bishops, also sending with them a mandate in which he
requested and urged the pontiff to gather a council of the apostolic church, and to confirm such of
them as he approved, and quash and reject those which were adverse. But he, terrified in his human
weakness, sent them back to the prince by the same metropolitans without any emendations at all.2

The excuse of “humana fragilitate”, is not valid, for the Papal confirmation of the canons of an Ecumenical
Council is not a light matter, and the author of the Liber Pontificalis admits that Pope John VII did not follow
Pope Sergius I in rejecting the canons. This admittedly ambiguous passage in the Liber Pontificalis is
interpreted differently by scholars. Some say it shows that Pope John VII did not sign them, and others say
that it shows that he did accept the canons.

Hefele gives the following interpretation of this event: “The Pope, a timid man, would neither strike out nor
confirm. He simply sent back again the copy which he had received.”

Judith Herrin comments, “Whether this means that the pope signed them is unclear. He probably did …”3

Pope John VII should not have sent the Trullan canons to Emperor Justinian II if he did not approve of them.
By directing the canons back to the Emperor, with two metropolitan bishops, Pope John VII implicitly
admitted the validity of the Trullan Canons, without any changes at all. Moreover, as mentioned below, the
frescoes in the Church of Santa Maria Antiqua, which appear to be positively influenced by Canon 82 of Trullo,
were commissioned by Pope John VII, who appears to have been conciliatory with Justinian II.

In the life of Pope Gregory II (715 – 731) in the Liber Pontificalis there is another very important reference to
the Trullan canons, which is discussed in the quotation above from Hefele. It states:

Next he was advanced to the order of the diaconate and set out with the holy pontiff Constantine for
the imperial city. When the prince Justinian [II] inquired of him about certain chaptersa his excellent
reply solved every disputed point.

[Davis’s Footnote:] a) i.e. the Canons of the Quinisext Council in Trullo of 692.4

It is worth noting that the second sentence is not in the earlier recension of Gregory’s life (compiled
contemporaneously with Gregory’s reign and represented by MSS ACG), but is found in the later adaptation

1 Isaac Barrow, A Treatise of the Pope’s Supremacy, Sixth Papal Supposition, Third Assumption, pp. 263 – 264,
Edinburgh: Johnstone and Hunter, 1852. Barrow quotes the Greek.
2 Raymond Davies, The Book of Pontiffs (Liber Pontificalis), 88. John VII, 4 – 5, pp. 86 – 87, in Translated Texts

for Historians, Vol. VI, Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 3rd Ed., 2010.
3 Judith Herrin, The Formation of Christendom, Part II, Ch. 7., p. 288, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,

1989.
4 Raymond Davis, The Lives of the Eighth-Century Popes (Liber Pontificalis), 91. Gregory II, 1., p. 3, in

Translated Texts for Historians, Vol. XIII, Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2nd Ed., 2007.
 356

made in the 750s (represented by MSS BDE).1 Pope Constantine’s voyage to the imperial city, with the
deacon Gregory, is also discussed in his life in the Liber Pontificalis.2

The alleged limited acceptance of the Trullan Canons by Pope John VIII (where John supposedly only accepted
“all those canons which did not contradict the true faith, good morals, and the decrees of Rome.”) is based on
a testimony by Anastasius Bibliothecarius in his Preface on the Seventh Synod, as Hefele remarks above, and
therefore is not worthy of much credence, especially considering Hefele’s critical remarks, where Hefele
notes, “Anastasius (or the Roman Synod under John VIII.) is mistaken in regard to the last statement; for (a)
as we saw, p. 237, the Greek patriarchs were present at the Trullan Council; (b) and the Greeks received
unhesitatingly the Trullan canons, as canon 1 of the seventh Œcumenical Synod shows.” This testimony had
falsely claimed that no other patriarchs were present at the Quinisext Council, and that the Eastern Church
did not receive the canons.3

The XVIII Council of Toledo

It is possible that the Eighteenth Council of Toledo may have sanctioned the Trullan Canons, at least for the
sake of permitting clerical marriage:

In this context of controversy over the council of 692 and its canons, which centred on two
different approaches to clerical marriage and celibacy, it is impossible to believe that Spain remained
unaffected or in ignorance of what was going on. The implications of the later chronicle references
might suggest that in the peninsula the imperial council and its policies received the backing
of Wittiza, who, through his pliant metropolitan of Toledo, Sindered, had the decisions of the
‘Quinisext Council’ ratified by a Spanish assembly, that is to say the Eighteenth Council of
Toledo. This would, for the opponents of such a reform, have seemed like a defiance and overturning
of numerous earlier western conciliar pronouncements on clerical celibacy. The Eastern Church’s
decisions on the subject were successfully resisted by Rome and the West in general, but it looks as if
briefly they were received in Spain under royal patronage in the early eighth century. The strength
of opposition, and indeed the subsequent fate of both dynasty and kingdom, must have driven
Spanish churchmen to take the earliest opportunity to repudiate XVIII Toledo, and if the events of
711 meant that they could hold no more such ‘national’ synods at which the acts could be formally
condemned, at least the non-inclusion of its canons in the Hispana collections has served the same
purpose. In the small Christian kingdom in the Asturias which came into being as the result of a
successful revolt against the Arabs c.718/22, the formal abrogation of Wittiza's ruling on married
clergy is recorded in one version of a late ninth-century chronicle as having been decreed by the
king Fruela I the Cruel (757-68).4

Although this council was later repudiated, it appears the matter of contention was clerical celibacy, and not
the Trullan canons as such. Moreover, I must strongly express my reserve in connecting this council at all to
the Trullan Council, since no original records have remained, and the question of clerical celibacy has been a
recurring and hotly-discussed topic in many Western Church councils. I personally do not think there is
sufficient evidence to link this council with Trullo. I disagree with Collins’ claim that the decisions of Trullo
“were successfully resisted by Rome and the West”, for which he does not provide evidence, and rather the
fact that the Seventh Ecumenical Council and Pope Adrian fully recognized Trullo (as shown in this section),
shows the failure of any Western resistance.

1 David, The Lives of the Eighth-Century Popes, 91. Gregory II, 1., p. 1.
2 Davis, The Book of Pontiffs, 90. Constantine, pp. 87 – 89.
3 This Preface is translated into English in Joseph Mendham, The Seventh General Council, Ante-Conciliar

Documents, Preface of Anastasius the Librarian, to John VIII Illustrious Pontiff, on the Seventh Synod, pp. xvii
– xx, London: William Edward Painter, 1850.
4 Roger Collins, The Arab Conquest of Spain: 710 – 797, Ch. I, p. 19, Oxford: Blackwell, 1998. See the

preceding pages for more context.

 357

The Ecloga

The Ecloga, an important compilation of Byzantine laws issued in 726 by Emperor Leo III the Isaurian (685 –
741, emperor from 717 – 741), has seven laws on sexual crimes, several of which are based on or related to
the Trullan canons.

The third law compares with the fourth of Trullo:

Ecloga, Law 3: ‘A person who has carnal knowledge of a nun shall, upon the footing that he is
debauching the Church of God, have his nose slit, because he committed wicked adultery with her
who belonged to the Church; and she on her side must take heed lest similar punishment be reserved
to her’

Trullo, Canon 4: ‘If any bishop, presbyter, deacon, sub-deacon, lector, cantor, or door-keeper has had
intercourse with a woman dedicated to God, let him be deposed, as one who has corrupted a spouse
of Christ, but if a layman let him be cut off.’

The fourth and sixth laws compare with the 53rd and 54th of Trullo:

Ecloga, Law 4: ‘Anyone who, intending to take in marriage a woman who is his goddaughter in
Salvation-bringing baptism, has carnal knowledge of her without marrying her, and being found
guilty of the offence shall, after being exiled, be condemned to the same punishment meted out for
other adultery, that is to say, both the man and the woman shall have their noses slit’

Ecloga, Law 6: ‘Persons committing incest, parents and children, children and parents, brothers and
sisters, shall be punished capitally with the sword. Those in other relationships who corrupt one
another carnally, that is father and daughter-in-law, son and stepmother, father-in-law and daughter-
in-law, brother and his brother's wife, uncle and niece, nephew and aunt, shall have their noses slit.
And likewise he who has carnal knowledge with two sisters and even cousins’

Trullo, Canon 53: ‘Whereas the spiritual relationship is greater than fleshly affinity; and since it has
come to our knowledge that in some places certain persons who become sponsors to children in holy
salvation-bearing baptism, afterwards contract matrimony with their mothers (being widows), we
decree that for the future nothing of this sort is to be done. But if any, after the present canon, shall
be observed to do this, they must, in the first place, desist from this unlawful marriage, and then be
subjected to the penalties of fornicators.’

Trullo, Canon 54: ‘The divine scriptures plainly teach us as follows, “Thou shalt not approach to any
that is near of kin to thee to uncover their nakedness.” Basil, the bearer-of-God, has enumerated in
his canons some marriages which are prohibited and has passed over the greater part in silence, and
in both these ways has done us good service. For by avoiding a number of disgraceful names (lest by
such words he should pollute his discourse) he included impurities under general terms, by which
course he shewed to us in a general way the marriages which are forbidden. But since by such
silence, and because of the difficulty of understanding what marriages are prohibited, the matter has
become confused; it seemed good to us to set it forth a little more clearly, decreeing that from this
time forth he who shall marry with the daughter of his father; or a father or son with a mother and
daughter; or a father and son with two girls who are sisters; or a mother and daughter with two
brothers; or two brothers with two sisters, fall under the canon of seven years, provided they openly
separate from this unlawful union.’1

1 E. Freshfied (translator), A Manual of Roman Law: The “Ecloga”, pp. 108 – 112, Cambridge, 1926, in Deno
John Geanakoplos, Byzantium: Church, Society, and Civilization Seen through Contemporary Eyes, p. 78,
 358

In addition, the seventh law on sexual crimes in the Ecloga punishes those who try to commit the crime of
abortion, which is also condemned in the 91st Trullan canon (and of course condemned by the Church since
the 1st century – e.g., in Chapter 2 of the Didache, Canon XXI of Ancyra, and Canon II of St. Basil). These rules
are also based upon St. Justinian’s law code and earlier canons. The Ecloga’s connection with Trullo is also
suggested by the Orthodox deacon Fr. David John Williams, whose Master of Arts dissertation (in Late
Antique and Byzantine Studies at Royal Holloway, University of London) was related to the canons of the
Sixth Ecumenical Council. Williams writes, “The Ecloga (726) of Leo III on sexual crimes (717-41) is made up
of seven laws, five of which are clearly based on the Trullan canons.” 1

The Basilika

The ninth-century Byzantine code of law called the Basilika (or Basilica) was initiated by Emperor Basil I and
completed by his son Emperor Leo VI c. 892 in Constantinople. This collection of laws assumes the
ecumenical validity of the canons of Trullo. The laws of Emperor Leo VI the Wise (866 – 912, emperor from
886 – 912), decreed for the entire Eastern Roman Empire, recognize the Council of Trullo and incorporate its
canons. Demetrios J. Constantelos, an Orthodox priest and university professor, writes,

the canons of the council of the Quinisext gained greater authority with the passing of time because
they were adopted by civic legislation. A significant number of canons of the Quinisext were used as
a basis and were included in the laws of Leo VI the Wise.2

The Novels of Leo VI

Leo VI also promulgated one hundred and thirteen Novels, ca. 887 – 892, which also recognize the
ecumenicity of Trullo. This matter is discussed at length in Spiridon N. Troianos, The Canons of the Trullan
Council in The Novels of Leo VI, in George Nedungatt and Michael Featherstone (editors), The Council in
Trullo Revisited, Kanonika, Vol. VI, Part III, pp. 189 – 198, Rome: Pontificio Instituto Orientale, 1995).

First-and-Second Council of Constantinople in 861 Confirms Trullo

This council dealt with the remnant heterodox iconomachists. In the Rudder there is the following
description:

The great and holy First-and-Second Council, which was held in Constantinople in the all-venerable
temple of the holy Apostles, was assembled in the time of Emperor Michael, the son of Theophilus,
and of Bardas Caesar, his uncle on his mother’s side, in A.D. 861. It was attended by three hundred
and eighteen Fathers, among whom the most distinguished were: Most holy Photius, patriarch of

Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, New Ed., 1986. For the Canons in Trullo, with useful notes, see
Percival, Seven Ecumenical Councils, pp. 359 – 408, and The Rudder (Pedalion), pp. 290 – 412.
1 David John Williams, The Council in Trullo, http://davidjohnwilliams.blogspot.com/2016/05/the-council-

in-trullo.html, n. 25, May 19, 2016.

2 Demetrios J. Constantelos, Renewing the Church: The Significance of the Council in Trullo, p. 105, Brookline:

MA, Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 2006. Also see David Ferguson Wagschal, The Nature of Law and Legality in
the Byzantine Canonical Collections 381 – 883, Vol. I, Ch. I, C, 6., p. 69, n. 208, Dissertation: Durham
University, 2010, who notes that Justinian’s “Novel 131.1, which confirms the dogmatic definitions and
canons of the first four councils [was] updated in the 9th C in Basilica 5.3.2 to include the seven ecumenical
councils.”
 359

Constantinople, who had been elevated anew to the throne of Constantinople at that time after divine
Ignatius had been exiled to Mitylene, by force and power of Caesar Bardas; and the legates, or
deputies, of Pope Nicholas, namely, Rodoald of Porto and Zacharias of Anagnoea, who were then in
Constantinople on a mission against the iconomachists. … The present Council has been assigned by
all commentators a place preceding the other local Councils held previously to this one, either
because of its having been a large one and one more numerously attended than were those, or rather
because it followed immediately in the wake of Seventh Ecum. Council both in respect of the date and
in that it was convoked against the same iconomachists as those against whom that one was
convoked, and, in a way, this Council was, in that respect, a continuation or successor of that one. 1

Landon writes:

in 861 he [Photius] convoked another council, at which three hundred and eighteen bishops
(including the pope’s legates) attended, together with the Emperor Michael and a large number of
lords and people.2

The twelfth canon of the First-and-Second Council clearly recognizes the canonical authority of the Sixth
Council.

Besides the fact that the holy and Ecumenical Sixth Council has made liable to deposition from
office clerics who are officiating or baptizing within a home in prayer-houses without the
consent and approval of the bishop, we too join hands with that Council in condemning them
likewise. For inasmuch as the holy Church is expounding the faith straightforwardly and soundly, and
is professing and defending the true word, and is both maintaining and teaching outright the decorum
regulating conduct in actual life, it is dissonant and undevout to relegate those living together with
uneducatedness to their own roles, to vitiate her good order, and to permeate her with troubles and
scandals galore. Wherefore the present sacred Council in cooperation with God, and in agreement
with the Ecumenical and holy Sixth Council, has decreed that those who are officiating within a
private home in prayerhouses are declericated, that is to say, the declerication being awarded them by
the local bishop. But if any other persons than these, without the bishop’s lending his good will, should
fall into those roles and dare to touch the liturgy, they are to be deposed from office, whereas those on
the other hand who partook of their communion are to undergo excommunication. 3

For comparison, this is Canon 31 of the Sixth Ecumenical Council in Trullo:

Clerics who in oratories which are in houses offer the Holy Mysteries or baptize, we decree ought to
do this with the consent of the bishop of the place. Wherefore if any cleric shall not have so done, let
him be deposed.4

Some canons and acts of this Council also compare with the following Trullan Canons: 19, 31 (a second time),
34 (twice), 40, 41, 49, 59, and 80.

St. Photius

Photius also designates the Trullan Council as ecumenical. In Photius’ Encyclical to the Eastern Patriarchs in
867, he makes reference to Canons 55 and 13, respectively:

1 The Rudder (Pedalion), p. 453 – 454.

2 Landon, A Manual of Councils, Vol. I, p. 214.
3 The Rudder (Pedalion), p. 468 – 469.
4 Percival, Seven Ecumenical Councils, p. 379.
 360

Similarly, by the 56th canon of the holy Fourth Ecumenical Synod which states: Since we have learnt
that in the city of Old Rome some, during the Great Fast, in opposition to the ecclesiastical order
handed down to us, keep the fast even on Saturdays, the holy Ecumenical Synod orders that in the
Church of Old Rome the Apostolic Canon which prohibits fasting on Saturdays and Sundays is to be
followed exactly.

Similarly, there is a canon of the regional synod of Gangra which anathematises those who do not
recognise married priests. This was confirmed by the holy Sixth Ecumenical Synod, which
condemned those who require that priests and deacons cease to cohabit with their lawful wives after
their ordination. Such a custom was being introduced even then by the Church of Old Rome. That
Synod reminded the Church of Old Rome of the evangelical teaching and of the canon and polity of
the Apostles, and ordered it not to insult the holy institution of Christian marriage established by God
Himself.1

The canons of Trullo are contained in the first canonical collection of St. Photius in 883, called the
Nomocanon, which has held an important place in the East, as a standard source and compilation of the
ecclesiastical laws. The Catholic Encyclopedia has the following article on “Nomocanon”:

Nomocanon (from the Greek νόμος, law, and κάνων, a rule), a collection of ecclesiastical law,
the elements of which are borrowed from secular and canon law. When we recall the important
place given to ecclesiastical discipline in the imperial laws such as the Theodosian Code, the Justinian
collections, and the subsequent “Novellæ”, and “Basilica”, the utility of comparing laws and canons
relating to the same subjects will be readily recognized. Collections of this kind are found only in
Eastern law. The Greek Church has two principal collections. The first, dating from the end of the
sixth century, is ascribed, though without certainty, to John Scholasticus (q. v.), whose canons it
utilizes and completes. He had drawn up (about 550) a purely canonical compilation in fifty titles,
and later composed an extract from the “Novellæ” in eighty-seven chapters (for the canonical
collection see Voellus and Justellus, “Bibliotheca juris canonici”, Paris, 1661, II, 449 sqq.; for the
eighty-seven chapters, Pitra, “Juris ecclesiastici Græcorum historia et monumenta”, Rome, 1864, II,
385). To each of the fifty titles were added the texts of the imperial laws on the same subject, with
twenty-one additional chapters nearly all borrowed from John’s eighty-seven (Voellus and Justellus,
op. cit., II, 603). In its earliest form this collection dates from the reign of Emperor Heraclius (610-
40), at which time Latin was replaced by Greek as the official language of the imperial laws. Its two
sections include the ecclesiastical canons and the imperial laws the latter in fourteen titles.

This collection was long held in esteem and passed into the Russian Church, but was by
degrees supplanted by that of Photius. The first part of Photius's collection contains the conciliar
canons and the decisions of the Fathers. It is in substance the Greek collection of 692, as it is
described by canon ii of the Trullan Council (see Law, Canon), with the addition of 102 canons of that
council, 17 canons of the Council of Constantinople of 861 (against Ignatius), and of 3 canons
substituted by Photius for those of the œcumenical council of 869. The nomocanon in fourteen titles
was completed by additions from the more recent imperial laws. This whole collection was
commentated about 1170 by Theodore Balsamon, Greek Patriarch of Antioch residing at
Constantinople (Nomocanon with Balsamon’s commentary in Voellus and Justellus, II, 815; P.G., CIV,
441). Supplemented by this commentary the collection of Photius has become a part of the
“Pidalion” (πηδάλιον, rudder), a sort of Corpus Juris of the Orthodox Church, printed in 1800 by
Patriarch Neophytus VIII. In the eleventh century it had been also translated into Slavonic for the
Russian Church; it is retained in the law of the Orthodox Church of Greece, and included in the
“Syntagma” published by Rhallis and Potlis (Athens, 1852-9). Though called the “Syntagma”, the
collection of ecclesiastical law of Matthew Blastares (c. 1339) is a real nomocanon, in which the texts
of the canons and of the laws are arranged in alphabetical order (P.G., loc. cit.; Beveridge,

1Holy Transfiguration Monastery (translators), On the Mystagogy of the Holy Spirit, p. 53, [Boston, MA]:
Studion Publishers, 1983. Note that by mistake in the text it reads “56th canon of the holy Fourth Ecumenical
Synod”, whereas it should say “55th canon of the holy Sixth Ecumenical Synod”.
 361

“Synodicon”, Oxford, 1672). A remarkable nomocanon was composed by John Barhebræus (1226-
86) for the Syrian Church of Antioch (Latin version by Assemani in Mai, “Script. vet, nova collectio”, X,
3 sqq.). Several Russian manuals published at Kiev and Moscow in the seventeenth century were
also nomocanons.1

The fact that Photius’s Nomocanon was translated into Slavonic and used by the Russian Church shows that
the Russian Church of the eleventh century accepted and incorporated the canons of Trullo.

A prologue (dated to 883) to the Collection in Fourteen Titles, and attributed to Photius by some, terms Trullo
“the sixth” council when discussing its canons.2 This prologue states, “The present book therefore contains all
that the [first] prologue has described, as well as, in the same sequence, and in the same order of composition
that those before us devised, the regulations which the sixth ecumenical council defined; and further those of
the seventh ecumenical council, …”3

Popes have attributed canons of the Quinisext Council to the Sixth Ecumenical Council, showing that the
Quinisext Council has canonical authority. In light of this fact, the Latins’ only response is to pick and choose
which canons they want to accept, showing that they are detached from the divine decrees coming from the
council that Popes have clearly recognized as the Sixth Ecumenical Council.

It was mentioned above that Pope Sergius I allegedly refused to sign the decrees of the Quinisext Council, but
even if this happened, it is because the Council condemns many of the errors that the Latins had already
begun to fall into. In addition, this only serves to show the inconsistency of the Roman Popes, as the canons
did receive acceptance at Rome, and besides the signature of the Roman legates at Trullo and the legates of
the Pope who were present at the Seventh Ecumenical Council, there is also the unambiguous testimony of
Pope Hadrian (or Adrian) I.4

The Libri Carolini and Pope Hadrian

The Caroline Books are a work in four books written by command of Charlemagne against the Second Council
of Nicaea. Although they have many errors, they contain a testimony to the Western recognition of the
Trullan Council as the Sixth Ecumenical Council. The author of these books is not known with certainty, and
according to the Catholic Encyclopedia, “The author may be Alcuin; possibly one or more of the Spanish or
Irish theologians who were then residing at the Frankish court.” 5 Another possible author is Angilram of
Metz, but current scholars favor Theodulf of Orleans. Note that much of their criticism against the Seventh
Ecumenical Council is due to a “very faulty Latin version of the Greek acts” 6 of this Council.

The Seventh Ecumenical Council had adduced Canon 82 of Trullo in favour of images (this important canon
will be discussed later), and while the Libri Carolini challenge the Iconophile use made of this canon, their
author admits the validity of the Trullan Canon and recognizes it as produced by Sixth Ecumenical Council.
In Book II occurs the following passage:

1 Auguste Boudinhon, Nomocanon, in CE, Vol. XI, pp. 94 – 95. Photius’s second Nomocanon, prepared
anonymously after his last deposition in 886, also identifies the Council in Trullo with the Sixth Ecumenical
Council, and is based on Canon II of Trullo (William Palmer, The Patriarch and the Tsar, Vol. I, The Replies of
the Humble Nicon, p. 625, London: Trübner & Co., 1871).
2 David Ferguson Wagschal, The Nature of Law and Legality in the Byzantine Canonical Collections 381 – 883,

Vol. I, Ch. II, A., 4., p. 102, Dissertation: Durham University, 2010.
3 Wagschal, The Nature of Law, Vol. II, Appendix B., p. 290.
4 See the passage from Hefele is quoted at length above.
5 Thomas J. Shahan, Caroline Books, in CE, Vol. III, p. 371.
6 Thomas J. Shahan, Caroline Books, in CE, Vol. III, p. 371.
 362

XVIII. Quod non ad adorationem imaginum pertineat testimonium, quod de sexta synodo
protulerunt. Textus sane testimonii, quod de sexta synodo in eadem nugarum adglomeratione, quae
pro adorandis imaginibus scripta est, taxasse perhibentur, talis est: In quibusdam venerabilium
imaginis picture agnus digito precursoris monstratus designator, quod in signum relictus est gratiae,
verum nobis per legem premonstrans agnum, Christum Dominum nostrum. Qui tamen, quamquam non
ita ab illis prolatus sit, sicut in eadem synodo habetur, nec sic quidem, ut ab illis usurpatus est,
cuiusdam imaginum adorationis quandam fecisse dinoscitur mentionem; sed cum pene nullum
habeat Latine integritatis vigorem sensuque sit tepidus verbisque inlepidus / et quadam ex parte
ratione nudatus, nullum tamen eorum errori adminiculum prebere monstratur. 1

Pope Hadrian’s letter to the Frankish bishops in c. 794, in reply to the Caroline Books (or perhaps in reply to a
similar assembly of Frankish theologians with the assistance of Charlemagne who wrote a separate criticism
of the Seventh Ecumenical Council), contains an important passage assuming (both by the Franks and
Hadrian) that Trullo was part of the Holy Sixth Ecumenical Council. It is not certain whether Hadrian is
replying to the Caroline Books or to the Frankish assembly or to both, and this is another testimony that the
critics of Nicaea II did not deny the validity of the Trullan canon, yet challenged its relevance, but Pope
Hadrian defends Trullo and the pertinency of its 82nd Canon, and proceeds to quote part of the 82nd Canon:

Reprehensio. Quod non ad adorationem imaginum pertineat testimonium quod de sexta

synodo protulerunt.

Responsio. Idcirco testimonium de sancta sexta synodo protulerunt ut clarifice ostenderent

quod jam quando sancta sexta synodus est, a priscis temporibus sacras imagines et historias pictas
venerabantur. Unde ipsa sancta sexta synodus fideliter per canones orthodoxe statuens, ita
constituit dicens: “In quibusdam venerabilium imaginum picturis, agnus digito præcursoris
monstratus designator, qui in signum relictus est gratiæ.” Et post pauca: “Secundum humanam
figuram et in imaginibus a nunc pro veteri agno retitulari decernimus, etc.” Unde et beatus
Augustinus in psalmo XCIII explanavit: “Si autem non adoras in Christo ista terrena, quamvis de illis
similitudo quædam data est ad significandos sanctos, de quacunque creatura ducta fuerit similitude,
tu intellige similitudinem creaturæ, et adora artificem creaturæ, etc.”2

In a later section of this letter, Hadrian refers to, and quotes from the above chapter, mentioning Trullo again
as part of the Sixth Council:

Interrogatio. Ut scientes nos faciant, ubi in Veteri vel Novo Testamento, aut in sex synodalibus
conciliis jubeantur imagines facere, vel factas adorare.

Responsio. Nos quidem infra scientes facimus, sicut jam fecimus, quia et in Veteri et in Novo
Testamento, siva in sex synodalibus conciliis semper venerandæ faciunt [fuerunt] sacræ imagines, et
factæ inter sancta sanctorum titulabantur. Nam illi nobis dicere debebant in quali de ipsis sex
synodalibus conciliis reprehensæ sint sacræ imagines. Enim veri in primo sancto concilio … In sexto
vero sancto concilio non solum contemnere non sunt ausi, sed etiam easdem sacras imagines

1 Ann Freeman and Paul Meyvaert, Opus Caroli regis contra synodum (Libri Carolini), Liber II, XVIII, pp. 267 –
268, Hannover: Hahnsche Buchhandlung, 1998, (Monumenta Germaniae Historica, [Leges], Concilia, Tomus
II, Supplementum I). Mendham gives a paraphrase or summary in Mendham, The Seventh General Council,
Session the Fourth, p. 160, n. *.
2 Hadrianum, I, Ch. XXXV, In Actione Sexta, in Migne, PL, Vol. XCVIII, p. 1264 A – B. “Therefore they [the

Fathers of the Seventh Council] brought forward this testimony from the Holy Sixth Council, that they might
clearly show that when that Holy Sixth Synod was convened they had long been accustomed to venerate
images and historic pictures.” English paraphrased, see Mendham, The Seventh General Council, the Second
of Nicæa, p. 160.
 363

venerantes statuerunt, agnum Christum Deum nostrum secundum humanam figuram, et in

imaginibus a nunc pro veteri agno retitulari. 1

The Libellus Synodalis of the Paris Synod or Colloquium of 1 November 825, in a list of authorities quoted on
icons, also quotes the 82nd Canon of Trullo at length, ascribing it to the Holy Sixth and Great Council:

In definition sancti sexti et magni concilii cap. LXXXII.: In quibusdam venerabilium imaginum
picturis agnus digito praecursoris monstratus designator, qui in signum relictus est gratiae, verum
nobis per legem praemonstrans agnum Christum Deum nostrum, qui abstulit peccata mundi.

Et post pauca: Secundum humanam figuram et in imaginibus nunc pro veteri agno retitulari
decernimus, per ipsum humilitatis altitudinem Dei verbi considerantes et ad memoriam quae in
carne actionis quique passionis eius et salutiferae mortis minibus educati et quae abhine facta est
mundi redemptio et cetera.2

The 82nd Quinisext Canon is important because it refutes the iconoclast heresy several decades before the
controversy over images, by approving of the “venerable icons”. This connects the Sixth Council with the
Seventh, which refutes those, such as many Protestants and Iconoclasts, who profess to hold to the first Six
Ecumenical Councils but reject the Seventh Council. The main purpose of the Seventh Ecumenical Council
was to deal with the Iconoclast heresy and declare the Orthodox doctrine on the proper veneration given to
images. The fact that Popes consider this canon to have been made by the Sixth Ecumenical Council proves
that the Quinisext canons were recognized in the West as the canons legislated by the Holy Sixth Ecumenical
Council.

Patriarch St. Germanus I of Constantinople (c. 634 – 732/740, Patriarch from 715 – 730), writes:

In eternal memory of the life in the flesh of our Lord Jesus Christ, of His passion, His saving death, and
the redemption of the world which results from them, we have received the tradition of representing
Him in His human form – i.e., in His visible theophany – understanding that in this way we exalt the
humiliation of God the Word.3

1 Hadrianum, II, Ch. XIX, in Migne, PL, Vol. XCVIII, pp. 1285 A – 1286 B.
2 Albert Werminghoff (editor), Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Concilia, Vol. II, Concilia Aevi Karolini I, Part
II, 44. Concilium Parisiense, p. 513, lines 1 – 8, Hannover and Leipzig: Impensis Bibliopolii Hahniani, 1908.
3 Germanus I, De haeresibus et synodis; PG 98: 80 A. Translated in John Meyendorff, Byzantine Theology:

Historical Trends and Doctrinal Themes, Part I, Ch. III, § 3., p. 45, New York, NY: Fordham University Press,
2nd Ed., 1983. Germanus’s work was perhaps written after his retirement in 730, although others date it to
723 – 724. Meyendorff places this quote of Germanus almost immediately after his (Meyendorff’s) citation of
the 82nd canon, noting the parallel of the image of Jesus “in His human form”, and writes that Germanus
“used the same Christological argument” [as the fathers of the Council in Trullo] “against the incipient
iconoclasm of the court” (op. cit., p. 45). Stephen Charles Steacy, a student who wrote his Master of Arts
thesis on Iconoclasm, follows Meyendorff and also implies a connection here between Germanus and Trullo
(Iconoclasm: A Christian Dilemma – A Byzantine Controversy, Ch. III, pp. 70 – 71, Stillwater, OK, Dissertation:
Oklahoma State University, 1978.). Another Master of Arts thesis makes this connection (Erin Michael Doom,
Patriarch, Monk and Empress: A Byzantine Debate Over Icons, pp. 89, 169, Wichita, KS, Dissertation: Wichita
State University, 2005). The Serbian Orthodox bishop and scholar Athanasius Yevtich (1938 – current) also
points out the connection of these words of Germanus with the 82nd canon of Trullo, in his introduction to
the French translation of Theodore the Studite’s treatise on icons (St. Théodore du Stoudion, L’Image
Incarnée: Trois Controverses Contre les Adversaires des Saintes Images, tr. by Jean-Louis Palierne, intro. by
Athanase Jevtitch, I, 2., pp. 18 – 20, Lausanne: L’Âge l’Homme, 1999). Brunet also makes the connection and
says that Germanus here freely quotes the 82nd canon (Ester Brunet, Il ruolo di papa Gregorio II (715-731)
 364

Later in this work (De Haeresibus et Synodis / On Heresies and Synods), when listing the synods whose
canons are accepted, Germanus lists various local synods, followed by the six ecumenical councils. For each
of the first four ecumenical councils, Germanus lists them out separately, but for the last two, he groups them
together “quinta et sexta”, showing that he recognized the canons of the Quinisext Council.1 It has also been
suggested that Germanus himself may have played a role in the Quinisext Council.2

St. John of Damascus, in his third treatise against those who attack the holy icons, writes, “Having spoken of
the difference between idols and images, and having taught the definition of images, behold we now bring
forward the [patristic] citations, as we have undertaken.”3 St. John goes on to quote many fathers and
authorities in defence of icons, and his second-to-last citation is the full text of the 82nd canon of Trullo,
which he introduces with the approving words: “The Holy Sixth Synod that met under Justinian concerning
the Holy Fifth Synod:”4

Also see Oratio demonstrativa de sacris et venerandis imaginibus adversus Imperatorem Costantinum
Cabalinum, Migne, P.G., Vol. XCV, pp. 319 – 322. This extended passage is quite a strong testimony for Trullo’s
identification with the Sixth Synod, including a full citation of Canon 82. Although this oration is in the works
of John, it is said not to proceed from him, but rather from a John of Jerusalem, and is dated to 770.

Patriarch St. Nicephorus I of Constantinople (or Nikephorus, 758 – 828, Patriarch from 806 – 815), a hero in
the Iconoclast controversy, accepts the validity of the Trullan canons in his first theological work, the
Apologeticus Minor, according to the distinguished Byzantine scholar and Berkeley Professor Emeritus Paul
Julius Alexander (1910 – 1977):

It was named Apologeticus Minor by its first editor, A. Mai, to distinguish it from a much
lengthier (and later) Apologeticus Maior. The Apologeticus Minor is a more or less official document
issued by Nicephorus in his capacity as Patriarch of Constantinople.

… There follows an inquiry into the validity of the canons of the Sixth Council (chs. 9–10)
and into certain heretical quotations, in particular from Eusebius, and finally once again the
statement that if the present schism does not cease an ecumenical council will have to meet.

nel processo di ricezione del concilio Trullano o Quinisesto (692), in Iura Orientalia, Vol. III, p. 60, Rome:
Pontificio Istituto Orientale, 2007). It is evident that Germanus was aquainted with the 82nd Trullan Canon
because Pope Gregory II cites it in a letter to Germanus (cited below).
1 Migne, PG, Vol. 98, pp. 83 – 84, B – C.
2 See Charles Garton and Leendert G. Westerink (translators), Germanos, On Predestined Terms of Life, vii,

Buffalo, NY: Department of Classics Clemens Hall State University of New York, 1979. Also referred to by Erin
Michael Doom, Patriarch, Monk and Empress: A Byzantine Debate Over Icons, pp. 81, 89, Wichita, KS,
Dissertation: Wichita State University, 2005.
3 Andrew Louth (translator), St. John of Damascus, Three Treatises On the Divine Images, Treatise III, 42, p.

112, in Popular Patristics Series, Crestwood, NY: Saint Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2003.
4 John of Damascus, Three Treatises On the Divine Images, Treatise III, 137, pp. 157 – 158. Note that this

translation is missing the word “Sixth” between the words “Holy Synod”, see Migne, Patrologia Graeca, Vol.
XCIV, 1417 D – 1420 A.
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The date of this work has been given by Mai and Ehrhard as 813 because in one passage it is
said that the canons of the Trullanum (692) have been valid ὑπὲρ τὰ ἑκατὸν εἴκοσι ἔτη, ‘more than
120 years’.1

Nicephorus establishes the ecumenicity of the Quinisext Council in the following important passages:

For necessarily even now the canons of the holy sixth synod are observed and have force … For the
worthiness of the men who prescribed these canons, their great number and their trustworthiness is
clear to all Christians. For the sacred patriarchs of that time and others of the bishops, up to the
number of two hundred and forty, pronounced these canons as their own: this is clear from their own
signatures … How then is it not blasphemous and unlawful not to admit such a great number of
bishops and to consider this as an historical fact … [The honour given to images before this council
was an obvious fact for the Fathers of this council] … The leading sees and the emperors and bishops
of those times alike show this plainly. And if some idle talkers say that the pronouncement of these
canons took place some time after the sixth council, the doctrine of the Church does not for this
reason fail utterly. For the intervening time does not prevent them from being called canons of the
sixth council, because the reason for their being gathered together was that neither the fifth holy
council nor the sixth had issued canons. Hence they were gathered together most usefully and of
necessity, and pronounced them, for the common benefit of the Church. These Fathers are in no way
inferior both as regards numbers or as regards their worth, father they are superior in these; for in
the sixth holy council there were about one hundred and seventy fathers whereas in the publication
of the canons, there were two hundred and forty bishops.2

In the Appendix, Paul J. Alexander gives a summary and paraphrase of Nicephorus’ work Refutatio et Eversio,
the full title of which is “Criticism and refutation of the lawless, undefined, and truly spurious Horus set forth
by men who abandonded the Catholic and Apostolic Church and adhered to foreign thought to destroy the
saving dispensation of the Word of God”.3 The critical edition of this work, until which point only existing in
two manuscripts in the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris,4 was published by J. M. Featherstone in 1997.5 Alice-
Mary Maffry Talbot calls this treatise of Nicephorus an “important work”.6

Paul J. Alexander, in his paraphrase of Refutatio et Eversio, writes:

‘This synod confirmed and strengthened the God-inspired dogmas of the holy Fathers, it followed the
six holy synods and set forth most holy canons.’

If they had really followed the decisions of the six ecumenical councils, they should have acted as the
Sixth Council did1, and not have condemned image-worship. The Fathers of the Sixth Council knew
that preference was due to adoration in the spirit and truth, but preference for something superior
does not mean condemnation of things inferior. …

1 Paul Julius Alexander, The Patriarch Nicephorus of Constantinople: Ecclesiastical Policy and Image Worship
in the Byzantine Empire, VII, 2., pp. 163 – 164, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1958 (reprinted 2001).
2 Apologeticus Minor, PG, Vol. 100, pp. 845C – 848B. Translated in Patrick O’Connell, The Ecclesiology of St

Nicephorus I (758 – 828) Patriarch of Constantinople: Pentarchy and Primacy, Ch. IX, 5., p. 126 – 127,
Orientalia Christiana Analecta, 194, Rome: Pontifical Oriental Institute, 1972.
3 Alexander, Patriarch Nicephorus of Constantinople, Appendix, p. 242.
4 In Parsinius Graecus 1250, fol. 173 – 332, and in Coislinianus 93, fol. 1 – 185 bis. Patrick O’Connell, The

‘Patristic Argument’ in the Writings of Patriarch St. Nicephorus I of Constantinople († 828), Studia Patristica,
Vol. XI, p. 210, n. 1., Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1972. Alexander, Patriarch Nicephorus of Constantinople,
Appendix, p. 242.
5 J. M. Featherstone, Nicephori Patriarchae Constantinopolitani: Refutatio et eversio definitionis synodalis

anni 815, Corpus Christianorum. Series Graeca, XXXIII, Turnhout: Brepols/Leuven University Press, 1997.
6 Alice-Mary Maffry Talbot, Byzantine Defenders of Images: Eight Saints’ Lives in English Translation, A., 5., p.

31, n. 20, Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 1998.
 366

Since the Iconoclasts claim that they are following the six ecumenical councils, Nicephorus proposes
to examine the conciliar decrees. To begin with the first Council of Nicaea, the position of its
members on the image problem is made clear by the church built in their honour and adorned,
together with other images, with splendid mosaics of those holy fathers of Nicaea and of Constantine
the Great. Furthermore, would they have condemned Arianism as creature-worship if they had seen
Christians committing the much more serious sin of idol-worship? There follow similar observations
on the Second, Third, Fourth, Fifth Ecumenical Councils as well as a lengthy discussion of the Sixth
Council; the doctrine of the two wills and two energies shows that Christ’s human nature subsists
even after His resurrection, consequently He can be represented by an image. …

The holy councils approved image-worship, in particular the sixth.

[Alexander’s Footnote:] 1. Canon 82, see pp. 45 f. above [where Alexander quotes and discusses the
82nd canon].1

The Irish Jesuit Patrick O’Connell writes:

For Nicephorus, writing against the Iconoclasts who were widely regarded by the faithful as denying
the very economy of the incarnation, the council of Chalcedon as well as 2nd and 3rd Constantinople,
supplemented by the Quinisext council, are of great importance. It is precisely the traditional faith
defined at these councils that the Fathers defend and expound. There is a mutual relationship.2

The Chalke Gate Inscription may possibly be seen as the Iconoclast Emperor Leo’s response to the 82nd
Canon of Trullo.

In 726 CE, Leo III ordered the removal and destruction of the icon of Christ over the Chalke gate of
the imperial palace, an icon that served as a symbol of the protection of Christ over both emperor and
empire. In its place, Leo ordered the installation of a cross to serve as a more proper (non-
idolatrous) symbol of Christ and his triumph with the following inscription:
“The Lord not suffering Christ to be portrayed in voiceless form devoid of breath, by means of earthly
matter which the scriptures reject, Leo and his son, the new Constantine, trace the thrice-blessed sign
of the cross, the glory of believers, at the palace gates.” (Schö nborn, “Theological Presuppositions,”
87.)3

Erin Michael Doom comments, “The inscription with the cross over the Chalke gate can be seen as a response
to Canon 82.”4

The Letter of the Three Patriarchs (those of Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem) to Emperor Theophilus in the
year 836 may be alluding to the Trullan Council, when they say that 289 bishops were present at the Sixth

1 Alexander, Patriarch Nicephorus of Constantinople, Appendix, pp. 246 – 251. The text in quotations is a
direct quote of Nicephorus, while the rest is a paraphrase/summary. I highly recommend reading the
entirety of this Appendix, for an excellent understanding of the Orthodox mindset, and evidence in support of
the Orthodox view on the dignity of the Bishop of Rome.
2 Patrick O’Connell, The ‘Patristic Argument’ in the Writings of Patriarch St. Nicephorus I of Constantinople (†

828), Studia Patristica, Vol. XI, p. 213, Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1972.

3 Erin Michael Doom, Patriarch, Monk and Empress: A Byzantine Debate Over Icons, p. 22, Wichita, KS,

Dissertation: Wichita State University, 2005.

4 Doom, Patriarch, Monk and Empress, p. 85.
 367

Ecumenical Council, in their summary list of the Seven Ecumenical Synods. The editors note, “The Patriarchs
may be referring to the Quinisext Council in Trullo, 692”.1

A Greek life of Pope St. Martin I (by an unknown author), dated to 730 – 740, refers to the 82nd canon of
Trullo as a condemnation of iconoclasm, and attributes it to the Sixth Ecumenical Council.2

A Greek chronological work dating from either 734 or 736 (more likely 734) gives “the interval between the
Sixth and Quinisext Councils” as 11 or 12 years. This chronology provides the dates and intervals between
the Ecumenical Councils, and has been copied and passed down in various forms in the manuscripts, along
with similar chronologies.3 By including the Quinisext Council in a list of the Ecumenical Councils, this
8th century Byzantine chronicler (writing within 45 years of the Quinisext Council), and repeatedly followed
by later chroniclers, shows that it was recognized as having Ecumenical authority.

The 8th century Church in England implicitly accepted the canons of Trullo, according to several authors and
scholars. The Anglican assistant-curate Frederick Hall notes that the Trullan “canons were also recognized as
part of the English Code by the fourth of the Legatine Canons at Cealchythe (probably Chelsea), A.D. 785.” 4
Hall refers to John Baron’s notes upon John Johnson’s Laws and Canons (both Anglicans). John Baron notes:

The Trullan canons made at Constantinople, A.D. 683, and the decrees of Pope Gregory II., A.D. 721,
are also recognised as part of the code of the English Church by the fourth of the Legatine canons at
Cealchythe, A.D. 785.”5

Note that this city is variously named Celichyth, Calcuith, Calchite, Cealchythe, Chalkhythe, Chalk-hythe, or
Chalthuthe, and was most probably at Chelsea.6

The fourth Legatine canon of the council of Celichyth states:

That bishops take great care, that canons live canonically, and monks and nuns behave themselves
regularly, both as to diet and apparel, that there may be a distinction between a canon, a monk, and a
secular. Let the monks use the habit that the Orientals do, and the canons also; and not garments

1 Charalambos Dendrinos, Joseph A. Munitiz, Julian Chrysostomides, Eirene Harvalia-Crook (editors), The
Letter of the Three Patriarchs to Emperor Theophilus and Related Texts, p. 58, n. 196, Camberly:
Porphyrogenitus, 1997. Also see p. 94, n. 45 (there is a reference to this page in the section on Pope
Honorius), where the Monothelites are said to have been condemned under the devout Justinian (who
convened the Quinisext Council) which is probably a mistaken reference for Emperor Constantine IV (who
convened the first assembly of the Sixth Council), although the Monothelites were condemned again at Trullo
as well. It appears that the occasional mix-up between these two assemblies is due to the fact that they were
considered as one council, convened in separate parts by two Emperors.
2 Joseph A. Munitiz, Synoptic Greek Accounts of the Seventh Council, Revue des Études byzantines, Vol. XXXII,

p. 167, Paris: Peeters, 1974. Paul Peeters, Une Vie Grecque du Pape S. Martin I, Analecta Bollandiana, Vol. LI,
Ch. XIV, pp. 252 & 262, Brussels: Société des Bollandistes, 1933.
3 Munitiz, Synoptic Byzantine Chronologies of the Councils, pp. 207, 212, & 193 – 218.
4 Frederick Hall, Fasting Reception of the Blessed Sacrament a Custom of the Church Catholic, p. 19, n. 1,

London: Rivingtons, 1881.

5 John Baron (editor & translator), John Johnson, A Collection of the Laws and Canons of the Church of

England, Vol. I, A.D., 673, Theodore’s Canons, p. 90, note asterisk, Oxford: John Henry Parker, 1850.
6 Arthur West Haddan and William Stubbs, Councils and Ecclesiastical Documents relating to Great Britain

and Ireland, Vol. III, XIII Jaenbert, Canon IV, p. 445, note a., Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1871.
 368

dyed with Indian tinctures, or very costly. But let bishops, abbots, and abbesses, give good example
to their subjects, as Peter says, “Be ye a pattern to the flock,” &c. Therefore we advise, that the
synodal edicts of the six general councils, with the decrees of the Roman pontiffs, be often read with
attention, and that the ecclesiastic state be reformed, according to the pattern prescribed there; that
so no novelty be introduced, lest there be a schism in the Church of God.1

The Latin text reads:

Quartus sermo: Ut Episcopi diligenti cura provideant, quo omnes canonici sui canonice
vivant, et monachi seu monachæ regulariter conversentur, tam in cibis quam in vestibus, ut discretio
sit inter canonicum et monachum vel secularem: et illo habitu vivant, quo Orientales monachi
degunt: et canonici exemplo Orientalium, et non tinctis Indiæ coloribus, aut veste preciosa: sed
Episcopi, abbates, et abbatissæ, subjectis sibi in omnibus exemplum bonum præbeant, ut Petrus ait,
“Estote forma facti gregis, secundum Dominum,” etc. Qua de re suademus, ut synodalia edicta
universalium sex conciliorum cum decretis pontificum Romanorum sæpius lectitentur, observentur,
et juxta eorum exemplar Ecclesiæ status corrigatur, ut ne quid novi ab aliquibus introduci
permittatur, ne sit schisma in Ecclesia Dei.2

The canons of this synod “were unanimously received and signed by King Offa, Lambert, Archbishop of
Canterbury, twelve other bishops, several abbots, and other great men of the laity.”3

John Baron refers to John Johnson’s The Clergyman’s Vade-Mecum, where Johnson writes:

I proceed only to the Year 785, exclusively; for in that Year there was an execrable Addition
made to the Codes both Eastern and Western, by the second Council of Nice. This Year or not many
before, Adrian I. presented his Latin Code to Charles the Great, ending with these Decretals. The Greek
Code had not any Additions to it after the Synod of Trullo, A.D. 683, till the said second Council of
Nice; so that my Reader has the Codes of both these two great Branches of the Christian Church, as
they stood in the beginning of the Year 787; and happy had it been for the Christian World, if they
had never been augmented by the Canons of what is called the Seventh General Council.

I the rather chose here to break off; because it seems clear, that this whole Book of Canons
and Decretals was the Code of the English Church, receiv’d by the Synod of Chalckhyth, A.D. 787,
Lambert being Archbishop of Canterbury: By the fourth Canon whereof it was agreed, that all the
Synodal Edicts of the Six General Councils, and the Decrees of the Popes, be often read and observed, and
that the State of the Church be reform’d according to those Patterns. By the Edicts of the Six General
Councils, we are to understand, not only their Doctrinal Decrees, but Canons; and if the Canons, then
those of Trullo among the rest; for the Sixth General Council, as distinguish’d from that of Trullo,
made no Canons; and if those of Trullo, then, by consequence, all those confirm’d and receiv’d by that
Synod in its Second Canon: Therefore, by the Edicts of the first Six General Councils, and the Decrees
of the Popes, I can understand no less than all the Canons and Decrees contained in this Volume. And
it is the more credible, that they should receive the Canons of Trullo; because it is clear, that not only
the Ancient British Church, but the English too, had a great regard to the Easterns, as appears from
the Canon now cited, whereby it is Decreed, That the English Monks (see my Note on that Canon in
my Collection of Laws, &c.) and Regulars should use the Habits of the Orientals. And in another
Particular, the English Clergy copied after the Greek, that is, in retaining their Wives: For to the Reign
of Edgar, and the Presidence of Dunstan in the Archepiscopal Chair, ’tis certain, that even those of the
clergy who lived in Monasteries had their Wives co-habiting with them. And the Chronicle of Winton

1 Johnson, Laws and Canons of the Church of England, Vol. I, A.D., 785, Legatine Canons at Cealchythe, Canon
IV, pp. 268 – 269. Also see the notes on this canon.
2 Haddan and Stubbs, Councils, Vol. III, XIII Jaenbert, Canon IV, p. 450.
3 Notes and Queries: A Medium of Inter-Communication for Literary Men, Artists, Antiquaries, Genealogists,

Etc., Second Series, Vol. VIII, July – December, 1859, Calcuith, p. 205, London: Bell & Daldy, 1859.
 369

informs us, how, after a long struggle, they were at last ejected by the miraculous Voice of a Crucifix,
which yet was heard by none but the King and Archbishop. 1

Also, after citing the 29th canon of Trullo, along with other ancient authorities on the topic of fasting, the
Anglican priest Arthur Ritchie writes:

It may be objected that these councils, and the few others to which reference is made in this
paper, were only of local authority; but nevertheless they serve to show clearly what was the mind of
the Church in different lands. And in regard to the Council of Trullo just mentioned, we should bear
in mind that its decrees were accepted as part of our own English Code, by a Synod held at Chelsea,
A.D. 785.2

Whether “Orientales” refers to Greeks is disputed. Haddan and Stubbs note “By Orientales are meant the
monks of Italy and Germany, no doubt.”,3 and the note by the editor of Johnson’s Laws and Canons agrees
with this assessment:

It is hardly credible, that Roman legates should propose the example of the Eastern people to be
imitated by the English, unless by the Eastern or Orientals they meant the Italians and neighbouring
people, who were indeed sometimes called Orientals in this age. 4

The next note states:

Here the Church of England clearly received the whole body of canons and codes contained in the
second volume of the clergyman’s Vade-Mecum, which Adrian the first, now Pope, presented to the
Emperor Charles the Great; and which he sent to King Offa.5

The writer of Offa’s Life mentions that Pope Adrian sent a collection of canons to King Offa, and it is shown in
this section that Pope Adrian recognized the 82nd canon of Trullo to be from the Holy Sixth Ecumenical
Council, when he wrote to Patriarch Tarasius of Constantinople and at other times. As King Offa subscribed to
this council, the reference to the “synodal edicts of the six general councils,” could fairly be understood to
include the decrees of Trullo.

St. Anastasius of Sinai (flourished second half of seventh century, died after 700), is said to be the author of a
council synopsis, titled Synopsis de Haeresibus et Synodis. Karl-Heinz Uthemann, who edited the standard
edition, argues that the text is a multilayered composition and that the author of the main body was likely not
Anastasius, but was contemporary with Anastasius. At the end of this work the author discusses the Sixth
Council, and the final paragraph (since the Trullan Council had very recently assembled) is the following,
writing very positively about the Council in Trullo:

Constantino successit Justinianus eius filius in pietate et imperio, qui ut obsistat nonnullis concilio
renitentibus, convocat synodum episcoporum circiter numero CCXXX, et facta multa rerum
consideratione, canones auctoritate tuetur; qui orthodoxae doctrinae insignem se praebet

1 John Johnson, The Clergyman’s Vade-Mecum, Part II, pp. cxii – cxiii, Third Ed., London: R. Knaplock, 1723.
2 Arthur Ritchie, Catholic Champion, Vol. II, No. 4., March, 1890, Catholic Papers, No. 9., p. 104, New York, NY:
Guild of St. Ignatius, 1890. Ritchie refers to the same note in Frederick Hall’s work that is cited above.
3 Haddan and Stubbs, Councils, Vol. III, XIII Jaenbert, p. 461, note j., Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1871.
4 Johnson, Laws and Canons of the Church of England, Vol. I, A.D., 785, Legatine Canons at Cealchythe, Canon

IV, p. 269, note q.

5 Johnson, Laws and Canons of the Church of England, Vol. I, A.D., 785, Legatine Canons at Cealchythe, Canon

IV, p. 269, note r.

 370

defensorem, pacisque ecclesiarum confirmandae studiosissimum: et in omnibus quae meditatur,

prospera utitur fortuna, viamque carpit, quam divina ipsi gratia ostendit. 1

The Codex Barberini 336 (or Barberini Euchologion, this manuscript is mentioned above in the section on the
conservatism of the Eastern liturgy and also the chapter on trine immersion) implicitly refers to and approves
of Canon 95 of Trullo, by paraphrasing that canon (along with Canon VII of Constantinople I), in directions on
the reception of heretics by baptism or chrismation.2

Many Iconophile Florilegia and collections of Iconophile texts (circulating around the time of the Seventh
Ecumenical Council) contain the text of the 82nd Trullan Canon. Dr. Alexander Alexakis writes:

Concerning the provenance of this canon of the Quinisext council there is no doubt: it was
cited from a ϰάρτης which was, as the subsequent debate revealed, the original copy of the canons of
that council bearing the signatures of the fathers.

Since it is the only canon up to this period dealing directly with the icons, it is included in
almost every Iconophile work and florilegium composed before and after the council of 787. 3

Alexakis writes that the 82nd Canon is included in one of the earliest Iconophile works, composed by an
unknown author:

Codex Mosquensis Hist. Mus. 265 (= M) is well known as the only source of one of the earliest
Iconophile works, the Νουθεσία γέροντος περὶ τῶν ἁγíων εἰκóνων [The Admonition of an Old Man
on the Holy Icons]. It is written in a very early minuscule dating sometime between the ninth and
eleventh centuries. The prevailing opinion favors the earlier date. 4

Stephen the Younger (d. 765) was a defender of icons during the Iconoclast controversy, and was a martyr,
sentenced to death by the Iconoclastic emperor. His life (Vita Sancti Stephani Junioris) was written by
Stephen the Deacon (Stephanis Constantinopolitanus Diaconus) in the year 808 or 809, and is included in St.

1 Jean-Baptiste Pitra (editor), Iuris Ecclesiastici Graecorum Historia et Monumenta, Vol. II, II, Sancti Anastasii
Sinaitae capitulum in quo brevis sermo est de haeresibus quae ab initio fuerunt, et de synodis adversus eas
habitis, p. 271, Rome: Typis S. Congregationis De Propaganda Fide, 1868.
2 Stefano Parenti and Elena Velkovska (editors), L’Eucologio Barberini GR. 336, p. 155, Rome: CLV-Edizioni

Liiturgiche, 1995. See Patrick (John) Ramsey, Canon 95 – Council of Trullo, p. 3,

academia.edu/36579829/Canon_95_-Council_of_Trullo.
3 Alexander Alexakis, Codex Parisinus Graecus 1115 and Its Archetype, Ch. III, 25., p. 182, Dumbarton Oaks

Studies XXXIV, Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 1996; Alexakis gives
several examples, see pp. 38, 101, 121, 182 – 183, 219 & 223; Also see Alexander Alexakis, The Source of the
Greek Patristic Quotation in the Hadrianum (JE 2483) of Pope Hadrian I, in Annuarium Historiæ Conciliorum,
Vol. XXVI, 1994, pp. 18 – 19, Paderborn: Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh, 1994.
4 Alexander Alexakis, Codex Parisinus Graecus 1115 and Its Archetype, Ch. III, 3., pp. 100 – 101, Dumbarton

Oaks Studies XXXIV, Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 1996. The Νουθεσία
is written on fols. 142 – 171 of M. Alexakis does not provide a date for this work (the date above is for the
manuscript), but it was written before the year 754 (Gilbert Dagron, Empereur et Prêtre: Étude sur le
«Césaropapisme» Byzantin, p. 194, Paris: Gallimard, 1996), and as the author refers to himself as an “old
man”, this brings him nearly contemporary with Trullo.
 371

Symeon Metaphrastes’s tenth-century collection of lives of the saints.1 St. Stephen the Younger, in his
controversy against the Iconoclasts, lists the locations of the first six Ecumenical Councils, and when he comes
to the Sixth, he says “and the Sixth [Council], one part [was held] in the Church of St. Sophia, the other part in
the sacred palace at the place called ‘the Dome’ (ho Troullos), and for us, we call that ‘Ôatos’”.2 St. Stephen
therefore recognizes that the Sixth Ecumenical Council was composed of two main parts, fully aware that the
Council of Trullo was a part of the Sixth Council.

St. Theodore the Studite (759 – 826) was a theologian and the abbot of the Studion Monastery in
Constantinople, and he is distinguished for his support of the holy icons against the iconoclasts. The Catholic
Encyclopedia calls Theodore a saint and “a zealous champion of the veneration of images and the last great
representative of the unity and independence of the Church in the East”.3 St. Theodore wrote Three
Antirrhetici, against the enemies of images. In Antirrheticus II, he refers to Trullo as the “Holy Sixth
Ecumenical Council”, calling its canons “holy”, and he immediately goes on to cite in full the 82nd canon.4 Dr.
Roman Cholij notes, “In Theodore’s own writings more importance was actually given to the council in Trullo
than to the Second Council of Nicaea in defence of the icons.” 5

St. Theodore also refers to the 58th canon of Trullo, understanding it to permit lay baptism, saying, “the sixth
council, in the divine canons [divinis canonibus], allows that a layman may himself give the sacrament, if a
priest is not present”.6

The Chronicle of Theophanes the Confessor (758/760 – 817/818) contains one of the only extant Eastern
criticisms of the Council of Trullo. The Chronicle says,

It should be noted that those who maintain that the Summary Definitions of the Sixth Council (which
they make much of) were issued four years later are chattering in vain. For, as in all other respects
they are convicted of lying, so here, too, they are proved not to be speaking the truth. 7

The Chronicle then attempts to chronologically demonstrate that the Canons were issued 27 years after the
Sixth Council, and cites parts of two Trullan Canons. However, this chronicle was not primarily the work of St.
Theophanes, but of George Syncellus and anonymous editors, and the relevant passage concerning the
Canons of Trullo was written by an Iconoclast author. Moreover, the chronology given contains several

1 Stephen’s Life is found in Migne, Patrologia Graeca, Vol. C, 1067 – 1186. The critical edition, with a French
translation, is Marie-France Auzépy, La Vie d’Etienne le Jeune par Étienne le Diacre: Introduction, Édition et
Traduction, Aldershot: Variorum, 1997.
2 Auzépy, La Vie d’Etienne le Jeune, p. 243. See notes 313 – 315.
3 Klemens Löffler, Theodore of Studium, in CE, Vol. XIV, p. 574.
4 “Οῦτω τοιγαροῦν χαὶ οἱ τῆς άγἱας οὶχουμενιχῆς ἐχτης συνόδου Πατέρες ἐυ τοῖς μετὰ ταῦτα ἐχτεφεῖσιυ

αὐτοῖς ἱεποῖς χανόσιν ὶξιλμφότες τάδε φασίυ”. “Sic ergo et sanctæ œcumenicæ sextæ synodi Patres in sacris
canonibus, qui conscripti postea fuerunt, usurpantes hæc dicunt”. Antirrheticus I, XXXVIII. Migne, Patrologia
Graeca, Vol. XCIX, col. 377 D. Translated in Catharine P. Roth, St. Theodore the Studite, On the Holy Icons,
Popular Patristics Series, Crestwood, NY: SVSP, 1981.
5 Roman Cholij, Theodore the Stoudite: The Ordering of Holiness, Part I, Ch. I, p. 56, n. 330, Oxford: Oxford

University Press, 2002.

6 Epistolarum, Lib. II, Ep. CLVII, Ad Antonio Dyrrhachii. Migne, Patrologia Graeca, Vol. XCIX, col. 1491 B.

Translated in Warwick Elwin, The Minister of Baptism, Ch. VII, pp. 118 – 119, London: John Murray, 1889.
7 Cyril Mango, Roger Scott, and Geoffrey Greatrix, The Chronicle of Theophanes Confessor: Byzantine and

Near Eastern History, AD 284 – 813, AM 6177, p. 504, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997.
 372

significant errors, such as mistaking the years given according to the Byzantine Era with those of the
Alexandrian Era. See the notes of the editors in this location.1

The Iconoclast Bishop Claudius of Turin (fl. 810 – 827), wrote the following:

Adorentur agni, quia de illo scriptum est: Ecce Agnus Dei, qui tollit peccata mundi (Joan. I); sed isti
perversorum dogmatum cultores agnos vivos volunt vorare, et in pariete pictos adore. 2

This passage, written in 825, refers to Canon 82 of Trullo, although Claudius completely misunderstands its
sense, critiquing those who adore perversely “painted lambs”, when in reality the canon forbade their
representation. Brunet and Orselli both related and connected the last part of Claudius’s passage to Canon
82. Claudius also makes a negative implicit reference (again distorted) to Canon 67 of Trullo. 3 This fact helps
to show that the Iconoclasts, who heard something of canon 82 and of Trullo’s decrees (and were using
erroneous translations), had a dislike towards them, and that the Orthodox had used Trullo as evidence
against the Iconoclasts.

The Life of the Patriarch Tarasios by the deacon Ignatios, an Orthodox hagiographical work composed in the
Byzantine 840s, contains an indirect reference and approval to the citation of the 82nd Trullan Canon in the
Seventh Ecumenical Council, in the following passage:

It was Tarasios who pronounced the introductory words and opened the door of speech for
the synod; after that, the imperial and holy letter was declared publicly within hearing of all and
spoken loudly in favour of the correct and sincere faith. … And many patristic books and conciliar
decisions were brought forth and true sayings and testimonia were presented and impressed on the
ears of all by means of careful scrutiny; 4

The modern Greek scholar and professor Stephanos Efthymiadis comments on the words “conciliar
decisions”:

As clearly stated in v. 18-19, Ignatios here draws information from the Acta. … the only conciliar
decision used in Nicaea for doctrinal purpose alone is the 82nd canon of the Quinisext Council read in
the fourth and fifth sessions respectively, Mansi XIII, 40E-41B and 220C-E.5

The Chronicle of George the Monk (Georgios Monachos, George Hamartolos, Georgii Hamartoli, or
Hamartolus, active under Michael III, 842 – 867), includes the 82nd Canon as part of the Sixth Council’s

1 Mango et al., The Chronicle of Theophanes Confessor, AM 6177, pp. 505 – 506. Another English translation
is found in Harry Turtledove, The Chronicle of Theophanes: Anni Mundi 6095 – 6305 (A.D. 602 – 813), Annus
Mundi 6177, pp. 59 – 61, Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1982. A critical edition of the
original Greek text, with Anastasius’s Latin translation, can be found in Ioannis Classeni (Johannes Classen),
Theophanis Chronographia, Vol. I, AM 6177, pp. 552 – 555, Georg Barthold Niebuhr, Corpus Scriptorum
Historiae Byzantinae, Vol. XLIII, Bonn: Impensis Ed. Weberi, 1839.
2 Migne, PL, Vol. CV, p. 462 C. Ernesus Duemmler [Ernst Ludwig Dümmler], MGH, Epistolae, Vol. IV, Epistolae

Karolini Aevi, Vol. II, p. 612, lines 5 – 7, Berlin: Apud Weidmannos, 1895.
3 Brunet, Il ruolo di papa Gregorio II (715-731), Iura Orientalia, Vol. III, p. 56.
4 Stephanos Efthymiadis, The Life of the Patriarch Tarasios by Ignatios Deacon (BHG 1698), Translation, §

XXIX, p. 183, in Birmingham Byzantine and Ottoman Monographs, Vol. IV, London: Routledge, 2016.
5 Efthymiadis, The Life of the Patriarch Tarasios, Commentary, § XXIX, 14., p. 227.
 373

work.1 George was a learned and pious Orthodox monk who opposed the Iconoclasts, and he was familiar
with many theological, philosophical, and historical topics. Krumbacher writes that George’s Chronicle
“became, from the IXth century onward, the favourite handbook for spiritual instruction and entertainment.”2
In agreement with Krumbacher, the Catholic Encyclopedia writes that “his work has considerable value for
the history of the last years before the schism of Photius” and that it was “a very popular and widely
consulted book”.3

The Synodicon Vetus states the Council in Trullo was “a divine and sacred synod”. The Synodicon Vetus, or
Ancient Synodikon, is the “conventional title of an anonymous concise history of church councils written
between 887 and 920, most probably at the end of the 9th C.”4 The Synodicon Vetus records that:

Justinian, then, having taken over the Empire from his father, brought together a divine and sacred
synod of two hundred and forty God-bearing bishops in Constantinople, which issued the canons left
out by the holy Fifth and Sixth Councils and purged the Churches of all Greek, Jewish, and heretical
teaching.5

Arethas of Caesarea (born 860), the Archbishop of Caesarea and a famed scholar, writing on the issue of the
fourth marriage of Emperor Leo VI, likely in the year 914, in a pamphlet against Nicholas Mystikos, brings
forth the actions of the Council of Trullo, assuming the validity of that Council and its identity with the Sixth
Ecumenical Council:

In the same way, more recently, the Fathers of the sixth holy council dealt with the priests
who had rebelled against the canons. Their innovation was bolder, since actually they granted
release from what had been decreed, while commanding those who came after to adhere again to the
original order, and not make an example of what had come about then through mercy.6

Agapius of Hierapolis (or Mahbūb ibn-Qūṣṭānṭīn, Agapius son of Constantine), was a Melkite bishop in Syria in
the 10th century. In his Universal History, he writes:

An assembly of bishops was convened at Constantinople at the behest of Constantine. They

numbered 189 bishops and it was called the Sixth Council. Agathon, head of (the Church of) Rome,
wrote stating the agreement of his doctrine with the doctrine of the 120 bishops who did not attend

1 Joseph A. Munitiz, Synoptic Greek Accounts of the Seventh Council, in Revue des Études Byzantines, Vol.
XXXII, p. 166.
2 K. Krumbacher, Geschichte der byzantinischen Litteratur, Munich 1897, p. 355 – 356. Translated and cited

in Munitiz, Synoptic Greek Accounts of the Seventh Council, in Revue des Études Byzantines, Vol. XXXII, p.
162.
3 Adrian Fortescue, George Hamartolus, in CE, Vol. VI, p. 456.
4 Alexander P. Kazhdan, Synodicon Vetus, in The Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium, Vol. III, p. 1994.
5 John Duffy and John Parker, The Synodicon Vetus, Text and Translation, ¶ 143., p. 121, Washington, DC:

Dumbarton Oaks, Center for Byzantine Studies, Harvard University, 1979. Greek on opposing page. Also
referred to in Andrew J. Ekonomou, Byzantine Rome and the Greek Popes: Eastern Influences on Rome and
the Papacy from Gregory the Great to Zacharias, A.D. 590 – 752, Ch. 6, p. 240, n. 186., Lanham, MD: Lexington
Books, 2007. It is worth noting that the Synodicon Vetus was written by a member of the anti-Photius party.
6 Patricia Karlin-Hayter, New Arethas Documents IV, Byzantion, Vol. XXXII, No. 2., p. 478 (Greek on p. 479),

Brussels: Peeters Publishers, 1962. Arethas is referring to Canon III, which concerns clergy involved in a
second marriage.
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the Council. They enacted canons which the Chalcedonians alone accepted to the exclusion of the
other Christian groups.1

In the Middle East, the term “Chalcedonians” (or Melchites/Melkites) refers to the Orthodox, that is, those
Christians who remained faithful to the Fourth Ecumenical Council held in Chalcedon in 451, when many in
the Middle East turned Monophysite. The term “Melkite” in the modern acceptation now generally refers to
the Eastern Christians who are in union with Rome. Agapius did accept the definitions of Chalcedon, but he
appears to have rejected the Seventh Ecumenical Council held in Nicaea in 787, since he reports that the
Iconoclastic synod of Hieria in 754 was called the seventh council, without giving any objections.2 The Church
Quarterly Review writes, “Unfortunately the sole surviving manuscript of the second part of the Kitab
al-’Unvan of Agapius breaks off before 787, but he seems to regard the Iconoclast council of 753-4 as the
Seventh Oecumenical.”3 In any case, the testimony of Agapius supports the Trullan Canons, for when he says
that “other Christian groups” did not accept these canons, he is not referring to Rome or the West, but to the
various Oriental heretics (who have rejected Chalcedon) and perhaps the Iconoclasts, whom he elsewhere
also designates as Christians.

St. Symeon Metaphrastes (active tenth century, also called Simon the Logothete), a Greek magistrate,
lawmaker, and scholar, is thought to be the author of a tenth-century revision of the canonical collection
called the Synopsis, which contains the canons of the Quinisext Synod. 4

It is important that the Church in Georgia also included the Trullan Canons in their canon law collections:

We have certain evidence of Georgian use of the Greek conciliar canons in the Small
Nomokanon of Euthymios Mt‘ac‘mi(n)deli (about 955 – 1028). It will be discussed in the following
section. Since he included only the canons of the Synod of Trullo (691 – 92), one may probably
assume that the canons of the older synod were already available in Georgian translation. Nothing
more certain may be said. …

The Georgian Church’s first synod of which acts survive is the Synod of Ruis-Urbnisi. It
assembled at the command of the King David II (IV) ‘the Builder’ (1089 – 1125) in 1103 and 1105. It
was a dedicated reforming synod, where abuses in the Church were to be eliminated. Their acts,
called the ‘column inscription’ (Dzeglis-cerai) of the synod, begin with an introduction that mentions,
among other things, that the synod was not concerned with dogmatic questions, for Georgians had
always been orthodox, but with canonical matters on discipline. The sources of canon law are also
enumerated in this introduction. These are entirely Greek: native sources and the ‘Small Nomokanon’
were not used.

1 Robert G. Hoyland (translator), Theophilus of Edessa’s Chronicle and the Circulation of Historical
Knowledge in Late Antiquity and Early Islam, Translation, Section II, p. 172, in Translated Texts for
Historians, Vol. LVII, Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2011.
2 Hoyland, Theophilus of Edessa’s Chronicle, Translation, Section III, p. 292.
3 George Every, Syriac and Arabic in the Church of Jerusalem, in The Church Quarterly Review, Vol. CXLV, No.

290., p. 234, London: Spottiswoode, 1948.

4 Panayiotis Papageorgiou (translator), Spyros Troianos, Byzantine Canon Law to 1100, in Wilfried Hartmann

and Kenneth Pennington (editors), The History of Byzantine and Eastern Canon Law to 1500, Ch. III, pp. 120 –
123, Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2012. David Ferguson Wagschal, The Nature
of Law and Legality in the Byzantine Canonical Collections 381 – 883, Vol. I, Ch. I, B., p. 42, Dissertation:
Durham University, 2010.
 375

Ruis-Urbnisi incorporated the following councils and Fathers … Synod ‘in the royal palace’
(102 canons = Trullo) …1

St. Niketas Stethatos (or Nicetas Pectoratus) (1005 – 1090), was also a theologian and abbot of the Studion
Monastery in Constantinople, and he wrote against the Latins during the era of the Great Schism (~1050). In
his booklet Libellus Contra Latinos, 2 St. Nicetas makes repeated reference to the Council of Trullo, referring to
it as the Holy Sixth Ecumenical Council (sacræ sextæ synodi, sexto universali concilio, etc.), and quotes canons
55,3 52,4 and 135 of Trullo, against fasting on the Sabbath and clerical celibacy, along with his commentary, in
defence of Greek traditions and against the Latins. Niketas also adduces the Trullan canon against azymes
(Canon XI).

Cardinal Humbert’s reply to Nicetas contains the following statement on the canons of Trullo:

capitula quæ nobis sub ejus (scil. sextæ synodis) auctoritate opponitis omnino refutamus, quia prima
et apostolica sedes nec aliquando ea accepit nec observat hactenus; et quia aut sunt nulla, aut ut
nobis libuit, depravata sunt6

Heinz Ohme summarizes Humbert’s position: “Cardinal Humbert rejected all of these canons on behalf of the
Latin Church, since Rome had supposedly never accepted them and had never obeyed them, and because they
were invalid and depraved.”7 What Humbert calls “invalid and depraved”, Popes Gregory II and Adrian I
called “holy” and the work of the Sixth Ecumenical Council, as shown below.

Also, the eleventh-century Latins advocating for a married clergy brought up in their favour the Trullan
canons on marriage, but Peter Damian, a vigorous contender for clerical celibacy, rejected those canons, when
Damian was arguing against those Latin priests: “Peter Damian was compelled to denounce the use of the

1 Steven Rowan (translator), Hubert Kaufhold, Sources of Canon Law in the Eastern Churches, in Wilfried
Hartmann and Kenneth Pennington (editors), The History of Byzantine and Eastern Canon Law to 1500, Ch. V,
pp. 332 – 339, Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2012. St. Euthymius the Athonite
translated numerous Byzantine works into Georgian. The scholar Bernadette Martin-Hisard writes, “In the
subsequent decade, following the translation [in 1025], the Definition of Faith [or Synodikon of Orthodoxy]
was copied on three occasions in the manuscripts. It follows a compilation known as the Nomokanon, that is
‘Legislation’, which includes the acts of the Sixth Ecumenical Council (680 – 681), the canons of the Council in
Trullo (692), and two groups of penitential canons attributed to John the Faster.” (B. Martin-Hisard,
Synodicum Georgicum, p. 398, in Alberto Melloni (editor), The Great Councils of the Orthodox Churches: From
Constantinople 861 to Moscow 2000, Vol. I, Turnhout: Brepols Publishers, 2016.)
2 Migne, Patrologia Graeca, Vol. CXX, pp. 1011 – 1022.
3 Contra Latinos, XII. PG, CXX, 1018 A.
4 Contra Latinos, XIV. PG, CXX, 1018 D.
5 Contra Latinos, XVI. PG, CXX, 1020 A.
6 Contra Nicetas, XIX – XX PG, Vol. CXX, 1029 – 1030. Also see PL, Vol. CXLIII, 996 – 1000.
7 Steven Rowan (translator), Heinz Ohme, Sources of the Greek Canon Law to the Quinisext Council (691/2):

Councils and Church Fathers, in Wilfried Hartmann and Kenneth Pennington (editors), The History of
Byzantine and Eastern Canon Law to 1500, Ch. II, p. 84, Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America
Press, 2012.
 376

canons of Trullo in defence of marriage in the Latin church on the basis that the decrees of the council had not
been approved by the pope.”1

Peter Damian has contradicted Pope Gregory II’s words: “holy men assembled in Council, by the direction of
God, have delivered this canon to the Church”. Also, Pope Adrian I approvingly quoted Patriarch Tarasius’s
statement where Tarasius says that “I receive also all that was determined by the six holy Œcumenical
Councils, with all the Canons, legitimately and by divine inspiration enacted therein, among which is the
following – [the 82nd Trullan]”. This evidence will be presented in greater detail further below.

The Patriarch Michael Cerularius of Constantinople referred to the 23rd Canon of the “Sixth Synod”, that is,
Trullo, when he anathematized the papal legates in 1054.2

Patriarch John VIII Xiphilinos of Constantinople (1010 – 1075, Patriarch from 1064 – 1075), a distinguished
lawyer and intellectual, twice invoked canon 98 of the Quinisext Synod regarding topics of marriage law, in a
local synod, on both April 26, 1066 and March 19, 1067.3

Leo, Metropolitan of Chalcedon, in a letter to Nicholas of Adrianople in the late 11th century, discusses the
82nd canon of Trullo, as an authoritative canon.4

Basil, Metropolitan of Euchaita, in a letter to Isaak Sebastokrator in 1093, quotes the whole of the 68th canon
of Trullo, as an authoritative canon.5

There is numismatic evidence in support of the 82nd canon of Trullo. The British scholar and archaeologist
Judith Herrin (1942 – current) of King’s College London writes:

Justinian II introduced a radical change in the gold coinage of the empire. For the first time ever, the
head of the reigning emperor was removed from the obverse (front) to the reverse (back) to allow a
portrait bust of Christ to be displayed. Two types of portrait were used. … As such, both can be

1 Helen Parish, Clerical Celibacy in the West: c. 1100 – 1700, Ch. II, p. 84, London: Routledge, 2016. Also see
Anne Llewellyn Barstow, Married Priests and the Reforming Papacy: The Eleventh-Century Struggle, p. 55,
New York, NY: E. Mellen Press, 1982.
2 Michael Cerularius, Anathematization of Papal Legation, ed. C. Will, Acta et Scripta quae de controversiis

ecclesiae Graecae et Latinae saec. XI composita extant, (Leipzig and Marpurg, 1861; repr. 1968), p. 66.
Translated in Deno John Geanakoplos, Byzantium: Church, Society, and Civilization Seen through
Contemporary Eyes, p. 210, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, New Ed., 1986.
3 Panayiotis Papageorgiou (translator), Spyros Troianos, Byzantine Canon Law to 1100, in Wilfried Hartmann

and Kenneth Pennington (editors), The History of Byzantine and Eastern Canon Law to 1500, Ch. III, p. 166,
Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2012.
4 Charles Barber, Contesting the Logic of Painting: Art and Understanding in Eleventh-Century Byzantium, Ch.

V, p. 138, Leiden: Brill, 2007.

5 Barber, Contesting the Logic of Painting, Ch. V, p. 140.
 377

related to the 82nd canon of the Council in Trullo (691 – 92), which ordered that Christ should no
longer be represented in His symbolic form – as the Lamb of God.1

The American art history professor James Douglas Breckenridge (1926 – 1982) writes the following:

We cannot exaggerate the importance of this Eighty-Second Canon to its own time; it states the
problem of Christian religious representation in terms of Christology, and it was on the grounds of
Christology that the Iconoclastic Controversy was fought in the course of the next century and a half.
This Canon was remembered well, and it became an important weapon for the orthodox cause in the
eighth century. … These are the facts which led Grabar to see a connection between the action of the
Quinisexte Council, and the initiative taken by the imperial administration in issuing coins bearing
the portrait of Christ; this relation seems to us also the most obvious, and the most direct one of the
possibilities open.2

The same is related by the Orthodox scholar Milton Vasil Anastos (1909 – 1997) of Harvard University:

Further, there is little doubt that the iconoclasm of Leo was directed against the 82nd canon
of the Council in Trullo (692), which required that Christ be represented as a man and not as a lamb,
in order to emphasize ‘his life in the flesh, his passion, his saving death, and the ransom for the world
that was won thereby.’ The immediate effect of this ordinance, which must have greatly increased
the production of realistic portraits of Christ, can be illustrated by the coinage of Justinian II (685-95,
705-11), the first Emperor regularly to strike coins bearing the image of Christ. 3

Some aspects of the early eighth-century frescoes in the Church of St. Maria Antiqua in Rome are thought to
be linked to the promulgation of the 82nd Canon of Trullo. According to art historians, Pope John VII (650 –
707, pope from 705 – 707) had a significant role in commissioning and promoting the project and programme
of this artwork and decoration. Professor John Osborne (1951 – current), who specialises in the art and
archaeology of the city of Rome in the Middle Ages, and has studied cultural transmissions between western
Europe and Byzantium, writes:

Perhaps the most determined effort to explain the arch decorations has been made by Per Jonas
Nordhagen, who accepted the suggestion first made by Gordon Rushforth that ‘the scene is a version
of the worship of the Lamb by the redeemed’, based on passages in the Book of Revelation, and thus
should be viewed in a tradition of Roman arch decorations extending back to San Paolo fuori le mura
(mid-fifth century) and Santi Cosma e Damiano (early sixth century) which employ that same Biblical
source for their visual components. The principal difference is that, at Santa Maria Antiqua, the
Apocalyptic Lamb has been replaced by the figure of the Crucified Christ. Perhaps not coincidentally,
the use of the image of the lamb to represent Christ had been specifically prohibited by canon 82 of
the so-called Quinisext Council … Given the usual exegesis of the Biblical passages painted beneath,
the Santa Maria Antiqua arch mural could almost be regarded as a visual equivalent of canon 82. …

But there is still more evidence to consider. Nordhagen’s minute observation of the figure of Christ
has also revealed that the face of Christ depicted in the mural departs from the traditional formula,
and instead adopts a new and unusual format, a triangular head with short hair and a thin curly
beard instead of the usual long-haired and full-bearded image. What makes this particularly
interesting is that precisely this same new facial type for Christ was used by Justinian II on his

1 Judith Herrin, The Formation of Christendom, Part III, Ch. 8., p. 311, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press, 1989. Also see ibid., Plate 9., for a likeness of Justinian’s coins.
2 James Douglas Breckenridge, Numismatic Iconography of Justinian II (685 – 695, 705 – 711 A.D.), pp. 85 –

86, New York, NY: The American Numismatic Society, 1959.

3 Milton Vasil Anastos, Iconoclasm and Imperial Rule, 717 to 842, in Joan Mervyn Hussey (editor), The

Cambridge Medieval History, Vol. I, p. 67, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1966.
 378

coinage following his recovery of the imperial throne in 705. Thus the replacement of the lamb with
a figure of Christ, and the specific type of Christ employed, may suggest an attempt by John VII to be
more conciliatory than [Pope] Sergius [in the Liber Pontificalis] when it came to imperial relations.1

Numerous other leading Orthodox scholars in succeeding centuries, without a voice to the contrary, continue
to refer to the Trullan canons as Ecumenical, including Michael the Sebastos (late 11th C), Theodore the
Bestes (late 11th C),2 John Zonaras (~1074 – 1159), Alexius Aristenus (or Aristenes, Aristenos, active ~1166)
and the canonical synopsis (labeled with Aristenus’s name) to which Aristenus attached his commentary
(there is another canonical recension under the name of Aristenus (from the manuscript Paris gr. 1302),
which is also attributed to a 7th-century bishop Stephen of Ephesus, who was present at Trullo),3 Theodore
Balsamon (d. 1199), St. Meletios the Confessor (1206 – 1283),4 Patriarch St. Athanasius I of Constantinople
(1230 – 1310, patriarch from 1289 – 1293 and 1303 – 1309) implicitly refers to Trullo’s canons as
ecclesiastical law,5 Barlaam of Calabria (1290 – 1348),6 Matthew Blastares (active ~1335), the Council of
Constantinople in 1341 (under the presidency of Emperor Andronikos III, with the presence of Patriarch John
XIV Kalekas of Constantinople and the future Emperor John VI Kantakouzenos, with a total of 36 bishops in
attendance, which approvingly quotes at length Canons 64 and 19),7 Nilus Cabasilas (~ 1295 – 1363),
Patriarch St. Philotheus Kokkinos of Constantinople (1300 – 1379), Constantine Harmenopoulos (1320 –
1385),8 and Mark of Ephesus (1392 – 1444), all through to the present day.

The acts of the Patriarchs of Constantinople, prior to the year 1200, contain multiple references to the canons
of Trullo. Vincent Laurent writes:

1 John Osborne, Rome in the Eighth Century: A History in Art, Ch. II, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2020. Also, Per Olav Folgerø, an associate professor of the History of Art at the University of Bergen, has
explored this topic in Per Olav Folgerø, The Text-Catena in the Frescoes of S. Maria Antiqua in Rome (705 –
707 A.D.): An Index of Cultural Cross-Over in 7th – 8th century Rome?, in Helge Vidar Holm, Sissel Lægreid,
and Torgeir Skorgen (editors), The Borders of Europe: Hegemony, Aesthetics and Border Poetics, Section I,
pp. 110 – 112, Aarhus: Aarhus University Press, 2012. Also see the footnote references in Ann van Dijk,
Jerusalem, Antioch, Rome, and Constantinople: The Peter Cycle in the Oratory of Pope John VII (705-707),
Dumbarton Oaks Papers, Vol. LV, p. 324, n. 89, Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and
Collection, 2001.
2 The previous two authors are mentioned in David Ferguson Wagschal, The Nature of Law and Legality in the

Byzantine Canonical Collections 381 – 883, Vol. I, Ch. I, B., p. 46, Dissertation: Durham University, 2010.
3 David Ferguson Wagschal, The Nature of Law and Legality in the Byzantine Canonical Collections 381 – 883,

Vol. I, Ch. I, B., pp. 42 – 43, Dissertation: Durham University, 2010.

4 See Kolbaba’s article (cited in the Bibliography) on Meletios Homologetes, p. 157 and elsewhere.
5 Alice-Mary Maffry Talbot (editor and translator), The Correspondence of Athanasius I Patriarch of

Constantinople, Letters 28, 62, and 83, respectively pp. 60 – 61, pp. 144 – 145, and pp. 218 – 219, and
Commentary, pp. 337, 372 – 373, and 409, in Dumbarton Oaks Texts, Vol. III, Washington, DC: Dumbarton
Oaks, Center for Byzantine Studies, Harvard University, 1975.
6 Writing while Orthodox in 1333 – 1334, and twice quoting extensively from “Canon 36 of the sixth council”

as well as other anti-Latin canons (Canons 13 and 55), see Kolbaba’s article (cited in the Bibliography) on
Barlaam, pp. 88, 102 – 104, 106 – 108.
7 Frederick Lauritzen, Concilium Constantinopolitanum 1341, pp. 140 – 141, lines 66 – 99, in Alberto Melloni

(editor), The Great Councils of the Orthodox Churches: From Constantinople 861 to Moscow 2000, Vol. I,
Turnhout: Brepols Publishers, 2016.
8 See Claudia Rapp, Brother-Making in Late Antiquity and Byzantium: Monks, Laymen, and Christian Ritual,

Ch. IV, B., p. 196, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016. Paul Sant Cassia and Constantina Bada, The Making
of the Modern Greek Family: Marriage and Exchange in Nineteenth-Century Athens, Ch. V, p. 146, Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1992
 379

Bien qu’elles en aient, à l’epoque moderne, atténué sur quelques points la rigueur, l’Église
byzantine et les Églises nationales issues d’elle n’ont jamais varié dans leur attitude envers les 102
canons du concile in Trullo. Pour elles toutes, la collection entière, dans sa rédaction actuelle, est
l’œuvre d’un concile œcuménique, le sixième, et son autorité est, pour cela même, irrécusable. Les
Actes et diplômes patriarcaux renferment en effet de fréquentes références a à l’un ou l’autre de ses
articles.

[Laurent’s Footnote:] a) Voir Grumel, Regestes, nn. 352, 938, 964, 1024, 1085, 1127, sans préjudice
des autres diplômes (v.g. le n. 846) qui cite également nos canons sans que le fait soit signalé.1

A Thesaurus, attributed to an otherwise unknown Theognostus, includes the 82nd Canon as part of the Sixth
Council’s work. This work is a sort of semi-encyclopaedic catechism. Although this work dates from the
middle of the thirteenth century, it is based on much earlier sources, such as the treatise Synopsis de
Haeresibus et Synodis attributed to Anastasius of Sinai (d. after 700), and the Roman Catholic Jesuit scholar
Joseph A. Munitiz says of Theognostus, the compiler of this work, “It seems more likely that for all seven
Councils he had at his disposal a synopsis which … enjoyed a high esteem for its precise historical detail”.2
A twelfth-century Greek canonical collection (the Coislin. 363 manuscript) attributes the 82nd Canon of
Trullo to the Sixth Council.3

Kaufhold notes that the following manuscripts of canonical collections contain the Trullan Synod: “Beirut ar.
515 (thirteenth century), Barb. or. 111 (1308) and perhaps the supplement at the end of the aforementioned
Dair aš-Šīr I and Yabrūd I (with only a brief notice on the Trullanum).” 4

Wagschal notes that the following manuscripts of canonical collections contain Trullo: Venice Nan. 226,
Oxford Barocc. 26 (11th C), Venice Bessarion 171, Oxford Laud. 39 (perhaps a 10th C manuscript), Rawl.
G.1.58 (11th C), Vatican 2198, Vienna hist gr. 56 (a. 1000), Oxford Baroc. 196 (11th C), Athos Iver. 302 (14th
C), and Patmos 172 (perhaps early 9th C).5

The Synopsis Chronike (or Synopsis Sathas), a Greek chronicle written in the second half of the thirteenth
century (after the Greek recapture of Constantinople in 1261), provides an Orthodox description of the
Quinisext Council, in a passage parallel to that in the Synodicon Vetus.6

1 Vincent Laurent, L’Œuvre Canonique du Concile in Trullo (691 – 692), Source Primaire du Droit de l’Église
Orientale, Revue des Études Byzantine, Vol. XXIII, p. 21, Paris: Institut Français d’Études Byzantines, 1965.
Valuable source material can be found in the series Les Regestes des Actes du Patriarchat de Constantinople,
as well as the entire Le Patriarchat Byzantin series, in which it is contained.
2 Joseph A. Munitiz, Synoptic Greek Accounts of the Seventh Council, in Revue des Études Byzantines, Vol.

XXXII, p. 166. Munitiz edited the first edition of this work for his doctoral thesis in 1976, and translated the
work in 2013. Joseph A. Munitiz (editor), Theognostos, Thesaurus, Corpus Christianorum Series Graeca, Vol.
V, Turnhout: Brepols, 1979; Joseph A. Munitiz (translator), Theognostos, Treasury, in Corpus Christianorum
in Translation, Vol. XVI, Turnhout: Brepols, 2013.
3 Munitiz, Synoptic Greek Accounts of the Seventh Council, Revue des Études Byzantines, Vol. XXXII, p. 167.
4 Steven Rowan (translator), Hubert Kaufhold, Sources of Canon Law in the Eastern Churches, in Wilfried

Hartmann and Kenneth Pennington (editors), The History of Byzantine and Eastern Canon Law to 1500, Ch. V,
p. 228, n. 26., Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2012.
5 David Ferguson Wagschal, The Nature of Law and Legality in the Byzantine Canonical Collections 381 – 883,

Vol. I, Ch. I, C, 5., pp. 65 – 66, 70, Dissertation: Durham University, 2010.
6 Konstantinos A. Zafeiris, The Synopsis Chronike and its Place in the Byzantine Chronicle Tradition: Its

Sources (Creation – 1081 CE), pp. 139, 301, St. Andrews, Dissertation: University of St. Andrews, 2007.
 380

It appears that many other canonical collections, chronicles, and manuscripts of the late first and early second
millenniums include the canons of Trullo as the work of the Sixth Ecumenical Council.

The Seventh Ecumenical Council Confirms Trullo

Gratian has the following statement on the subject in the Decretum:

Canon V. The Sixth Synod is confirmed by the authority of Hadrian.

I receive the Sixth Synod with all its canons.

Gratian: There is a doubt whether it set forth canons but this is easily removed by examining
the fourth session of the VIIth [VIth by mistake, vide Roman Correctors’ note] Synod.

For Peter the Bp. of Nicomedia says:

C. VI. The Sixth Synod wrote canons.

I have a book containing the canons of the holy Sixth Synod. The Patriarch said: § 1. Some
are scandalized through their ignorance of these canons, saying: Did the Sixth Synod make any
canons? Let them know then that the Sixth Holy Synod was gathered together under Constantine
against those who said there is one operation and one will in Christ, in which the holy Fathers
anathematized these as heretics and explained the orthodox faith.

II. Pars § 2. And the synod was dissolved in the XIVth year of Constantine. After four or five
years the same holy Fathers met together under Justinian, the son of Constantine, and promulgated
the aforementioned canons, of which let no one have any doubt. For they who under Constantine
were in synod, these same bishops under Justinian subscribed to all these canons. For it was fitting
that a Universal Synod should promulgate ecclesiastical canons. Item: § 3. The Holy Sixth Synod after
it promulgated its definition against the Monothelites, the emperor Constantine who had summoned
it, dying soon after, and Justinian his son reigning in his stead, the same holy synod divinely inspired
again met at Constantinople four or five years afterwards, and promulgated one hundred and two
canons for the correction of the Church.

Gratian: From this therefore it may be gathered that the Sixth Synod was twice assembled: the
first time under Constantine and then passed no canons; the second time under Justinian his son, and
promulgated the aforesaid canons.1

The 12th century Latins thus accepted the canons of the Sixth Council, on the authority of the Pope and the
Seventh Ecumenical Council. The Roman Church clearly did ratify the canons of Trullo, and the Roman
legates at the 7th Council did not object to the canons and declarations of the Seventh Council, giving their
implicit approval.

There is furthermore explicit evidence of Roman recognition of the very important Canon 36 of Trullo.
Gratian cites several Trullan canons in his Decretum, including the 36th Canon of Trullo, which Gratian
accepts. However, in some versions of Gratian’s Decretum, there is a corruption of this canon (through the
insertion of the word “not”), which reads:

1Gratian, Pars I Dist. XVI, c. v. Translated in Percival, Seven Ecumenical Councils, p. 358. Percival here notes,
“Upon this passage of Gratian’s the Roman Correctors have a long and interesting note, with quotations from
Anastasius, which should be read with care by the student but is too long to cite here.”
 381

Renewing the decrees of the holy council of Constantinople, we entreat (petimus) that the see of
Constantinople assumes similar privileges, that the elder (superior) Rome has, nevertheless is not to
be as highly regarded in ecclesiastical matters, and shall be second after it, numbered prior to the See
of Alexandria; thereafter that of Antioch, and after that of Jerusalem.1

In his Decretum, Gratian cites Trullan canons II, IV, VI, XI, XIII, XVII, XXIII, XXIV, XXXVI, and XCIII, although
some canons are only paraphrased or partially cited.

There is no doubt that the Seventh Ecumenical Council (Second Council of Nicaea, held in 787) reaffirms the
canons of the Quinisext council. This is manifest in the Acts and canons of the Seventh Council. The decrees
of the Seventh Council were adopted by an unanimous vote of the three hundred and fifty bishops. The
following is a summary of the Holy Seventh Council from the Rudder:

Of the Fathers (Bishops) attending it, 350 were Orthodox, but seventeen others joined it who had
formerly been iconomachs, but who later repented and were accepted by it. So that in all there were
367. Outstanding and distinguished ones among them were Tarasius the Patriarch of Constantinople,
Peter the Archpresbyter of Rome, and Peter, he too another presbyter and the abbot of the
monastery of St. Sabbas in Rome, all of them acting as representatives of Pope Adrian. Thomas the
Syncellus and hieromonach and John the hieromonach, filling the places of the Apostolic thrones, or,
more explicitly, acting instead of Apollinarius of Alexandria, Theodoret of Antioch, and Elias of
Jerusalem. The monks also exercised great influence in this Council, seeing that there were 136 of
them present as archimandrites of monasteries. This Council was assembled against the ungodly
iconomachs who used to disparage the Christians. 2

The 1st Canon of the Seventh Ecumenical Council implies an approval of the canons of Trullo:

The pattern for those who have received the sacerdotal dignity is found in the testimonies and
instructions laid down in the canonical constitutions, which we receiving with a glad mind, sing unto
the Lord God in the words of the God-inspired David, saying: “I have had as great delight in the way of
thy testimonies as in all manner of riches.” “Thou hast commanded righteousness as thy testimonies
for ever.” “Grant me understanding and I shall live.” Now if the word of prophecy bids us keep the
testimonies of God forever and to live by them, it is evident that they must abide unshaken and
without change. Therefore Moses, the prophet of God, speaketh after this manner: “To them nothing
is to be added, and from them nothing is to be taken away.” And the divine Apostle glorying in them
cries out, “which things the angels desire to look into,” and, “if an angel preach to you anything
besides that which ye have received, let him be anathema.” Seeing these things are so, being thus
well-testified unto us, we rejoice over them as he that hath found great spoil, and press to our bosom
with gladness the divine canons, holding fast all the precepts of the same, complete and without
change, whether they have been set forth by the holy trumpets of the Spirit, the renowned Apostles,
or by the Six Ecumenical Councils, or by Councils locally assembled for promulgating the decrees of
the said Ecumenical Councils, or by our holy Fathers. For all these, being illumined by the same
Spirit, defined such things as were expedient. Accordingly those whom they placed under anathema,
we likewise anathematize; those whom they deposed, we also depose; those whom they
excommunicated, we also excommunicate; and those whom they delivered over to punishment, we
subject to the same penalty. And now “let your conversation be without covetousness,” crieth out
Paul the divine Apostle, who was caught up into the third heaven and heard unspeakable words. 3

William Beveridge has the following commentary on this canon:

1 Decretum, Part I, Dist. XXII, Canon Renovantes, c. vi. Note that this error was corrected in the official Roman
edition of the 16th century.
2 The Rudder (Pedalion), p. 413.
3 Percival, Seven Ecumenical Councils, p. 555
 382

Here are recognized and confirmed the canons set forth by the Six Ecumenical Councils. And
although all agree that the fifth and sixth Synods adopted no canons, unless that those of the Council
in Trullo be attributed to them, yet when Tarasius the Patriarch of Constantinople claimed Canon 82
of the Trullan Canons as having been set forth by the sixth synod (as is evident from the annotations
on that canon), all the canons of Trullo seem to be confirmed as having issued from the Sixth Synod.
Or else, perchance, as is supposed by Balsamon and Zonaras, as also by this present synod, the
Trullan was held to be Quinisext, and the canons decreed by it to belong to both the fifth and the sixth
council. Otherwise I do not see what meaning these words [“of the Six Ecumenical Synods”] can have,
for it will be remembered that the reference is to the ecclesiastical canons of the Six Ecumenical
Synods, and not to their dogmatic decrees.1

The 6th Canon of the Seventh Ecumenical Council cites the 8th Quinisext canon as a canon of the Sixth
Council, after first mentioning a previous canon:

Since there is a canon which says, twice a year in each province, the canonical enquiries shall be
made in the gatherings of the bishops; but because of the inconveniences which those who thus came
together had to undergo in travelling, the holy fathers of the Sixth Council decreed that once each
year, without regard to place or excuse which might be urged, a council should be held and the things
which are amiss corrected. This canon we now renew. And if any prince be found hindering this
being carried out, let him be excommunicated. But if any of the metropolitans shall take no care that
this be done, he being free from constraint or fear or other reasonable excuse, let him be subjected to
the canonical penalties. While the council is engaged in considering the canons or matters which
have regard to the Gospel, it behoves the assembled Bishops, with all attention and grave thought to
guard the divine and life-giving commandments of God, for in keeping of them there is great reward;
because our lamp is the commandment, and our light is the law, and trial and discipline are the way
of life, and the commandment of the Lord shining afar giveth light to the eyes. It is not permitted to a
metropolitan to demand any of those things which the bishops bring with them, whether it be a horse
or any other gift. If he be convicted of doing anything of this sort, he shall restore fourfold. 2

For comparison, this is Canon 8 of Trullo:

Since we desire that in every point the things which have been decreed by our holy fathers may also
be established and confirmed, we hereby renew the canon which orders that synods of the bishops of
each province be held every year where the bishop of the metropolis shall deem best. But since on
account of the incursions of barbarians and certain other incidental causes, those who preside over
the churches cannot hold synods twice a year, it seems right that by all means once a year—on
account of ecclesiastical questions which are likely to arise—a synod of the aforesaid bishops should
be holden in every province, between the holy feast of Easter and October, as has been said above, in
the place which the Metropolitan shall have deemed most fitting. And let such bishops as do not
attend, when they are at home in their own cities and are in good health, and free from all
unavoidable and necessary business, be fraternally reproved. 3

Moreover, Canons XXII and XXVIII of Trullo are re-affirmed in the provisions of Canons IV and V (on simony),
and XVI (on priestly attire) of the Seventh Council.

1 Beveridge, Annotat., Vol. II, p. 166. Translated in Percival, Seven Ecumenical Councils, p. 556.
2 Percival, Seven Ecumenical Councils, pp. 559 – 560. Pervical notes that “This canon is found in the Corpus
Juris Canonici, Gratian’s Decretum, Pars I, Dist. XVIII, C. vij.”
3 Percival, Seven Ecumenical Councils, p. 369.
 383

By recognizing the canons of the Trullan Council to be those of the Sixth Ecumenical Council, the 367 Bishops
and numerous dignitaries of the Seventh Ecumenical Council approve the Trullan canons, which confirm
Canon 28 of Chalcedon in spite of Pope Leo’s protest.

In Pope Hadrian’s letter to Tarasius (which will be quoted again later, and which was read at the Seventh
Council to unanimous approval), Hadrian specifically says that the Fathers of the Holy Sixth Ecumenical
Council produced the 82nd Canon of Trullo, as Percival writes:

Pope Hadrian I distinctly recognizes all the Trullan decrees in his letter to Tarasius of Constantinople
and attributes them to the Sixth Synod. “All the holy six synods I receive with all their canons,
which rightly and divinely were promulgated by them, among which is contained that in
which reference is made to a Lamb being pointed to by the Precursor as being found in certain
of the venerable images.” Here the reference is unmistakably to the Trullan Canon LXXXII. 1

The Acts of the Seventh Ecumenical Council contain multiple references to Trullo, including several citations
of the text of the 82nd canon.

In the first session, there is the following testimony of Bishop Basil of Ancyra in the Acts, which contains an
implicit acceptance of Trullo:

Basil then read from the libel which he had in his hand: “It is an ecclesiastical regulation,
canonically handed down to us from the beginning, both by the holy Apostles and our holy Fathers
and Doctors their successors, and also by the six holy Œcumenic Councils, and by all orthodox local
Synods, that all who return from any heresy whatever, to the orthodox confession and tradition of
the Catholic Church, should deliver in writing a recantation of their several heresy, and a confession
of the Orthodox Faith. Wherefore, I, Basil, Bishop of Ancyra, desiring to be united to the Catholic
Church, do present this my written confession to Adrian, most holy Pope of old Rome – to Tarasius,
the most blessed Patriarch – to the other most holy Apostolic Thrones – namely of Alexandria,
Antioch, and the holy City; and, moreover, to all other Orthodox Chief Priests and Priests, and I lay it
before you as having received power from apostolical authority; 2

In the second session of Nicaea II, the following is recorded in the Acts:

Cosmas, the Deacon, Notary, and Chamberlain, said: “Another epistle was also sent from the
most holy Pope, addressed to Tarasius, our most holy and Œcumenic Patriarch, and we wait to know
your pleasure concerning this also.”

The Holy Council answered: “Let it be read.”

Cosmas, the aforesaid Deacon, read as follows:

“The Epistle of Adrian, most holy Pope of Old Rome, to our beloved brother Tarasius, the
Patriarch: Adrian, servant of the servants of God:

In consequence of those pastoral cares by which it becomes us to feed the people of God –
being occupied in enquiries most profound as to the manner in which the voice of sound doctrine

1Percival, Seven Ecumenical Councils, p. 357.

2Mendham, The Seventh General Council, Session I, p. 10. There is an implicit reference here to Canon XCV of
Trullo and Canon VII ascribed to Constantinople I. Also, many “orthodox local Synods” and canonical
collections are enumerated in Canon II of Trullo.
 384

should be proclaimed by the preacher at all times, and how the shepherd should sympathise with his
flock, and how he should conduct himself, that by his sympathy he may be dear to all and by his
behavior he may become a pattern to all – and how, by a religious compassion he may transfer to
himself their sorrows and infirmities, whilst, by his exalted contemplations, he may raise their minds
to heavenly things – we determined with ourselves to communicate with your beloved Holiness: and
in sacerdotal unanimity fully to lay before you our mind.

Now in the synodical confession of your faith, transmitted by Leo your most religious
Presbyter, to our Apostolic throne, in the very beginning of the first page we found that your Holiness
had been raised to that sacerdotal dignity from the ranks of the Laity and the imperatorial service:
and very greatly was our soul amazed at this. And, indeed, were it not that your faith, as expressed in
aforementioned synodals, had been found sincere and orthodox, according to the rule of the sacred
Symbol and of the six holy Œcumenical Councils, and furthermore sound as it respected holy images,
we should never have ventured to have given such synodals a listening. But, in proportion as our
heart was grieved at your former perverse division from us, so was our soul filled with joy when we
found how consonant with your confession with the orthodox faith.

For we found in the above-mentioned synodical epistle of your Holiness, after the
fullness of your faith in, and confession of, the sacred Symbol and the six holy Œcumenic
Councils, a paragraph concerning holy and venerable images worthy of the highest praise and
reception. For you there say, ‘I receive also all that was determined by the six holy Œcumenical
Councils, with all the Canons, legitimately and by divine inspiration enacted therein, among which is
the following – In certain sacred pictures, the Lamb, as pointed out by the finger of the forerunner
(John the Baptist) is represented which was a type of grace, and under the law prefigured the True
Lamb, Christ our God. But while we duly value the ancient types and shadows, as types and
prefigurations of the truth, we value more highly the grace and truth itself, receiving the same as the
completion of the law. In order, therefore, that the perfect image may be presented to the
contemplation of all, we decree that in all pictures from henceforth, the figure of our Lord Jesus
Christ, the true Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world (John i. 29), should be pourtrayed
in His human form, instead of the Lamb as heretofore; that we being stirred up by the sight thereof,
may be led to meditate upon the depth of the humiliation of God the Word, and to the remembrance
of His conversation in the flesh; and of His passion, and of His saving death, and of the redemption
thereby accomplished in behalf of the world.’

By this proof of the orthodoxy of your faith, your fraternal Holiness hath separated itself
from, and utterly rejected, the officious meddling of wicked men and the garrulity of the heretics,
even as their pernicious zeal never met with any countenance from us nor from divine grace, but was
ever accounted by both as vain and frivolous. For our Catholic and Apostolic Roman Church, ‘girt up
as to the loins of the mind’ (1 Peter i. 13), makes her confession, in heart and voice ever deciding in
exact contrariety to the folly of heretics, against whose hostility and fury she hath often been forced
to contend. Wherefore, as your beloved Holiness has engaged to worship and adore holy images –
namely, that of Christ our God according to His human form who, like to ourselves, for us and on our
account became incarnate, and that of the holy, immaculate, and very Mother of God; and,
furthermore, those of His saints: this, your orthodox determination (if only as it has begun so it
continue) meets our entire approbation; and, regarding you as it were with pastoral solitude, we
advise you that both in preaching and in teaching you preserve unchanged that orthodox faith of
which you have now made confession; ‘for other foundation can no man lay than is laid which is Jesus
Christ’ (1 Cor. iii. 11). … But may He who for our sakes became Man, condescending to become that
which He Himself had made, confirm and teach you in all these things: may He shed abundantly the
love and desire of His holy Spirit upon you: may He keep you from all disquieting cares and open the
eyes of your mind; so that, by the labour and conflict of your love, and by the conformity of your
course to our orthodox tradition of the ancient Apostolic faith, holy and venerable images may be
replaced according to the ancient order throughout all the realms of our pious Sovereigns, and thus
may your sacerdotal dignity remain firm and stable. After the confession of your faith, it was
furthermore signified to us that your venerable Holiness had requested of our most pious, most
 385

orthodox, zealous, and faithful Sovereigns born for the glory of God and to be most valiant champions
of the truth, that there should be held and Œcumenic Council, and that they piously favouring the
proposal, had declared their agreement thereto in the presence of all their most Christian people, and
had determined that the Council should be held in their own Royal city.” …

Peter and Peter, the aforesaid Legates said: “Let this holy Council declare to us if they
consent to the letters of the most holy Pope of Old Rome or not.”

The Holy Council replied: “We follow, we receive, we hail them with joy.”1

In the third session of the Seventh Ecumenical Council, the following is recorded in the Acts:

John and Thomas, Legates of the Eastern Diocese: “If it seem good to this holy and Œcumenic
Council we request that the epistle of the most holy Patriarch Tarasius which was sent to the most
holy Chief Priests of the East be first read, and then the answers made in return.”

The Holy Council said: “Let it be read.”

Stephen, Deacon and Notary of the Patriarchate, read as follows: –

“A Copy of the Letter sent to the Chief Priests and other Priests of Alexandria, Antioch, and
the Holy City, from Tarasius, most Holy, Blessed, and Œcumenic Patriarch of Constantinople: –

… I admit also the six holy Œcumenic Councils and their sacred decrees and doctrines as
having been delivered to us by divine inspiration. … With the sixth [Ecumenical Council] I believe
that as Christ is of two natures, so hath He two wills and two operations – the divine and the human –
as adapted to each nature; and I anathematize Cyrus, Sergius, Honorius, Pyrrhus, Paul, and all who
were of the same opinion with them – and their dogmata I hate as the vine of Sodom and the branch
of Gomorrha, which bear the grapes of gall. Moreover, I receive this same sixth holy Council with
all the doctrines legitimately and divinely declared therein, and also the canons which have
been issued thereby among which is found the following: – ‘In certain sacred pictures, the Lamb,
as pointed out by the finger of the Forerunner (John the Baptist), is represented, which was a type of
grace, and under the law prefigured the true Lamb, Christ our God. But, while we duly value the
ancient types and shadows as types and prefigurations of the truth, we value more highly the grace
and truth itself, receiving the same as the completion of the law. In order therefore that the perfect
image may be presented to the contemplation of all, we decree that in all pictures from henceforth,
the figure of our Lord Jesus Christ, the true Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world, should
be pourtrayed in His human form, instead of the Lamb, as heretofore; that we, being stirred up by the
sight thereof, may be led to meditate upon the depth of the humiliation of God the Word, and to the
remembrance of His conversation in the flesh, and of His passion, and of His saving death, and the
redemption thereby accomplished in behalf of the world.’ But, as to all those superfluous pratings
and vain babblings which, after these Councils, were inconsiderately set forth by certain, as they
were not admitted by you, and were not spoken by Divine Grace, so in like manner I account them
destitute of authority. …

Peter and Peter, Legates of Pope Adrian, said: “Our most holy Pope, having received an
epistle of the same kind, sent us hither with his reply, which has been read in your presence.”

John, the Legate of the Eastern Dioceses, said: “This sacred letter and the piety of our
Sovereigns it was which enabled us both to come hither and to escape the enmity of those lawless
ones, the bitter enemies of our Church.”

1 Mendham, The Seventh General Council, Session II, pp. 71 – 74.

 386

The Holy Council said: “God hath triumphantly brought you hither.” 1

Also here in the third session, the Synodals of Theodore (Patriarch of Jerusalem from 760 – 782) were read,
which contains an implied acceptance of the canons of the Sixth Council:

These six holy Councils are all that we consider Œcumenic; and indeed, besides these, we wish for no
other, since there is not now left anything, whether of Apostolic Tradition or of legitimate exposition
of the Fathers, which needs any amendment or any addition or improvement of any kind
whatever. … Nor do we reject, but altogether receive and approve, all the various holy local Synods
which have been convened, and the canonical regulations and soul-profiting ordinances which, under
the influence of the Holy Spirit, have been set forth in them.2

After these letters were publicly read, the following is recorded in the Acts:

After the reading of these letters was finished, Peter and Peter the Legates of the Bishop of
Rome said: “We are fully satisfied; for, according to the orthodox confession of faith now made by the
most holy and most blessed Patriarch Tarasius, so hath Adrian our Apostolic Pope received; and in
this all his sacred Conclave have agreed, and have embraced communion with him in all points which
have been here confessed. And, blessed be God, the most holy Chief Priests of the East have been
found to agree in orthodoxy of faith and in the worship of images with the most holy Adrian Pope of
Old Rome, and Tarasius the Patriarch of New Rome. Upon those, therefore, who do not agree in this
confession, be the anathema of the Three Hundred and Eighteen Fathers who, on a former occasion,
were assembled in this place.”

The Holy Council said: “So be it, so be it, so be it.”

Agapius Bishop of Caesarea: “Receiving as it were a standard of religion in the sacred

Epistles sent from the chief Priests of the East to Tarasius our most holy Ecumenic Patriarch, I agree
with them in every respect and embrace communion with them; and those who think otherwise I lay
under my anathema.”

John Bishop of Ephesus: “To the orthodox letters sent from the East by the chief Priests of
those parts to Tarasius our most holy and thrice blessed Ecumenic Patriarch I entirely assent, and
embrace communion with them in all points; and those who do not confess thus, and who do not
worship or admit of holy, sacred, and venerable images, I account as aliens from the Catholic Church,
and give them over to my anathema.”

Constantine Bishop of Constantia: “Seeing that the letters which have now been read from
the Priests of the East to Tarasius our most holy Archbishop and Ecumenic Patriarch, do in no respect

1 Mendham, The Seventh General Council, Session III, pp. 90 – 97. Note there is a minor printing error in
Mendham’s text, where it says “the as Lamb, pointed out”, it should be “the Lamb, as pointed out”, a correction
I have made above.
2 Mendham, The Seventh General Council, pp. 113 – 114. Note that the “canonical regulations” of the “various

holy local Synods” are specified in Canon II of Trullo, to which this passage implicitly refers. Also note that
these Synodals of Theodore were “read and approved” at the fourth session of the Council of the Lateran in
769, under Pope Stephen III (and attended by about 52 bishops or episcopal representatives, along with
many priests, deacons, and laymen), which confirmed the veneration of images (Hefele, History of the
Councils, Vol. V, Book XVIII, Ch. I, Sec. 343, p. 338), and Pope Hadrian I “afterwards appealed repeatedly to
this Synodica” (Hefele, History of the Councils, Vol. V, Book XVIII, Ch. I, Sec. 340, p. 329).
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differ from the confession of faith previously made by him, I, unworthy as I am, declare my
agreement with them; and, being of the same mind, I receive and pay the worship of honour to holy
and venerable images, while supreme and absolute worship, I offer to the holy life-giving Trinity
only; and those who think or teach otherwise I separate from the holy Catholic Church. I lay them
under my anathema, and give them over to the doom of those who deny the incarnate and bodily
dispensation of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.”

Basil Bishop of Ancyra: “With the letters sent from the East from the most holy Chief Priests
there to our most holy Archbishop and Ecumenic Patriarch Tarasius, I agree and to these I stand firm.
All points therein confessed I receive with all readiness and gladness, and those who think not thus I
give over to anathema.”1

In the fourth session of the Seventh Ecumenical Council, there is a very important testimony on behalf of the
Trullan Canons. In the Acts, a canon of the Council of Trullo was read as a canon of the Sixth Synod, and
Patriarch St. Tarasius, who “assumed the presidency”,2 gives a clear statement on these Trullan canons
(Tarasius’ testimony is accepted by Gratian as conclusive):

Elias Archpresbyter of the most holy Church of our Lady the Mother of God at Blachernæ read, from a
“Roll which contained the Definitions of the Holy and Œcumenical Sixth Council, the Eighty-second
Canon of the same Œcumenical Council:” –

“In certain venerable pictures, the lamb as pointed out by the finger of the forerunner is represented,
which was a type of grace, and under the law prefigured the true Lamb Christ our God. But, while we
duly value the ancient types and shadows as types and prefigurations of the truth, we value more
highly the truth and the grace itself, receiving the same as the completion of the law. In order,
therefore, that the perfect image may be presented to the contemplation of all, we decree that in all
pictures from henceforth the figure of our Lord Jesus Christ, ‘the true Lamb of God that taketh away
the sin of the world,’ should be pourtrayed in His human form, instead of the lamb as heretofore; that
we, being stirred up by the sight thereof, may be led to meditate upon the depth of the humiliation of
God the Word, and to the remembrance of His conversation in the flesh, and of His passion, and of His
saving death, and the redemption thereby accomplished in behalf of the world.”

After that he had finished reading the Canon he turned to the Council and said: “Venerable and holy
fathers, no one felt a stronger inclination to have engaged in this late persecution than, for my sins,
did I; but this roll which I have here, which was subscribed by the fathers of the Sixth Council,
became to me as it were a divine hook, and drew me back to the orthodox faith, in addition to which
the most holy Patriarch used his influence with me; whom may God reward for my sake.”

Sabbas [Abbot of the Monastery of Studium]: “Wherefore is this read from a roll, and not from the
book?”

1 Mendham, The Seventh General Council, Session III, pp. 116 – 119. There are many more similar passages in
the Acts of similar declarations by other bishops. Mendham notes at the end, “After this follow similar
declarations from all the Bishops assembled in the Council. … In the old Latin translation we find the names
of Two Hundred and Sixty-two Bishops who were present at this Session.” From this passage, it is apparent
that the letter of Tarasius and the Synodals of Theodore received the unanimous approval of the Seventh
Council.
2 Hefele, History of the Councils, Vol. V, Book XVIII, Ch. II, Sec. 346, p. 358. Hefele writes in a footnote here, “So

he says himself, Mansi, t. xii p. 1000; Hardouin, t. iv. p. 34.” Hefele later states that in the Acts of the Seventh
Council, “the Patriarch Tarasius is specially commended as ‘the exarch of the present assembly,’ in a manner
as though he were the head of the Church.” (Hefele, History of the Councils, Vol. V, Book XVIII, Ch. II, Sec. 357,
p. 386.)
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Tarasius: “Because that is the original roll which the fathers themselves subscribed.”

Peter Bishop of Nicomedia said: “I have here another book, which contains the Canons of the Sixth
Holy Council.”

Nicetas Deacon and Notary took the book and read over again the same Canon.

Tarasius: “Some persons, labouring under the malady of ignorance, have taken offence at these
Canons, and ask, ‘Are these really the Canons of the Sixth Council?’ Let all such know, therefore,
that the sixth holy Œcumenic Council was assembled under Constantine against those who
maintained the one will and opinion in Christ; and that after these fathers had anathematized the
heretics, and clearly set forth the orthodox faith, they returned home in the fourteenth year of
Constantine. Four or five years after that event the same fathers were again assembled by Justinian,
the son of Constantine, who then laid down the above-mentioned canons. Let no one have any
scruple about them, since the same fathers who subscribed under Constantine were the very same
who subscribed in this roll which you see under Justinian, as is evident from the exact similarity of
the hand-writing; and it was but right that they who had presented to the world an Œcumenic
Council should also enact Ecclesiastical Canons.* Now, they affirmed that by means of holy images
‘we are led to the remembrance of His conversion in the flesh and of His life-giving death.’ If, then,
these are the means by which we are led to the consideration of the dispensation of Christ our God,
what must we think of those who have abolished venerable images?”

The Holy Council said: “As Atheists, Hebrews, and enemies to the truth.”

Tarasius: “But the Lord our God is good, who receiveth us all; for He hath not left the rod of the
wicked to rest on the lot of the righteous” (Psalm cxxv.3).

[Mendham’s Footnote:] * Binius in his notes on this Council observes – “That what was said in the
fourth Session concerning the Canons of the sixth Council was not said by the Council, but by the
Greek Tarasius; and so they must be understood and explained according to our notes upon that
Council.” That Council, as it did not please the Romish pontiffs, is therefore styled by his party as
“non solum Pseudo-synodum verum etiam conventum malignantium, Synagogam Diaboli” (Bin. Concil.
General. Tom. 3. Part 1. Sect. 1. p. 313). And yet not only the Greek Tarasius but the Roman Adrian, as
above affirms this Canon to be “De Sancta Sexta Synodo”: and again, “Sexta Synodus fideliter per
Canones orthodoxe statuens, ita,” &c. How strange, that the Papal legates could hear their Pontifical
master charged with ignorance, and yet offer not a word in his defense! 1

Some have criticised Tarasius for saying that “the same fathers were again assembled” in Trullo from the
Sixth Ecumenical Council. However, Tarasius was justified in such an expression, for, as already noted above,
at least 43 of the bishops in Trullo were present at the first assembly of the Sixth Ecumenical Council, and the
first session of the first assembly of the Sixth Council had 43 bishops as well, so Trullo is just as valid of a
continuation of the Sixth Council as the later sessions of the first assembly of that Council, and they ought well
to be considered the “same fathers”, not to mention the fact that many others, who were not bishops or their
representatives, such as monks, priests, scholars, and secular authorities and dignitaries, were also in
attendance or consulted at both assemblies.

Pope Gregory II refers to the Council of Trullo as “holy men assembled in Council”, and cites the 82nd canon,
in his important letter to Patriarch Germanus of Constantinople, which was read in the fourth session of the
Seventh Ecumenical Council:

1Mendham, The Seventh General Council, Session IV, pp. 160 – 162. A similar translation, of only the speech
of St. Tarasius, is in Percival, Seven Ecumenical Councils, p. 540. Binius’s notes are contradicted by the Acts,
which show that the Holy Council replied with approval to the words of Tarasius.
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Cosmas Deacon and Chamberlain read: “The Letter of Gregory, Most Holy Pope of Rome,
to Germanus, Most Holy Patriarch of Constantinople: –

What pleasure, what delight, did ever so rejoice my soul as did that most gratifying
communication which has been by thee transmitted concerning thyself, who art to me a name and a
glory ever venerable, ever precious, my most religious, my God-directed brother. … The constant
remembrance which I have of thy super-eminent excellence, O thou most worthy of all praise and
ever beloved by God, bears witness to my words; which having ever on my lips and no longer being
able to bear the burden thereof I have once more addressed myself to you by letter; for I feel it a duty
surpassing all others, to hail and address thee, my brother and champion of the Church, and to laud
and magnify the motives which impelled thee to the conflict. …

Such setting up of images in the name of God is, as we may rather say, according to the law; but, since
grace and truth are more exact than types and to be honoured above the shadow, therefore, holy
men assembled in Council, by the direction of God, have delivered this canon* to the Church, in
order that the greatest cause of salvation should ever be in the sight of all – namely, that the holy and
venerable image of Him who takes away the sins of the world should be set forth by the colours of the
painter according to His human form; that we, being stirred up by the sight thereof, may be led to
meditate upon the depth of the humiliation of God the Word, and to the remembrance of His
conversation in the flesh, and of His passion, and of His saving death, and of the redemption thereby
accomplished in behalf of the world, and in all this there is nothing incongruous with the divine
oracles. …”

Tarasius: “This blessed father has rivalled the divine Apostle Peter in thus sounding the
trumpet of truth from Rome.”

[Mendham’s Footnote:] * The holy men whom Gregory describes as speaking thus by the counsel of
God are, according to Binius and Baronius, Monothelites: their Canons are spurii and illegitimi and
their Council reprobatum. And Binius adds further – Non tantum Pseudo-synodum, verum etiam
conventum malignantium et Synagogam Diaboli eandum rectissimi appellaveris (Binii “Concil.
Generall.” tom. iii., pars. i., sect. i., p. 313). So the only Canon which speaks expressly in favour of
images was decreed by a Council styled by Romish writers “a Devil’s Synagogue.” 1

Moreover, Pope Gregory II’s letters to Emperor Leo III perhaps contain more evidence for the identification of
Trullo with the Sixth Ecumenical Council.

To begin with, it is interesting that Pope Gregory II wrote in his second letter to the Emperor:

But thou has written – ‘How is it that in the six General Councils no mention was ever made of
images?’ Very true, O King; but neither has anything been said concerning bread and water, whether
we should or should not eat. For as these things were ages ago handed down to us as a means of
preserving life, so have images been handed down to us, and the High Priests have ever been
accustomed to take them with them to the Councils.2

1 Mendham, The Seventh General Council, Session IV, pp. 216 – 223. However, it ought to be noted in fairness,
that the full authenticity of this letter has been disputed since the 1960s, although there is very strong
evidence that it is now preserved as it was presented in the Acts of the Seventh Council (see Leslie Brubaker
and John Haldon, Byzantium in the Iconoclast Era, C. 680 – 850: A History, Ch. II, pp. 90 – 94, Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2011), so those who deny its authenticity must assert that the Seventh Council
itself publicly read an inauthentic or corrupted text.
2 Mendham, The Seventh General Council, Ante-Conciliar Documents, p. xv. Note that the authenticity of this

letter is doubted, and has been much discussed. It is strange that Gregory concedes that nothing was said
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However, this letter also contains a passage where Gregory lists the emperors who had called ecumenical
synods over the centuries:

Such, verily, thy predecessors proved themselves to be in word and deed, who founded churches and
took care of them, and, together with the Priests, with zeal and earnestness sought out the truth of
orthodoxy – such as were Constantine the Great, Theodosius the Great, Valentinian the Great, and
Constantine the father of Justinian, who was present at the Sixth General Council. These Sovereigns
reigned in a manner pleasing to God; and being one with the High Priests, in mind and council, they
assembled synods, searching out the truth of the opinions laid down; and, moreover, they built and
adorned churches.1

Ester Brunet comments on this passage:

While the preceding emperors have the honorary title of mègas (“the Great”), Constantine is
identified with his paternity, as if the fact of being the father of Justinian II is the first source of his
ecclesiological auctoritas. We are witnessing an operation that is the same and opposite to that
carried out by the fathers of Nicene II, who insist on the links between Constantine and Justinian II
and to guarantee ecumenical authority at the synod of the second.2

Also, the first letter of Pope Gregory II to Emperor Leo III refers to the initial assembly of the Sixth Ecumenical
Council by “Constantine, the son of Constans, and father of Justinian”.3 Gregory does recognise a connection
between Constantine and Justinian in relation to the Sixth Ecumenical council, and it would be valid to say
that there was an understanding in the Church that both emperors played a part in the Sixth Ecumenical
Council, realising that Trullo (under Justinian) was part of the Sixth Council.

In the sixth session of the Seventh Ecumenical Council, in the first section, the deacon Epiphanius reads:

Ignorant and undiscerning, the underhand plotters of this newfangled innovation did not
perceive the drift of their own surreptitious exposition; for, wishing to disguise their real sentiments
under a veil of craft, through heedlessness they have made themselves truly ridiculous. For they say
many and great things in praise of ecclesiastical order, and, whether they will or not, are constrained
to confess that the six holy Œcumenic Councils have preserved it entire; thus in words at least they
take the garb of religion, while in their hearts they do wickedly: with their lips they honour her, while
in their hearts they depart from her; for they refuse to receive the tradition which has been held
throughout all preceding ages by so many holy men. O, would that they had shown some reverence
both for the multitude of the present generation of Christians, and, indeed, of all the Christians who
have existed from the first preaching of the Gospel, before that they had thus cast out and denounced
the illustration thereof by means of images! Now, from the time of the convocation of the sixth holy

concerning images in the Six Councils, whereas others have said that the very Churches where they met
contained icons and paintings on the walls, not to mention the striking omission of the 82nd canon of Trullo,
which was usually produced as an example to the contrary. Pope Adrian gives a much better answer in reply
to the Frankish bishops, which is partially quoted in Latin above.
1 Mendham, The Seventh General Council, Ante-Conciliar Documents, pp. xii – xiii.
2 “Mentre gli imperatori che lo precedono hanno il titolo onorifico di mègas, Costantino si identifica con sua

paternità, come se il fatto di essere il padre di Giustiniano II sia la fonte prima della sua auctoritas
ecclesiologica. Si assiste a un’operazione uguale e contraria a quella effettuata dai padri del Niceno II, che
insistono sui legami tra COSTANTINO e GIUSTINANO II e per garantire autorità ecumenica al sinodo del
secondo.” Brunet, Il ruolo di papa Gregorio II (715-731), Iura Orientalia, Vol. III, p. 61. Although it does not
appear that Brunet’s subsequent claims are necessarily accurate given the first quote above, where Gregory
concedes that no mention was made of images in the ecumenical councils, which Brunet does not notice.
3 Mendham, The Seventh General Council, Ante-Conciliar Documents, p. xiii.
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Œcumenic Council to that in which they were convened against holy images, there was not more than
seventy years. That it was not during this period that the usage of pictures and images was delivered
to the Church is evident to all: it must therefore have originated previous to that event. Indeed, to
speak the truth, they came in with the preaching of the Apostles, as we learn from seeing the holy
churches which have been built up in every place; and, as our holy fathers have testified, and as
historians relate, whose writings are with us, even to this present time. …

Again: when from time to time certain Heretics sprang up full of gall and bitterness against
the Church, and when, for the subversion of the same, the six holy Œcumenic Council were convened
in succession by the good will of God, these confirmed and established all that had been delivered to
the Catholic Church, whether written or unwritten, from the most ancient periods, among which
things was the setting up of holy images. This was especially the case with the sixth holy Œcumenic
Council; for, after its decision had been pronounced against those who maintained the one will in
Christ our God, and, indeed, after that Constantine, then Emperor, by whose order, under the good
providence of God, the Council had been assembled had departed this life, and his son Justinian had
assumed the government, that the same fathers who had been assembled therein, met together
again under the divine approbation after a lapse of four or five years, and then they issued
forth one hundred and two canons for the better regulation of the affairs of the Church; in
which canons we find the following regulation about holy images in the eighty-second. [Here
follow the words of the canon at length.] Whence we may all see and understand that, both before
these holy Councils and after these holy Councils, the delineating of images has been handed down to
the Church equally with the publication of the Gospels.1

The eighth and last session of the Seventh Ecumenical Council, records this beautiful conclusion to the entire
holy Council:

When these acclamations had ceased, the Patriarch, having brought the Book of the Definitions which
had been read to the Sovereigns, requested them, together with the whole Council, that they would
be pleased to seal and ratify the same with their own sacred subscription. On which the most pious
Empress, most graciously resplendent, subscribed the document; and then she gave it to her son,
who reigned together with her, for him to subscribe it also. And when this was done, the book was
returned to the Patriarch by Stausarius, the illustrious patrician and master of the Hippodrome. And
all the Bishops, with one accord, joined in the following acclamations to our Sovereigns: –

“Many be the years of our Sovereigns. Many be the years of Constantine and Irene his mother. Of our
orthodox Sovereigns, many be the years. Of our triumphant Sovereigns, many be the years. Of our
peace-loving Sovereigns, many be the years. Eternal be the memory of the New Constantine and the
new Helena. God preserve their dominion. Lord grant them a life of peace. O Lord, preserve their
empire. King, protect those of this world!”

After these acclamations were finished, the Sovereigns gave order that passages from the fathers
which had been recited in the metropolis of the Niceans, and even written in the Fourth Session,
should be read – that is, of John Chrysostom on Meletius Bishop of Antioch; of Asterius Bishop of
Amasca on the martyr Euphemia; of the discourse written by John Bishop of Thessalonica against the
Gentiles; the epistle of the holy Symeon the Stylite to the Emperor Justin; the epistle of the blessed
Nilus the Ascetic to Olympiodorus the Prefect; and the eighty-second canon of the Sixth General
Council. And when these were read in the audience of the Sovereigns, of the illustrious Princes, and
of all Christ-loving people, all being pricked to the heart, embraced the truth. And again, the God-
beloved Bishops joined with the people in acclamations of praise. And the whole of the before-
mentioned royal palace was filled with men; for the whole city, with the military orders, were all

1 Mendham, The Seventh General Council, pp. 314 – 317.

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present. And they broke up the Session, and they glorified God, and with joy gave thanks to Him by
whose pleasure the whole was brought about.1

The matter is settled, and abundantly clear that the Seventh Ecumenical Council considered the Council of
Trullo to be Ecumenical and part of the Sixth Ecumenical Council.

It is interesting that the Roman Catholic bishop Francis de Sales (1567 – 1622), who is considered a saint by
Roman Catholics, in his work The Catholic Controversy, on four occasions identifies the Council in Trullo with
the Sixth Ecumenical Council or the voice of the Catholic Church, and refers to its second canon, when writing
in defence of the Biblical canon:

These are, as far as we know, the books and parts of books concerning which it appears there was
anciently some doubt. And these were not of undoubted authority in the Church at first, but as time
went on they were at length recognised as the sacred work of the Holy Spirit, and not all at once but
at different times. And first, besides those of the first rank, whether of the new or of the Old
Testament, about the year 364 there were received at the Council of Laodicea (which was afterwards
approved in the sixth general Council), the book of Esther, the Epistle of S. James, and Second of S.
Peter, the Second and Third of S. John, that of S. Jude, and the Epistle to the Hebrews as the
fourteenth of S. Paul. Then some time afterwards at the third Council of Carthage (at which S.
Augustine assisted, and which was confirmed in the sixth general Council in Trullo), besides those of
the second rank just mentioned, there were received into the canon, as of full authority, Tobias,
Judith, First and Second Machabees, Wisdom, Ecclesiasticus, and the Apocalypse. …

Yes, but the whole of the Church itself does not receive them, you say. Of what Church are you
speaking? Unquestionably the Catholic, which is the true Church, receives them, as S. Augustine has
just now borne witness to you, and he repeats it, citing the Council of Carthage. The Council in Trullo
the 6th General, that of Florence, and a hundred ancient authors are [witnesses] thereto. …

S. Augustine and S. Jerome are faithful witnesses to us that these have been unanimously received by
the whole Catholic Church; and the Councils of Carthage, in Trullo, Florence, assure us thereof. Why
then do they say that they do receive these sacred books not so much by the common accord of the
Church or by interior persuasion, since the common accord of the Church has neither value nor place
in the matter?2

Many Roman Catholics have made a similar mistake. They could have referred to Trullo simply as an
attestation of the Biblical canon by many bishops in the late seventh century, in simply historical terms, in
which case they would not be inconsistent. However, several Roman Catholics have identified the Council in
Trullo with the Sixth Ecumenical Council, being ignorant that their own modern Church does not fully accept
this identification. Besides Francis de Sales, the English Roman Catholic controversialist James Austin Mason
wrote, “The same [Biblical] canon … was again confirmed by the sixth general council in the year 680.”3

To review the more important testimonies, the Council of Trullo is referred to as valid by Pope Hadrian I in
his letter to Patriarch Tarasius, which was read at the Seventh Ecumenical Council, and this same Council
recognized the validity of the Trullan canons several times. The Caroline Books, written against the Seventh

1 Mendham, The Seventh General Council, pp. 464 – 465.

2 Henry Benedict Mackey, Library of St. Francis De Sales: Works of This Doctor of the Church Translated into
English, Vol. III, The Catholic Controversy, Part II, Art. I, Ch. III – V, pp. 94, 99, 105 (also see footnote † on p.
94), London: Burns and Oates, 1886.
3 James Austin Mason, The Triumph of Truth, p. 33, London: W. E. Andrews, 2nd Ed., 1830.
 393

Council, admit as valid the Council of Trullo, and Pope Hadrian recognizes the Trullan Council again in his
reply to the Caroline Books and other critics of the Seventh Council.

As a side remark, I have seen claims that Trullo falsified or misrepresented the Synod of Carthage on clerical
celibacy. Some have said that Trullo used a faulty Greek translation of those Latin canons. However, this
rather shows that the Latin is misinterpreted or corrupted in currently extant copies, for the Council of Trullo
deliberately commented upon, analysed, and interpreted the canons, and they were much more competent to
do so than modern critics. This is much more likely the case, than the idea they ignorantly worked off of a
faulty Greek translation.

The great Orthodox canonist St. Nicodemus the Hagiorite summarizes the evidence of the Ecumenical nature
of the Trullan Council and Canons:

The Holy and Ecumenical[122] Quinisext (or Quinisextine), or more properly speaking, Sixth[123]
Council was assembled in the imperial and lustrous palace called the Troullos (or, according to the
Latin spelling, Trullus), in the reign of Justinian II, who was the son of Pogonatus and was surnamed
Rhinotmetus (a Greek word meaning “with the nose cut off”), in the year 691 after Christ.[124] The
number of Fathers who attended it was 327 according to Balsamon and Zonaras, but 340 according
to the author of the Conciliar booklet, of whom the leaders were Paul of Constantinople,[125] Basil
the Bishop of Gortyna, a province in Crete, a certain Bishop of Ravenna who acted as the legate of the
Pope of Rome,[126] Peter the Patriarch of Alexandria, Anastasius the Patriarch of Jerusalem, and
George the Patriarch of Antioch. It was assembled at the command of the Emperor, not in order to
examine into any special heresy, not in order to settle questions of faith, in such a way as to warrant
its being called a special and separate Council, but for the purpose of promulgating necessary Canons
relating to correction of outstanding evils and the regulation of the internal polity of the Church.
Which Canons are the following, as confirmed by Acts 2 and 4 and 8 of the Seventh Ecumenical
Council and by the latter’s Canon I. They are further confirmed by three Popes, namely, Adrian I,
Gregory II, and Innocent III, by Gratian, by the legates of the Pope who were present at the Seventh
Ec. C., by the so-called First-and-Second Council, which mentions its c. XXXI in its own c. XII. They are
also confirmed or attested by Cedrenus, by John of Damacus (or John Damascene), who says, “consult
the definitions of the Sixth Council and you will find there the proof.” They were also confirmed or
attested by the interpreters of the Canons, by Photius, by the personal signatures both of the
Emperor and of the legates of the Pope of Rome, as well as those of the Patriarchs and of the Fathers
who attended it. Thus, summarily speaking, it may be said to have been attested and confirmed by
the whole catholic Church, notwithstanding that the modern Latins calumniously traduce them
because they censure and controvert their innovations. Adrian I in his letter to Tarasius has left us
this admirable testimony concerning these Canons in the following words: “I accept the decisions
made by the same holy Sixth Council, together with all the Canons it has duly and divinely uttered,
wherein they are expressed.” In certain inscriptions of the venerable icons is to be found added also
the whole text of its eighty-second Canon (p. 747 of the Collection of the Councils). Pope Gregory in
his letter to St. Germanus (which is recorded in Act 4 of the Seventh Ec. C.) says in reference to this
same Canon of the present Sixth Council: “Wherefore the assembly of the holy men have delivered
this chapter to the Church by God’s design as a matter of the greatest salvation.” Note, too, the fact
that he called this Council a holy assembly and said that its Canons were issued by God’s design. But
the testimony of Patriarch Tarasius concerning these Canons is sufficient to shut and gag the mouths
of the adversaries. In fact it is rather the testimony of the entire Seventh Ecumenical Council and
runs word for word as follows: “Some men who are painfully ignorant in regard to these Canons are
scandalized and blatantly say, ‘We wonder whether they really are Canons of the Sixth Council.’ Let
such men become conscious of the fact that the holy and great Sixth Council was convoked in the
reign of Constantine against those who were asserting the energy and the will of Christ to be a single
energy and a single will, and that the bishops who attended it anathematized the heretics and stated
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clearly and emphatically the Orthodox faith, after which they left for home in the year fourteen of
Constantine’s reign. Thereafter, however, let it not be forgotten that … the same Fathers gathered
themselves together in the reign of Constantine’s son Justinian and promulgated the aforementioned
Canons, and let no one have any doubt about them. For those who signed their names in the reign of
Constantine are the same ones as those who signed their names to the present paper in the reign of
Justinian, as becomes plainly evident from the exact likeness of their respective signatures as written
by their own hands. For it was incumbent on them after declaring an Ecumenical Council to proceed
to promulgate also ecclesiastical Canons (Act 4 of the Seventh Ec. C., p. 780 of the second volume of
the Collection of Canons).” In the same Act 4 of the 7th it is written that this very same identical and
original paper, which had been signed by the Fathers of the present Sixth Council, was read aloud to
the Seventh Ec. C. Peter the Bishop of Nicomedeia stated, though, that there was also another book
containing the present Canons of the Sixth Council (see also Dositheus p. 603 to p. 618 of the
Dodecabiblus).

[Footnotes:]

[122] For many reasons the present Council is called and is an Ecumenical Council. Firstly, because
in the salutatory address which it makes to Justinian, as well as in its third Canon, it labels itself
Ecumenical. Secondly, because the Seventh Ecumenical Council in its Act 8 and in its first Canon also
calls it an Ecumenical Council. In addition, Adrian I, the Pope of Rome, in his letter to Tarasius,
recorded in Act 2 of the 7th Ec. C. (page 748 of the Collection of the Councils), counts this among the
Ecumenical Councils. Thirdly, because in its Canons it lays down legislation and pronounces decrees
relating, not to any one part of the inhabited earth, but to the whole inhabited portion of the globe,
both to the Eastern Churches and to the Western ones; and it specifically refers to Rome, and to
Africa, and to Armenia, to the provinces in Barbary — as appears in Canons XII, XIII, XVIII, XXIX,
XXXV, and XXXVI. It would be ridiculous, of course, for it to lay down legislation for so many and so
widely distributed provinces, and especially to improve upon Canons of many local and regional
Councils and Synods, were it not in reality an Ecumenical Council, and had it not in reality the dignity
and office of an Ecumenical Council. As concerning this see the Footnote to its c. II. Fourthly, because
all of the four Patriarchs of the inhabited earth attended it, and so did the Pope of Rome through his
legates (or lieutenants, or proxies, or deputies); and the churches everywhere on the face of the earth
recognized it and accepted it — a fact which serves as an essential mark of identification and a
constitutive characteristic, or constituent feature, of Ecumenical Councils. Fifthly, and lastly, because
it agrees in its Canons with the divine Scriptures and with the Apostolic and Conciliar and Synodic
traditions and instructions and injunctions, a fact which in itself is a sign and a peculiar token of
Ecumenical Councils, as we said in the prologue to the First Ecumenical Council, if it be not their most
specifically peculiar feature.

[123] I said that more properly speaking this Council is or ought to be designated the sixth, because,
though the later exegetes of the Canons sometimes call it the Quinisext (or Quinisextine), and others
do too, by reason of the fact that it may be said to have supplied what the Fifth and Sixth Councils
failed to provide — that is to say, that it furnished Canons to help in the regulation of the
ecclesiastical polity, such as those Councils failed to promulgate — yet, in spite of the significance of
this fact, it may be averred that, properly and truly speaking, this Council is and ought to be called the
Sixth Ecumenical. Firstly, because, according to the author Romanus in his Prolegomena to the
present Council, the prelates who convoked the Sixth Ecumenical Council in the reign of Pogonatus
convoked also this one in the reign of his son Justinian. For, according to him, forty-three of the
bishops who attended the former were present also at the latter. It would appear, however, that
there were more of them, judging from the words of St. Tarasius which he addressed to the Seventh
Ecumenical Council. Secondly, because the Seventh Ecumenical Council, in its Act 4 and its Act 8, and
in its first Canon, specifically calls it the Sixth. Adrian [I], too, in his letter to Tarasius, accepts its
Canons as if considering it the Sixth Ecumenical Council proper (page 748 of the Collection of
Councils), and in writing to Emperor Charles of France he calls it the Sixth and Holy Council. The
legates of the Pope, too, confirmed it as the Sixth at the Seventh Ecumenical Council; and Pope
Innocent III says in reference to c. XXXII of the Council, “it was arranged at the Sixth Council”; and
 395

Gratian (i.e., Franciscus Gratianus) refers to it by its proper name as the Sixth. And thirdly, also
because this Council is identical with the Sixth more than with the Fifth Ecumenical Council, both as
being closer to it in point of time and as having been held in the same geographical locality, since it
convened in the very same palace of the Troullos (or Trullus) as that in which the Sixth Ecumenical
Council convened.

[124] For this is the date of it according to chronological calculations. For the Council called the Sixth
which was held before it convened in the Ninth Indiction and finished its work A.D. 681 in the first
month of the Tenth Indiction, as the minutes of its meetings bear witness. But this Council (which we
are considering to be the real Sixth Ecumenical Council) assembled in the year 6199 after Adam, and
691 after Christ, as its Third and Seventeenth Canons bear witness; this means that it took place in
the Fifth Indiction immediately following the past period of fifteen years of the preceding Indiction in
which the Sixth Council which was held prior thereto finished its business. So that from the Sixth to
the present Council ten or eleven years passed in point of fact, and not twenty-seven, as the Latins
allege.

[125] That this Council convened in the time of Paul of Constantinople is attested by the Collection of
the Councils, on page 698 thereof; and not in the time of Callinicus, as Binius and Baronius babblingly
assert.

[126] Not only does Balsamon say that he discovered in old codices of Nomocanons that these men
were representing the Pope at this Council, and that the Bishops of Sardinia, of Thessalonica, and of
Corinth were also acting as legates of the Pope, but even c. III of this same Sixth Ec. C. obviously bears
witness that there were legates and representatives of the Pope of Rome attending it (concerning
these see ibidem in the Collection). The Bishop of Gortyna, the Bishop of Thessalonica, and the
Bishop of Corinth acted in place of the Pope at this Council, not because they were subject to the
Pope, by any reason of their having been ordained by him, but on account of the distance, says
Blastaris, from Rome to Constantinople.1

Notes on Sidney Herbert Scott regarding the Trullan Council

Sidney Herbert Drane-Scott writes, “It is amazing that, having passed these canons, the Easterns should then
proceed to send them to the Pope for his confirmation. These Easterns are fully aware of the necessity of
getting their decisions sanctified by the Apostolic See.”2 I do not think this is amazing, but rather standard
and proper ecclesiastical procedure, since councils have often sent their decisions to the Emperor and other
bishops for confirmation. Scott concludes, “This council cannot therefore be reckoned œcumenical on any
grounds. How can it be – judged even by the test of ‘universal consent’ – when the pope and the West
rejected it? Whatever conditions are stipulated as necessary to obtain for a council the right to be accounted
‘œcumenical’ this council in Trullo satisfies none.”3 However, the Trullan Council called itself ecumenical, was
convened by the lawful and Orthodox Emperor, was attended by dozens of bishops who were present at the
Sixth Ecumenical Council, was approved by representatives from all five patriarchates, was classed among the
Six Ecumenical Councils by Pope Adrian, and was specifically recognized as ecumenical by the fathers of the
Seventh Ecumenical Council, along with numerous other first-millennium authorities.

Scott’s claims that the Pope rejected the Trullan Council and that the Easterns believed Papal approval was
necessary, cannot both be true. If the Pope rejected the Trullan canons, then the Seventh Council did not

1 The Rudder, pp. 287 – 289. Concerning the ellipsis after “let it not be forgotten that”, see the discussion
above, on the “great assembly” in 687. It is worth reiterating, as another evidence for the acceptation of
Trullo, that Nicodemus points out that some ancient icons had inscribed upon them the 82nd Canon.
2 Scott, The Eastern Churches and the Papacy, p. 286.
3 Scott, op. cit., p. 286.
 396

think that Papal approval was required for the validity of Trullo, for the Seventh Council fully endorses the
Council of Trullo. The Seventh Ecumenical Council represents the consensus of the universal Church.

Scott questions the legitimacy of Basil of Gortyna in Crete to represent Rome: “Basil seems to have called
himself papal legate, but there is no evidence of his commission, apart from the statement of the Liber
Pontificalis that their signatures were obtained by fraud, their good faith being imposed upon.” 1 However,
the evidence for Basil’s commission is that Basil already signed as representing the Church of Rome in the
first assembly of the Sixth Ecumenical Council, with no records of any disapproval from the council, and this is
a sufficient endorsement. Also, as quoted above, Hefele points out a statement from Pope Nicholas’s eighth
letter to Emperor Michael III (where Hefele comments, “Here it is indicated that the Emperor Justinian II. had
won over the papal representatives to his error.” in the time of Pope Sergius), which is an additional evidence
of the presence of Roman legates at the Council, who agreed with its canons.

Scott also writes, “Simeon Metaphrastes and Gregory of Cæsarea protest against the Council in Trullo being
designated ‘œcumenical,’ but their grounds are uncertain – that no priest of Rome represented the pope there
and that the consent of the Patriarchs of Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem was wanting”. 2 This is an
interesting claim, since I was not able to find any other author who mentions these two Greeks as opposed to
the Trullan Council. Scott does not provide any citation or reference for his claim regarding the priest
Gregory of Caesarea (fl. 940), and as far as I am aware, Gregory’s only extant works are his life of Gregory
Nazianzen and a panegyric on the fathers of the first Nicene council,3 and I did not find any mention of Trullo
in these works of his.4 For Symeon Metaphrastes, Scott gives the footnote reference, “Vit. Steph. Jun. c.
30.” This refers to the life of St. Stephen the Younger (d. 765), which was already mentioned above in
connection with Trullo. The Vita of Stephen the Younger actually classes the Council of Trullo with the Sixth
Ecumenical Council, which is clear from the passage quoted above. Near this point in the text, St. Stephen
strongly criticizes the allegedly ecumenical council of Hieria (which was an iconoclast assembly of 338
bishops who met in the Hieria, or Hiereia, Palace near Chalcedon in 754), and Stephen gives various reasons
why it cannot be called ecumenical, including that it was not attended or represented by four of the five
patriarchs.5 The Vita is not referring here to the Council of Trullo, but to the mock synod of Hieria. It appears
that Scott accidentally or negligently transferred the statements regarding the pseudo-council at Hieria to the
council in Trullo.6

Comments on William Palmer’s remarks on Trullo

William Palmer of Magdalen, writing after he became a member of the Roman Catholic communion, and with
criticism of the Orthodox Church, had the following remarks on the Council in Trullo, which he appears not to
have studied:

But the Council in Trullo of A.D. 691 being unconfirmed by the Popes, and having worded some
canons in a tone offensive to them and tending to schism, could not be put forward as authoritative,
so long as union was preserved with Rome, or so long as a permanent rupture was not intended. In
fact, it was only in A.D. 879, at the restoration of Photius, or rather only in A.D. 942, when his name

1 Scott, op. cit., p. 286.

2 Scott, op. cit., p. 286.
3 John M’Clintock and James Strong, Gregorius Cæsariensis, in Cyclopædia of Biblical, Theological, and

Ecclesiastical Literature, Vol. III, p. 993, New York, NY: Harper & Brothers, 1894.
4 Migne, PG, Vol. XXXV, pp. 241 – 304. Migne, PG, Vol. CXI, pp. 417 – 440.
5 Marie-France Auzépy, La Vie d’Etienne le Jeune par Étienne le Diacre: Introduction, Édition et Traduction, p.

242, Aldershot: Variorum, 1997; Migne, Patrologia Graeca, Vol. C, 1143 – 1144.
6 Scott is aware that St. Stephen is referring to Hieria when he quotes this passage elsewhere in his book. Yet

in that location he again misquotes Stephen. For a note on Scott’s misrepresentation of Stephen’s passage,
see the chapter in the Forgeries section.
 397

was reinserted in the diptychs, that it was decided synodically to identify the Council of A.D. 691 with
the Sixth Ecum. Council, also held at C.P. and ‘in Trullo’ in A.D. 680, 681.1

While still an Anglican, and soon before joining the Roman Catholic communion, Palmer wrote that “these
canons [of Trullo] have never been so received [as ecumenical] in the West”. 2

Palmer is mistaken in numerous points here, because, in addition to the First-and-Second Council of 861, the
Seventh Ecumenical Council deliberately and synodically identified the Council of Trullo with the Sixth
Ecumenical Council, as shown above, and Trullo’s canons were put forward as authoritative by numerous
Christians, including the Popes of Rome, who quoted the 82nd Canon (Pope Adrian I specifically says that the
82nd Canon of Trullo was decreed by the Sixth Council, and Pope Gregory said of this same canon, “holy men
assembled in Council, by the direction of God, have delivered this canon to the Church”). Gratian’s notes show
the Trullan canons were received as ecumenical in the West.

Further Literature

Additional information on Trullo can be found in Vincent Laurent, L’Œuvre Canonique du Concile in Trullo
(691 – 692), Source Primaire du Droit de L’Église Orientale, Revue des Études Byzantine, Vol. XXIII, pp. 7 – 41,
Paris: Institut Français d’Études Byzantines, 1965.

The German Evangelical theologian and professor Heinz Ohme (1950 – current) has written extensively on
the Trullan Council, in the following works (in German):
Das Concilium Quinisextum und seine Bischofsliste: Studien zum Konstantinopeler Konzil von 692,
Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1990.
Concilium Quinisextum – Das Konzil Quinisextum. Übersetzt und eingeleitet von Heinz Ohme. Fontes
Christiani 82. Turnhout 2006.
Concilium Constantinopolitanum a. 691/2 in Trullo habitum (Concilium Quinisextum) (= Acta
Conciliorum Oecumenicorum ser. II 2,4). de Gruyter, Berlin/New York 2013.
Also see Ohme’s section (in English) on Trullo, which includes a bibliography, in Steven Rowan
(translator), Heinz Ohme, Sources of Greek Canon Law to the Quinisext Council (691/2): Councils and Church
Fathers, in Wilfried Hartmann and Kenneth Pennington (editors), The History of Byzantine and Eastern
Canon Law to 1500, Ch. II, pp. 77 – 84, Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2012.
Ohme has written several other articles on the Quinisext Council, mostly in German.

The Greek Orthodox Theological Review, Vol. XL, Nos. 1 – 2, Brookline, MA: Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 1995.
This issue was dedicated to the Quinisext Council.

A short discussion of archeological finds and ancient art and icons preserved in Churches, and their possible
relation to the 82nd Canon of Trullo, can be found in Catherine Jolivet-Lévy, Le canon 82 du Concile
quinisexte et l’image de l’Agneau: à propos d’une é glise iné dite de Cappadoce, in Δελτίον XAE (Χριστιανικής
Αρχαιολογικής Εταιρίας), Vol. XVII, (1993 – 1994), Περίοδος Δ', pp. 45 – 52, Athens: Χριστιανικής
Αρχαιολογικής Εταιρίας , 1994.

John Lindsay Opie, a professor of Byzantine Art History at the University of Rome, and a Russian Orthodox
believer, wrote an excellent article on the 82nd Canon of Trullo and its connection to Christian art of the late
first millennium: John Lindsay Opie, Agnus Dei, in Federico Guidobaldi and Alessandra Guiglia Guidobaldi
(editors), Ecclesiae Urbis: atti del Congresso internazionale di studi sulle Chiese di Roma (IV-X secolo), Roma,

1 William Palmer, The Patriarch and the Tsar, Vol. I, The Replies of the Humble Nicon, p. 625, London: Trübner
& Co., 1871.
2 William Palmer, Dissertations on Subjects Relating to the “Orthodox” or “Eastern-Catholic” Communion,

Dissertation VIII, § XIII, p. 132, London: Joseph Masters, 1853.

 398

4-10 settembre 2000, XVI Sessione: Pittura, mosaico, iconografia, Vol. III, Rome: Pontificio Istituto di
Archeologia Cristiana, 2002.

John Joseph Myers, The Trullan Controversy: Implications for the Status of the Orthodox Churches in Roman
Catholic Canon Law, The Catholic University of America: Canon Law Studies, Vol. CDXCI, Ann Arbor, MI: The
Catholic University of America Press, 1990. This was written as Myers’ dissertation in 1977, and he later
became the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Newark, NJ.

George Nedungatt, The Council in Trullo Revisited: Ecumenism and the Canon of the Councils, Theological
Studies, September 2010, vol. 71, no. 3, pp. 651 – 676.

Ester Brunet, La Ricezione del Concilio Quinisesto (691-692) nelle Fonti Occidentali (VII-IX sec.). Diritto –
Arte – Teologia, Paris: Centre d’Études Byzantines, 2011. Brunet also wrote an article on the topic in 2007 (Il
ruolo di papa Gregorio II (715-731) nel processo di ricezione del concilio Trullano o Quinisesto (692), in Iura
Orientalia, Vol. III, pp. 37 – 65, Rome: Pontificio Istituto Orientale, 2007), largely included in her book.

Richard Price, The Canons of the Quinisext Council (691/2), Translated Texts for Historians, Vol. LXXIV,
Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2020.

The Romanian Orthodox professor and scholar Nicolae V. Dură (1945 – current) has written the best recent
article on this subject, The Ecumenicity of the Council in Trullo: Witnesses of the Canonical Tradition in the
East and in the West, a chapter in The Council in Trullo Revisited (George Nedungatt and Michael
Featherstone (editors), The Council in Trullo Revisited, pp. 229 – 262, Kanonika, Vol. VI, Rome: Pontificio
Instituto Orientale, 1995).

In summary, Canon II of the Second Ecumenical Council, following Canon VI of the First Ecumenical Council, is
accepted and explained by canon XXVIII of the Fourth Ecumenical Council (in harmony with Canon III of the
Second, Canon VIII of the Third, and Canons I, IX and XVII of the Fourth Ecumenical Council, along with
multiple local councils and canonical collections), which is confirmed by Canon XXXVI of the Fifth/Sixth
Ecumenical Council (Trullo), and in accordance with Canon XXXVIII of Trullo, and the canons of Trullo are
confirmed by Canons I and VI of the Seventh Ecumenical Council, which are in turn confirmed by the Eighth
Ecumenical Council, and all are received and recognized by the Orthodox, forming a golden chain of truth,
preserved by thousands of Holy Fathers throughout the ages and to this day.

It is thus clear that the Papal resistance to Canon XXVIII of Chalcedon is unsuccessful, and that the Latin West
has since altered the ancient order and harmony of the Church. Objective history has furnished us with many
proofs to show that the Latins have deviated from Orthodoxy and the primitive belief of the Church.
399
 400

Book III. Forgeries

Ch. I. Introduction

This collection of resources and citations from reliable and authoritative sources shows that the highest
officials of the Catholic Church have used unauthentic documents to promote their positions. The
monumental approval given to falsehood within the Roman Catholic communion is a sign that Roman
Catholicism was not commissioned by God. This book will review not only direct forgeries, but all sorts of
abuse of Church Fathers and ecclesiastical records and sources, including garbled quotations, poor
translations, misrepresentations, misattributions, corruptions, interpolations, and various other forms of
dishonesty or errors in quotation, as well as false accusations of Orthodox forgery.

It is very significant that the greatest controversies between the Latins and the Orthodox are not due to some
supposed rebellion of the Greeks, but when ambitious Latins begin to use false documents to support new
claims to power, such as the supposed universal jurisdiction of the Bishop of Rome. It is important to point
out that the two most disobedient Popes were Pope Nicholas I (858 – 867) and Pope Leo IX (1049 – 1054),
and it is noteworthy that a considerable increase in the circulation of false documents occurred under their
notorious careers. The most important forgery in the Roman Catholic – Orthodox controversy is the forged
Greek Catena or Libellus first extensively used by Thomas Aquinas (considered the greatest Roman Catholic
theologian) in his Contra Errores Graecorum (Against the Errors of the Greeks, written 1263/1264), which
became extremely widespread and the standard “quote mine” for very many Latin books against the
Orthodox for about five hundred years. Often throughout the Roman Catholic interactions with the Orthodox
in history, and down to the present day, Roman Catholics have had recourse to misquotations of the primitive
Fathers and Councils, which shows that their system is not identical to that propounded by those ancient
authorities.

Although most of these false documents had been exposed between the Renaissance and the 18th century,
and no longer recognized as authentic by the Latins, these forgeries had a significant impact on the growth of
the Papal power during the Middle Ages, and were considered authentic for many hundreds of years. Even to
this day, I still commonly find Roman apologists citing forgeries, admittedly spurious works, interpolated
documents, and writings of questionable authenticity in defence of the Papacy and Latin doctrines. That is all
in addition to poor translations, garbled quotations, and other frequent misquotations and
misrepresentations by Roman Catholics.

It is also a problem when Roman Catholics cite documents that are preserved only in the Latin translation,
such as some letters of Greek Fathers who originally wrote in Greek, but the only extant manuscripts are in
Latin. This is an issue because there are many examples of documents for which there is both the original
Greek and the Latin translation, and when the two are compared, considerable differences are found between
the two versions, the Latin translation being interpolated very early with declarations such as “The Roman
Church has always had the Primacy” (an interpolation made by Rome to the 6th Canon of the Council of
Nicaea held in 325, as exposed in Session 16 of the Council of Chalcedon in 451, casting doubt on Rome as an
accurate preserver of ancient documents – as pointed out below in the chapter on The Council of Sardica and
Misquotations of Nicaea), along with many more corruptions of original texts. Numerous examples of current
Roman Catholic use of forgeries abound in libraries around the world, on the Internet, and in works by the
apologists of Rome, but this work is concerned with the question of how historical members of the Roman
Catholic confession have made use of these forgeries, and the impact of these fabrications.

In fairness, it should be noted that I have found several instances of Orthodox authors who have not been
accurate in their use of sources, but it is to a very far lesser degree, and has not resulted in any novel doctrine,
and is frequently blamable in part upon the Latins. Moreover, that inquiry will not concern us here as this
work focuses on the errors of the Latins.
 401

The most important forgeries bearing on the Roman Catholic – Orthodox controversy are the Pseudo-
Isidorian Decretals, the forged Greek Catena (or Libellus) initially used by Aquinas, the Donation of
Constantine, and the Symmachian Forgeries. There are other important corruptions and errors discussed in
this work, and various other issues of minor and miscellaneous importance are also listed here, but they
accumulate to show a system lacking a high degree of accuracy and trustworthiness.

Overbeck points out, “History was always the weak point of the [Roman Catholics] … and Rome by falsifying it
has sealed her own doom.”1

William Payne writes, “Besides the correcting, or rather corrupting of so many fathers, which were genuine
monuments of antiquity, the counterfeiting of so many false ones, and obtruding of so many spurious authors
upon the world, is a plain evidence of the want of true antiquity. … Thus the decretal epistles were
counterfeited to prop up the pope’s spiritual power, and Constantine’s donation to establish his temporal.”2

The Roman Catholic professor James Francis Loughlin (1851 – 1911) claims, “The Bishops of Rome have ever
been distinguished for scrupulous attention to the genuineness of their documents. From the earliest ages,
the fact of a text proceeding ex scriniis Ecclesiam Romanum, was the best witness to its accuracy.”3 This claim
will be proven false by the following examples in this book.

Ch. II An Overview of Falsified Conciliar Records

The following is a summary of various issues with the Latin treatment of the records and facts of Church
Councils, and issues in Latin Councils after the Schism, which can be found throughout the present work and
in this Forgeries book (many other examples could still be given):

1) Pseudo-Synod of Sinuessa in 303

a) An alleged gathering of 300 bishops, where it is said about Pope Marcellinus that “no one can judge
the highest see” (from the Symmachian Forgeries, see the chapter on this forgery).
2) Nicaea I
a) Denying the historicity of Paphnutius’s presence and his speech against mandatory clerical celibacy
(see the chapter on clerical celibacy).
b) Interpolating the text of the 6th canon to favour the Church of Rome, with the words “The Roman
Church always had the Primacy” (see the chapter on the 28th Canon of Chalcedon).
c) A putative letter of the Nicene fathers to Pope Sylvester, showing the solemn approval of the Acts of
the Council of Nicaea given by Pope Sylvester and an apocryphal Roman Synod of 275 bishops, along
with other documents to show that the Fathers of the Council of Nicaea asked for the approval and
ratification of their canons and acts by Pope Sylvester (from the Symmachian Forgeries).
d) Arabic Canons of Nicaea, which promote the Papacy (see the chapter on this forgery).
e) Claiming that the canons of Nicaea permanently fixed the rankings of the Patriarchal Sees and
forbade Constantinople from ever attaining the second place (see the chapter on the 28th Canon of
Chalcedon).
f) A false canon is ascribed to the Nicene Council in the collection of canons made by Latin Cardinal
Deusdedit, to the effect that “it is impossible that any bishop bring it to pass or concede that someone
not be required necessarily to obey the Roman Church, since this obedience has been granted her
immediately by divine institution”, and this was mentioned by other Latins against the Orthodox,

1 Joseph Overbeck, A Plain View, p. 64.

2 William Payne, The Sixth Note of the Church Examined; viz. Agreement in Doctrine with the Primitive
Church, in John Cumming (editor), Edmund Gibson, A Preservative Against Popery, Vol. III, Of the Catholic
Church, Ch. II, Sec. VI, p. 306, London: British Society for Promoting the Religious Principles of the
Reformation, 1848.
3 James F. Loughlin, The Sixth Nicene Canon and the Papacy, in The American Catholic Quarterly Review, Vol.

V, January to October 1880, p. 235, Philadelphia, PA: Hardy & Mahony, 1880.
 402

such as John de Fontibus (see the chapter on the Inauthentic Patristic Quotations in John de
Fontibus).
3) Council of Sardica in 343
a) Citing the Sardican canons as Nicene, and imposing them upon an African Council and quoting them
as Nicene on other occasions after this error was revealed, to promote the privileges of the Papacy
(see the chapter on this). This is due to the Sardican canons being appended to the Nicene canons in
early Latin canonical collections. It is worth noting that the Sardican canons have had textual
variations of their own and some have doubted their full authenticity.
b) The letter of the Council of Sardica to Pope Julius has been interpolated, with the words that it was
“most fitting that the Bishops of the Lord make reference from all the Provinces to the head, that is,
the See of the Apostle Peter.” (see the chapter on the Council of Sardica).
4) Synod of Alexandria (with St. Athanasius) in 357
a) The Pseudo-Isidorian Decretals contain a spurious letter of a Synod of Alexandria, with St. Athanasius
and the other Egyptian bishops, addressed to Pope Felix II, which Roman Catholics and later Latin
popes have cited in defence of the papal claims, such as Francis de Sales, who says: “The Synod of
Alexandria, at which Athanasius was present, in its letter to Felix II., uses remarkable words on this
point, and amongst other things, relates that in the Council of Nice it had been determined that it was
not lawful to celebrate any Council without the consent of the Holy See of Rome, but that the canons
which had been made to that effect had been burnt by the Arian heretics.” (see the chapter on this).
5) Constantinople I
a) Denying the ecumenicity of this Council (Pope Leo I calling them “certain bishops”), and claiming its
canon on Constantinople’s rank was ineffective and not in force (see the chapter on the 28th Canon of
Chalcedon).
b) Corruption of the Third Canon in Aquinas’s Summa and Contra Errores Graecorum, to state “we
venerate the most holy bishop of old Rome as the first and greatest of all the bishops.” (see the
commentary on Aquinas’s works).
c) Falsification of the Constantinopolitan Creed with the Filioque, and claiming that the Greeks removed
the Filioque from the Creed (see the chapter on the Filioque).
d) The Latin Peter Damian, when arguing for the Filioque, at multiple times claims that the Nicene Creed
says that “We also believe in the Holy Spirit, who proceeds properly from the Father,” and then
makes an argument from the word “properly”, saying that this implies that the Holy Spirit does not
proceed from the Father alone, but also from the Son.
6) Two Councils on the Pelagian Controversy
a) The famous misquotation of St. Augustine, “Roma locuta est; causa finita est”, attributes everything to
Rome, and omits mention of the two councils that had assembled and made decisions, and were an
important component in the resolution of the Pelagian controversy (see the chapter on this quote).
7) Ephesus
a) The pro-Papal speech of the papal legate Philip is suspected of being a forgery and interpolation,
based on the internal evidence (see the chapter on this).
b) The Trent Catechism, along with many others, claimed that St. Cyril of Alexandria called the Bishop of
Rome “archbishop of the whole universe” at this council (see the chapter on the Spurious Passages of
St. Cyril).
8) Chalcedon
a) The Papal legates falsely claimed that the bishops were “extorted” to sign the 28th canon, and Pope
Leo then repeated this accusation after the Council itself refuted the claim, likely misled by the Papal
legates (see the chapter on the 28th Canon of Chalcedon).
b) The Papal legates here quoted the interpolated 6th Canon of Nicaea, and in a later Latin manuscript
of the Acts of the Council of Chalcedon, the response of secretary Constantine is removed, to make it
seem as though the Council accepted the interpolated canon of Nicaea.
c) The Latin version of the Acts contain significant tampering with the texts to make them more pro-
Papal. This includes a letter of Pope Leo, the extant text of which quotes from the corrupted Latin
version (see the chapter on this subject).
d) False claims that Canon 28 was not accepted until the time of Photius (see the chapter on the 28th
Canon of Chalcedon).
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e) A likely corrupted letter of Patriarch Anatolius to Pope Leo, where Anatolius allegedly gives up the
cause of the 28th canon, and says that “the whole force of confirmation of the acts was reserved for
the authority of Your Blessedness” (see the chapter on the 28th Canon of Chalcedon).
f) A spurious or interpolated letter of Pope Leo to Theodoret of Cyrus, which contains passages
supporting the Papacy.
g) One forgery associated with the Pseudo-Isidore is a collection of excerpts from the Acts of the Council
of Chalcedon, with interpolations that corrupt the authentic record of Chalcedon to favour the Papal
primacy and Roman jurisdiction (see the end of the chapter on the Pseudo-Isidorian Forgeries).
h) A false claim that the Bishop of Rome was called “ecumenical” by the whole Council of Chalcedon.
Aquinas writes, based on the Forged Greek Catena, “For it is recorded of the Council of Chalcedon
how the whole synod acclaimed Pope Leo: ‘Long live Leo, the most holy, apostolic, and ecumenical,
that is, universal patriarch.’” (see the commentary on Aquinas, Contra Errores Graecorum, Part II, Ch.
XXXIII).
i) A false canon of Chalcedon cited by Aquinas from the Libellus promoting the Papal supremacy.
Aquinas says, “For the canon of the Council of Chalcedon says: ‘If any bishop is sentenced as guilty of
infamy, he is free to appeal the sentence to the blessed bishop of old Rome, whom we have as Peter
the rock of refuge, and to him alone, in the place of God, with unlimited power, is granted the
authority to hear the appeal of a bishop accused of infamy in virtue of the keys given him by the
Lord.’ And further on: ‘And whatever has been decreed by him is to be held as from the vicar of the
apostolic throne.’” (see the commentary on Aquinas, Contra Errores Graecorum, Part II, Ch. XXXV).
9) Code of Canons of the African Church in 418 – 419
a) In some later editions and copies of Gratian’s work, his commentary became appended to the end of
the canon, thus corrupting and giving the opposite meaning to the African canon against appeals to
Rome, which states, “But whoever shall think good to carry an appeal across the water shall be
received to communion by no one within the boundaries of Africa.” and appending the words,
“Unless, perchance, they appeal to the Apostolic chair.”
10) Council of Toledo in 589
a) The Filioque was interpolated into the Acts of this council, and some had erroneously ascribed the
first inclusion of the filioque in the Creed to the Council of Toledo of 447 (see the chapter on the
Corruption of Some Latin Documents with the Filioque).
11) Constantinople III
a) Roman Catholics have taken out the name of Pope Honorius from the list of condemned heretics in
several records. Some have accused the Greeks of foisting in Honorius’s name. Some have asserted
that all of the original documents with Honorius’s name are inauthentic or interpolated (see the
Appendix on the Condemnation of Pope Honorius).
b) The Papal biographer Platina falsely makes Honorius to be a decided opponent of the Monothelites
with a fictional history.
c) Many falsifications and misrepresentations about the Council of Trullo, such as saying that it was a
false synod, led by Monothelites, and not accepted by the Popes or the rest of the Church. (e.g.,
Bottalla saying “that pseudo-synod, stained with Monothelitism, was reprobated in every part of the
Catholic world”, see the section on the Council of Trullo).
12) Nicaea II
a) The Latin version of the Papal letters contain pro-Papal additions that are not present in the Greek
version read at this Council (see the chapter on this).
b) Latins have misquoted St. Stephen on the Council of Hieria as saying “How can you call œcumenical a
council when the Bishop of Rome has not given his consent and when the canons forbid ecclesiastical
affairs to be decided without the Pope of Rome?”, and ending the quote early, whereas the full quote
is “And how can [it] be ‘ecumenical’, a council to which the bishop of Rome did not give his approval
(although a canon states that one does not regulate the affairs of the Church without the Pope of
Rome) nor that [Pope] of Alexandria, as it were, neither that of Antioch nor that of Jerusalem?”, which
shows that the approval of the Bishops of Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem are components in the
ecumenicity of a council (see the chapter on this misquotation).
c) Stephen is implicitly referring to or borrowing from a passage in the Acts of the Seventh Ecumenical
Council, which has likewise been misrepresented: Latins have cited the Seventh Council as saying
“How was it great and universal? for it had not the countenance of the Roman Pope of that time, nor
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of the Bishops who are about him, nor by his Legates, nor by an encyclical letter, as the law of
Councils requires.” However, the true passage is: “Again, how could that be Great or Œcumenic,
which the Presidents of other Churches have never received or assented to; but which, on the
contrary, they have anathematized? It had not as its fellow helper the then Pope of Rome, or his
conclave: neither was it authorized by his Legate, nor by Encyclic Epistle from him, as the custom is
in Councils. Neither do we find that the Patriarchs of the East, of Antioch, Alexandria, and the holy
City, did at all consent thereto, nor any of their great doctors or high-priests.” (see the chapter on this
misquotation).
13) Council of Soissons in 863
a) In a letter to this Council, Pope Nicholas I claimed a right to intervene in the trials of bishops, alleging
in support the canons of Sardica, but the Catholic Encyclopedia comments, “yet what is our surprise
to find him [Nicholas I] claiming in support thereof the canons of the Council of Sardica, which say
nothing of the sort.” (see the quotation from the Catholic Encyclopedia’s article on the False Decretals
in the chapter on this subject).
14) Council of Worms in 868 (and later German councils)
a) The Acts of this council, as well as of later councils of Germany, contain quotations from the Pseudo-
Isidore (see the chapter on the Pseudo-Isidorian Decretals).
15) Pseudo-Constantinople IV (869 – 870)
a) There are many issues with this false council, which are discussed in the works listed on
the Photian controversy.
16) Constantinople IV (879 – 880)
a) Roman Catholics have denied the ecumenicity of this council and accused the Orthodox of forgery,
denying that the Bishop of Rome accepted this council (also see the works on the Photian
controversy).
17) Latin Synods held in Rome under Gregory VII
a) A synod in 1074 cited the Pseudo-Isidore (see the chapter on the Pseudo-Isidorian Decretals).
b) A synod in 1079 explicitly condemned the story of Paphnutius as a forgery (although Pius IV later
admitted its authenticity, see the chapter on clerical celibacy).
18) Latin Council of Lyons in 1274
a) Aquinas’s Contra Errores Graecorum was influential at this council. Note that Aquinas died on his
way to this council, carrying this work and prepared to quote its forgeries against the Greeks.
19) Latin Council of Pisa in 1409
a) The Acts of this council contain quotes from Aquinas Contra Errores Græcorem, Part II, Ch. XXXIV,
including the spurious work of Chrysostom to the Bulgarian delegation (obviously anachronistic).
20) Latin Council of Florence
a) Latins at this council cited the pseudo-Isidore to convince the Orthodox (see the chapter on the
Pseudo-Isidorian Decretals).
b) Latins cited inauthentic texts that have Basil stating that the Holy Spirit “is second to the Son, having
his being from him and receiving from him and announcing to us and being completely dependent
upon him, [as] pious tradition recounts;” (see the chapter on the Corruption of Some Latin
Documents with the Filioque).
c) Latins claimed to cite the Formula of Hormisdas, but it was actually another letter of Pope
Hormisdas, which itself was interpolated with an explicit assertion of the double procession of the
Holy Spirit (see the chapter on the Corruption of Some Latin Documents with the Filioque).
d) The last will of Patriarch Joseph of Constantinople, where he allegedly accepts the Latin doctrines,
was a forgery (see the chapter on this).
21) Latin Council of Trent
a) A member of this Latin council admitted that other council members were sometimes citing
incorrectly from the Church Fathers (see the short chapter on this, quoting Visconti, from Mendham’s
work).
b) The Trent Catechism cites or quotes the Pseudo-Isidorian Decretals at least eleven times, quotes the
spurious passage of Cyril at the Council of Ephesus, and many editions of the Catechism have a false
quotation of St. Ambrose (see the chapter on this).
22) Latin Local Councils in the 1800s
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a) The Acts of the Latin Provincial Council of Kalocsa in 1863 quote the false statement of Cyril at
Ephesus (see the chapter on the Trent Catechism).
b) The promise of a papal legate at the Latin Second Plenary Council of Baltimore (1866) was broken,
and the acts were tampered with (see the chapter on this).
23) Latin Vatican I Council
a) A false quote of Latin bishop Strossmeyer was published by Cardinal Manning to promote the alleged
freedom of discussion at the Latin First Vatican Council (see the chapter on this).

Ch. III Pseudo-Isidorian Decretals

Decretalia autem, quæ a sanctis Pontificibus primæ sedis Romanæ Ecclesiæ sunt instituta, cujus auctoritate
atque sanctione omnes Synobi et sancta Concilia roborantur, et stabilitatem sumunt, cur vos non habere vel
observare dicitis? – Pope Nicholas I to Patriarch St. Photius

“The ‘Decretum’ of Gratian quotes three hundred and twenty-four times the epistles of the popes of the first four
centuries; and of these three hundred and twenty-four quotations, three hundred and thirteen are from the
letters which are now universally known to be spurious.” – George Salmon

“The Pseudo-Isidorian Decretals were the most extensive, most important, and most impudent fraud ever
perpetrated in history.” – Julian Joseph Overbeck (A Plain View, p. 45)

The introductory notice to the Pseudo-Isidorian Decretals in the Ante-Nicene Fathers series states the
following:

The learned editors of the Edinburgh series have given us only a specimen of these frauds,
which, pretending to be a series of “papal edicts” from Clement and his successors during the ante-
Nicene ages, are, in fact, the manufactured product of the ninth century, – the most stupendous
imposture of the world’s history, the most successful and the most stubborn in its hold upon
enlightened nations. Like the mason’s framework of lath and scantlings, on which he turns an arch of
massive stone, the Decretals served their purpose, enabling Nicholas I. to found the Papacy by their
insignificant aid. That swelling arch of vanity once reared, the framework might be knocked out; but
the fabric stood, and has borne up every weight imposed upon it for ages. Its strong abutments have
been ignorance and despotism. Nicholas produced his flimsy framework of imposture, and amazed
the whole Church by the audacity of the claims he founded upon it. The age, however, was unlearned
and uncritical; and, in spite of the remonstrances from France under lead of Hincmar, bishop of
Rheims, the West patiently submitted to the overthrow of the ancient Canons and the Nicene
Constitutions, and bowed to the yoke of a new canon-law, of which these frauds were not only made
an integral, but the essential, part. The East never accepted them for a moment: her great
patriarchates retain the Nicene System to this day. But, as the established religion of the “Holy
Roman Empire,” the national churches of Western Europe, one by one, succumbed to this revolt from
historic Catholicity. The Eastern churches were the more numerous. They stood by the Constitutions
confirmed by all the Œcumenical Synods; they altered not a word of the Nicene Creed; they stood up
for the great Catholic law, “Let the ancient customs prevail;” and they were, and are to this day, the
grand historic stem of Christendom. The Papacy created the Western schism, and contrived to call it
“the schism of the Greeks.” The Decretals had created the Papacy, and they enabled the first Pope to
assume that communion with himself was the test of Catholic communion: hence his
excommunication of the Easterns, which, after brief intervals of relaxation, settled into the chronic
schism of the Papacy, and produced the awful history of the mediæval Church in Western Europe.

In naming Nicholas I. as the founder of the Papacy, and the first Pope, I merely reach the
logical consequence of admitted facts and demonstrated truths. I merely apply the recognised
principles of modern thought and scientific law to the science of history, and dismiss the technology
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of empiricism in this science, as our age has abolished similar empiricisms in the exact sciences. For
ages after Copernicus, even those who basked in the light of the true system of the universe went on
in the old ruts, talking as if the Ptolemaic theory were yet a reality: and so the very historians whose
lucid pages explode the whole fabric of the Papal communion, still go on, in the language of fable,
giving to the early Bishops of Rome the title of “Popes;” counting St. Peter as the first Pope;
bewildering the student by many confusions of fact with fable; and conceding to the modern fabric of
Romanism the name of “the Catholic Church,” with all the immense advantages that accrue to
falsehood by such a surrender of truth, and the consequent endowment of imposture with the
raiment and the domain of Apostolic antiquity.

The student of this series must have noted the following fundamental facts: –

1. That the name papa was common to all bishops, and signified no pre-eminence in those who
bore it.
2. That the Apostolic Sees were all equally accounted matrices of unity, and the roots of other
Catholic churches.
3. That, down to the Council of Nicæa, the whole system of the Church was framed on this principle,
and that these were the “ancient customs” which that council ordained to be perpetual.
4. That “because it was the old capital of the empire,” and for no other reason (the Petrine idea
never once mentioned), the primacy of honour was conceded to Old Rome, and equal honour to
New Rome, because it was the new capital. It was to be named second on the list of
patriarchates, but to be in no wise inferior to Old Rome; while the ancient and all-commanding
patriarchate of Alexandria yielded this credit to the parvenu of Byzantium only on the principle
of the Gospel, “in honour preferring one another,” and only because the imperial capital must be
the centre of Catholic concourse.

Now, the rest of the story must be sought in post-Nicene history. The salient points are as
follows: –

1. The mighty centralization about Constantinople; the three councils held within its walls; the
virtual session of the other councils under its eaves; the inconsiderable figure of “Old Rome” in
strictly ecclesiastical history; her barrenness of literature, and of great heroic sons, like
Athanasius and Chrysostom in the East, and Cyprian and Augustine in the West; and her
decadence as a capital, – had led Leo I., and others after him, to dwell much upon “St. Peter,” and
to favour new ideas of his personal greatness, and of a transmitted grandeur as the inheritance of
his successors. As yet, these were but “great swelling words of vanity;” but they led to the
formulated fraud of the Decretals.
2. Ambition once entering the pale of Catholicity, we find a counter idea to that of the councils at
the root of the first usurpation of unscriptural dignity. John “the Faster,” bishop of New Rome,
conceived himself not merely equal (as the councils had decreed) to the bishop of Old Rome, but
his superior, in view of the decrepitude of the latter, and its occupation by the Goths, while the
imperial dignity of Constantinople was now matured. He called himself “Œcumenical Bishop.”
3. Gregory was then bishop of “Old Rome,” and that was the time to assert the principle of the
Decretals, had any such idea ever been heard of, How did he meet his brother’s arrogance? Not
appealing to decretals, not by asserting that such was his own dignity derived from St. Peter, but
by protesting against such abasement of all the other patriarchs and all other bishops (who were
all equals), and by pronouncing the impious assumption of such a nefarious title to denote a
“forerunner of Antichrist.” Plainly, then, there was no “Pope” known to Christendom at the close
of the sixth century.
4. But hardly was Gregory in his grave when court policy led the Emperor Phocas (one of the most
infamous of men to gratify the wicked ambition of the new Bishop of Rome by giving to him the
titular honour of being a “forerunner of Antichrist.” Boniface III. (607 A.D.) assumed the daring
title of “Universal Bishop.” But it was a mere court-title: the Church never recognised it; and so it
went down to his successors as mere “sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal” till the days of
Charlemagne.
 407

5. In his times the Petrine fable had grown upon the Western mind. All Western Europe had but
one Apostolic See. As “the Apostolic See” it was known throughout the West, just as “the Post-
Office” means that which is nearest to one’s own dwelling. What was geographically true, had
grown to be theologically false, however; and the Bishop of Rome began to consider himself the
only inheritor of Apostolic precedency, if not of all Apostolic authority and power.
6. The formation of the Western Empire favoured this assumption: but it did not take definite shape
while Charlemagne lived, for he regarded himself, like Constantine, the “head of the Church;” and
in his day he acted as supreme pontiff, called the Council of Frankfort, overruled the Roman
bishop, and, in short, was a lay-Pope throughout his empire. That nobody refused him all he
claimed, that Adrian “couched like a strong ass” under the burden of his rebukes, and that Leo
paid him bodily “homage,” demonstrated that no such character as a “Pope” was yet in existence.
Leo III. had personally “adored” Charlemagne with the homage afterwards rendered to the
pontiffs, and Adrian had set him the example of personal submission.
7. But, Charlemagne’s feeble sons and successors proving incapable of exercising his power, the
West only waited for an ambitious and original genius to come to the See of Rome, to yield him
all that Charlemagne had claimed, and to invest him with the more sacred character of the
Apostolic head to the whole Church.
8. Such a character arose in Nicholas I. He found the Decretals made to his hand by some imposter,
and he saw a benighted age ready to accept his assumptions. He therefore used them, and
passed them into the organic canon-law of the West. The “Holy Roman Empire” reluctantly
received the impious frauds: the East contemptuously resisted. Thus the Papacy was formed on
the base of the “Holy Roman Empire,” and arrogated to itself the right to cut off and anathematize
the greater part of Christendom, with the old patriarchal Sees. So we have in Nicholas the first
figure in history in whose person is concentrated what Rome means by the Papacy. No “Pope”
ever existed previously, in the sense of her canon-law; and it was not till two centuries longer
that even a “Pope” presumed to pronounce that title peculiar to the Bishop of Rome.

Such, then, are the historical facts, which render vastly important some study of the Decretals. I
shall give what follows exclusively from “Roman-Catholic” sources. Says the learned Dupin:

“1. All these Decretals were unknown to all the ancient Father, to all the Pope and all the
ecclesiastical authors that wrote before the ninth century. Now, what rational man can believe that so
vast a number of letters, composed by so many holy Popes, containing so many important points in
relation to the discipline of the Church, could be unknown to Eusebius, to St. Jerome, to St. Augustine,
to St. Basil, and, in short, to all those authors that have spoken of their writings, or who have written
upon the discipline of the Church? Could it possibly happen that the Popes, to whom these epistles
are so very favourable, would never have cited and alleged them to aggrandize their own reputation?
Who could ever imagine that the decisions of these Decretals should be never so much as quoted in
any council or in any canon? He that will seriously consider with himself, that, since these Decretals
have been imposed upon the world, they have been cited in an infinite number of places by Popes, by
councils, and as often by canonists, will be readily convinced that they would have acquired immense
credit, and been very often quoted by antiquity, if they had been genuine and true.”

Here I must direct attention to the all-important fact, that whatever may have been the
authorship of these forgeries, the Roman pontiffs, and the “Roman Catholic” communion as such,
have committed themselves over and over again to the fraud, as Dupin remarks above, and that, long
after the imposture was demonstrated and exposed; in proof of which I cite the following, from one
whose eyes were open by his patient investigation of such facts, but who, while a member of the
Roman communion, wrote to his co-religionist Cardinal Manning as follows: –

“Is it credible that the Papacy should have so often appealed to these forgeries for its extended
claims, had it any better authorities – distinctive authorities – to fall back upon? Every disputant on
the Latin side finds in these forgeries a convincing argument against the Greeks. ‘To prove this,’ the
universal jurisdiction of the Pope, said Abbot Barlaam, himself converted by them from the Greek
Church, to convert his countrymen, ‘one need only look through the decretal epistles of the Roman
 408

pontiffs from St. Clement to St. Sylvester.’ In the twenty-fifth session of the Council of Florence the
provincial of the Dominicans is ordered to address the Greeks on the rights of the Pope, the Pope
being present. Twice he argues from the pseudo-decretal of St. Anacletus, at another time from a
synodical letter of St. Athanasius to Felix, at another time from a letter of Julius to the Easterns, all
forgeries. Afterwards, in reply to objections taken by Bessarion, in conference, to their authority,
apart from any question of their authenticity, his position in another speech is, ‘that those decretal
epistles of the Popes, being synodical epistles in each case, are entitled to the same authority as the
Canons themselves.’ Can we need further evidence of the weight attached to them on the Latin side?

“Popes appealed to them in their official capacity, as well as private doctors; (1) Leo IX., for instance,
to the pseudo-donation in the prolix epistle written by him, or in his name, to Michael Cerularius,
patriarch of Constantinople, on the eve of the schism. (2) Eugenius IV. to the pseudo-decretals of St.
Alexander and Julius, during the negotiations for healing it, in his instructions to the Armenians. (3)
But why, my lord, need I travel any further for proofs, when in the Catechism of the Council of Trent,
that has been for three centuries the accredited instructor of the clergy themselves, recommended
authoritatively by so many Popes, notwithstanding the real value of these miserable impostures had
been for three centuries before the world, I find these words: ‘On the primacy of the Supreme Pontiff,
see the third epistle (that is, pseudo-decretal) of Anacletus’! Such is, actually, the authority to which
the clergy of our own days are referred, in the first instance, for sound and true views on the primacy.
(4) Afterwards, when they have mastered what is said there, they may turn to three more authorities,
all culled likewise from Gratian, which they will not fail to interpret in accordance with the ideas they
have already imbibed. Nor can I refrain from calling attention to a much more flagrant case. On the
sacrament of confirmation there had been many questions raised by the Reformers, calculated to set
people thinking, and anxious to know the strict truth respecting it. On this the Catechism proceeds as
follows: –

“‘Since it has been already shown how necessary it would be to teach generally respecting all the
sacraments, by whom they were instituted, so there is need of similar instruction respecting
confirmation, that the faithful may be the more attracted by the holiness of this sacrament. Pastors
must therefore explain that not only was Christ our Lord the author of it, but that, on the authority of
the Roman pontiff St. Fabian (i.e., the pseudo-decretal attributed to him), He instituted the rite of the
chrism, and the words used by the Catholic Church in its administration.’

“Strange phenomenon, indeed, that the asseverations of such authorities should be still ordered
to be taught as Gospel from our pulpits in these days, when everybody that is acquainted with the
merest rudiments of ecclesiastical history knows how absolutely unauthenticated they are in point of
fact, and how unquestionably the authorities cited to prove them are forgeries.

“Absolutely, my lord, with such evidence before me, I am unable to resist the inference that
truthfulness is not one of the strongest characteristics of the teaching of even the modern Church of
Rome; for is not this a case palpably where its highest living authorities are both indifferent to having
possible untruths preached from the pulpit, and something more than indifferent to having forgeries,
after their detection as such, adduced from the pulpit to authenticate facts?

“This, again, strongly reminds me of a conversion I had with the excellent French priest who
received me into the Roman-Catholic Church, some time subsequently to that event. I had, as an
Anglican, inquired very laboriously into the genuineness of the Santa Casa; and having visited
Nazareth and Loretto since, and plunged into the question anew at each place, came back more
thoroughly convinced than ever of its utterly fictitious character, notwithstanding the privileges
bestowed upon it by so many Popes. On stating my convictions to him, his only reply was: ‘There are
many things in the Breviary which I do not believe, myself.’ Oh the stumbling-blocks of a system in
the construction of which forgeries have been so largely used, in which it is still thought possible for
the clergy to derive edification from legends which they cannot believe, and the people instruction
from works of acknowledged imposture!”
 409

Further, Dupin remarks:

“The first man that published them, if we may believe Hincmar, was one Riculphus, bishop of
Mentz, who died about the ninth century. It is commonly believed, seeing the collection bears the
name of Isidore, that he brought them from Spain. But it never could have been composed by the
great Archbishop of Seville; and there is great reason to believe that no Spaniard, but rather some
German or Frenchman, began this imposture.

“It likewise seems probable that some of these Decretals have been foisted in since the time of
Riculphus. Benedict, a deacon of the church of Mentz, who made a collection of canons for the
successors of Riculphus, may have put the last hand to this collection of false Decretals attributed to
one Isidore, a different person from the famous Bishop of Seville, and surnamed Peccator, or
Mercator. About his time a certain Isidore did come from Spain, along with some merchants, and
then withdrew to Mentz. Not improbably, therefore, this man’s name was given to the collection, and
it was naturally believed that it was brought from Spain.

“And since these letters first appeared in an unlearned, dark age, what wonder is it that they
were received with very little opposition? And yet Archbishop Hincmar of Rheims, with other French
bishops, made great difficulty in accepting them, even in that time. Soon after, however, they
acquired some authority, owing to the support of the court of Rome, the pretensions of which they
mightily favoured.”

On the twin imposture of the “Donation of Constantine,” it may be well to cite the same learned
authority. But this shall be found elsewhere [Elucidation II.].

Let me now recur to the same candid Gallican doctor, Dupin, who remarks as follows: –

“2. The imposture of these letters is invincibly proved from hence: because they are made up of a
contexture of passages out of Fathers, councils, papal epistles, and imperial ordinances, which have
appeared after the third century, down to the middle of the ninth.

“3. The citations of Scripture in all these letters follow the Vulgate of St. Jerome, which
demonstrates that they are since his time (A.D. 420), and consequently do not proceed from Popes
who lived long before St. Jerome.

“4. The matter of these letters is not at all in keeping with the ages when those to whom they are
attributed were living.

“5. These Decretals are full of anachronisms. The consulships and names of consuls mentioned
in them are confused and out of order; and, moreover, the true dates of the writers themselves, as
Bishops of Rome, do not agree with those assumed in these letters.

“6. Their style is extremely barbarous, full of solecisms; and in them we often meet with certain
words never used till the later ages. Also, they are all of one style! How does it happen that so many
different Popes, living in divers centuries, should all write in the same manner?”

Dupin then goes on to examine the whole series with learning and candour, showing that every
single one of them “carries with it unequivocal signs of lying and imposture.” To his pages let the
student recur, therefore. I follow him in the following enumeration of the frauds he calmly exposes
with searching logic and demonstration: –

1. St. Clement to St. James the Lord’s Brother. – Plainly spurious.

2. The Second Epistle of Clement to the Same. – Equally so.
3. St. Clement to all Suffragan Bishops, Priests, Deacons, and Others of the Clergy: to all Princes Great
and Small, and to all the Faithful.
 410

Dupin remarks: “This very title suffices to prove the forgery, as, in the days of St. Clement, there
were no “princes great or small” in the Church. He adds that it speaks of “subdeacons,” an order
not then existing, and that it is patched up from scraps of the apocryphal [Clementine]
Recognitions.

4. A Fourth Letter of the Same. It is self-refuted by “the same reasons.”

5. The Fifth Letter to St. James of St. Clement, Bishop of Rome and Successor of St. Peter.

“But,” says Dupin, “as St. James died before St. Peter, it necessarily follows, that this epistle
cannot have been written by St. Clement.” Further, “We have one genuine epistle of St. Clement,
the style of which is wholly different from that of these Decretals.”

6. The Epistle of Anacletus. – Barbarous, full of solecisms and falsehoods.

7. A Second Epistle of Anacletus. – Filled with passages out of authors who lived long after the times
of Anacletus.
8. A Third Letter, etc. – Spurious for the same reasons.
9. An Epistle of Evaristus. – Patched up out of writings of Innocent in the fifth century, dated under
consuls not contemporaries of the alleged writer.
10. A Second Epistle of the Same. – Stuffed with patchwork of later centuries.
11. An Epistle of Alexander. – Contains passages from at least one author of the eighth century.
12. A Second Epistle of the Same. – Refers to the Councils of Laodicea, which was held (A.D. 365) after
Alexander was dead.
13. A Third Epistle, etc. – Quotes an author of fifth century.
14. An Epistle of Xystus. – Dates under a consul that lived in another age, and quotes authors of
centuries later than his own day.
15. A Second Epistle of the Same. – Subject to the same objections, anachronisms, etc.
16. An Epistle of Telesphorus. – False dates, patched from subsequent authors, etc.
17. An Epistle of Hyginus. – Anachronisms, etc.
18. A Second of the Same. – Stuffed with anachronisms, and falsely dated by consuls not of his age.
19. An Epistle of Pius I. – Full of absurdities, and quotes “the Theodosian Code”!
20. A Second. – It is addressed to Justus, etc. Bad Latin, and wholly unknown to antiquity, though
Baronius has tried to sustain it.
21. A Third Letter, etc. – Addressed to Justus, bishop of Vienna. False for the same reasons.
22. An Epistle of Anicetus. – Full of blunders as to dates, etc. Mentions names, titles, and the like,
unheard of till later ages.
23. An Epistle of Soter. – Dated under consuls who lived before Soter was bishop of Rome.
24. A Second Letter, etc. – Speaks of “monks,” “palls,” and other things of later times; is patched out of
writings of subsequent ages, and dated under consuls not his contemporaries.
25. An Epistle of Eleutherus. – Subject to like objections.
26. A Second Letter, etc. – Anachronisms.
27. A Third Letter, etc. – Addressed to “Desiderius, bishop of Vienna.” There was no such bishop till
the sixth century.
28. A Fourth Letter, etc. – Quotes later authors, and is disproved by its style.
29. An Epistle of Zephyrinus. – Little importance to be attached to anything from such a source; but
Dupin (who lived before his bad character came to light in the writings of Hippolytus) convicts it
of ignorance, and shows that it is a patchwork of later ideas and writers.
30. A Second Letter. – “Yet more plainly an imposture,” says Dupin.
31. An Epistle of St. Callistus. – What sort of a “saint” he was, our readers are already informed. This
epistle is like the preceding ones of Zephyrinus.
32. A Second Epistle, etc. – Quotes from writings of the eighth century.
33. An Epistle of Urban. – Quotes the Vulgate, the Theodosian Code, and Gregory the Fourth.
34. An Epistle of Pontianus. – Anachronisms.
35. A Second Epistle, etc. – Barbarous and impossible.
36. An Epistle of Anterus. – Equally impossible; stuffed with anachronisms.
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37. An Epistle of Fabianus. – Contradicts the facts of history touching Cyprian, Cornelius, and
Novatus.
38. A Second Epistle, etc. – Self-refuted by its monstrous details of mistake and the like.
39. A Third Epistle, etc. – Quotes authors of the sixth century.
40. An Epistle of Cornelius. – Contradicts historical facts, etc.
41. A Second Epistle, etc. – Equally full of blunders. “But nothing,” says Dupin, “shows the imposture
of these two letters more palpably than the difference of style from those truly ascribed to
Cornelius in Cyprian’s works.”
42. A Third Letter, etc. – Equally false on its face. Dupin, with his usual candour, remarks: “We find in
it the word ‘Mass,’ which was unknown to the contemporaries of Cornelius.
43. An Epistle of Lucius. – It is dated six months before he became Bishop of Rome, and quotes
authors who lived ages after he was dead.
44. An Epistle of Stephen. – “Filled with citations out of subsequent authors.”
45. A Second Epistle, etc. – Open to the like objection; it does not harmonize with the times to which it
is referred.

Here Dupin grows weary, and winds up his review as follows: –

“For like reasons, we must pass judgment, in like manner, on the two Epistles of Sixtus II.; the two of
Dionysius; the three of St. Felix I.; the two of Eutychianus; one of Caius; two of Marcellinus and those
of Marcellus; the three of Eusebius; those of Miltiades, and the rest of Isidore’s collection: they are full
of passages out of Fathers, Popes, and councils, more modern than the very Popes by whom they are
pretended to be written. In them are many things that clash with the known history of those times,
and were purposely framed to favour the court of Rome, and to sustain her pretensions against the
rights of bishops and the liberties of churches. But it would take too much time to show the gross
falsehood of these monuments. They are now rejected by common consent, and even by those
authors who are most favourable to the court of Rome, who are obliged to abandon the patronage of
these epistles, though they have done a great deal of service in developing the greatness of the court
of Rome, and ruining the ancient discipline of the Church, especially with reference to the rights of
bishops and ecclesiastical decisions.”

The following is the Translator’s Preface to these frauds: –

In regard to these Decretals, Dean Milman says: “Up to this period the Decretals, the letters
or edicts of the Bishops of Rome, according to the authorized or common collection of Dionysius,
commenced with Pope Siricius, towards the close of the fourth century. To the collection of
Dionysius was added that of the authentic councils, which bore the name of Isidore of Seville. On a
sudden was promulgated, unannounced, without preparation, not absolutely unquestioned, but
apparently overawing at once all doubt, a new code, which to the former authentic documents added
fifty-nine letters and decrees of the twenty oldest popes from Clement to Melchiades, and the
Donation of Constantine; and in the third part, among the decrees of the popes and of the councils
from Sylvester to Gregory II., thirty-nine false decrees, and the acts of several unauthentic councils.”

In regard to the authorship and date of the False Decretals, Dean Milman says: “The author
or authors of this most audacious and elaborate of pious frauds are unknown; the date and place of
its compilation are driven into such narrow limits that they may be determined within a few years,
and within a very circumscribed region. The False Decretals came not from Rome; the time of their
arrival at Rome, after they were known beyond the Alps, appears almost certain. In one year
Nicholas I. is apparently ignorant of their existence; the next he speaks of them with full knowledge.
They contain words manifestly used at the Council of Paris, A.D. 829, consequently are of a later.
They were known to the Levite Benedict of Mentz, who composed a supplement to the collection of
capitularies by Ansegise, between A.D. 840 – 847. The city of Mentz is designated with nearly equal
 412

certainty as the place in which, if not actually composed, they were first promulgated as the canon
law of Christendom.”1

The False Isidorian Decretals refers to a collection of forged papal letters and other apocryphal documents
created around the year 850. Saint Isidore, who was the Bishop of Seville in Spain from 600 to 636, was
alleged to be the compiler of the collection. These forged documents claimed to be from the early ages of the
Church, but incorporated the anachronistic ideas of Papal power. This forgery greatly promoted the Papacy
and had nearly undisputed authority for about seven hundred years, from the ninth century to the sixteenth
century. The Catholic Encyclopedia has a great article on this topic by the French professor and historian
Louis Saltet (1870 – 1952), which will be quoted here, and Saltet confirms, “Nowadays every one agrees that
these so-called papal letters are forgeries.”2 Regarding the purpose of the forger, Saltet writes, “His chief
concern was to defend the bishops; and if the papacy profited by what he did, it can be shown that it was a
necessary consequence of the pope’s being made the champion of the bishop. And even though it must be
admitted that the popes benefited by the forgeries, their good faith is beyond question.”3

However the ready acceptance by the Popes of these forgeries casts suspicion upon the statement that their
“good faith is beyond question”. The Anglican priest and historian Henry Hart Milman (1791 – 1868),
discussing the False Decretals in his magnum opus, History of Latin Christianity, has questioned:

This immediate, if somewhat cautious, adoption of the fiction, unquestionably not the forgery, by
Pope Nicolas, appears to me less capable of charitable palliation than the original invention. It was, in
truth, a strong temptation. But in Rome, where such documents had never been heard of, it is difficult
to imagine by what arguments a man, not unlearned, could convince himself, or believe that he could
convince himself, of their authenticity. Here was a long, continuous, unbroken series of letters, an
accumulated mass of decrees of councils, of which the archives of Rome could show no vestige, of
which the traditions of Rome were altogether silent: yet is there no holy indignation at fraud, no lofty
reproof of those who dared to seat themselves in the pontifical chair and speak in the names of Pope
after Pope. There is a deliberate, artful vindication of their authority. Reasons are alleged from which
it is impossible to suppose that Nicolas himself believed their validity, on account of their
acknowledged absence from the Roman archives. Nor did the successors of Nicolas betray any
greater scruple in strengthening themselves by this welcome, and therefore only, unsuspicious aid. It
is impossible to deny that, at least by citing without reserve or hesitation, the Roman pontiffs gave
their deliberate sanction to this great historic fraud.4

The following is a passage from Saltet’s article in the Catholic Encyclopedia:

The Collection of Isidore falls under three headings: (1) A list of sixty apocryphal letters or decrees
attributed to the popes from St. Clement (88 – 97) to Melchiades (311 – 314) inclusive. Of these sixty
letters fifty-eight are forgeries; they begin with a letter from Aurelius of Carthage requesting Pope
Damasus (366 – 384) to send him the letters of his predecessors in the chair of the Apostles; and this
is followed by a reply in which Damasus assures Aurelius that the desired letters were being sent.
This correspondence was meant to give an air of truth to the false decretals, and was the work of
Isidore. (2) A treatise on the Primitive Church and on the Council of Nicæa, written by Isidore, and
followed by the authentic canons of fifty-four councils. It should be remarked, however, that among
the canons of the second Council of Seville (page 438) canon vii is an interpolation aimed against

1 Arthur Cleveland Coxe (volume editor), Stewart Dingwall Fordyce Salmond (translator), The Decretals,
Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson (series editors), in ANF, Vol. VIII, VI, pp. 601 – 607.
2 Louis Saltet, False Decretals, in CE, Vol. V, p. 773.
3 Louis Saltet, False Decretals, in CE, Vol. V, p. 778.
4 Henry Hart Milman, History of Latin Christianity, Vol. III, Book V, Ch. IV, pp. 198 – 199, 3rd Ed., London: John

Murray, 1872.
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chorepiscopi. (3) The letters mainly of thirty-three popes, from Silvester (314 – 335) to Gregory II
(715 – 731). Of these about thirty letters are forgeries, while all the others are authentic. …

The Isidorian collection was published between 847 and 852. On the one hand it must have been
published before 852, because Hincmar quotes the false decretal of Stephen I (p. 183) among the
statutes of a council (Migne, P.L., CXXV, 775), and on the other hand it cannot have been published
before 847, because it makes use of the false capitularies of Benedict Levitas, which were not
concluded until after 21 April, 847. As to the place where the Decretals were forged, critics are all
agreed that it was somewhere in France. …

Isidore’s forgeries were known among the Franks as early as 852. In Germany we hear of them a
little later. We find traces of them in the Acts of the councils of Germany dating from that of Worms
in 868, but in Spain we find no reference to them, and they seem to have been hardly known there.
They found their way into England towards the close of the eleventh century, probably through
Lanfranc, Archbishop of Canterbury. Their reception in Italy is of greater importance. It occurred
probably during the pontificate of Nicholas I (858–867). It seems certain that he knew of the
decretals, and it is possible that he may have even possessed a copy of them, and showed proof of
this on the occasion of the appeal to Rome made by Bishop Rothade of Soissons, who had got into
difficulties with his metropolitan, Hincmar of Reims. He had already caused his appeal to be
presented to the pope, but he now explained his case in detail. It was to his interest to quote the
authority of the false decretals, and he did not fail to do so. This is proved by a letter written by
Nicholas I on 22 January, 865, dealing with Rothade’s appeal. Pope Adrian II (867–872) was
acquainted with them, and in a letter dated 26 December, 871, he approves of the translation of
Actard, Bishop of Nantes, to the metropolitan See of Tours, and quotes apropos one of the false
decretals. Quotations made by Stephen V (885–891) are not conclusive proof that he directly used
Isidore’s text; and the same may be said of occasional references to it during the tenth century, which
occur in the letters of the popes or of the papal legates. However, other authors in Italy show less
reserve in using the false decretals. Thus, at the end of the ninth and the beginning of the tenth
century they are quoted by Auxilius in the treatises he wrote in defence of the ordinations performed
by Pope Formosus (891–896). It is true that Auxilius was born among the Franks, as was also
Rathier, Bishop of Verona, who likewise quotes Isidore. Attone of Vercelli, however, was an Italian,
and he quotes him. At the end of the ninth century and during the tenth, extracts from the false
decretals begin to be included in canon law collections – In the collection dedicated to Bishop
Anselm of Milan, in the Réginon collection about 906, among the decrees of Burchard, Bishop of
Worms. Nevertheless, until the middle of the eleventh century the false decretals did not
obtain an official footing in ecclesiastical legislation. They were nothing more than a collection
made in Gaul, and it was only under Leo IX (1048–1054) that they took firm hold at Rome.
When the Bishop of Toul became pope and began the reform of the Church by reforming the Roman
Curia, he carried with him to Rome the apocryphal collection. Anselm of Lucca, the friend and
adviser of Gregory VII, composed an extensive collection of canons among which those of Isidore
figure largely. The same thing happened in the case of Cardinal Deusdedit’s collection made about
the same time. And finally, when in 1140 Gratian wrote his “Decree” he borrowed extensively
from Isidore’s collection. In such manner it gained an important place in schools of law and
jurisprudence. It is true that the Gratian collection had never the sanction of being the official text of
ecclesiastical law, but it became the textbook of the schools of the twelfth century, and, even with
the false decretals added to it, it retained a place of honour with the faculty of canon law. It was it
that supplied the text of the “everyday” instructor on the things most essential to be known.
And the faculty of law styled itself faculty of the Decree; which shows how important a place in
the schools was given to the Isidorian texts inserted in the decretals.

… Isidore wrote a long way off from Rome; he deceived his own neighbours in France, and among
them the learned Hincmar of Reims. What wonder, then that he deceived the popes also, when his
work was carried to Rome by Rothade of Soissons about the summer of 864? … And it is an
undoubted fact that from the year 864, in cases such as the one we refer to, Isidore’s ideas and
expressions exercised a marked influence on the conduct and decisions of Nicholas I. … We
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can admit that, while the pope’s contention is justified, the arguments with which he supports it are
at times open to attack. Thus, in a letter addressed to the Council of Soissons in 863, he wishes to
assert his right to intervene in the trials of bishops, even when there was no question of an appeal to
Rome. This amounted to an assertion of the absolute power of the Holy See, a claim he might have
supported by many solid arguments; yet what is our surprise to find him claiming in support
thereof the canons of the Council of Sardica, which say nothing of the sort. The Council of
Sardica (343) intended very particularly to safeguard the legal rights of bishops who were being
persecuted; that was its main object, and it by no means intended to define the rights of Rome in
matters of the kind. These canons mark one of the early steps in the question of church
discipline. …

On the whole, then, from the beginning of his pontificate, and before he knew of the Isidorian texts,
Nicholas I was in full sympathy with the ideas expressed therein. Acquaintance with those texts did
not seriously affect him. Yet, in his letter to the Frankish bishops, dated 22 January 865, apropos of
Rothade, he puts the theory on appeals much after the manner in which Isidore had put it; so much
so, that one writer speaks of the parfum isidorien that letter exhales (Fournier). If the letters of the
early popes (i.e. the decretals of Isidore) are not explicitly quoted, they are at least alluded to. …

Having said this, we are free to confess frankly that in lesser spheres than those of theology and law,
the false decretals have not always exercised a fortunate influence. On history, for instance, their
influence was baneful. No doubt they do not bear all the blame for the distorted and legendary view
the Middle Ages had of ecclesiastical antiquity. During the Middle Ages it was almost an impossibility
to consult all the sources of information, and it was difficult to check and control those at hand. It
was not easy to distinguish genuine documents from apocryphal ones. And this difficulty, which was
the great stumbling-block of medieval culture, would have been always an obstacle to the progress of
historical study. It must be admitted that Isidore’s forgeries increased the difficulty till it
became almost insurmountable. The forgeries blurred the whole historical perspective. Customs
and methods proper to the ninth century stood out in relief side by side with the discipline of the first
centuries of the Church. And, as a consequence, the Middle Ages knew very little concerning the
historical growth of the rights of the papacy during those first centuries. Its view of antiquity
was a very simple one, and perhaps it was just as well for the systematizing of theology. In the main,
it was no easy matter to develop a historical sense during the Middle Ages. …

Though he [Hincmar of Rheims] had a suspicion that one or other document had been forged in part,
he offered no objection to the collection as a whole. …

Now the critics [scholars discussing the origin of the forgery] in question think they recognize a
family likeness between two documents which were certainly written at Le Mans and the decretals of
Isidore. The first of these is the apocryphal Bull of Pope Gregory IV (827–844) in favour of Aldric,
Bishop of Le Mans. In this letter (Migne, P. L., CVI, 853) the pope recognizes the right of the Bishop of
Le Mans to take his case to Rome whenever a charge is brought against him. The letter is supposed
to have been written on 8 July, 833. It is quite after Isidore’s own heart; and its style is wonderfully
similar to that of the forger. The forged Bull of Gregory IV is a mosaic of authentic texts, and very
often they are texts which Isidore used over and over again. The critics are all agreed that this forged
Bull and the decretals are independent documents; that is, that neither makes use of the other. …

In the interests of fairness we must, however, say one thing. As we have seen, the knowledge of the
decretals shown by Pope Nicholas I dates from the visit to Rothade to Rome in 864. … It is true that
in his letter of 22 January, 865, Nicholas I declares that the Frankish bishops appeal to the
decrees of the early popes (i.e. the decretals of Isidore).1

Although Roman Catholics accuse Photius as the ambitious promoter of the schism, yet it is apparent that his
antagonist and contemporary Pope Nicholas I was influenced by false documents, and though Nicholas’s

1 Louis Saltet, False Decretals, in CE, Vol. V, pp. 773 – 780.

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culpability is debated, it is clear that he never condemned the false letters. Roman Catholic scholars have
admitted that this forgery played a significant role in the Latin communion, though they attempt to minimise
its influence. The Belgian Roman Catholic professor Alphonse Van Hove (1872 – 1947) writes, “The Pseudo-
Isidorian collection, the authenticity of which was for a long time admitted, has exercised considerable
influence on ecclesiastical discipline, without however modifying it in its essential principles.” 1 The French
Jesuit Jean Jules Besson (1855 – after 1917) writes, “While the ‘False Decretals’ affected certainly
ecclesiastical discipline, it is now generally recognized that they did not introduce any essential or
constitutional modifications. They gave a more explicit formulation to certain principles of the constitution of
the Church, or brought more frequently into practice certain rules hitherto less recognized in daily use.” 2

The Roman Catholic defence is to claim that the forgeries asserted nothing new, yet they are admitted to have
significantly influenced the church, and there would have been no need to fabricate proofs for what was
already both admitted and exercised from the beginning of the Christian religion, if adequate authentic
documents previously existed. It does not appear that the widespread use of these false documents and the
mounting errors of the Latins are mere coincidences.

The Catholic Encyclopedia article on Canon Law, by the French Roman Catholic priest and professor Auguste
Marie Félix Boudinhon (1858 – 1941), who resided in Rome since 1916 and held an influential position at the
Vatican, also mentions the False Decretals:

(6) The collection of the False Decretals, or the Pseudo-Isidore (about 850), is the last and most
complete of the “chronological” collections, and therefore the one most used by the authors of the
subsequent “systematic” collections; it is the “Hispana” or Spanish collection together with
apocryphal decretals attributed to the popes of the first centuries up to the time of St. Damasus, when
the authentic decretals begin. It exerted a very great influence.

(7) To conclude the list of collections, where the later canonists were to garner their materials, we
must mention the “Penitentials”, the “Ordines” or ritual collections, the “Formularies”, especially the
“Liber Diurnus”; also compilations of laws either purely secular, or semi-ecclesiastical, like the
“Capitularies” (q.v.). The name “capitula” or “capitularia” is given also to the episcopal ordinances
quite common in the ninth century. It may be noted that the author of the False Decretals forged also
false “Capitularies”, under the name of Benedict the Deacon, and false episcopal “Capitula”, under the
name of Angilramnus, Bishop of Metz.3

Evidently referring to the false decretals, Pope Nicholas I declares in an epistle:

Decretales epistolae Rom. Pontificum sunt recipiendae, etiamsi non sunt canonum codici
compaginatae: quoniam inter ipsos canones unum b. Leonis capitulum constat esse permixtum, quo
omnia decretalia constituta sedes apostolicae custodiri mandantur.—Itaque nihil interest, utrum sint
omnia decretalia sedis Apost. constituta inter canones conciliorum immixta, cum omnia in uno
copore compaginare non possint et illa eis intersint, quae firmitatem his quae desunt et vigorem
suum assignet.—Sanctus Gelasius (quoque) non dixit suscipiendas decretales epistolas quae inter
canones habentur, nec tantum quas moderni pontifices ediderunt, sed quas beatissimi Papae diversis
temporibus ab urbe Roma dederunt.4

On Christmas Eve of 864, Pope Nicholas declared in a sermon:

although the Bishops had no right to hold a Synod without the precept of the Apostolic See, they had
summoned Rothad there, and even if he had not appealed to the Apostolic See, they ought not, as you

1 Alphonse Van Hove, Corpus Juris Canonici, in CE, Vol. IV, p. 392.
2 Jean Jules Besson, Collections of Ancient Canons, in CE, Vol. III, p. 285.
3 Auguste Marie Félix Boudinhon, Canon Law, in CE, Vol. IX, pp. 61 – 62.
4 Nicolai I Epist. ad universos episcopos Galliae ann. 865. Mansi xv, p. 694 sq. Cited in Schaff, History of the

Christian Church, Vol. IV, p. 272, 1908.

 416

well know, to have opposed themselves to so many and great Decretals and unadvisedly depose
a Bishop.1

Here is part of an article by the Catholic Truth Society, which has boldly tried to exculpate the Roman Catholic
communion from guilt on the topic of the False Decretals:

Some time after this (861), Rothade, Bishop of Soissons, had been excommunicated for alleged
disobedience to his metropolitan, Hincmar of Rheims. He thereupon appealed to Rome. The Bishops
of the metropolitan province of Rheims held a second synod, deposed Rothade, and appointed
another bishop in his place, and handed him over to be imprisoned in a monastery. Rothade
appealed to Rome again, and the Pope thereupon sent for Rothade, called a Council (Concilium
Romanum V.) and annulled the whole proceeding, threatening Hincmar with excommunication
unless Rothade were at once restored. A correspondence took place between the Frankish Bishops
and the Pope, in which the former urged that the decrees quoted by Rothade to support his appeal,
and which were taken from the False Decretals, were not contained in the Hadriana, or collection of
decrees sent by Pope Hadrian to Charlemagne, and therefore were not binding. They did not attempt
to deny the authenticity of the decrees; but accepting them as authentic, they denied their supreme
authority, and they laid down the false principle that whatever was not contained in their Codex
Hadrianus was not binding on them, and had not the force of law in the Empire of the Franks. To this
St. Nicolas answers that they were wrong in despising decrees of the Pontiffs because they were not
found in the Codex Canonum. “God forbid,” he says, “that any Catholic should refuse to embrace with
honour due and the highest approval either decretals or any exposition of ecclesiastical discipline,
provided always that the Holy Roman Church, keeping them from ancient times, has handed them
down to us to be guarded, and lays them up in her archives and ancient memorials. Some of you have
maintained that these decretals of former Pontiffs are not contained in the whole body of the canons,
while those very men, when they see that they favour their designs, use them without distinction,
and now only attack them as less generally received (minus accepta) in order to diminish the power
of the Apostolic See and increase their own privileges. For we have some of their writings which are
known to adduce not only the decrees of certain Roman Pontiffs, but even of those of early times.
Besides, if they say that the decretals of early Popes are not to be received because they are not to be
found in the Codex Canonum (or Hadriana), this would be a reason for not receiving any ordinance or
writing of St. Gregory or of any other Pope before or after him.” And St. Nicolas then goes on to quote
from the genuine letters of St. Leo and Gelasius to prove the respect due to all decretals of the Holy
See.

Whether in all this the Pope alludes directly or indirectly to the False Decretals is a question
very difficult to decide. It seems that Rothade had quoted them in his favour. The other Bishops had
not rejected them as spurious. St. Nicolas abstains from saying a word in their favour, but perhaps
alludes to them so far as this, that he twits the Bishops with playing fast and loose – using a
document when it suited them, rejecting it as not of supreme authority when it ran counter to their
wishes; but he expresses no sort of personal acceptance of the forged collection, and never makes
any quotation from it, but only from those genuine letters which were, he says, actually stored up in
the Roman archives.

This is clear enough from the difficulty made by the Bishops. Hincmar does not say, Yes, but
those documents quoted by Rothade are a forgery, as he would have said if the question turned on
their authenticity. Instead of this he says, “We allow that these Decretals are to be received with
veneration (venerabiliter suscipienda), but we do not allow that they are necessarily to be received
and observed (recipienda et custodienda),” thus showing that in his mind the question turned simply
on their weight of authority as Papal decrees. In fact, he himself uses these False Decretals over and
over again in his quarrel with his nephew, Hincmar of Laon, and to exact submission from the
Bishops under him.

1Nicholas, P. I, Servto quern de Rothadi causa … in missa fecit … die vigiliarum Naiiv. Domini (A.D. 864).
Migne, PL, Vol. CXIX, pp. 890 – 891. English translation in Denny, Papalism, p. 112.
 417

St. Nicolas, then, not only acted wisely and prudently in the answer he sent to the Bishops,
but he pursued the only course open to him under the circumstances.1

The quotes they bring forward are very important, but their interpretation appears to be much more
unfavorable than the Catholic Truth Society is willing to admit, as many great scholars have noted, and as the
plain sense of the words imply.

This article proceeds to Jesuitical sophistry to defend Pope Nicholas, but the fact cannot be denied that the
Pope was presented with false documents of his papal predecessors in a formal appeal, during an important
controversy between Bishops, and the Pope did not condemn these documents. Milman well notes that there
was “no holy indignation at fraud, no lofty reproof of those who dared to seat themselves in the pontifical
chair and speak in the names of Pope after Pope.”

The article then argues that the popes after Nicholas rarely used the False Decretals, and even in those
isolated cases, they were used unintentionally and not to the furtherance of Papal authority. The article
comments:

All this is the more remarkable, because all this time the Decretals were known at Rome. They are
quoted over and over again by authors who wrote at Rome during those two hundred years. John the
Deacon, about 880, in a Life of St. Gregory which he dedicates to the then reigning Pontiff; Auxilius, in
his defence of the ordinations of Pope Formosus; Liutprand, or the author who bears his name,
writing about 950, all use them freely: and we cannot but wonder at the wisdom and prudence of the
Holy See in rejecting documents in which there was so much tending to establish Papal authority. In
fact it was not until a French Bishop (St. Leo IX.) occupied the Chair of Peter that the False Decretals
began to be regarded as genuine by the Papal Court, and to be quoted as authentic in the documents
of the Holy See.2

Many of the Popes before Pope Leo IX were members of the undivided Church, so this inquiry is not as
concerned with them, but it is significant fact, as stated before, that Pope Leo IX, who pretended to
excommunicate the Greeks, was a notorious promoter of these False Decretals. The admission that the later
popes used the False Decretals concedes quite a bit, and stands against much of the effort in attempting to
clear the earlier popes, who were still negligent in failing to stop or condemn the promulgation of these false
documents in Rome.

In a council held in Rome in the year 1074 (the second year of the pontificate of Gregory VII), one of these
Isidorian Decrees, ascribed to Marcellus, who is assigned to the year 304, is quoted as sufficient authority for
the invalidity of Councils held without the sanction of the Holy See. The third Chapter of this Council reads
thus:

This blessed Pope [Marcellus], who, before the Nicene Council, sealed his Decrees with martyrdom, in
the eleventh chapter says: The Apostles themselves, and their successors, by the inspiration of the
Lord, decreed, “That there should be no Synod without the authority of the See of Rome.” 3

1 Publications of the Catholic Truth Society, 1894, Volume XV, pp. 14 – 15. There is a minor printing error in
the original which I have corrected; the closing quotation marks go after “(recipienda et custodienda),” not
the word “decrees”.
2 Publications of the Catholic Truth Society, 1894, Volume XV, p. 18.
3 Eclectic and Congregational Review, 1860, New Series, Vol. III, p. 655. In another Bull, Gregory VII refers to

the words of the Pseudo-Decretal of Anacletus, as the Roman Catholic Gallican scholar Fleury points out in his
Histoire Ecclésiastique (Fleury is translated in Edward Bouverie Pusey, The Church of England A Portion of
Christ’s One Holy Catholic Church, and a Means of Restoring Visible Unity: An Eirenicon, in a Letter to the
Author of “The Christian Year.”, p. 244, Oxford: John Henry and James Parker, 1865).
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The “Pseudo-Isidorian Decretals and Other Forgeries” article in the Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia shows more
examples of the widespread use of the counterfeit collection in the Middle Ages:

It was in West Franconia (and in the province of Reims) that the completed and published
work first appeared. The earliest known citations are Hincmar’s of 852 (or 857; see § 4, above). In
Hincmar’s contests with his suffragans, Rothad of Soissons and Hincmar of Laon, the false decretals
were the decisive factor in the former case, with help from the pope, in favor of the suffragan, in the
latter case against the recalcitrant subordinate. There is some reason to believe that Hincmar
discerned the true character of the documents; he was learned enough to do so, but he seems to have
deprecated the controversy that must follow, if he spoke out boldly; and, moreover, he was not
unwilling, on occasion, to use the decretals for his own purposes and to beat his enemies with their
own weapons. It is probable that Rothad carried the decretals to Rome in 864 and laid them before
Pope Nicholas I. The first sure intimations that Nicholas knew of them appear in his Christmas
address of that year and in a letter of Jan., 865, to the Frankish bishops, both utterances being in
regard to Rothad’s contest with Hincmar. Adrian II., in 871, quotes a decretal of the Pseudo-Anterus,
and a synodal address of 869, probably composed by Adrian himself, has more than thirty citations
from the Pseudo-Isidore’s collection; it is noteworthy as the first extensive use of the false decretals
in favor of the claims of the Roman see. In the reform movements of the eleventh century their full
possibilities and effect were disclosed. In Germany the first citations are in the acts of synods at
Worms (868), Cologne (887), Metz (893), Tribur (895), and – at greater length – Hohenaltheim
(916). At Gerstungen (1085) both the Gregorian and the imperial parties appealed to the false
decretals; and an utterance of the papal legate (who afterward became Pope Urban II.) and the Saxon
bishops concerning them is noteworthy for its doubting and contemptuous tone. They were
introduced into England by Lanfranc. Spain they reached only as embodied in the later collections of
canons. It was these collections which did most for their acceptance and dissemination. The oldest
which embodies Pseudo-Isidorian material (A2) is the Collectio Anselmo dedicata, made, probably in
Milan, between 883 and 897. Others followed (see Canon Law, II., 5, § 1), and a collection made in
Italy under Leo IX. about 1050 is little more than a compendium of the Pseudo-Isidoriana (250
of its 315 chapters are from the forgery). When it was admitted to Gratian’s Decretum, its
acceptance became absolute. With the possible exception of Hincmar and the guarded expression of
the Synod of Gerstungen, no one raised his voice against the forgeries till the fifteenth century. 1

In the canon law collection commonly known as the Excerptions of Egbert, which originated in southern
England around the year 1005,

There are articles (e.g. those numbered 141 and 144 by Mr. Thorpe) taken from the ‘decretals’ of the
early Popes fabricated by the false Isidore, and from the spurious Acts of the pretended Roman
Council under Pope Sylvester.2

It is remarkable that despite the doubts raised, the official position of the Roman Catholic communion near
the end of the 16th century, in her official canon law collection, was that the Pseudo-Isidorian decretals were
genuine:

The Middle Ages were deceived by this huge forgery, but during the Renaissance men of learning and
the canonists generally began to recognize the fraud. Two cardinals, John of Torquemada (1468) and
Nicholas of Cusa (1464), declared the earlier documents to be forgeries, especially those purporting
to be by Clement and Anacletus. Then suspicion began to grow. Erasmus (d. 1536) and canonists
who had joined the Reformation, such as Charles du Moulin (d. 1568), or Catholic canonists like
Antoine le Conte (d. 1586), and after them the Centuriators of Magdeburg, in 1559, put the question
squarely before the learned world. Nevertheless the official edition of the “Corpus Juris”, in

1 Emil Seckel, Pseudo-Isidorian Decretals and Other Forgeries, I, § 7., in The New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia
of Religious Knowledge, Vol. IX, p. 347, New York, NY: Funk and Wagnalis Company, 1911.
2 Roundell Palmer, Ancient Facts and Fictions Concerning Churches and Tithes, Part II, Ch. VI, § 4., p. 244,

London: Macmillan and Co., 1888.

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1580, upheld the genuineness of the false decretals, many fragments of which are to be found
in the “Decretum” of Gratian.1

The Italian professor Giorgio Bartoli (1867 – after 1917), a Jesuit for 27 years who was a professor at various
Jesuit colleges and converted to Protestantism, writes,

And it must be remarked here, that when in 1582, by order of Pope Gregory XIII. and under the
revision of a committee appointed by him, the correct text of the Corpus Juris was published, the false
decretals were retained, although, even then, most of the learned asked for their suppression. 2

It was not until the 17th century that they were formally repudiated by Roman Catholics, urged by the studies
of Protestant scholars:

In 1628 the Protestant Blondel published his decisive study, “Pseudo-Isidorus et Turrianus
vapulantes”. Since then the apocryphal nature of the decretals of Isidore has been an established
historical fact. The last of the false decretals that had escaped the keen criticism of Blondel were
pointed out by two Catholic priests, the brothers Ballerini, in the eighteenth century. 3

When the real character of these decretals was sufficiently demonstrated by the “Magdeburg Centuries”
(1559), some Latins gave them up, but the Jesuit Franciscus Turrianus (or Francisco de Torres, Francisci
Torresnsis, c. 1509 – 1584), endeavoured to prove their genuineness in his reply “Adv. Magdeburg.
Centuriatores pro canonibus Apostolorum et epistolis Decretalibus Pontificum Apostolorum, libri quinque”
(1572). To this work David Blondel wrote an answer entitled “Pseudo-Isidorus et Turrianus Vapulantes”
(1628), which settled the question beyond all cavil.

Francisco Turrianus is another case of a high-ranking official of Roman Catholicism defending forged
documents:

In 1562 Pius IV sent him to the Council of Trent, and on 8 January, 1567, he became a Jesuit. He
was professor at the Roman College, took part in the revision of the Sixtine Vulgate, and had Hosius
and Baronius for literary associates. His contemporaries called him helluo librorum for the rapidity
with which he examined the principal libraries. He defended the doctrines of the Immaculate
Conception, the authority of the sovereign pontiff over the council, the Divinely appointed authority
of bishops, Communion under one kind for the laity, the authenticity of the Apostolic Canons and
the Pseudo-Isidorian decretals.4

Other Roman Catholics who have attempted to defend the False Decretals have also failed:

An attempt at defence by the Jesuit (Torres: Adv. Magd. centuriatores, Florence, 1572) was
completely refuted by Blondel; and later attempts – Bonaventura Malvasia (Nuntius veritatis, Rome,
1635) and Eduard Dumond (Les fausses décrétales [1866]), in Revue des questions historiques, i. and ii.
– have failed as signally.”5

The Anglican scholar George Gordon Coulton (1858 – 1947) writes:

1 Louis Saltet, False Decretals, in CE, Vol. V, p. 773.

2 Giorgio Bartoli, The Primitive Church and the Primacy of Rome, Ch. VI, p. 116, London: Hodder and
Stoughton, 1910. Bartoli will be quoted later in the Forgeries section. Also note that thirty spurious
quotations are ascribed to Pope Anacletus in the Corpus Juris.
3 Louis Saltet, False Decretals, in CE, Vol. V, pp. 773 – 774.
4 Perez Goyena, Francisco Torres (Turrianus), in CE, Vol. XIV, p. 783.
5 Hermann Wasserschleben, Pseudo-Isidorian Decretals, in A Religious Encyclopædia or Dictionary, Vol. III, p.

1968, London: Funk & Wagnalls Company, Third Ed., 1891.

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The last scholar to attempt a defence of the genuineness of these decretals was the Spanish
Benedictine, J. S. Aguirre, Professor of Theology at Salamanca and Secretary to the Inquisition in
Spain, in the seventh dissertation of his Collectio Conciliorum Hispanae. The book was printed in
1683, and the author was promoted to the Cardinalate in 1686; but no modern Romanist scholar
takes his dissertation seriously.1

Zeger Bernhard van Espen (or Espenius, 1646 – 1728) was a learned Roman Catholic priest and professor of
canon law. The Catholic Encyclopedia states, “He was consulted by all classes on account of his profound
learning in canon law, and his famous work, ‘Jus canonicum universum’, although it raised numerous just
criticisms, still remains remarkable.”2 Van Espen writes of the Pseudo-Isidorian Decretals:

It is undoubted that the Roman Curia supported this collection of false Decretals with the utmost
zeal, and laboured that these Decretal letters might everywhere be received as authentic and as
emanating from these early and most holy Pontiffs, and that the authority claimed in them for the
Roman Pontiffs might be recognised by all, … by this forgery and reception of the Decretals the
discipline of the Fathers was broken down, and … moreover, the Roman Pontiffs inserted into their
own Decretals, and willed to be taken for law, the new principles asserted in these Decretals as if
they had been transmitted to us by Apostolical tradition. 3

Yves Congar (1904 – 1995), a knowledgeable Dominican Roman Catholic historian, professor, and ecumenist,
while attempting to defend the Latin use of the False Decretals, notes:

Concerning the False Decretals, we need not repeat what is today universally admitted, that they
were not the acts of Rome but of Frankish clerics, seeking to ensure to the Church her independence
in regard to the secular powers. But they contributed to the increasing of papal power and the
ideology expressing that power. Cf. Fleury, Hist. ecclesiast. 4th “Discours” at the beginning of Vol. XVI,
and Haller, op. cit. Hartmann, op. cit. 28, has shown that the Pseudo-Isidore has the popes using the
same imperative terms with the Eastern bishops that they employed in their metropolitan or
Western competence. The pontifical texts of the False Decretals treat the whole world as suffragans
of the Pope, with the obligation of conformity, not only in the faith, but in discipline and usages.4

The Latin professor Christian Wolf (or Christianus Lupus, 1612 – 1681), one of the most learned Latin
ecclesiastics of his time, thus describes the state of things as it regarded the interests of Rome:

In that age the majesty of the apostolic see and all ecclesiastical government was greatly depressed;
in Gaul and Germany by the Franks (laity), in Italy and Illyria by Lombards and Greeks, in Spain by
the Saracens. Therefore, with a view to restore the papal authority and the decaying discipline of the
church, some pious sons of the church – I know not who they were – concocted certain decretal
epistles under the names of the ancient pontiffs of Rome; and these are the documents we now call
the collection of Isidore Mercator.5

1 George Gordon Coulton, Romanism and Truth, Vol. I, Ch. II, p. 23, note 3, London: The Faith Press, 1930.
There were still scattered Latin attempts to defend the pseudo-Isidorian decretals, such as by Eduard
Dumond in 1866.
2 Zeger Bernhard van Espen, Alphonse Van Hove, in CE, Vol. V, p. 541.
3 Van Espen, Comment. in jus novum Canonicum, pars secunda, diss. prima, De Collectione Isidori, op. tom. iii

453. Lovanii, 1753. English translation cited from Edward Denny, Papalism, p. 593. Due to Van Espen’s stout
Gallicanism, all of his works have been placed on the Roman Catholic Index of Prohibited Books.
4 Yves Congar, After Nine Hundred Years: The Background of the Schism between the Eastern and Western

Churches, Notes upon Ch. IV, p. 137, n. 74, New York, NY: Fordham University Press, 1959. This work was
originally published in Paris, 1954, and was translated from the French in 1959. The English translation
bears the Nihil Obstat from John A. Goodwine, J. C. D., Censor Librorum, and the Imprimatur from Francis
Cardinal Spellman, Latin Archbishop of New York.
5 Thomas Greenwood, 1859, Cathedri Petri, Book VI, p. 180. However, Wolf still alludes to the Donation of

Constantine as an undisputed fact (see the next section).

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It is interesting to point out the inconsistency of Roman Catholic scholarship on the False Decretals. Many
19th century Roman Catholic works would not even admit that Pope Nicholas I was influenced by the
decretals. The author of the “False Decretals” article in the Catholic Encyclopedia appears to have a different
perspective than the author of the Catholic Encyclopedia article on “Pope St. Nicholas I”. Though the article
on Nicholas I writes that he was “One of the great popes of the Middle Ages, who exerted decisive influence
upon the historical development of the papacy and its position among the Christian nations of Western
Europe.”,1 the article also summarizes a Roman Catholic study on Nicholas’s use of the forgeries:

After exhaustive investigation, Schrörs has decided that the pope was neither acquainted with the
pseudo-Isidorian collection in its entire extent, nor did he make use of its individual parts; that he
had perhaps a general knowledge of the false decretals, but did not base his view of the law upon
them, and that he owed his knowledge of them solely to documents which came to him from the
Frankish Empire2

Yet is has been admitted elsewhere, by more honest scholars, that Pope Nicholas I did make use of the
Pseudo-Isidorian decretals, referring to them in authoritative matters, and he was certainly very influenced
by them, so this shows here the incongruity of Roman Catholic authors, even in the age of critical scholarship,
when these apocryphal papal letters had been exposed as fabrications.

Even the Roman Catholics who admit that the false decretals influenced Pope Nicholas and his successors try
to minimize the extent to which this forgery promotes the Papacy. Referring to extracts from these forged
decretals will at once dispel the idea that the decretals did not significantly assert the Papal power.

For example, in the so-called Third Epistle of Anacletus (circa 81), this ancient Pope of Rome is made to say:

if more difficult suits should arise between you, refer them as to the supreme tribunal of this holy See
as to the head, that they may be terminated by the Apostolical decision, because it was so willed by
the Lord, and is declared by the aforesaid testimonies to have been so determined by Him.3

Another false epistle, claimed to be the Third of Pope Felix I (269 – 274), says:

all doubtful and greater matters are accustomed to receive their settlement from this holy See from
the time of the Apostles who instructed it by their writings, and therefore you did rightly that you
wished that you and others should be strengthened and instructed by the advice of this holy See. 4

George Salmon (1819 – 1904), an Irish mathematician, Anglican theologian, and provost of Trinity College
Dublin, wrote:

If we want to know what share these letters had in the building of the Roman fabric we have
only to look at the Canon Law. The ‘Decretum’ of Gratian quotes three hundred and twenty-four
times the epistles of the popes of the first four centuries; and of these three hundred and twenty-four
quotations, three hundred and thirteen are from the letters which are now universally known to be
spurious. I will not pledge myself to the genuineness of the remaining eleven. In writing a former
Lecture I had occasion to refer to Bellarmine, to see whether he could cite any Father as applying to
Rome the text in which Christ prays that Peter’s faith should not fail. I found he could allege no
writer who was not a pope; and the popes he begins by citing are taken from the spurious
decretals. The treatise of Bellarmine is founded on that of Melchior Canus; and of twenty quotations

1 Johann Peter Kirsch, Pope St. Nicholas I, in CE, Vol. XI, p. 54.
2 Johann Peter Kirsch, Pope St. Nicholas I, in CE, Vol. XI, p. 55.
3 Edward Denny, Papalism, p. 618.
4 Denny, Papalism, p. 619. Many more like examples can be brought forth, which the reader can find in Note

13 of Denny’s Papalism, pp. 612 – 621. Also see the end of this section.
 422

which he gives on this subject, eighteen are out of the false decretals. So idle is it to deny that this
forgery is the foundation on which the Romish belief in papal power has been founded.1

It is very significant that 18 out of 20 of Melchior Canus’s quotations are forgeries, in a chapter upon the
divine privileges of the Roman See and of the Pope in matters of faith,2 but I think Salmon goes too far in his
statement that “this forgery is the foundation on which the Romish belief in papal power has been founded.”,
but it certainly served to promote and support the erroneous views of the Latins on the position of the Bishop
of Rome, which contributed to their schism, and helped sustain them in their schism, along with other
forgeries. On the other side, the Jesuit Paul Bottalla, who wrote at length defending the Roman Catholic
communion from criticism relating to the false decretals, makes an entirely too strong claim, that

Unless he [Edmund Ffoulkes] is prepared to admit this paradox, he must join with all the most
learned writers of Europe, Protestant no less than Catholic, in confessing that the forgery of the
Decretals contributed nothing either to originate and establish, or to propagate the doctrine of Papal
supremacy in the Church.3

Bottalla’s claim that the forgery “contributed nothing” to “propagate the doctrine of Papal supremacy” is
proven incorrect by the evidence adduced here, of the numerous citations of the Pseudo-Decretals in defence
of papal power (some of which Bottalla is aware of),4 and in the attempt to win over the Orthodox in
controversy. All that Bottalla concedes is,

In other words, we regard the change introduced into the discipline of the Church through the
influence of the False Decretals, as affecting points of detail only, or rather as being no more than the
practical application of principles already universally admitted.5

The Anglican scholar William Edward Scudamore (1813 – 1881) writes:

To show that the Fathers understood our Lord’s words as a promise of infallibility to the Pope,
Bellarmine cites ten several authors. Seven of these are themselves Popes, but his quotations from
the two oldest are spurious; from the third nothing at all to the purpose; while the rest, whatever
they mean, are so recent (ranging from A.D. 680 to 1200) as to be of no value to his cause. Of his
remaining testimonies, one is an utterly irrelevant passage from Theophylact (A.D. 1070) another is
from S. Bernard (A.D. 1140) who says of the See of Rome: “To what other See has it been said, I have
prayed for thee, &c. ?” and the third from a spurious addition to an Epistle of Chrysologus, which a
great Roman Catholic historian and critic (Dupin, cent. v. Petr. Chrysol.; vol. i. p. 485) supposes to
have been made to the genuine text expressly “to raise the authority of the Church of Rome.” 6

Johannes Gratian (or Gratianus, fl. mid-12th c.) was an important Medieval Latin canonist, whom the Catholic
Encyclopedia calls “the true founder of the science of canon law.” 7 As mentioned before, Gratian’s famous
“Decretum”, which was written in the mid-12th century, “supplied the text of the ‘everyday’ instructor on the
things most essential to be known.” Gratian’s work was also endorsed by men who became Latin popes, as
the Catholic Encyclopedia writes of Latin Pope Alexander III (pope from 1159 – 1181), “As professor in

1 George Salmon, The Infallibility of the Church, Lecture XXIII, pp. 453 – 454, London: John Murray, 3rd Ed.,
1899. See the rest of this lecture for further context.
2 See T. J. Bailey (translator), Auguste Gratry, Second Letter to Monseigneur Dechamps, I, pp. 8 – 13, London: J.

T. Hayes, 1870.
3 Paul Bottalla, The Papacy and Schism: Strictures on Mr. Ffoulkes’ Letter to Archbishop Manning, III, p. 25,

London: Burns, Oates, and Company, 1869.

4 Bottalla, The Papacy and Schism, VIII, pp. 55 – 58.
5 Bottalla, The Papacy and Schism, VII, p. 51.
6 William Edward Scudamore, England and Rome: A Discussion of the Principal Doctrines and Passages of

History in Common Debate between the Members of the Two Communions, Letter IV, Part I, Sect. II, xi, p. 116,
n. 5, London: Rivingtons, 1855.
7 Alphonse Van Hove, Johannes Gratian (Gratianus), in CE, Vol. VI, p. 730.
 423

Bologna he acquired a great reputation as a canonist, which he increased by the publication of his
commentary on the ‘Decretum’ of Gratian, popularly known as ‘Summa Magistri Rolandi.’” 1

Melchior Canus (1509 – 1560) was a Dominican Roman Catholic bishop and theologian who was the top
professor at the University of Alcalá, and who attended Trent. The Catholic Encyclopedia writes of Canus:

Early in 1551 he was sent by the emperor to the Council of Trent. He was accompanied by Dominic
Soto, and, like other members of the order, was enabled by his historical erudition and his mastery of
scholastic and positive theology to render important service in the deliberations and achievements of
the council.2

Robert Bellarmine (1542 – 1621) was a distinguished Jesuit theologian, writer, professor, and cardinal, and
was declared by Roman Catholic authorities to be a “Doctor of the Universal Church”, and is considered a
saint by Roman Catholics.

Professor Franz Xaver von Funk writes on the False Decretals:

But about the middle of the ninth century a new work made its appearance in western Gaul; its
unknown author describes himself as Isidorus Mercator. The first witnesses to the existence of the
work are the Councils of Soissons (853) and Quiercy (857), which both make use of it; they point to
its having been composed among the Franks, and the same conclusion will be arrived at if the MSS.
and the sources drawn upon in the collection be taken into consideration. The Decretals in question
are found in two recensions, a shorter and a longer, of which only the latter is of interest to us at
present, having, at an early date, completely ousted the other. Apart from the preface and the
appendices, it falls into three parts, of which the first contains the fifty Apostolic Canons
acknowledged in the West, fifty-nine Decretals or Papal Bulls and Briefs dating from Clement I to
Miltiades, and the charter by which Constantine's Donation was made, whilst the second gives the
Canons of the ancient Councils, which here are copied from the Spanish collection; the third part
contains the Papal Decretals from Silvester I to Gregory II (314-731). As for the object of the
collection, the writer himself tells us that he wished canonum sententias colligere et uno in volumine
redigere et de multis unum facer – in other words, that his intention was merely to compose a handy
reference book of Canon Law. His intention is, however, no excuse for his wholesale fabrications.
The papal briefs of the first part of his work are, every one of them, forgeries, and the same is true of
many contained in the last portion of the work; nor can the author crave forgiveness on the score
that much of the material he uses is really taken from early documents. More likely his real intention
was to strengthen the hand of the bishops against both the metropolitans and the secular power. To
this intention corresponds his eagerness to magnify the office of the primates and to convince the
reader that causae maiores (by which he means causae episcopates) can be decided only by Rome. It
may also have been his desire to heal to some extent the wounds produced in the Church by the civil
wars under Lewis the Pious and his sons, and to better the Church's position. His effort may have
been to second those of the Councils of Paris (829, 846), Aachen (836), and Meaux (845), but
whether this be the case or not, Möhler was certainly wrong in taking this as the primary object of
the work.

Since the work, in the main, is devoted to justifying customs which were already in
possession, it would be an overstatement to say that Pseudo-Isidore founded an entirely new system
of Canon Law. But his importance must not be under-estimated. By reserving to the Holy See the
decision of the causae maiores, which had formerly been a privilege of the provincial synods,
he helped mightily to forward the cause of the Roman primacy.

The decretals were made use of at Rome first by Nicholas I, who appeals to them when
quashing the decision of the bishops of Gaul, who in 864 had deposed Rothadius, bishop of Soissons

1 James F. Loughlin, Pope Alexander III, in CE, Vol. I, p. 287.

2 John R. Volz, Melchior Cano, in CE, Vol. III, p. 251.
 424

(N.A. XXV, 1900, pp. 652-63; according to the Hist. J. 1904, pp. 1-33, he was acquainted with only a
few passages of the Decretals, and did not found his pretension on them at all), and throughout the
Middle Ages they were generally held to be genuine. It was only their binding force which was
questioned at first, for instance by Hinkmar of Rheims in the case of his nephew and namesake of
Laon. The first real doubts as to their credibility were expressed in the fifteenth century by Nicholas
of Cusa and Juan de Torquemada, and though their strictures did not then succeed in shaking the
deep-rooted general persuasion, yet in the next century, as soon as the collection had been widely
circulated by means of the press (it was first printed by Merlin in his Collectio Conciliorum, 1523), the
fraudulent nature of the composition was borne in on all. The arguments adduced by the Jesuit
Torres for their authenticity against the Magdeburg Centuriators were triumphantly confuted by the
Protestant theologian Blondel (Pseudo-Isidorus et Turrianus vapulantes, 1622).1

This work has the Imprimatur and Nihil Obstat of the Roman Catholic authorities and censors, and the first
edition was published in 1886. Funk was considered as the successor of the great church historian Hefele.
The Catholic Encyclopedia writes:

In 1870 Funk was named extraordinary, and in 1875 ordinary professor of church history, patrology,
and Christian archæology, an office which he filled till his death. His life was henceforth entirely
devoted to his professorial duties and historical researches, especially to the various branches of the
history of the early Church. … Among the Catholic historians whom Germany has produced in the
last three decades Funk was undoubtedly the greatest authority and the chief historical writer on
early Christian times. Clear and purely critical in method, his sole aim was the establishment of
historical truth. His character was frank and conscientious; his life was blameless, as became a
minister of God. As a controversialist he could be severe when an opponent allowed himself to be
swayed by any other motive than the demonstration of exact truth. His method has created a school
among the Catholic historians of Germany which has been a benefit to the advancement of earnest
historical investigation and scholarly criticism.2

Hefele mentions that the Pseudo-Isidorian decretals have made their way into the Roman Collections of
Councils, from the very first published collections:

Sec. 12. Histories of the Councils.

James Merlin, canon and chief penitentiary of the metropolitan church of Paris, was the first
who had a collection of the acts of the councils published. This edition, naturally very incomplete,
appeared at Paris in 1523, in one folio volume, in two parts. A second impression was published at
Köln in 1530, enriched by two documents, the golden bull of Charles IV., and the bull of Pius II. in
which he forbade an appeal from the Pope to an œcumenical council. The third edition, in octavo,
published at Paris in 1536, had no additions. Like all the collections of the councils which have been
made after it, with the exception of the Roman edition of 1609, the edition of Merlin contained, with
the acts of the œcumenical councils, those of several provincial synods, as well as many papal
decretals. It may be mentioned that this alone had the collection of the false Isidorian Decretals
printed in a continuous form, whilst in the more recent collections they are distributed in
chronological order, assigning to each council or each Pope the part attributed to him by pseudo-
Isidore. (The longest details on Merlin’s edition are found in the work of Salmon, doctor and
librarian of the Sorbonne, Traité de l’Etude des Conciles et de leurs collections, etc., nouvelle edition,
Paris 1726, pp. 288 sq. and 724. In this last passage Salmon points out the faults of Merlin’s
collections.)3

1 Luigi Cappadelta (translator), Franz Xaver von Funk, A Manual of Church History, Vol. I, The Middle Ages,
Part I, Ch. IV, § 99, pp. 287 – 289, London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co., (authorized tr. from the 5th
German Ed.), 1910.
2 Johann Peter Kirsch, Franz Xaver von Funk, in CE, Vol. VI, pp. 323 – 324.
3 Hefele, History of Councils, Vol. I, Introduction, Sec. 12, pp. 67 – 68.
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The Roman Catholic priest Thomas Harding (1516 – 1572), in his notable controversy with the Anglican
bishop John Jewel, argues for the Papal Supremacy, quoting the Pseudo-Anacletus:

But I, in this treatise, seeking to avoid prolixity, having purposed to say somewhat to this
number of the other articles, and knowing this matter of the primacy to be already largely and
learnedly handled of others, will but trip (as it were) lightly over at this time, and not set my fast
footing in the deep debating and treating of it.
First, as concerning the right of the primacy by God’s law, by these ancient authorities it hath
been avouched. Anacletus that holy bishop and martyr, St Peter’s scholar, and of him consecrated
priest, in his epistle to the bishops of Italy, writeth thus: In novo … testamento, post Christum, &c. :
“In the new testament, the order of priests began after our Lord Christ, of Peter; because to him
bishopric was first given in the church of Christ, where as our Lord said unto him, ‘Thou art Peter;
and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it; and unto
thee I will give the keys of the kingdom of heaven.’ Wherefore this Peter received of our Lord, first of
all, power to bind and to loose; and first of all he brought people to the faith, by virtue of his
preaching. As for the other apostles, they received honour and power in like fellowship with him,
and willed him to be their prince, or chief governor.”
In another epistle to all bishops, alleging the same text, for the primacy of the see of Rome,
speaking of the disposition of churches committed to patriarchs and primates, saith thus most
plainly: “This holy and apostolic church of Rome hath obtained the primacy, not of the apostles, but of
our Lord and Saviour himself, and hath gotten the pre-eminence of power over all churches, and over
the whole flock of Christian people, even so as he said to blessed Peter the apostle, ‘Thou art Peter;
and upon this rock,’” &c.1

Harding is writing in 1564, before the Latins had widely admitted the spurious nature of these Isidorian
decretals, but Jewel learnedly replies with good reasons for doubting their authenticity. Jewel’s entire
chapter against the supremacy of the Bishop of Rome is well worth reading.

Pope Nicholas I, in his sixth epistle, addressed to St. Photius, says:

But the decrees made by the holy popes of the chief see of the Roman Church, by whose authority and
sanction all synods and holy councils are strengthened and established, why do you say, that you do
not receive and observe them?2

Latin officials continued citing false documents in their attempt to win over the Orthodox during the 15th
century attempts at reunion. The Russian Orthodox priest and professor Sergei Nikolaevich Bulgakov (1871
– 1944) notes:

It is worth noting that John of Ragusa, in his answer to Vissarion, justified the pope’s power over the
bishops as his vicars by the alleged fact that St. Peter appointed patriarchs, metropolitans and
bishops to various dioceses; in supporting this, he quoted a spurious passage from pseudo-Isidore’s
Anaclite, and an also spurious text of the 6th canon of the 1st Nicean Council. (The text had been
proved to be spurious at the IV Oecumenical Council of 451, where papal legates had attempted to
make use of it). In his arguments John of Ragusa referred also to the notoriously spurious Donatio

1 John Ayre (editor), The Works of John Jewel, Vol. I, Of the Supremacy, Art. IV, p. 341, Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1845.
2 “Decretalia autem, quæ a sanctis Pontificibus primæ sedis Romanæ Ecclesiæ sunt instituta, cujus auctoritate

atque sanctione omnes Synobi et sancta Concilia roborantur, et stabilitatem sumunt, cur vos non habere vel
observare dicitis?” Conc. Labb., tom. viii, Nicolai Papæ I epist. vi, ad Photium, col 285, D., Paris 1671. Cited in
Charles Elliott, Delineation of Roman Catholicism, Book III, Chap. XI, p. 672, London: Wesleyan Conference
Office, 4th Ed., 1877.
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Constantini—a document which had already been proved unauthentic by Laurentius Valla and
Nicolaus Cusanus (Hefele VII. 733).1

According to the Catholic Encyclopedia, John of Ragusa (1380 – 1443) was:

a Dominican theologian, president of the Council of Basle, legate to Constantinople … By reason of

his great attainments in theology, Scripture, and the Oriental languages, he was considered an oracle
in his native Dalmatia. At the University of Paris he shone conspicuously and there received the
doctor's cap about the beginning of the fifteenth century. In the year 1426 he was appointed
procurator general of the Dominican Order, and went to reside at Rome under Pope Martin V. There
he received marks of honour and esteem from the pope and the College of Cardinals, and the former
eventually named him papal theologian for the General Council of Basle.2

Basilios Bessarion (Vissarion) (1403 – 1472) converted to Roman Catholicism from Orthodoxy, and became a
Roman Catholic Cardinal and Latin Patriarch of Constantinople.

Also note that John of Ragusa cites largely from the spurious texts of Cyril in his inaugural sermon “Fiet unum
ovile et unus pastor” given at Pavia on 23 April 1423, at the Latin Council of Pavia-Siena. Many other parts of
his sermons are based on Aquinas’s Contra Errores Graecorum (these forgeries will be reviewed in a
following chapter).3

Archbishop Manasses I of Rheims cited Pseudo-Isidorian texts in 1077, though not for the Papacy, but for the
judicial immunity of the episcopate.4

The French Roman Catholic priest Gratry writes:

All our brethren in the priesthood possess the Moral Theology of S. Liguori. All can consult,
somewhere or other, the work of Bellarmine, De Romano Pontifice. For instance, I have before me the
chapter in question, in S. Liguori [S. Liguori, Theologia Moralis, t. i., De Infallibilitate Papæ. Ed. Mellier,
p. 109 et suiv.]. He collects all the passages of Melchior Cano and of Bellarmine, and he maintains
that the Pope is absolutely infallible. He begins by quoting a passage of St. Irenæus: “All must of
necessity depend upon the Roman Church, as their source and head.” “Omnes a Romana Ecclesia
necesse est ut pendeant, tanquam a fonte et capite.” Now this passage is a pure invention. It is not to
be found in S. Irenæus. S. Liguori has copied it from somewhere or other, without verifying it. After
which our dear saint admits as true the two forged letters of S. Athanasius, quoted by Melchior Cano.
He then enumerates the whole list of the forged decretals adduced by that same author. “Idemque
senserunt plures alii Pontifices, Evaristus, Alexander I., Sixtus I., Pius I., Victor, Zephyrinus, Marcellus,
Eusebius, et alii quos refert Cano.” … Melchior Cano was deceived by the forger, Bellarmine by
Melchior Cano, S. Liguori by all the others.5

Coulton makes the following important note regarding Liguori’s integrity:

1 Sergei Nikolaevich Bulgakov, The Vatican Dogma, III, South Canaan, PA: St. Tikhon Press, 1959 [Originally
Paris, 1929].
2 Albert Reinhart, John of Ragusa, in CE, Vol. VIII, p. 476. John attained many more distinctions and was an

important character in the discussions concerning the reunion of the East and West.
3 Walter Brandmüller, Das Konzil von Pavia-Siena 1423-1424, Vol. II, Sermones, Nr. 2, pp. 139 sq. & 145 sq.,

Münster: Verlag Aschendorff, 1974.

4 Patrick Healy, The Chronicle of Hugh of Flavigny: Reform and the Investiture Contest in the Late Eleventh

Century, Ch. V, pp. 129 – 130, Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006.

5 T. J. Bailey (translator), Auguste Gratry, Second Letter to Monseigneur Dechamps, I, pp. 14 – 15, London: J. T.

Hayes, 1870.
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Dr. Franz Meffert, perhaps the latest Ultramontane biographer of St. Alfonso Liguori, confesses that
Döllinger was right in his most serious accusation; viz. that Liguori, defending Infallibility against
Febronius, based some of his arguments on quotations from the Forged Decretals, even though he
betrayed at different times, in two separate places, the knowledge that those Decretals were false. 1

Alphonsus Maria de Liguori (1696 – 1787) was a highly influential Italian Roman Catholic bishop and
theologian, and is considered a saint and Doctor of the Church by Roman Catholics.

In recent times, an important discovery was made of a forgery associated with the Pseudo-Isidore. This
component of the forgery complex is a collection of excerpts from the Acts of the Council of Chalcedon, titled
Nonnullæ Sanctiones Sparsim Collectæ Actionis Primæ Sancti et Magni Chalcedonensis Concilii. The author of
the Pseudo-Isidore created this forgery, which helped corrupt the authentic record of Chalcedon to favour the
Papal primacy and Roman jurisdiction. Eric Knibbs, an Assistant Professor of History at Williams College in
Williamstown, MA, who specializes in the Pseudo-Isidorian forgeries, writes the following in discussing one
interpolation in this collection:

The excerpts concentrate on episcopal power, Roman jurisdiction, and secular interference in
ecclesiastical affairs; in some places the text has been interpolated or otherwise inauthentically
revised. … As I said above, the Nonnullae sanctiones has some of the Chalcedon texts in interpolated
form. As you might expect, these interpolations correspond to marginal additions in Lat. 11611. …
The marginal annotation [pictured above] is one of Pseudo-Isidore’s inauthentic additions to the
conciliar acta; it reads “… quod apostolicae sedis missi prius semper debeant iudicare …” (“… which
the messengers of the apostolic see should always judge beforehand …”: a lot of the interpolations
have to do with papal prerogatives.)2

The standard study of this Chalcedonian forgery is Klaus Zechiel-Eckes, Verecundus oder Pseudoisidor? Zur
Genese der Excerptiones de gestis Chalcedonensis concilii, in Deutsches Archiv für Erforschung des
Mittelalters, Vol. LVI., pp. 413 – 446, Cologne: Böhlau Verlag, 2000.

Even well after these documents had been exposed as inauthentic, they were still occasionally used by
negligent authors, and a very popular work by the Roman Catholic apologist Joseph Faà di Bruno, titled
Catholic Belief (printed over 550,000 times from 1875 to 1922) contains six references to the false decretals,
and yet this work still received the approbations of the papal legate to the USA, seven Latin archbishops,
seventeen Latin bishops, and numerous other authorities (see the chapter on the Council of Sardica and
Misquotations of Nicaea, where Bruno’s book is analysed in-depth).

For more material from these notorious letters and further analysis, I recommend Chapter VI and Notes 12 –
15 of Edward Denny’s Papalism.3 Vol. VIII of the Ante-Nicene Fathers series contains translations of several
forged Papal letters in the Pseudo-Isidorian collection.4 Also see Edward Bouverie Pusey, Eirenicon, [Part I],
pp. 237 – 256, Oxford: John Henry and James Parker, 1865; Joseph McCabe, Nicholas I. and the False
Decretals, in Crises in the History of the Papacy, Ch. VI, pp. 101 – 123, New York, NY: G. P. Putnam’s Sons,
1916; Ernest Harold Davenport, The False Decretals, Oxford: B. H. Blackwell, 1916; Horst Fuhrmann, The

1 George Gordon Coulton, Papal Infallibility, Appendix IX, p. 269, London: The Faith Press, 1932.
2 Eric Knibbs, Pseudo-Isidore: A Blog, Another Component of the Forgery Complex, or, Pseudo-Isidore’s
Autograph, (http://pseudoisidore.blogspot.com/2010/04/another-component-of-forgery-complex-or.html),
8 April 2010.
3 Edward Denny, Papalism, pp. 109 – 117 & 612 – 622.
4 Arthur Cleveland Coxe (volume editor), Stewart Dingwall Fordyce Salmond (translator), The Decretals, in

ANF, Vol. VIII, VI, pp. 609 – 641.

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Pseudo-Isidorian Forgeries, in Detlev Jasper and Horst Fuhrmann, Papal Letters in the Early Middle Ages, pp.
135 – 196, Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2001.

Ch. IV Donation of Constantine

“Ahi, Constantin, di quanto mal fu matre,

Non la tua conversion, ma quella dote,
Che de te prese il primo ricco patre!”
(Dante, Inferno, xix, 115 – 117)

The donation of Constantine is a notorious document that has been cited numerous times to bolster the
claims of the papacy, and it has had an influential place in Latin canon law collections. It begins with the
following significant statements:

The Emperor Constantine the fourth day after his baptism conferred this privilege on the Pontiff of
the Roman church, that in the whole Roman world priests should regard him as their head, as judges
do the king. In this privilege among other things is this: “We – together with all our satraps, and the
whole senate and my nobles, and also all the people subject to the government of glorious Rome –
considered it advisable, that as the Blessed Peter is seen to have been constituted vicar of the
Son of God on the earth, so the Pontiffs who are the representatives of that same chief of the
apostles, should obtain from us and our empire the power of a supremacy greater than the clemency
of our earthly imperial serenity is seen to have conceded to it, choosing that same chief of the
apostles and his vicars to be our constant intercessors with God. And to the extent of our earthly
imperial power, we have decreed that his holy Roman church shall be honored with veneration, and
that more than our empire and earthly throne the most sacred seat of the Blessed Peter shall be
gloriously exalted, we giving to it power, and dignity of glory, and vigor, and honor imperial. And we
ordain and decree that he shall have the supremacy as well over the four principal seats,
Alexandria, Antioch, Jerusalem, and Constantinople, as also over all the churches of God in the
whole earth. And the Pontiff, who at the time shall be at the head of the holy Roman church itself,
shall be more exalted than, and chief over, all the priests of the whole world, and according to his
judgment everything which is provided for the service of God and for the stability of the faith of
Christians is to be administered.

And below: §. 1. On the churches of the blessed apostles Peter and Paul, for the providing of the lights,
we have conferred landed estates of possessions, and have enriched them with different objects, and
through our sacred imperial mandate we have granted him of our property in the east as well as in
the west, and even in the northern and the southern quarter; namely, in Judea, Greece, Asia, Thrace,
Africa, and Italy and the various islands; under this condition indeed, that all shall be administered
by the hand of our most blessed father the supreme Pontiff, Sylvester, and his successors.

And below: §. 2. And to our Father, the Blessed Sylvester, supreme Pontiff and Pope universal, of
the city of Rome, and to all the Pontiffs, his successors, who shall sit in the seat of the Blessed Peter
even unto the end of the world, we by this present do give our imperial Lateran palace, then the
diadem, that is, the crown of our head, and at the same time the tiara and also the shoulder-band, –
that is, the strap that usually surrounds our imperial neck; and also the purple mantle and scarlet
tunic, and all the imperial raiment; and also the same rank as those presiding over the imperial
cavalry, conferring also even the imperial scepters, and at the same time all the standards, and
banners, and the different ornaments, and all the pomp of our imperial eminence, and the glory of
our power. …”1

1“Constantinus imperator quarta die sui baptismi privilegium Romanae ecclesiae Pontifici contulit, ut in toto
orbe Romano sacerdotes ita hunc caput habeant, sicut iudices regem. In eo privilegio ita inter cetera legitur:
 429

Christopher Bush Coleman (1875 – 1944), an American Protestant professor of history who specialised in the
legends of Constantine, states that the Donation of Constantine “was cited by no less than ten Popes of whom
we know, to mention no lesser writers, in contentions for the recognition of papal control, and contributed
not a little to the prestige of the Papacy.”1 In his dissertation on this topic, Coleman writes:

It was referred to as valid or used by many popes, including Leo IX, Urban II, Eugenius III, Innocent
III, Gregory IX, Innocent IV, Nicholas III, Boniface VIII, and John XXII. Though Gregory VII apparently
did not use it, his representative, Peter Damiani did so. It may possibly have been in the mind of
other popes who exacted oaths from prospective emperors that they would preserve all the rights
and possessions granted by all previous emperors to the see of St. Peter, and may also have
influenced Hadrian IV.2

The Catholic Encyclopedia affirms that “This document is without doubt a forgery, fabricated somewhere
between the years 750 and 850”, and that the document was generally considered to be authentic until the
15th century, exposed by the Treatise of Lorenzo Valla in 1440 which “proved the forgery with certainty”.
However, even after this treatise, “Its genuinity was yet occasionally defended, and the document still further
used as authentic, until Baronius in his ‘Annales Ecclesiastici’ (ad an. 324) admitted that the ‘Donatio’ was a
forgery, whereafter it was soon universally admitted to be such.”3 The Annales Ecclesiastici of Baronius is a
large-scale classic Latin work on the history of the Church, and was published around the end of the 16th
century.

‘Utile iudicavimus una cum omnibus satrapis nostris, et universe senatu optimatibusque meis, etiam et cuncto
populo Romanae gloriae imperio subiacenti, ut sicut B. Petrus in terries vicarious Filii Dei esse videtur
constitutus, ita et Pontifices, qui ipsius principis apostolorum gerunt vices, principatus potestatem amplius
quam terrena imperialis nostrae serenitatis mansuetudo habere videtur, concessam a nobis nostroque
imperio obtineant, eligentes nobis ipsum principem apostolorum vel eius vicarios firmos apud Deum esse
patronos. Et sicut nostrum terrenam imperialem potentiam, sic eius sacrosanctam Romanam ecclesiam
decrevimus veneranter honorari, et amplius quam nostrum imperium et terrenum thronum sedem
sacratissimam B. Petri gloriose exaltari, tribuentes ei potestatem, et gloriae dignitatem atque vigorem, et
honorificentiam imperialem. Atque decernentes sancimus, ut principatum teneat tam super quatuor
precipuas sedes, Alexandrinam, Antiocenam, Ierosolimitanam, Constantinopolitanam, quam etiam super
omnes in universo orbe terrarum ecclesias Dei, et Pontifex, qui pro tempore ipsius sacrosanctae Romanae
ecclesiae extiterit, celsior et princeps cunctis sacerdotibus totius mundi existat, et eius iudicio queque ad
cultum Dei vel fidei Christianorum stabilitatem procuranda fuerint disponantur.
Et infra: §. I. Ecclesiis beatorum apostolorum Petri et Pauli pro continuation luminariorum possessionum
predia contulimus, et rebus diversis eas ditavimus, et per nostrum imperialem iussionem sacram tam in
oriente, quam in occidente, vel etiam septentrionali et meridiana plaga, videlicet in Iudea, Grecia, Asia,
Thracia, Affrica et Italia, vel diversis insulis, nostra largitate ei concessimus, ea prorsus ratione, ut per manus
beatissimi patris nostri Silvestri summi Pontificis successorumque eius omnia disponantur.
Et infra: §. 2. Beatro Silvestro Patri nostro, summo Pontifici et universalis Urbis Romae Papae, et omnibus,
eius successoribus Pontificibus, qui usque in finem mundi in sede B. Petri erunt sessuri, de presenti
contradimus palatium imperii nostri Lateranense, deinde diadema, videlicet coronam capitis nostri, simulque
frigium, nec non et superhumerale, videlicet lorum, quod imperial circumdare assolet collum; verum etiam et
clamidem purpuream, atque tunicam coccineam, et Omnia imperialia indumenta; set et dignitatem
imperialium presidentium equitum, conferentes etiam et imperialia sceptra, simulque cuncta signa, atque
banda, et diversa ornamenta imperialia, et omnem processionem imperialis culminis et gloriam potestatis
nostrae.’” Christopher Bush Coleman, The Treatise of Lorenzo Valla on the Donation of Constantine, pp. 10 –
15, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1922.
1 Coleman, Donation of Constantine, p. 2.
2 Christopher Bush Coleman, Constantine the Great and Christianity: Three Phases: the Historical, the

Legendary, and the Spurious, Part III, Ch. I, § 2, p. 178, Dissertation: Columbia University, New York, NY, 1914.
More is said here on the acceptance and Latin use of the Donation.
3 Johann Peter Kirsch, Donation of Constantine (Donatio Constantini), In CE, Vol. V, p. 119. This is a fair article

that is worth reading.

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The most notable reply to Valla and defence of the Donation was by Agostinus Steuchus (also called Agostine
Steuco or Eugubinus, 1497 – 1548), an Italian scholar, Latin bishop of Chisamo in Crete, and librarian of the
Vatican. Steuchus published two replies to Valla. In 1530 he wrote “Pro religione christiana adversus
Lutheranos”, and in 1547 he wrote “Contra Laurentium Vallam de falso donation Constantini libri duo”.1
The first time a pope officially cited the Donation of Constantine was Pope Leo IX in his letter to Patriarch
Michael Cerularius of Constantinople, in 1054, on the eve of the Great Schism, which shows that the Latins
separated from the Church based on incorrect information. The Catholic Encyclopedia says:

The first pope who used it in an official act and relied upon, was Leo IX; in a letter of 1054 to
Michael Cærularius, Patriarch of Constantinople, he cites the “Donatio” to show that the Holy See
possessed both an earthly and a heavenly imperium, the royal priesthood. Thenceforth the “Donatio”
acquires more importance and is more frequently used as evidence in the ecclesiastical and political
conflicts between the papacy and the secular power. Anselm of Lucca and Cardinal Deusdedit
inserted it in their collections of canons. Gratian, it is true, excluded it from his “Decretum”, but it
was soon added to it as “Palea”. The ecclesiastical writers in defence of the papacy during the
conflicts of the early part of the twelfth century quoted it as authoritative (Hugo of Fleury, De
regiâ potestate et ecclesiasticâ dignitate, II; Placidus of Nonantula, De honore ecclesiæ, cc. lvii, xci, cli;
Disputatio vel defensio Paschalis papæ, Honorius Augustodunensis, De summâ gloriæ, c. xvii; cf. Mon.
Germ. Hist., Libelli de lite, II, 456, 591, 614, 635; III, 71). St. Peter Damian also relied on it in his
writings against the antipope Cadalous of Parma (Disceptatio synodalis, in Libelli de lite, I, 88).
Gregory VII himself never quoted this document in his long warfare for ecclesiastical liberty against
the secular power. But Urban II made use of it in 1091 to support his claims on the island of
Corsica. Later popes (Innocent III, Gregory IX, Innocent IV) took its authority for granted
(Innocent III, Sermo de sancto Silvestro, in P.L., CCXVII, 481 sqq.; Raynaldus, Annales, ad an. 1236, n.
24; Potthast, Regesta, no. 11,848), and ecclesiastical writers often adduced its evidence in favour
of the papacy.2

Jean-Edmé-Auguste Gosselin (1787 – 1858), a French Roman Catholic priest and seminary director, writes:

After this deed had been inserted in the collections of the False Decretals, it was cited by a
great many authors, who never suppose that there was the least reasonable doubt of its authenticity.
It was first cited by two French authors; Æneas, bishop of Paris, in a Treatise against the Greeks,
composed about the year 867; and Hincmar of Rheims, in a Letter to the French Barons, written
about the year 882. Though neither of these authors cites the words of this document, they
manifestly suppose its existence; and the former states that copies of it were preserved in the
libraries of several French churches. Pope Leo IX. cites long extracts from it in his letter to Michael
Cerularius, patriarch of Constantinople, in 1054, in order to establish against the Greeks the spiritual
and temporal jurisdiction of the Holy See. St. Peter Damian also cites some extracts from it in his
Synodal Discussion, compiled about the year 1062. Long passages from it are also found in a
collection of canons, compiled about the same time by St. Anselm of Lucca; and also in the Decreta of
Ivo of Chartres, and of Gratian, which appeared in the course of the following century.

There are, nevertheless, reasons to believe, that though Constantine’s donation was so
confidently cited by those authors, its authority was not universally admitted; for it is not mentioned
by many authors of the tenth and eleventh centuries, who could neither be ignorant of its existence,
nor omit citing it, had they believed that its authenticity was unquestionable. Even Gregory VII.
himself does not cite it in many of those letters in which he collects so carefully all the arguments and
authorities in favour of the extraordinary power which he claimed over sovereigns.

1 See Ronald K. Delph, Valla Grammaticus, Agostino Steuco, and the Donation of Constantine, in Journal of the
History of Ideas, Vol. LVII, No, 1., Jan. 1996, pp. 55 – 77, Philadelphia, PA: Journal of the History of Ideas, 1996.
2 Johann Peter Kirsch, Donation of Constantine (Donatio Constantini), In CE, Vol. V, pp. 120 – 121.
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[Gosselin’s footnote:] The most complete edition of the False Decretals is given in Merlin’s Collectio
Concil. tom. 1. Paris, 1524, 2 vols. fol. The same edition was reprinted with some changes in Crabbe’s
Collection of Councils, Cologne, 1551, 3 vols. fol. Constantine’s donation is given in both those
editions.1

Although Gosselin and the Catholic Encyclopedia say Pope Gregory VII never used the Donation himself, his
close friend Cardinal Deusdedit of San Pietro in Vincoli (d. 1097 – 1100, most likely 1099) inserted it in his
collection of canons, and the Catholic Encyclopedia says of Deusdedit:

He was a friend of St. Gregory VII and defender of his reformation measures; Deusdedit joined the
Benedictine Order and became a zealous promoter of ecclesiastical reforms in the latter half of the
eleventh century. Pope Gregory VII raised him to the cardinalate with the title of St. Pietro in
Vincoli. … In 1078, he took part in a Roman synod, at which he represented the opinions of
Berengarius of Tours. In the long conflict for the freedom of the ecclesiastical authority from the
oppression of the civil power Deusdedit sided with Gregory VII, and was one of his chief agents and
defenders. At the suggestion evidently of this pope, he undertook the compilation of a collection of
canons which he completed in 1087 and dedicated to Victor III. … He meant this work to defend the
rights and liberty of the Church and the authority of the Holy See, in keeping with the measures of
Gregory VII and his adherents. At the same time, this Collection reveals Deusdedit as one of the most
important of the pre-Gratian canonists. … Possibly also Deusdedit was the editor of this famous and
important collection of Gregory’s correspondence. In this case, the cardinal appears in a new light as
intimate counsellor and intellectual heir of Gregory VII. 2

Moreover, the Protestant historian Frank Zinkeisen writes:

Another half-century passes before we hear of the ‘Donation’ again. To prove the superiority
of the church of Rome, Leo IX, in 1054, sent a long letter to Michael, the patriarch of Constantinople.
The fact that almost the entire text of the ‘Donation’ proper is inserted in it goes to show the implicit
belief which the pope seems to have had in the supposititious document. The same year Leo IX once
more called upon the great name of Constantine, but to no effect. After his defeat by the Normans at
Civita in 1054 he made peace with his enemies, but with no intention of its being final; for he sent
messengers with a letter to Constantinople to beseech the eastern emperor to take part with the
German emperor in avenging his wrongs. In this letter the pope begged the emperor to give up to the
holy see all that which Constantine and his successors had once granted. There was no response to
the request, and the pope soon died. In significant contrast to the frank assurance of Pope Leo is the
reserve of Gregory VII. Still it does not seem strictly true to say that he never so much as mentions
the ‘Donation;’ for in the oath which Gregory exacted from Rudolf of Swabia there is apparently an
allusion to the spurious gift: De ordinatione vero ecclesiarum et de terris vel censu quae Constantinus
imperator vel Carolus sancto Petro dederunt … ita conveniam cum papa, ut periculum sacrilegii … non
incurram. Perhaps Gregory had the ‘Donation’ in mind when, in his celebrated dictatus, he claimed
that ‘only the pope can make use of the imperial insignia,’ which, to be sure, always remained an
empty claim. Finally, there is another case which is more in point but is still more doubtful than the
two preceding. In a letter to the kings and princes of Spain the pope claims that regnum Hispaniae ex
antiquis constitutionibus beao Petro et sanctae Romanae ecclesiae in ius et proprietatem esse traditum.
Now the ‘Donation’ of Constantine is called Exemplar Constituti Domni Constantini Imperatoris in a
manuscript of the ninth or tenth century, and this copy Gregory might have seen and had in mind.
But on what a slender footing this hypothesis rests is made doubly clear when we examine another
letter of the pope on the same subject, in which Spain is merely claimed as ‘of old the property of St.
Peter.’ In fact, it seems to me more than likely that Gregory’s policy was not to invoke the false

1 Matthew Kelly (translator), Jean-Edmé-Auguste Gosselin, The Power of the Pope During the Middle Ages,
Vol. I, Confirmatory Evidence, § V, pp. 317 – 318, in Library of Translations from Select Foreign Literature,
Vol. I, London: C. Dolman, 1853.
2 Johann Peter Kirsch, Cardinal Deusdedit, in CE, Vol. IV, pp. 760 – 761.
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‘Donation;’ for in two cases he is careful to name the grantor of lands which he claims for the holy
see.1

Concerning Pope Leo IX’s use of the Donation of Constantine, Döllinger writes:

Pope Leo IX. recounted nearly the whole text of the Donation to the patriarch Michael
Cerularius in the year 1054, openly and confidently, without having (as it would seem) a single
misgiving as to the weakness of his document. He wished the patriarch to convince himself “of the
earthly and heavenly imperium, of the royal priesthood of the Roman Chair,” and retain no trace of
the suspicion that this chair “wished to usurp power by the help of foolish and old wives’ fables.” He
is, however, the only one of all the popes who has brought the document expressly before the eyes of
the world, and formally challenged criticism.2

Pope Leo IX wrote to Patriarch Michael Cerularius:

XIII.

His & aliis quam plurimis testimoniis, jam vobis satisfactum esse debuit de terreno & cælesti
imperio, immo de regali sacerdotio sanctæ Romanæ & Apostolicæ sedis, præcipue super speciali ejus
dispositione in cælis: si ipsam evangelii veritatem aperte, quod absit, non impugnatis. Ad cujus
tonitruum quisquis non expergiscitur: non dormit, sed omnino est mortuus, cui jam frustra ab
hominibus clamabitur. Sed ne forte adhuc de terrena ipsius dominatione aliquis vobis dubietatis
supersit scrupulus, neve leviter suspicemini ineptis & anilibus fabulis sanctam Romanam sedem velle
sibi inconcussum honorem vindicare & defensare aliquatenus: pauca ex privilegio, ejusdem
Constantini manu cum cruce aurea super cælestis clavigeri venerabile corpus posito, ad medium
proferemus, quibus fundetur veritas, & confundatur vanitas: ut omnia membra catholicæ matris
cognoscant nos illius Petri disciplinæ esse, qui sic in epistola sua ait de fe: Non enim doctas fabulas
secuti notam vobis fecimus Deomini nostril Jesu Christi virtutem, sed speculatores facti illius
magnitudinis: & nos vobis inculare non tam relatu quolibet, quam quæ ipso visu & tactu comperta
sunt. Vel admoniti recognoscite, quia idem gloriosus princeps in jam dicto privilegio post Christianæ
fidei claram perfectamque confessionem, atque baptismatis sui enucleatam commendationem,
specialem sanctæ Romanæ ecclesiæ dignitatem sic promulgavit, dicens: “Utile judicavimus una cum
omnibus nostris satrapis, & universo senato, optimatibus & cuncto populo Romanæ gloriæ imperio
subjacente, ut sicut beatus Petrus in terris vicarius Filii Dei videtur esse constitutes, it etiam &
pontifices ipsius principis Apostolorum vice, principatus potestatem, amplius quam terrenæ
imperialis nostræ serenitatis manusuetudo habere videtur, concessam a nobis nostroque imperio
obtineant; eligentes nobis ipsum principem Apostolorum, vel ejus vicarios, firmos apud Deum esse
patronos. Et sicur nostra est terrena imperialis potential, ita ejus sacrosanctam Romanam ecclesiam
decrevimus veneranter honorare, & amplius quam nostrum imperium terrenumque thronum, sedem
sacratissimam beati Petri gloriose exaltare: tribuentes ei potestatem & gloriæ dignitatem, atque
vigorem & honorificentiam imperialem: atque decernentes sancimus, ut principatum teneat tam
super quatuor sedes, Alexandrinam, Antiochenam, Hierosolymitanam ac Constantinopolitanam,
quamque etiam super omnes in universo orbe terrarum Dei ecclesias: & Pontifex, qui pro tempore
ipsius sacrosanctæ Romanæ ecclesiæ exstiterit, celsior & princeps cunctis sacerdotibus totius mundi
exsistat: & ejus judicio quæque ad cultum Dei vel fidei Christianorum stabilitatem procuranda
fuerint, disponantur. Justum quipped est, ut ibi lex sancta caput teneat principatus, ubi sanctarum
legum institutor Salvator noster beatum Petrum Apostolum obtinere præcepit cathedram, ubi &
crucis patibulum sustinens, beatæ Paulus Apostolus pro Christo extenso collo martyrio est coronatus:

1 Frank Zinkeisen, The Donation of Constantine as Applied by the Roman Church, in The English Historical
Review, Vol. IX, No. 36, Oct., 1894, pp. 627 – 628, Oxford University Press, 1894.
2 Henry Boynton Smith (editor), Alfred Plummer (translator), Johann Joseph Ignaz von Döllinger, Fables

Respecting the Popes of the Middle Ages, Part I, Ch. V, pp. 133 – 134, New York, NY: Dodd & Mead, 1872
(originally published in German at Munich in 1863). This book contains several valuable studies with regard
to papal fables.
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& illic usque in finem quærant doctorem, ubi sanctorum doctorum quiescunt corpora: & ibi proni ac
humo prostrati, cælestis regis & Salvatoris nostri Jesu Christi famulentur officio, ubi superbi, terreni
regis serviebant imperio.” Et succincte commemorato suo studio & devotione in construendis aliquot
sanctorum basilicis, & imperialium donationum magnificentia abundanter ditatis, ait: “Concedimus
ipsis sanctis Apostolis dominis beatissimis Petro & Paulo, & per hos etiam beato Silvestro patri
nostro, summo ponifici, & universali urbis Romæ Papæ, & omnibus ejus successoribus pontificibus,
qui usque in finem mundi in sede beati Petri erunt sessuri, atque de præsenti contradimus palatium
imperii nostri Lateranense, quod omnibus in toto orbe terrarium præfertur atque præcillit palatiis.
Deinde diadema, videlicet coronam capitis nostri, simulque phrygium, necnon & superhumerale,
videlicet lorum quod imperial circumdare assolet collum: verum etiam & chlamyden purpuream,
atque tunicam coccineam, & Omnia imperialia indumenta, sed & dignitatem imperialium
præsidentium equitum: conferentes ei etiam imperialium præfidentium mulque cuncta signa atque
banda, etiam & diversa ornamenta imperialia, & omnem processionem imperialis culminis, & gloriam
potestatis nostræ. Viros etiam reverendissimos clericos diversi ordinis, eidem sacrosanctæ Romanæ
ecclesiæ servientes, illud culmen singularis potentiæ & præcellentiæ habere sancimus, cujus
amplissimus noster senatus videtur gloria adornari: id est, patricios atque consules effici, necnon &
ceteris dignitatibus imperialibus eos promulgamus decorari. Et sicut imperialis exstat decorate
militia, ita & clerum sanctæ Romanæ ecclesiæ ornari decernimus. Et quemadmodum imperialis
potential diversis officiis, cubiculariorum nempe, & ostiariorum, atque omnium excubitorum ornatur:
ita & sanctam Romanam ecclesiam decorari volumus. Et ut amplissime Pontificale decus præfulgeat,
decernimus & hoc, ut clerici ejusdem sanctæ Romanæ ecclesiæ mappulis & linteaminibus, id est,
candidissimo colore decoratos equos equitent. Et sicut noster senatus calceamentis utitur cum
udonibus, id est candido linteamine illustratis, sic utantur & clerici: & ita cælestia, sicut terrena, ad
laudem Dei decorentur. Præ omnibus autem licentiam tribuentes, concedimus ipsi sanctissimo patri
nostri Silvestro Urbis Romæ episcopo & Papæ, & omnibus qui post eum in successu, & perpetuis
temporibus advenerint, beatissimis Pontificibus, pro honore & gloria Christi Dei nostri in eadem
magna Dei catholica & Apostolica ecclesia ex nostro indicto, quem placates proprio consilio clericare
voluerit, & in numero religiosorum clericorum connumerare, nullum ex omnibus præsumentem
superbe agere.”

XIV.

“Derevimus itaque & hoc, ut idem venerabilis pater noster Silvester summus pontifex, vel
omnes ei succedentes pontifices, diademate, videlicet corona quam ex capite ad laudem Dei pro
honore beati Petri gestare. Ipse vero beatissimus Papa super coronam clericatus, quam gerit ad
gloriam beati Petri, omnino ipsa ex auro non est passus uti corona: phrygium autem candido nitore,
splendidam resurrectionem Dominicam designans, ejus sacratissimo vertici minibus nostris
imposuimus, & tenentes frenum equi ipsius, pro reverentia beati Petri, stratoris illi officium
exhibuimus, statuentes eodem phrygio omnes successors ejus singulariter uti in processionibus, ad
imitationem imperii nostri. Unde ut pontificalis apex non vilescat, sed magis quam terreni imperii
dignitas & gloriæ potential decoretur, ecce tam palatium nostrum, ut prælatum est, quam Romanam
urbem, & omnes Italiæ seu occidentalium regionum provincias, loca & civitates, sæpefato beatissimo
pontifici & patri Silvestro universali Papæ contradentes atque relinquentes, ei vel successoribus
ipsius pontificibus potestatem & ditionem firmam imperiali censura per hanc nostram divalem
jussionem & pragmaticum constitutum decernimus disponenda, atque juri sanctæ Romanæ ecclesiæ
concedimus permansura. Unde congruum prospeximus, nostrum imperium & regni potestatem
orientalibus transferri ac transmutari regionibus, & in Byzantiæ provinciæ optimo loco nomini
nostro civitatem ædificari, & nostrum illic constitui imperium: quoniam ubi principatus sacerdotum
& Christianæ religionis caput ab Imperator cælesti constitutum est, justum non est ut illic terrenus
Imperator habeat potestatem. Hæc vero omnia, quæ per hanc imperialem sacram, & per alia divalia
decreta statuimus atque confirmavimus, usque in finem mundi illibata & inconcussa permansura
decernimus.” Deinde facta obtestatione coram Deo vivo, & terribili ejus judicio, & imprecatione
æternæ condemnationis temeratori vel contemptori ipsius sui privilegii, secutus idem venerabilis
Constantinus, ait: “Hujus vero imperialis nostril decreti paginam propriis minibus roborantes, super
venerandum corpus beati Petri principis Apostolorum posuimus: ibique eidem Dei Apostolo
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spondentes nos cuncta inviolabiliter conservare, & nostris successoribus Imperatoribus conservanda
in mandatis relinquere, patri nostro Silvestro summo Pontifici & universali Papæ, & per eum cunctis
successoribus ejus pontificibus, Domino Deo & Salvatore nostro Jesu Christo annuente, tradimus,
feliciter atque perenniter possidenda.

XV.

Tot ergo & talibus aliisque quamplurimis testimoniis subnixa non erubescit veritas, sed
confuratur impudens vanitas. At nos hinc habentes testimonium majus Constantino; Qui, ut ait
beatus evangelista Joannes, de terra est, & de terra loquitur; vix ab homine testimonium accipimus,
contenti testimonio illius qui de cælo venit, & super omnes est, & dicit: Tu est Petrus, & super hanc
petram ædificabo ecclesiam meam, & portæ inferi non prævalebunt adversus eam. Et tibi dabo claves
regni cælorum. Et quodcumque ligaveris super terram, erit ligatum & in cælis; & quodcumque solveris
super terram, erit solutum & in cælis.1

John of Salisbury (1115/1120 – 1180), a distinguished Roman Catholic bishop and scholar, also quotes the
Donation of Constantine, in support of Pope Hadrian IV conferring upon Henry II, the king of England,
dominion over the island of Ireland in 1155. Döllinger writes:

Hadrian does not mention the Donation of Constantine in his Bull; but his friend and
confidant, John of Salisbury, the one who, according to his own confession, induced him to take this
step so pregnant with consequences, quotes the Donation of the first believing emperor as the
ground of this “right of St. Peter” over all islands.2

Döllinger also writes:

In a chronicle of the church of St. Maria del Principio, it is stated that Constantine gave the whole of
the kingdom of Sicily on both sides of the straits, along with other possessions, to pope Sylvester; the
town of Naples was the only thing which he reserved as imperial property.

[Döllinger’s footnote:] The chronicle appears to belong to the end of the twelfth or beginning of the
thirteenth century.3

Otto of Freising (1111/1114 – 1158, also Friesingen) was an influential nobleman, historian, abbot, and
Roman Catholic bishop. Döllinger writes about the chronicle of Otto of Freising:

In his chronicle, which was composed between 1143 and 1146, he asserts the authenticitya of the
Donation, and relates how Constantine, after conferring the imperial insignia on the pope, went to
Byzantium, adding that “for this reason the Roman Church maintains that the western kingdoms
have been given over to her possession by Constantine, and demands tribute from them to this day,
with the exception of the two kingdoms of the Franks” (that is, the French and the German one).
[Döllinger’s Footnote:] a) Chron. 3, ap., Urstis. f., 80.4

Liutprand (or Liudprand) or Cremona (920 – 972), around 968 – 969, a Latin Bishop in northern Italy who
made important embassies to the Byzantine court at Constantinople, refers to the Donation of Constantine.5

1 Jean Hardouin, Acta Conciliorum, Vol. VI, Part I, Leonis Papæ IX. Epistolæ, Ad Michaelem
Constantinopolitanum Patriarcham, XIII – XV, pp. 934 – 937, Paris: Typographia Regia, 1714 . Also in Migne,
PL, Vol. CXLIII, pp. 744 – 769.
2 Döllinger, Fables Respecting the Popes of the Middle Ages, Part I, Ch. V, p. 138.
3 Döllinger, Fables Respecting the Popes of the Middle Ages, Part I, Ch. V, p. 139.
4 Döllinger, Fables Respecting the Popes of the Middle Ages, Part I, Ch. V, p. 144.
5 Zinkeisen, The Donation of Constantine as Applied by the Roman Church, p. 628.
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In his chapter, Döllinger points out other Roman Catholics who were more cautious in using the Donation, but
who still cited or alluded to it in favour of the Papacy, including Bishop Sicard of Cremona (1155 – 1215),
Archbishop Romuald Guarna of Salerno (1110/1120 – 1181/1182), Robert Abolant (d. 1214), Bishop
Tolomeo of Lucca (or Batholomew Fiadóni, 1236 – 1327), Amalrich Augerii (or Amalricus Augerii, 14th
century), Bishop Lucas of Tuy (d. 1249), Balduin of Ninove (or Baudouin of Ninnove, wrote a Chronicle until
1294), Godfrey of Viterbo (or Gottfried, 1120 – 1196), Gervasius of Tilbury (or Gervase, 1150 – 1220), Canon
Rudolf or Pandulf Colonna (14th century), Archdeacon Nicholas of Clamenge (or Mathieu-Nicolas Poillevillain
de Clémanges, 1360 – 1434/1440). The Strasburg parish priest, John Hug of Schlettstadt, defended the
Donation around the end of the 15th century, along with the jurist Peter of Andlo (or Petrus de Andlo, 1420 –
1480).

In the conclusion of his chapter, Döllinger writes:

On the other hand, Nicolas Tudeschi, who was considered by his contemporaries as the greatest of all
canonists, declares that he who denies the Donation lies under suspicion of heresy. Cardinal P. P.
Parisius, and the Spanish bishop, Arnold Albertinus, declare the same. Whosoever pronounces the
Donation to be null and void, says the latter, comes very near to heresy; but whosoever
maintains that it never took place at all is in a still worse case. Antonius Rosellus, and Ludwig
Gomez are of the same opinion; and cardinal Hieronymus Albano declares thus much at least, that
there exist shameless persons who refuse to submit to the “unanimis consensus tot ac tantorum
Patrum,” respecting the Donation; or, according to the expression of Petrus Igneus, to the “tota
academia Canonistarum et Legistarum,” with the whole host of theologians to boot. But after
cardinal Baronius had once for all confessed the unauthenticity of the Donation, all these voices,
which had shortly before been so numerous and so loud, became dumb. 1

Gabriel de Mussis (or Giovanni de’ Mussi, 1280 – 1356), an Italian notary and chronicler, alludes to the
temporal dominion given to Sylvester, although he says that it was the source of countless evils and wars, and
he argues against temporal power being given to ecclesiastics.2

Gratian, making use of other false stories about Constantine, says, “It is clearly enough shown that the Pope
cannot be bound or loosed by the secular power, seeing that it is agreed that he was by the pious prince
Constantine called a God, and it is manifest that a God cannot be judged by men”.3

Gilbert Génebrard (1535 – 1597), the Latin Archbishop of Aix and a learned French scholar, still refers to false
legends of Constantine as genuine, saying “that to Sylvester and his successors Constantine gave, as a present,
Rome, and all the imperial dress and ornaments; and he adduces the authority of Eugubinus and Photius for
his statement:”4

Johannes Vergenhans (Nauclerus) (1425 – 1510), an eminent Latin historian and scholar who is listed by the
Catholic Encyclopedia as one of the “distinguished professors” of the University of Tübingen, while defending
the authenticity of the Donation of Constantine, reports the Donation to be affirmed in the history of Isidore,
yet this is based on false information, and a Protestant scholar replies, “But in the old copies of Isidore no
such thing is to be found.”5

1 Döllinger, Fables Respecting the Popes of the Middle Ages, Part I, Ch. V, pp. 180 – 181.
2 Eric Russell Chamberlin, The Bad Popes, (introductory quote), New York, NY: Dorset Press, 1969.
3 Gratian’s Dist., 96, 7. Cited in James Anson Farrer, Literary Forgeries, Ch. VII, p. 142, London: Longman,

Green, and Co., 1907.

4 “Huic et ejus successoribus Constantinus Imp. dono dedit Romam et Omnia imperatoria indumenta ac

ornamenta; ut manifese probat Eugubinus duobus libris, et testatur Photius patriarcha Græcus, tit. 8.”
Génebrard’s Chronicles, Paris, 1580, p. 216. Cited in James Todd, A Protestant Text Book of the Romish
Controversy, Vol. I, Ch. XI, § 33, p. 279, London: The Protestant Educational Institute, 1879.
5 Stephen Reed Cattley (editor), The Acts and Monuments of John Foxe: A New and Complete Edition, Vol. I,

Book I, p. 301, London: R. B. Seeley and W. Burnside, 1841.

 436

Cardinal Cencius Savelli, who later became Latin Pope Honorius III (1216 – 1227), included the donation in
the “Liber censuum Romanae ecclesiae”, which he completed in 1192, while he was papal chamberlain. The
Catholic Encyclopedia says this work was “perhaps the most valuable source for the history of papal
economics during the Middle Ages. It comprises a list of the revenues of the Apostolic See, a record of
donations received, privileges granted, and contracts made with cities and rulers.”1

Fleury writes that “S. Bernard [of Clairvaux] presupposed it [the truth of the Donation], when he said to Pope
Eugenius [III] that he was the successor not only of Peter, but of Constantine”. 2

John Huss (Jan Hus) (1372 – 1415), an influential precursor to the Protestant reformers, who was burned at
the stake for heresy against the Roman Catholic communion, cites and spends several pages discussing the
Pseudo-Isidorian decretals and other false documents in his Treatise on the Church (or De Ecclesia, written
1413), considered his most important writing. He cites the spurious letters of Pope Marcellus on pp. 82 sq.,
214 sq., and Anacletus on pp. 82, 110, 152, 155, 211, as bearing on the Papal power, accepting these
documents as true, and they significantly influence his ecclesiology. However, he endeavours to give a less
ultramontane interpretation to the words of Pope Anacletus, and he criticises the statements of Pope
Marcellus, saying that he made mistakes, and that “Certainly this pope speaks confusedly.” (p. 215).
Moreover, Huss cites a spurious decretal of Pope Gelasius, Constantine’s Donation, and a pact between the
Emperor Lewis and Pope Pascal, upon which the editor comments, “This pact between Lewis and Pascal, 817-
824, is first found in Anselm of Lucca, d. 1073, and is deemed altogether spurious or at least largely
interpolated.”3

The Donation of Constantine was not unquestioned in the West at first, although many adopted it later.
Henry Charles Lea (1825 – 1909), an American Protestant historian, notes:

About the year 1000, Otho III., in a grant to Sylvester II. takes occasion to stigmatize the donation of
Constantine as a fiction: “Hæc sunt enim commenta ab illis ipsis inventa, quibus Joannes diaconus,
cognomento digitorum mutius (mutilus) præceptum aureis litteris scripsit, sub titulo magni
Constantini longa mendacii tempora finxit. … Spretis ergo commenticiis præceptis et imaginariis
scriptis, ex nostra liberalitate sancto Petro donamus quæ nostra conferimus.” (Baronius, ann. 1191,
No. 57.) And not long after, in a donation of St. Henry II., confirming the previous liberalities of the
emperors, no mention is made in the recital of Constantine’s gift, showing that it was still regarded as
supposititious (Lünig Cod. Ital. Diplom. II. 698).

This soon passed away, however, and any doubt as to the authenticity of the donation was assumed
to spring from unworthy enmity to the just claims of St. Peter. About the year 1150 Geroch of
Reichersperg writes: “Memini enim cum in urbe Romana fuissem, fuisse mihi objectum a quodam
causidico ecclesiæ Dei adversario, non esse rata privilegia imperatoris Constantini ecclesiasticæ
libertati faventia, eo quod ipse vel baptizatus vel rebaptizatus fuisset in hæresi Ariana, ut insinuare
videtur historia tripartita.” (Geroch. Expos. in Psalm. LXIV) The reviving study of the imperial
jurisprudence might well cause a shrewd lawyer to doubt the obsequiousness of a Roman emperor,
but he found it prudent to justify his incredulity by the Arianism of Eusebius of Nicomedia, from
whom the emperor on his death-bed received the rite of baptism.

The stubborn vitality infused into these forgeries by their success in establishing the papal power is
shown by the learned Christian Wolf, as late as the close of the seventeenth century, alluding to the

1 Michael Ott, Honorius III, in CE, Vol. VII, p. 459.

2 In Pusey, Eirenicon, [Part I], p. 321. Citing Fleury, Disc. 4, sur l’Hist. Eccl., n. 9.
3 David Schley Schaff (translator and editor), John Huss, De Ecclesia: The Church, Ch. XV, pp. 150 – 151, New

York, NY: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1915. Also see Marios Costambeys, Power and Patronage in Early Medieval
Italy: Local Society, Italian Politics and the Abbey of Farfa, c.700–900, Ch. VIII, pp. 315 – 323, Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2007, who notes that this Pactum Hludowicianum is “a text whose reliability is
deeply problematic” (p. 322).
 437

donation of Constantine with as much confidence as though its authenticity had never been
questioned (Chr. Lupi Opp. II. 261).1

It is significant that the official edition of the Roman Canon Law in 1582, the “Corpus Juris”, defended the
Donation of Constantine. It was already mentioned that Bartoli pointed out that this work retained the
Pseudo-Isidorian decretals. The scholars who composed this work are referred to as the Correctores Romani,
or Roman Correctors, who commented extensively on Gratian:

The Roman Correctors were a group of mainly humanist scholars who, in the wake of the Council of
Trent, set about editing the texts of canon law. … Three of the five cardinals who composed the core
of the original congregation (established in 1566 under the direction of Pope Pius V) were renowned
scholars: Ugo Buoncompagni (later Pope Gregory XIII), probably the most expert canonist in the
papal curia; Guglielmo Sirleto, expert in both Greek and Latin manuscripts, and director of the
Vatican libraries since 1554; and Francesco Alciati, former professor of law at the University of Pavia.
There were twenty-eight other members, both lay and clerical, many with outstanding dossiers. The
effective leader of the committee was Miguel Thomás Taxaquet, protégé of the famed canonist
Antonio Agustín, archbishop of Tarragona. … they did their work diligently and intelligently,
although there was a division ‘between those who believed that good Humanist text-critical practice
was of primary importance and those who were reluctant to part with medieval tradition’ (p. 62).
One point in which tradition triumphed was their defense of the Donation of Constantine (pp. 79-81,
95).2

It is also important to mention that many frescoes, statues, and works of art in Latin church buildings and
elsewhere visually depict and represent the Donation of Constantine. Many examples of such artwork could
be given here, but they are documented at length in a recent 550-page dissertation on the subject, which
states in its introduction:

As this dissertation demonstrates, in visual art the Donation was rhetorically potent for the
advancement of papal claims, despite repeated challenges to the veracity of the historical document.
The overarching argument of this dissertation is that in the early modern period the papacy utilized
visual means both to defend and to reaffirm the authenticity of the Donation.3

Johannes Fried (1942 – current), a German historian and professor, writes about the pseudo-Constantinian
fabrication, and its promotion in numerous frescoes in Rome:

the Reformation, which used the forged document as propaganda against the Roman pontiff, saw the
papal side reassert its authority. This was proclaimed by a long series of canonistic authors;
significantly, the commentary on Gratian by John of Torquemada, the learned canonist and formerly
‘anti-conciliarist’ cardinal, with its thoroughly unoriginal defense of the “Donation”, indeed of papal
rule generally, was now printed (1553). It was promoted in an elaborate sequence of frescoes
commissioned (from Giulio Romano and Gianfrancesco Penni) by Clement VII (1523-34) in the “Sala

1 Henry Charles Lea, Studies in Church History, The Rise of the Temporal Power, p. 167, Philadelphia, PA:
Henry C. Lea’s Son & Co., 1883.
2 The Catholic Historical Review, Volume 97, Number 4, October 2011, pp. 804 – 805 [A review of Mary E.

Sommar, The Correctores Romani: Gratian’s Decretum and the Counter-Reformation Humanists,
Pluralisierung & Autoritä t, 19, Berlin: LIT Verlag, 2009].
3 Silvia Tita, Political Art of the Papacy: Visual Representations of the Donation of Constantine in the Early

Modern Period, Ch. I, p. 4, Dissertation: University of Michigan, 2013.

 438

di Constantino” of the Vatican Palace, adapting those that Raffael had painted for Leo X (1513 –
1521), and at the end of the century in the Lateran Basilica by Clement VIII in 1597. 1

After being made aware of the spurious nature of this document, some Roman Catholics claimed it was a
Greek fabrication. However, Döllinger demonstrates that this is not the case in his chapter on the Donation of
Constantine. Döllinger writes:

That the Donation was a fiction of the Greeks, composed in Greek, and brought from the East
to Rome, has indeed been long ago maintained by Baronius. Next Bianchi undertook to defend the
view, on no better grounds, however, than the weak allegation, that it is to be found in Balsamon; and
lately, Richter also has given as his opinion that it probably originated in Greece. But from the Greek
text, as well as from the contents of the document itself, the very opposite of this can be
demonstrated to a certainty.2

Döllinger then demonstrates the Latin origin of the text, and concludes:

The Donation of Constantine, therefore, beyond all doubt was composed in the West, in Italy, in
Rome, and by a Roman ecclesiastic. The time of its appearance points to the same conclusion.3

The article on the Donation of Constantine in the Encyclopedia of Medieval Italy states:

How effective this document was and what use the papacy made of it during the Carolingian
period are matters of debate, although the document is known to have been available in Rome. The
situation changed with the Gregorian reform, when the Donation was cited in a letter of Pope Leo IX,
probably written by Humbert of Silva Candida. Other references are found in the formulary of Pope
Gregory VII and in the letters of popes Urban II, Hadrian IV (1154 – 1159), Innocent III (1198 –
1216), and Gregory IX (1227 – 1241). The popes reconfirmed the Donation well into the fifteenth
century, together with other imperial donations. Still, far greater use could have been made of the
forgery. According to Fuhrmann (1981), a dangerous ambivalence or ambiguity surrounded the
Donation: papal primacy could appear as the gift of a Roman emperor rather than as divinely
bestowed. Several popes, therefore, used the document merely as a secondary proof for their
claims.4

In summary, Popes who made use of the Donation include Pope Leo IX, Nicholas III, Innocent III, Innocent IV,
Clement V, John XXII, Urban II, Hadrian IV, Gregory IX, and implicitly by Hadrian I, Nicholas V, Alexander VI,
Calixtus III, Sixtus IV, Innocent VIII, and Leo X. It was perhaps implicitly used by Stephen III/II and Gregory
VII. There are many other Roman Catholics who have used the Donation in support of the Papal power.

Dante Alighieri (1265 – 1321), the Italian Roman Catholic poet, wrote in his Divine Comedy the following
lines, believing that Constantine’s Donation was real, but that it was a grave mistake, which bode ill for the
Church:

1 Johannes Fried, Donation of Constantine and Constitutum Constantini: The Misinterpretation of a Fiction
and Its Original Meaning, Introduction, p. 3, Berlin: De Gruyter, 2007. This book is a good study on the
Donation. The story of Wala of Corbie and Hilduin of St. Denis (pp. 96 – 109) is quite interesting.
2 Döllinger, Fables Respecting the Popes of the Middle Ages, Part I, Ch. V, p. 107.
3 Döllinger, Fables Respecting the Popes of the Middle Ages, Part I, Ch. V, p. 115.
4 Uta-Renate Blumenthal, Donation of Constantine, in Christopher Kleinhenz (editor), Medieval Italy: An

Encyclopedia, Vol. I, p. 306, New York, NY: Routledge, 2004.

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Ahi, Constantin, di quanto mal fu matre,

Non la tua conversion, ma quella dote,
Che de te prese il primo ricco patre!

Ah Constantine! of how much ill was cause,

Not thy conversion, but those rich domains
That the first wealthy Pope received of thee.1

For further reading, see Henry Boynton Smith (editor), Alfred Plummer (translator), Johann Joseph Ignaz von
Döllinger, Fables Respecting the Popes of the Middle Ages, Part I, Ch. IV – V, pp. 88 – 182, New York, NY: Dodd
& Mead, 1872 [also published with a different introduction, London: Rivingtons, 1871]; Christopher B.
Coleman, The Treatise of Lorenzo Valla on the Donation of Constantine, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press,
1922; Christopher B. Coleman, Constantine the Great and Christianity: Three Phases: the Historical, the
Legendary, and the Spurious, New York, NY: The Columbia University Press, 1914; Dimiter G. Angelov, The
Donation of Constantine and the Church in Late Byzantium; Péter Bara, The Use of the Donation of
Constantine in Late-Eleventh-Century Byzantium: the Case of Leo Metropolitan bishop of Chalcedon;
Johannes Fried, Donation of Constantine and Constitutum Constantini: The Misinterpretation of a Fiction and
Its Original Meaning, 2007; Frank Zinkeisen, The Donation of Constantine as Applied by the Roman Church,
in The English Historical Review, Vol. IX, No. 36, Oct., 1894, pp. 625 – 632, Oxford University Press, 1894 [Also
see Lea’s short note on Zinkeisen’s paper, in Vol. X, pp. 86 – 87 of the English Historical Review]; Silvia Tita,
Political Art of the Papacy: Visual Representations of the Donation of Constantine in the Early Modern Period,
Dissertation: University of Michigan, 2013.

Ch. V Pseudo-Clementine Literature

The Patriarchal Encyclical of 1895, in reply to Latin Pope Leo XIII’s encyclical on reunion, states:

In the Holy Scripture the Apostle Peter, whom the Papists, relying on apocryphal books of the second
century, the pseudo-Clementines, imagine with a purpose to be the founder of the Roman Church and
their first bishop, discusses matters as an equal among equals in the apostolic synod of Jerusalem,
and at another time is sharply rebuked by the Apostle Paul, as is evident from the Epistle to the
Galatians. … The first seeds of these claims of a papal absolutism were scattered abroad in the
pseudo-Clementines …2

The Clementine Romance refers to spurious early Ebionite writings, called the Clementine Homilies or the
Clementine Recognitions. Among these is a spurious letter from St. Clement to St. James, the first Bishop of
Jerusalem, which emphasizes the Roman Episcopate of St. Peter, and Clement as his immediate successor. In
an analysis of this subject, Anglican scholar Frederick William Puller (1843 – 1938) writes that:

1 Dante, Inferno, xix, 115 – 117. The Metropolitan, Vol. III, March 1832, The Irish Church and her Tithes, p.
295, London: James Cochrane and Co., 1832. There are many English translations – another is given in The
Westminster Review, Vol. XXXIII (New Series), January 1868, Art. III, Two Temporal Powers, p. 84, London:
Trübner & Co., 1868, “Alas! Constantine, of how great ill was the mother, Not thy conversion, but that
dowery, Which from thee accepted the first rich father.” The author notes, “Dante here alludes to what was
believed in his days, viz., that Rome and the territory around it, called the Patrimony of St. Peter, were given
by Constantine to Pope Sylvester.” Also see Dabney G. Park, Dante and the Donation of Constantine, pp. 67 –
161, Dante Studies: with the Annual Report of the Dante Society, No. 130, The Johns Hopkins University Press,
2012.
2 Anthimos VII, Encyclical, Art. XIV & XVII.
 440

In this spurious letter S. Peter is represented as speaking a good deal about his chair; but this chair is
not the throne of government of the universal Church, but “the chair of discourse,” or, as we should
say, the pulpit, in the local community at Rome. S. Peter is represented as saying, shortly before his
death, to the assembly of Roman Christians, “Hear me, brethren and fellow-servants. Since … the day
of my death is approaching, I lay hands on this Clement as your bishop; and to him I entrust my chair
of discourse,” etc. Then Clement is represented as kneeling before S. Peter, and entreating him,
“declining the honour and authority of the chair.” However, S. Peter insists; and after giving a
somewhat lengthy charge, he lays his hands on Clement, and compels him “to sit in his own chair.”1

There is no doubt that these are heretical writings, as St. Peter, in the spurious Epistle of Peter to James,
prefixed to the Clementine Homilies, “is represented as speaking of S. Paul as ‘the man who is my enemy,’ who
leads the Gentiles to reject ‘my preaching of the law.’” 2

Puller writes:

As a matter of fact, the Clementine literature circulated very largely among the Catholics of Rome and
Italy. S. Paulinus of Nola is supposed by some to have made an ineffectual attempt to translate the
Clementine Recognitions. They were actually translated by Rufinus, who had been urged to
undertake the task by S. Silvia of Aquitaine, and after her death by S. Gaudentius of Brescia. Mgr.
Duchesne says, “Le roman Syrien eut au IVe et au Ve siècle, une très grande vogue dans les cercles
orthodoxies.” The letter [of Clement] to James was quoted as genuine by the Council of Vaison in
442. It is also quoted more than once in the Liber Pontificalis, an eminently Roman book. That same
letter, augmented by additional spurious matter, finds a place in the forefront of the celebrated
forged decretals of the Pseudo-Isidore; and it is quoted as an authority by Pope Gregory VII. in a
letter to Herimann of Metz. Altogether, this objection raised by Dr. Rivington [“that the Ebionite
character of the Clementine documents would prevent their having any influence at Rome”] will not
hold good. The Church of Rome and other Western churches failed during many centuries to detect
the Ebionite tendency of these writings.3

It is also worthy of note that Pope Nicholas I (Epistle 147) quotes the spurious letter of Pope Clement to St.
James, although this is not quoted for the Papal pretensions, but to denounce adultery. Puller sees these
writings as significant in distorting the original traditions of the Roman Church with regard to the role of St.
Peter as the first Roman bishop. However, these writings did not impact the orthodoxy of the Church of
Rome. Puller writes:

Even when the discourses and teaching attributed to S. Peter were perceived to be heretical, and
were rejected, yet considerable portions of the framework of the story were supposed to give a true
account of what had actually happened.4

The Ebionite tendency was to depreciate the role of St. Paul in the founding of the Church of Rome, and it
appears that these spurious writings did have the effect of increasing the focus on St. Peter, whereas St.
Irenaeus gives us the true tradition, and “tells us that S. Matthew’s Gospel was published ‘while Peter and
Paul were preaching and founding the Church in Rome,’ and he also tells us that, ‘having founded and built up
the Church, they committed the ministry of the episcopate to Linus.’”5

1 Frederick William Puller, The Primitive Saints and the See of Rome, Lecture II, p. 42, London: Longmans,
Green, and Co., 3rd Ed., 1900.
2 Puller, The Primitive Saints and the See of Rome, Lecture II, p. 42.
3 Puller, The Primitive Saints and the See of Rome, Lecture II, pp. 47 – 48.
4 Puller, The Primitive Saints and the See of Rome, Lecture II, p. 42.
5 Puller, The Primitive Saints and the See of Rome, Lecture II, p. 43. See the good analysis of this subject in

Puller, Primitive Saints, pp. 41 – 49.

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Ch. VI Forged Greek Catena (or Libellus) and Errors of Thomas Aquinas

Later forgeries continued to distort Apostolic traditions in the Latin Church. The forged Greek catena, or
Libellus, first used by Thomas Aquinas in his Contra Errores Graecorum (Against the Errors of the Greeks),
contains over 200 spurious quotes from the Church Fathers that support the Latin position in various
controversies with the Orthodox. Aquinas’s treatise became the “quote mine” from which very many later
Latin scholars quoted in their arguments against Protestants and the Orthodox Church. This chapter will first
discuss the spurious passages of St. Cyril of Alexandria, which are especially relevant and have been
commonly cited in Latin arguments for the Papacy, and then I will review the rest of the Libellus.

Döllinger wrote the following:

In theology, from the beginning of the fourteenth century, the spurious passages of St. Cyril and
forged canons of Councils maintained their ground, being guaranteed against all suspicion by the
authority of St. Thomas. Since the work of Trionfo in 1320, up to 1450, it is remarkable that no single
new work appeared in the interests of the Papal system. But then the contest between the Council of
Basle and Pope Eugenius IV evoked the work of Cardinal Torquemada, besides some others of less
importance. Torquemada’s argument, which was held up to the time of Bellarmine to be the most
conclusive apology of the Papal system, rests entirely on fabrications later than the pseudo-Isidore,
and chiefly on the spurious passages of St. Cyril. To ignore the authority of St. Thomas is, according
to the Cardinal, bad enough, but to slight the testimony of St. Cyril is intolerable. The Pope is
infallible; all authority of other bishops is borrowed or derived from his. Decisions of Councils
without his assent are null and void. These fundamental principles of Torquemada are proved by
spurious passages of Anacletus, Clement, the Council of Chalcedon, St. Cyril, and a mass of forged or
adulterated testimonies. In the times of Leo X and Clement III, the Cardinals Thomas of Vio, or
Cajetan, and Jacobazzi, followed closely in his footsteps. Melchior Canus built firmly on the authority
of Cyril, attested by St. Thomas, and so did Bellarmine and the Jesuits who followed him. Those who
wish to get a bird’s–eye view of the extent to which the genuine tradition of Church authority was
still overlaid and obliterated by the rubbish of later inventions and forgeries about 1563, when the
Loci of Canus appeared, must read the fifth book of his work. It is indeed still worse fifty years later
in this part of Bellarmine’s work. The difference is that Canus was honest in his belief, which cannot
be said of Bellarmine. The Dominicans, Nicolai, Le Quien, Quétif, and Echard, were the first to avow
openly that their master St. Thomas, had been deceived by an imposter, and had in turn misled the
whole tribe of theologians and canonists who followed him. On the one hand, the Jesuits, including
even such a scholar as Labbe, while giving up the pseudo–Isidorian decretals, manifested their
resolve to still cling to St. Cyril. In Italy, as late as 1713, Professor Andruzzi of Bologna cited the most
important of the interpolations of St. Cyril as a conclusive argument in his controversial treatise
against the patriarch Dositheus.1

This Luigi Andruzzi was a Roman Catholic professor of the University of Bologna, and he pressed the weight
of this forgery when writing against Dositheus, the Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem.2

In a later work (1720) to prove the infallibility of the Pope, Professor Andruzzi cites again the spurious works
of Saint Cyril of Alexandria:

S. Cyrillus Patriarcha Alexandrinus in Lib. Thesaurorum inquit: “UT MEMBRA maneamus in

capite nostro Apostolico Throno Romanorum Pontificum, A QUO NOSTRUM EST QUÆRERE QUID
CREDERE, ET QUID TENERE DEBEMUS &c. Ipsius scilicet Apostolici Throni Romanorum Pontificum
SOLIUS est reprehendere, corrigere statuere, soluere, disponere, & loco illius ligare, qui ipsum
ædificavit &c.”

1Janus [Döllinger et al.], The Pope and the Council, Ch. III, Sect. 20, pp. 287 – 289.
2Aloysio Andruzzi, Vetus Græcia De Sancta Romana Sede Præclare Sentiens, Sive Responsio Ad Dositheum
Patriarcham Hierosolymitanum, Lib. III, p. 219, Venice: Apud Baltassarem Julianum, 1713.
 442

Hæc Sanctus Thomas profert contra errores Græcorum, & Gennadius Patriarcha
Constantinopolitanus in Apologia pro Synodo Florentina: qui cum agerent pro Latinis contra Grecos;
non potuerunt supposititia Loca adducere, nisi se ridendos præbere voluerint. Tum verò Andreas
Collossensis Episcopus in Synodo Florentina palam testatus est Cyrillum in Thesauro, Romani
Pontificis auctoritatem eximie celebrasse; neque ullus Græcorum quiduam opposuit. Cave igitur
mireris quod in Libro Thesaurorum, ex quibus Loca illa ab hisce Auctoribus referuntur; ea nunc
reperire non licet. Detruncarunt enim Hæretici Librum illum, & quæ in eo ad Romani Pontificis
auctoritatem pertinebant hæc eraserunt omnia. Quod idem Commentariis Theophylacti super
Joannem hæreticos secisse, a Viris Catholicis, & deprehensum, & patefactum est. Quamquam non
omnes Libri Thesaurorum latini facti sunt. Nam in Synodo sexta citatur 32. Liber, qui nobis non est
redditus.

Cum nostrum sit, e Sancti Cyrilli sentential, quærere a Romano Pontifice quid credere, & quid
tenere debeamus; manifestè patet veritatem, firmitatemque dogmatum Sedis Apostolicæ minime
consensu Ecclesiæ indigere, licet extra Synodum generalem universis Christi fidelibus proponantur
credenda.1

S. Cyrillus Alexandrinus Patriarcha in Thesauris ait: “Debemus nos utpote qui membra
sumus, Capiti nostro Pontifici Romano adhærere: ad nos pertinent inde quid credendum, quid
tenendum sit, quærere. Quoniam SOLIUS Pontificis est arguer, corrigere, increpare, ratum facere,
disponere, solvere, & ligare.”2

S. Cyrillus Patriarcha Alexandrinus, & clarissimum Orientalis Ecclesiæ lumen in libro

Thesaurorum ait: “Sicut Christus acceptis a Patre duplex sceptrum Ecclesiæ Gentium, & Israel,
egrediens super omne quodcumque est, ut ei cuncta curventur: plenissimam potestatem SIC ET
PETRO, ET EIUS SUCCESSORIBUS PLENISSIME COMMISIT &c. ET NULLI ALII, quàm Petro Christus
quod suum est, plenum, SED IPSI SOLI dedit” ergo non cæteris Apostolis, neque Concilio Generali, sed
Petro, & Petri Successori Romano Pontifici dedit; quem particular, soli, non excludit; cum idem Sacer
Doctor in præcedenti ejusdem orationis membro plenissimam potestatem Petro, & Successori Petri
esse a Christo Domino traditam prædicaverit.3

However, Roman Catholic scholars now admit that these quotes from St. Cyril are spurious. The Anglican
scholar John Rainolds (1549 – 1607) was the first to show that Cyril’s works were interpolated in the source
used by Thomas Aquinas, in his conference with the English Jesuit John Hart (d. 1586) at Oxford in 1582, on
the topic of “The fathers counterfeited by Papistes”:

Rainoldes. … Your practices in corrupting the writings of the Fathers, are of two sortes: the
one, before the art of printing was founde: and the other, sithence. Examples of them both I will give
in our present question, touching the supremacie. The former sort therefore is rife in the chiefest
Doctor of your Church, I meane, Thomas of Aquine. Who writing against the errours of the Grecians,
doth bring in S. Cyrill, saying, that as Christ receiued power of his Father ouer euery power, a power
most full and ample, that all things shoulde bowe to him: so he did commit it most fully and amply
both to Peter and his sucessours: and Christ gaue his owne to none else, saue to Peter, fully, but to him

1 Aloysius Andruzzi, Perpetua Ecclesiæ Doctrina de Infallibilitate Papæ in Decidendis ex Cathedra Fidei
Quæstionibus extra Concilium Œcumenicum et ante Fidelium Acceptionem, Liber I, Caput X, pp. 61 – 62,
Bologna: Typis Constantini Pisarri Sanctæ Inquisitionis Impressoris sub Signo S. Michælis, 1720. Capitals in
the original. Note that Andruzzi takes these quotes directly from Thomas Aquinas in his treatise Against the
Errors of the Greeks, and he also points out that Gennadius used them in his Apology for the Council of
Florence. Andruzzi says that the quotes cannot be found in the original books of Saint Cyril, and is aware that
the Orthodox at the Latin Council of Florence rejected these spurious texts, but claims that the Greek
“heretics” have cut out these words in the text, since they pertain to the authority of the Roman Pontiff. The
rest of Andruzzi’s work is not exempt from other errors and misquotations.
2 Liber I, Caput XV, p. 111.
3 Liber II, Caput IV, pp. 150 – 151.
 443

alone hee gaue it: and, the Apostles in the Gospels and Epistles haue affirmed (in euery doctrine)
Peter and his Church to be in steade of God: and, to him, euen to Peter, all doe bowe their head by the
lawe of God, and the Princes of the worlde are obedient to him, euen as to the Lord Iesus: and we, as
being members, must cleaue vnto our head, the Pope and the Apostolike See: thence it is our duetie to
seeke and enquire what is to be beleeued, what to be thought, what to be held: because it is the right
of the Pope alone, to reproue, to correct, to rebuke, to confirme, to dispose, to loose and binde. These
sayings are alleaged by Thomas of Aquine out of S. Cyrils worke entitled the treasure. But in S. Cyrils
treasure there are no such base coynes to be found. Wherefore either Thomas coined them him selfe
for want of currant money: or tooke them of some coiner, and thought to trie, if they would goe.

Hart. Doe you knowe, what iniurie you doe to that blessed man S. Thomas of Aquine, to
whose charge you lay so great a crime of forgerie?

Rainoldes. None at all, to him, whose counterfeits I discrie. But he did great iniurie to the
poore Christians, whome he abused with such counterfeits. Your Saint-maker of Rome did canonize
him for the holinesse of his life and learning. The greatest triall of it was in his seruice to that
See. And are you loth to haue it knowen?

Hart. But why shoulde you thinke either him to be the counterfeiter, or the saying to be
counterfeit, when, (as Cope sheweth) they are alleaged not onely by him, but by other too. Namely,
by that worthy & most learned Cardinall Iohn of Turrecremata, who was at the Councel of Basil: and
before him by Austin of Anconæ: yea, by the Græcians themselues, who were at the councel of
Florence, Andreas Bishop of Colossæ, and Gennadius Scholarius the Patriarke of Constantinople. Of
whome when the former saide (in the Councell) that Cyrill in his treasures had very much extolled the
authoritie of the Pope, none of all gainesaide him. The later (in a treatise that he wrote for the Latins
against the Græcians, touching fiue poyntes, whereof one is the Popes supremacie) citeth the same
testimonies, although perhaps not all, which S. Thomas of Aquine doth out of Cyrill. Yet you amongst
so many choose him whom you may carpe at: and thinke that wordes alleaged by them all, are
counterfeites.

Rainoldes. Counterfeites are counterfeites, though they goe through twenty handes. All
these, whome you name out of Harpsfieldes Cope, did liue long after Thomas: and seeme to haue
alleaged S. Cyrill on his credit, as Cope himselfe doeth also. Wherefore I could not thinke that they
had bene the coyners of that which was before they were. But Thomas is the first, with whom I finde
the wordes: and therefore greatest reason to lap the fault on him, unlesse he shewe from whom he
had them. At least, seeing I knowe the wordes are not Cyrils, whose Thomas saith they be: I did him
no iniurie (I trust) when I saide, that either he receiued them at some coyners hands, or coyned them
himselfe.

Hart. Although the wordes are not to be founde now in those partes of Cyrils treasure, which
are extant: yet that is not sufficient to proue, that either Thomas or some other forged them. For
Melchior Canus affirmed that heretikes haue maimed that booke, and haue razed out all those things
which therein pertained to the Popes authoritie. Which same thing to be done by thé in the
Commentaries of Theophilact vpon Iohn: the Catholikes haue found, and shewed.

Rainoldes. Me thinks, you and Canus deale against us, as the men of Doryla did against
Flaccus. Whome when they accused out of their publike recordes, and their recordes were called for:
they said that they were robbed of them vpon the way, by, I know not what shepheardes. You accuse
us, that we deny the Pope his right of the supremacie. The recordes, by which you proue it his right,
are the wordes of Cyrill. Cyrils wordes are called for, that they may be seene. You say, they are not
extant: you are robbed of them, by, I know not what heretikes. Whereon to put a greater likelihood,
you say further, that heretikes haue done an other robberie in Theophylact, as they are charged by
Catholikes. And this doe you say: but you say it onely: you bring no proofe, you name no witnes, you
shew no token of it. If such accusations may make a man giltie: who shal be innocent? He that should
haue dealt among the heathens so: would haue bene counted rather a slaunderer then an accuser.
 444

Hart. Admitte, that the words were not razed perhaps out of any booke of Cyrill, which we
haue. Yet might they be in some of them, which are lost, or not set forth in Latine. For we haue no
more then fourteene bookes of his treasure: whereas the two and thirtieth is cited by the Fathers in
the sixth generall Councell. And this is enough to remoue suspition of forgerie from Thomas, and
other, who alleage them.

Rainoldes. Nay, although the two and thirtieth be mentioned by the Fathers there: yet meant
they no more of Cyrill, then we haue. For that, which in our Latine edition is the twelfth, is the two
and thirtieth, in the Grecians count.

Hart. This is an answere which I neuer heard. It hath no likelyhood of trueth.

Rainoldes. Peruse you the place, which toucheth that of Cyrill: and the wordes them selues
will proue it more then likely.

Hart. The Councel hath it thus. Hoc & sanctus Cyrillus in trigesimo secundo libro Thesaurum
docet, epistolam ad profanos explanans: nec enim vnam naturalem operationem dabimus esse Dei &
creaturæ: vt neque id quod creatum est ad diuinam deducamus essentiam, neque id quod est diuinæ
naturæ præcipuum, ad locum qui creatis conuenit deponamus.

Rainoldes. This sentence alleaged out of the two and thirtieth of Cyrill in Greeke, is in the
twelfth booke of our Latin Cyril. Sauing that, he being translated by an other hath it in other
wordes. But there is the sentence: the very same sentence which the Councell pointeth to.

Hart. It might be there, first, and yet againe afterward in the two and thirtieth: as many use
one sentence often.

Rainoldes. But the circumstance of the place doth rather import it to be the very same. For,
the Councell saith, that Cyrill hath these wordes, explanus epistolam ad profanos, where he
expoundeth the epistle to profane men. And what meant they, by this epistle ad profanos, to profane
men?

Hart. How can I tell what they meant, when that booke of Cyrill (whereof they speake) is
lost?

Rainoldes. It should be, the epistle ad Romanos, to the Romaines: [Romanos] made
[profanos] by the printers error: unlesse he did it of purpose, to shew, what now the Romanes be: or
some corrector chaunged it, least wee by this circumstance should finde the place of Cyrill. For, this
[where he expoundeth the epistle to the Romanes] is a great argument, that the Councell meant the
place in the twelfth booke: where Cyrill doth handle such points of that epistle as concerned the
matter that he had in hand. Which that he should doe againe, in the same worke, with the same
sentence, touching the same matter: they who know Cyrill, will not thinke it likely. The lesse, because
it is an usuall thing with the Grecians, to diuide bookes otherwise then the Latins doe. As in the
Greeke testament, the gospell of Saint Marke hath more then fortie chapters, which hath not twntie in
the Latin: & yet notwithstanding ye Latin hath ye whole, as wel as the Greeke. Which is ye more
lykely to haue bene the difference betweene the Greeke Cyrill, alleaged by ye Councell, and our Latin
Cyrill translated out of Greeke, because that our Latin hath also other sentences in the tenth booke,
which are alleaged by the Councell out of the foure and twentieth: and, in their diuision, a chapter
and a booke did goe for all one, whereas the bookes in Latin are sub-diuided into chapters. The
mentioning therefore of more bookes of Cyrils treasure, then wee haue, remoueth not suspicion of
forgerie from the sayings, which Thomas citeth thence for the Popes supremacie. Chiefely, sith
Trapezuntius who translated that worke of Cyrill into Latin, was a man affectionate greatly to the
Pope. That, if he had left out somewhat of the Greeke, as he hath perhaps, (unlesse he used Cyrill
better then Eusebius:) yet is it not credible that he would haue left out so many places, so notable
 445

proofes of a thing so weightie, so nerely touching him whom he so deerely loued. In deed they are
too notable, and perfit sor the purpose: and such, as, your Canus saith, haue not their matches
throughout all the Fathers. Wherein, that is also worthie of remembrance which a wise man said in
like case: too much perfection breedeth suspicion. Neither was S. Cyrill likely to write them, who,
when the Councell of Carthage sent unto him about the Pope usurping, was so glad to send them
euidence against it: neither was his treasure fitte to writh them in, as handling all an other matter,
that the Sonne and the holy ghost are of one substance with God the Father. But the forging of Cyrill
might be better borne with: he was but one man. That is no way tollerable, that the like dealing is
used wite sixe hundred bishops, and more, euen with the genrall Councell of Chalcedon.1

Here is all of Cyril’s spurious quotes from Thomas Aquinas’ Contra Errores Græcorum (Against the Errors of
the Greeks), which concern the Primacy of Rome. I have used the English translation of Aquinas by Peter
Damian Mary Fehlner (1931 – 2018, ordained 1957), and re-edited by Joseph P. Kenny (1936 – 2013,
ordained 1963), both Roman Catholic priests and professors, with their critical notes:

[Part II] CHAPTER 34: That the same [Roman Pontiff] possesses in the Church a fullness of power.
It is also established from the texts of the aforesaid Doctors that the Roman Pontiff possesses a
fullness of power in the Church. For Cyril, the Patriarch of Alexandria, says in his Thesaurus: “As
Christ coming forth from Israel as leader and sceptre of the Church of the Gentiles was granted by the
Father the fullest power over every principality and power and whatever is that all might bend the
knee to him, so he entrusted most fully the fullest power to Peter and his successors.” And again: “To
no one else but Peter and to him alone Christ gave what is his fully.” And further on: “The feet of
Christ are his humanity, that is, the man himself, to whom the whole Trinity gave the fullest power,
whom one of the Three assumed in the unity of his person and lifted up on high to the Father above
every principality and power, so that all the angels of God might adore him (Heb. 1:6); which whole
and entire he has left in sacrament and power to Peter and to his Church.” [Footnote] Lib. 98, 17-23,
55-56, and 60-66 (not found).

CHAPTER 35: That he enjoys the same power conferred on Peter by Christ.

And Cyril of Alexandria in his Thesaurus says that the Apostles “in the Gospels and Epistles have
affirmed in all their teaching that Peter and his Church are in the place of the Lord, granting him
participation in every chapter and assembly, in every election and proclamation of doctrine.” And
further on: “To him, that is, to Peter, all by divine ordinance bow the head and the rulers of the world
obey him as the Lord himself.” [Footnote] Lib. 98, 25-30, and 56-57 (not found).

CHAPTER 36: That to him belongs the right of deciding what pertains to faith.

It is also demonstrated that to the aforesaid Pontiff belongs the right of deciding what pertains to
faith. For Cyril in his Thesaurus says: “Let us remain as members in our head on the apostolic throne
of the Roman Pontiffs, from whom it is our duty to seek what we must believe and what we must
hold.” [Footnote] Lib. 98, 49-51 (not found).

CHAPTER 37: That he is the superior of the other patriarchs.

1John Rainolds, The Svmme of the Conference Betweene Iohn Rainoldes and Iohn Hart: Tovching the Head
and the Faith of the Chvrch, Ch. V, Division II, pp. 159 – 163, London: George Bishop, 1588. Notes in margin
not copied here. Rainolds goes on to mention other Latin forgeries, and this conference is well worth reading.
Note that the Austin of Anconae referred to is Augustine or Augustinus Triumphus or Agostino Trionfo of
Ancona (1270 – 1328, although others give a birth date in the early 1240’s), who was an influential pro-papal
writer, professor, and chaplain to Charles (the son of Robert, King of Naples). As Hart mentioned, Augustine
cites the false Cyril in his magnum opus, Summa de Potestate Ecclesiastica (Summa on Ecclesiastical Power),
written 1326, printed 1473, and reprinted several times later, and it was a very influential book.
 446

It is also clear that he is the superior of the other patriarchs from this statement of Cyril: “It is his”,
namely, of the Roman Pontiffs of the apostolic throne, “exclusive right to reprove, correct, enact,
resolve, dispose and bind in the name of Him who established it.” [Footnote] Lib. 98, 53-55 (not
found).

CHAPTER 38 That to be subject to the Roman Pontiff is necessary for salvation.

It is also shown that to be subject to the Roman Pontiff is necessary for salvation. For Cyril says in his
Thesaurus: “Therefore, brethren, if you imitate Christ so as to hear his voice remaining in the Church
of Peter and so as not be puffed up by the wind of pride, lest perhaps because of our quarrelling the
wily serpent drive us from paradise as once he did Eve.” [Footnote] Lib. 98, 44-48 (not found).1

Thomas Aquinas cites this false Cyril in his other works, such as in his Liber contra impugnantes Dei cultum et
religionem,2 and also in the following passage from the Supplement to his Summa Theologica, to answer
affirmatively to the question “Whether in the Church there can be anyone above the bishops?”:

Further, the blessed Cyril, bishop of Alexandria, says: “That we may remain members of our apostolic
head, the throne of the Roman Pontiffs, of whom it is our duty to seek what we are to believe and
what we are to hold, venerating him, beseeching him above others; for his it is to reprove, to correct,
to appoint, to loose, and to bind in place of Him Who set up that very throne, and Who gave the
fulness of His own to no other, but to him alone, to whom by divine right all bow the head, and the
primates of the world are obedient as to our Lord Jesus Christ Himself.” Therefore bishops are
subject to someone even by divine right.3

In the Catena Aurea on St. Matthew xvi. 18, Aquinas cites Cyril again:

Cyril. According to this promise of the Lord, the Apostolic Church of Peter remains pure and spotless
from all leading into error, or heretical fraud, above all Heads and Bishops, and Primates of Churches
and people, with its own Pontiffs, with most abundant faith, and the authority of Peter. And while
other Churches have to blush for the error of some of their members, this reigns alone immoveably
established, enforcing silence, and stopping the mouths of all heretics; and we, not drunken with the
wine of pride, confess together with it the type of truth, and of the holy apostolic tradition.

Upon which the Anglican editors (primarily John Henry Newman (1801 – 1890), who converted to Roman
Catholicism in 1845 and became a Cardinal in 1879) note:

1 Joseph P. Kenny (editor), Peter Damian Mary Fehlner (translator), available online at
http://jonhaines.com/thomas/english/ContraErrGraecorum.htm (formerly on the Priory of the Immaculate
Conception at the Dominican House of Studies website, at dhspriory.org). Originally published in James
Likoudis, Ending the Byzantine Greek Schism, Appendix I, Part II, Ch. XXXIV – XXXVIII, pp. 182 – 185, New
Rochelle, NY, Catholics United for the Faith, 2nd Ed., 1992. The edition published online contains the
additional edits of Kenny. The note of the Roman Catholic editors, “not found”, means that the original words
of St. Cyril have not been found in any manuscripts, and are spurious, copied from the Libellus.
2 John Proctor, An Apology for the Religious Orders by Saint Thomas Aquinas: Being a Translation from the

Latin of Two of the Minor Works of the Saint, Part II, Ch. II, pp. 93 – 94 & Ch. III, p. 113, London: Sands & Co.,
1902. The Roman Catholic Dominican editor and translator, though writing a 40-page introduction, makes no
comment or note about Aquinas’s use of this spurious source.
3 Summa Theologica, Supplement, Question 40, Article 6. Note that the Dominican editors write on the

Supplement: “The remainder of the Summa Theologica, known as the Supplement, was compiled probably by
Fra Rainaldo da Piperno, companion and friend of the Angelic Doctor, and was gathered from St. Thomas’s
commentary on the Fourth Book of the Sentences of Peter Lombard. This commentary was written in the
years 1235-1253, while St. Thomas was under thirty years of age.” (Fathers of the English Dominican
Province (translators), The “Summa Theologica” of St. Thomas Aquinas, Part III, No. IV, p. 98, London: R. & T.
Washbourne, 1917.
 447

This passage is quoted in the Catena from ‘Cyril in Lib. Thes.’ but does not occur in any of S. Cyril’s
works. On the subject of this interpolation, vid. Launoy’s Epistles, part i. Ep. 1-3. and v. Ep. 9. c. 6-12.
From him it appears that, besides the passage introduced into the Catena, S. Thomas ascribes similar
ones to S. Cyril in his comment on the Sentences, Lib. iv. d. 24. 3. and in his books ‘contr. impugn.
relig.’ and ‘contra errores Græc.’ He is apparently the first to cite them, and they seem to have been
written later than Nicholas I. and Leo IX. (A. D. 867-1054.) He was young when he used them, and he
is silent about them in his Summa, (which was the work of his last ten years,) in three or four places
where the reference might have been expected.1

Newman is implying that Aquinas later became aware of the unreliability of these quotes from St. Cyril, and
thus did not use them in his later works, which is an argument other scholars have made. However, while this
may be true, Aquinas never formally stated this and he never retracted those passages (and died carrying his
book against the Greeks on his way to the Council of Lyons, prepared to adduce these false documents), and
they were repeatedly cited by later authors, as shown in this work.

Newman writes in the Preface:

But there are two passages of serious moment, one on Matt. xvi. 18. the other on Luke xxii. 19. quoted
from S. Cyril, which require a remark. The first affirming the supremacy of the successors of S. Peter
is quoted from ‘Cyril. in lib. Thes.’ but occurs no where in S. Cyril’s writings. Accordingly it has been
made the groundwork of an old charge against S. Thomas (lately revived by a German writer, see
Ellendorf Hist. Blätter) of forgery, which however has been amply refuted by Guyart and Nicolai.2

I was also inclined to believe that Thomas Aquinas was not the author or aware of these forgeries himself, but
it is known, from the latest scholarship, that he was not the forger, and that he simply copied them from the
Libellus, which however does not excuse him from the charge of negligence, and of his primary role in widely
disseminating these spurious quotations. The American Church Review appropriately comments:

We had intended to say something about Aquinas’s mistakes in his controversy with the Greeks,
whom he expected to confront in the Council of Lyons. In his tract against them, he employs, under
the sanction of a Pope – he was blind when a Pope wanted him to be – manufactured or false
quotations from the Fathers. … Aquinas was honest and honorable. If he erred, he was deceived by
those whom he trusted implicitly, – as he always did a Pope, through thick and thin. 3

The Libellus

It is important to mention the source from which Thomas Aquinas took many of his quotations. Nicholas of
Cotrone (or Crotone), a Roman Catholic bishop but native Greek of Dyrrachium (Durazzo), compiled a work
titled “Liber de fide Trinitatis, ex diversis auctoritatibus sanctorum graecorum confectus contra graecos”, or
simply Libellus, which he sent to Latin Pope Urban IV in 1262. Pope Urban then submitted the work to
Aquinas, who used it to write his treatise Contra Errores Græcorum (Against the Errors of the Greeks) in
about 1263 or 1264. Of the two hundred and five quotations of Greek fathers in Aquinas’ work against the
Greek Orthodox, two hundred are taken from the Libellus. However, this document contains many spurious
texts that were forged to induce the Orthodox Greeks to join the Latin Church. Pope Urban made use of its
statements in writing to the Greek emperor, Michael VIII Palaeologus, and the Latins repeatedly used it in

1 [John Henry Newman (translator)], Thomas Aquinas, Catena Aurea: Commentary on the Four Gospels,
Collected out of the Works of the Fathers, Commentary on the Gospel According to St. Matthew, Vol. II (or Vol.
I, Part II), Ch. XVI, pp. 585 – 586, Oxford: James Parker, New Ed., 1874 (first published in Oxford, 1841).
2 Catena Aurea: St. Matthew, Vol. I (or Vol. I, Part II), Preface, viii.
3 The American Church Review, Vol. XXV, Art. I, pp. 14 sq., New York & London, Jan. 1873.
 448

their efforts to win over the Orthodox, especially in the era of the Second Council of Lyons (1272 – 1274).
Before the mid-20th century, little was known of the Libellus and Nicholas of Cotrone’s connection with it. 1

Dupin remarks:

S. Thomas often quotes a Passage in favour of the Court of Rome, as being taken out of the
Second Book of S. Cyril’s Thesaurus, which is not to be found entire in that Work: But we need only
to read it, and we shall be satisfied that there was never any such, nor ever could be found there.
This is the famous Passage, as he cites it: “We must remain as Members in our Head, in the
Apostolick Throne of the Roman Bishops, from whom we ought to request whatsoever is necessary
to be believed and held, having a particular Respect for him, and enquiring of him about all Things,
because it belongs to him to reprove, correct, order, dispose things, loose in his stead, who hath
founded him, and given him a fulness of Power, him alone and not any other, to whom all the Faithful
are obliged by Divine Right to be subject, and whom the Princes of the World should obey.” Who of
all the Greek or Latin Fathers ever spake thus? Who of them ever flattered the Bishop of Rome at this
rate? But how is it possible for it to enter into the Thesaurus of S. Cyril, which is nothing else but a
contexture of Texts and Arguments upon the Trinity? What coherence hath our pretended Passage
with that Subject? What doth this Phrase mean, “That we may remain as Members in our Head,
which is the Apostolick Throne of the Roman Bishops”? And of whom are they spoken, “That we may
remain Members, &c.” Are they the Bishops of Ægypt that speak them? Could it find a Place in a
Theological Treatise of one Father only?

S. Thomas is the First that cited this Passage; and we know with how much carelesness, and
with how little Judgement he quotes the Works of the Fathers. It likewise appears, that he had never
seen S. Cyril’s Thesaurus, because he quotes the Second Book of that Work, which was never divided
into Books. Urban IV. hath alledged it after S. Thomas, but upon the Credit of that Author. In the
Council of Florence S. Cyril’s Thesaurus is quoted in general, but when it was seasonable to produce
this Passage, there is nothing said of it. All this makes it evident, That neither this Passage nor any
other like it, cited by the same S. Thomas, in his Catena upon S. Matthew, as being in S. Cyril’s
Thesaurus, which is not found there no more than the former, are not, nor can be this Father’s, nor
are taken out of his Thesaurus. I wonder that F. Labbe should so openly profess himself a Defender
of these two supposititious Passages.2

The German Roman Catholic scholar Otto Bardenhewer (1851 – 1935), professor of theology in the
University of Munich, writes on the spurious works of St. Cyril of Alexandria:

Many works have been erroneously attributed to him. … In order to confirm the doctrine of
papal supremacy, Thomas Aquinas quoted in his Opusculum contra errores Graecorum ad Urbanum
IV. several passages from a work of St. Cyril of Alexandria entitled: In libro thesaurorum. He says
himself that he took these citations from the anonymous Libellus de processione Spiritus Sancti (in
which Libellus they were said to occur in secundo, according to annother [sic] reading in tertio libro
thesaurorum). From the Opusculum these passages made their way into works of other Western
theologians. These quotations cannot be verified as words of St. Cyril; they are, therefore, and also
for intrinsic reasons, to be looked on as spurious, probably forged by the author of the Libellus.3

1 Also see Alexander Alexakis, Codex Parisinus Graecus 1115 and Its Archetype, Chapter V, pp. 234 et sqq., in
Dumbarton Oaks Studies XXXIV, Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 1996.
2 William Wotton (translator), Lewis Ellies du Pin, A New History of Ecclesiastical Writers, Vol. IV, Tome III,

Part II, p. 29, London: H. Clark, 1693.

3 Thomas J. Shahan (translator), Otto Bardenhewer, Patrology: The Lives and Works of the Fathers of the

Church, Second Period, First Section, § 77, 8., pp. 366 – 367, St. Louis, MO: B. Herder, 2nd Ed., 1908. This book
was originally published in German in 1894, and contains the approval of several Roman Catholic bishops and
archbishops.
 449

The Jesuit Possevine writes in his Apparatus that the passages in question are found nowhere in all the books
and editions of St. Cyril, whose works are extant in Greek and Latin in diverse libraries. They are not found
even in the good manuscripts and codices. There are Greek MS. copies in the Vatican, Florentine,
Constantinopolitan, and Bavarian Libraries, and in the records of Bessarion, the Duke of Urbin, and Ant.
Cantacuzen, and in none of them these words of Cyril are to be found.1

These texts are pointed out as inauthentic in “Radii solis zeli seraphici cœli veritatis, pro Immaculatae
conceptionis mysterio Virginis Mariæ”, by the Roman Catholic Pedro d’Alva y Astorga (1602 – 1667), a
lecturer in theology, Procurator-General of the Franciscans, and Qualificator of the Holy Office of the
Inquisition.2 The Catholic Encyclopedia writes that he was “a voluminous writer on theological subjects,
generally in defense of the Immaculate Conception. … His principal opponents were the Dominicans. His
polemic had such a personal tone and was so violent that he was sent to the Low-Countries.”3 True to this, he
spends several pages discussing and pointing out that Aquinas is using dubious sources, since Pedro d’Alva is
intent on criticising the Dominicans, of whom Aquinas is perhaps the most eminent, and who moreover
rejected the Immaculate Conception. For example, Pedro d’Alva writes that the contra Errores Græcorum of
Aquinas “swarms with serious mistakes and errors”.

Henry Ignatius Dudley Ryder writes the following:

Forged Greek Catena: This was a forgery introduced into the West by Latin missionaries from the
East in the thirteenth century; undoubtedly of Latin origin, the Greek being clearly a translation from
the Latin. But there is nothing to make one suppose that the Pope (Urban IV.) was not as honest as
every one admits St. Thomas was, in his acceptance of it.4

These spurious passages of St. Cyril misled many in the Western Church, who followed Aquinas in defending
the Papal authority.

Latin Cardinal John of Torquemada (Turrecremata) (1388 – 1468), as mentioned by Döllinger above, cited
these spurious texts of Cyril in his major work “De Summi Pontificis Auctoritate, de Episcoporum Residentia,
et Beneficiorum Pluralitate, gravissimorum Auctorum complurium opuscula ad Aposolicæ Sedis dignitatem
Majestemque tuendam spectantia”.5 Torquemada cites Cyril in his other works as well, such as in pp. 1 sq., 10
sq., and 19 of “De plenitudine potestatis Romani Pontificis in Ecclesia Dei” (Taurini, 1870).

Latin Cardinal Bellarmine, in his attempt to show the primacy of Peter from the Church Fathers, quotes the
spurious Cyril, referring to Thomas Aquinas.6

Francisco Suárez (1548 – 1617), the eminent Spanish Jesuit priest and theologian, cites the false Cyril, and he
afterwards says, “Nor can we doubt this testimony, even though it is no longer found in the Thesaurus, but on

1 John Edmund Cox (editor), Thomas James, A Treatise of the Corruptions of Scripture, Councils, and Fathers:
By the Prelates, Pastors, and Pillars of the Church of Rome, for the Maintenance of Popery, Part II, pp. 138 –
140, London: John W. Parker, 1843. L. Desanctis, Il Papa Osservazioni Dottrinali E Storiche, p. 104, Florence,
1864.
2 Signum V, Radius LXXXI, § 3., 16-22, pp. 863 sq., Louvain, 1666.
3 John J. A’Becket, Pedro d’Alva y Astorga, in CE, Vol. I, p. 372.
4 Henry Ignatius Dudley Ryder, Catholic Controversy, Part. II, Charge IV, § 8., p. 190, Eighth Ed., London: Burns

& Oates, [Undated, 1890s, first published 1881].

5 Quæstio III, XIV, XIX, XX, pp. 2 – 8, Venice, 1562. Also reprinted without note of inauthenticity in pp. 11 – 42

of the 1736 Milan edition.

6 Controversiarum De Summo Pontifice, Liber I, Caput XXV; Roberti Bellarmini, Opera Omnia, Vol. I, pp. 525

sq., Paris, 1870.

 450

account of the authority of the Doctor Thomas; and we also know that many books of the Thesaurus have
been lost.”1

The Latin scholar, distinguished theologian, and canon law expert Giacomo (Jacobi) Pignatelli (1625 – 1698),
cites the pseudo-Cyril:

Concinit Cyrillus Alexandrinus in thesauro, cujus verba latine jam versa producunt Hieronymus
Donatus in Apologet. de Romane sedis principatu, & Turrianus lib. 2. de Pontificis autoritate supra
Concilia, & ex eo Lindanus lib. 4. panopl. cap. 87. quæ sunt hujusmodi. “Debemus nos, ut qui membra
sumus, capite nostro Pontifici Romano, & Apostolica sedi adhærere. Ad nos pertinent, ab eo quid
credendum, quid opinandum, quid tenendum sit, quarere. Quoniam solum Pontificis sit, arguere,
corrigere, increpare, ratum facere, disponere, solvere, & ligare.” Paolò plenius hunc ipsum Cyrilli
locum refert D. Thomas opusc. I. cap. 68. & opusc. 19. cap. 3.2

Girolamo Donato (1454 – 1511), the Venetian ambassador to the Roman See, wrote an apologetic work to the
Orthodox on the primacy of the Roman See, in which he says:

Nihil profecto Græci patres, nihil prorsus nouum decreuit Florentina synodus, quæ consentien tibus
Græcis Romanæ sedi detulit principatum, Constantinopolitanis simul Imperator, & Patriarcha
decernentibus, atque iubentibus, quam synodum, quia multi ex uestris irritante Marco Ephesino
Episcopo non exceperunt, pauca uobis afferam ex uestris authoribus fidedignissimis, quorum in cœlis
cum Christo trumphus est, & in terris nobiscum æterna memoria. Quos enim ego uobis alios testes
afferam, quam eos, quorum dicta sancta, & uera creditis? & quorum merito anniuersaria festa
celebratis? prodeat primu diuinissimus ille Cyrillus, de quo in quarta synodo sic legitur. … idest
Credamus sicut æterna Cyrilli memoria credit, & qui huic non credit, anathema sit, hic autem in libro
Thesaurorum suorum sic ait … idest oportet nos tanqua membra manere in capite nostro Romano
Pontifice & Apostolico throno, a quo nostrum est quærere, quid credere, quid opinari, quid tenere
debeamus, quia ipsus solum est redarguere, dirigere, reprehendere, confirmare, disponere, soluere,
& ligare.3

Franciscus Turrianus writes:

Preterea magnus Cyrillus Alexandrinus in Thesauris, recitabo autem Græce, quo maior fides
habeatur … debemus inquit nos, vt qui mebra simu, capiti nostro potifici Romano, & apostolicæ sedi
adhærere ad nos pertinent, inde quid credendum, quid opinandum, quid tenendum sit, quarere,
quoniam solum pontificis sit arguere, corrigere, increpare, ratum facere, disponere, soluere, & ligare.
quid igitur reliquum fecit pater Cyrillus, quod isti concilio suo tribuant, quod supra pontificem
ponunt? Quemadmodum poterit eum accusatorie reprehendere, & reformare, cuius est cæteros
omnes & concilia omnia iudicare, corrigere, firmare, disponere, soluere, & ligare, dimittere, &
congregare?4

William Damasus Lindanus (1525 – 1588), was a noted Roman Catholic Bishop and controversialist, who
wrote the following in his most popular work, “Evangelical Panoply”:

1 “Nec dubitandum est de his testimoniis, etiamsi nunc in Thesauro non inveniantur, tum propter D. Thomæ
authoritatem; tum etiam, quia plures libro Thesauri periisse scimus.” Opera Omnia, Vol. XXI, Defensio Fidei
Catholicæ et Apostolicæ aduersus Anglicanæ sectæ errores, Lib. III, Cap. XVII, p. 157, Venice, 1749.
2 Novissimæ Consultationes Canonicæ, Vol, I, Consulatio XLII, p. 120, Tournes, 1719. The first edition of this

work was in 1668. Pignatelli says that there are variations in the Latin words of this quote, pointing to
Girolamo (Hieronymus) Donatus, Turrianus, and Lindanus, all of whom shall be examined next.
3 Hieronymi Donati Patricii Veneti Apologeticvs Ad Graecos De Principatv Romanae Sedis, Rome, 1525, no

page numbers.
4 Francisci Torrensis, De Svmmi Pontificis supra Concilia auctoritate, Book II, p. 80, Florence, 1551.
 451

Lam fi oculos ad Orientales conuertamus, perspiciemus idem eos de seipsis sensisse D. Cyrillus ille
Alexandrinus Patriarcha quantam Romano Episcopo a suis deberi censuerit obedientiam, paucis eius
verbis huc recitatis faciemus luce meridian clarius: … Debemus nos, inquit, quod ex Thesauris vertit
Franc. Torrensis, ur qul membra sumus, capiti nostro Pontifici Roman & Apostolicæ sedi adhærere ad
nos pertinent ab eo, quid credendum, quid opinandum, quid tenendum sit, quærere: quonia solius
Pontificis huius sit arguere, corriegere, increpare, ratu facere, disponere, soluere, & ligare. 1

Donato, Turrianus, and Lindanus put a Greek version of this quote, as if to bolster the case for their
authenticity, but it is simply traced from the same forger of the Libellus (since the original passages do not
exist). These spurious passages, according to a Protestant author, “are not to be found in any extant copies of
Cyril, not anywhere except in these falsified documents of the 13th century.”2 Some of the old Roman authors
entertained hopes that an ancient manuscript of Cyril would be found with these texts, either Latin or Greek,
but nothing has come to light from the latest scholarship, and the certainty of their inauthenticity has only
been confirmed.

Christoval de Vega, of the Society of Jesus, includes a text of Cyril to show that the fathers attest to the
primacy of Rome, and he seems unaware of its inauthenticity.3

The Roman Catholic scholar Thomas Gaggioli († 1807), writing under the pen name Giovan Battista Gemini,
cites a spurious quote of Cyril (without mentioning its inauthenticity), referring to Thomas Aquinas:

Dimost. 4. Finalmente la presente verita han confessato, e predicato tutti quei Padri, che nelle
antecedenti Proposizioni abbiam citato. E qui quasi per compimento dell’opera udirem parlare il
solo S. Cirillo Patriarca di Alessandria: “Ut membra maneamus in Capite Apostolico Throno RR.
Pontificum, a quo nostrum est quærere, quid credere, & quid tenere debeamus, ipsum venerantes,
ipsum rogantes pro omnibus, quoniam ipsius est corrigere, reprehendere, statuere, disponere,
solvere, & loco ejus ligare, qui ipsum aedificavit, & nulli alii, quod suum est plenum, sed ipsi soli dedit,
cui omnes jure divino caput inclinant.” E a che perderemo il tempo a riferire l’unanime sentimento
de’ Teologi, e dei Canonisti? Aveva pero ragione d’asserire l’Angelico S. Tommaso, che: “Similis error
est dicentium Christi Vicarium R. Ecclesiæ Pontificem non habere universalis Ecclesiæ Primatum,
error dicentium Spiritum Sanctum a Filio non procedere.”4

The Roman Catholic historian and Bishop Pompeo Sarnelli (1649 – 1724), writes:

… e la ragion’e, perche il Papa e Capo di tutti la Chiesa. Le Chiefe particolari non sono tanti corpi, ma
tante membra d’un sol corpo: “Ut membra maneamus in Capite nostro Apostolico throno
Romanorum Pontificum, a quo nostrum est quærere quid credere, & quid tenere debeammus”: Cirillo
Patriarca Gerosolimitano lib. Thesaur. Quando si dice il capo e superiore a tutto il corpo, non e il
senso, che sia solo superior alla mano, al piede separatemente prese, perche queste cose,
separatamente prese, non costituiscono il corpo, ma quando sono unite.” 5

1 VVilhelmvs Lindanvs Dordracenvs, Panoplia Evangelica, Book IV, Cap., 87., p. 435, 436, Final Edition,
Cholinus, 1575.
2 The Church Association Monthly Intelligencer, Vol. VI, p. 331, London, December, 1871.
3 Ideo Patres omnes, Ecclesiarumque praesules semper Pontificem summum adierunt de rebus dubiis

consulturi. A Romano Pontifice, inquit Cyrillus in libro Thesaurorum,” &c. Theologica Mariana: sive
certamina litteraria de B. V. Dei Genitrice Maria, Vol. I, Ch. X, ¶320, p. 109, Napoli, 1866. This book on the
Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary was first published in 1653, and was later printed with the
approval of Pope Pius IX.
4 Giovanni Battista Gemini, La Cabala Discoperta De' Filosofanti Del Secolo Le Due Potesta Supreme

Ecclesiastica E Civile, Tomo II, Proposizione V, pp. 237, 238, Assisi, 1792.
5 Pompeo Sarnelli, Lume A’ Principianti, Quesito XV, p. 65, Napoli, 1723. Note that Sarnelli by mistake

attributes this quote to St. Cyril of Jerusalem.

 452

Domenico Zelo (1803 – 1885), who became the Roman Catholic bishop of Aversa, Italy, cites an
aforementioned quote of St. Cyril, and says that it cannot be found in his works, concluding that these books
“are not exempt from the impetus and fury of the corrupters.” 1

The Genoese Roman Catholic cardinal and general of the Franciscan Order, Clemens Dolera Monilianus (1501
– 1568), in Theologicarum Institutionum Compendium, De Sacramento Ordinis, Caput LVII, O., page 126.,
Fulginei, 1562. This section is taken directly from the Supplement to the Summa Theologica of Aquinas, and
includes his corrupted version of the Constantinopolitan Canon.

Remigio dei Girolami (1235 – 1319), a pupil of Thomas Aquinas, cites these texts of Cyril.2

In the polemical work “Tractatus De Causa Immediata Ecclesiastice Potestatis” written in 1318 by Guillaume
de Pierre Godin (1260 – 1336), a Dominican theologian, Cardinal, Master of the Sacred Palace, and papal
legate.3

The University of Toulouse in 1402 wrote a letter to the king, in which the spurious texts of Cyril are cited to
demonstrate the Papal power.4 The faculty of the same university also quotes pseudo-Cyril in 1396, and this
statement of the university is uncritically cited on behalf of the Papacy by the Abbé Romain in “Entretiens Sur
Plusieurs Questions à L’Ordre Du Jour Touchant La Liturgie Et Le Droit Canonique”.5

Archbishop Antoninus (1389 – 1459) of Florence, and papal theologian at the Latin Council of Florence
(considered a saint by Roman Catholics), cites the spurious texts of Cyril in his Summa Theologica Moralis, on
Cols. 1217 D., 1238 B., 1240 B., and 1241 C.6 Also note that the Pseudo-Isidorian decretals of Popes Marcellus
and Anacletus are cited in Cols. 172 B., 296 C., 1201 A., 1203 D., 1207 D., 1223 B., and 1585 C. of the same
volume.

Archbishop Andrew of Colossus (Andreas Collossensis Episcopus, or Andrew of Rhodes, d. 1440) was born an
Orthodox Greek, but had afterwards joined the communion of Rome, and was a speaker at the Latin Council of
Florence. At the seventh sitting of this council, Andrew appeals to the testimony of the forged St. Cyril.7

Antonio Casini (1687 – 1755) of the Jesuits, in Encyclopædia Sacræ Scripturæ, Vol. I, Disputatio Prævia
Octava, p. 64, Venice, 1747. After referring the reader to the Contra Errores Græcorum of Aquinas, and citing
the Pseudo-Cyril, Casini comments, “Hæc ex Cyrillo; alia plura horum similia refert ex aliis Patribus Græcis.”

Juan Tomás de Rocaberti (1624 – 1699), the Archbishop of Valencia and inquisitor-general of Spain, in
multiple locations (pp. 41, 177, 349, 364, 525, 613, 801) of his Bibliotheca Maxima Pontificia, Vol. IX, Rome,
1698. The reader is also referred to the Arabic Canons of Nicaea (p. 646), the Pseudo-Isidorian decretals (pp.
364, 493, 634, 636, 645, 765, 767), and numerous other inauthentic sources throughout this work. The
spurious Cyril is also repeatedly cited on pp. 263 and 481 of Vol. XI, and pp. 20, 170, 247, 260, 339, 342, 564,
565, 558, 572, 579 of Vol. 19, not to mention other volumes. This work, in 21 volumes folio, is a compilation
of the treatises of a large number of authors in defence of the claims of the Roman See.

1 “non sono iti esenti dall’impeto e dal furore de’ corruttori.” Domenico Zelo, Della Vera Autorita’ De’SS. Padri
Della Chiesa E Maniera Di Adoperarli, IV, p. 56, Napoli, 1832.
2 Emilio Panella, “Per lo studio di fra Remigio dei Girolami, († 1319).” Memorie Domenicane, n.s., 10, 1979, p.

92.
3 William D. McCready, The Theory of Papal Monarchy in the Fourteenth Century: Guillaume de Pierre Godin,

Tractatus de causa immediata ecclesiastice potestatis, pp. 108, 110, 199, Toronto, 1981.
4 Cæsare Egassio Bulæo, Historia Vniuersitatis Parisiensis, Vol. V, Epistola Vniuersitatis ad Tholosane ad

Regem., p. 10, Paris, 1670.

5 Ch. XII, p. 150, Paris, 1858.
6 Sancti Antonini, Summa Theologica Moralis, Partibus IV distincta, Pars Tertia, Verona, 1740 [originally

printed in 1477].
7 Döllinger, Some Words About the Address on Infallibility, The Union Review: A Magazine of Catholic

Literature and Art, Vol. VIII, January to December, 1870, p. 181, London: J. T. Hayes, 1870.
 453

In the “Annales Ecclesiastici” by the renowned Roman Catholic historian Baronius (Vol., XXIII, Joannis XXII,
Annus 6, Christi 1321, ¶30, p. 157, 1871, ed. by Augustino Theiner in XXXVII Vol.).

In the book titled “Scrutinium Doctrinarum qualificandis assertionibus”, by Giovanni Antonio da Palermo (or
Joannes Antonius Sessa, born 1640), a Franciscan friar (Caput II, Art. XII, ¶54, p. 92, Rome, 1709).

In the book titled “Summa Conciliorum Omnium”, by Louis Bail (1610 – 1669), doctor of the Sorbonne
(Ludovicus Bail, Vol. I, p. 90, Padua, 1701, Final Ed.).

In the minor works of Denis the Carthusian (1402 – 1471), writing on “De Auctoritate Summi Pontificis Et
Generalis Concilii” (Doctoris Ecstatici D. Dionysii Cartusiani Opera Omnia, Vol., XXXVI, Liber I, Art. XXVIII, p.
570, Tornaci, 1908).

In “De Coena, Et Calice Domini” by Gaspar Casalio Lusitano, Bishop of Leiria (Liber III, p. 227, Venice, 1563).

In “Tradition de L'Eglise de France, sur L'Infaillibilité du Pape”, by Léonard Paradis (†1831), a French Roman
Catholic priest (p. 39, Paris, 1820). Also in another book by the same author “De L’Obéissance Due Au Pape”
(pp. 35 sq., Paris, 1815).

In “Opusculorum Theologico-Juridico-Politica”, by Juan Bautista de Valenzuela Velázquez (1574 – 1645), the

eminent Spanish Bishop of Salamanca (Lib. I, Pars V, p. 89, Basil, 1728).

In “Societas Jesu”, by Juan Bautist Fragoso (1559 – 1639), a Spanish Jesuit (Vol. II, Disputatio I, De
obligationibus Summi Pontificis, § IV, p. 21, Cologny, 1737, Third Edition).

In “Difesa della bolla ‘Auctorem fidei’ in cui si trattano le maggiori questioni che hanno agitate in questi tempi
la chiesa”, by Filippo Anfossi († 1825), Vicar-General of the Dominicans and Master of the Sacred Palace. (Vol.
I, pp. 55, 206, 317; Vol. II, p. 56; Rome, 1816)

In a speech given at the Council of Basel by Henry Kalteisen, a Roman Catholic Archbishop, Dominican,
professor, and inquisitor of Mentz, in the year 1433 (Jacques Basnage De Beauval & Henricus Canisius,
Thesaurus Monumentorum ecclesiasticorum et historicorum, Vol. IV, pp. 632, 678, 689, Amsterdam, 1725)

In “De Dogmatibus Chaldaeorum Disputatio”, by Peter Stroza, Secretary to Pope Paul the Fifth (Petri Strozae,
p. 184, Rome, 1617) (Cyril’s spurious work is not quoted; only its title is referred to).

In “Libri De Poteste Papae”, by Giovanni Girolamo Albani (1509 – 1591), an Italian Roman Catholic Cardinal
(pp. 23, 154, Venice, 1561) (text not quoted; only title mentioned).

In “Privilegiorum In Persona Sancti Petri Romano Pontifici A Christo Domino Collatorum Vindiciae”, by the
Roman Catholic priest Fr. Hieremias à Bennettis (1709 – 1774) of the Capuchin Order (Part I, Vol. I, p. 59,
Rome, 1756).

In “Theologia Patrum Scholastico-Dogmatica” by Fr. Antoine (or Antonio) Boucat (d. 1730), a member of the
Order of Minims and lecturer of theology in Paris (Vol. V, pp. 20 sq., Venice, 1765, 2nd Ed.)

In “De Monarchia Divina Ecclesiastica Et Seculari Christiania” by Michaele Mauclero, Doctor of the Sorbonne.
(Pars II, Lib. II, Ch VI, VII, pp. 291, 297, Paris, 1622).

In “Bibliotheca homiliarum et sermonum priscorum Ecclesiae Patrum” by Lorenzo Condivi, Doctor of the
Sorbonne and librarian of the court of Henry III of France, and Gerardus Mosanus, a Dominican editor (Vol. IV,
p. 431, Lyon, 1588).
 454

In “Sur l’obéissance au Souverain Pontife”, a pastoral letter by Charles-François Joseph, the Bishop of Venice,
who tells us, “On voit par les autorités des Auteurs Grecs, dit st. Thomas, que le Pontife Romain a une
plenitude de puissance dans l’Eglise, et que J.C. n’a donné qu’à Pierre seul la plenitude du pouvoir qu’il avoit.”
(Serafino Viviani Romano, Testimonianze delle chiese di Francia, Vol. X, pp. 72 sq., Rome, 1792; also printed
in Augustin Barruel, Collection Ecclésiastique, Vol. XIII, Book V, Part III, Lettre Pastorale De M. L’Evêque de
Vence, p. 358, Paris, 1793).

In “De Potestate Papæ Supra Concilium” by Fr. Pauli Fabulotti Romani (Paulus Fabulottus Romanus), of the
Order of Saints Barnabas and Ambrose, and a professor of sacred theology (Labbé & Cossart, Concilia, Ed.
Apparatus Alter, V, p. 674, Venice, 1728; originally printed in 1546).

In “De Concilio” by Cardinal Dominicus Jacobatius (d. 1527) (Labbé & Cossart, Concilia, Ed. Apparatus Alter, I,
Book III, p. 118, Book V, p. 220, Book VII, pp. 347 sq., 357, Book X, pp. 481, 553 sq., Venice, 1728; originally
printed in 1538; also printed in Tractatus de Concilio, pp. 347, 553, etc., Paris, 1870, New Edition).

In “Contra Laurentium Vallam: De falsa donatione Constantini libri duo” by Agostino Steuco (Augustini
Steuchi or Agostinus Steuchus, 1497 – 1548), a bishop, librarian of the Vatican, and attendee at Trent (Opera
quæ extant, omnia, p. 277 E, Paris, 1578). Steuco wrote this book to attack Laurentius Valla’s demonstration
of the falsity of the Donation of Constantine, and Steuco attempts to defend the Donation. However, the
Protestant scholar Heinrich Bullinger (1504 – 1575) notes, “he bringeth no sound arguments, though he
wonderfully rage” (The Decades of Bullinger, Fifth Decade, p. 125, Cambridge, 1852). Steuco also cites from
the Pseudo-Isidorian decretals (p. 276 C).

In “Defensio Cathedræ Sancti Petri, sev in ea pro tempore Sedentis Romani Pontificis; eiusque infallibilis
magisterij independenter à Concilio Generali”, by Sir Don José de Yermo (d. 1737), Archbishop of Santiago,
citing copiously from Aquinas contra Græcorum (Tract II, § IV, Subsect. IV, ¶¶ 8-15, pp. 159 – 163, § XI, ¶ 27,
p. 374, Madrid, 1719).

In “Commentariorum in Evangelium Matthæi”, by Alonso Tostado (1400 – 1455), the Bishop of Ávila,
commenting on Matthew xvi. 18 (Vol. IV, Cap. XVI, Quæst. LXXI, p. 171 D, Venice, 1596).

In “Sacramentorum brevis Elucidatio”, written in 1523 by Eustachius de Zichensis, a Dominican Professor of

Sacred Theology who attacked Martin Luther’s theology (Fredrik Pijper, Primitiae Pontificiae: Theologorum
Neerlandicorum Disputationes Contra Lutherum, p. 348, Hague, 1905).

In the Acts of the Council of Pisa in 1409 (Baronius, Annales Ecclesiastici, Vol. XXVII, Anno 1409, p. 281, Paris:
Barri-Ducis, Ludovicus Guèrin, 1874), which quotes from Aquinas Contra Errores Græcorem, Part II, Ch.
XXXIV, including the spurious work of Chrysostom to the Bulgarian delegation.

In the article on “Papa” in “Bibliotheca Canonica Iuridica Moralis Theologica Nec Non Ascetica Polemica
Rubristica Historica” by Lucius Ferraris (Gennaro Bucceroni (editor), Vol. VI, p. 44, ¶. 22, Rome: Ex
Typographia Polyglotta, 1890.) Ferraris was an influential Italian canonist of the 18th century (provincial of
the Franciscan order, professor, and consultor of the Holy Office), and this encyclopedic work was first
published in 1746.

In “Vindiciæ pro Suprema Pontificis Potestate adversus Justinum Febronium”, by Alphonsus Liguori (Jules
Jacques (editor), Du Pape et Du Concile, Appendix I, pp. 572, 636, Tournai: H. Casterman, 1869; First
published 1768), who cites these passages from Aquinas, but the Roman Catholic editor notes (p. 572) that
these words are no longer found in the extant works of Cyril, but that they are mentioned in Aquinas.

As late as 1864, in (Valentino Steccanella, Il Valore e la Violzione della Dichiarazione Pontificia sopra il
Dominio Temporale della S. Sede, Part I, Cap. XXII, pp. 192 – 193, Rome: Coi Tipi Della Civilità Cattolica, 1864),
who notes that this text has been questioned since it is not read in the modern editions, but that Girolamo
Donato, Francesco Turrianus, and Lindanus, with others, have brought forth the Greek text and proven the
passages authentic (“l’hanno provato autentico.”) (op. cit., p. 193, n. 1.). Valentino Steccanella was an Italian
 455

priest and head of the Civilità Cattolica (an official Jesuit Roman Catholic publication based in Rome) from
1872 – 1881. This work is an enlargement of some papers which appeared in the previous year in the Civilità
Cattolica, and it received a favourable notice in The Dublin Review (The Dublin Review, Vol. III, New Series,
July – October 1864, No. V, Art. IX, pp. 218 – 220, London: Burns, Lambert, & Oates, 1864).

In Augustino De Roskovány, Romanus Pontifex Tamquam Primas Ecclesiae et Princeps Civilis, Tom. I, p. 508,
Nitra: Typis Fratrum Siegler, 1867. Count Augustinus Roskoványi (or Ágoston Roskoványi, 1807 – 1892) was
the Roman Catholic bishop of Nitra, in Slovakia. This work is a compilation of Church authorities on the
primacy of the Roman bishop, and contains extracts from Aquinas that cite Cyril. This work contains many
other false documents, including the pseudo-decretals and spurious documents of Nicaea, and demonstrates
little critical thought.

Many other books also cite these spurious texts of Cyril in defence of Papal supremacy. In the books just
mentioned, this is only one example of their many misquotations of ancient authorities. Many other errors of
Thomas Aquinas have similarly spread to his followers.

Also see note 30 in Denny’s Papalism.1

Thomas Aquinas is considered the “Angelic Doctor” and greatest theologian of the Latin communion. It is
remarkable that in the only places in his Summa Theologica (as far as I noticed) where Aquinas tries to show
the supreme power of the Pope, he cites spurious or interpolated documents.

In the Supplement to the Summa, Aquinas cites three authorities in his affirmative answer to the question
“Whether in the Church there can be anyone above the bishops?”2 His quote of Cyril was already mentioned
in the previous section. Another father he cites is St. John Chrysostom:

Although the power of binding and loosing was given to all the apostles in common, nevertheless in
order to indicate some order in this power, it was given first of all to Peter alone, to show that this
power must come down from him to the others. For this reason He said to him in the singular:
“Confirm thy brethren” (Lk. 22:32), and: “Feed My sheep” (Jn. 21:17), i.e. according to Chrysostom:
“Be thou the president and head of thy brethren in My stead, that they, putting thee in My place, may
preach and confirm thee throughout the world whilst thou sittest on thy throne.” (Reply to Objection
1)

The above is not an accurate quotation from the authentic works of Chrysostom, and is from the same source
(the Libellus) as the spurious Cyril. The last authority cited is the third canon of the Second Ecumenical
Council, held in Constantinople:

We read in the council of Constantinople: “In accordance with the Scriptures and the statutes and
definitions of the canons, we venerate the most holy bishop of ancient Rome the first and greatest of
bishops, and after him the bishop of Constantinople.” Therefore one bishop is above another.

However, the true reading of this canon is:

The Bishop of Constantinople, however, shall have the prerogative of honour after the Bishop of
Rome; because Constantinople is New Rome.3

1 Edward Denny, Papalism: A Treatise on the Claims of the Papacy as Set Forth in the Encyclical Satis
Cognitum, Note 30, n. 359, ¶1215, pp. 633 – 635, London: Rivingtons, 1912.
2 Summa Theologica, Supplement, Question 40, Article 6.
3 Percival, Seven Ecumenical Councils, p. 178.
 456

In the following passage from the Summa, Aquinas first quotes the “Decretum” of Gratian, followed by a false
quote from Jerome. Here the 1947 Dominican editors of Aquinas’ work readily admit the falsehood of the
citation of St. Jerome:

Accordingly, certain doctors seem to have differed either in matters the holding of which in this or
that way is of no consequence, so far as faith is concerned, or even in matters of faith, which were not
as yet defined by the Church; although if anyone were obstinately to deny them after they had been
defined by the authority of the universal Church, he would be deemed a heretic. This authority
resides chiefly in the Sovereign Pontiff. For we read [*Decret. xxiv, qu. 1, can. Quoties]: “Whenever a
question of faith is in dispute, I think, that all our brethren and fellow bishops ought to refer the
matter to none other than Peter, as being the source of their name and honor, against whose
authority neither Jerome nor Augustine nor any of the holy doctors defended their opinion.” Hence
Jerome says (Exposit. Symbol [*Among the supposititious works of St. Jerome]): “This, most
blessed Pope, is the faith that we have been taught in the Catholic Church. If anything therein has
been incorrectly or carelessly expressed, we beg that it may be set aright by you who hold the faith
and see of Peter. If however this, our profession, be approved by the judgment of your apostleship,
whoever may blame me, will prove that he himself is ignorant, or malicious, or even not a catholic but
a heretic.”1

The citation from St. Jerome appears to be a similar, but interpolated version of Jerome’s high-sounding
appeal to the Pope of Rome during the controversy over the rightful bishop of Antioch. Latins have often
cited the original appeal of Jerome (written when Jerome was still a layman, and no more than 30 years old,
out of his life’s 73 years) as though it were evidence that this great saint and Biblical scholar readily
supported Papal Supremacy. I reply with the words of Jerome, “Si auctoritas quæritur, orbis major est urbe.”

However, words of great praise and exaltation can be found in many similar examples of grandiloquent
appeals to great bishops and saints in the Church. For example, Jerome’s contemporary Saint Basil, writes to
Saint Athanasius, bishop of Alexandria,

No one knows better than you do, that, like all wise physicians, you ought to begin your treatment in
the most vital parts, and what part is more vital to the Churches throughout the world than
Antioch? Only let Antioch be restored to harmony, and nothing will stand in the way of her
supplying, as a healthy head, soundness to all the body.2

In another letter to St. Athanasius, St. Basil writes:

In my former letter it seemed to me sufficient to point out to your excellency, that all that portion of
the people of the holy Church of Antioch who are sound in the faith, ought to be brought to concord
and unity. My object was to make it plain that the sections, now divided into several parts, ought to
be united under the God-beloved bishop Meletius [of Antioch]. Now the same beloved deacon,
Dorotheus, has requested a more distinct statement on these subjects, and I am therefore
constrained to point out that it is the prayer of the whole East, and the earnest desire of one who, like
myself, is so wholly united to him, to see him in authority over the Churches of the Lord. He is a
man of unimpeachable faith; his manner of life is incomparably excellent, he stands at the head, so
to say, of the whole body of the Church, and all else are mere disjointed members. On every
ground, then, it is necessary as well as advantageous, that the rest should be united with him, just as
smaller streams with great ones.3

In further correspondence with St. Athanasius, St. Basil writes:

1 Summa, Second Part of the Second Part, Question 11, Article 2, Reply to Objection 3.
2 Basil, Letter LXVI, in NPNF, Series II, Vol. VIII, p. 164.
3 Basil, Letter LXVII, in NPNF, Series II, Vol. VIII, p. 164.
 457

As time moves on, it continually confirms the opinion which I have long held of your holiness; or
rather that opinion is strengthened by the daily course of events. Most men are indeed satisfied with
observing, each one, what lies especially within his own province; not thus is it with you, but your
anxiety for all the Churches is no less than that which you feel for the Church that has been
especially entrusted to you by our common Lord; inasmuch as you leave no interval in speaking,
exhorting, writing, and despatching emissaries, who from time to time give the best advice in each
emergency as it arises. Now, from the sacred ranks of your clergy, you have sent forth the venerable
brother Peter, whom I have welcomed with great joy. I have also approved of the good object of his
journey, which he manifests in accordance with the commands of your excellency, in effecting
reconciliation where he finds opposition, and bringing about union instead of division. With the
object of offering some contribution to the action which is being taken in this matter, I have thought
that I could not make a more fitting beginning than by having recourse to your excellency, as
to the head and chief of all, and treating you as alike adviser and commander in the enterprise. …
But you will yourself give more complete attention to all these matters, so soon as, by the blessing of
God, you find every one entrusting to you the responsibility of securing the peace of the Church. 1

Of St. Athanasius likewise St. Gregory Nazianzen writes as follows:

Thus brought up and trained, as even now those should be who are to preside over the people, and
take the direction of the mighty body of Christ, according to the will and foreknowledge of God, which
lays long before the foundations of great deeds, he was invested with this important ministry, and
made one of those who draw near to the God Who draws near to us, and deemed worthy of the holy
office and rank, and, after passing through the entire series of orders, he was (to make my story
short) entrusted with the chief rule over the people, in other words, the charge of the whole
world: nor can I say whether he received the priesthood as the reward of virtue, or to be the fountain
and life of the Church. For she, like Ishmael, fainting from her thirst for the truth, needed to be given
to drink, or, like Elijah, to be refreshed from the brook, when the land was parched by drought; and,
when but faintly breathing, to be restored to life and left as a seed to Israel, that we might not become
like Sodom and Gomorrah, whose destruction by the rain of fire and brimstone is only more
notorious than their wickedness. Therefore, when we were cast down, a horn of salvation was raised
up for us, and a chief corner stone, knitting us to itself and to one another, was laid in due season, or a
fire to purify our base and evil matter, or a farmer’s fan to winnow the light from the weighty in
doctrine, or a sword to cut out the roots of wickedness; and so the Word finds him as his own ally,
and the Spirit takes possession of one who will breathe on His behalf.

Thus, and for these reasons, by the vote of the whole people, not in the evil fashion which has since
prevailed, nor by means of bloodshed and oppression, but in an apostolic and spiritual manner, he is
led up to the throne of Saint Mark, to succeed him in piety, no less than in office; in the latter
indeed at a great distance from him, in the former, which is the genuine right of succession, following
him closely. For unity in doctrine deserves unity in office; and a rival teacher sets up a rival throne;
the one is a successor in reality, the other but in name. …

Such was Athanasius to us, when present, the pillar of the Church …

He legislated again for the whole world, and brought all minds under his influence, by letters to
some, by invitations to others, instructing some, who visited him uninvited, and proposing as the
single law to all – Good will.

Errors of Aquinas’s “Against the Errors of the Greeks”

1 Basil, Letter LXIX, in NPNF, Series II, Vol. VIII, p. 165.

 458

The Contra Errores Græcorum, ad Urbanum IV Pontificem Maximum of Aquinas, mentioned above, is his
principal controversial work against the Greeks. Much of the treatise is dedicated to the filioque controversy.
It is especially noteworthy that “Thomas Aquinas was on his way to the reunion council at Lyons, carrying
with him his Contra Errores Graecorum, when he died on March 7, 1274.”1 and this work was influential at
that council. There are many errors in this work, especially the inauthentic sources used, which will be
focused on in this section.

If the reader examines the footnotes of the Roman Catholic editors, he will find that the entire treatise is
nearly completely reliant on inauthentic sources. Siecienski writes “Most of the quotations used by Thomas
Aquinas in the Contra Errores Graecorum, which had been taken from the Libellus de fide ss. Trinitatis of
Nicholas of Cotrone, have since proven to be spurious”.2 Siecienski says later, “Thomas’s handling of the
patristic material in his Contra Errores Graecorum presents two distinct problems. The first is the recognition
that many of the patristic quotations cited in the work (especially from the Greek fathers) have since proven
to be either corrupted or spurious.”3

This occurs to such a degree, that in the beginning of Part I, Chapter IV, where Aquinas writes, “Among the
sayings of the aforesaid Fathers is met the assertion that the essence is begotten in the Son and spirated in the
Holy Spirit.”, the Roman Catholic editor notes, “The aforementioned Fathers: none of these holy Fathers is the
author of the ten glosses examined in this chapter; rather they express the theology of the Libellus.” Many of
the false quotes used by Aquinas made their way into other authors, as I have examined for some texts.

For example, Aquinas often cites spurious texts from Athanasius, including a spurious letter from Athanasius
to Serapion. This spurious letter is cited (with Aquinas as the source) several times in the documents of the
Latin Council of Florence.4

To print and discuss all the erroneous quotations would take many pages, and I think it would help to
summarize the matter in a higher-level view. The following is a table of the patristic citations used by
Aquinas in Contra Errores Graecorum per chapter, and the number of these that are spurious, not found,
interpolated, clumsily translated, or inauthentic, by the admission of the Roman Catholic editor and Roman
Catholic scholarship:

Part Chapter # of Patristic Citations # Inauthentic

I I 6 4
I II 6 2
I III 2 1
I IV 8 8
I V 1 1
I VI 2 0
I VII 4 4
I VIII 4 3
I IX 2 1
I X 6 3
I XI 1 0
I XII 3 2
I XIII 2 1

1 Siecienski, The Filioque, p. 131.

2 Siecienski, The Filioque, p. 8.
3 Siecienski, The Filioque, p. 130.
4 Concilium Florentinum Documenta et Scriptores, Vol. II, Pt. I, p. 30, 38, 43, 45, 46, 51, Rome 1942. Vol. II, Pt.

II, Introductio, L, Rome, 1944. Vol. II, Pt. II, Cap. XXXII, pp. 29 – 30. Sessio Florentina, collatio VIII, univ. XXI,
24 martii 1439, Acta Latina Concilii Florentini, Vol. VI, 125r, p. 212, Rome, 1955.
 459

I XIV 4 1
I XV 1 1
I XVI 2 2
I XVII 1 1
I XVIII 2 1
I XIX 1 1
I XX 3 3
I XXI 2 2
I XXII 1 1
I XXIII 1 1
I XXIV 2 1
I XXV 2 0
I XXVI 5 1
I XXVII 2 0
I XXVIII 1 1
I XXIX 1 1
I XXX 1 1
I XXXI 1 1
I XXXII 1 1
II I 9 7
II II 8 6
II III 5 5
II IV 3 2
II V 6 5
II VI 2 2
II VII 2 2
II VIII 4 3
II IX 2 2
II X 1 0
II XI 2 1
II XII 2 2
II XIII 4 4
II XIV 3 2
II XV 2 2
II XVI 3 3
II XVII 1 1
II XVIII 2 2
II XIX 4 4
II XX 2 1
II XXI 4 3
II XXII 2 2
II XXIII 1 1
II XXIV 1 1
II XXV 3 3
II XXVI 0 0
II XXVII 11 6
II XXVIII 2 0
II XXIX 1 1
II XXX 6 4
II XXXI 3 3
II XXXII 2 2
 460

II XXXIII 4 3
II XXXIV 4 4
II XXXV 6 5
II XXXVI 2 1
II XXXVII 2 1
II XXXVIII 2 2
II XXXIX 4 1
II XL 2 2
II XLI 1 0
Total 211 152

In total, 152 out of 211, or 72 percent of the patristic citations in Aquinas’ Contra Errores Graecorum are
inauthentic.

I will here place in full all that Aquinas writes on the topic of Papal supremacy in his “Against the Errors of the
Greeks”, which is Part II, Chapters XXXII – XXXVIII,1 along with my chapter-by-chapter commentary:

[Part II] CHAPTER 32: That the Roman Pontiff is the first and greatest among all bishops.

The error of those who say that the Vicar of Christ, the Pontiff of the Roman Church, does not have a
primacy over the universal Church is similar to the error of those who say that the Holy Spirit does
not proceed from the Son. For Christ himself, the Son of God, consecrates and marks her as his own
with the Holy Spirit, as it were with his own character and seal, as the authorities already cited make
abundantly clear. And in like manner the Vicar of Christ by his primacy and foresight as a faithful
servant keeps the Church Universal subject to Christ. It must, then, be shown from texts of the
aforesaid Greek Doctors that the Vicar of Christ holds the fullness of power over the whole Church of
Christ.

Now, that the Roman Pontiff, the successor of Peter and Vicar of Christ, is the first and greatest of all
the bishops, is expressly stated in the canon of the Council which reads: “According to the Scriptures
and definition of the canon we venerate the most holy bishop of old Rome as the first and greatest of
all the bishops.”

This, moreover, accords well with Sacred Scripture, which both in the Gospels and in the Acts of the
Apostles (cf. Matt. 16:18; John 21:17; Acts 1: 15-16, 2:14, 15:17) assigns first place among the
Apostles to Peter. Hence, Chrysostom commenting on the text of Matthew 18: 1: The disciples came
to Jesus and asked, who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven, says: “For they had created in their
minds a human stumbling block, which they could no longer keep to themselves; nor did they control
their hearts’ pride, because they saw that Peter was preferred to them and was given a more
honorable place.”

It is interesting that Aquinas correlates the truth of the doctrine of papal supremacy with the filioque, for the
Orthodox are rightly opposed to both. It was shown that “the authorities already cited” are far from making
the matter “abundantly clear”, but rather obscure the truth with ungenuine citations. The Libellus’s version
of the third canon of the Council of Constantinople is quite incorrect, as I had occasion to note above in the
commentary on the Summa Theologica. The commentary of St. Chrysostom is not an actual quote of what he
actually said, but a paraphrase taken from the Libellus, and does not make for the purpose for which it is
adduced.2

1From Likoudis, Appendix I, pp. 181 – 185.

2See the English translation of Chrysostom’s 58th Homily on the Gospel of Matthew, found in NPNF, Series I,
Vol. X, pp. 359 – 360.
 461

CHAPTER 33: That the same Pontiff has universal jurisdiction over the entire Church of Christ.

It is also shown that the Vicar of Christ has universal jurisdiction over the entire Church of Christ.
For it is recorded of the Council of Chalcedon how the whole synod acclaimed Pope Leo: “Long live
Leo, the most holy, apostolic, and ecumenical, that is, universal patriarch.”

And Chrysostom commenting on Matthew says: “The power which is of the Father and of the Son
himself the Son conferred worldwide on Peter and gave a mortal man authority over all things in
heaven, giving him the keys in order that he might extend the Church throughout the world.” And in
homily 85 on John: “He allocated James a determined territory, but he appointed Peter master and
teacher of the whole world.” Again, commenting on the Acts of the Apostles: “Not like Moses over
one people, but throughout the whole world Peter received from the Son power over all those who
are His sons.”

This is also taught on the authority of Holy Scripture. For Christ entrusted his sheep to the care of
Peter without restriction, when he said in the last chapter of John (21:15): Feed my sheep; and in
John 10:16: That there might be one fold and one shepherd.

The quote from the Council of Chalcedon is not found in the authentic acts of that Synod. Although several
individuals at this Council, as read in the acts, did call him “Ecumenical Patriarch” and “Ecumenical
Archbishop”, the Council never officially ascribes the term “Ecumenical” to Leo. Moreover, at the Robber
Council of Ephesus (449), Olympius bishop of Augaza speaks of Dioscorus as the “ecumenical archbishop of
the great city of Alexandria”,1 and in later councils the Patriarch of Constantinople is repeatedly referred to as
Ecumenical. Also, the Latins have continually mistaken the Greek term “Ecumenical Bishop”, as if referring to
universal dominion over the entire world, but the term refers to the Imperial cities. The Orthodox archpriest
Fr. Gregorio Cognetti (d. 1998) writes:

Ecumenical comes from the Greek word oikoumene, that literally means “the inhabited world.” Due
in part to lack of geographical knowledge and in part to the typical pride of conquerors, the Romans
identified the “inhabited world” with the Roman Empire, and therefore, at that time, “ecumenical”
was nothing more than a synonym of “Imperial”. Constantinople was the “ecumenical” town. The
chief librarian of Constantinople, for example, was called “Ecumenical librarian”. But this implied
only that he was the librarian of the imperial town, and not that he had authority over all the
librarians in the empire. “Ecumenical Patriarch,” therefore, in Greek, was understood only as “the
Patriarch of the Imperial town”: just a synonym of Patriarch of Constantinople. As a matter of fact,
this title is attested in sporadic use long before [the sixth century]. 2

Much more could be said about the important controversy over the title of “universal bishop” in the times of
Pope Gregory the Great, and it is interesting to note that Gregory said that the Bishop of Rome was offered
this title per the Council of Chalcedon.3 As for the three quotes from Chrysostom, they are also not precise.
For the first quotation, the Roman Catholic editor writes in a footnote, “Power: thus the Libellus, where
Chrysostom has ‘revelation’”. The second quote, from Homily 85 on John, I have admitted as authentic in the
table above, since it captures the sense of the passage. However, it is not very exact, and the actual quotation
is “And if any should say, ‘How then did James receive the chair at Jerusalem?’ I would make this reply, that
He appointed Peter teacher, not of the chair, but of the world.” 4 Concerning the third quote, the Roman
Catholic editor writes that it is the “gloss of the compiler” of the Libellus.

CHAPTER 34: That the same possesses in the Church a fullness of power.

1 The Latin word is “universalis”, see Price & Gaddis, Acts of the Council of Chalcedon, Vol. I, The First Session
(Ephesus II), n. 88, pp. 287 – 288.
2 Gregorio Cognetti, The Dawn, July 1993.
3 See Pusey, Eirenicon, [Part I], p. 311, n. 3.
4 NPNF, Series I, Vol. XIV, p. 332.
 462

It is also established from the texts of the aforesaid Doctors that the Roman Pontiff possesses a
fullness of power in the Church. For Cyril, the Patriarch of Alexandria, says in his Thesaurus: “As
Christ coming forth from Israel as leader and sceptre of the Church of the Gentiles was granted by the
Father the fullest power over every principality and power and whatever is that all might bend the
knee to him, so he entrusted most fully the fullest power to Peter and his successors.” And again: “To
no one else but Peter and to him alone Christ gave what is his fully.” And further on: “The feet of
Christ are his humanity, that is, the man himself, to whom the whole Trinity gave the fullest power,
whom one of the Three assumed in the unity of his person and lifted up on high to the Father above
every principality and power, so that all the angels of God might adore him (Heb. 1:6); which whole
and entire he has left in sacrament and power to Peter and to his Church.”

And Chrysostom says to the Bulgarian delegation speaking in the person of Christ: “Three times I ask
you whether you love me, because you denied me three times out of fear and trepidation. Now
restored, however, lest the brethren believe you to have lost the grace and authority of the keys, I
now confirm in you that which is fully mine, because you love me in their presence.”

This is also taught on the authority of Scripture. For in Matthew 16: 19 the Lord said to Peter
without restriction: Whatsoever you shall bind upon earth shall be bound in heaven.

As already pointed out, these texts from St. Cyril are spurious. The quote of Chrysostom to the Bulgarian
delegation is notably anachronistic, and is not found among his authentic works. The Roman Catholic editor
points out in a footnote, “Bulgarian delegation: how spurious this work included among those of Chrysostom
is had already been shown by J. Launoy, Epist. 1 ad Ant. Faurum (Geneva 1731, p. 4); Thomas, however,
accepted the defective reading of the Libellus, whose origin cannot be traced.”

CHAPTER 35: That he enjoys the same power conferred on Peter by Christ.

It is also shown that Peter is the Vicar of Christ and the Roman Pontiff is Peter’s successor enjoying
the same power conferred on Peter by Christ. For the canon of the Council of Chalcedon says: “If any
bishop is sentenced as guilty of infamy, he is free to appeal the sentence to the blessed bishop of old
Rome, whom we have as Peter the rock of refuge, and to him alone, in the place of God, with
unlimited power, is granted the authority to hear the appeal of a bishop accused of infamy in virtue of
the keys given him by the Lord.” And further on: “And whatever has been decreed by him is to be
held as from the vicar of the apostolic throne.”

Likewise, Cyril, the Patriarch of Jerusalem, says, speaking in the person of Christ: “You for a while, but
I without end will be fully and perfectly in sacrament and authority with all those whom I shall put in
your place, just as I am with you.” And Cyril of Alexandria in his Thesaurus says that the Apostles “in
the Gospels and Epistles have affirmed in all their teaching that Peter and his Church are in the place
of the Lord, granting him participation in every chapter and assembly, in every election and
proclamation of doctrine.” And further on: “To him, that is, to Peter, all by divine ordinance bow the
head and the rulers of the world obey him as the Lord himself.” And Chrysostom, speaking in the
person of Christ, says: “Feed my sheep (John 21:17), that is, in my place be in charge of your
brethren.”

There is certainly no canon or record of the sort from the Ecumenical Council of Chalcedon, and the Roman
Catholic editor notes that it is “not found”, and is taken from the Libellus. On the alleged quote from St. Cyril
of Jerusalem, the editor notes that it is the “gloss of the compiler”, that is, not from the original text, and
similarly from the Libellus. Again, Cyril of Alexandria’s quotes are spurious. In the tally above, I have
admitted the quote from Chrysostom, but the true quote is not as explicit about “in my place”, and actually
says, “If thou lovest Me, preside over thy brethren, and the warm love which thou didst ever manifest, and in
which thou didst rejoice, show thou now; and the life which thou wouldest lay down for Me, now give for My
 463

sheep.”1 The larger context does indeed make for Peter’s chief leadership among the Apostles, but this makes
nothing unique for Rome since it was shown that Chrysostom considered the Bishop of Antioch the successor
of Peter in the fullest sense.

CHAPTER 36: That to him belongs the right of deciding what pertains to faith.

It is also demonstrated that to the aforesaid Pontiff belongs the right of deciding what pertains to
faith. For Cyril in his Thesaurus says: “Let us remain as members in our head on the apostolic throne
of the Roman Pontiffs, from whom it is our duty to seek what we must believe and what we must
hold.” And Maximus in the letter addressed to the Orientals says: “All the ends of the earth which
have sincerely received the Lord and Catholics everywhere professing the true faith look to the
Church of the Romans as to the sun, and receive from it the light of the Catholic and Apostolic Faith.”
Rightly so, for Peter is recorded as the first to have, while the Lord was enlightening him, confessed
the faith perfectly when he said to him (Matt. 16:16): You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.
And hence the Lord also said to him (Lk. 22:32): I have prayed for you, Peter, that your faith may not
fail.”

The Cyrillian quote is spurious. St. Maximus the Confessor’s quote is likely authentic, but it was shown that
similar praise was given to other Apostolic churches, such as to Antioch by St. Basil the Great and St. Gregory
Nazianzen. The works of St. Maximus will be discussed in a later chapter.

CHAPTER 37: That he is the superior of the other patriarchs.

It is also clear that he is the superior of the other patriarchs from this statement of Cyril: “It is his”,
namely, of the Roman Pontiffs of the apostolic throne, “exclusive right to reprove, correct, enact,
resolve, dispose and bind in the name of Him who established it.” And Chrysostom commenting on
the Acts of the Apostles says that “Peter is the most holy summit of the blessed apostolic choir, the
good shepherd.”

And this also is manifest on the authority of the Lord, in Luke 22:32 saying: “You, once converted,
confirm your brethren.”

The quote from Cyril is spurious. Chrysostom’s quote is authentic,2 but note that Chrysostom considered the
Bishop of Antioch as the successor of Peter as well.

CHAPTER 38: That to be subject to the Roman Pontiff is necessary for salvation.

It is also shown that to be subject to the Roman Pontiff is necessary for salvation. For Cyril says in his
Thesaurus: “Therefore, brethren, if you imitate Christ so as to hear his voice remaining in the Church
of Peter and so as not be puffed up by the wind of pride, lest perhaps because of our quarrelling the
wily serpent drive us from paradise as once he did Eve.” And Maximus in the letter addressed to the
Orientals says: “The Church united and established upon the rock of Peter’s confession we call
according to the decree of the Savior the universal Church, wherein we must remain for the salvation
of our souls and wherein loyal to his faith and confession we must obey him.”

The quote from Cyril is spurious. On the quote by St. Maximus, the editor notes that the author of the Libellus
was “interjecting his own views in Maximus”, and the passage is interpolated.

Chapter XL is the only chapter on purgatory in this work:

Chapter 40: That there exists a purgatory wherein souls are cleansed from sins not cleansed in the
present life.

1 Homily LXXXVIII, in NPNF, Series I, Vol. XIV, p. 331.

2 Homily VI, in NPNF, Series I, Vol. XI, p. 38.
 464

The power of this sacrament [the Eucharist], however, is lessened by those who deny here exists a
purgatory after death; for on the souls in purgatory special healing is conferred by this sacrament.
For Gregory of Nyssa in his sermon on the dead says: “If anyone her in his frail life has been less than
able to cleanse himself of sin, after departing hence, through the blazing fire of purgatory the penalty
is the more quickly paid, the more and more the ever-faithful Bride offers to her Spouse in memory of
his passion gifts and holocausts on behalf of the children she has brought forth for that Spouse by
word and sacrament; just as we preach in fidelity to this dogmatic truth, so we believe.”

Likewise Theodoret, Bishop of Cyr, commenting on that passage of 1 Cor. 3: 11: If any man’s work
burn, etc., says thus: “The Apostle states that one is saved thus as through a blazing fire cleansing
whatever accumulated through carelessness in life’s activity, or at least from the dust of the feet of
earthly living. In this fire one remains so long as any earthly and bodily affections are being purged.
For such a person holy Mother Church pays and devoutly offers peace offerings, and so through this
such a one emerging clean and pure assists immaculate before the most pure eyes of the Lord of
hosts.”1

Upon the quote from St. Gregory of Nyssa, the editor remarks, “Lib. III, 31-38, perhaps an imitation of Gregory
of Nyssa De mortuis (PG 46, 521 D-524 B).” This text is evidently interpolated with later and mediaeval
perspectives on purgatory, but the original texts of St. Gregory have also been cited by others in favour of
purgatory (in answer to which see Hall, Purgatory, pp. 126 – 129). On the quote from St. Theodoret, the
editor notes, “Lib. 112, 33-46; cf. Oecumenicus Super I Cor. III (PG 118, 676 D), where, however, the last
section ‘In this fire…hosts’ is omitted).” Omitting this last section greatly weakens the force of Theodoret’s
testimony. Also, in the Supplement to the Summa Theologica, where Aquinas discusses the question
“Whether there is a Purgatory after this life?”, he writes:

Gregory of Nyssa says: “If one who loves and believes in Christ,” has failed to wash away his sins in
this life, “he is set free after death by the fire of Purgatory.” Therefore there remains some kind of
cleansing after this life. … Gregory of Nyssa, after the words quoted above, adds: “This we preach,
holding to the teaching of truth, and this is our belief; this the universal Church holds, by praying for
the dead that they may be loosed from sins.” This cannot be understood except as referring to
Purgatory: and whosoever resists the authority of the Church, incurs the note of heresy. 2

The quotation here is corrupted as well. The Roman Catholic editors of the Madrid 1783 edition of the
Summa comment, “æquivalenter in orat. de iis qui in fide dorm. à med.” (Vol. VI, p. 464), that is, the quotation
is “equivalent”, and not exact. The same is found in Migne’s edition. 3 The 1947 editors simply put “De iis qui
in fide dormiunt”, without mentioning the inaccuracy of the quotation. The German Lutheran church
historian Adolf von Harnack (1851 – 1930) notes that in Aquinas’s defence of purgatory, “there follows a
forged passage from Gregory of Nyssa’s Works, representing that the whole Church so teaches.”4

The next article of the Summa reads:

Gregory says, “Even as in the same fire gold glistens and straw smokes, so in the same fire the sinner
burns and the elect is cleansed.” Therefore the fire of Purgatory is the same as the fire of hell: and
hence they are in the same place.5

Upon this quotation, the 1947 Dominican editors note, in agreement with the editors of other editions, “The
quotation is from St. Augustine (De Civ. Dei i, 8).” Aquinas still greatly misunderstands Augustine’s words,

1 Likoudis, Appendix I, pp. 187 – 188.

2 Summa, Supplement, Appendix II, Question I, Article I.
3 Migne, Summa Theologica, Vol. IV, p. 1456, Paris, 1841.
4 History of Dogma, Vol. VI, Ch. II, p. 262, n. 1, Boston, 1907. Note that von Harnack references this passage as

Q. 69, Art. 7.
5 Summa, Supplement, Appendix II, Question I, Article II.
 465

which speak of the afflictions in this world, and not the next. For comparison, here is the entirety of Chapter
VIII of Book I of the City of God:

Chapter 8.— Of the Advantages and Disadvantages Which Often Indiscriminately Accrue to Good and
Wicked Men.

Will some one say, Why, then, was this divine compassion extended even to the ungodly and
ungrateful? Why, but because it was the mercy of Him who daily makes His sun to rise on the evil
and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. For though some of these men, taking
thought of this, repent of their wickedness and reform, some, as the apostle says, despising the riches
of His goodness and long-suffering, after their hardness and impenitent heart, treasure up unto
themselves wrath against the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God, who will
render to every man according to his deeds: nevertheless does the patience of God still invite the
wicked to repentance, even as the scourge of God educates the good to patience. And so, too, does
the mercy of God embrace the good that it may cherish them, as the severity of God arrests the
wicked to punish them. To the divine providence it has seemed good to prepare in the world to come
for the righteous good things, which the unrighteous shall not enjoy; and for the wicked evil things,
by which the good shall not be tormented. But as for the good things of this life, and its ills, God has
willed that these should be common to both; that we might not too eagerly covet the things which
wicked men are seen equally to enjoy, nor shrink with an unseemly fear from the ills which even
good men often suffer.

There is, too, a very great difference in the purpose served both by those events which we call
adverse and those called prosperous. For the good man is neither uplifted with the good things of
time, nor broken by its ills; but the wicked man, because he is corrupted by this world's happiness,
feels himself punished by its unhappiness. Yet often, even in the present distribution of temporal
things, does God plainly evince His own interference. For if every sin were now visited with manifest
punishment, nothing would seem to be reserved for the final judgment; on the other hand, if no sin
received now a plainly divine punishment, it would be concluded that there is no divine providence
at all. And so of the good things of this life: if God did not by a very visible liberality confer these on
some of those persons who ask for them, we should say that these good things were not at His
disposal; and if He gave them to all who sought them, we should suppose that such were the only
rewards of His service; and such a service would make us not godly, but greedy rather, and covetous.
Wherefore, though good and bad men suffer alike, we must not suppose that there is no difference
between the men themselves, because there is no difference in what they both suffer. For even in the
likeness of the sufferings, there remains an unlikeness in the sufferers; and though exposed to the
same anguish, virtue and vice are not the same thing. For as the same fire causes gold to glow
brightly, and chaff to smoke; and under the same flail the straw is beaten small, while the grain is
cleansed; and as the lees are not mixed with the oil, though squeezed out of the vat by the same
pressure, so the same violence of affliction proves, purges, clarifies the good, but damns, ruins,
exterminates the wicked. And thus it is that in the same affliction the wicked detest God and
blaspheme, while the good pray and praise. So material a difference does it make, not what ills are
suffered, but what kind of man suffers them. For, stirred up with the same movement, mud exhales a
horrible stench, and ointment emits a fragrant odor. 1

A Misattributed Quote From Pope Gregory I on Leavened Bread

Concerning the controversy over unleavened bread in the Eucharist, Aquinas weighs in with misattributed
documents:

1 NPNF, Series I, Vol. II, pp. 5 – 6.

 466

St. Thomas Aquinas states that St. Gregory the Great says that it was the custom of the Roman Church
of his day to celebrate with unleavened bread: “Dicit enim Beatus Gregorius in Registro: ‘Romana
Ecclesia offert azymos panes propterea quod Dominus sine commistione ulla suscepit carnem’” (P.
III., Q. lxxiv. Art. iv.). This quotation is not, however, to be found in any of the extant writings of St.
Gregory, and St. Thomas has apparently made a mistake in assigning it to him. 1

Aquinas provides this quote of St. Gregory in an answer to the question, “Whether this sacrament ought to be
made of unleavened bread?” in his Summa Theologica. Aquinas also uses this quote in Chapter 39 of “Against
the Errors of the Greeks”, as a testimony “Against the position of those who deny the Sacrament may be
confected with unleavened bread.” Aquinas here writes:

We do not, however, mean by this that the sacrament may not be confected using leavened bread. For
Pope Gregory says in his Register: “The Roman Church offers unleavened bread because the Word of
the Father took flesh without any carnal conmingling; but other Churches offer leavened bread
because the Word of the Father is clothed with flesh and is true God and true man. So, also, yeast is
mixed with flour and this becomes the true body of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

“Non autem propter hoc intendimus quod ex fermentato hoc sacramentum confici non possit. Dicit
enim Gregorius Papa in registro: Romana Ecclesia offert azymos panes, propterea quod dominus sine
ulla commixtione suscepit carnem; sed ceterae Ecclesiae offerunt fermentatum, pro eo quod verbum
patris indutum est carne, et est verus Deus et verus homo. Ita et fermentum commiscetur farinae, et
efficitur corpus domini nostri Iesu Christi verum.”

The Roman Catholic editors here comment that this passage is “not found among the works of Gregory”. The
eminent Anglican scholar John Mason Neale comments,

this passage nowhere occurs in the works of S. Gregory, though also cited by an anonymous writer
(In Bibliothec. Patr. i. tom. iv.) as from his Dialogues; and the probability seems to be that it is in
reality a quotation from S. Gregory VII. (There is a similar assertion, Regist. Greg. VII., lib. viii. Ep. 1.) 2

Aquinas also uses this same quote of Gregory in his work Contra Gentiles.3 Aquinas uses this quote again in
his Catena Aurea on the Gospel of Matthew.4 This false quote of Pope Saint Gregory on Azymes has been
uncritically used by several other authors since the time of Aquinas, some of which is mentioned here.

It is found in the spurious work attributed to Gennadius Scholiarus (Patriarch of Constantinople 1454 –
1456), “Expositionis pro Concilio Florentino”,5 which cites Aquinas Contra Graecorum in the margin. The
Catholic Encyclopedia notes on this work, “An ‘Apology for five chapters of the Council of Florence’, edited
first (in Latin) at Rome in 1577, and again in 1628, is doubtful (in P.G., CLIX, it is attributed to Joseph of
Methone).”6 As a side note, this is another example of a misattributed work used by Latins to show a Greek
Patriarch arguing for the Latin Council of Florence.

Gregory’s quote is cited by Dionysius the Carthusian (1402 – 1471), a Latin theologian, in his “Commentary
on Peter Lombard” (Vol. I, Venice, 1584, p. 148), where he also comments on the Summa of Aquinas.

The spurious quote of Pope Gregory is cited by Domingo de Soto (or Dominic Soto, 1494 – 1560), who was a
Spanish Dominican priest, university professor, and chosen by Charles V imperial theologian at Trent, in his

1 Woolley, The Bread of the Eucharist, § I, p. 14.

2 John Mason Neale, A History of the Holy Eastern Church, Part II, Book V, Dissertation I “On Azymes”, p. 1069,
London: Joseph Masters, 1850.
3 Book IV, Chapter LXIX, ¶ 2.
4 Ch. XXVI, Lectio VII.
5 Cap. I, Sec VIII, in Bibliothecae Patrvm et Vetervm Avctorum Ecclesiasticorvm, Vol. IV, p. 1213, 3rd Ed., Paris,

1610.
6 Adrian Fortescue, Gennadius II, in CE, Vol. VI, p. 417.
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work “Commentariorvm Fratris Dominici Soto Segobiensis … in Quartum Sententiarum” (Vol. I, Salamanca,
1557, p. 402), where he comments on the Summa of Aquinas.

By Antoine de Mouchy (1494 – 1574), a French theologian and canonist who attended Trent, in Christinæ
Religionis (Tom. IV, De Observanda Missarvm Celebratione, Paris, 1562, Cap. XXV, p. 117, C.), citing from
Aquinas.

By the Jesuit John de Pina of Madrid in Commentariorum Ecclesiasticum (Vol. II, Lyons, 1634, Cap. XV,
Ethologia CCCCXXIV, ¶ 7, p. 613), citing from Aquinas.

By Baronius in Annales Ecclesiastici (Vol. XVIII, Rome, 1659, Iesv Christi 1440., Evgenii PP. IV. 10., ¶ 18),
citing from Gennadius.

By Martin Wigandt (d. 1708), a Thomist professor of theology at Vienna, in his most famous work, Tribunal
Confessariorum, et Ordinandorum, Declinato Probabilismo (Tom. II, Tract. XII, Examen II, VII, p. 45, Cologne,
1739 (first published in Augsburg, 1703)), citing from Aquinas.

By Antoine Boucat in Theologia Patrum Scholastico Dogmatica (Tom. V, Dis. III, p. 125, Rouen, 1725).

By the Italian professor of theology Mariano Degli Amatori in Biblioteca Eucharistica (Par. I, Venice, 1744,
Cap. CIII, p. 314), citing from Aquinas.

Also, in the Manual of Universal Church History, by Dr. John Alzog (1808 – 1878), a German Roman Catholic
professor of theology at the University of Freiburg, Dr. Alzog states:

Nearly all the Churches of the East used leavened bread in the Eucharistic Sacrifice. In the Western
Church, the practice of using unleavened bread was almost universal at the time of Photius, when the
rule was made strictly obligatory on all.

The American Roman Catholic professors F. J. Pabisch and Rev. Thomas S. Byrne, who translated and edited
this work, note here:

We are prepared to say that “unleavened bread” was, even before Photius, generally used in the Latin
Church, contrary to the statement of the author in the German original. It is certainly strange that he
should have made use of such an assertion – one which is contradicted by the very highest authority.
Thus, for instance, St. Gregory the Great, in Registro, quoted by St. Thomas, in Summa Theol., Pt. III.,
qu. 74, art. 4, in corpore: “Romana Ecclesia offert azymos panes, propterea …”1

It is certainly strange that these university professors, who devote a long footnote of two pages to this topic,
should be unaware that this authority is misattributed.

Other Citations of Forgeries in the Summa Theologica

Thomas Aquinas, on the question “Whether it is lawful to receive this Sacrament daily?” writes the following
paragraph on frequent Communion, citing the Pseudo-Isidorian decretals of Popes Anacletus, Fabian, and
Soter:

Reply Obj. 5. Various statutes have emanated according to the various ages of the Church. In
the primitive Church, when the devotion of the Christian faith was more flourishing, it was enacted
that the faithful should communicate daily: hence Pope Anaclete says (Ep. i.): When the consecration

1John Alzog, Manual of Universal Church History, Vol. I, Period I, Epoch II, Ch. IV, p. 722, Cincinnati, OH:
Benziger Brothers, 1874 (translated from the 9th German ed. by Pabisch & Byrne, same in the 1912 reprint).
 468

is finished, let all communicate who do not wish to cut themselves off from the Church; for so the
apostles have ordained, and the holy Roman Church holds. Later on, when the fervour of faith relaxed,
Pope Fabian (Third Council of Tours, Canon 1.) gave permission that all should communicate, if not
more frequently, at least three times in the year, namely, at Easter, Pentecost, and Christmas. Pope
Soter likewise (Second Council of Chalon, Canon xlvii.) declares that Communion should be received
on Holy Thursday, as is set forth in the Decretals (De Consecratione, dist. 2). Later on, when iniquity
abounded and charity grew cold (Matth. xxiv. 12), Pope Innocent III. commanded that the faithful
should communicate at least once a year, namely, at Easter. However, in De Eccl. Dogmat. xxiii. the
faithful are counselled to communicate on all Sundays.1

On the topic of Confirmation, Aquinas cites the Pseudo-Isidorian letters of Pope Melchiades (or Miltiades),
Pope Urban I, and Pope Eusebius. The Dominican scholar James J. Cunningham notes:

Some of the arguments in Question 72 are based upon the authority of a certain Pope
Melchiades (arts. 1, 7, 8), who in fact never existed. Today it is generally held that the texts are from
a Pentecost sermon of a late 5th-century Gallican bishop, Faustus of Riez. They found their way into
the False Decretals, compiled in the mid-ninth century, and were attributed by Pseudo-Isidore to a
Pope ‘Melchiades’. This error was passed on by Gratian’s Decretum and Peter Lombard’s Sentences.
Another spurious quotation used is that from Pope Urban I (art. 11), which also comes from the False
Decretals. This matter is of importance because these quotations entered into St Thomas’s
understanding of what confirmation is, and is underlined here to note his limited access to the
evidences of liturgical tradition.2

Lastly, it is worth mentioning that Aquinas’s major works referred to faulty translations of Aristotle and the
Vulgate Bible, as Roger Bacon has pointed out. George Gordon Coulton writes:

The Summa Theologica of St. Thomas Aquinas is habitually quoted, side by side with his Summa
contra Gentiles, as the most perfect philosophical structure of the Middle Ages; yet his contemporary,
Roger Bacon, criticised Aquinas in much the same terms as might have been employed by a modern
critic. These younger men (writes Bacon, conscious of a slight superiority in age over St. Thomas),
are in too great a hurry to round everything off into a complete scheme; and their work, apparently
so perfect, is shaky at the very foundations. They base everything upon the Vulgate translation of the
Bible, sometimes faulty in itself, and still more often corrupted by copyists’ errors. They base it also
upon an Aristotle still more often mistranslated or misunderstood.*

[Coulton’s footnote] * This latter criticism holds good to a considerable extent even though Bacon
unquestionably exaggerates the imperfections of the Aristotelian translations used by Aquinas, and
the number and importance of misinterpretations. With regard to the Bible text in the thirteenth
century, the learned Dominican, H. Denifle, admits that Bacon’s complaints are justified. 3

1 Fathers of the English Dominican Province (translators), The “Summa Theologica” of St. Thomas Aquinas,
Part III, Q. LXXX, Art. X, Reply Obj. 5., Vol. XVII (Part III, Third Number), pp. 398 – 399, London: R. & T.
Washbourne, 1914. The text in parentheses are the commentary of the editors. The first three of the four
Popes cited here are spurious.
2 James J. Cunningham, St Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiæ, Vol. LVII (3a. 66 – 72), Baptism and

Confirmation, Appendix V, pp. 245 – 246. Cunningham seems incorrect in asserting that Melchiades never
existed. In this question, Aquinas quotes Melchiades six times, Urban I one time, and Pope Eusebius one time
(Art. XI).
3 George Gordon Coulton, Romanism and Truth, Vol. I, Ch. II, p. 24, London: The Faith Press, 1930. Also see

George Gordon Coulton, Studies in Medieval Thought, Ch. XI, pp. 148 – 149, London: Thomas Nelson and Sons,
1940.
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Ch. VII Inauthentic Patristic Quotations in John de Fontibus

In this section I will point out the misquotations of the Dominican priest John de Fontibus, in his Letter to the
Abbot and Monks of a Monastery in Constantinople (c. 1350).1 This John de Fontibus is not to be confused
with the much more famous French abbot and bishop John de Fontibus (d. 1225).

To show the primacy of Peter in chapter five, John de Fontibus quotes Chrysostom at second-hand, borrowing
from Aquinas, as the Roman Catholic editor notes, “The quotations from St. John Chrysostom are cited from
St. Thomas Aquinas’ Contra Errores Graecorum, chapter 33.” 2 John de Fontibus makes two quotes from
Chrysostom, one authentic (though not exact) and one inauthentic (mentioned above on Aquinas).

In chapter seven, John writes “it is impossible that any bishop bring it to pass or concede that someone not be
required necessarily to obey the Roman Church, since this obedience has been granted her immediately by
divine institution, as shown in the foregoing. And furthermore, this same point is expressly indicated in the
first Council of Nicaea as well.” There is no such decree or statement or canon made by Nicaea, and the editor
notes here, “This canon is ascribed to the Nicene Council in the Collection of Canons made by Cardinal
Deusdedit, IV (xciii), ed. V. Wolf von Glanwell, Paderborn, 1905, p. 478. It does not appear, however, that John
de Fontibus utilized this particular Collection as his source.”3

In chapter nine John writes “And witness of this is Blessed Augustine, born at Carthage and made Bishop of
Hippo, in the book De Fide ad Petrum”, whereupon the editor notes “De Fide ad Petrum is actually the work of
St. Fulgentius of Ruspe (468 – 533 A.D.) an eminent disciple of St. Augustine.”4 This misattributed quotation
is authentic, but only regards the necessity of being in the true Church, and does not have any bearing on the
Papacy or the Roman Catholic controversy. In chapter ten, there is an authentic quotation from the Lives of
the Desert Fathers, which has no bearing on the controversy.5

In chapter eleven, John writes on the filioque, “For this is not an opinion, but the true faith, ‘which unless one
believe it faithfully and firmly, one cannot be saved’, as St. Athanasius, your doctor, says. And the same had
said before this that the Holy Spirit is from the Father and the Son, not made, nor created, nor begotten, but
proceeding. Your holy doctors, namely the aforementioned Athanasius, Cyril of Alexandria, Basil and many
saints, held and taught this faith, as is inferred in their writings in which the Holy Spirit is described as the
‘Spirit of the Son’, and ‘from the Son’, and the ‘image of the Son’, and ‘flowing from Him’, and ‘caused by Him’,
and ‘spirated by the Son’, and ‘Himself (the Son) the origin and font of the Holy Spirit, spirating Him’.” Upon
Athanasius the editor notes “The quotation is from the famous Athanasian Creed which actually originated in
the West in the 5th century. It was of Augustinian inspiration but attributed to St. Athanasius.”, and upon the
references to the other fathers on the filioque, the editor writes “All these phrases are taken from the Contra
Errores Graecorum of St. Thomas Aquinas.”6 John de Fontibus was misled by the spurious quotes on the
filioque in Aquinas’s work.

In chapter thirteen, John references Cyril of Alexandria’s letter to Nestorius and exposition of the Nicene
Creed, which John says teaches the filioque.7 However, I disagree with his theological interpretation of Cyril’s
works.8

1 Translated in James Likoudis, Ending the Byzantine Greek Schism, Appendix III, pp. 205 – 216, New
Rochelle, NY: Catholics United for the Faith, 2nd Ed., 1992.
2 Likoudis, p. 207, n. 2.
3 Likoudis, p. 209, n. 3.
4 Likoudis, p. 212, n. 4.
5 Likoudis, p. 213, n. 5.
6 Likoudis, pp. 213 – 214, nn. 6 – 7.
7 Likoudis, p. 215.
8 See Siecienski, Filioque, pp. 47 – 50, 97 – 98. Markos A. Orphanos, The Procession of the Holy Spirit

According to Certain Greek Fathers, in Θεολογία: τριμηνιαία έκδοση της Ιεράς Συνόδου της Εκκλησίας της
Ελλάδος, Vol. LI, No. 1, 1980, 9., Cyril of Alexandria, pp. 99 – 105, Athens: Typ. tē s Apostolikē s Diakonias,
1980.
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There are many other issues and references that indicate a severe ignorance of Church history, but I have
directly focused on the false references. In summary, John de Fontibus makes a total of eight patristic
citations, of which five are inauthentic or misattributed (a corrupted quote from Chrysostom, a false canon of
the Nicene Council, misattributing Fulgentius’s work to Augustine, incorrectly ascribing the so-called
“Athanasian Creed” to Athanasius, and the inauthentic patristic phrases on the filioque). John de Fontibus’s
work is only one example of the dependence of later Roman Catholic apologists upon inauthentic history and
upon Aquinas’s heavily flawed work against the Greeks.

Ch. VIII Authenticity of Certain Passages of St. Maximus the Confessor and his Ecclesiology

The works of St. Maximus have received more scholarly attention in recent decades. The Catholic
Encyclopedia states that Maximus is “remarkable as a witness to the respect for the papacy held by the Greek
Church in his day.”1 and extensively cites his texts on the Roman primacy. It should also be pointed out that
St. Maximus spent several years of his life in Rome, and was aligned with Rome against Monothelites in
Constantinople.

In the Contra Errores Græcorum, Aquinas makes three citations from St. Maximus (of which two promote
Papal primacy), which will be discussed here. The first citation is in Part II, Chapter XXVII, titled “That in the
divine person to flow and to proceed is the same”:

And Maximus the monk says in his sermon on the candlestick and the seven lights: “Just as the Holy
Spirit naturally exists by God the Father according to his essence, so also he truly exists by the Son
according to his nature and essence, as it were proceeding as God from the Father through the Son.”

Upon which the Roman editors make the following note:

Lib. 91, 27-321; cf. Maximus Qu. 63 ad Thalassium (PG 90, 672 C), who only has “belongs to the Son”,
where the Libellus says “exists … by the Son”.

This corruption attempts to make Maximus more in favour of the filioque.

The next citation is in Ch. XXXVI, and is from Opusculum 11, which is cited here in its entirety:

All the ends of the inhabited world, and those who anywhere on earth confess the Lord with a pure
and orthodox faith, look directly to the most holy Church of the Romans and her confession and faith
as to a sun of eternal light, receiving from her the radiant beam of the patristic and holy doctrines,
just as the holy six synods [hagiai hex sunodoi], inspired and sacred, purely and with all devotion set
them forth, uttering most clearly the symbol of faith. For, from the time of the descent to us of the
incarnate Word of God, all the Churches of the Christians everywhere have held and possess this
most great Church as the sole base and foundation [krēpida kai themelion], since according to the
very promise of the Saviour, it will never be overpowered by the gates of hell, but rather has the keys
of the orthodox faith and confession in him, and to those who approach it with reverence it opens the
genuine and unique piety, but shuts and stops every heretical mouth that speaks utter wickedness.
For that which the creator of everything himself, our Lord and Master Jesus Christ, established and
built up – together with his disciples and apostles, and the Holy Fathers and teachers and martyrs
who came after – have been consecrated by their own works and words, by their sufferings and
sweat, by their labours and blood, and finally by their remarkable deaths for the sake of the Catholic
and Apostolic Church of us who believe in him, they through two words, uttered without pain or

1 John Chapman, St. Maximus of Constantinople, in CE, Vol. X, p. 78.

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death – O the long-suffering and forbearance of God! – are eager to dissolve and to set at naught the
great, all-illuminating and all-praised mystery of the orthodox worship of the Christians.1

This text, referred to as Opuscula 11, is still extant in an excerpt in Greek, and was a letter written in Rome
shortly after the Lateran Council of 649, and is dated from October 649 – June 653.2 It is interesting that
Maximus refers to the Lateran Council as among the “holy six councils”, since he is writing before what was
later recognized to be the actual Sixth Ecumenical Council (The Third Council of Constantinople in 680;
Chapman conjectures that this is likely a correction for five in the text by a copyist writing after 680),3 but the
Lateran Council was indeed an important and theologically Orthodox gathering (though it negligently failed
to condemn Honorius, if the extant text is to be relied upon).

However, Maximus’s claims of Roman Orthodoxy have been undermined by the fact that the Pope Honorius
was determined to have been a heretic, although I would generally agree that Rome at multiple important
times held to theologically Orthodox positions amidst several heresies that disturbed the ancient Church,
though Rome can in no way be described as “the sole base and foundation”. Some scholars have doubts about
the authenticity of this text, but the critical view appears to be that it is authentic, including by Orthodox
scholars, such as Dr. Jean-Claude Larchet (b. 1949) who provisionally accepts Maximian authorship.4 A good
discussion of the polemical issue of the Roman primacy in Maximus’ writings is found on pp. 125 – 201 of this
work, and Larchet’s three volumes on St. Maximos are an excellent resource, and are widely acknowledged as
among the best studies on this saint. Larchet has published many other articles and works on St. Maximos,
and a relevant article is “The Question of the Roman Primacy in the Thought of Saint Maximus the
Confessor”.5

The Orthodox scholar Fr. Andrew Louth has the following remarks on Opuscula 11:

Roman Catholic scholars are eager to see in these words proleptic support for papal primacy. They
are certainly strong words, proclaiming the faithfulness of the Church of Rome to orthodoxy, and
linking this to the words of our Lord in Matthew 16.18f. They are, however, words about the Church
of Rome, not the papacy as such, and they are also words written by Maximos in the glow of gratitude
he must have felt, following the Lateran synod, for the support he had found in Rome. 6

However, I strongly believe that this text is inauthentic, for it is already known the extant text is false in
claiming ecumenicity for the Lateran Council, and the exaggerated praise of Rome is typical of forgeries made
in the Roman interest.

One can also gain an understanding of St. Maximos’s ecclesiology from the canons of the Lateran Synod of
649, which he is said to have authored, and which do not mention the Bishop of Rome at all. Canon XVIII
states:

1 International Journal for the Study of the Christian Church, Vol. IV, No. 2, July 2004, 109 – 120, The
Ecclesiology of Saint Maximos the Confessor, Andrew Louth, p. 116. Other translations (which are largely the
same) can be found in Adam G. Cooper, The Body in St. Maximus the Confessor: Holy Flesh, Wholly Deified,
Ch. IV, pp. 181 – 182, Oxford, 2005. Booth, Crisis of Empire, p. 272. The Catholic Encyclopedia’s article on St.
Maximus of Constantinople).
2 Jankowiak & Booth, The Oxford Handbook of Maximus the Confessor, Ch. II, A New Date-List of the Works of

Maximus the Confessor, n. 73, pp. 67 – 68, Oxford, 2015.

3 Chapman, Honorius, p. 58, n. 1. Also see C. Cubitt, The Lateran Council of 649 as an Ecumenical Council.
4 Maxime le Confesseur, médiateur entre l’Orient et l’Occident, pp. 106 – 108, Paris, 1998.
5 Chapter in Cardinal Walter Kasper, The Petrine Ministry: Catholics and Orthodox in Dialogue: Academic

Symposium Held at the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, pp. 188 – 209, New York, 2006. Also
see Dr. Phil Booth, Crisis of Empire: Doctrine and Dissent at the End of Late Antiquity, Transformation of the
Classical Heritage 52, Ch. VI, Maximus and the Popes, pp. 269 – 276, Berkeley, CA, 2013.
6 International Journal for the Study of the Christian Church, Vol. IV, No. 2, July 2004, 109 – 120, The

Ecclesiology of Saint Maximos the Confessor, Andrew Louth, p. 116.

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If anyone according to the holy Fathers, harmoniously with us and likewise with the Faith, does not
with mind and lips reject and anathematize all the most abominable heretics together with their
impious writings even to one least portion, whom the Catholic and apostolic Church of God, that is,
the holy and universal five Synods and likewise all the approved Fathers of the Church in harmony,
rejects and anathematizes …

Canon XIX:

If anyone who indubitably has professed and also understands those (teachings) which the wicked
heretics suggest, through vain impudence says that these are teachings of piety, which the
investigators and ministers of the Word have handed down from the beginning, that is to say, the five
holy and universal Synods, certainly calumniating the holy Fathers themselves and the five holy
Synods mentioned, in the deception of the simple, or in the acceptance of their own impious
treachery, let such a person be condemned.

Canon XX:

If anyone according to the wicked heretics in any manner whatsoever, by any word whatsoever, or at
any time or place whatsoever illicitly removing the bounds which the holy Fathers of the Catholic
Church have rather firmly established (Prov. 22:28), that is, the five holy and universal Synods, in
order rashly to seek for novelties and expositions of another faith; or books, or letters, or writings, or
subscriptions, or false testimonies, or synods, or records of deeds, or vain ordinations unknown to
ecclesiastical rule; or unsuitable and irrational tenures of place; and briefly, if it is customary for the
most impious heretics to do anything else, (if anyone) through diabolical operation crookedly and
cunningly acts contrary to the pious preachings of the orthodox (teachers) of the Catholic Church,
that is to say, its paternal and synodal proclamations, to the destruction of the most sincere
confession unto the Lord our God, and persists without repentance unto the end impiously doing
these things, let such a person be condemned forever, and let all the people say: so be it, so be it (Ps.
105:48).1

Maximos clearly identifies the teachings of the Catholic Church with the proclamations of its universal
councils (and without reference to the Church of Rome), which is Orthodox ecclesiology. For the acts of the
council, which are not free from Roman corruption, see Richard Price, Phil Booth, and Catherine Cubitt, The
Acts of the Lateran Synod of 649, Translated Texts for Historians, Vol. LXI, Liverpool: Liverpool University
Press, 2014.

The third Maximian quote Aquinas uses, in Ch. XXXVIII, is also intended to be from the same Opusculum 11
here quoted, but is significantly interpolated, as previously remarked, and it is apparent that the statement,
“we must obey him”, in reference to the Pope of Rome, is not found in the original.

There are two other documents attributed to St. Maximos that are more likely interpolated. These are
Opusculum 12 and the Letter to Thalassius, which survive only in several excerpts or fragments translated in
Latin in the ninth century, and preserved in the Collectanea of Anastasius Bibliothecarius.2

Opusculum 12 contains several excerpts from the Letter of Maximos sent to Peter Illustris, and composed
around 643 – 645.3 The Catholic Encyclopedia quotes extensively from this text:

1 Roy Joseph Deferrari (translator), Henry Denzinger, The Sources of Catholic Dogma, The Lateran Council
649, ¶¶ 271. – 274., pp. 104 – 106, St. Louis, MO: Herder, 1957.
2 See Booth, Crisis of Empire, p. 272.
3 See The Oxford Handbook of Maximus the Confessor, Ch. II, Jankowiak & Booth, A New Date-List of the

Works of Maximus the Confessor, n. 66, pp. 63, Oxford, 2015.

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I was afraid of being thought to transgress the holy laws if I were to do this without knowing the will
of the most holy see of Apostolic men, who lead aright the whole plenitude of the Catholic Church,
and rule it with order according to the divine law. … they have not conformed to the sense of the
Apostolic see, and what is laughable, or rather lamentable, as proving their ignorance, they have not
hesitated to lie against the Apostolic see itself … but have claimed the great Honorius on their side. …
What did the divine Honorius do, and after him the aged Severinus, and John who followed him? Yet
further, what supplication has the blessed pope, who now sits, not made? Have not the whole East
and West brought their tears, laments, obsecrations, deprecations, both before God in prayer and
before men in their letters? If the Roman see recognizes Pyrrhus to be not only a reprobate but a
heretic, it is certainly plain that everyone who anathematizes those who have rejected Pyrrhus,
anathematizes the see of Rome that is, he anathematizes the Catholic Church. I need hardly add that
he excommunicates himself also, if indeed he be in communion with the Roman see and the Church
of God. … It is not right that one who has been condemned and cast out by the Apostolic see of the
city of Rome for his wrong opinions should be named with any kind of honour, until he be received
by her, having returned to her – nay, to our Lord – by a pious confession and orthodox faith, by which
he can receive holiness and the title of holy. … Let him hasten before all things to satisfy the Roman
see, for if it is satisfied all will agree in calling him pious and orthodox. For he only speaks in vain
who thinks he ought to persuade or entrap persons like myself, and does not satisfy and implore the
blessed pope of the most holy Church of the Romans, that is, the Apostolic see, which from the
incarnate Son of God Himself, and also by all holy synods, according to the holy canons and
definitions, has received universal and supreme dominion, authority and power of binding and
loosing over all the holy Churches of God which are in the whole world – for with it the Word who is
above the celestial powers binds and looses in heaven also. For if he thinks he must satisfy others,
and fails to implore the most blessed Roman pope, he is acting like a man who, when accused of
murder or some other crime, does not hasten to prove his innocence to the judge appointed by the
law, but only uselessly and without profit does his best to demonstrate his innocence to private
individuals, who have no power to acquit him.1

The Letter to Thalassius is classified as Letter A and was written about 640. The text survives in a Latin
excerpt in the Collectanea of Anastasius Bibliothecarius under the title “Commemoration of what the Roman
envoys did in Constantinople”.2 The Catholic Encyclopedia again makes an extensive citation:

Having discovered the tenor of the document, since by refusing they would have caused the first and
Mother of Churches, and the city, to remain so long a time in widowhood, they replied quietly: We
cannot act with authority in this matter, for we have received a commission to execute, not an order
to make a profession of faith. But we assure you that we will relate all that you have put forward, and
we will show the document itself to him who is to be consecrated, and if he should judge it to be
correct, we will ask him to append his signature to it. But do not therefore place any obstacle in our
way now, or do violence to us by delaying us and keeping us here. For none has a right to use
violence especially when faith is in question. For herein even the weakest waxes mighty and the
meek becomes a warrior, and by comforting his soul with the Divine Word, is hardened against the
greatest attack. How much more in the case of the clergy and Church of the Romans, which from of
old until now, as the elder of all the Churches under the sun, presides over all? Having surely
received this canonically, as well from councils and the Apostles, as from the princes of the latter, and
being numbered in their company, she is subject to no writings or issues of synodical documents, on
account of the eminence of her pontificate, even as in all these things all are equally subject to her
according to sacerdotal law. And so when without fear but with all holy and becoming confidence,
those ministers of the truly firm and immovable rock, that is, of the most great and Apostolic Church
at Rome, had so replied to the clergy of the royal city, they were seen to have conciliated them and to
have acted prudently, that the others might be humble and modest, while they made known the
orthodoxy and purity of their own faith from the beginning. But those of Constantinople, admiring

1John Chapman, St. Maximus of Constantinople, in CE, Vol. X, p. 79.

2The Oxford Handbook of Maximus the Confessor, Ch. II, Jankowiak & Booth, A New Date-List of the Works of
Maximus the Confessor, n. 58, pp. 59 – 60, Oxford, 2015.
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their piety, thought that such a deed ought to be recompensed; and ceasing from urging the
document on them, they promised by their diligence to procure the issue of the emperor's order with
regard to the episcopal election. … Of the aforesaid document a copy has been sent to me also. They
have explained in it the cause for being silent about the natural operations in Christ our God, that is,
in His natures, of which and in which He is believed to be, and how in future neither one nor two are
to be mentioned. It is only to be allowed to confess that the divine and human (works) proceeded
from the same Word of God incarnate, and are to be attributed to one and the same (person).1

The modern Oxford scholar Dr. Phil Booth comments on Opuscula 11 and 12 and the Letter to Thalassius:

As has often been observed, this handful of texts contain some of the strongest statements of Roman
privilege contained within Greek sources: the acknowledgment of a universal power derived from
the promise of Christ; the emphasis upon Rome’s status as the basis and guardian of the faith; and the
guarantee that it would never be overcome. It is not surprising that some scholars have questioned
the authenticity of such statements – not least because the Letter to Thalassius and Opuscula 12, at
least, survive only in Latin excerpts, preserved in the ninth century precisely for their pro-Roman
content. Broader evidence nevertheless suggests that Maximus’s circle did indeed celebrate Roman
preeminence in this period, as the Eastern consensus over monotheletism began to crystallize and as
the realization dawned, no doubt, that Rome represented the last significant medium through which
that circle might express its doctrinal (and political) opinions. 2

I would disagree with Dr. Booth’s interpretation of the “broader evidence”, and insist that there are good
reasons to suspect the authenticity of these Latin fragments, especially as so many corrupted documents
emerged from the Latins during the 9th century. Moreover, I do not consider Anastasius the Librarian as a
reliable source in this matter, as he was a very partisan figure, notably anti-Greek and pro-Latin. The
Anglican scholar James Barmby (1823 – 1897), in his introduction to the works of Pope Gregory the Great
says, “The authority, however, of Anastasius, who lived in a time of hierarchical forgeries, cannot be relied on
without reserve.”3 Guettée speaks with stronger words: “Anastasius the Librarian was so contemptible a man
that no importance can be attached to his testimony.”4 It should also be noted that Anastasius was highly
prejudiced against St. Photius and attended the anti-Photian Council of 869. According to the Catholic
Encyclopedia, Anastasius was also an anti-pope in Rome for some time, but was later reconciled with the
Popes.5

Lastly, it should be remembered that (if the records are authentic) St. Maximus was deceived into believing
that Pope Honorius was not a heretic, and Maximus was on this matter tricked by the ecclesiastics at Rome.
Therefore, whatever misplaced veneration he may have had for Rome only misled him, for Rome had
“deceived the very elect”, and Maximus’s error on this matter undermined his own Orthodox cause against
the Monothelites, for the Monothelites saw that Honorius was one with their party, yet Maximus refused to
concede that point (see the Appendix on the Condemnation of Pope Honorius).

In conclusion, St. Maximos the Confessor confessed the Orthodox faith, and much of his supposed testimony
for the Church of Rome is not properly interpreted in its context, textually unreliable, and does not reflect the
views of the Orthodox Church (nor of the universal Church) in his era.

1 John Chapman, St. Maximus of Constantinople, in CE, Vol. X, p. 79.

2 Booth, Crisis of Empire, pp. 272 – 273.
3 NPNF, Series II, Vol. XII, Prolegomena, xxviii.
4 Guettee, The Papacy, p. 274. See pp. 274 – 276.
5 Johann Peter Kirsch, Anastasius Bibliothecarius, in CE, Vol. XVI, pp. 2 – 3. Anastasius was twice

excommunicated in the West, once for having had himself elected antipope, and another time on the charge of
being an accomplice to a murder.
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Ch. IX More Corruptions of St. Cyril

That St. Cyril of Alexandria did not teach the primacy of the Bishop of Rome is shown by the Orthodox scholar
Archbishop Chrysostomos of Athens and all Greece (1868 – 1938), who also points out a corruption in the
authentic works of St. Cyril:

St. Cyril in his writings has no knowledge of any such authority as the [Papal] Encyclical [Lux
Veritatis] implies, especially concerning the primacy of the Bishop of Rome in respect of the Apostle
Peter. It is true that he calls this Apostle “the chief” and “the foremost of the disciples,”a but not in the
sense of the primacy of any authority, for he teaches that the Apostles were equal with one anotherb.
More particularly with regard to Peter and John he states: “Peter and John were both apostles and
saints and adorned with equal honours and powers through the Holy Spirit by Christ the Saviour of
all …” “Hence from their equal value, that is authority, we say that the two are reckoned as one
man.”c He repeats the same argument in his third letter to Nestorius, in which he writes: “The
equality of the two natures of our Saviour does not unite them, as also Peter and John, though equal
with each other as Apostles and holy disciples, nevertheless these two were not one.” d

Throughout his writings he extols the Apostle Paule, but that he does not consider the
Apostle Peter to have received any particular dignity from the Lord, he likewise testifies throughout.
Thus interpreting the passage “Thou art Peter and upon this rock I will build my Church,” f he teaches
that by these words the Lord “promises to found the Church, attributing to it the power of endurance,
as He Himself is the Lord of power, and to this Church He appointed Peter shepherd.” g

[Chrysostom’s Footnotes:] a) Patr. Migne ser. graeca, 77, 1025, 74, 661. b) Ibid., 77, 305, 75, 703. c)
Ibid., 76, 75. d) Ibid., 77, 112. e) Ibid., 77, 1037, 76, 17. f) Matth. xvi. 16, etc.

Upon the last quotation Archbishop Chrysostomos notes,

7. Patr. Migne ser graeca, 72, 424. In Migne’s Patrology the text has “ταύτης“ (of this) instead of the
more accurate “ταύτῃ” (to this) and the editor remarks: “Animadverte testimonium pro Petri
primate”! (“Notice the testimony in behalf of the primacy of Peter”!).1

Chrysostomos continues with more testimony from the writings of St. Cyril concerning his interpretation of
the Petrine passages. By the way, I highly recommend his short book, and in the recommended reading
section, I have listed several other works that extensively cover the Church Fathers’ interpretation of the New
Testament passages concerning St. Peter. Next, Chrysostom briefly mentions the spurious works of St. Cyril
that were discussed at length above, and points out another inauthentic sermon:

In the thirteenth century there appeared in the West certain forged texts and passages of St.
Cyril, advocating the primacy of the Bishop of Rome. These were included, in good faith, as genuine
by Thomas Aquinas (1274) in his Opusculum contra errores Graecorum, but their forgery and
spuriousness has already been demonstrated.a Equally forged and spurious has been proved to be a
certain sermon quoted among the other various sayings, namely, the eleventh, in which St. Cyril is
represented as calling the Bishop of Rome “the most holy archbishop of the whole universe, Father
and Patriarch Celestine of the great city of Rome.”b From these words A. Ehrhardc rightly concluded
the spuriousness and forgery of the sermon. Hence nowhere in his genuine writings does St. Cyril
make even the slightest mention of the primacy of the Bishop of Rome.

[Chrysostom’s Footnotes:] a) Vide F. H. Reusch. The forgeries in the Treatise of Thomas Aquinas
against the Greeks, in Abhandlungen der hist. Classe der Bayer. Akademie der Wissenschaften zu

1Chrysostomos Papadopoulos, The Third Oecumenical Council and the Primacy of the Bishop of Rome: A
reply to the encyclical “Lux Veritatis” of Pius XI, translated by Gerard Shelley, p. 10, London, 1933.
 476

München, 1889, pp. 673 – 742. b) Patr. Migne ser. graeca, 77, 1040. c) A Spurious Homily of St. Cyril
of Alexandria, in Rönische Quartalschrift, 1889, Vol. III., pp. 97 – 113.1

Nowhere in St. Cyril’s other works and letters does he refer to the Bishop of Rome as “archbishop of the
whole universe”. Indeed, in a letter read at the Council of Ephesus, he refers to Celestine as the “most devout
and most God-fearing brother, our Fellow-Minister, Celestine, Bishop of the Church of the Romans”.2 It is
worth noting that this work never had an ancient Latin version, and so the corruption was in Greek and the
work of a later unknown Byzantine author.

The German Roman Catholic patristic scholar Johannes Quasten (1900 – 1987, ordained 1926), agrees that
the eleventh sermon of St. Cyril, on the Blessed Virgin Mary, is spurious:

The eleventh homily, entitled Encomium in S. Mariam Deiparam (MG 77, 1029 – 1040) is nothing
more than the fourth, retouched and enlarged between the seventh and the ninth century, as A.
Ehrhard has sufficiently shown.3

The modern Roman Catholic scholar Caro also investigated this homily, and argues that it is the work of an
unknown Byzantine author from the 6th century. The German Roman Catholic scholar Fr. Johann Friedrich
Ludwig Rothensee (1759 – 1835) concedes that this quote is not found in Cyril’s works or the conciliar
records, and laments that the Trent Catechism does not specify a source.4

Some Protestant authors have also pointed out that the authenticity of this homily is questionable. William
Bright says:

the “encomium” on the Virgin, included among his [Cyril of Alexandria’s] works as delivered at this
time [the fifteen days of waiting at Ephesus before the Council opened], is perhaps spurious.” 5

Upon this James Chrystal comments, “Now that is not strong enough. It is undoubtedly spurious.”6 Chrystal
extensively cites from and agrees with the Anglican scholar James Endell Tyler (1789 – 1851), who has also
examined this homily, stating:

This homily cannot, in any point of view, be regarded as genuine: it carries its own condemnation
with it, and evidently is the corrupt version of a rhapsody composed in a much later age than the
Council of Ephesus.7

The Protestant authors of The Christian Remembrancer also agree with Tyler, and write of the expressions in
this disputed homily, “we cannot regard them as even doubtful. They are certainly spurious;” 8

1 Chrysostomos Papadopoulos, The Third Oecumenical Council and the Primacy of the Bishop of Rome: A
reply to the encyclical “Lux Veritatis” of Pius XI, translated by Gerard Shelley, pp. 13 – 14, London, 1933.
2 James Chrystal, The Third World Council, Vol. I, Act I, 11 B., p. 212, Jersey City, NJ: James Chrystal, 1895.
3 Johannes Quasten, Patrology, Vol. III, The Golden Age of Greek Patristic Literature, p. 132, Utrecht: Spectrum,

1960. The Patrology series is regarded as Quasten’s magnum opus and was highly praised by reviewers.
4 “Es ist inzwischen sehr zu bedauern, dass der Katechismus [Romanus] seine quelle für die angesührten

worte Cyrills nichte angegeben hat.” Rothensee, Der Primat des Papstes in allen Christlichen Jahrhunderten,
Vol. III, pp. 208 – 209, Mainz: Kupferberg, 1838.
5 William Bright, Cyrillus, in William Smith and Henry Wace (editors), A Dictionary of Christian Biography,

Vol. I, p. 767, bottom of right column, London: John Murray, 1877.

6 James Chrystal, The Third World Council, Vol. II, Document VII, p. 33, Jersey City, NJ: James Chrystal, 1904.

Chrystal has written a good analysis on the spuriousness of this homily in Vol. II, pp. 29 – 40.
7 James Endell Tyler, The Worship of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Part V, Ch. V, p. 360, London: Society for

Promoting Christian Knowledge, New Ed., 1851. Tyler remarks further upon this spurious homily in
Appendix D (pp. 408 – 410).
8 The Glories of Mary, in The Christian Remembrancer, Vol. XXX, October, 1855, Art. VI, p. 451, n. 2, London: J.

& C. Mozley, 1855.

 477

However, this homily of St. Cyril was not as widely recognized to be spurious, and many Roman Catholics
cited it as genuine in defence of the Papal claims. Most importantly, it was cited as genuine in the Catechism
of the Council of Trent, which states:

Superior to all these [Patriarchs] is the Sovereign Pontiff, whom Cyril, Archbishop of Alexandria,
denominated in the Council of Ephesus, “the Father and Patriarch of the whole world.” 1

From the Roman Catechism, this quotation has made its way into numerous Latin books, such as the
following:

In “Tractatus De Certitudine Gloriæ Sanctorum Canonizatorum” (Ch. III, 21., § 5, p. 185, Rome, 1628), by
Bishop Luca Castellino of Catanzaro (d. 1631 or 1633), an Italian canon and theologian at the Sapienza
University of Rome, and Vicar-General of the Dominican Order from 1612 – 1628, quoting from the Trent
Catechism.

In “Novum Rationale Divinorum Officiorum” (Lib. I, Cap. 52., p. 161, Venice, 1628; note that the page numbers
appear to have been printed incorrectly), by John Baptista de Rubeis, an Italian priest and member of the
Somascan Fathers.

In “Dottrina Christiana Spiegata in Quattro Libri” (Lib. IV, Cap. VII, p. 226, n. 1., Padua, 1773, 3rd ed.), by Dr.
Gabriello Savonarola, an Italian priest.

In “Confutazione Degli Errori e Calunnie Contro la Chiesa e la Sovranita” (Vol. II, Cap. XIII, p. 383, n. 21., [place
of publication not identified], 1794), by Tommaso Maria Soldati (d. 1807), an Italian priest and professor at
the Collegium Germanicum et Hungaricum in Rome.

In “The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Other Principal Saints” (Vol. I, St. Cyril, Jan. 28., p. 403, London,
1812; Vol. I, p. 282 of the New York 1846 ed.; first published in London, 1756 – 1759), by the English Roman
Catholic priest and hagiographer Alban Butler (1710 – 1773), in his well-known hagiographic work and
magnum opus.

In “The Faith of Catholics” (Prop. XII, p. 154, London, 1830), a famous controversial work by the scholars
Joseph Berington (1743 – 1827) and John Kirk (1760 – 1851).

In “The Supremacy and Jurisdiction of the Roman Pontiffs” (Letter II, p. 78, London, 1843) by an anonymous
Roman Catholic layman under the pen name Verax, who has copied this section verbatim from Berington &
Kirk.

In “Remarks on a Letter from the Rev. William Palmer” (p. 25, London, 1841), by Cardinal Wiseman (1802 –
1865).

In “England and Rome: Or, the History of the Religious Connection Between England and the Holy See” (Ch.
III, p. 102, London, 1854), by William Waterworth (1811 – 1882), an English Jesuit and professor.

1 “Præter hos omnes, catholica Ecclesia Romanum Pont. Max. qué in Ephesina Synodo Cyrillus Alexándrinus
Archepiscopum, totius orbis terrarium patrem, & Patriarcham appellat, semper venerata est.” John Donovan
(translator), The Catechism of the Council of Trent, Published by Command of Pope Pius the Fifth, Part II,
Sacrament of Orders, p. 319, Dublin: W. Folds and Son, 1829 (p. 296 of the Baltimore 1833 Ed.; p. 222 of the
New York 1905 Ed.) Catechismus Ex Decreto Concilii Tridentini Ad Parochos, De Sacramento Ordinis, p. 205,
Rome, 1566. No citation or reference is provided for Cyril’s quote. See the chapter below on Forgeries in the
Roman Catechism.
 478

In the Acts of the Provincial Council of Kalocsa in 1863 (Acta et Decreta Sacrorum Conciliorum Recentiorum,
Collectio Lacensis, Vol. V, Concilium Provinciae Colocensis, Tit. II, Cap. I, p. 625 A, Freiburg im Breisgau, 1879).

In “Lectures on the Evidences of Catholicity” (Lecture XII, p. 370, 5th Ed., Baltimore, MD, 1870 [Lecture XI, p.
332 of the Louisville, KY, 1847 ed.), by Latin Archbishop Martin John Spalding of Baltimore (1810 – 1872),
who attended the Latin First Vatican Council.

In “The Evidence for the Papacy: As Derived From the Holy Scriptures and From Primitive Antiquity” (cited
on pp. 163, 164, 166, 316, and referred to in the index on p. 327; London, 1870), by the Hon. Colin Lindsay
(1819 – 1892), an English nobleman who converted from Anglicanism.

In “A Commentary, by Writers of The First Five Centuries, on the Place of St. Peter in the New Testament; and
that of St. Peter’s Successors in the Church” (Part II, pp. 307 – 308, London, 1871), by James Waterworth
(1806 – 1876), a Jesuit priest and controversialist.

In “Historical Sketches” (Vol. II, III, Trials of Theodoret, § 8., 2., p. 350, London, 1917; first published 1872 and
often reprinted), by Latin Cardinal John Henry Newman.

In “The Via Media of the Anglican Church” (Vol. I, Lecture VII p. 188, London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1918;
first published 1882 and often reprinted), by Cardinal John Henry Newman. The passage in question is very
approvingly cited in The Dublin Review, Vol. XXX (New Series), No. LIX, January – April 1878, Art. VII,
Archbishop Trench on Medieval Church History, p. 458, London: Burns, Oates, & Co., 1878.

In “Dimitrios and Irene: Or, The Conquest of Constantinople” (Ch. XV, p. 140, Baltimore, MD, 1894), by Bishop
Charles Warren Currier of the Diocese of Matanzas (1857 – 1918).

In “The Early Scottish Church: Its Doctrine and Discipline” (Part I, Ch. XII, p. 64, Edinburgh & London, 1906),
by Columba Edmonds, a Latin monk of Fort Augustus Abbey in Scotland.

The monthly magazine The Catholic World replies to an Anglican bishop, “Again we find St. Cyril addressing
Pope Celestine as ‘Archbishop of the Universe.’ Would Dr. Grafton thus address his Holiness, Pope Pius X.?”
(Lewis Jerome O’Hern, Is Bishop Grafton Fair?, The Catholic World, Vol. LXXXIX, August, No. 533., p. 588, New
York, 1909). Lewis Jerome O’Hern (1876 – 1930) was an influential Paulist priest and university professor.

In H. L. B. (translator), Joseph Tixeront, History of Dogmas, Vol. III, The End of the Patristic Age (430 – 800),
Ch. VII, Greek Theology, § 5., Ecclesiology, p. 216, St. Louis, MO: B. Herder, 1916 (first published in Paris in
1912). As another evidence that “the East beheld in the Bishop of Rome a bishop invested with superior
authority, whose assent was needed to settle all matters of importance concerning the Church”, Tixeront cites
a letter of Cyril to the Pope, where Cyril calls him “father”, but this is not a relevant attestation to the Papacy,
and it was shown that Cyril elsewhere calls the Pope “brother, our Fellow-Minister,” which would not be an
appropriate way for an inferior to address a superior.

Archbishop Chrysostomos also points out a misleading translation of Cyril’s letter to Bishop Celestine of
Rome, by Louis Duchesne (1843 – 1922), a prominent French Roman Catholic priest, scholar, and professor:

It is truly amazing how Latin theologians such as the eminent L. Duchesne, in splitting hairs
in search of the Primacy in the phrases of the letter, have misinterpreted them. Cyril’s phrase “τὰ
μακρὰ τῶν Ἐκκλησιῶν ἐξη ηείζουσιν ἀνακσινοῡσξαι τῇ σῇ άγιότητι” (“the long customs of the
Churches persuade (me) to make known to thy holiness”) is translated by Duchesne as “Les graves
causes doivent toujours être soumises au Saint Siège!” (“Grave causes must always be submitted to the
Holy See!”). Here you have a complete misrepresentation of what was said by St. Cyril, who was
referring to the ancient ecclesiastical custom, whereby the presidents of the Churches of the East and
West communicated to one another the important happenings, as we have already mentioned.
 479

Subsequently, writing to Rufus of Thessalonica, who was Exarch of Eastern Illyricon and therefore
the president of a particular Church, St. Cyril said: “It is appropriate that all things useful to the
Churches, and generally speaking, those which crop up day by day, should be communicated to your
holiness.”1

Ch. X Three Spurious Epistles from the Fourteenth Century Concerning Purgatory

Around the beginning of the 14th century, three spurious letters were in circulation among the Latins, one of
which attempts to bring patristic witnesses to the novel doctrine of purgatory.

Art historian Marjorie Elizabeth Cropper (1944 – current) discusses the spurious letters that influenced
numerous Renaissance works of art depicting the death of St. Jerome:

Yet all the scenes of Jerome’s death that we have considered so far, whether they include the scribe
or not, are based on the text shown being written before our eyes in Starnina’s fresco and Agostino’s
altarpiece. This is the letter De morte Hieronymi, to which we have already referred, describing the
death of the saint on 30 September 420, and purportedly written to Damasus, Bishop of Porto, and
Theodosius, a Roman senator, by Eusebius of Cremona, Jerome’s disciple and his successor as leader
of the monastery in Bethlehem. It suddenly appeared, probably in the first decade of the fourteenth
century, together with two others. One of them, supposedly written by Saint Augustine to Cyril,
Bishop of Jerusalem, praises Jerome as the near equal of John the Baptist. The other is from Cyril to
Augustine and concerns Jerome’s posthumous miracles.

These letters must have been written in Italy and in Dominican circles. They are intricately bound up
with the history of the cult of Saint Jerome in general in the later middle ages, and they can be linked
most specifically with two important events. The first is the translation of Jerome’s remains to Santa
Maria Maggiore in Rome, an event recorded in the Translatio corporis beati Hieronymi, dating from
the 1290s. Jerome’s body was laid to rest there, as it had been in Bethlehem, next to the Praesepium.
The letter from Cyril, who actually predeceased Jerome, contains a “prophetic” reference to this
translation. The second important event was a decretals issued by Boniface VIII in 1295 directing
that the feasts of the Doctors of the Church be celebrated sub duplici solemnitate. The letter
describing Jerome’s death, claimed to have been composed by Eusebius and the writing of which is
depicted by Agostino, includes an indirect quotation from this decretal, and therefore must postdate
it.2

Mentioning the spurious letter of Cyril in a section discussing the false miracles adduced to support
purgatory, the learned Protestant professor and author Dr. Charles Elliott (1792 – 1869) writes:

The Priests and Friars have made great use of the apparition of St. Jerome after death to Eusebius,
commanding him to lay his sack on the corpses of three dead men, that they, rising from the dead,
might confess purgatory, which formerly they denied. This story is found in an epistle attributed to
St. Cyril: but what is fatal to this assertion is, that Jerome outlived Cyril, and wrote his life. 3

The prominent Anglican scholar Archbishop James Ussher (1581 – 1656) discusses this spurious work in his
essay on prayers for the dead, reprinted in the Tracts for the Times:

1 Gerard Shelley (translator), Chrysostomos Papadopoulos, The Third Oecumenical Council and the Primacy
of the Bishop of Rome: A Reply to the Encyclical “Lux Veritatis” of Pius XI, pp. 21 – 22, London: The Faith
Press, 1933.
2 Marjorie Elizabeth Cropper, The Domenichino Affair, Ch. I, p. 45, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press,

2005. For more discussion and examples of the artworks, see Chapters I – II, pp. 23 – 98.
3 Charles Elliott, Delineation of Roman Catholicism, Book II, Ch. XII, VIII, 1., p. 281, London: Wesleyan

Conference Office, 4th Ed., 1877.

 480

That “barbarous impostor,” as Molanus rightly styleth him, who counterfeited a letter as written by
St. Cyril, bishop of Jerusalem, unto St. Augustine, touching the miracles of St. Jerome, taketh upon him
to lay down the precise time of the first arising of this opinion [purgatory] amongst the Grecians in
this manner:

“After the death of most glorious Jerome, a certain heresy or sect arose amongst the Grecians, and
came to the Latins also, which went about with their wicked reasons to prove, that the souls of the
blessed, until the day of the general judgement, wherein they were to be joined again unto their
bodies, are deprived of the sight and knowledge of God, in which the whole blessedness of the saints
doth consist; and that the souls of the damned, in like manner, until that day are tormented with no
pains. Whose reason was this: that as the soul did merit or sin with the body, so with the body was it
to receive rewards or pains. Those wicked sectaries also did maintain, that there was no place of
purgatory, wherein the souls which had not done full penance for their sins in this world might be
purged. Which pestilent sect getting head, so great sorrow fell upon us, that we were even weary of
our life.”

Then he telleth a wise tale, how St. Jerome, being at that time with God, for the confutation of this
new-sprung heresy, raised up three men from the dead, after that he had first “led their souls into
paradise, purgatory, and hell, to the end they might make known unto all men the things that were
done there;” but had not the wit to consider, that St. Cyril himself had need to be raised up to make
the fourth man among them. For how otherwise should he, who died thirty years before St. Jerome,
as is known to every one that knoweth the history of those times, have heard and written the news
which those good fellows, that were raised by St. Jerome after his death, did relate concerning
heaven, hell, and purgatory? Yet it is nothing so strange to me, I confess, that such idle dreams as
these should be devised in the times of darkness, to delude the world withal, as that now in the broad
daylight Binsfeldius and Suarez, and other Romish merchants, should adventure to bring forth such
rotten stuff as this, with hope to gain any credit of antiquity thereby, unto the new-erected staple of
popish purgatory.1

Ch. XI An Interpolation Pertaining to Purgatory in Erasmus’s Edition of Augustine

In Erasmus’s edition of St. Augustine’s City of God, there are 10 or 12 lines interpolated on the subject of
purgatory.2 There is no basis for this reading in the manuscripts, and it was soon removed and corrected by
Roman Catholics in later editions,3 but the false passage still impacted Latin apologetics. For example, Robert
Bellarmine quotes the following sentence from this interpolation in his controversial work on Purgatory: “It is
apparent that such [persons], cleansed before the day of judgment by means of temporary punishments
which their spirits undergo, are not to be handed over to the torments of the eternal fire.”4

1 James Ussher, Archbishop Ussher on Prayers for the Dead, Tracts for the Times, Vol. III, No. 72., Against
Romanism, No. 2., pp. 30 – 31, Oxford: J. H. Parker, New Ed., 1840.
2 De civitate Dei, Book XXI, Ch. XXIV. Note that the Anglican William John Hall mentions this interpolation (in

Hall, Purgatory, Ch. IV, pp. 140 – 142 & 171, n. 4c.), but he quotes only the genuine passage of Augustine, and
then, while likely intending to refer to the interpolated text, he mistakenly confuses the authentic passage
with the interpolation, and calls the authentic passage the forgery.
3 See the footnote in the Maurist edition of St. Augustine’s works (Vol. VII, pp. 641 – 642, n. d., Paris:

Franciscus Muguet, 1685), reprinted in Migne, PL, Vol. XLI, pp. 737 – 738, n. 2. Also see Corpus Scriptorum
Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum (CSEL), Vol. XL, Vol II, p. 559, Prague: F. Tempsky, 1900. The modern critical
edition here is Corpus Christianorum Series Latina (CCSL), Vol. XLVIII, p. 790.
4 Robert Bellarmine, De Purgatorio, I, 10.
 481

Ch. XII The Arabic Canons of Nicaea

Professor Giorgio Bartoli, a Jesuit scholar who left Roman Catholicism for Protestantism, writes about
forgeries in the Papal interest:

Another forgery in favour of Rome is found in the formula, or profession of faith, which Pope
Hormisdas presented for signature to the oriental bishops who had taken part in the Acacian schism.
In that formula we read the following words: “Quia in Sede Apostolica immaculata est semper
catholica reservata religio et sancta celebrata doctrina.” The words in italics are wanting in the
genuine formula which Pope Hormisdas consigned to his legates for the Greek Emperor Anastasius,
nor are they in his Letter 26 to the bishops of Spain. They appear, however, in the formula signed by
the Fathers of the Eighth Ecumenical Council, and from that document were taken by the Vatican
Council to establish the infallibility of the Pope. But they are not genuine. They are wanting in both
the sources - i.e. in the formula of St. Hormisdas and in his Letter 26. They were, therefore,
interpolated into the Acts of the Eighth Council by a friend of Rome.a
A forgery, likewise, are the five documents, once commonly given at full length, in the old
editions of Collectio Conciliorum, to show that the Fathers of the Council of Nicæa asked for the
approval and ratification of their Canons and Acts by Pope Sylvester. The five documents are: (a) A
collective letter written by Osius, Macarius of Jerusalem, and the two Roman priests, Victor and
Vincent, to Pope Sylvester; (b) the answer of the latter, containing the ratification of the Council; (c)
another letter of Pope Sylvester, almost identical in purpose with the former one; (d) the Acts of a
supposed Roman Council, convened by Pope Sylvester, in order to confirm the Council of Nicæa; (e)
the Constitutio Sylvestri. All these documents are spurious. They were forged at a much later date
than the Council of Nicæa, perhaps in the sixth century, by a Lombard priest, who lived at Rome, and
wanted by that fabrication to defend Pope Symmachus, who had been accused of several crimes and
summoned before a Synod of Bishops (501 or 503), who, however, acquitted him. The style and
Latin of the documents are simply barbarous.b
The words which the Prisca, the ancient Latin translation of the Nicene Canons, prefixes to
Canon VI. – Ecclesia Romana semper habuit primatum (“The Roman Church has always possessed the
primacy”) — are interpolated, spurious, and false.c The true and genuine wording of Canon VI. is as
follows: “The ancient custom, followed in Egypt, Libya, and in the Pentapolis, must continue - i.e. that
the Bishop of Alexandria is to have the right of jurisdiction over all those provinces, because he is in
the same conditions as the Bishop of Rome.”
Some unknown friend of the Roman See, a monk, perhaps, finding implied in this Canon a
certain equality of rank, condition, and power of the Bishop of Alexandria with that of Rome, prefixed
to the old Prisca the aforesaid words, to save the primacy of the Pope. But the words thus added are
his, not those of the Council of Nicæa.
Altogether spurious and fabricated is the pretended Synod of Sinuessa, held in that place A.D.
303, in which it was established that Prima Sedes non judicatur a quopiam (“The first See [that of
Rome] may not be judged by any one”). Hardouin and Mansi inserted the Acts of that Council in their
collections; but now all the learned, Catholic as well as Protestant, agree in holding these Canons to
be spurious and utterly fabricated. Thus wrote, many years ago, Pagi, Papebrock, Natalis Alexander,
Remi Ceillier, Bower, Walch, and others.
False likewise is the celebrated Decretum Gelasii (the Decree of Pope St. Gelasius I.), where
we meet very strong words in favour of the primacy of the Roman See. This has been lately
demonstrated again, with very convincing arguments, by M. Roux in his book, Le Pape St. Gelase.d
Largely interpolated, or, at least, very doubtful, is the text of the Canons III., IV., V. of the
Council of Sardica. The Greek text of the Canons is much less explicit in favour of Rome than the
Latin translation of Denis, which bluntly attributes the right of revision to the Pope. In the ancient
Prisca, moreover, the additional sentence occurs: Quce decreverit Romanus Episcopus, confirmata
erunt (“What the Roman Bishop has decreed, shall be confirmed”), which words are altogether
wanting in the Greek text.e
Of course, it is well known that the Council of Sardica is not, and never was, held for
Ecumenical. Its canons had, however, a fictitious importance owing to the fact that later on Pope
Zosimus (A.D. 417-418), in the cause of the priest Apiarius from Sicca in Africa, deposed from his
 482

rank by the bishop of that see, and appealing to Rome, the Pope, I say, in order to show that he had
the right to accept the appeal of Apiarius, quoted, and referred the African bishops to what he called a
Canon of the Council of Nicæa which says: “When a bishop believes he has been unjustly deposed by
his colleagues he may appeal to Rome, and the Roman bishop shall have his cause examined by new
judges (judices in partibus?).” This Canon is not of Nicæa, but of Sardica, the fifth in the Greek, the
seventh in the Latin text.
Another fraud, as singular as it is evident, has to do with the Canons of the Council of Nicæa,
translated early into Arabic and edited in the sixteenth century by the Maronite Abraham Echellensis.
Amongst them found the following, which comes Number XLIV.: “Quemadmodum Patriarcha
potestatem habet super subditos suos; ita quoque potestatem habet Romanus Pontifex super
universos Patriarchas, quemadmodum habebat Petrus super universos Christianitatis principes et
concilia ipsorum; quoniam Christi Vicarius est super redemptionem, Ecclesias et cunctos populos
ejus.” (Just as the Patriarch has authority over his subjects, so has the Roman Pontiff over all the
Patriarchs, as St. Peter had over all the princes of Christendom and their Councils; because the Pope
is the Vicar of Christ over the redemption, all the Churches and all his peoples.) These supposed
Arabic Canons of the Council of Nicæa were brought from Alexandria in Egypt into Europe by the
Italian Jesuit John Baptist Romano, and were directly received as genuine, though in themselves most
absurd, by the Jesuit Francis Turrianus; and another Jesuit, Alphonsus Pisano, did not shrink from
inserting them into his history of the Council of Nicæa. The latter accepted likewise, as authentic, a
pretended letter of St. Athanasius to Pope Marcus. The fact is that the Council of Nicæa made but
twenty Canons, and the aforesaid Arabian Canons are synodical regulations referring to various
oriental peoples, as, to Syrians, Chaldeans, Maronites, Copts, Jacobites, etc., etc. Moreover, the
manuscripts from which the Maronite Abraham copied them are full of blunders, misspellings,
interpolations, and various readings; which must be said in particular of Canon XLIV., savouring of
modern manipulation from without. At any rate, even should it be genuine, which we most
emphatically deny, the explanation is at hand. History tells us that, in former centuries, now this, now
that oriental Church, driven to the wall by the Turks, used to approach the Roman Church with the
view of obtaining from her more fortunate sister money and men against her foes. To get all this
more easily, those oriental Churches in distress gratified the Pope with the most splendid and
laudatory titles, which, later on, they themselves laughed at. In fact, as soon as the political danger
that threatened them was warded off, they fell back into the schism and hated Rome more than ever.
This is the history of all oriental Churches, the Maronite excepted. Notwithstanding all this, and in
spite of history and of sound criticism, the so-called Arabian Canons were accepted as genuine by Fr.
Hardouin, and printed in his Collectio Conciliorum.f

[Bartoli’s Footnotes:] a) Cf. Thiel, Epistolae Rom. Pontiff. b) Cf. D. Coustant, Epistolæ Rom. Pontificum,
Praef. p. lxxxvi. Hefele, Histoire des Conciles, vol. i. p. 430 seq. c) Cf. Harduin, S.J., Collectio Concil. tom.
i. p. 325. d) Roux, Le Pape St. Gelase, cap. vii. Paris, 1880. [Roux was a French Roman Catholic priest,
and his work is cited as a source in the Catholic Encyclopedia article titled “Pope St. Gelasius I”.] e)
Cf. Van Espen, Diritto Ecclesiastico, ed. Ital. p. 276; Fuchs, Hefele, etc. f) Cf. Hefele, History of the
Councils, vol. i. p. 350 seq.1

Bartoli, the author of this extract, writes about himself:

Until eighteen months ago I was a member of the Society of Jesus; now I am no more so. I
was not expelled from that Society. I left it of my own accord, because the religious opinions and
doctrines I held did not any longer agree with the opinions and doctrines held sacred by that Society.
As long as I remained in the Society of Jesus my Superiors never complained of me for
reasons other than those connected with differences in doctrine. On this point I can appeal to all the
Jesuits who have known me. I served the Society of Jesus for twenty-seven years with the utmost
fidelity, obedience, and self-sacrifice. I taught science, literature, and languages in several colleges of
the Society, both at home and abroad; i.e. in Europe and Asia. I have preached the Word of God in

1Giorgio Bartoli, The Primitive Church and the Primacy of Rome, Ch. VI, pp. 107 – 114, London: Hodder and
Stoughton, 1910.
 483

different countries and languages, and for five years I was a regular writer on the staff of the Jesuit
magazine La Civiltà Cattolica, which is published at Rome under the eye of the Pope, and in the
interest of the Papacy.1

Alphonsus Pisano, who inserted the false Arabic canons in his history of the Council of Nicaea, was a Jesuit
scholar of the 16th century, Doctor of Theology, and Professor of the ordinary, and was venerated by his
Roman Catholic peers and superiors.

I would disagree with how Bartoli represents the Orthodox churches approaching Rome, but it is true that
there was considerable external pressure for the Orthodox to apostatize from the faith and turn to the Latins
for political help. Also, while Sardica was not an ecumenical council, Sardica’s canons do have a level of
ecumenical authority from the Council of Trullo. Regardless, popes and Latin officials repeatedly mistook the
Sardican canons for Nicene in their attempt to make a foundation for the Papal claims, yet this backfires
against them as the very canons of Sardica provide good evidence against Papal supremacy (see the chapter
on this).

It has been said, in defence of the Latins, that the falsehood proceeded not from Rome, but from the Orientals.
However, it most certainly came from partisans of Rome in the East, after the beginning of the schism
between East and West, and thus they are not reflective of any ancient tradition. Moreover, the argument of
Oriental provenance is beside the point because these canons are now admitted to be false, these canons
highly exalt the Papal power, and the Latins and their allies have still used them in their interest.

Following Bartoli’s discussion of the forged Arabic Canons of Nicaea, I proceed to quote Hefele, who has an
excellent discussion and detailed examination on these canons in his work, which was referred to in footnote
6 of the quoted extract of Bartoli (though beginning on p. 355 in the second edition). Hefele mentions that
many Latins have tried to prove that Nicaea decreed more than 20 canons, but Hefele skillfully refutes these
errors, and shows that the Arabic Canons are a forgery:

In the face of these numerous and important testimonies from the Greek Church and the
Latin, which are unanimous in recognising only twenty canons of Nicæa, and exactly those which
have been handed down to us, we cannot consider authentic the Latin letter which is pretended to
have been written to Pope Marcus by S. Athanasius, in which it is said that the Council of Nicæa
promulgated first of all forty Greek canons, then twenty Latin canons, and that afterwards the
Council reassembled, and unitedly ordained these seventy canons. a A tradition, erroneously
established in the East, may have caused this letter to be accepted. We know, indeed, that in some
Eastern countries it was believed that the Council of Nicæa had promulgated this number of canons;
and some collections do contain seventy. Happily, since the sixteenth century we have been in
possession of these pretended canons of Nicæa; we can therefore judge them with certainty.

The first who made them known in the West was the Jesuit J. Baptista Eomanus, who, having
been sent to Alexandria by Pope Paul IV., found an Arabic MS. in the house of the patriarch of that
city, containing eighty canons of the Council of Nicæa.b He copied the MS., took his copy to Rome, and
translated it into Latin, with the help of George of Damascus, a Maronite archbishop. The learned
Jesuit Francis Turrianus interested himself in this discovery, and had the translation of Father
Baptista revised and improved by a merchant of Alexandria who was in Rome. About the same time
another Jesuit, Alphonso Pisanus, composed a Latin history of the Council of Nicæa, with the help of
the work of Gelasius of Cyzicus, which had just been discovered; and at his request Turrianus
communicated to him the Latin translation of the Arabic canons. Pisanus received them into his
work.c In the first editiond the testimony of the pretended letter of S. Athanasius to Marcus caused
him to reduce the eighty canons to seventy; but in the subsequent editions he renounced this
abbreviation, and published all the eighty canons in the order of the Arabic MS. It was in this way
that the Latin translation of the eighty so-called Arabic canons of Nicæa passed into the other

1 Bartoli, The Primitive Church and the Primacy of Rome, Preface, pp. v – vi.
 484

collections of the Councils, particularly into that of Venice and of Binius. Some more recent
collections, however, adopted the text of a later translation, which Turrianus had made.

Shortly after the first edition of Alphonso Pisanus appeared, Turrianus made the
acquaintance of a young converted Turk called Paul Ursinus, who knew Arabic very well, and
understood Latin and Italian. Turrianus confided to him a fresh translation of the eighty Arabic
canons. Ursinus, in preparing it, made use of another ancient Arabian MS., discovered in the library
of Pope Marcellus II. (1555). This second MS. agreed so well with that of Alexandria, that they might
both be taken for copies from one and the same original. Turrianus published this more accurate
translation in 1578. He accompanied it with notes, and added a Proëmium, in which he tried to prove
that the Council of Nicæa promulgated more than twenty canons.e All the collections of the Councils
since Turrianus have considered his position as proved, and have admitted the eighty canons. f

In the following century, the Maronite Abraham Echellensis made the deepest researches
with reference to the Arabic canons of the Council of Nicæa; and they led him to the opinion that
these canons must have been collected from different Oriental nations, from the Syrians, Chaldeans,
Maronites, Copts, Jacobites, and Nestorians, and that they had been translated into many Oriental
languages. At the same time he started, and with truth, the suggestion that these Oriental collections
were simply translations of ancient Greek originals, and that consequently in the Greek Church too
they must have reckoned more than twenty canons of Nicæa.g After having compared other Arabian
MSS. which he had obtained, Echellensis gave a fresh Latin translation of these canons at Paris in
1645. According to these MSS., there were eighty-four canons instead of eighty. However, this
difference arose much more from the external arrangement than from the canons themselves. Thus
the thirteenth, seventeenth, thirty-second, and fifty-sixth canons of Turrianus were each divided into
two in the translation by Abraham Echellensis; on the other hand, the forty-third and eighty-third of
Echellensis each formed two canons in the work of Turrianus. The twenty-ninth, thirty-seventh, and
forty-first of A. Echellensis are wanting in Turrianus; but, again, Echellensis has not the forty-fifth
canon of Turrianus. A superficial study of these two collections of canons would lead to the
conclusion that they were almost identical; but it is not so. The corresponding canons in the two
translations sometimes have an entirely different meaning. We can but conclude either that the
Arabian translators understood the Greek original differently, or else that the MSS. which they used
showed considerable variations. The latter supposition is the most probable; it would explain how
the eighty-four Arabian canons contain the twenty genuine canons of Nicæa, but often with
considerable changes. Without reckoning these eighty-four canons, Echellensis has also translated
into Latin, and published, a considerable number of ecclesiastical decrees, διατυπώσεις,
constitutiones, also attributed to the Nicene Council. He added to this work a Latin translation of the
Arabic preface, which preceded the entire collection in the MS., together with a learned dissertation
in defence of the eighty-four canons, with a good many notes. Mansih has retained all these articles,
and Hardouini has also reproduced the principal part of them.

… it is certain that these Arabic canons are not the work of the Council of Nicæa: their
contents evidently prove a much more recent origin. … The Constitutiones, edited by Echellensis,
still less than the eighty-four canons, maintain the pretension of dating back to the Council of
Nicæa. …

We may therefore sum up the certain proofs resulting from all these facts, by affirming that
these Arabic canons are not genuine; and all the efforts of Turrianus, Abraham Echellensis, and
Cardinal d’Aguirre, cannot prevent an impartial observer from coming to this opinion even with
regard to some of those canons which they were anxious to save, while abandoning the others.j
Together with the authenticity of these canons, the hypothesis of Abraham Echellensis also vanishes,
which supposes them to have been collected by Jacob, the celebrated Bishop of Nisibis, who was
present at the Nicene Synod. They belong to a later period. Assemani offers another supposition,
supporting it by this passage from Ebed-jesu:k “Bishop Maruthas of Tagritl translated the seventy-
three canons of Nicæa.”m Assemani believes these seventy-three canons to be identical with the
eighty-four Arabic canons, but such identity is far from being proved. Even the number of the canons
 485

is different; and if it were not so, we know, from what we saw above, that several of the Arabic
canons indicate a more recent period than those of Bishop Maruthas. It is probable that Maruthas
really translated seventy-three canons, supposed to be Nicene; that is to say, that he had in his hands
one of those MSS. spoken of above, which contained various collections of canons falsely attributed to
the Council of Nicæa.n

It will be asked why in some parts of the East they should have attributed so great a number
of canons to the Council of Nicæa. It is not difficult to explain the mistake. We know, indeed, that the
canons of various councils were at a very early period collected into one corpus; and in this corpus
the canons of Nicæa always had the first place, on account of their importance. It happened
afterwards, that either accidentally or designedly, some copyists neglected to give the names of the
councils to those canons which followed the Nicene. We have already seen that even at Rome there
was a copy containing, sub uno titulo, the canons of Nicæa and those of Sardica. When these copies
were circulated in the East, that which might have been foreseen took place in course of time: viz.,
from a want of the spirit of criticism, all the later canons which followed after the true canons were
attributed to the Council of Nicæa.

But it must also be said that certain learned men, especially Baronius o and the Spanish
Cardinal d’Aguirre,p have tried hard to prove, from the only Greek and Latin memorials, and without
these Arabic canons, that the Synod of Nicæa published more than twenty canons.

a. The Synod, said Aguirre, certainly set forth a canon on the celebration of Easter; and a
proof of this is, that Balsamon, in his commentary upon the first canon of Antioch, mentions this
Nicene canon as being in existence. There must therefore, concludes Aguirre, have been above
twenty Nicene canons. But it may be answered that the ancient authors make no mention of a canon,
but only of a simple ordinance, of the Council of Nicæa respecting the celebration of the Easter
festival; and it is indeed certain that such a rule was given by the Council, as is proved by the
synodical decree.q As for Balsamon, he says exactly the contrary to what Carinal d Aguirre
maintains … D’Aguirre evidently did not consult the Greek text of Balsamon, but probably made use
of the inaccurate Latin translation which Schelstrate has given of it.r …

c. Aguirre suggests further, that the Arians burnt the complete acts of the Council of Nicæa,
and allowed only these twenty canons to remain, in order to have it believed that the Council had
decreed no others. Baroniuss also makes similar supposition, but there is not the slightestt proof of
such an act on the part of the Arians; and if the Arians had done as he suggests, they would certainly
have burnt the Creed of Nicæa itself, which contains their most express condemnation. …

q. Again, it has been said that Atticus Bishop of Constantinoples alludes to a canon not found
among the twenty, when he indicates very precisely in a letter who those are, according to the rule of
the Council of Nicæa, who ought to have literae formatae.u But the document bearing the name of
Bishop Atticus was unknown to the whole of antiquity; it belongs only to the middle ages, and has
certainly no greater value than the pseudo-Isidorian documents.v But if this memorial were
authentic (Baronius accepts it as suchx), it would prove nothing against our position; for Baronius
himself tells us that the Fathers of Nicæa deliberated very secretly upon the form that the literae
formatae ought to take, but made no canon upon the subject.y

[Hefele’s Footnotes:] a) See Athanasii Opp. ed. Bened. Patav. ii. 599. The learned Benedictine
Montfaucon says (l.c. p. 597), speaking of this letter, and of some others which are also spurious: Sane
commentis sunt et mendaciis respersæ exque variis locis consarcinatæ, ut ne umbram quidem
γνησιότητος referant. b) This MS. was subsequently bought by Joseph Simon Assemani of the Coptic
patriarch John; it is now in the Vatican Library. Cf. Angelo Mai, Præf. p. 5 to the tenth volume of his
Scriptorum vet. nova Collectio. c) Lib. iii. d) Dilling 1572. e) At the end of his Latin translation of the
Constit. Apostol. f) e.g. Mansi, ii. 947 sqq.; Hard. i. 463 sqq. Most of our information respecting the
eighty Arabic canons is taken from the Proëmium of P. Turrianus. [Another Conciliar authority that
could be added here is Labbe and Cossart (Concilia, Tom. II. col. 291 – 318).] g) Mansi, ii. 1071, 1072.
 486

h) Mansi, ii. 982-1082. i) Hard. i. 478-528. j) Cf. Pagi, Crit. in Annales Baron, ad ann. 325, n. 45;
Pearson, Vindicia Epist. Ignat. P. i. p. 177; Richer, Hist. Councils-General, i. 110; Ludovici, Præf. ad Ittig.
Hist. Concil. Nic. k) Sec. xiv. l) Sec. v. m) Assemani, Biblioth. Orient. i. 23, 195; Angelo Mai, l.c. Præf, p.
vii. n) Cf. Spittler, Geschichte des Canonischen Rechts, S. 108, note. o) Annales, ad ann. 325, n. 156 sqq.
p) Collect. Concil. Hispan. i. 1; Appar. Diss. 8. q) Socrat. i. 9. r) Concil. Antioch. Antwerp 1681. [Our
note – The inaccurate translator Emmanuel Schelstrate (1649 – 1692) was a Romanist theologian
and “While he was a canon of the cathedral of Antwerp, he was called to Rome by Innocent IX and
made an assistant librarian of the Vatican Library. … He was a fine scholar in early ecclesiastical
history and became the accredited defender of the papal supremacy.” (René Maere, Emmanuel
Schelstrate, in CE, Vol. XIII., p. 526)] s) Hard. i. 1428, n. 21; Mansi, iv. 415, in the note. t) The letter of
S. Athanasius to Mark, speaking of that, is evidently spurious. See above, sec. 23. u) Sec. v. v) Hard. v.
1453. w) Tillemont, Mémoires, vi. 288, b. x) Ad ann. 325, n. 162 sq. y) Cf. Natal. Alex. l.c. p. 387.1

For reference, these so-called Arabic canons of Nicaea contain the following statements on the Bishop of
Rome:

[Canon XXXIX] Of the care and power which a Patriarch has over the bishops and
archbishops of his patriarchate; and of the primacy of the Bishop of Rome over all:

Let the patriarch consider what things are done by the archbishops and bishops in their
provinces; and if he shall find anything done by them otherwise than it should be, let him change it,
and order it, as seemeth him fit: for he is the father of all, and they are his sons. And although the
archbishop be among the bishops as an elder brother, who hath the care of his brethren, and to
whom they owe obedience because he is over them; yet the patriarch is to all those who are under
his power, just as he who holds the seat of Rome, is the head and prince of all patriarchs; inasmuch as
he is first, as was Peter, to whom power is given over all Christian princes, and over all their peoples,
as he who is the Vicar of Christ our Lord over all peoples and over the whole Christian Church, and
whoever shall contradict this, is excommunicated by the Synod.

[Canon XXXVII] Let there be only four patriarchs in the whole world as there are four writers
of the Gospel, and four rivers, etc. And let there be a prince and chief over them, the lord of the see of
the Divine Peter at Rome, according as the Apostles commanded. And after him the lord of the great
Alexandria, which is the see of Mark. And the third is the lord of Ephesus, which is the see of John the
Divine who speaks divine things. And the fourth and last is my lord of Antioch, which is another see
of Peter. And let all the bishops be divided under the hands of these four patriarchs; and the bishops
of the little towns which are under the dominion of the great cities let them be under the authority of
these metropolitans. But let every metropolitan of these great cities appoint the bishops of his
province, but let none of the bishops appoint him, for he is greater than they. Therefore let every
man know his own rank, and let him not usurp the rank of another. And whosoever shall contradict
this law which we have established the Fathers of the Synod subject him to anathema.2

Peter le Page Renouf says that the Arabic canons date well after the beginning of the controversy between the
East and the West, and they are likely to be attributed to the Maronites:

1 Hefele, History of the Councils, Vol. I, Book II, Ch. II, Sec. 41, pp. 359 – 374. Also see Percival’s Excursus on
the Number of the Nicene Canons in Percival, Seven Ecumenical Councils pp. 43 – 45. The best recent Roman
Catholic analysis of these canons is in Scott Butler and John Collorafi, Keys Over the Christian World, Ch. XXIII,
pp. 579 – 593, [Publisher and printing location not given (USA)], 2003. The canons (at least those on the
papacy) appear to have had their origin in the ninth century, but the authenticity and reliability of the sources
remains doubtful, and more research remains to be done on the Eastern sources.
2 Percival, Seven Ecumenical Councils, p. 48. The numbering of the canons and their Latin translation varies

in the different editions.

 487

These Arabic canons contain gross anachronisms which prove them to be of much more recent date
than the beginning of the schism [between East and West]. The manuscripts which contain the
canons are not of very great antiquity. … The Arabic canons themselves, however, furnish us with a
clue which enables us to conjecture their origin with a great amount of probability. De Marca long
ago called attention to the canon which placed the island of Cyprus under the jurisdiction of the
patriarch of Antioch. Is fecit cui prodest. The Maronite patriarchs of Antioch exercised jurisdiction in
Cyprus over several bishops and churches of their own communion, and it was most probably in
their interest that the canon was forged in justification of an ecclesiastical arrangement directly at
variance with ancient rule. If the fraud owes its origin to a Maronite hand, it is not to be wondered at
if in some of the canons great authority is ascribed to the Bishop of Rome. 1

Several Roman scholars have attempted to bolster the authenticity of the Arabic canons, including
Columbanus and Natalis Alexander, who follow Echellensis.2 In order to lend credence to the Arabic canons,
Bellarmine, Binius, Canus, and Coster also tried to prove that there were more than twenty canons
promulgated by Nicaea, but their arguments have been sufficiently answered.

They are even cited in more recent times. The Roman Catholic priest and apologist Thomas Stanislaus Dolan
(1869 – 1918) quotes the 39th and 37th canons (cited above) of this false collection, as if they were of
assistance in proving the Roman Supremacy. Dolan qualifies this with the following statement:

I am perfectly aware that there has been a long and as yet unsettled controversy, as to the exact
number of canons promulgated by the Council of Nice. I am aware also that perhaps the more critical
view seems to point to only twenty canons, whereas the Arabic manuscript translated into Latin by
Father Romanus S. J. points to eighty. The antiquity of the Arabic MS. however is not to be called into
question, and the fact that it proceeds from an oriental source, makes it valuable in this connection. 3

Dolan italicizes the word ‘perhaps’, as if to raise doubt, but it is absolutely certain that the more critical view,
even by his own Church, is that there are only twenty authentic canons, as Hefele has demonstrated, and this
critical view is correct beyond any reasonable doubt. The antiquity and provenance of the manuscript make
no difference – the canons cited by Dolan are manifestly spurious and it can do him no good to allege that
they might be from Nicaea, or even from the same century. The Arabic Canons of Nicaea provide no evidence
for the papacy, and they are only valuable in showing what the decrees of the Nicene council might have
looked like if the holy fathers had actually believed in papal supremacy.

The following is a short list of Roman Catholic authors who cite the Arabic Nicene canons in favour of the
Roman primacy. Almost all the authors mention that they are taken from the Arabic edition of the Nicene
canons, or that there is some debate concerning them, but these authors still think they can find support from
these canons:

(Joanne Paulo Lancelotto, Institutiones Juris Canonici de Mandato Pauli Papae IV., Vol. I, Lib. I, Tit. V, § 9., C., p.
67, Venice: Jacobum Tomasinum, 1704.) The author, also called Johannes Paulus Lancelloti or John Paul
Lancelot (1522 – 1590), was a jurist and professor at the University of Perugia.

1 Peter le Page Renouf, [Book review of] The Tradition of the Syriac Church of Antioch concerning the Primacy
and the Prerogatives of St. Peter, and of his Successors, the Roman Pontiffs, in The Academy, Vol. III, No. 61., p.
454, London: Williams and Norgate, 1872. I recommend reading this entire article. Note that Sir Renouf was
opposed to the dogma of Papal infallibility.
2 James Bernard Clinch, Letters on Church Government, Letter IX, p. 465, Dublin: Graisberry and Campbell,

1812.
3 Thomas Stanislaus Dolan, The See of Peter and the Voice of Antiquity, Ch. IV, pp. 48 – 50, St. Louis, MO: B.

Herder, 1908.
 488

The Anglican bishop Edward Stillingfleet (1635 – 1699) replies to a Roman Catholic controversialist who had
quoted in favour of the Papacy the Arabic Canons of Nicaea as though they were the real canons (Edward
Stillingfleet, A Rational Account of the Grounds of Protestant Religion, Vol. II, Part II, Ch. V, Sect. IV, pp. 158 –
163, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1844).

(Alphonso Maria de Liguori, Opere di S. Alphonso Maria de Liguori, Vol. VII, Opere Morali, Vol. III, Vindiciae
Pro Suprema Rom. Pontificis Auctoritate Contra Iustinum Febronium, Cap. IV, 2., p. 1011, Turin: Giacinto
Marietti, 1880.) Liguori simply cites the text of “canon 39 of Nicaea” in his chapter to demonstrate the
supremacy of the pope from the ecumenical councils, without mentioning that this canon is from the Arabic
version or that it may be doubtful. I believe this is an instance of Liguori’s equivocation and dissimulation,
see Charles Hastings Collette, Romanism in England Exposed, Letters XII – XV, pp. 109 – 135 (and elsewhere
throughout the entire work), London: Arthur Hall, 2nd Ed., 185. Likewise see Richard Paul Blakeney’s
treatise on Saint Alphonsus Liguori. Also, five false patristic quotations or references [Irenæus, Anselm,
Bernard, Ignatius, Chrysostom, besides using the forged Greek catena from Aquinas] made by Liguori are
pointed out in Richard Frederick Littledale, Plain Reasons Against Joining the Church of Rome, LVIII, a., pp.
126 – 130, London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1912.

(Pontifici Romani Primatus, J. C. Poussin and J. C. Ganier, Dictionnaire de La Tradition Pontificale, Patristique
et Conciliare, Vol. II, p. 842, Paris: J. P. Migne, 1855.) The two authors are abbots from the Latin diocese of
Rheims and members of the Imperial Academy of that city.

(Aloysium Vincenzi, De Hebraaeorum et Christianorum Sacra Monarchia et de Infallibili in Utraque

Magisterio, Part II, Cap. III, p. 183., n. 1., Rome: Ex Typographia Vaticana, 1875.) Luigi Vincenzi (d. 1880) is a
Greek Writer in the Vatican Library and Professor of Hebrew at the Roman University.

(Francisco Suarez, Defensio Fideo Catholicae et Apostolicae Adversus Anglicanae Sectae Errores, Part I, Liber
III, Cap. XVI, 3., p. 254, Naples: Ex Typis Fibrenianis, 1872.)

(Johann Friedrich Ludwig Rothensee, Andreas Räß, and Nikolaus von Weis, Der Primat des Papstes in allen
christlichen Jahrhunderten, Vol. I, Century IV, p. 119, Mainz: Florian Kupferberg, 1836.)

(Stephen K. Ray, Upon this Rock: St. Peter and the Primacy of Rome in Scripture and the Early Church, Part II,
pp. 195 – 196, n. 101, San Francisco, CA: Ignatius Press, 1999.) The Roman Catholic apologist Stephen K. Ray
(1954 – current) approvingly cites Dolan’s qualification.

Ch. XIII The Council of Sardica and Misquotations of Nicaea

As mentioned earlier, even the authentic words of the early councils were interpolated with passages meant
to aggrandize Rome. I will first discuss a very popular Roman Catholic polemic work titled “Catholic Belief”
by Joseph Faà di Bruno (1815 – 1888), an Italian Jesuit priest who was a missionary for 30 years in England.
In this work, there are many additional instances of the Latin use of spurious documents, beginning with the
first two examples given for the Papacy:

History proves, however, that the Pope’s Supremacy was as firmly believed by Catholics in
the first ages of Christianity as in those that followed. So far from there being any difference on this
head, the fact is, that whilst in later ages the supremacy of the Pope has been denied by the
schismatical Churches of the East, and by Protestant communities which have separated themselves
from the Catholic Church, for the first seven hundred years the whole of Christendom united in
believing and proclaiming the supremacy of the Roman See.
The Fathers of the Primitive Church had no doubt whatever that the Roman Pontiff was, by
God's appointment, the Supreme Pastor of ‘sheep’ and ‘lambs,’ that is, as interpreted by the Fathers of
the Church, of the whole flock of Christ, and the source of all spiritual jurisdiction. To reject this truth
was, in their judgment, to ruin the whole fabric of the Church; to deny His Vicar was to deny Christ.
 489

No one ever pretended to create this majestic office, the divine institution of it was always taken for
granted. The Councils did not invent it, but bore witness to it as older than themselves.
‘The Roman Church always had the Primacy,’ said the Fathers of Nicæa in the year of our
Lord 325. This was the confession of the first Œcumenical Council.
Twenty-two years later the great Council of Sardica wrote to Pope Julius I., that it was ‘most
fitting that the Bishops of the Lord make reference from all the Provinces to the head, that is, the See
of the Apostle Peter.’1

This work has the Nihil Obstat from Pius Melia (1800 – 1883), an Italian Jesuit theologian, and the
Imprimatur from Henry Edward Manning (1808 – 1892), a highly influential Roman Catholic cardinal and
Archbishop of Westminster, who had been an Anglican priest. The “Author’s American Edition” in 1884,
edited by American Roman Catholic priest Louis A. Lambert (1825 – 1910) bears the Imprimatur of John
McCloskey (1810 – 1885), the Latin Archbishop of New York. In the Preface to his work, Bruno states:

During the thirty years passed as a Missionary Priest in England, I have found that nearly all the
objections so often repeated against the faith and practice of the Roman Catholic Church come from
misunderstanding the true teaching of our Holy Religion, that holy Catholic faith which, in order to be
respected and beloved by well disposed Christian minds, needs only to be known. 2

Bruno’s book received much approval from Roman Catholics, and an advertisement for this work states that it
is

the cheapest and best book for missions … over 80,000 copies of this book have been sold in
England, and it has perhaps more than any other book been the means of bringing very many into the
Church.3

A later edition of Bruno’s work notes on the cover that 280,000 copies have been sold.4 The 1922 printing
says that 550,000 copies have been sold.5 This work was completely revised in 1940 by Roman Catholic
priest Joseph Cartmell, and was published until 1958. 6

Regarding the letter of the Council of Sardica to Pope Julius, this has been interpolated, as many Roman
Catholic scholars have conceded, as Percival comments:

A Letter to Pope Julius. – Among the Fragments of St. Hilary is found a letter from the synod
to Pope Julius. Hefele says that the text is ‘considerably injured.’ One clause of this letter above all
others has given occasion to much controversy. The passage runs as follows: ‘It was best and fittest
that the priests [i.e., bishops] from all the provinces should make their reports to the head, that is, the
chair of St. Peter.’ Blondell declares the passage to be an interpolation, resting his opinion upon the
barbarous Latin of the expression valde congruentissimum. And even Remi Ceillier, while explaining
this by the supposition, which is wholly gratuitous, that the original was Greek, yet is forced to
confess that the sentence interrupts the flow of thought and looks like an insertion. Bower, in his
History of the Popes, and Fuchs have urged still more strongly the spurious character of the phrase,
the latter using the convenient ‘marginal comment’ explanation. 7

1 Joseph Faà di Bruno, Catholic Belief: or A Short and Simple Exposition of Catholic Doctrine, Part I, Ch. XXVI,
pp. 111 – 112, London: Burns and Oates, 2nd Ed., 1878 [first published in 1875].
2 Bruno, Catholic Belief, Preface, p. v.
3 Hoffmann’s Catholic Directory, Almanac and Clergy List – Quarterly, for the Year of Our Lord 1886, p. 37,

Milwaukee, WI: Hoffmann Bros., 1886.

4 Louis A. Lambert (editor), Bruno, Catholic Belief, New York, NY: Benziger Brothers, [Undated reprint of the

Author’s American Edition of 1884].

5 New York, NY & Cincinnati, OH: Benziger Bros., 1922 (reprint of the Author’s American Edition of 1884).
6 I have not examined the 1940 revision.
7 Percival, Seven Ecumenical Councils, pp. 434. Percival follows Hefele, who comments likewise on this topic

(Hefele, History of Councils, Vol. II, Book IV, Sec. 66, pp. 163 – 164). Bruno implicitly refers to this quote again
 490

In the Third Edition (1880) of Bruno’s Catholic Belief, the citation of Nicaea is kept the same, but there is a
long footnote in response to criticisms of Bruno’s work, which endeavours to defend those words as
authentic.1 In the Fifth Edition (1884) of Catholic Belief, the citation of Nicaea is rephrased and the footnote
is retained. The citation of Sardica is kept unchanged, and appears to have never been corrected.2 The
paragraph on Nicaea is changed to “‘The Roman Church always had the Primacy,’ said the Fathers of Nicæa in
the year of our Lord 325, as quoted by the Council of Chalcedon A.D. 451.” Note that this revised paragraph,
while attempting to be more accurate, adds another falsehood, and now contains two errors, namely, that
those words from Nicaea are authentic, which is maintained from the earlier editions, and that those words
were quoted “by” the Council of Chalcedon, when in fact they were merely uttered by the Roman legate at
Chalcedon and are thus recorded in the acts of the Council of Chalcedon. The interpolated canon of Nicaea
was not quoted in the name of the Council of Chalcedon or in any conciliar statement, and immediately after
Paschasinus, the Roman legate, read the interpolated canon, Constantine, the Greek secretary of the council,
read the true Nicene Canon, implicitly and respectfully correcting the Roman legate, as mentioned in this
chapter.

Denny remarks on the interpolated versions of the 6th Nicene canon:

There is no doubt that these ‘versions’ do not represent the true text, for not only do they differ from
the Greek, which must be held to be the original, but also from the Latin text known as the ‘Vetus,’
which the Ballerini consider to have been made from a Greek codex extant long before the Council of
Chalcedon, as well as from that which is contained in the Acts of the Council of Carthage, A.D. 419,
which, it is evident from a speech made by Aurelius, was made from the copy of the Nicene Statutes
which, brought home by the Africans who had attended the Nicene Council, was preserved in the
Church of Carthage.3

In a later Latin manuscript of the Acts of the Council of Chalcedon, the response of secretary Constantine is
removed, to make it seem as though the Council accepted the interpolated canon of Nicaea. Percival notes:

An attempt has been made to shew that this statement of the acts is a mere blunder. That no correct
copy of the Nicene canons was read, and that the council accepted the version produced by the
Roman legate as genuine. The proposition appears to me in itself ridiculous, and taken in connexion
with the fact that the acts shew that the true canon of Nice was read immediately afterwards I cannot
think the hypothesis really worthy of serious consideration. … It should be added that the Ballerini
ground their theory chiefly upon the authority of a Latin MS., the Codex Julianus, now called
Parisiensis, in which this reading of the true text of the canon of Nice is not contained, as Baluzius was
the first to point out.4

Percival agrees with the view of William Bright, who aptly notes:

The commissioners then directed both parties to produce the canons on which they relied.
Accordingly Paschasinus gave out ‘the 6th canon of the 318 holy fathers.’ Let it be remembered that

a few pages later when he says “A similar declaration of submission to the Roman See was made by the
British Bishops at the Council of Sardica, A. D. 347.”
1 Joseph Faà di Bruno, Catholic Belief: or A Short and Simple Exposition of Catholic Doctrine, Part I, Ch. XXVII,

pp. 105 – 106, London: Burns and Oates, 3rd Ed., 1880.
2 This quote from Sardica is retained in the editions of this book through 280,000 copies, and I have not

verified whether it is still in later editions.

3 Denny, Papalism, p. 144. There are also very good notes on this topic in William Bright, The Roman See in

the Early Church and Other Studies in Church History, Ch. I, pp. 75 – 77 & Additional Note on the Sixth Nicene
Canon, pp. 481 – 483, London: Longmans, Green, & Co, 1896; and in William Bright, The Canons of the First
Four General Councils, Notes on the Canons of Nicæa, Canon VI, pp. 24 – 25, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2nd Ed.,
1892.
4 Percival, Seven Ecumenical Councils, p. 293.
 491

he was the representative of Rome; that by a reference to the authentic text of the Nicene canons,
preserved in the East, Rome had been proved, in the case of Apiarius, to have quoted as ‘Nicene’ a
previous canon which was not in the text, and appears as one of the canons of Sardica; that, in
consequence, it was specially incumbent on all who spoke in her name to be scrupulous in
ascertaining the actual words of ‘the 318’ before appealing to their authority: and we shall appreciate
the assurance of this Roman delegate in quoting the 6th Nicene canon thus: ‘Quod ecclesia Romana
semper habuit primatum: teneat igitur et Ægyptus,’ etc. (see on Nic. 6). (It is but fair, indeed, to
Paschasinus, to remember that he was only following in the wake of Leo himself, who, six years
previously, had caused Valentinian III. to assert in a too famous rescript, reckoned as Leo’s Epist. 11,
that the primacy of the Apostolic see had been established not only by the ‘merit of St. Peter’ and ‘the
dignity of the City,’ but by ‘the authority of a holy Synod,’ alluding to Nic. 6, as usually cited at Rome
in a version which had been proved spurious, yet which Leo persisted in utilizing, see his Epist. 44.)
When Paschasinus had concluded, Aetius handed a ‘codex’ to one of the secretaries, who read from it
the authentic Greek text of the canon in question. The ‘Ballerini,’ followed by Hefele, attempt to
exclude this ‘iterata Nicæni sexti canonis recitatio’ as a Greek student’s gloss; partly because that
canon would not help the pretentions of Constantinople, but ‘multo magis’ because it is not found in
an ancient version ‘quæ pura conservatur in codice … capituli Parisiensis’ (de Ant. Collect. Can. i. 6.
8). Nothing but an intelligible bias could account for a suggestion so futile. If we place ourselves, for
a moment, in the position of the ecclesiastics of Constantinople when they heard Paschasinus read
his ‘version,’ which the Ballerini gently describe as ‘differing a little’ from the Greek text, we shall see
that it was simply impossible for them not to quote that text as it was preserved in their archives, and
had been correctly translated by Philo and Evarestus, in their version beginning ‘Antiqui mores
obtineant.’ No comment on the difference between it and the Roman ‘version’ is recorded to have
been made: and, in truth, none was necessary. Simply to confront the two, and pass on to the next
point, was to confute Paschasinus at once most respectfully and most expressively. 1

The Anglican editors of The Church Quarterly Review wrote an article against the papal apologist Rivington,
which says of him:

he resorts to his usual scepticism as to whatever tells against Rome, and favours the hypothesis that
the passage in the acts which represents an imperial secretary as reading the true Greek text is in fact
an interpolation.*

[* Footnote:] This is suggested by the Ballerini, and adopted by Hefele, for reasons which seem to us
very weak. It was distinctly ad rem to produce the true text, and thus to damage the case of the
legates; at the same time, respect for Rome would restrain the bishops from commenting on such an
exposure, which would be in fact what Canon Bright calls it, a ‘rebuff.’ Mr Rivington should
remember that Leo had already (Ep. xliv.) claimed as Nicene a canon which had been notoriously
proved to be not Nicene. On this see Gore’s Leo the Great, p. 114.2

Strangely enough, as though insisting on running counter to historical truth, another forgery is inserted in
later (I noticed this in the Fifth and Sixth and later) editions of Bruno’s book, in the very section that I
originally quoted, where Bruno now adds the sentence,

So much so that about the year 140, the then ruling Pontiff Sixtus I. could issue the rule that no
Bishop going back from Rome to his diocese without a “Littera formata, that is, without the Apostolic
declaration that he was recognized by the Roman Pontiff to be in communion with him, his diocesans

1 William Bright, The Canons of the First Four General Councils, Notes on the Canons of Chalcedon, Canon
XXVIII, pp. 225 – 227, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2nd Ed., 1892.
2 The Church Quarterly Review, Vol. XXIX, Oct. 1889, Art. VI, A Roman Proselyte on Ancient Church History, p.

131, London: Spottiswoode & Co., 1890. Compare with Luke Rivington, Dependence, Or, The Insecurity of the
Anglican Position, Ch. III, pp. 53 – 54, London: Kegan Paul, Trench, & Co., 1889. This is a good article that
addresses some of the errors of Rivington on the papacy in the ancient Church.
 492

were bound not to regard him as their legitimate Pastor (H. W. Wouters, Epoca II. § 9. – History of the
Roman Pontiffs by Artaud de Mentor).1

The Church Quarterly Review points out:

They [the False Decretals] are not, however, altogether disowned in Roman argument. We have seen
within the last few months an English manual called Catholic Belief (6th ed.), by a certain Joseph Faa
di Bruno, who spent thirty years as a missionary priest in England, and who says (p. 113), ‘For the
first seven hundred years the whole of Christendom united in believing and proclaiming and
submitting to the supremacy of the Roman see.’ In proof of this thesis he quotes a ‘letter of Pope
Sixtus I. as ruling that no bishop shall go back from Rome to his own diocese without a littera formata
[sic].’ This grotesque forgery will be found in Hinschius’s Decretales Pseudo-Isidorianæ (p. 108). On a
less important note he quotes the ‘third epistle of Anacletus’ and the ‘third of Marcellus (Hinschius,
pp. 83, 223).2

Furthermore, in listing the condemned Monothelites of the Sixth Ecumenical Council, Bruno quietly passes
over the name of Honorius, writing, “The Monothelites, with their leaders Cyrus, Sergius, and Pyrrhus, were
condemned”3

Another example of Bruno’s inaccuracy is when he alleges a quote from St. Cyprian in favour of the
Immaculate Conception:

St. Cyprian, a Father of the third century, says: “The Holy Spirit overshadowing her (Mary), the
original fire of concupiscence became extinct, and therefore it was not fit that an innocent one should
endure pain, nor could justice allow that that vase of election should be prostrated by the usual pains
of childbirth. Because being very different from the rest of mankind, human nature, but not sin,
communicated itself to her. (De Nativitate Christi.)4

The Anglican scholars of the Church Quarterly point out,

1 Bruno, Catholic Belief, p. 113 of the Fifth Edition (p. 110 of the Author’s American Edition labelled as the
280,000th printing). This letter of Pope Sixtus I is a forgery from the Pseudo-Isidorian decretals, and it is
interesting that it was not cited in the earlier (2nd and 3rd) editions of Bruno’s work, but it was later added
in, and ended up being printed in hundreds of thousands of copies. Bruno cites the Roman Catholic scholars
G. Henry Wouters and Artaud de Montor in parenthesis, who also promoted this forgery (Bruno misprints his
name as ‘Mentor’; the English translation and edition (with the Approbation of the Latin Archbishop John of
New York), with no note of the spuriousness of the decretal, is William H. Neligan (translator), Artaud de
Montor, The Lives and Times of the Roman Pontiffs: From St. Peter to Pius IX., Vol. I, St. Sixtus I, p. 29, New
York, NY: D. & J. Sadlier & Co., 1867 [unchanged in the 1869 Ed.]). As noted in the Church Quarterly Review,
Bruno elsewhere says, “attested by Anacletus (Epistola iii.), by Marcellus (Epistola iii.)”, more spurious
decretals (p. 353 in Second Edition, p. 311 in Fifth Edition, p. 271 of Author’s American Edition). In another
place, Bruno again implicitly refers to the spurious letters of Popes Clement I, Anacletus and Marcellus I as
providing evidence for the papacy, saying, “I abstain from giving the quotations of Pope St. Clement I., St.
Anacletus, St. Marcellus, … who all have asserted that they were succeeding to Peter, and sitting in the chair of
Peter.” (pp. 280 – 281 of Author’s American Edition). However, the sole authentic letter of Pope St. Clement I
does not say what Bruno claims, and no authentic writings of Anacletus or Marcellus are extant. Thus there
are a total of six references to the False Decretals: Sixtus I (once), Clement I (once), Anacletus (twice), and
Marcellus I (twice).
2 The Church Quarterly Review, Vol. XLIV, April 1897, Art. II, Two Roman Controversialists, p. 39, n.
3 Bruno, Catholic Belief, pp. 125 – 126 of the Fifth Edition (p. 120 of the Author’s American Edition).
4 Bruno, Catholic Belief, p. 202 of the Second Edition.
 493

Not only is there no treatise of this kind by S. Cyprian, but the Benedictine editors do not even
condescend to put the cited book (attributed to Arnald, Abbot of Bonneval, a friend of S. Bernard)
amongst the works erroneously ascribed to S. Cyprian. 1

However, in a later edition of Catholic Belief, this is revised to:

The ancient writer “De Nativitate Christi” found in St. Cyprian’s works, says: Because (Mary) being
“very different from the rest of mankind, human nature, but not sin, communicated itself to her.” (See
the Anglican Bishop Fell’s edition, A.D. 1700, p. 60, col. 2.) 2

Another Anglican notes,

Di Bruno Catholic Belief, 1878, p. 202, quoting S. Cyprian in favour of the Immaculate Conception of
the Blessed Virgin Mary, has, ‘S. Cyprian, a Father of the third century, says,’ -but the passage cited is
really from a treatise ascribed to Arnald of Bonneval, a writer of the twelfth century, whose writings,
though bound up in the same volume as S. Cyprian’s works in the editions of Bishop Fell and the
Benedictines, are placed at the end, with a separate title, head lines, and pagination, so that there
could be no mistake. Notice was taken of this by Dr. Littledale Plain Reasons, p. 132. In Di Bruno’s
fifth edition he has quietly altered this into- ‘The ancient writer found in S. Cyprian’s works says,’ and
alludes to, ‘the Anglican, Bishop Fell’s edition,’ which leaves the same false impression on the reader
as before. Di Bruno says (ed. 1878, p. 179) ‘The Catholic belief in Purgatory rests especially on the
Apostolic traditions of the Church, recorded in all ancient Liturgies.’ This error was noticed by Dr.
Littledale. Di Bruno, fifth edition, has dropped out ‘especially’ and ‘all,’ though the references still give
no support to the Romish doctrine of purgatory, though prayers for the dead are found. For proof see
Translations of Primitive Liturgies, by Neale (Hayes).3

There are many more errors I found in Bruno’s work, and which have also been pointed out in William
Lockett, Judge Fairly: A Reply to J. Faa di Bruno’s “Catholic Belief”, London: Chas. J. Thynne, 2nd Ed., 1912; and
Charles Hastings Collette, A Reply to “Catholic Belief”: Letters Addressed to Cardinal Manning on His Approval
and Recommendation of “Catholic Belief”, London: J. F. Shaw & Co., 1887.

An official letter of approbation, written by Henry Edward Manning, and standing next to the title-page,
praises Bruno “for giving us one of the most complete and useful Manuals of Doctrine, Devotion, and
Elementary information for the instruction of those who are seeking the truth”. Bruno’s entire work
(retaining his errors) is also included in a book titled The Glories of the Catholic Church: The Catholic
Christian Instructed in Defence of His Faith, Vol. I, pp. 49 – 307, New York, NY: John Duffy, 1895. This work is
a compilation of several Roman Catholic works, and received formal approvals from many Latin bishops and
priests, as can be seen in the list of approbations printed at the beginning of this book, which includes a
portrait of each person. Immediately after the title page of this book, it is stated that the following American
Roman Catholic authorities have approved The Glories of the Catholic Church: Denis J. McMahon (1855 –
1915, “Theological Censor of the Diocese of New York”), Michael Augustine Corrigan (1839 – 1902,
Archbishop of New York [Bruno’s American Edition received the approval of Corrigan’s immediate
predecessor John McCloskey, as noted above]), Francis Satolli (or Francesco, 1839 – 1910, Italian cardinal,
professor, and papal delegate to the United States of America, and it is stated in the approbation that “Mgr.
Satolli has looked carefully over it. He is very much pleased with it. … The information it contains is most
useful and well selected.”), James Gibbons (1834 – 1921, Archbishop of Baltimore, MD, “He feels sure that it
will be a source of instruction and edification to those who read it, and entertains the hope that it will have a

1 The Church Quarterly Review, Vol XII, 1881, p. 566.

2 Bruno, Catholic Belief, p. 205 of the Fifth Edition, p. 178 of the Author’s American Edition. Note the
grammatical error in the beginning, missing the word “of” after “writer”, which was not corrected in reprints
of the Author’s American Edition, but was corrected in the edition printed in The Glories of the Catholic
Church, p. 172 (this edition is mentioned below), though the rest of the paragraph always remained the same.
3 Richard Stephen O. Tayler, A Few Facts About the Roman Catholic Church, p. 8, n. 5, Norwich: A. H. Goose

and Co., 1885

 494

wide circulation.”), Francis Janssens (1843 – 1897, Archbishop of New Orleans, LA, “will be most useful in
every Christian family.”), Sebastian Gebhard Messmer (1847 – 1930, Bishop of Green Bay, WI, and later
archbishop of Milwaukee), Patrick William Riordan (Archbishop of San Francisco, CA, 1841 – 1914, “I hope
that so valuable a work will have a large circulation among our people.”), Thomas Daniel Beaven (1851 –
1920, Bishop of Springfield, MA), Thomas Sebastian Byrne (1841 – 1923, Bishop of Nashville, TN), Winand
Michael Wigger (1841 – 1901, Bishop of Newark, NJ), Henry Cosgrove (1834 – 1906, Bishop of Davenport,
IA), James Schwebach (1847 – 1921, Bishop of La Crosse, WI, “This book is a Catholic Library in itself, and it
ought to be in every Catholic family of the land.”), James Augustine McFaul (1850 – 1917, Bishop of Trenton,
NJ, “I have examined the volume … and I have found it a very valuable and instructive work. It is well adapted
for reading in Catholic families.”), Stephen Vincent Ryan (1825 – 1896, Bishop of Buffalo, NY, “It contains a
large amount of useful information, historical, ascetical, and doctrinal; and that it is safe reading, the
Imprimatur of the Archbishop of New York is a sufficient guarantee. I commend it to the Catholic public, and
hope that it will have a wide circulation.”), John Joseph Williams (1822 – 1907, Archbishop of Boston, MA),
Henry Gabriels (1838 – 1921, Bishop of Ogdensburg, NY, “a book I hope you will succeed in placing in many
Catholic families. It is truly a religious library, dogmatic, moral, historical, devotional, and controversial,
condensed into one volume, and its contents are correct and edifying. I give to it my full approbation.”), Denis
Mary Bradley (1846 – 1903, Bishop of Manchester, NH), Louis De Goesbriand (1817 – 1899, Bishop of
Burlington, VT, “I consider to be a most useful work,”), Richard Phelan (1828 – 1904, Bishop of Pittsburgh, PA,
“It is an excellent compilation, containing an immense fund of useful and instructive information for all
classes. The Catholic who is familiar with its contents is well equipped for the practice of the duties and the
defence of the teachings of our holy Religion. … I wish it a most extensive circulation in my Diocese.”), John
Joseph Hogan (1829 – 1913, Bishop of Saint Joseph and Kansas City, MO, “It ought to find many Catholic
purchasers.”), Nicholas Chrysostom Matz (1850 – 1917, Bishop of Denver, CO, “I have examined your
beautiful book … I am happy to be able to say that it is a regular encyclopedia of useful and needful Catholic
information, a book that should adorn the library of every Catholic home.”), Ignatius Frederick Horstman
(1840 – 1908, Bishop of Cleveland, OH), John L. Spalding (1840 – 1916, Bishop of Peoria, IL, “I have looked
through your book, ‘The Glories of the Catholic Church,’ and heartily give it my approval. It will be a treasure
in any Catholic family.”), and Silas Francis Marean Chatard (1834 – 1918, Bishop of Indianapolis, IN). The
publisher received many more testimonial letters. I could quote more of the approbations, and it is fair to
note that not all the Latin bishops said they carefully read the entire book, with many implying that they
merely quickly reviewed or skimmed it, and only read some portions. In total, this book received
approbations from the papal legate to the USA, seven archbishops, seventeen bishops, and numerous other
Latin authorities, besides the fact that it was printed over 550,000 times.

The edition of Bruno’s Catholic Belief printed in The Glories of the Catholic Church still contains the six
references to the Pseudo-Isidorian decretals of Popes Sixtus I, Clement I, Anacletus, and Marcellus I, besides
numerous other errors of fact.1 That in 1895 all these Roman Catholic authorities could stamp their approval
on a work containing so many errors is one of those things which indeed makes the heart sad. All I can say is
that they ought to have known better.

The Pseudo-Isidorian decretal of Pope Sixtus I, mentioned above, has been commonly quoted in favour of the
papacy, and I will only note here that in the seventeenth century, Stillingfleet replies to a Roman Catholic
controversialist who had made an argument using this false decretal of Pope Sixtus I.2

The interpolated letter of the Council of Sardica to Pope Julius is cited or referred to in the following Roman
Catholic works promoting the Papacy, without mentioning its spuriousness:

1 The Glories of the Catholic Church: The Catholic Christian Instructed in Defence of His Faith, Vol. I, pp. 123,
242 & 249, New York, NY: John Duffy, 1895. These are the same passages from the Author’s American Edition
mentioned above.
2 Edward Stillingfleet, A Rational Account of the Grounds of Protestant Religion, Vol. II, Part II, Ch. VII, Sect. XI,

pp. 283 – 284, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1844.

 495

Paul Bottalla, The Papacy and Schism: Strictures on Mr. Ffoulkes’ Letter to Archbishop Manning, IV, pp. 19, 28,
London: Burns, Oates, and Company, 1869.

Robert Knox Sconce, The Testimony of Antiquity to the Supremacy of the Holy See, No. XXVII, 4., p. 38,
Sydney: C. St. Julian, 1848. Sconce (1818 – 1852) claims in the Advertisement to his book that “No work has
been wittingly cited, the genuineness of which has been questioned by the most scrupulous of Protestant
critics.” (p. v.)

James Kent Stone, The Invitation Heeded: Reasons for a Return to Catholic Unity, Part III, Ch. III, pp. 260, n. †,
London: Burns, Oates & Co., 1870. Stone says, “The canons [of Sardica] find their best interpretation in the
words of the synodical epistle which was sent to Pope Julius:” and then immediately quotes the spurious
passage.

Another work that cites the Council of Sardica’s supposed testimony to the headship of Rome is the famous
controversial work by British Roman Catholic priests Joseph Berington (1743 – 1827) and John Kirk (1760 –
1851), titled “The Faith of Catholics”, the first edition of which was in 1812. A section attempting to
demonstrate the “Primacy of the Successors of Saint Peter” states:

The Council of Sardica, G. C. “If a Bishop, &c. (see p. 86) – ‘This shall seem most proper, if from all the
provinces, the priests of the Lord, refer themselves to the head, that is to the See of Peter.’ Ep. Synod.
Ad Julium Rom. Conc. Gen. T. ii. p. 661.”1

Cardinal Wiseman quotes these spurious words of Sardica to Pope Julius, making no note of their
doubtfulness, saying:

Another remarkable and still stronger testimony we find in the decrees of the council held at
Sardica, in Thrace, at the request of St. Athanasius, at which 300 bishops were present. In its decrees
we have this expression: – “It shall seem most proper, if from all the provinces the priests of the Lord
refer themselves to the head – that is, to the See of Peter.” So that here we have a council
acknowledging that there was a final appeal to the head of the Church; and this is specified to be the
See of Peter, where his successors resided.2

The Hon. Colin Lindsay’s apologetic work on The Evidence for the Papacy misquotes the Latin canons of
Sardica. Here is his version of the third canon:

“If judgement be passed upon any Bishop, and he thinks he has sufficient grounds for referring the
matter to another judgement; let us honour the memorial (memoriam) of the holy Apostle Peter, by
providing that the parties who entertained the case shall write to Julius, Bishop of Rome, and if he
judges that a trial be renewed, let it be renewed.” Can. III. Labb. Concil. T. ii. col. 659.3

The following is from the much more authentic Latin text of the canons (which were originally drawn up in
both Greek and Latin), with an accurate translation:

1 Joseph Berington and John Kirk, The Faith of Catholics on Certain Points of Controversy, Confirmed by
Scripture, and Attested by the Fathers of the Five First Centuries of the Church, Section I, Proposition XII, p.
151, London: Joseph Booker, 2nd Ed., 1830. The Footnote makes no note of the spuriousness of the quote,
and cites the Latin: “Si ad caput, id est, ad Petri Apostoli sedem.”
2 Nicholas Patrick Stephen Wiseman, Lectures on the Principal Doctrines and Practices of the Catholic Church,

Vol. I, Lecture VIII, p. 243, Baltimore: John Murphy & Co., 1851 [These lectures were first delivered in 1836]).
3 Colin Lindsay, The Evidence for the Papacy: As Derived from the Holy Scriptures and from Primitive

Antiquity, Second Inquiry, Part II, II, 2., 85., pp. 180 – 181, London: Longmans, Green, & Co., 1870. Note that
Lindsay appears to be using the Isidorian version of these canons.
 496

But if judgment have gone against a bishop in any cause, and he think that he has a good case, in
order that the question may be reopened, let us, if it be your pleasure, honour the memory of St.
Peter the Apostle, and let those who tried the case write to Julius, the bishop of Rome, and if he shall
judge that the case should be retried, let that be done, and let him appoint judges; but if he shall find
that the case is of such a sort that the former decision need not be disturbed, what he has decreed
shall be confirmed. Is this the pleasure of all? The synod answered, It is our pleasure.1

Lindsay next cites the spurious text of the Sardican Epistle to the Pope:

“For this seems to be the best and most suitable, if the Priests of the Lord in every province refer to
the Head, that is to the Apostolic See of Peter” (se ad caput, id est, ad Petri Apostoli sedem). Ib. col.
690.2

Lindsay comments, “The testimony of this plenary Council to the Supremacy of the Chair of S. Peter is very full
and complete.”3

Unfortunately for Lindsay, the true testimony of this venerable Council is rather incomplete for the Papal
theory. The words omitted by Lindsay, “if it be your pleasure”, are extremely important to the proper
understanding of this canon, as Tillemont says, “This form is very strong to shew that it was a right which the
Pope had not had hitherto.”,4 and as Pereira says, “It is certain that these and other prerogatives attached to
the Roman Primacy had their beginning in the consent of the Bishops, or of a Council;”.5 Moreover, the actual
power conferred by this canon is quite reasonable and moderate, and nowhere near demonstrating Papal
supremacy over the entire Church, especially since it refers by name to the contemporary Pope, and is
comparable with similar canons regarding the powers of the Patriarch of Constantinople (see Canon IX of
Chalcedon). Pusey has the following commentary on the limited reference of the Sardican canons to Rome:

Other Canonsa secured to Bishops, deposed by the neighbouring Bishops, the power of
having their sentence revised. These Canons also seem to have been occasioned by the tyranny of the
Eusebians. The right given was to have the sentence revised if “Juliusb Bishop of Rome should see
good.” Yet it was not by way of appeal, but of revision; not at Rome, but by the Bishops of the
neighbouring province, with or without the legates of the Roman Bishop. The specific mention of
Julius in the first instance, seems again to imply a temporary object, such as was protection against
the Eusebians. In any case, this limited reference to the Bishop of Rome is made in a form which
shews that it was something new. “If any of the Bishops have been judged in any cause, and think
that his cause is good, so that the judgement should be renewed, if you think good, let us honour the
memory of the Apostle Peter, so that they who examined the cause should write to Julius, the Roman
Bishop &c.” “This form is very strong to shew,” says Tillemontc, “that it was a right which the Pope
had not hitherto.” “The words of the Canon,” says de Marcad, “prove that the institution of this law is
new. ‘If it seem good to you,’ says Hosius &c. He does not say that the ancient tradition is to be
confirmed, as was wont to be done in matters which required only the renewal or explanation of the
ancient law.” S. Athanasius himself insists strongly on the difference of the two forms of speech, the
one declaring what is old, the other enacting what is new. “They e [the Council of Nice] wrote
concerning the Easter, ‘It seemed good’ as follows; for it did then seem good, that there should be a
general compliance; but about the faith they wrote not, ‘It seemed good,’ but ‘Thus believes the
Catholic Church;’ and thereupon they confessed how the faith lay, in order to shew that their
sentiments were not novel, but Apostolic.”

1 Percival, Seven Ecumenical Councils, p. 417.

2 Lindsay, The Evidence for the Papacy, Second Inquiry, Part II, II, 2., 88., p. 181.
3 Lindsay, The Evidence for the Papacy, Second Inquiry, Part II, II, 2., Comment, p. 181.
4 Edward Bouverie Pusey, The Councils of the Church from the Council of Jerusalem A.D. 51, to the Council of

Constantinople A.D. 381, Chiefly as to their Constitution, but also as to their Objects and History, Ch. V, p. 142,
Oxford: John Henry Parker, 1857. See the following quote.
5 Antonio Pereira de Figueredo, Tentativa Theologica, Epistle Dedicatory, p. 4.
 497

These three Canons form one wholef. Can. 3. required the Bishops who held the trial, to
write to Julius Bishop of Rome, if the deposed Bishop should think his cause good. Can. 4. That in
such cases a successor be not appointed to a Bishop deposed by the judgment of the neighbouring
Bishops, until the cause be determined. Can. 7. appoints the mode in which the cause should be
reheard, if reheard at all, viz. that the Bishop of Rome should write to the Bishops in the neighbouring
province, that they should diligently inquire and define. Power was also given to the Bishop of Rome,
to send a Presbyter, “to judge with the Bishops, with the authority of him, by whom he was sent.”

This was the first impulse to appeals to Rome. But it differed very much from the system
engrafted upon it. 1. What it granted was a revision of a cause, not strictly an appealg. The deposed
party, in this case, remained deposed, though no successor was appointed to him. 2. The cause was
heard where it happened, not drawn to Rome. 3. It was mainly decided by the Bishops of the
neighbouring Province; the legate of the Bishop of Rome, if sent, only judged with them. 4. Presbyters
were allowed an appeal to the neighbouring Bishops, not to Rome.

Greater powers were conferred on the see of Constantinople, by the ninth Canon of the
Council of Chalcedon.

[Pusey’s Footnotes:] a) Can. 3. 4. 7. b) Can. 3. He is not mentioned by name in can. 4. and 7. having
been already spoken of in the third, upon which they bear. c) S. Athanas. Art. 51. T. 8. p. 221. d) Conc.
Sac. vii. 3. 8. e) Counc. Arim. and Sel. §. 5. p. 80. f) De Marca. l. c. §. 10. g) see De Marca l. c. 6. and 7.1

Lindsay also cites the spurious epistle of the Council of Nicaea to Pope Sylvester:

“Forasmuch as all things concerning the divine mysteries have been enforced to ecclesiastical profit,
which pertained to the strength of the Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church, we report them to your
Roman See, having translated them from the Greek. Whatever, then, we have ordained in the Council
of Nicæa, we pray may be confirmed by the fellowship of your countenance” (Quidquid autem
constituimus in concilio Nicæno, precamur vestry oris consortio confirmetur). Labb. T. ii. col. 79.2

Lindsay includes this among his evidence “to prove the superior pre-eminence of the Roman Church”, but
Roman Catholic historians consider its genuineness doubtful, as discussed in the previous chapter. This letter
is among several others interpolated or falsified to aggrandize the role of the bishop of Rome in the Council of
Nicaea, and are known as the Symmachian Forgeries (see the next section).

Even if this letter were authentic, it would not prove that only the Bishop of Rome can confirm Councils.
Similar requests were made to other bishops and to Emperors, for example, the bishops in the first council of
Constantinople wrote to the emperor Theodosius with these words: “We desire your favour, by your
highness’ letters, to ratify and confirm the decree of the council.” 3

Adrian Fortescue also cites the corrupted letter of Sardica to Pope Julius, commenting, “It is difficult to
understand how anyone can dispute that the canons of Sardica in 344 recognize the jurisdiction of the Pope
over all other bishops.” Soon after he cites a spurious Arabic canon of Nicaea, writing, “That these are
genuine pronouncements of the Council in 325 we do not claim. … At any rate, they are old enough to come
within our period.”4 Some Latins insist on finding some value from these forgeries, but they are of negligible
value, and date many centuries after Nicaea (see the section on the Arabic canons of Nicaea).

1 Edward Bouverie Pusey, The Councils of the Church, Ch. V, pp. 142 – 144. Note that there are printing errors
with the closing of quotations in the original text, which I have corrected here. Also, it is worth reading the
entire chapter by Percival on the Council of Sardica (Percival, Seven Ecumenical Councils, pp. 411 – 436).
2 Lindsay, The Evidence for the Papacy, Second Inquiry, Part II, II, 2., 84., p. 177.
3 “Rogamus tuam clementiam, ut per literas tuæ pietatis ratum esse jubeas confirmesque concilii decretum”.

John Ayre (editor), The Works of John Jewel, Vol. I, Of the Supremacy, Art. IV, Division XXVI, p. 410.
4 Adrian Fortescue, The Early Papacy: To the Synod of Chalcedon in 451, Ch. V, p. 40, London, 1920.
 498

Misquotation of the Sardican Canons as Nicene

From a very early time improprieties appear in the West when dealing with conciliar documents. William
Bright writes:

the Roman series of canons, in the fifth century, confounded canons of the series called Sardican with
Nicene, and led the Roman bishops, first perhaps in careless forgetfulness of the Sardican mention of
Julius instead of Sylvester (as in the cases of Zosimus and Boniface), and afterwards, in spite of
discussion and authentic information (as in the case of Leo, Epist. 43), to quote as Nicene what was
really ‘Sardican,’ as Gregory of Tours afterwards called a canon of Gangra Nicene (Hist. Fr. ix. 33)1

The following seven Popes called a Sardican canon Nicene, at least implicitly: Innocent I, Zosimus, Boniface I,
Celestine I, Leo I, Felix III, and Gelasius I [in Tractatus II, an inauthentic work ascribed to Gelasius (though
some think it is authentic), and implied in numerous other places]. Western Roman Emperor Valentinian III
and his mother Galla Placidia, misled by Roman authorities, also referred or alluded to the Sardican canons as
Nicene.2 The Papacy claimed that the “318 fathers” made these decisions in favour of Rome’s honour, and this
can only refer directly to Nicaea. It is important to note that Pope Innocent I plainly said, “Other canon than
the Nicene canons the Roman church receives not,” and “the Nicene canons alone is the Catholic Church
bound to recognise and to follow”,3 yet Innocent and the popes who succeeded him were not careful in what
they attributed to Nicaea.

The usual defence of this confusion is that the Sardican Canons were grouped with the Nicene in various
codices and canonical collections. However, this was not the case universally, and indeed, when in the fifth
century Rome attempted to cite the Sardican canons as Nicene to the African bishops, the Synod of 217
African bishops, present from all Africa, said those alleged canons were not found among the Nicene canons,
in any of their Greek or Latin copies. To ascertain the correct canonical list, the African bishops then sent
envoys to the Eastern sees, and found that those cited by the Pope as Nicene were not in that collection. This
proves that the Churches of Africa, Constantinople, and Alexandria, at least, did not consider the Sardican
canons as an appendix to the Nicene. Despite the shortness of this section, this is an extremely important
problem, for the Nicene canons were inspired by the Holy Spirit, and those who corrupt or misrepresent
those canons, have committed a serious error, despite pleas of negligence or ignorance, especially seeing how
Pope Leo I and other Roman bishops proclaimed the highest regard for the divine authority of the canons of
Nicaea.

More could be written on this subject, and more information can be found in some of the recommended
works listed at the end.4

1 William Bright, The Canons of the First Four General Councils, Notes on the Canons of Nicæa, pp. 89, Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 2nd Ed., 1892.
2 Beresford James Kidd, The Roman Primacy to A.D. 461, p. 138, London: SPCK, 1936.
3 Cuthbert Hamilton Turner, The Organisation of the Church, in Henry Melvill Gwatkin and James Pounder

Whitney (editors), The Cambridge Medieval History, Vol. I, p. 179, Ch. VI, New York, NY: The Macmillan
Company, 1911.
4 See an excellent chapter in Edward Denny, Papalism, Sec. LXXXIII, St. Augustine and the case of Apiarius,

609. – 623., pp. 301 – 311. Also see Edward Bouverie Pusey, Eirenicon, [Part I], pp. 67 – 72, Oxford: John
Henry and James Parker, 1865. Some have accused the Sardican canons themselves of being inauthentic, but
it appears that the scholarship is against this theory, see C. H. Turner, The Genuineness of the Sardican
Canons, in The Journal of Theological Studies, Vol. III, No. 11, April, 1902, pp. 370 – 397, Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1902.
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Ch. XIV Symmachian Forgeries

The Symmachian forgeries were a significant early attempt by Roman partisans to falsify history in their
favour. Hefele writes:

Five documents, dating from the fifth century, mention, besides, a solemn approval of the acts of the
Council of Nicæa, given by Pope Sylvester and a Roman synod of 275 bishops. It is granted that these
documents are not authentic, as we shall show in the history of the Council of Nicæa;1

Binius also owns that the letter of the Nicene Fathers to Sylvester is false and feigned. 2

The forgeries of Symmachus “were written during the dispute between Symmachus and Laurentius (498 –
507)”.3 Symmachus and Laurentius were both elected pope by different groups in Rome on the same day, 22
November 498. Laurentius was later generally considered an anti-pope. The Catholic Encyclopedia states:

During the dispute the adherents of Symmachus drew up four apocryphal writings called the
“Symmachian Forgeries”; these were: “Gesta synodi Sinuessanae de Marcellino”; “Constitutum
Silvestri”, “Gesta Liberii”; “Gesta de purgatione Xysti et Polychronii accusation”. These four works
are to be found in Coustant, “Epist. rom. pontif.” (Paris, 1721), appendix, 29 sq.; cf. Duchesne, “Liber
pontificalis”, I, introduction, CXXXIII sq.: “Histoire littéraire des apocryphes symmachiens”. The
object of these forgeries was to produce alleged instances from earlier times to support the whole
procedure of the adherents of Symmachus, and, in particular, the position that the Roman bishop
could not be judged by any court composed of other bishops.4

In the book Papal Letters in the Early Middle Ages, there is the following summary:

The core of the work consisted of five forgeries: the Constitutum Silvestri (Maassen, Geschichte §
539.3), the Gesta Liberii (§ 557), the Gesta de Xysti purgatione (§ 558), the Gesta de Polychronii
accusatione (§ 559), and the Synod of Sinuessa (§ 537). There were also additional texts: The view of
Symmachus was preserved in a putative letter of the council fathers of Nicaea to Sylvester (Massen §
538), the letter of Sylvester JK † 174, Gaudeo promptam (§ 539.1), and a reworking of the
Constiturum Silvestri. The Laurentians responded with their own version of the council fathers of
Nicaea’s letter, Silvester’s letter Gloriosissimus, JK † 175 (§ 539.2) and the Roman council of 275
bishops (§ 539.4).5

Much could be written on the wide impact and reception of these forgeries. The Roman Catholic medieval
scholar Uta-Renate Blumenthal writes:

The principle, ‘the pope is to be judged by no one’, was appealed to for the first time during the
schism between Symmachus (498 – 514) and Laurantius (498 – c. 505), when the supporters of the
former referred to the protocol of a synod of Sinuessa held allegedly in 303 near Capua where, it was
said, Pope Marcellinus was obliged to judge himself because the assembly refused to do so although
it had found Marcellinus guilty of an error in faith. The Symmachian party further strengthened their
claim that the pope could not be judged by anyone with a reference to a pseudo-constitution of
Sylvester I, who was said to have decreed at a synod in the presence of Emperor Constantine the
Great that nobody could judge the pope, ‘nobody shall judge the Holy See’. Pope Nicholas I quoted
both instances in the letter he sent in 865 to the Byzantine Emperor Michael III in defense of the

1 Hefele, History of the Councils, Vol. I, Introduction, Sec. 6, p. 44.

2 See A Preservative Against Popery, Vol. XV, p. 176. Also see Samuel Hanson Cox (editor), Archibald Bower,
The History Of The Popes, Vol. I, Sylvester, pp. 53 – 54, Philadelphia, PA: Griffith & Simon, 1844.
3 Jasper and Fuhrmann, Papal Letters in the Early Middle Ages, Part I, Ch. III, 2., p. 69, n. 293.
4 Johann Peter Kirsch, Pope Saint Symmachus, in CE, Vol. XIV, p. 378.
5 Jasper and Fuhrmann, Papal Letters in the Early Middle Ages, Part I, Ch. III, 2., p. 69, n. 293. See the

references in their footnote.

 500

Patriarch Ignatius, and subsequently the decree of Sylvester I and/or the letter of Nicholas the Great
were quoted frequently, last not least in the numerous canon law collections from the late eleventh-
and early twelfth century, including the collections of Anselm of Lucca, Cardinal Deusdedit, and Ivo of
Chartres.1

The Roman Catholic scholar and priest (later bishop) James M. Moynihan (1932 – 2017) writes the following:

In the centuries which followed, the gradual absorption of these forgeries into canonical
collections aided greatly the acceptance in Western Europe of the maxim the popes could be judged
by no temporal authority. …

Among canonical collections, the Symmachian forgeries are not contained in the Collectio
Dionysiana, the Collectio Friesingensis, nor the Collectio Quesnelliania, all of which were compiled
during the reign of Pope Symmachus. They make their first appearance in three early sixth-century
collections: the Collectio Sanblasiana, the Collectio Vaticana, and in abridged form in the Collectio
Teatina. The former two were frequently incorporated in larger collections during the years which
followed, thus accounting for the preservation of our apocrypha. They are to be found, for example,
in the MS. Collectio Mutensis, an Italian collection complied shortly after the year 524. All the
apocrypha appear together in the MS. Collectio Diessensis I, another Frankish work said to date from
the middle of the sixth or else the early seventh century.

The Constitutum and Gesta Marcellini were also interpolated in certain manuscripts of the
eighth-century Collectio Dionysio-Hadriana, or simply Hadriana as it is often called. Maassen
mentions in particular MS. 74 of Irvee, MS. Burgundianum, and MS. Lucanum 125 as examples of the
interpolation of our apocrypha. Finally we might note that the same two forgeries are to be found as
well in the Collectio Hadriana aucta, a further interpolated version of the Hadriana containing
additional manuscripts of Italian provenance, although the collection was made in Gaul.

Thus it was that the doctrine of the pope’s personal immunity from judgment spread rapidly
throughout Western Europe. …

In the early days of the papacy however the popes considered themselves, in temporal
matters, as the loyal subjects of the emperor.

Be that as it may, in the year 800 the doctrine of papal immunity had been established much
more on the strength of these apocrypha than as a matter of theological conclusion from the doctrine
of primacy. It was to these forgeries, for instance, that Alcuin appealed when he reminded Arn of
Salzburg in the year 799 that the canons of Sylvester forbade anyone to judge a pope. 2

Although this is a short chapter, these forgeries had a very significant impact in Church history, and many
more examples of their influence could be given.

Ch. XV The Alleged Speech of Philip at the Council of Ephesus

1 Uta-Renate Blumenthal, Papal Reform and Canon Law in the 11th and 12th Centuries, Ch. XI, p. 86,
Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing, 1998; Blumenthal goes on to note that Gregory VII also quoted this pseudo-
Symmachian text in Dictatus Papae. Gratian can be added to the list of canonists. See the footnotes for
additional references.
2 James M. Moynihan, Papal Immunity and Liability in the Writings of the Medieval Canonists, Ch. I, § II, pp. 6 –

8, in Analecta Gregoriana, Vol. CXX (Series Facultatis Iuris Canonici: sectio B, n. 9), Rome: Gregorian
University Press, 1961.
 501

In Act III of the Council of Ephesus in 431, Philip, the legate of Bishop Celestine of Rome, is said to have made
a pro-Papal speech, applying Matthew xvi. 18 to the Bishop of Rome as Peter’s successor. This passage has
been often cited by Roman Catholics (including by the Latin First Vatican Council) as an evidence for the
Papacy. However, I am not aware of any discussion on the authenticity of this speech, and even the few
Protestants who notice these words appear to concede that it was said at Ephesus. Archbishop Chrysostomos
of Greece, in his study of this council, has pointed out that it appears to be a forgery and interpolation, based
on the internal evidence, and writes:

Philip is stated to have accompanied this opinion with the following wholly unexpected
declaration: “It is doubtful to nobody, but rather it was known in all ages, that the holy and most
blessed Peter, the prince and head of the Apostles, the pillar of the faith, the foundation of the
Catholic Church, received from our Lord Jesus Christ, the Saviour and Redeemer of mankind, the keys
of the Kingdom of Heaven, and to him was given the power of binding and loosing sins; who lives and
exercises judgment in his successors unto this time and ever. Therefore his successor in order and
placeholder, our holy and most blessed pope, the Bishop Celestine, has sent us as [representatives] of
his presence to this holy Council, which the most Christian and mankind-loving Emperors have
summoned … in order that the catholic faith which has been guarded from ages unto this time may
continue to remain unshaken.”

These words of Philip, which the Vatican Council (1870) adduced in support of “infallibility”
without mentioning that they were pronounced in the Third Œcumenical Council, appear to have
been interpolated in the acts of the Council and are indeed contrary to the very fact and summoning
of the Council. For if they bore the meaning that the Bishop of Rome was the sole teacher of the faith
and judge over the whole Church, the summoning of the Council and its decision against the heretic
Nestorius would have been considered superfluous. Whereas Philip himself, after the above
statement, and as though he did not remember it, extolled the canonical regularity of the Council as
being “in accordance with the science of the canons” and as being unshakable, since after Nestorius’
refusal to attend and after the lapse of the term fixed by the Apostolic See and much other time the
sentence was delivered by the Council, in which all the Churches were represented by bishops “from
the Eastern and Western Church.” …

According to this, the Council did not execute the sentence of the Roman Bishop Celestine
but pronounced its own judgment, to which the representatives of Celestine and of the other bishops
of the West assented.

Thus the words of Philip, if in fact they were spoken, remained suspended in the air through
the total silence of the Fathers of the Council, and found no response whatsoever in it.1

More research on the question of the genuineness of this speech could be done, but I am inclined to agree
with Archbishop Chrysostomos’s suspicions.

1 Gerard Shelley (translator), Chrysostomos Papadopoulos, The Third Oecumenical Council and the Primacy
of the Bishop of Rome: A Reply to the Encyclical “Lux Veritatis” of Pius XI, pp. 40 – 43, London: The Faith
Press, 1933. A translation and Protestant commentary on Philip’s words, assuming they are genuine, is in
James Chrystal, The Third World Council, Vol. II, Act. III, pp. 99 – 108, Jersey City, NJ: James Chrystal, 1895.
Chrystal emphasises the following important words of Philip, near the end of his speech: “Therefore the
sentence put forth against him who with hostile spirit and with impious mouth dared to bring in blasphemy
against our Lord Jesus Anointed, is valid and unshaken, [for it is] in accordance with the formulated
decision of all the Churches, since the Priests both from the Eastern Church and from the Western
Church, are present and stand together in this Priestly Assembly, either in person or by their
ambassadors.” (pp. 107 – 108.)
 502

Ch. XVI Latin Version of the Acts of Chalcedon

There are several significant differences between the Latin and Greek Acts of the Council of Chalcedon.
Scholars have differed in their preferences for the Greek and Latin versions, and most prefer the Greek in
some locations and the Latin in others. The Council’s official language for its proceedings was Greek, and I
hold the Greek version to be the more trustworthy, especially when it concerns questions of the papal
prerogatives, and taking into consideration the numerous other Latin corruptions documented in this book. I
will review only a few of these differences here.

Early in Session III the Latin version of the Acts has the papal legate Paschasinus saying that since Pope Leo
was absent, Leo “commanded our littleness to preside in his place over this holy council.” However, the Greek
version here simply says “our littleness in the place of himself he allowed at the Holy Synod”.1

Later in Session III, the Latin version of the official sentence against Dioscorus from the papal legates is more
effusive about papal primacy than the original Greek text, and the Greek version here is supported by the
Latin translation of the Roman deacon Rusticus about one hundred years after the Council. This corrupted
Latin version of the Acts is quoted in the extant text of a letter of Pope Leo. This specific textual difference is
discussed by Grillmeier, who is quoted at length in the chapter on Three Corrupted Letters of Pope Leo.

In Session XVI, the Latin version of the Acts contains a statement by bishop John of Sebasteia (or Sebaste),
saying “We all will remain of the opinion expressed by your magnificence.” in response to the papal legate
bishop Lucentius, who protested against the 28th Canon. This interpolation makes it appear as though the
bishops present agreed with the papal legates, whereas the very next line of the Acts states “The most
glorious judges said: The whole synod has approved what we proposed.” This is also the final line of the Acts
of Session XVI, which is the final session of the Council, and it shows that the Council’s decision in Canon 28
was officially confirmed by the Council.2

Moreover, a Latin manuscript omits the reading of the true text of Canon VI of Nicaea at Session XVI, after the
corrupted Latin version was read, which has been the occasion for Hefele and the Ballerini to argue that the
true canon was not read at the Council (see the chapter on The Council of Sardica and Misquotations of
Nicaea).

As a side note, one study into the textual differences between the Latin and Greek versions of the Acts of the
Council of Chalcedon is in Tommaso Mari, The Latin Translations of the Acts of the Council of Chalcedon, in
Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies, Vol. LVIII, No. 1., pp. 126 – 155, Durham, NC: Duke University, 2018,
and although the Greek version of the Acts are not perfect, I disagree with Dr. Mari’s (as well as Price and
Gaddis’s) general preference for the Latin version of the Acts.

Ch. XVII Latin Version of the Papal Letters in Nicaea II

I will begin by quoting the French Protestant scholar John Daillé (Jean Dallæus, 1594 – 1670), who points out
some issues with the transmission of certain texts in the era of the Seventh Ecumenical Council:

In the next place there is a very observable corruption in the epistle of Adrian I to the Emperor
Constantine, in the time of the second council of Nice. For in the Latin collection of Anastasius, made
about seven hundred and fifty years since, Adrian is there made to speak very highly and
magnificently of his see; and he rebukes the Greeks very shrewdly, for having conferred upon

1 “τὰ τῆς ἁγίας συνόδου επέτρεψε” Percival, Seven Ecumenical Councils, p. 259. The Latin is also translated
(without mentioning the Greek reading) in Price and Gaddis, Vol. II, Session III, p. 41. Price and Gaddis note
that Session III was the only session at which Leo’s legates presided (n. 44.).
2 Percival, Seven Ecumenical Councils, p. 295. Also translated in Price and Gaddis, Acts of Chalcedon, Vol. III,

Session XVI, p. 91.

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Tarasius, the patriarch on Constantinople, the title of Universal Bishop; and all this while there is not
so much as one word of this to be found either in the Greek edition of the said seventh council, nor
yet in the common Latin ones. The Romanists accuse the Greeks of having suppressed these two
clauses; and the Greeks again accuse the Romanists of having foisted them in: neither is it easy to
determine on which side the guilt lies. However, it is sufficient for me, that wheresoever the fault
lies, it evidently appears hence, that this curtailing and adding to authors, according to the interest of
the present times, has now a very long time been in practice amongst Christians. It appears also very
evidently, in the next piece following in the same council, namely, the Epistle of Adrian to Tarasius,
that it is quite another thing in the Greek from what it is in Anastasius’s Latin translation; and that in
points too of as high importance as those others before mentioned. So in the fifth act likewise, where
both in the Greek text, and also in the old Latin translation, Tarasius is called Universal Bishop, this
title appears not at all in Anastasius’s translation. … Yet I do not see how we can excuse the
Romanists from being guilty of corrupting Anastasius in those passages above noted; 1

There are several significant differences between the Latin and Greek Acts and documents of the Second
Council of Nicaea, but I will here focus on the Latin versions of the papal letters. Anastasius Bibliothecarius
claims that the Greeks at the Council corrupted the original text of Pope Hadrian I’s letter to the Emperor,
which was read at Session II of the Seventh Ecumenical Council. The text given by Anastasius contains the
following statements exalting the papacy:

If you persevere in that orthodox Faith in which you have begun, and the sacred and
venerable images be by your means erected again in those parts, as by the lord, the Emperor
Constantine of pious memory, and the blessed Helen, who promulgated the orthodox Faith, and
exalted the holy Catholic and Apostolic Roman Church your spiritual mother, and with the other
orthodox Emperors venerated it as the head of all Churches, so will your Clemency, that is protected
of God, receive the name of another Constantine, and another Helen, through whom at the beginning
the holy Catholic and Apostolic Church derived strength, and like whom your own imperial fame is
spread abroad by triumphs, so as to be brilliant and deeply fixed in the whole world. But the more, if
following the traditions of the orthodox Faith, you embrace the judgment of the Church of blessed
Peter, chief of the Apostles, and, as of old your predecessors the holy Emperors acted, so you, too,
venerating it with honour, love with all your heart his Vicar, and if your sacred majesty follow by
preference their orthodox Faith, according to our holy Roman Church. May the chief of the Apostles
himself, to whom the power was given by our Lord God to bind and remit sins in heaven and earth,
be often your protector, and trample all barbarous nations under your feet, and everywhere make
you conquerors. For let sacred authority lay open the marks of his dignity, and how great veneration
ought to be shewn to his, the highest See, by all the faithful in the world. For the Lord set him who
bears the keys of the kingdom of heaven as chief over all, and by Him is he honoured with this
privilege, by which the keys of the kingdom of heaven are entrusted to him. He, therefore, that was
preferred with so exalted an honour was thought worthy to confess that Faith on which the Church of
Christ is founded. A blessed reward followed that blessed confession, by the preaching of which the
holy universal Church was illumined, and from it the other Churches of God have derived the proofs
of Faith. For the blessed Peter himself, the chief of the Apostles, who first sat in the Apostolic See, left
the chiefship of his Apostolate, and pastoral care, to his successors, who are to sit in his most holy
seat for ever. And that power of authority, which he received from the Lord God our Saviour, he too
bestowed and delivered by divine command to the Pontiffs, his successors, etc.

However, the text that was read in Greek to the Council does not contain the above statements, and reads
instead:

If the ancient orthodoxy be perfected and restored by your means in those regions, and the venerable
icons be placed in their original state, you will be partakers with the Lord Constantine, Emperor of

1John Daillé, A Treatise on the Right Use of the Fathers, Book I, Ch. IV, pp. 78 – 79, 2nd American Ed.,
Philadelphia, 1856 (originally published in French in 1631). Note that the numerous corruptions of the
Latins have driven Daillé to a general distrust of the integrity of all Christian fathers.
 504

old, now in the Divine keeping, and the Empress Helena, who made conspicuous and confirmed the
orthodox Faith, and exalted still more your holy mother, the Catholic and Roman and spiritual
Church, and with the orthodox Emperors who ruled after them, and so your most pious and heaven-
protected name likewise will be set forth as that of another Constantine and another Helena, being
renowned and praised through the whole world, by whom the holy Catholic and Apostolic Church is
restored. And especially if you follow the tradition of the orthodox Faith of the Church of the holy
Peter and Paul, the chief Apostles, and embrace their Vicar, as the Emperors who reigned before you
of old both honoured their Vicar, and loved him with all their heart: and if your sacred majesty
honour the most holy Roman Church of the chief Apostles, to whom was given power by God the
Word himself to loose and to bind sins in heaven and earth. For they will extend their shield over
your power, and all barbarous nations shall be put under your feet: and wherever you go they will
make you conquerors. For the holy and chief Apostles themselves, who set up the Catholic and
orthodox Faith, have laid it down as a written law that all who after them are to be successors of their
seats, should hold their Faith and remain in it to the end. 1

There is also another statement that Anastasius claims has been curtailed from the end of the pope’s letter,
which has the pope complaining about some irregular circumstances of Patriarch Tarasius’s ordination:

We greatly wondered that in your imperial commands, directed for the Patriarch of the royal
city, Tarasius, we find him there called Universal: but we know not whether this was written through
ignorance or schism, or the heresy of the wicked. But henceforth we advise your most merciful and
imperial majesty, that he be by no means called Universal in your writings, because it appears to be
contrary to the institutions of the holy Canons and the decrees of the traditions of the holy Fathers.
For he never could have ranked second, save for the authority of our holy Catholic and Apostolic
Church, as is plain to all. Because if he be named Universal, above the holy Roman Church which has
a prior rank, which is the head of all the Churches of God, it is certain that he shews himself as a rebel
against the holy Councils, and a heretic. For, if he is Universal, he is recognized to have the Primacy
even over the Church of our See, which appears ridiculous to all faithful Christians: because in the
whole world the chief rank and power was given to the blessed Apostle Peter by the Redeemer of the
world himself; and through the same Apostle, whose place we unworthily hold, the holy Catholic and
Apostolic Roman Church holds the first rank, and the authority of power, now and for ever, so that if
any one, which we believe not, has called him, or assents to his being called Universal, let him know
that he is estranged from the orthodox Faith, and a rebel against our holy Catholic and Apostolic
Church.2

This passage was also not in the letter read to the Council. I think there is no doubt that the letter did not
contain the passages that the Latins claim was in the original. Several Latins, such as Binius, following
Anastasius, have accused the Seventh Ecumenical Council of reading a corrupted version of this letter, or
deliberately editing or mistranslating the original text of the letter to be less offensive to the Greeks, but this
position is not tenable. In the Acts, immediately after the letter of the Pope was read, the following is
recorded:

After the letter of the Pope to the Emperor was finished Tarasius said to the Legates: “Did ye
yourselves receive these letters from the most Holy Pope which ye laid before our pious Sovereigns?”

Peter and Peter, the legates, answered: “We ourselves having received from our Apostolic
Father these letters, have brought them to your pious Lords.”

John, the most honourable Secretary, said “Our most worthy friends from Sicily can testify to
this – I mean Theodore, most religious Bishop of Catana, and the most pious Deacon Epiphanius, who
is here as Vicar of the Archbishop of Sardinia; for they both, at the command of our pious Sovereigns,
went to Rome with the most pious Secretary of our most holy Patriarch.”

1 Percival, Seven Ecumenical Councils, pp. 536 – 537. Also see Mendham, The Seventh General Council, p. 49.
2 Percival, Seven Ecumenical Councils, p. 537. Also see Mendham, The Seventh General Council, pp. 69 – 70.
 505

Theodore, Bishop of Catana, said to the Patriarch: “... He [the pope] then sent, by the hands
of his Legates who now preside in this assembly, the letter which is directed to your Holiness, with
that other letter which has been read, addressed to our most pious Sovereigns.”1

It is also important to note the fact that the Council repeatedly calls Tarasius “Ecumenical Patriarch”, which
the pope had allegedly complained about in this letter.

Anastasius makes another accusation of the Greeks having tampered with papal letters at this Council,
claiming that in the pope’s letter to Patriarch Tarasius, “And here also has much been expunged by the
Greeks”,2 but this is rather an attempt to discredit the Greek records of this Holy Council, and the internal
evidence of this letter shows no signs of Greek tampering.

Much could be said about the Latin version of the Acts of Nicaea II as they bear upon the Iconoclast
controversy, and although this is an indication of the low quality of Latin scholarship and their records and
translations of Greek documents at that time, this is a separate issue and outside of the scope of this work.3

Ch. XVIII Fictions in the Roman Breviary

The Roman Catholic Breviary made use of the Pseudo-Isidorian Decretals, and still retained falsehoods in the
19th century:

One cannot pass by the two specimens of fiction still retained in the Roman Breviary. On
April 26 Roman Clergy are still bound to recite the “lying legend” of the Council of Sinuessa, and its
declaration that “the First See could be judged by no one.” On January 16 is presented to them, on the
part of their Church, an extract from the monstrous forgery of the False Decretals, telling how Pope
Marcellus “proved to the Churches of the province of Antioch the primacy and headship of the Church
of Rome” (see Hinschius’ edition of the ‘False Decretals,’ page 224). The Decretals were abandoned,
it is said, by Pius VI., but under Pius IX. they still taint the Roman office book with falsehood. 4

Ch. XIX Inauthentic Documents in the Latin Pontificals and the Widespread Diffusion of Two Pseudo-
Isidorian Texts

The Roman Catholic Pontificals, which were widely used by clerics, contained inauthentic documents. The
following information mentions some spurious documents in them:

Allocution Libelli

1 Mendham, The Seventh General Council, pp. 70 – 71.

2 Mendham, The Seventh General Council, p. 75, n. *.
3 One scholar who has discussed this (though I do not agree with his conclusions) is Luitpold Wallach, The

Greek and Latin Versions of II Nicaea and the Synodica of Hadrian I (JE 2448): A Diplomatic Study, in Traditio,
Vol. XXII, pp. 103 – 125, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1966. Richard Price susprisingly favours the
Latin edition of Anastasius Bibliothecarius above all the extant Greek manuscripts (Richard Price, The Acts of
the Second Council of Nicaea (787), Vol. I, Session II, p. 143, in Translated Texts for Historians, Vol. LXVIII,
Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2018).
4 Henry Parry Liddon and William Bright, English Church Defense Tracts, No. I, Roman Misquotations, pp. 3 –

4, London: Rivingtons, 1872. There is more to this effect in the Breviary, and much could be written on the
history of the Roman Breviary. Also see George Gordon Coulton, Papal Infallibility, Ch. XII, pp. 156 – 157 &
Appendix X, pp. 269 – 274, London: The Faith Press, 1932; Janus [Döllinger et al.], The Pope and the Council,
Ch. III, Sect. 31, pp. 396 – 400.
 506

Closely related to the libelli earlier described and to the lectionaries were groups of texts used in the
exhortations, admonitions, and allocutions to the ordinands in the first part of the ordination
ceremonies. These texts could be in a variety of forms, and there is little rhyme or reason to the
groupings in medieval manuscripts. They are often in the form of florilegia. Among the texts
included to be read to the ordinand were snippets from Isidore of Seville’s De ecclesiasticis officiis
and Origines, the Pseudo-Hieronymian De septem ordinibus ecclesiaea, the Pseudo-Isidorian De
officiis septem graduumb, and Epistula ad Leudefredumc, the Pseudo-Alcuinian Liber de divinis
officiisd, the Ordinals of Christ and a variety of sermons, including Sermo II attributed to Ivo of
Chartres.

Pontificals
All of the above texts were gathered together into one volume variously called ordines, ritualia, and
the like, but because the ordination ceremony was reserved to the bishop or pontiff, they came to be
known by the 13th century as pontificals.

[Selected Footnotes:] a) Athanasius Walter Kalff (ed.) Ps. - Hieronymi, De septem ordinibus ecclesiae
(Wurzburg: 1935).
b) Roger E. Reynolds, “The De officiis vii graduum: its Origins and Early Medieval
Development,” Medieval Studies 34 (1972): 113-51. [According to Reynolds, this Pseudo-
Isidorian letter “formed one of the most commonly used epitomes of the functions of the
ecclesiastical grades in early medieval manuscripts. In view of the popularity of this text in early
medieval ordinational formulae, florilegia, and canonical collections, it is surprising that no extensive
study has been devoted to its origins and early development.” (p. 113)]
c) Roger E. Reynolds, “The ‘Isidorian’ Epistula ad Leudefredum: An Early Medieval Epitome of the
Clerical Duties,” Medieval Studies 41 (1979): 252-330. [This article shows how this spurious letter
was diffused throughout the Middle Ages in canonical collections, liturgical books, letters, sentence
collections, and theological florilegia.]
d) PL 101, 1173-1286.1

Ch. XX “Roma locuta est; causa finita est”

The Harvard-educated Roman Catholic priest James Kent Stone (1840 – 1921), who was formerly an
Episcopalian priest, wrote the following in a book published soon after his conversion:

There is a famous sentence of St. Augustine, which has already been given in a note, but to
which attention may be fairly called again, since it has lately been made a pretext for the charge of
fraud against some of the most learned writers as well as saintly prelates of the Catholic Church. St.
Augustine's comment upon the condemnation of Pelagianism is as follows: Jam enim de hac causa
duo concilia missa sunt ad Sedem Apostolicam; inde etiam rescripta venerunt. Causa finita
est. These familiar words have sometimes been abbreviated, indeed have passed into the aphorism:
Roma locuta est; causa finita est. It does not fall to me to vindicate the abbreviation; and if it did, I
should scorn the task.2

The German Roman Catholic priest and preacher John Evangelist Zollner, in a sermon, misquotes Augustine in
an attempt to defend the supreme authority of the Pope, saying, “And in all cases the children of the Church

1 Roger E. Raynolds, Ordinatio and the Priesthood in the Early Middle Ages and Its Visual Depiction, in Greg
Peters and C. Colt Anderson (editors), A Companion to Priesthood and Holy Orders in the Middle Ages, Ch. III,
p. 45, Brill: Leiden, 2015.
2 James Kent Stone, The Invitation Heeded: Reasons for a Return to Catholic Unity, Part III, Ch. VI, pp. 323 –

324, London: Burns, Oates & Co., 1870.

 507

have observed the word of St. Augustine: ‘Roma locuta, causa finita.’”1 Zollner fails to mention or qualify that
these words are in any way an abbreviation of Augustine’s actual words.

The German Jesuit Weininger (or Weninger), in his catechism titled “Infallibility in a Nutshell”, asserts, “They
all [“the holy Fathers”] said with S. Augustine, as soon as the Pope pronounced a judgment in matters of faith:
‘Rome has spoken, the case is decided.’” Weininger also makes the radical claim that “all the holy Fathers,
from Hermas in the first century … without a single exception, thought the Pope to be infallible in the sense of
the Vatican decree of 1870.”2

Victor Augustin Isidore Dechamps (or Deschamps, 1810 – 1883), the Latin Archbishop of Malines, in a letter
to the Latin Bishop of Orleans, also assigned this false saying to St. Augustine, writing, “When S. Augustine, for
example, said with regard to those who demanded a second baptism, that S. Cyprian would have yielded, had
the truth been made clear and affirmed by a plenary Council, what does he prove in speaking thus, but that, in
giving his orders, Pope S. Stephen did not give them as a definitive decision, and to them could not yet be
applied the saying, which belongs to S. Augustine himself: Roma locuta est, causa finita est?”3 Moreover,
Dechamps boldly misrepresents St. Augustine on the question of Cyprian, and I highly advise re-reading the
extensive quotations above made directly from Augustine on this matter.

The Roman Catholic Irish Member of Parliament John Francis Maguire (1815 – 1872), in his book Pius the
Ninth, which was revised in a new edition by Monsignor James L. Patterson, the Roman Catholic Bishop and
president of S. Edmund’s College, also falsely ascribes this quote to St. Augustine, writing: “Rome has ever
been regarded as the centre of unity, the seat of authority, the court of final appeal in all matters of
controversy; and whenever Rome has spoken, her decision has been received with submission by those who
professed to belong to her communion. ‘Rome has spoken; the cause is decided,’ says St. Augustine.”4

Hergenröther writes: “The judgment of Rome was so decidedly held up as final, that already Augustine
declared ‘Rome hath spoken; the cause is ended’ – ‘Roma locuta est; causa finita est.’” In the footnote,
Hergenröther attempts to defend this phrase.5

The Jesuit Walter Devivier (1833 – 1915), in a work edited by the Latin bishop Sebastian Gebhard Messmer
(and with the imprimatur by Latin Archbishop John M. Farley), dates this saying from St. Augustine. 6

The Roman Catholic John Miley, Rector of the Irish College in Paris, quotes these words as St. Augustine’s.7

The Roman Catholic editor of the American periodical “The Southern Cross” of Savannah, Georgia, who says in
a correspondence with the Protestant Episcopal Bishop of Georgia on Papal Infallibility: “Since the Church
exists, it has always been Rome that gave final answer in matters of Christian dogma, and not the bishops of

1 John Evangelist Zollner, Repertorium Oratoris Sacri, Vol. I, p. 331, New York, NY: Fr. Pustet & Co., Third Ed.,
1895.
2 The Saturday Review, Vol. XXXII, December 16, 1871, Infallibility in a Nutshell, p. 776, London:

Spottiswoode & Co., 1871. Henry Parry Liddon and William Bright, English Church Defense Tracts, No. I,
Roman Misquotations, pp. 1 & 6 – 7, London: Rivingtons, 1872. T. J. Bailey (translator), Auguste Gratry, [Four
Letters to Monseigneur Dechamps], Second Letter, pp. 37 – 39, London: J. T. Hayes, 1870.
3 T. J. Bailey (translator), Monseigneur Dechamps, A Letter to Monseigneur Dupanloup (prefixed to

Dechamps’s First Letter to the Rev. Father Gratry), p. 23, London: J. T. Hayes, 1870. See Gratry’s response in
T. J. Bailey (translator), Auguste Gratry, [Four Letters to Monseigneur Dechamps], Second Letter, pp. 34 – 36,
London: J. T. Hayes, 1870.
4 John Francis Maguire and James Patterson, Pius the Ninth, Ch. XVI, p. 289, London: Longmans, Green, & Co.,

2nd Ed., 1878 (Ch. XXVIII, p. 565 of the 1870 Ed.).

5 Hergenröther, Anti-Janus, Ch. IV, p. 67.
6 Sebastian Gebhard Messmer (editor), Walter Devivier, Christian Apologetics: A Defense of the Catholic Faith,

Part II, Ch. III, Art. III, III, p. 407, New York, NY: Benziger Brothers, 1903.
7 John Miley, The Temporal Sovereignty of the Popes, Vol. I, Ch. IX, p. 220, note †, Dublin: James Duffy, 1856.
 508

an individual country; … Or, as St. Augustine says, in the affairs of the Donatists, ‘Roma locuta, causa finita’
(‘Rome has spoken, the matter is decided’).”1

Vassall-Phillips (1857 – 1932) a Roman Catholic priest and convert from Anglicanism, who quotes in the
beginning of his book: “Rescripts have come from the Apostolic See: the Case is finished. – St. Augustine.”2

Archbishop Manning, in his pastoral letter to the clergy, when arguing for the authority of Rome, writes:

The Roman Pontiffs, from the beginning, have issued decrees, sentences, judgments, condemnations,
on faith, on morals, on universal discipline, without Councils, general or particular, or with the
assistance or bishops chosen by themselves, or with their own clergy and theologians. And such acts
of the Roman Church have always been received as objects of faith, and laws of Divine authority. I
need hardly stay to quote … or S. Augustin, ‘Rescripts have come (from the Apostolic See): the cause
is finished.’3

William Bright writes on this aphorism against Roman apologist Luke Rivington’s book The Primitive Church
and the See of Peter:

But we must give full prominence to our author’s daring, and twice repeated, defence of ‘Roma locuta
est, causa finita est,’ as no more than ‘the exact equivalent’ of certain words of St. Augustine (pp. 291,
317; cf. 360). What words? He gives, fairly enough, in a translation, ‘Jam enim de hac causa [i.e.
Pelagianism] duo concilia missa sunt ad sedem apostolicam: inde etiam rescripta venerunt: causa
finita est.’ He tells us that it has been ‘customary’ to represent the words which we have italicised by
the formula in question, which is, he says, their ‘exact equivalent’ – although it gives no hint whatever
of the purport of what precedes them as to the reports of two Councils, to which Rome’s utterance
was a reply. So then, to suppress one of the elements in a process, and to ascribe the whole result to
the other, is evidently, in Roman eyes, a legitimate way of treating a document. In Anglican eyes, it is
a scandalous offence against truth, and one of a numerous class of ‘signs’ against Rome. 4

To those who still believe this was the opinion of Augustine, I respond that it is clear that Augustine did not
think that Pope Stephen’s decision in the baptismal controversy ended the cause, but that only a general
council settled the question (as I show from extensive quotes of Augustine in the chapter on that subject).

Ch. XXI Peter Damian’s Misquotation of the Fathers in Favour of the Filioque

The influential Latin Peter Damian was involved in some controversies between the Orthodox and Latins. I
will here point out some of Damian’s inauthentic or misattributed quotations of the Fathers, in his attempt to
defend the filioque, in the two primary letters he wrote discussing the subject.

Peter Damian writes in his Letter 81 (dated to around 1060), to an Ambrose, citing spurious words of Jerome,
the Nicene Creed, and Athanasius:

1 Papal Infallibility!: A Correspondence Between the Editor of “The Southern Cross,” Savannah, and Rt. Rev.
John W. Beckwith, Bishop of Georgia, III, pp. 35 – 36, New York, NY: D. Appleton and Company, 1876.
2 Oliver Rodie Vassall-Phillips, After Fifty Years, p. 6, London: Sheed & Ward, 1928.
3 Henry Edward Manning, The Centenary of Saint Peter and the General Council: A Pastoral Letter to the

Clergy, p. 27, London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1867, collected in Petri Privilegium: Three Pastoral Letters
to the Clergy of the Diocese, London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1871. Manning simply cites “S. Aug. Opp.
Serm. cxxxi. S. 10, tom. v. 645.” It is strange that Manning should also quote St. Cyprian here, who certainly
proves Manning’s claim false, for Cyprian did not receive the decision of Pope Stephen in the baptismal
controversy as an “object of faith” or “law of Divine authority.”
4 William Bright, The Primitive Church and the Papal Claims, Part II, in The Church Quarterly Review, Vol.

XXXIX, No. LXXVIII, January 1895, Art. I, p. 275, London: Spottiswoode & Co., 1895.
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(41) … Very many of the Greeks think that the Holy Spirit proceed from the Father alone and
not from the Son, because they cannot find, as they think, clear evidence in the Lord’s words. St.
Jerome also, following their teaching, so states in his explanation of the faith, “We also believe in the
Holy Spirit, true God, who proceeds from the Father,”a in which he was silent on whether he
proceeded from the Son. Also in the Creed of the Council of Nicea we find: “We also believe in the
Holy Spirit, who proceeds properly from the Father, and like the Son is true God.”b …

(45) But even though, as I said, many of the Greeks do not believe that the Holy Spirit
proceeds from the Son as from the Father, the blessed Athanasius, bishop of the see of Alexandria,
said among other things in the book he wrote against Arius, “I believe that the Son is in the Father
and the Father in the Son; I believe also that the Spirit, the Paraclete, who proceeds from the Father is
of both the Son and the Father, because he also proceeds from the Son, as it is written in the gospel
that, by his breathing, he would give the Holy Spirit to his disciples, saying, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit.’”c

[Footnotes by the Roman Catholic editor:]

a) This citation cannot be found in Jerome. It derives from Pseudo-Jerome, Epistola 17 seu Explanatio
fidei ad Cyrillum (PL 30.176 D; 179 C-D). But in both texts the word proprie, ‘properly,’ occurs and in
the second the author states, “The Holy Spirit properly and truly proceeds from the Father and from
the Son.” It would seem, therefore, that Damian is not citing directly from this text, but is using some,
as yet, undetected source. Nevertheless, in Letter 91 (PL 145.639 C-D) Damian quotes Jerome as
saying, “The Spirit who proceeds from the Father and from the Son,” a text that Ryan, Sources 128 no.
278 attributes to Smaragdus, Libellus de processione sancti Spiritus, ed. A. Werminghoff, MGH Conc.
2.1 (1906) 238. See also J. Gill, “Filioque,” NCE 5 (1967) 913-14.

b) This is not found in the generally accepted text of the Nicene Creed. But the citation, without
attribution to Nicea, is in Pseudo-Jerome, Epistola 17 (PL 30.176 D).

c) John 20.22-23. Ryan, Sources 120f. no. 260, following Gaudenzi, Il codice 306, points to Smaragdus,
Libellus 238 as the source of this quotation. Gaudenzi, Il codice 306f. notes that Codex Vat. Ottob. lat.
339 contained the work of Smaragdus, and that Damian’s visit to the monastery of S. Giovani di
Acereta in 1057 – 1058, which owned this codex, allowed him to cite Smaragdus in Letter 81. [Cf.
Pseudo-Athanasius, Professie Ariana et confessio catholica (PL 62, 300 C), falsely ascribed to Vigilius
of Tapsus. This passage is cited also in Letter 91.]1

Peter Damian continues his inaccurate quotations in his Letter 91 (dated to 1062), to Patriarch St.
Constantine III Lichoudes of Constantinople (Patriarch from 1059 – 1063), where Damian writes, “First of all,
therefore, let me explain the source of this ignorance that allows almost all the Greeks and some Latins to
maintain that the Holy Spirit does not proceed from the Son, but only from the Father.” In this letter, Damian
misquotes the Nicene Creed (pp. 7, 15), Ambrose (p. 12), Augustin (pp. 12 – 13), Jerome (pp. 6, 13, but
Damian notes his doubts with this last passage’s authenticity), and Athanasius (p. 13), pressing these false
documents upon the Patriarch.2

Damian inaccurately quotes St. Ambrose in the following passage of Letter 91:

1 Owen J. Blum (translator), The Letters of Peter Damian, Letters 61 – 90, Letter 81, pp. 227 – 230, in The
Fathers of the Church Mediaeval Continuation, Vol. III, Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America
Press, 1992.
2 See Owen J. Blum (translator), The Letters of Peter Damian, Letters 91 – 120, Letter 91, pp. 1 – 17, The

Fathers of the Church Mediaeval Continuation, Vol. V, Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America
Press, 1998. Another translation of this letter is found in James Likoudis, Ending the Byzantine Greek Schism,
Appendix II, pp. 191 – 203, New Rochelle, NY: Catholics United for the Faith, 2nd Ed., 1992. Latin in Migne,
PL, Vol. CVL, Opusc. XXXVIII, pp. 633 A – 642 C. It is worth remarking that Damian points out that “some
Latins” in his time rejected the Filioque.
 510

Nor is it improper for him to proceed from both, since he is equally in both, as Ambrose also states in
book eight of the same work, “Just as the Father is in the Son, and the Son is in the Father, thus the
Spirit of God is both in the Father and in the Son.”

However, the true Ambrosian passage reads:

Just as the Father is in the Son, and the Son is in the Father, thus the Spirit of God and the Spirit of
Christ is both in the Father and in the Son.1

The addition of the words “the Spirit of Christ” dissipates some of the force of Damian’s argument, for it is not
as significant to say that the Spirit of Christ is in Christ, and anyways the passage has no bearing on the
question of ‘from’.

It is a serious matter that Damian does not know the correct text of the Nicene Creed, and makes an argument
from the word “properly”, which is not found in the original Creed. In his Letter 91, Damian writes:

In the creed of the Council of Nicaea, moreover, it says, “We also believe in the Holy Spirit, who
proceeds properly from the Father, and who just as the Son is true God”; and a little further on,
“And that the Holy Spirit is also true God we find in Scripture, and that he proceeds properly from the
Father, and that he always exists with the Father and the Son.” And again it says, “The Son is from the
Father, and the Holy Spirit proceeds properly and truly from the Father.” …

Hence, when in the creed of the Council of Nicaea, to which we referred above, the Holy Spirit is said
to proceed not just from the Father without any qualification, but with the added word, “properly” –
“and [we believe] in the Holy Spirit,” it says, “who proceeds properly from the Father” – this
“properly” is not referred to the Father in such a way that the Holy Spirit proceeds from him alone,
but that from him is given to the Son the attribute that he proceeds also from him. 2

These spurious quotations constitute a significant portion of Damian’s testimonies from the Church Fathers in
these two letters (in Letter 91, seven out of the fifteen patristic quotes are misquoted, and in Letter 81, three
out of the seven patristic quotes on the procession are misquoted – this totals 10 inauthentic passages out of
22, or almost half, in his controversial letters against the Greeks).

Ch. XXII Forgeries in the Roman Catechism

There are multiple citations of forgeries in the “Catechism of the Council of Trent”, also known as the “Roman
Catechism” or “Trent Catechism”, an authoritative document which has been praised and quoted by
numerous Popes, and was commissioned by the Latin Council of Trent. The Catholic Encyclopedia writes, “It
[the Trent Catechism] was composed by order of a council, issued and approved by the pope; its use has been
prescribed by numerous synods throughout the whole Church;” (fuller quotation below).

Section I Citations of Pseudo-Isidore

The Introductory Notice to the Ante-Nicene Fathers volume, which is quoted at length above, points out that
the Roman Catechism cites the pseudo-epistle of Anacletus as an evidence for the primacy of the Roman

1Blum, The Letters of Peter Damian, Letters 91 – 120, Letter 91, p. 12.
2Blum, The Letters of Peter Damian, Letters 91 – 120, Letter 91, pp. 7 – 15. Damian’s source here is the
Pseudo-Jerome. See the editor’s remarks for more information on Damian’s sources – I do not allege that he
was the author of any forgery, only that he uncritically and negligently copied the erroneous quotations of
others, which had already been circulating among the Latins.
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Pontiff, as well as the spurious epistle of Pope Fabian on the sacrament of chrism. However, more examples
and a thorough documentation can be given here.

References here are to the English translation by John Donovan (Dublin: W. Folds and Son, 1829), which was
frequently reprinted in other cities and countries. The Roman Catechism extensively makes use of the
pseudo-Isidorian decretals ascribed to the early Popes (Clement I, Anacletus, Eusebius, Urban I, Fabian, and,
and Melchiades). I document all eleven examples that I identified (though some items could count as multiple
instances):

1. A Pseudo-Isidorian decretal of Pope Melchiades (or Miltiades) is cited on p. 194, immediately followed by a
quotation from a Pseudo-Isidorian epistle of Pope Clement I, followed by references to the Pseudo-Isidorian
writings ascribed to three Popes (Urban I, Fabian, and Eusebius): “That confirmation has all the conditions of
a true Sacrament has been, at all times, the doctrine of the Catholic Church, as Pope Melchiades, and many
other very holy and ancient pontiffs expressly declare. The truth of this doctrine S. Clement could not have
confirmed in stronger terms, than when he says: ‘All should hasten, without delay to be born again to God,
and then to be sealed by the bishop, that is, to receive the seven-fold gift of the Holy Ghost; for, as we have
learned from S. Peter, and as the other Apostles taught in obedience to the command of our Lord, he who
contumeliously and not from necessity, but voluntarily neglects to receive this Sacrament, cannot possibly
become a perfect Christian.’ This same doctrine has been confirmed, as may be seen in their decrees, by the
Urbans, the Fabians, the Eusebius’s, pontiffs who, animated with the same spirit, shed their blood for the
name of Christ.” [Footnotes: “Epist. ad Episcop. Hispan. c. 2. ep. 4, ante finem.; Habes decreta horum
Pontificum de consecrat. dis. 5.”]

2. The same Pseudo-Isidorian decretal of Pope Melchiades is cited on p. 195: “Confirmation, although said by
Melchiades to have a most intimate connection with baptism, is yet an entirely different Sacrament:”
[Footnote: “Epist. ad Episc. Hisp. in med.”]

3. The same Pseudo-Isidorian decretal of Pope Melchiades is quoted on p. 196: “Hence, Pope Melchiades
marks the difference between them with minute accuracy in these terms: ‘In baptism,’ says he, ‘the Christian
is enlisted into the service, in confirmation he is equipped for battle; at the baptismal font the Holy Ghost
imparts the plenitude of innocence, in confirmation the perfection of grace; in baptism we are regenerated to
life, after baptism we are forfeited for the combat; in baptism we are cleansed, in confirmation we are
strengthened; regeneration saves by its own efficacy those who receive baptism in peace, confirmation arms
and prepares for the conflict.’ These are truths not only recorded by other Councils, but specially defined by
the Council of Trent, and we are, therefore, no longer at liberty not only to dissent from, but even to entertain
the least doubt regarding them.” [Footnotes: “Loco citato.”; “Laod. can. 48, Meld. c. 6. Florent. & Constant.
Trid. sess. 7.”]

4. A Pseudo-Isidorian decretal of Pope Fabian is cited on chrism on p. 196: “But, to impress the faithful with a
deeper sense of the sanctity of this Sacrament, the pastor will make known to them by whom it was
instituted; a knowledge the importance of which with regard to all the Sacraments, we have already pointed
out. He will, accordingly, inform them that not only was it instituted by our Lord Jesus Christ, but as S. Fabian
Bishop of Rome testifies, the chrism and the words used in its administration were also appointed by him: a
fact of easy proof to those who believe confirmation to be a Sacrament, for all the sacred mysteries are
beyond the power of man, and could have been instituted by God alone.” [Footnote: “Epist. 2, initio.”]

5. A Pseudo-Isidorian decretal of Pope Fabian is cited on chrism on p. 197: “That such is its matter the
Church and her councils have uniformly taught; and the same doctrine has been handed down to us by S.
Denis, and by many other fathers of authority too great to be questioned, particularly by Pope Fabian, who
testifies that the Apostles received the composition of chrism from our Lord, and transmitted it to us.”
[Footnote: “Epist. 3. ad Episc. Orient.”; other fathers in support are cited in the next footnote.]

6. The same Pseudo-Isidorian decretal of Pope Fabian is cited on chrism on p. 198: “That this is its solemn
consecration is in accordance with the instructions of our Lord, when at his last supper he committed to his
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Apostles the manner of making chrism, we learn from Pope Fabian, a man eminently distinguished by his
sanctity, and by the glory of martyrdom.” [Footnote: “S. Fab. papa, uti supra.”]

7. The Pseudo-Isidorian decretals of Popes Urban I and Eusebius are cited on pp. 199 – 200: “We have also
the clearest testimony of the Fathers, and, as may be seen in the decrees of their popes, of Urban, of Eusebius,
of Damasus, of Innocent, and of Leo.” The footnote also cites the spurious decretals of Popes Clement and
Melchiades.

8. A Pseudo-Isidorian decretal of Pope Melchiades is quoted on p. 203: “Not only does this Sacrament
confirm; it also increases divine grace in the soul: ‘The Holy Ghost,’ says Melchiades, ‘who descends with
salutary influence on the waters of baptism, imparts the plenitude of grace to innocence: in confirmation, the
same Holy Ghost gives an increase of divine grace, and not only an increase, but an increase after a wonderful
manner.’” [Footnote: “De cons. dist. 5. c. Spiritum. Euseb. Emis. hom. in die Pent.”]

9. A Pseudo-Isidorian decretal of Pope Anacletus is cited on clerical communion on p. 242: “This devout
practice which seems to have been interrupted for a time, was again partially revived by Pope Anacletus, a
most holy martyr, who commanded, that all the ministers who assisted at the holy sacrifice, should
communicate, an ordinance, as the Pontiff declares, of Apostolic institution.” [Footnote: “De consec. dist. 2, c.
10.”]

10. A Pseudo-Isidorian decretal of Pope Fabian is cited on the same page (p. 242): “But subsequently, when
charity and devotion declines amongst Christians, and the faithful very seldom approached the holy
communion, it was decreed by Pope Fabian, that all should communicate thrice every year, at Christmas, at
Easter, and at Pentecost, a decree which was afterwards confirmed by many Councils, particularly the first of
Agath.” [Footnote: “Fab. decret. habes de cons. dist. 2. c. 16. & ib. citatur Concil. Agathense c. 18. c.
sæculares.”]

11. A Pseudo-Isidorian decretal of Pope Anacletus is cited to show the Papacy in the footnote to the following
passage on p. 320: “As the successor of S. Peter, and the true and legitimate vicar of Jesus Christ, he,
therefore, presides over the Universal Church, the Father and Governor of all the faithful, of Bishops, also, and
of all other prelates, be their station, rank, or power what they may.” [Footnote: “De primatu Summi Pontifice
vid. Anacl. epist. 3. c. 3. et citatur dist. c. Sacrosancta. Greg. l. 7. epist. 64. et 65. Nicol. Pap. epist. ad
Mediolanens. et citat. dist. 22. c. omnes, vid. item eadem dist. c. Constantin. Conc. Chalced. in ep. ad Leonem.”]

Section II Citations of Cyril, Cyprian, and Optatus

The supposed statement by Cyril at the Council of Ephesus (p. 319, that the Pope is ‘the Father and Patriarch
of the whole world’) is likewise a forgery, which is discussed in the section on the spurious works and
interpolations of St. Cyril of Alexandria.

On p. 98, Cyprian is quoted to show that “A visible head [is] necessary to preserve unity” (p. 97), but is was
shown above that Cyprian did not agree with the modern Roman doctrine on the Papacy. The Roman
Catechism goes on to quote Ss. Optatus of Milevis, Basil, and Ambrose out of context. The words of Optatus of
Milevis appear the most relevant, but the Anglican scholar William Chillingworth (1602 – 1644) comments on
their impertinence.1 These are the principal pages in the Catechism where the rights of the Pope are defined.

A brief note on the authenticity and reliability of Optatus’s statements bearing on the Church of Rome

1Chillingworth’s Works, Vol. II, p. 276, 1820 [Vol. II, pp. 252 – 255 of the Oxford, 1838 Ed.]. Also see George
Ayliffe Poole, The Testimony of Saint Cyprian Against Rome: An Essay Towards Determining the Judgment of
Saint Cyprian Touching Papal Supremacy, § VIII, pp. 128 – 130, London: James Duncan, 1838.
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I have grave doubts about the textual reliability, authenticity, and value of Optatus, since there are many
problems with this work. Scholars assert the existence of a second edition of this work (which St. Jerome did
not know about), and the Catholic Encyclopedia writes of this work,

St. Jerome (De viris ill., cx) tells us it was in six books and was written under Valens and Valentinian
(364-75). We now possess seven books, and the list of popes is carried as far as Siricius (384-98).
Similarly the Donatist succession of antipopes is given (II, iv), as Victor, Bonifatius, Encolpius,
Macrobius, Lucianus, Claudianus (the date of the last is about 380), though a few sentences earlier
Macrobius is mentioned as the actual bishop. The plan of the work is laid down in Book I, and is
completed in six books. It seems, then, that the seventh book, which St. Jerome did not know in 392,
was an appendix to a new edition in which St. Optatus made additions to the two episcopal lists. The
date of the original work is fixed by the statement in I, xiii, that sixty years and more had passed since
the persecution of Diocletian (303-5). Photinus (d. 376) is apparently regarded as still alive; Julian is
dead (363). Thus the first books were published about 366-70, and the second edition about 385-
90.1

The subsequent updates to Optatus’s work show that it was clearly tampered with, and the theory of a
“second edition” is a speculation to account for this. Allegedly, in creating a “second edition” Optatus did not
even bother to update the dates and statements of who was still living or dead, but patched up only parts of
his work. This is reminiscent of speculations of St. Cyprian having written a second edition of his
De Unitate Ecclesiae, to account for the pro-Petrine variations in the manuscripts. Also, the Catholic
Encyclopedia admits that in Optatus’s work, “An incorrect list of popes follows”, which means that Optatus (or
his interpolator) did not even know the correct list of the Bishops of Rome, which he is using to mock the
succession of Donatist antipopes at Rome. Optatus also claims that the word Cephas (which Peter was called)
means “a head”, whereas it means “a stone”, showing himself unaware of the Aramaic origins of this
word.2 Optatus also makes an incorrect reference to the topography of Rome in a reference to the Lateran
neighbourhood: “Optatus was an African who knew little of the topography of Rome, and could well have
misunderstood his source. … In fact the manuscripts of Optatus erroneously have in Laterani at this point”.3
It is worth adding that there are six known manuscripts of this work (three manuscripts are from the first
millennium, the best of which is the Petersburg codex, which is said to be from the fifth or sixth century),
which are in a more or less incomplete state.4 Another concern is that Optatus incorrectly cites writings, for
example in his First Book Against the Donatists, saying, “So poor is your instruction that you asserted what
you had not seen and had heard from false reports, despite what we have read in the Epistle of the Apostle
Peter: do not judge your brethren on the strength of opinion.”5 I am reluctant to put much weight in an
author who misquotes Biblical documents in the very same breath as he criticises others of “poor …
instruction” of using “false reports”. The modern editor of Optatus does not think there was significant
interpolation, but writes, “Historians crave dates as well as episodes, but where Optatus offers these, he is

1 John Chapman, Saint Optatus, in CE, Vol. XI, p. 262.

2 See Chillingworth and the notes on this passage in O. R. Vassall-Phillips (translator and editor), The Work of
St. Optatus Against the Donatists, London: Longmans Green, 1917. However, also see Mark Edwards
(translator and editor), Optatus: Against the Donatists, Book II, § 2., p. 32, n. 9, in Translated Texts for
Historians, Vol. XXVII, Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1997. This faulty linguistic interpretation is also
made by Latin Pope Innocent III and is found in the Pseudo-Isidore (see Walter Ullmann, The Individual and
Society in the Middle Ages, Lecture I, p. 9, n. 8, Baltimore, MA: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1966). Also
see Yves Congar, Cephas – Céphalè – Caput, in Revue du Moyen Âge Latin, Vol. VIII, pp. 5 – 42, 1952.
3 Johannes Fried, Donation of Constantine and Constitutum Constantini: The Misinterpretation of a Fiction

and Its Original Meaning, Ch. VI, p. 81, 2007.

4 O. R. Vassall-Phillips (translator and editor), The Work of St. Optatus Against the Donatists, Preface, London:

Longmans Green, 1917.

5 Mark Edwards (translator and editor), Optatus: Against the Donatists, Book I, § 5., p. 4, in Translated Texts

for Historians, Vol. XXVII, Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1997. The editor here comments, “Not
attested in any Epistle attributed to Peter (cf 1Peter 3.8, 2Peter 1.10). Ziwsa suggests James 4.11. Optatus
does, however, cite non-canonical sayings; cf p. 161 n. 74.”
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almost always wrong.”1 Moreover, very little biographical information is known about Optatus, such as the
years of his birth and death. In addition, Optatus’s status as a saint is questionable, and to my knowledge, he
is not venerated in the Orthodox Church, and was not venerated anywhere in the first millennium, and the
Catholic Encyclopedia states, “St. Optatus has apparently never received any ecclesiastical cultus; but his
name was inserted in the Roman Martyrology on the fourth of June, though it is quite unknown to all the
ancient Martyrologies and calendars.”

To summarise, Jerome says this work is in six books, but it has come down to us in seven books, and internal
evidence shows that the seventh book was not part of the original plan. Jerome says Optatus wrote this under
Valens and Valentinian (364-75), and Optatus himself says he is writing when the persecution of Diocletian
(303) was “a full sixty years ago and more”. Yet in this same work of Optatus, Siricius is mentioned as being
Bishop of Rome, but Siricius did not become bishop until 384. Several various theories to explain the
problem of a second edition or interpolation have been proposed, but they are speculative, and the different
editors are not unanimous. All this tends to show the lack of integrity and reliability of this work, and it
cannot be insisted upon for controversial purposes.

Section III A False Quotation of St. Ambrose in Multiple Editions and Translations of the Trent Catechism

The Roman Catholic priest John Donovan of Maynooth College published a popular English translation of the
Trent Catechism in 1829, which contains many errors and is unfaithful to the original Latin text of the
Catechism.2 I will here focus on a serious false quotation of St. Ambrose, where the words of the 16th century
Catechism authors have been mistakenly put in as a quotation of St. Ambrose. Some Latin editions of the
catechism had been corrupted here on this point (perhaps by mistake, negligence, or fraud), and this error
made its way into the English, French and Italian translations. The following quotation is not by Ambrose, but
is cited as such in Donovan’s English translation:

Lastly, S. Ambrose says: “Should any one object, that the Church is content with one head and one
spouse, Jesus Christ, and requires no other; the answer is obvious; for, as we deem Christ not only the
author of all the Sacraments, but, also, their invisible minister; (he it is who baptises, he it is who
absolves, although men are appointed by him the external ministers of the sacraments) so has he
placed over his Church, which he governs by his invisible spirit, a man to be his vicar, and the
minister of his power: a visible Church requires a visible head, and, therefore, does the Saviour
appoint Peter head and pastor of all the faithful, when, in the most ample terms, he commits to his
care the feeding of all his sheep; desiring that he, who was to succeed him, should be invested with
the very same power of ruling and governing the entire Church.”3

The London 1852 edition of the Trent Catechism, with notes by the Anglican scholar Theodore Alois Buckley
corrects this error. Buckley writes in the Preface:

Whilst I confess myself in many respects indebted to the translation published by the Rev. J.
Donovan, I must express my surprise that a work abounding in so many manifest inaccuracies,

1 Mark Edwards (translator and editor), Optatus: Against the Donatists, Introduction, p. xx, in Translated
Texts for Historians, Vol. XXVII, Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1997.
2 See John Mockett Cramp, A Text-Book of Popery: Comprising a Brief History of the Council of Trent, and a

Complete View of Roman Catholic Theology, Ch. XXII, pp. 430 et sqq., London: Houlston and Stoneman, 3rd
Ed., 1851.
3 John Donovan, The Catechism of the Council of Trent, On the Ninth Article, pp. 98 – 99, Dublin: W. Folds and

Son, 1829 (p. 97 of the Baltimore 1833 ed.; p. 75 of an undated [1839] Baltimore ed. [published by Lucas
Brothers]; p. 75 of an undated [1830s?] New York ed. [published by The Catholic Publication Society]; p. 75
of an undated [1830s?] New York ed. [published by Catholic School Book Co.]; also in the 1839 edition
published in Rome by the Propaganda Press). Note that that no citation is given for this passage, while the
quotes for other fathers usually have citations.
 515

should have obtained public sanction, and even been reprinted at the Propaganda Press [Rome,
1839]. The state of Roman Catholic Theology must be low, where so careless an edition of
documents so important, forms the sole medium of their communication in the English language.1

In the footnote to the Ambrosian passage under discussion, Buckley writes:

Lib. ix. Com. in Luc. c. 9. Through a typographical error, this passage of St. Ambrose has been omitted,
and the following words strangely attributed to that father, in several of the best editions of
Manutius, of 1831, and the Leipsic reprint, and others. The same mistake has also crept into the
French and Italian translations. See Ambros. in Luc. ix. 9. 2

The Presbyterian John Hughes comments:

In page 97 of the Translation, there are twelve lines of the Latin struck out. These are from
Ambrose, who says, “Christ is the rock,” and that Christ conferred his peculiar titles on the twelve
disciples. Why this is dropped is very clear! But the forgery stops not here. The words of the
compilers of the catechism, written many ages after Ambrose died, are put into his mouth, and he is
made to talk like a thorough-paced papist, by leaving in the words – “St. Ambrose saith,” and then
erasing all he had said, and making him father a long paragraph composed in the 16th century, on the
power of the popes! Is this less than infamous?3

Subsequent Roman Catholic editions (starting in 1867, it seems) corrected this error (as a result of Protestant
criticism), and have the following footnote:

The words of St. Ambrose are wanting in some of the best editions of the Roman Catechisms, in that
of Paulus Manutius for instance, in the Leipsic stereotype edition of 1841, approved by the Saxon
Catholic Consistory, and in the Translation of Figliucci, an error in its origin purely typographical.4

This translation has deceived some later authors, who have cited in full this false quotation of St. Ambrose
from the Trent Catechism as an evidence in favour of the Papal claims, without noticing its spuriousness.
These include:

Charles White and M. J. Spalding (editors), The United States Catholic Magazine and Monthly Review, Volume
IV, Anna H. Dorsey, The Student of Blenheim Forest, or The Trials of a Convert, Ch. VI, p. 101, Baltimore, MD:
John Murphy, 1845.

W. E. Youngman, For Husks, Food, Ch. IV, pp. 42 – 43, New York, NY: D. & J. Sadlier & Co., 1874.

James Harvey Robinson and Charles Austin Beard, Readings in Modern European History, Vol. I, Ch. VIII,
Section 25, pp. 151 – 152, Boston, MA: Ginn & Co., 1908. It is strange that these two Columbia University
professors copied wholesale from the Trent Catechism these inaccuracies without any critical comment.

1 Theodore Alois Buckley, The Catechism of the Council of Trent, Preface, p. v, London: George Routledge &
Co., 1852.
2 Theodore Alois Buckley, The Catechism of the Council of Trent, Question XI, p. 100, note f., London: George

Routledge & Co., 1852. Another source states that this false Ambrosian quote is “In the editions of Tauchnitz
and L’abbé Doney (à Dijon, 1840), as well as in that of Paulus Manutius, and the translation of Figliucci”
(Notes and Queries, Second Series, Vol. I, May 3, 1856, pp. 356 – 357, London: Bell & Daldy, 1856).
3 John Hughes and John Breckinridge, A Discussion of the Question, Is the Roman Catholic Religion, in Any Or

in All Its Principles Or Doctrines, Inimical to Civil Or Religious Liberty?: And of the Question, Is the
Presbyterian Religion, in Any Or in All Its Principles Or Doctrines, Inimical to Civil Or Religious Liberty?, p.
426, Baltimore, MD: John Murphy & Co., 1867.
4 John Donovan (translator), Catechism of the Council of Trent, p. 97, n. ‡, Dublin: James Duffy, 1867. It is

noteworthy that only the omission of Ambrose’s authentic words is here noticed, and not the far more
significant fact that the next paragraph had been ascribed to Ambrose instead.
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Recommendations of the Roman Catechism by Popes

Also known as the “Catechism of the Council of Trent”, this catechism is recognized as the most authoritative
Roman Catholic catechism. The Roman Catechism was ordered by the Latin Council of Trent, edited under
Charles Borromeo, and published by decree of Latin Pope Pius V (1566), who are both considered saints by
Roman Catholics. Latin Pope Leo XIII recommended two books for all seminarians: Thomas Aquinas’ Summa
Theologica1 and The Catechism of the Council of Trent. This catechism was originally designed to supply
parish priests with an official book of instruction for the faithful.

The Catholic Encyclopedia writes the following on the authority of the Roman Catechism:

The Council [of Trent] intended the projected Catechism to be the Church’s official manual of popular
instruction. … It deals with the papal primacy and with Limbo, points which were not discussed or
defined at Trent; on the other hand, it is silent on the doctrine of Indulgences, which is set forth in the
“Decretum de indulgentiis”, Sess. XXV. The bishops urged in every way the use of the new
Catechism; they enjoined its frequent reading, so that all its contents would be committed to
memory; they exhorted the priests to discuss parts of it at their meetings, and insisted upon
its being used for instructing the people.

The Catechism has not of course the authority of conciliary definitions or other primary symbols of
faith; for, although decreed by the Council, it was only published a year after the Fathers had
dispersed, and it consequently lacks a formal conciliary approbation. During the heated
controversies de auxiliis gratiae between the Thomists and Molinists, the Jesuits refused to accept
the authority of the Catechism as decisive. Yet it possesses high authority as an exposition of
Catholic doctrine. It was composed by order of a council, issued and approved by the pope; its
use has been prescribed by numerous synods throughout the whole Church; Leo XIII, in a letter
to the French bishops (8 Sept., 1899), recommended the study of the Roman Catechism to all
seminarians, and the reigning pontiff, Pius X, has signified his desire that preachers should
expound it to the faithful.2

Latin Pope Leo XIII’s encyclical Depuis Le Jour states:

Is it necessary to add that the book par excellence in which students may with most profit study
scholastic theology is the Summa Theologica of St. Thomas Aquinas? It is our wish, therefore, that
professors be sure to explain to all their pupils its method, as well as the principal articles relating to
Catholic faith.

We recommend equally that all seminarists have in their hands, and frequently peruse, that golden
book known as the Catechism of the Council of Trent, or Roman Catechism, dedicated to all priests
invested with the pastoral office (Catechismus ad Parochos). Noted both for the abundance and
accuracy of its teaching and for elegance of style, this catechism is a precious summary of the whole
of theology, dogmatic and moral. The priest who knows it thoroughly has always at his disposal
resources which will enable him to preach with fruit, to acquit himself fitly in the important ministry
of the confessional and the direction of souls, and be in a position to refute triumphantly the
objections of unbelievers.3

1 The errors of this work are discussed in a previous chapter.

2 Joseph Wilhelm, Roman Catechism, in CE, Vol. XIII, p. 121.
3 Pope Leo XIII, Depuis Le Jour: On the Education of the Clergy, ¶¶ 22. – 23. Translated in Claudia Carlen, The

Papal Encyclicals: 1740 – 1981, Vol. II, 1878 – 1903, Pope Leo XIII, Depuis Le Jour (September 8, 1999),
Washington, DC: McGrath Publishing Company, 1981.
 517

Latin Pope Pius X recommends the Roman Catechism for children to learn in his encyclical Quam Singulari:

A full and perfect knowledge of Christian doctrine is not necessary either for First Confession or for
First Communion. Afterwards, however, the child will be obliged to learn gradually the entire
Catechism according to his ability. …

Those who have charge of the children should zealously see to it that after their First Communion
these children frequently approach the Holy Table, even daily if possible, as Jesus Christ and Mother
Church desire, and let this be done with a devotion becoming their age. They must also bear in mind
that very grave duty which obliged them to have the children attend the public Catechism classes; if
this is not done, then they must supply religious instruction in some other way. 1

The Latin Council of Trent issued the following decree, prefixed to the printed editions of the Trent
Catechism:

That the faithful people may approach to receive the sacraments with the greater reverence and
devotion of mind, the holy Synod commands all bishops, not only when these shall have to be
administered by themselves to the people, previously to explain their force and use in a manner
suited to the capacity of the receivers, but also to endeavour that the same be piously and prudently
observed by every parish-priest, even in the vernacular tongue, if need be, and it can be conveniently
done, according to the form to be prescribed by the holy Synod for all the sacraments in a catechism,
which bishops will take care to have faithfully translated into the vulgar tongue, and expounded to
the people by the parish-priests.2

Ch. XXIII Church Progress cites False Letter

The American Roman Catholic weekly paper Church Progress, which claimed a circulation of “20,000 Catholic
readers” in the late 19th century, and was endorsed by two Latin archbishops and seven Latin bishops, cites a
false letter of Ignatius in its public debate with the American Baptist paper, saying:

Where are the many bishops, one in doctrine, save in the Catholic Church? Where the truth
taught throughout the world without variety, save in the Catholic Church? Where the harmonious
accord of many minds bowing to the one teaching which is of God?
Recalling that Irenaeus and Ignatius, too, lived at a time, when by your theory, there was no
rule of faith in existence at all, when the New Testament had not been compiled, when the apostles
were all gone to rest, remarking that Christianity was already broad as the great Roman Empire and
one as Christ is with the Father, we have a right to ask what held that vast body of Christians together
and preserved them in the one faith?
The answer comes to us in the words of the same Ignatius Bishop of Antioch in the second
century (cf. letter to Pope Nicholaus Migne. v. 129, p. 60.) in which he tells us that “the blessed words
of Christ to Peter” were intended for “all who after him were to be supreme pastors and most sacred
pontiffs of ancient Rome” and therefore “from the beginning destroyers of heresies that have arisen
and uprooters of the cockle among the wheat” * * * “being successors of the prince of the Apostles
and imitators of his zeal for the faith which is according to Christ.”

1 Claudia Carlen, The Papal Encyclicals: 1740 – 1981, Vol. III, 1903 – 1939, Quam Singulari (August 8, 1910),
Washington, DC: McGrath Publishing Company, 1981.
2 John Donovan (translator), Catechism of the Council of Trent, p. 4, Dublin: James Duffy, 1867.
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In time we will show you that the voice of Ignatius is the voice of ages, and that so far from
the papacy having been interrupted or destroyed we can name every successor of St. Peter from the
first.1

Ignatius of Antioch certainly never wrote these words; this is a grave misquotation. There are even clues in
the very text, as the city of Rome is referred to as “ancient Rome”, which is a term used to distinguish Rome
on the Tiber after Constantinople was recognized as “New Rome” in 381. Also, there was no “Pope Nicholaus”
until Pope Nicholas I (800 – 867). In addition, there is no record that Ignatius ever wrote to any Pope; there is
only his Epistle to the Romans, which is not addressed the Bishop of Rome, and neither does it mention him,
and I quote this letter against the Papacy in this work. The reference provided, to Volume 129 of Migne’s
Patrologiæ Latinæ, consists of the works of Anastasius Bibliothecarius, who has an account of the Acts of the
Latin 8th Ecumenical Council (which, by the way, are widely recognized to be corrupted, as demonstrated in
the works I recommend on the Photian controversy). The citation used by the Church Progress is from the
Third Act of this council, which includes a letter from St. Ignatius, Bishop of Constantinople (c. 798 – 877,
contemporary of St. Photius), to Pope Nicholas I. I was unable to find any other writer who has made the
same gross misattribution to St. Ignatius of Antioch. This should have been obvious to the Church Progress,
since the volumes in Migne’s collections are generally in chronological order, so that volume 129 would not
contain material from the second century. The American Baptist, the debate opponent of the Church
Progress, failed to directly point out the spuriousness of this quote, and it was never retracted by the Church
Progress in this debate, which continued for several months after that false quote was published.

Ch. XXIV The Dublin Review cites False Passages

The Dublin Review, in a long article against the Anglican controversialist Arthur Philip Perceval, concludes
with these words:

As the boasting polemic challenges us to produce any single writer in the first seven
centuries, who taught an assent to this proposition—(‘They are accursed, who refuse obedience to
the Bishop of Rome’) as essential to salvation, or required it as a term of communion, we offer him
the following passages from a bishop of the seventh, equally eminent for his learning and his piety:
and “we shall be very glad—we speak in truth—if he or any other [Anglican] shall think it deserving
attention.

“Sic nos scimus præesse Ecclesiæ Christi quatenus Romano pontifici reverenter humiliter et
devote, TANQUAM DEI VICARIO præ ceteris Ecclesiæ prælatis, specialius nos fateamur debitam in
omnibus obedientiam exhibere. Contra quod quenquam procaciter venientem tanquam
HÆRETICUM a consortio fidelium omnino decernimus alienum. Hoc vero non ex electione proprii
arbitrii sed potius auctoritate Spir. Sancti, habemus firmum, ratum credimus et tenemus (St. Isidore
of Seville, ad Claud. Ducem. Opp. ii. 525. (Madrid 1778),
“Quod vero de parilitate agitur Apostolorum, Petrus præeminet ceteris qui a Domino audire
meruit Tu vocaberis Cephas, &c. … Cujas dignitas potestatis, etsi ad omnes catholicarum episcopos
est transfusa, specialus tamen Romano antistiti, veluti capiti, ceteris membris celsior, permanent in
æternum. Qui igitur debitam ei non exhibit obedientiam, a capite sejunctus Acephalorum SCHISMATI
se reddit obnoxium, quod sicut illud S. Athanasii de fide S. Trinitatis, quasi sit FIDEI CATHOLICÆ
ARTICULUS. Quod nisi quique fideliter firmiterque crediderit salvus esse non poterit. (Ad Eugenium.
ii. 524.)”2

1 The Papal Controversy involving the Claim of the Roman Catholic Church to be the Church of God between
the “American Baptist” and “Church Progress”, June 20, 1891, Church Progress’ Ninth Affirmative, p. 163, St.
Louis, MO: National Baptist Publishing Co., 1892.
2 Dublin Review, Vol. VII, May 1840, p. 528, “Hon. And Rev. A. P. Perceval, and the Dublin Review”.

Capitalization and formatting from source.

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Perceval replies, writing in “The Episcopal Magazine, and Church of England Warder”:

[The Dublin Reviewer] then cites two passages, which, for the reasons which immediately
follow, there is no need for my reprinting, professing to be—the first, from “St. Isidore, of Seville, ad
Claud. Ducem. Opp. ii. 254 (Madrid, 1778): the other from the same writer, “Ad Eugenium, ii. 524.”
I will now tell the Reviewer, and your readers, why these passages are not worthy our notice,
and why there is no need for my reprinting them: namely, because the learned Du Pin, himself a
member of the Roman communion, and to whom the Reviewer is content to appeal when it serves his
purpose, speaks thus of both these epistles:—
“I pass the same judgement (namely, “that there is no doubt but that letter is the fiction of
some imposter, and, perhaps, of the famous Isidore Mercator,”) [the forger of the spurious decretals]
“on the 4th letter, directed to Claudius, wherein the question of the Holy Ghost is handled against the
Greeks, and, on the last, to Eugenius of Toledo, about the authority of the Pope. It is visible these
letters were written in the time of the quarrel between the Greeks and the Latins, which was not
begun in the time of Isidore of Seville.”—Du Pin, 7th Century.1

Ch. XXV Forgeries and Novelties in Connection with the Rosary and the False Papal Claim that It
Originated with St. Dominic

Some false documents are connected with the history of the devotion of the Rosary. Many Bishops of Rome
have claimed that the Rosary was instituted by Dominic (1170 – 1221), considered a saint by Roman
Catholics, but that tradition is not historically tenable.

The Catholic Encyclopedia states:

“The Rosary”, says the Roman Breviary, “is a certain form of prayer wherein we say fifteen decades
or tens of Hail Marys with an Our Father between each ten, while at each of these fifteen decades we
recall successively in pious meditation one of the mysteries of our Redemption.” The same lesson for
the Feast of the Holy Rosary informs us that when the Albigensian heresy was devastating the
country of Toulouse, St. Dominic earnestly besought the help of Our Lady and was instructed by her,
so tradition asserts, to preach the Rosary among the people as an antidote to heresy and sin. From
that time forward this manner of prayer was “most wonderfully published abroad and developed
[promulgari augerique coepit] by St. Dominic whom different Supreme Pontiffs have in various past
ages of their apostolic letters declared to be the institutor and author of the same devotion.” That
many popes have so spoken is undoubtedly true, and amongst the rest we have a series of
encyclicals, beginning in 1883, issued by Pope Leo XIII, which, while commending this devotion to
the faithful in the most earnest terms, assumes the institution of the Rosary by St. Dominic to be
a fact historically established. Of the remarkable fruits of this devotion and of the extraordinary
favours which have been granted to the world, as is piously believed, through this means, something
will be said under the headings Feast of the Rosary and Confraternities of the Rosary. We will
confine ourselves here to the controverted question of its history, a matter which both in the middle
of the eighteenth century and again in recent years has attracted much attention. …

In any case it is certain that in the course of the twelfth century and before the birth of St. Dominic,
the practice of reciting 50 or 150 Ave Marias had become generally familiar. … When we find such
an exercise recommended to a little group of anchorites in a corner of England, twenty years before
any Dominican foundation was made in this country, it seems difficult to resist the conclusion that
the custom of reciting fifty or a hundred and fifty Aves had grown familiar, independently of, and
earlier than, the preaching of St. Dominic. On the other hand, the practice of meditating on certain
definite mysteries, which has been rightly described as the very essence of the Rosary devotion,

1Arthur Percival, The Episcopal Magazine, and Church of England Warder, Second Series, Vol. II, June 5th,
1840, p. 363. Italics and formatting from source.
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seems to have only arisen long after the date of St. Dominic’s death. It is difficult to prove a negative,
but Father T. Esser, O.P., has shown (in the periodical “Der Katholik”, of Mainz, Oct., Nov., Dec., 1897)
that the introduction of this meditation during the recitation of the Aves was rightly attributed to a
certain Carthusian, Dominic the Prussian. It is in any case certain that at the close of the fifteenth
century the utmost possible variety of methods of meditating prevailed, and that the fifteen
mysteries now generally accepted were not uniformly adhered to even by the Dominicans
themselves. (See Schmitz, “Rosenkranzgebet”, p. 74; Esser in “Der Katholik” for 1904-6.) To sum up,
we have positive evidence that both the invention of the beads as a counting apparatus and
also the practice of repeating a hundred and fifty Aves cannot be due to St. Dominic, because
they are both notably older than his time. Further, we are assured that the meditating upon the
mysteries was not introduced until two hundred years after his death. What then, we are compelled
to ask, is there left of which St. Dominic may be called the author?

These positive reasons for distrusting the current tradition might in a measure be ignored as
archaeological refinements, if there were any satisfactory evidence to show that St. Dominic had
identified himself with the pre-existing Rosary and become its apostle. But here we are met with
absolute silence. Of the eight or nine early Lives of the saint, not one makes the faintest allusion to
the Rosary. The witnesses who gave evidence in the cause of his canonization are equally reticent. In
the great collection of documents accumulated by Fathers Balme and Lelaidier, O.P., in their
“Cartulaire de St. Dominique” the question is studiously ignored. The early constitutions of the
different provinces of the order have been examined, and many of them printed, but no one has
found any reference to this devotion. We possess hundreds, even thousands, of manuscripts
containing devotional treatises, sermons, chronicles, Saints’ lives, etc., written by the Friars
Preachers between 1220 and 1450; but no single verifiable passage has yet been produced
which speaks of the Rosary as instituted by St. Dominic or which even makes much of the
devotion as one specially dear to his children. The charters and other deeds of the Dominican
convents for men and women, as M. Jean Guiraud points out with emphasis in his edition of the
Cartulaire of La Prouille (I, cccxxviii), are equally silent. Neither do we find any suggestion of a
connection between St. Dominic and the Rosary in the paintings and sculptures of these two and a
half centuries. Even the tomb of St. Dominic at Bologna and the numberless frescoes by Fra Angelico
representing the brethren of his order ignore the Rosary completely.

Impressed by this conspiracy of silence, the Bollandists, on trying to trace to its source the origin of
the current tradition, found that all the clues converged upon one point, the preaching of the
Dominican Alan de Rupe about the years 1470-75. He it undoubtedly was who first suggested the
idea that the devotion of “Our Lady’s Psalter” (a hundred and fifty Hail Marys) was instituted or
revived by St. Dominic. Alan was a very earnest and devout man, but, as the highest authorities
admit, he was full of delusions, and based his revelations on the imaginary testimony of writers that
never existed (see Quétif and Echard, “Scriptores O.P.”, 1, 849). His preaching, however, was
attended with much success. The Rosary Confraternities, organized by him and his colleagues at
Douai, Cologne, and elsewhere had great vogue, and led to the printing of many books, all more or
less impregnated with the ideas of Alan. Indulgences were granted for the good work that was thus
being done and the documents conceding these indulgences accepted and repeated, as was natural in
that uncritical age, the historical data which had been inspired by Alan’s writings and which were
submitted according to the usual practice by the promoters of the confraternities themselves. It was
in this way that the tradition of Dominican authorship grew up. The first Bulls speak of this
authorship with some reserve: “Prout in historiis legitur” says Leo X in the earliest of all. “Pastoris
aeterni” 1520; but many of the later popes were less guarded.

Two considerations strongly support the view of the Rosary tradition just expounded. The first is the
gradual surrender of almost every notable piece that has at one time or another been relied upon to
vindicate the supposed claims of St. Dominic. Touron and Alban Butler appealed to the Memoirs of a
certain Luminosi de Aposa who professed to have heard St. Dominic preach at Bologna, but these
Memoirs have long ago been proved to be a forgery. … The famous will of Anthony Sers, which
professed to leave a bequest to the Confraternity of the Rosary at Palencia in 1221, was put forward
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as a conclusive piece of testimony by Mamachi; but it is now admitted by Dominican authorities

to be a forgery (“The Irish Rosary”, Jan., 1901, p. 92). Similarly, a supposed reference to the subject
by Thomas à Kempis in the “Chronicle of Mount St. Agnes” is a pure blunder (“The Month”, Feb.,
1901, p. 187).1

Augusta Theodosia Drane (1823 – 1894), a Roman Catholic Dominican nun, who wrote a book on the history
of St. Dominic, finds it difficult to reject the false tradition of the Rosary’s Dominican origin, and writes the
following:

Having spoken thus far of the evidence of facts, we have now to say a word on the evidence
of tradition, a tradition which claims from us no ordinary degree of respect, being that of the Church
herself, resting on the supreme authority of the Holy See. This authority can be adduced, not merely
in support of the belief that the devotion of the Rosary took its origin in the time of St. Dominic, and
was first propagated by him and his immediate followers, but it declares him in no vague terms to
have been the first to institute the devotion, and to have received it from the hands of the Blessed
Virgin herself. If we are justified in recognizing St. Dominic to have been the first Inquisitor, less
from any historic proofs of the fact than from the tradition of the Order, confirmed by the words of
Pope Sixtus V., much more are we bound to accept this other tradition concerning the origin of the
Rosary, which is world-wide in its extent, and has been sanctioned by the authority of no less than
thirteen Sovereign Pontiffs. Such a tradition can hardly be assailed without temerity, for it would
imply the most culpable disrespect to these illustrious Pastors of the Church to suppose that they
would commit themselves to a precise affirmation of the fact without such examination of the
evidence in support of it as would be satisfactory to the most stubborn of critics. …

Yet, wonderful to say, Father Cuyper, the author of the dissertation which appears in the Bollandists,
declares himself not satisfied with the evidence afforded by these Lessons and their approval by the
Holy See. In his opinion they are not based on any ancient testimony, and have no sufficient
authority.

[Prospero Lambertini, later Pope Benedict XIV] concludes one of his dissertations with the following
words: “You ask if St. Dominic was really the institutor of the Rosary, you declare yourselves
perplexed and full of doubt upon the subject. But what account do you make of the decisions of so
many Sovereign Pontiffs – of Leo X., of Pius V., of Gregory XIII., of Sixtus V., of Clement VIII., of
Alexander VII., of Innocent XI., of Clement XI., of Innocent XIII., of Benedict XIII., and of many others,
who are all unanimous in declaring the Rosary to have been instituted by St. Dominic himself?” To
this list we can now add the names of Pius IX. and Leo XIII. Our limits will now allow us to do more
than acknowledge the testimony that they have borne to the fact in question, but we cannot conclude
without at least quoting the words of him who has perhaps done more than all his predecessors to
extend the use of the Holy Rosary, and to multiply its privileges. When, in 1883, Pope Leo XIII.,
addressing himself to the Bishops of the Universal Church, commanded for the first time the
observance of the Month of the Rosary, he made use of the following memorable words, in which he
sums up the history of the devotion: “None of you, venerable brethren, are ignorant what woes and
afflictions were caused by the Albigensian heretics, who, born of the sect of the later Manichæns,
filled the south of France and other parts of Europe with most pernicious errors. Carrying
everywhere the terror of their arms, they sought to extend their power by fire and sword. Then, as
you know, God in His mercy raised up against His enemies a man of eminent sanctity, the Father and
Founder of the Dominican Order. This man, great by the integrity of his doctrine, by his apostolic
labours, undertook the magnificent task of defending the Catholic Church, not by force, nor by arms,
but by the sole power of that prayer which he was the first to make known under the title of the Holy
Rosary, and which was propagated far and wide by him and by his disciples. Enlightened from on
high, he understood that this prayer would be the most powerful weapon for overcoming the
enemies of the Church and defeating their impiety. And the event proved that he was right. For, in

1Herbert Thurston, The Rosary, in CE, Vol. XIII, pp. 184 – 186. Also see Thurston’s articles in The Month
(October 1900 to April 1901, September 1902, July 1903, May and June, 1908, etc.).
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fact, the use of this prayer having been spread and practised according to the instruction and
institution of St. Dominic, piety, faith, and concord once more flourished. The enterprises of the
heretics failed, and their power gradually decayed; a vast number of souls returned to the true faith,
and the fury of the impious was vanquished by the arms of the Catholics, who repelled force by
force.”

Comment on these words is as needless as it would be unbecoming. Rome has spoken, the
cause is decided, and in presence of the authoritative decisions of so long a line of august Pontiffs, all
captious criticism must henceforth be put to silence.1

Yet the Catholic Encyclopedia was not silent, as has been seen, and many Roman Catholics have placed their
trust in false and ignorant authorities. Therefore, many (thirteen) Popes have made an error of fact, and
deceived others, when they falsely asserted on multiple occasions that Dominic was the author of the Rosary.
Despite the collective millions and billions of repetitions of the Rosary, Roman Catholics have not been
endowed with certainty in this matter, and have lacked the humility to concede the inauthenticity of the
Dominican origin of the Rosary.

Ch. XXVI The Novelty of the Latin Hail Mary Prayer and a Related Legend

The Hail Mary prayer in Latin, which forms so important a component of Roman Catholic worship, is a
novelty from about the year 1050. Though I do not here have any theological objections to this prayer (and
the Orthodox have a similar but better version, and it does not stand as separately with us), it is another
indication of the Latins changing and embracing novelties right at the time of their schism.

The Latins have also invented false legends about this prayer. The Catholic Encyclopedia writes:

a story attributing the introduction of the Hail Mary to St. Ildephonsus of Toledo must probably be
regarded as apocryphal. The legend narrates how St. Ildephonsus going to the church by night found
our Blessed Lady seated in the apse in his own episcopal chair with a choir of virgins around her who
were singing her praises. Then St. Ildephonsus approached “making a series of genuflections and
repeating at each of them those words of the Angel’s greeting: ‘Hail Mary full of grace the Lord is with
thee, blessed art thou amongst women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb’”. Our Lady then showed
her pleasure at this homage and rewarded the saint with the gift of a beautiful chasuble (Mabillon,
Acta SS. O.S.B., saec V, pref., no. 119). The story, however, in this explicit form cannot be traced
further back than Hermann of Laon at the beginning of the twelfth century.

In point of fact there is little or no trace of the Hail Mary as an accepted devotional formula
before about 1050. All the evidence suggests that it took its rise from certain versicles and
responsories occurring in the Little Office or Cursus of the Blessed Virgin which just at that time was
coming into favour among the monastic orders. Two Anglo-Saxon manuscripts at the British
Museum, one of which may be as old as the year 1030, show that the words “Ave Maria” etc. and
“benedicta tu in mulieribus et benedictus fructus ventris tui” occurred in almost every part of the
Cursus, and though we cannot be sure that these clauses were at first joined together so as to make
one prayer, there is conclusive evidence that this had come to pass only a very little later. (See “The
Month”, Nov., 1901, pp. 486-8.) The great collections of Mary-legends which began to be formed in
the early years of the twelfth century (see Mussafia, “Marien-legenden”) show us that this salutation

1Augusta Theodosia Drane, The History of St. Dominic: Founder of the Friars Preachers, Ch. X, pp. 134 – 136,
London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1891. Many other Roman Catholics have repeated this claim and have
been reluctant to admit that their Popes have deceived them, e.g., John Bonaventure O’Connor, Saint Dominic
and the Order of Preachers, Part I, pp. 35 – 37, New York, NY: The Holy Name Burau, Third Ed., 1919. Many
Roman Catholics disagreed with Thurston (the author of this Catholic Encyclopedia article), such as the
Roman Catholic priest A. M. Skelly, but his reasons are very poor and mainly rely on Papal authority.
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of our Lady was fast becoming widely prevalent as a form of private devotion, though it is not quite
certain how far it was customary to include the clause “and blessed is the fruit of thy womb”.1

Ch. XXVII A Quote from a Commentary Misattributed to St. Ambrose

The Douay–Rheims Bible has the following commentary on the epistle of St. Paul to Timothy, 1 Tim. iii. 15
(“But if I tarry long, that thou mayest know how thou oughtest to behave thyself in the house of God, which is
the church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth.”):

In the house of God.] Al the vvorld being Gods, yet the Church onely is his house, the Rector or Ruler
vvhereof at this day. (saith S. Ambrose vpon this place) is damasus. Where let our louing brethren
note vvel, how cleere a case it vvas then, that the Pope of Rome vvas not the Gouernour onely of one
particular See, but of Christes vvhole house, vvich is the Vniuersal Church, vvhose Rector this day is
Gregorie the thirtenth.

The piller of truth.] This place pincheth al Heretikes vvonderfully, and so it euer did, and therfore
they oppose them selues directly against the very letter and confessed sense of the same, that is,
cleane contrarie to the Apostle. some saying, the Church to be lost or hidden: some, to be fallen avvay
from Christ these many ages: some, to be driuen to a corner onely of the vvorld: some, that it is
become a stewes and the seate of Antichrist: lastly the Protestants most plainely and directly, that it
may and doth erre, and hath shamefully erred for many hundred yeres together. And they say herein
like them selues, and for the credit of their ovvne doctrine, vvhich can not be true in very deede,
except the Church erre, euen the Church of Christ, vvich is here called the house of the liuing God.

But the Church vvich is the house of God, whose Rector (saith S. Ambrose) in his time was Damasus,
and novv Gregorie the thirtenth, and in the Apostles time S. Peter, is the piller of truth, the
establishement of al veritie: therefore it can not erre.

It is also noted in the margin here, “S. Ambrose calleth the B. of Rome Rector of the vvhole Church.”2

The Latin of the quote attributed to St. Ambrose is “Ut cum totus mundus Dei sit, Ecclesia tamen domus Ejus
dicatur, cujus hodie rector est Damasus.”3

The Anglican scholar Thomas Cartwright (1535 – 1603) comments on these passages from the Douay–
Rheims:

[In the house of God,] Here is Ambroses authority brought in to proue that Damasus Bishop of Rome
was ruler of the whole Church, and withall a strong affirmation, that it is cleere that he so was taken at
that time: Howbeit those that can see cleere can see no such thing, but onely those whose eyes a
Popish mist hath dazeled: For first of all it is confessed by your own Lovanists, that these
Commentaries are none of Ambroses:4

The Anglican scholar Simon Patrick (1626 – 1707), bishop of Ely, also comments on this passage from the
Douay–Rheims:

1 Herbert Thurston, Hail Mary, in CE, Vol. VII, p. 111. Additional later novelties and variations are discussed in
this article.
2 The Holie Bible Faithfvlly Translated into English, Vol. III, The New Testament of Iesvs Christ, 1 Tim., Ch. III,

p. 572, Rheims: John Fogny, 1582.

3 Migne, PL, Vol. CXXIV, p. 673 C.
4 Thomas Cartwright, A Confvtation of the Rhemists Translation, Glosses and Annotations on the Nevv

Testament, 1 Tim., Ch. III, p. 553, Leiden: W. Brewster, 1618.

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For as I have proved in the following book, that we, not they, are the true Catholics, so there is
nothing further from truth (I have likewise shewn) than that the Apostle here speaks, with any
particular respect, to the Church of Rome; which is so far from striking any terror into us, when it
appropriates to itself the name of Church, that we look upon the pretence to be as ridiculous, as the
proof is, they give us of it; which is the sole authority of a false St. Ambrose’s Commentaries upon this
place; who thus glosses: “All the world being God’s yet the Church only is his house: the rector (or
ruler) whereof at this time is Damasus.” Where the Rhemists desire us to note, “how clear a case it
was then, that the Pope of Rome, was not the governor only of one particular See, but of Christ’s
whole house, which is the universal Church,” &c. And further improve this conceit, in these words;
“the Church, which is the house of God, whose rector,” saith St. Ambrose, “in his time, was Damasus,
and now Gregory the Thirteenth, and in the Apostle’s time St. Peter, is the pillar of truth, the
establishment of verity; and therefore it cannot err.”

Any truly, it is worth our noting how clear a case it is that they were sorely pinched (to use their own
word again) for want of proofs; when they betook themselves to such as this. For it is hard to think,
that men of their education (whom we will not despise, as they do the heretics, a little before, as most
ignorant of the Word of God, not knowing the very principles of divinity), should not know that St.
Ambrose was not the author of those Commentaries; they being acknowledged, by the greatest men
in their Church, to be spurious brats of some other writer. Baronius, for instance, saith, “the
exposition of Ambrose, upon all Paul’s Epistles, began to be wanting in the time of Cassiodorus: but
being plainly lost, it is apparent the work of another author was foisted in its room.” And their other
great Cardinal, Bellarmine, confesses as much in several places; but in one more fully, where he
assoils an objection of Chemnitius (who following the rule of the Civil Law, quotes this book, as
Bellarmine oft had done, in a case of marriage) by this answer, “that the author of these
Commentaries is not St. Ambrose, as learned men know: and more than that, whosoever was the
author, he was none ex celebratis patribus, of the famous or eminent Fathers.” And indeed, there is
great reason for what these, and many others of that Church say; as I might shew out of the
Commentaries themselves, which contradict the very words of the true St. Ambrose.

But suppose he had been the author, or these the work of some celebrated writer, it is a clear case
(and I desire it may be noted) that these Rhemish annotators were not so knowing as they would be
esteemed, or not so conscientious as they ought to have been; when they gather from those words,
that Damasus was ruler over more than his own see, even over the universal Church, as St. Peter they
say was in the Apostles’ times. For St. Ambrose himself saith, in his book of the Priestly Dignity
(which priests, one would think, should read) that when Christ said, “Feed my sheep;” “those sheep,
and that flock, not only blessed Peter then received; but both he received them with us, and with him
we all have received them.” And it is no unusual thing in ancient writers, to say the same of other
bishops that this writer doth of Damasus, when they mean no more, but that they were rulers of that
part of the catholic Church which was committed to their charge.

Thus Arsenius, for instance, writes to Athanasius, as he himself hath set down his letter, which begins
thus: “We loving peace and unity with the catholic Church, over which thou, by the grace of God, dost
preside or rule,” &c.1

Other Roman Catholics who have cited this passage as a production of St. Ambrose include:

Nicholas of Cusa, Writings on Church and Reform, VII, pp. 316 – 317, tr. by Thomas M. Izbicki, Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 2008.

1John Cumming, A Preservative Against Popery, Vol. V, The Popish Rule of Faith Examined and Disproved,
Book I, IV, Simon Patrick, The Pillar and Ground of Truth, pp. 2 – 3, London: British Society for Promoting the
Religious Principles of the Reformation, 1848.
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Thomas Harding, cited in John Ayre (editor), The Works of John Jewel, Vol. I, Of the Supremacy, Art. IV,
Division XXXI, pp. 429, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1845.

Thomas Stapleton, A Returne of Untruthes Upon M. Iewelles Replie, p, 187, Antwerp: John Latius, 1566.

Francis de Sales, in Henry Benedict Mackey, Library of St. Francis De Sales: Works of This Doctor of the
Church Translated into English, Vol. III, The Catholic Controversy, Part II, Art. VI, Ch. XII, p. 292, London:
Burns and Oates, 1886. Francis de Sales’s work on Papal authority contains many errors and false references
(e.g., a spurious letter of St. Clement to James the Lord’s brother (p. 280), ascribing the life of Clement to Pope
Damasus (pp. 280 – 281), believing there were more than 20 Nicene canons (p. 283), a spurious Athanasian
letter to Pope Felix II (pp. 283, 291, see the chapter on this document), a spurious epistle of Pope Julius I
against the Orientals in favour of Athanasius (p. 283), claiming that no other bishop than the Pope was called
successor of Peter or head of the Church (p. 284, see what I have quoted on Ignatius and Athanasius), twice
citing the pseudo-Isidorian letter of Anacletus (p. 291, the first citation of which is actually from Siricius, and
taken out of context), a spurious letter of Marcellus (p. 291), the spurious Synod of Sinuessa (p. 291), a
spurious letter to Damasus (p. 292), misrepresenting the Council of Carthage against a ‘Bishop of Bishops’ as
not relevant to Rome (p. 293, see the chapter on Cyprian and Augustine), claiming a particularity of the title
‘Universal Pope’ to the Bishop of Rome (p. 294, I noted that the heretic Dioscorus also received this title), a
spurious letter of St. Ignatius to a certain Mary (p. 294, see the chapter on this document), and references to
two apocryphal epistles by St. Martial (p. 79, 179), besides others).

American Ecclesiastical Review, Vol. XIV (Vol. IV of New Series), May 1896, II, The Union of the Churches, by
Mgr. Anton de Waal, XXV, p. 408, Philadelphia, PA: American Ecclesiastical Review Co., 1896. The Right Rev.
Mgr. Anton de Waal was Rector of the Campo Santo in Rome.

Several other Roman Catholics have cited this passage by Ambrosiaster in defence of the Papacy, but they
have correctly stated or implied that its author is not certain.

Erasmus was the first to challenge Ambrosian authorship, and more recent scholars have continued to
dispute the authorship of these commentaries on the Epistles, but the true author is not known with
certainty, although scholars are still agreed in rejecting Ambrose. The author is now generally referred to as
Ambrosiaster. He is probably contemporary with Pope Damasus (366 – 384), and is likely a certain Hilary of
Rome. In any case, the authors cited here discuss that even if the commentary was genuine, this quote is not
relevant to demonstrating Papal supremacy.1 Although the author is ancient and likely Orthodox, this
misattribution is important and distorts the context, because Ambrosiaster likely was a priest who lived in
Rome. It was not a saint who said this, nor a bishop. When a priest living in Rome says “Damasus is ruler of
God’s Church” it admits of a more local context (the true interpretation) than if a bishop from Milan says the
same.

Ch. XXVIII Note on a Textual Variant in St. Ambrose’s De Pœnitentia

There is a textual variant in St. Ambrose’s De Pœnitentia, where some manuscripts have “faith of Peter” and
others have “chair of Peter” in the passage “for they have not the succession of Peter, who hold not the chair
of Peter”. The variant is with the words “sedem” or “fidem”, which appear more similar with the long s
(ſedem/fidem).

The best critical edition (by Otto Faller (1889 – 1971), a Roman Catholic scholar who spent much of his life
editing the texts of St. Ambrose) prefers “sedem” as the better reading. The manuscripts/codices reading
“fidem” are E (11th c.), D (11th c.), A (11/12th c.), M (11/12th c.), N (11th c.), and L (12th c., but this is a later
scribal correction). The printed editions with “fidem” are the 1492 first printed edition, the Paris 1529

1Also see John Ayre (editor), The Works of John Jewel, Vol. I, Of the Supremacy, Art. IV, Division XXXI, pp. 433
– 435, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1845.
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edition, Baronius’s 1583 edition, the note in the 1582 and later editions of Gratian’s Decretum by the
Correctores Romani (reprinted in Migne), along with other editions, and Pietro Ballerini (1698 – 1769)
prefers “fidem” as the better reading.1 However, 13 other manuscripts (out of the 19 major codices, dating
from the 7th to the 12th c.) read “sedem”, and the more modern editions prefer “sedem”.2 Protestants have
historically held this to be a textual corruption,3 and there are differing views on the internal evidence and
possible motivations of the scribes, but I am not aware of any modern scholarly article on this variant
reading.

More can be said on this issue, but there is insufficient evidence to confidently make an accusation of
corruption here, although it should be insisted that the text is not reliable enough to be used in the Papal
controversy, where it has been frequently cited.

Ch. XXIX A Pseudo-Isidorian Quote from St. Clement of Rome

The following is another use of a false quotation of an early Church Father, Clement of Rome. James Austin
Mason wrote:

St. Clement, one of the successors of St. Peter and his disciple, writes thus: - “Simon Peter, for
the reward of his true faith and preaching sound doctrine, is defined to be the foundation of the
Church, for which reason he is named by the divine mouth of our Lord, Peter; who was by our Lord’s
first election the chief of the Apostles, to whom as chief, God the Father revealed the Son.” He also
calls him, “the father of all the apostles, who received the keys of the kingdom of heaven.” 4

It appears that Mason copied from Thomas Ward (1652 – 1708), who wrote the following:

St. Clement, who was a disciple of St. Peter and afterwards pope, writes thus: “Simon Peter,
for the reward of this true faith and preaching of sound doctrine, is defined to be the foundation of
the Church, for which reason he is also, by the divine mouth of our Lord, surnamed Peter; who was,
by our Lord’s first election, chief of the Apostles, to whom, as chief, God the Father revealed his son.”
Again, “the apostles were not all equals, but one presided over all.” And in his second epistle he calls
St. Peter “the blessed apostle, the father of all the apostles, who received the keys of the kingdom of
heaven.” He also styles him “blessed Peter, prince of the apostles.”5

Ward goes on to quote from the pseudo-Isidorian decretals of Pope Anacletus and Pope Pius I, and refers to
the pseudo-decretals of Popes Evaristus and Alexander I, along with many other mistakes in his use of
ecclesiastical authorities.

1 Pietro Ballerini, De Vi Ac Ratione Primatus Romanorum Pontificum, Cap. XIII, § V, 26., p. 117, Rome: S.
Congregationis De Propaganda Fide, 1849.
2 Otto Faller (editor), Ambrosius (Ambrose of Milan), Explanatio symboli, De sacramentis, De mysteriis, De

paenitentia, De excessu fratris Satyri, De obitu Valentiniani, De obitu Theodosii, De Paenitentia, Book I, Ch. VII,
n. 33., p. 135, in CSEL (Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum), Vol. LXXIII, Vienna: Hoelder, Pichler,
Tempsky, Rev. Ed., 1963.
3 Such as John Edmund Cox (editor), Thomas James, A Treatise of the Corruptions of Scripture, Councils, and

Fathers: By the Prelates, Pastors, and Pillars of the Church of Rome, for the Maintenance of Popery, Part II, p.
141, London: John W. Parker, 1843; Felix Bungener, Rome and the Council in the Nineteenth Century, III, p.
199, Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1870; Jeremy Taylor, The Whole Works, Vol. V, A Discourse of the Liberty of
Prophesying, Section VIII, 4., pp. 490 – 491, London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, 1859.
4 James Austin Mason, Strictures on Wesley’s Pretended Roman Catechism, Part I, p. 10, London: P. & M.

Andrews, 1828.
5 Thomas Ward, An Interesting Controversy with Mr. Ritschel, Part III, Ch. VII, p. 230, Manchester: J. Robinson,

1819. This appears to be taken from the Pseudo-Isidorian decretals attributed to Clement, which are found in
Migne, PG, Vol. I, pp. 463 et sqq.
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Ch. XXX A Spurious Letter of St. Athanasius with the Synod of Alexandria to Pope Felix II

Roman Catholics have cited in their favour an epistle which Athanasius, with the other bishops of Egypt in a
council held at Alexandria, are said to have addressed to Pope Felix II. This epistle states, among other things:

Christ has placed you and your predecessors on the summit of the ark, and willed them to take the
care of all churches.1

This letter has now been admitted to be spurious and supposititious by all Roman Catholics.2 However, many
had previously cited it in favour of the Papacy, and still continued to cite it, as shown here.

As briefly noted elsewhere, Francis de Sales twice uses this false document. Francis de Sales writes:

The Synod of Alexandria, at which Athanasius was present, in its letter to Felix II., uses
remarkable words on this point, and amongst other things, relates that in the Council of Nice it had
been determined that it was not lawful to celebrate any Council without the consent of the Holy See
of Rome, but that the canons which had been made to that effect had been burnt by the Arian
heretics.3

This document was already looked upon as doubtful or spurious before de Sales wrote, such as by Baronius4
and Binius,5 yet others have continued to cite it as though it were authentic. Note that this document is
associated with the Pseudo-Isidore.

Deusdedit, writing to Pope Victor III in 1086, boldly cites this letter as his first example of patristic evidences
for the Papal supremacy (Robert Somerville and Bruce C. Brasington (translators), Prefaces to Canon Law
Books in Latin Christianity: Selected Translations, 500 – 1245, Ch. IV, 2., pp. 122 – 123, New Haven, CT: Yale
University Press, 1998; Pio Martinucci (editor), Deusdedit Presbyteri Cardinalis Tituli Apostolorum In
Eudoxia Collectio Canonum, Lib I, Cap. XVIIII, pp. 40 – 42, Venice: Ex Typographia Aemiliana, 1869).

Pisanus defends this manifest forgery (A Preservative Against Popery, Vol. XV, p. 173).

Bellarmine had also confidently cited this spurious letter as if it were genuine (Michael Geddes, Miscellaneous
Tracts, Vol. II, An Essay on the Canons of the Council of Sardica, p. 438, London: B. Barker, Third Ed., 1730.)

This letter is quoted for the papal power in an anonymous mid-eleventh-century Gallic treatise De Ordinando
Pontifice, written in the aftermath of the 1046 synod of Sutri, attacking Emperor Henry III’s action against the
Papacy. The scholar Leidulf Melve writes: “The third reference, however, specifies this papal power by
quoting Bishop Athanasius addressing Pope Felix, claiming for the pope the power to judge heretics,
emperors and all enemies of the church: as ‘head’ and ‘doctor’ for everybody (caput omnium), the pope is
responsible for maintaining the ‘right order’.” (Leidulf Melve, Inventing the Public Sphere: The Public Debate
during the Investiture Contest (c. 1030 – 1122), Vol. I, Ch. II, 11., p. 167, Leiden: Brill, 2007).

1 William Patrick Palmer, A Treatise on the Church of Christ, Vol. II, Part VII, Ch. III, II, 4., p. 504. Palmer notes
here, “Athanas. Epist. ad Felicem. Rejected by the Benedictine edition of St. Athanasius’ works.”
2 Edward H. Landon (translator), Antonio Pereira de Figueredo, Tentativa Theologica: Episcopal Rights and

Ultra-Montane Usurpations, The Fifth Principle, XLII, p. 175, London: Joseph Masters, 1847.
3 Henry Benedict Mackey, Library of St. Francis De Sales: Works of This Doctor of the Church Translated into

English, Vol. III, The Catholic Controversy, Part II, Art. VI, Ch. X, p. 283, London: Burns and Oates, 1886. On p.
291, de Sales cites this document as giving the title of “Supreme Apostolic seat” to the Bishop of Rome.
4 Edward H. Landon (translator), Antonio Pereira de Figueredo, Tentativa Theologica: Episcopal Rights and

Ultra-Montane Usurpations, The Fifth Principle, XLII, p. 175, London: Joseph Masters, 1847.
5 A Preservative Against Popery, Vol. XV, p. 173.
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This letter (among other spurious writings of Athanasius) is found in a fifteenth-century manuscript written
in Italy (Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Lat. 10594) (Paul Oskar Kristeller, Iter Italicum, Vol. III, Alia
Itinera I, p. 246, Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1983).

Thomas Harding, in John Ayre (editor), The Works of John Jewel, Vol. I, Of the Supremacy, Art. IV, p. 352,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1845.

Alexander White in Edmond William O’Mahoney (translator), Alexander White, White’s Confutation of
Church-of-Englandism, and Correct Exposition of The Catholic Faith, On All Points of Controversy Between
the Two Churches, Ch. XXXI, pp. 146 – 147, London: Charles Dolman, 1841.

Anselm of Lucca (Fridericus Thaner (editor), Anselmi Episcopi Lucensis Collectio Canonum Una Cum
Collectione Minore, Fasciculus I, Lib. II, Cap. 50 – 52, pp. 98 – 100, Innsbruck: Librariae Academicae
Wagnerianae, 1906; Also see Kathleen G. Cushing, Papacy and Law in the Gregorian Revolution: The
Canonistic Work of Anselm of Lucca, Appendix I a., pp. 154 – 155, Oxford Historical Monographs, Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1998.)

Marcin Kromer (1512 – 1589), an influential Polish Roman Catholic Bishop, Prince, and personal secretary to
two Kings of Poland (Martini Cromeri, De Vera Et Falsa Religione Colloquiorum Liber Tertius, qui est de
Ecclesia Christi, in duo divisus colloquia, Lib. III, Mm – Mm3 (unnumbered pages), Dillingen: Exc. S. Mayer,
1561.

Thomas Ward (1652 – 1708), an English Roman Catholic controversialist, in Thomas Ward, An Interesting
Controversy with Mr. Ritschel, Part III, Ch. VII, p. 232, Manchester: J. Robinson, 1819 [first published
posthumously].

Johann Franz Bessel (1672 – 1749), a German Benedictine abbot and scholar, in a Dissertation on the Dignity
of the Supreme Pontiff (Joanne Francisco Bessel, Dissertationes ad Jus Publicum Romano-Ecclesiasticum,
Dissert. I, § III, p. 26, Cologne: Wilhelmi Metternich, 1715).

Giuseppe Marconi, La Voce Di S. Pietro, § I, p. 21, Assisi: Per Ottavio Sgariglia Stampatore, 1789.

Venceslaus Jelinek, Officia Episcoporum Sacris Sententiis et Ecclesiasticis Constitutionibus Illustrata, Cap.
XXXIII, p. 99, Trnava: Typis Venceslai Jelinek, 1806.

Dominico Schram, Institutiones Theologiae Dogmaticae, Scholasticae, et Moralis, Vol. I, § 31., p. 74, Venice:
Foresti et Bettinelli, 1817. Dominic Schram (1722 – 1797) was a Benedictine professor.

It is boldly quoted at length in the epigraph to the periodical Allgemeiner Religions und Kirchenfreund und
Kirchencorrespondent, Vol. XIX, Würzburg: Im Verlag der Stahel’schen Buchhandlung, 1846.

The Roman Catholic priest James Luke Meagher (1848 – 1920) quotes from this false letter (James Luke
Meagher, Christ’s Kingdom On Earth, pp. 157 – 158, New York, NY, 1892; Meagher’s work contains numerous
false patristic citations – which were not detected by the papal Censor, the Bishop, nor the Archbishop, who
all formally approved this work).

Most significantly, Latin Pope Leo X (1475 – 1521, Pope from 1513 – 1521), in his Bull Pastor Æternus (1516),
offering proofs from tradition in favour of the supreme power of the Power, cites this spurious letter (Edward
H. Landon (translator), Antonio Pereira de Figueredo, Tentativa Theologica: Episcopal Rights and Ultra-
Montane Usurpations, The Fifth Principle, XLII, p. 175, London: Joseph Masters, 1847; Pereira is quoted at
length on this in the chapter on the Errors of Papal Bulls of Innocent III and Leo X).

For more on this letter, see Louis Ellies Du Pin, A New History of Ecclesiastical Writers, Vol. II, p. 38, note rr.,
London: Abel Swalle, 2nd Ed., 1693.
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There are numerous other spurious letters of the era around the Nicene Council, which I may notice in a later
edition of this book. These include the spurious letters of Athanasius to Pope Mark, and two letters forged
under the name of Pope Julius, and one under the name of Pope Mark.

Ch. XXXI The Textual Variations in Cyprian’s De Unitate

This is a difficult and complicated topic to discuss here, since it requires an analysis of the textual evidence
and the manuscripts, as well as of previous research on this subject, since there is not a scholarly unanimity
regarding the authenticity of the contested passages. In summary, there are various versions in the
manuscripts and printed editions of Cyprian’s treatise on the Unity of the Church, with some versions being
more “pro-Petrine” and others without this content. Recent scholars have tended to accept the view that
Cyprian was the author of both versions, but they disagree as to which version was first. However, I believe
there is no doubt that a Roman corrupted Cyprian’s text to favour the Papal interests.1

The Anglican scholar Rev. Geoffrey Grimshaw Willis (1914 – 1982) decently summarises the matter:

Certain manuscripts, although not the oldest, bear witness to a version of chapter IV of De unitate
which diverges widely from the received text. The textus receptus may be read in Hartel’s edition in
the Vienna Corpus, and the interpolated text (called the ‘Primacy text’ because of its exaltation of the
primacy of the see of Rome) in the edition of the Abbé Migne. This Primacy text is very ancient, and
was quoted as early as the sixth century (between 584 and 589) by Pelagius II. Dom Chapman and
Father Bévenot hold that both versions came from Cyprian’s own hand, though neither of them is
able to cite any references earlier than that of Pelagius II, and though Dr Harnack refused to believe
that the interpolated text could in any case be traced back earlier than the fourth century. But
Chapman and Bévenot differ one from another, the former holding that the textus receptus is prior,
and the interpolation later, the latter the reverse. Their sole argument for the Cyprianic authorship
of both versions rests upon internal evidence, not entirely cogent. And the disagreement of those
who argue solely from internal evidence is, as Dr Bernard has shown, liable to be violent.

Fr. Bévenot sets out to establish the truth by a re-examination of the many available manuscripts.
Yet he is unable to produce any evidence which would clearly establish the priority of the Primacy
text which he holds; he merely assures us that its language is Cyprianic. That is exactly what a forger
would have taken care to ensure. And moreover he confesses in the introduction to his paper that he
has been unable to collate some of the manuscripts either personally or from photographs, and that
‘for others time and other circumstances allowed him only to make the collation without studying the
codices as a whole, or recording peculiarities of script, headings, incipits, etc. Unfortunately this is
particularly true of the manuscripts in England.’ But it happens that these manuscripts are of great
importance, and we are not entirely convinced by the writer’s optimistic appendix to this confession,
that he ‘is convinced that further study will only provide confirmation of the main conclusions
arrived at here on the origin of the different versions’. His enthusiasm for the cause that he has
undertaken leads him later to abuse Dr Benson for the virulence of his attack on the Roman forgeries.
‘No one made more capital out of it than Archbishop Benson in his Cyprian. … The duplicity,
insincerity, hypocrisy of the Church of Rome in imposing forgeries on the world were laid bare in
true pamphleteering style.’ If Archbishop Benson’s opinions were correct, it is clear that Roman
Catholic scholars through the ages have had an obvious interest in perpetuating such forgeries, and
the imposing list of such falsities officially encouraged or countenanced by the Roman see which was
compiled by Dr Robertson would be sufficient to make us wonder whether they would have hesitated
to manipulate the text of Cyprian.

1See Edward White Benson, Cyprian: His Life, His Times, His Work, Ch. IV, pp. 180 – 221, New York: D.
Appleton and Company, 1897.
 530

The erudition of Chapman and Bévenot has been insufficient to undermine Dr Benson’s view (which
is also that of Dr Koch, himself a Roman Catholic scholar); and perhaps the best summary of the
whole dispute is still that of Archbishop Bernard: ‘The difficulty of accepting the disputed or
alternative text as Cyprian’s is simply this, that prima facie its argument is quite unlike anything that
Cyprian says elsewhere. At two points especially it was not the true Cyprianic ring. First, the
argument that the significance of Matthew xvi. 18 depends on the fact that the Church is built on one
man is absent, and in its place is substituted the wholly different argument that the Lord’s words
indicate a peculiar authority for Peter personally and for the see of Peter. It is one of the
characteristics of Cyprian’s exposition, often repeated, of the Lord’s promise to Peter, that he does
not take this line, and it is highly suspicious that such an exegesis should be found here, and here
only, in the writings ascribed to him. And secondly, the assertion made at the close that whoever
deserts the see of Peter deserts the Church of Christ, is an assertion which it would have been wholly
inconsistent for Cyprian to have made at any stage in his career. His unchanging doctrine is that the
unity of the Church is to be found in the consensus of the collective episcopate, and not necessarily in
communion with the Roman See. Despite the care that has been taken by the author of the
“interpolation” to use phrases of Cyprianic origin, the tenor of the argument is so unlike Cyprian’s
general teaching that internal evidence concurs with manuscript authority in rejecting the whole
passage.’1

It is worth noting that several scholars, who accept the authenticity of the Primacy text, have explained it in a
non-Papalist way. However, in recent discussions on the authenticity of these disputed passages, little
emphasis is placed on the well-documented history of Roman corruption of texts.

Ch. XXXII The False Chronicles of Román de la Higuera

Jerónimo Román de la Higuera (1537/1538 – 1611) was a Jesuit of Toledo and teacher who wrote a number
of influential forgeries regarding Spanish history. In 1594 Higuera wrote some Chronicles that he presented
as of early Christian origin, claiming that he had found four long-lost historical works, the first by Flavius
Lucius Dexter (son of St. Pacian and a late fourth-century contemporary of St. Jerome), titled The Chronicle of
Universal History (Chronicon Omnimodæ Historiæ), later continued by Marcus Maximus (combining the
names of Bishop Maximus of Zaragoza [Bishop from 592 – 619] and an Italian Benedictine monk named
Mark), Luitprand (said to be of the tenth century), and Julián Pérez. These forgeries made it appear that the
early Christians held similar views as the Roman Catholics of the sixteenth century, such as the Papacy and
the Immaculate Conception.

The American professor Katrina B. Olds, who extensively studied these false chronicles and published an
entire book on this subject, writes:

Lined up chronologically, these late antique and medieval chronicles provided an unbroken outline of
ecclesiastical history from the time of Christ to the twelfth century such as the Iberian Peninsula had
never possessed, a cumulative body of historical information that had the potential to alter the way
Spanish history was written and imagined. …

In Higuera’s rendition, the beliefs, practices, and traditions of the primitive Church were virtually
identical to those of his own: as Godoy explained, according to the chronicles, ‘since the beginnings of
the Church, the authority of prelates was recognized, obedience to the Holy See had been offered, …’2

1 Geoffrey Grimshaw Willis, Saint Augustine and the Donatist Controversy, Ch IV, Excursus, Saint Cyprian and
the Roman Primacy, pp. 111 – 112, London: SPCK, 1950. See the references of Willis, which I have here
omitted.
2 Katrina B. Olds, Forging the Past: Invented Histories in Counter-Reformation Spain, Introduction, pp. 1 & 2,

New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2015.

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Several Roman Catholics were initially suspicious of his works, such as the learned Latin bishop Juan Bautista
Peréz Rubert (1534 – 1597), but Olds writes:

Peréz’s skepticism remained the minority opinion for the better part of a century. Perhaps it should
not surprise us, then, that once the texts entered circulation in print, they inspired the rewriting of
Spanish history on a monumental scale, as well as multifarious local and regional enthusiasms.
Nearly every seventeenth-century author who treated the late antique and medieval history of Spain
felt compelled to reckon with the distinctive historical vision of the cronicones. … during the
interval from 1595 to about 1670 the texts had altered the sacred landscape and historical
imagination of Spain forever.1

Some of the Roman Catholics who accepted them and defended their authenticity, at least partially, include
Bishop Sancho Dávila Toledo (1546 – 1625), the Spanish Jesuit Gabriel Vázquez (1549/1551 – 1604), the
royal chronicler Prudencio de Sandoval (c. 1552 – 1620), Cardinal Juan Salazar (1554 – 1628), Higuera’s
notable pupil and fellow Jesuit Hernando de Pecha (1567 – 1659), the Cistercian François de Bivar (Bivarius,
1584 – 1634?), the jurist and cathedral canon Martín Carrillo (in a 1615 Zaragozan martyrology), Zaragozan
Franciscan Juan de Calderón (who wrote a preface to the first printed edition in 1619 [there were a total of
seven editions published until 1651]), Spanish historian Gregorio de Argaíz (1602 – 1678), and many others,
and controversy continued well into the 18th century (the Roman Catholic scholarly consensus by the end of
the 18th century recognised that these were forgeries), and some parts were even included in the Patrologia
Latina (e.g., the spurious chronicle of Marcus Maximus, in PL, Vol. LXXX, pp. 617 – 632, though with a note on
its inauthenticity).

This forgery had a notable influence in promoting the Immaculate Conception of Mary. In the chronicle of
Flavius Dexter, there occurs the following interesting notice connected with the year 308: “Since the
preaching of St. James in Spain, the Festival of the Immaculate Conception of the Mother of God has been
celebrated in this country.”2 Marcus Maximus “also proved, apparently quite incidentally, the apostolic origin
of the Festival of the Immaculate Conception.”3 Luitprand is made to state, in the year 676, that “the Church
of Del Pilar, in the city of Saragossa, was built by St. James at the command of the holy Virgin, when he
preached the gospel in Spain in the year A.D. 37. It was dedicated (by him) to the conception (of Mary), which
all the apostles proclaimed, now (anno 676) widely celebrated, and sought after by many foreigners”. 4

Antony of Trejo, an influential Roman Catholic bishop of Carthagena and Vicar-General of the Minorite order,
was an ambassador from King Philip III of Spain to the Latin Pope Paul V (Pope from 1605 – 1621), in an
attempt to have the Pope define the dogma of the Immaculate Conception. In a speech to the Pope, Trejo says:

St. Bernard and St. Thomas were immaculatists. The festival of the immaculate conception is as old
as Christianity itself. It was prescribed by James to the disciples in Jerusalem, by Mark the Evangelist
to those in Syria, and by James the Elder to those in Saragossa. The unquestionable Flavius Dexter
and Marcus Maximus are witnesses to the truth of this. 5

1 Olds, Forging the Past, Introduction, pp. 5 & 7.

2 “A Jacobi prædicatione celebratur in Hispania festum immaculatæ et illibatæ conceptionis Dei genitrices
Mariæ.” L. A. Muratori, Opere, Arezzo 1768, 4to, v, 76. George Gladstone (translator), Edward Preuss, The
Romish Doctrine of the Immaculate Conception: Traced from Its Source, Ch. IX, pp. 127 – 128, Edinburgh: T. &
T. Clark, 1867.
3 “Conceptionis hinc diem Jacobus Hispanos docet et prædicat, ceu ceteri, ab omni labe liberam.” Muratori,

Opere, v, 76. Preuss, Romish Doctrine, p. 128.

4 “Beatissima sedes De Columna in urbe Cæsaraugustana, quæ constructa est jussu virginis a b. Jacobo, quum

in Hispania prædicavit a. 37 a nativitate Domini et consecrata ejusdem immaculatæ conceptioni, quam omnes
apostoli predicaverunt ubique, hoc tempore celeberrima multorum peregrinorum contubernio visitatur.”
Muratori, Opere, v, 77. Preuss, Romish Doctrine, pp. 128 & 131.
5 Preuss, Romish Doctrine, Ch. X, p. 142. Preuss notes, p. 147, “Relative to the discoveries at Granada [the

leaden tablets, see the next section], he says discreetly in comparison: Non examinare volo veritatem eorum,
quæ ex aliis apostolis apostolorumque discipulis non sine omni vel gravi fundamento referentur expressa
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Much more could be said, and the fullest study of this subject in English is Olds’s book (cited above) which is
over 400 pages, and contains many remarkable facts, including notices of other forgeries (though many of
these do not bear on ecclesiastical controversy) that obtained currency among the Latins in this time period.

Ch. XXXIII Corruptions Regarding the Immaculate Conception

This chapter will summarise some of the corruptions and issues with evidence regarding the Immaculate
Conception of Mary that I have come across, mainly in the works of Edward Bouverie Pusey and Edward
Preuss.

Section I The Leaden Tablets of Sacromonte

From 1595 to 1599, 22 circular lead disks or tablets, along with relics and human remains, were allegedly
discovered and unearthed from the caves of the hill of Valparaíso (today called Sacromonte) in the Spanish
city of Granada. These lead plates or books (also called the plomos of Granada), written in an unusual Arabic
script, contained several religious treatises, mostly attributed to the first-century missionary Saint Cecilio (or
Caecilius of Elvira/Granada). These lead books claimed to provide information on Spanish Christian history,
and they had a significant impact in corrupting authentic history with various legends. The Roman Catholic
Archbishop Pedro de Castro was a dedicated defender and supporter of these texts, and assembled a
committee of translators to decipher the texts. The Spanish Roman Catholic priest and professor Francisco
Bermúdez de Pedraza (1576/1585 – 1655) made use of this forgery in his History of the Church.1 However,
there was initial reluctance to accept these books, and in 1682 the Latin Pope Innocent XI condemned the
Sacromonte lead books as heretical and spurious. 2

Leonard Patrick Harvey (1929 – current), a professor of Spanish studies, writes:

The Sacromonte lead books provided very many texts to back up the “Franciscan” doctrine [of the
Immaculate Conception], hence the attraction they exercised over many of the faithful. There were,
for example, in these texts such welcome statements as one allegedly uttered by Saint Peter himself
to the effect that “Mary was not touched by sin” (“Lam darakaha al-dhanb al-awwal”). So these
ancient local relics did not only flatter the vanity of local historians in Granada, but they also supplied
proof texts that, if genuine, would make these books of absolutely primary theological importance
throughout the Christian world. It is not going too far to say that the Sacromonte excavations
claimed to yield up what appeared to amount to long-lost but vital supplementary scriptures.3

Preuss notes:

Nicolaus Antonius mentions 147 Spanish authors who wrote upon the immaculate conception
between the years 1590 and 1672. The greater portion of them have relied upon the foundations
mentioned in the text [that is, the false chronicles of Román de la Higuera and the Sacromonte lead

testimonia pro hac opinione. – [Wadding,] Legatio [Philippi III. et IV. ad Paulum V. et Gregorium XV. de
definienda controversia immaculatæ conceptionis b. v. Mariæ, Lovanii 1624, folio], 271, 272.”
1 A. Katie Harris, Forging History: The Plomos of the Sacromonte of Granada in Francisco Bermúdez de

Pedraza’s Historia Eclesiástica, in Sixteenth Century Journal, Vol. XXX, No. 4., pp. 945 – 966, Kirksville, MO:
Truman State University Press, 1999.
2 Olds, Forging the Past, Ch. IV, pp. 126 – 129.
3 L. P. Harvey, Muslims in Spain, 1500 – 1614, Ch. VIII, p. 274, Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press,

2005. For more information and a translation of one of the texts, see Ch. VIII, pp. 264 – 290 & Appendix III,
pp. 382 – 398. Additional information can be found in Consuelo López-Morillas (translator), Mercedes
García-Arenal and Fernando Rodríguez Mediano, The Orient in Spain: Converted Muslims, the Forged Lead
Books of Granada, and the Rise of Orientalism, Leiden: Brill, 2013 [first published in Spanish, Madrid 2010].
 533

books]. The kind of proof is seen to the greatest advantage in Salazar, Defensio pro immaculata
Deiparæ virginis conceptione. In the Cologne edition of 1622, at page 356 and following. 1

Section II Falsifications in Leonardo Nogaroli

Leonardo Nogaroli (or Nogarellus) was a Veronese Roman Catholic priest and a cleric for the household of the
Latin Pope Sixtus IV (Pope from 1471 – 1484), and played an important role in promoting Latin devotions to
the Immaculate Conception. I cite from Preuss’s work on the Immaculate Conception:

The noble Veronese is not very sparing in his quotations. The Song of Solomon iv. 7, which he
naturally refers to Mary, he quotes thus: ‘Thou art altogether beautiful, my love; and there is no spot
of original sin in thee.’a Still more freely does he deal with the fathers of the church. Finding it
difficult to extract from them any passages which are of an immaculatistic tendency, he invents a few.
Thus Augustine is presumed to have said: ‘Praise Him (O Mary), who has preserved thee from all sins.
For who, except Mary, can say of himself, I am born without sin; or, I am free from all
unrighteousness?’b Even he finds passages in St. Thomas and St. Dominic, in which they declare
themselves unreservedly in favour of the opinion of Scotus.c This celebrated work Nogaroli
presented to the Pope in the winter of 1475, with the request that he would recommend it with the
power of his apostolical authority.d Sixtus did so, with this express addition, that every one who
availed himself of this new order of divine worship, should be granted as much indulgence as he who
celebrates the Festival of Corpus Christi.e It was by such means that the Popes since the time of
Sixtus, and even during the Reformation, won over the people.f Should they not believe their priests,
should they not believe their bishops, whom the Holy Spirit has appointed to watch over the fold of
God, which He has won with His own blood? Does not every one who hears this office feel irresistibly
convinced that St. Augustine, St. Dominic, St. Thomas, and even the Scriptures themselves, proclaim
the immaculate conception? And yet, is one word of this true?

[Preuss’s Footnotes and Endnotes:] a) Tota pulchra es, amica nostra, columba nostra, et macula
originalis non est in te. – Breviarum Romanum, 385 A.
b) Magnifica illum qui te at omni peccato reservavit (sic). Quis enim dicere potuit: Sine peccato sum
natus, aut mundus sum ab omni inquitate dicere audebit, nisi illa virgo prudentissima, quam deus sic
elegit et præeligit ante mundi constitutionem, ut sancta et immaculata mater dei filia ab æterno
reservata incorrupta ab omni labe peccati. – Breviarum Romanum, 383 B.
c) Breviarum Romanum, 384 A.
d) The accompanying letter of Nogaroli, which is very stirring, and is full of falsifications, is in
Wadding, Legatio, Lovaniæ 1624, fol. s. 165 – 170.
e) Statuimus et ordinamus, quod omnes et singuli Christi fideles, qui missam et officium conceptionis
virginis gloriosæ juxta piam devotam et laudabilem ordinationem dilecti filii magistri Leonardi de
Nogarolis, clerici Veronensis notarii nostri in die festivitatis conceptionis v. Mariæ et per octavas ejus
devote celebraverint, eandem prorsus indulgentiam consequantur, quam consequuntur illi, qui
missam in festo corporis et sanguinis d. n. Jesi Christi celebrant. – Extravag. Comm. Lib. iii. tit. xii. c. 1.
f) Maginus Anglerill, Dissertatio in immaculatam virginis conceptionem, Barcinone 1767, 4to, s. xi.2

The French Dominican theologian and historian Natalis Alexander (or Noël Alexandre, 1639 – 1724) wrote
the following in 1679 on the Office for the Immaculate Conception by Nogaroli:

It was approved by Sixtus IV., not as an evidence of faith, but as a testimony and profession
of piety; but was judged by Pius V. unworthy to be read in the Church, as being entirely made up of
fictitious authorities from the Fathers and ecclesiastical testimonies, which, moreover, were nowhere
found in their works; nor did it meet the mind of the Church: wherefore this holy Pontiff suppressed

1 Preuss, Romish Doctrine, Ch. IX, p. 131 (end note for p. 129).
2 Preuss, Romish Doctrine, Ch. VI, pp. 87 – 88 & 96.
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it. But now in the office of the Roman Church, there is not the slightest word [verbulum] whereby the
Immaculate Conception of the B.V. is indicated. 1

Section III Some Misquotations of Liguori

Liguori makes many misquotations throughout his writings, but I will here merely notice a few regarding the
Immaculate Conception that Pusey has pointed out, which occur in the span of only a few pages of Liguori’s
On the Glories of Mary:

1) Liguori quotes a sentence he misattributes to St. John of Damascus and moreover misrepresents the
context. 2) Liguori interpolates two significant words into a quote from the Portuguese Jesuit Benedict
Fernandez (d. 1630). 3) Liguori quotes a sermon he misattributes to St. Augustine. 4) Liguori quotes a work
he misattributes to St. Ephrem the Syrian. 5) Liguori removes two significant words in a quote from the Latin
French theologian Richard of St. Lawrence (or Saint-Laurent, +1250). 6) Liguori gives the wrong reference
and an incorrect quote from the so-called Revelations of Bridget of Sweden (1303 – 1373), who is considered
a saint by Roman Catholics. 7) Liguori then quotes another doubtful passage of St. John of Damascus and
twice more from the work misattributed to St. Ephrem. 8) Liguori elsewhere misquotes Eadmer as Anselm of
Canterbury.2

Section IV Corruption of a Sermon of Eusebius of Gaul

Pusey gives the following quote and notes regarding a sermon in the Eusebius Gallicanus sermon collection
(dating from the mid to late fifth century), which ascribes original sin in plain terms to the Blessed Virgin, but
the sermon has been omitted in some editions and was textually corrupted in two locations:

aThe Beginner of all things has His beginning from thee, and receives from thy body the
Blood which was to be shed for the life of the world; and took from thee what He should pay for thee
also. For not even the Mother of the Redeemer was free b from the bond of the primæval sin. He
Alone, although born of an indebtedc [mother], is yet not held by the law of the primæval debt.

[Pusey’s footnotes:] a) De Nativ. Dom. Hom. 2. Bibl. Patr. T. v. p. 1 f. 545. Col 1618. T. vi. p. 621. Ludg.
1677. The sermon was omitted in the Antwerp Editions, 1555, 1568, Alva notices.
b) Pétau (de Inc. xiv. 2. 5) notices that, per se, “in herself,” was inserted here in the editions, contrary
to the old MSS., making the passage to imply the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, instead of
contradicting it. It was not in Turrecremata’s MS.
c) Debitrice. This is the reading of Turrecremata’s MS. There is a trace of it in the reading of the
editions, following that of Gaigny, Paris, 1547, “debito renascatur,” for “debitrice nascatur;”
renascatur, as applied to our Lord, having no meaning. 3

1 Natalis Alexander, Hist. Eccl. Sæc. ii Diss. xvi § 21, p. 488. Translated in Edward Bouverie Pusey, Eirenicon,
Part II, First Letter to the Very Rev. J. H. Newman, D.D., In Explanation, Chiefly in Regard to The Reverential
Love Due to the Ever-Blessed Theotokos, and The Doctrine of Her Immaculate Conception, with an Analysis of
Cardinal De Turrecremata’s Work on the Immaculate Conception, p. 382, Oxford: James Parker & Co., 1869.
2 Pusey, Immaculate Conception, pp. 37 – 39, n. 8., & p. 12. Note that these have largely been corrected in

posthumous editions of Liguori’s work.

3 Pusey, Immaculate Conception, p. 122, nn. 4 – 6.
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Section V Erroneous Allegations of the Spuriousness of a Letter of Bernard of Clairvaux

Besides tampering with evidence to promote the Immaculate Conception, some Roman Catholics have also
falsely accused authentic works of being spurious, when they tell against the Immaculate Conception. There
is a well-known epistle of the Roman Catholic Bernard of Clairvaux to the Canons of Lyons, where Bernard
criticises them for the innovation of celebrating the feast of the Conception of Mary, saying that it should not
be held, because the Conception was not holy, like the Nativity. In the Immaculate Conception controversy,
some Roman Catholics have called this letter spurious. However, the scholarly consensus, even of Roman
Catholic defenders of the Immaculate Conception, is that this is an authentic production of Bernard, as Pusey
notes:

Perrone mentions some, who (as has been so common in controversy) called the Epistle
supposititious. He himself says, “But Theophilus Raynaud in his Dipt. Mariana (Opp. T. vii. p. 48.
Ludg.), candidly acknowledges that this Epistle, above the rest, must be accounted a genuine
production of the holy Doctor. He writes, ‘Unless we decide to pronounce none of S. Bernard’s
Epistles to be his, we are absolutely forbidden to attribute this (which, most of all, savours of S.
Bernard) to any other, as his genuine production.’” P. i. c. 1. fin. note v. Passaglia assumes its
genuineness (P. iii. n. 1652 sqq.), and quotes, as explaining it, equally on the assumption of its
genuineness, Bellarm., Greg. De Valent., Fr. Bivar, Aug. Manrique, Ben. Plazza. A. Ballerini labours at
great length to take it from S. Bernard, and ascribes it to his dishonest scribe, Nicolas of Clairvaux, a
worthless but plausible hypocrite (Syll. Diss. ii. pp. 743 – 823). It seems to me an intense paradox, to
maintain that an Epistle should have always believed to have been written by such a man, upon such
a subject, to such a body as the Canons of Lyons, and that, within 20 years after his decease (see
below Peter of Celles), and thenceforth, being itself of such recent date, should have been cited
undoubtingly as his by Albertus Magnus, Alex. de Hales, S. Bonaventura, S. Thomas Aquinas, that it
should have been ascribed to him in all the MSS., and yet have been forged by one, who had no
temptation to forge it.1

Section VI Two Interpolations in Hervé de Bourg-Dieu

1 Pusey, Immaculate Conception, pp. 170 – 171, n. 6. The correspondence of the Latin Peter of Celles (Bishop
of Chartres in 1182) with the monk Nicholas, contains an interesting account of a vision of Bernard seen after
death (which Roman Catholic maculists have deemed inauthentic), as Pusey summarises, “[Nicholas] speaks,
as if God had revealed that S. Bernard’s Epistle on the Conception remained as a dark spot on his breast after
death, for which he had to pass, although lightly, through Purgatory. Such an account, circulated shortly after
S. Bernard’s departure, is surely decisive as to the fact of S. Bernard’s having written as he wrote, and having
meant, what his words express.” (Pusey, op. cit., pp. 191 – 192, the story is translated in n. 5.) The Latin
Archbishop Antoninus (1389 – 1459) of Florence, who was a papal theologian at the Latin Council of Florence
and is considered a saint by Roman Catholics, quoted at length the authorities against the Immaculate
Conception, saying, “If the Scriptures and the sayings of ancient and modern Doctors who were most devoted
to the glorious Virgin are well considered, it is manifestly plain from their words that she was conceived in
original sin. But they who hold the contrary opinion, twist their sayings contrary to the intention of the
speakers,”. To those who attempted to escape the testimony of Bernard, Antoninus responds, “To that of
Bernard, since it cannot be glossed, some simple persons say, that in a vision he appeared with a spot on his
breast, or that he retracted.” (Pusey, Immaculate Conception, pp. 284 & 287 – 288.) Bonaventure, after
commenting, “The Bl. Bernard, too, a chief lover of the Virgin and zealot for her honour, reprehends those
who celebrate her Conception.” writes, “Nor yet dare I altogether reprehend it, because, as some say, this
festival began, not by human invention but by Divine revelation; which, if it be true, without doubt it is good
to hold festival on her Conception. But since this is not authentic, we are not compelled to believe it; also,
since it is not against right faith, we are not compelled to deny it.” (Pusey, Immaculate Conception, p. 363.)
 536

Hervé de Bourg-Dieu (1080 – 1150) was a French Roman Catholic Benedictine theologian. In his commentary
on the New Testament, Hervé says “All men died for sins, no one whatever being excepted”, but a later scribe
added the words “exempting the Mother of God”. In another place, Hervé says “And to speak more concisely,
Mary from Adam died for sin, and the flesh of the Lord from Mary died to efface sin.” However, a later scribe
ungrammatically added here “Mary from Adam died for sin [unless she had been exempted by God]”.

In later controversial discussions Roman Catholics, such as Giovanni Perrone (1794 – 1876, a Jesuit Italian
professor and prominent theologian, highly influential in the promulgation of this new doctrine), had cited
Hervé with this interpolation in favour of the Immaculate Conception of Mary. However, multiple Roman
Catholics, such as Gabriel Gerberon (1628 – 1711, a French Benedictine scholar), Estius (or Willem Hessels
van Est, 1542 – 1613, the learned Chancellor of the Roman Catholic University at Douay), and Jean Joseph
Laborde,1 along with the consensus of scholarship, have admitted that these words are an interpolation, and
this is admitted in Migne, PL, Vol. CLVIII, p. 41. Also note that Hervé’s work was previously assigned to St.
Anselm.2

Section VII An Interpolation in Peter Lombard

Peter Lombard wrote that the flesh of the Virgin Mary was subject to sin, but there has been a interpolation of
the word “material” before “sin”, thus minimising the force of the passage. Peter Lombard (c. 1096 – 1160),
the highly influential Latin scholastic theologian and Bishop of Paris, wrote:

Since that Flesh, whose singular excellence cannot be expressed in words, was, before it was united
with the Word, subject to sin in Mary and in others from whom it was transmitted by propagation, it
may seem not unreasonably to have been subject to sin in Abraham, whose whole flesh was subject
to sin.

Pusey notes the following here:

This is the reading in Pet. Lombard, ed. Venice, 1477, ed. Paris, 1564 (revised by Joh. Aleaume, Div.
Prof. at Paris); Lovan. 1568 (three MSS. Collated); Lugd. 1570. This reading, which De B. also has, is
obviously right, both on the authority of the editions, and from the “aliisque.” My edition of S.
Thomas (Antw. 1612) has in P. Lombard’s text “materia.” The error, I suppose, arose from the dread
of connecting sin with the B. V.3

Section VIII An Omission of Some Words of Raymond de Penyafort

The Latin canon lawyer Raymond of Penyafort (c. 1175 – 1275), considered a saint by Roman Catholics, has
had his words on Mary’s conception in sin removed from his works. The passage is:

And note that there is no mention of the Annunciation of Holy Mary, whereas yet it is so celebrated a
festival; nor of her conception, because this ought not to be celebrated, because she was conceived in
sins, as also the other saints except the One Person of Christ, Which was [conceived] not from seed of
man, but by the mystical breathing.

1 Arthur Cleveland Coxe (translator), Abbé Jean Joseph Laborde, The Impossibility of the Immaculate
Conception as an Article of Faith: In Reply to Several Works which Have Appeared on that Subject of Late
Years, Ch. XI, pp. 79 – 80, Philadelphia, PA: Herman Hooker, 1855.
2 For fuller details see Pusey, Immaculate Conception, pp. 179 – 181.
3 Pusey, Immaculate Conception, p. 182, n. 6.
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Upon this Pusey notes, first quoting the Roman Catholic scholar Jacques Quétif (1618 – 1698):

“Alva, Sol Verit. Rad. 161, col. 1344, inquires, ‘who took away from all those editions the clause as to
the Conception of the B. V. which is read in MSS.?’ The answer is easy. It was taken away by those
who presided over the printing, on account of the decree of the Council of Basle, which also they
allowed themselves in many old writers. The Supreme Pontiffs did not command this as to the
ancients who wrote before the Bull of Sixtus IV., but only as to the later. But those editors acted so
negligently that, removing the clause from the text, they left a gloss in the margin, whose reclamation
manifestly shows that something has been cut out of the text of Raymund. There are almost
countless MSS. of this Summa in libraries.” Quétif, Scriptt. Ord. Prædic. i. 109, quoted in the Preface
to S. Raimund’s Summa, p. lii. Veron. 1744. The Latin in Bodl. 64, is, “nec de conception ejusdem,
quod illud non debet celebrari, eo quod concepta fuerit in peccatis, sicut et cæteri sancti, excepta una
Persona Christi, quæ non ex virile semine, sed mistico spiramine [concepta] est.” De Alva states that
the passage was in old originals and MSS. (he specifies two), but says, that it was removed from the
edition of Rome, 1603. Sol Ver. n. 264, p. 706.1

Section IX A Forgery of a Revelation Supporting the Feast of the Conception

There is a false story, that a certain Latin Abbot received a revelation during a shipwreck, that the feast of the
Conception of Mary should be celebrated. Latin scholars have admitted that this is inauthentic, such as
William Durand, who writes:

Some also celebrate a fifth feast, of the Conception of the B. V., saying, that, as the death of Saints is
celebrated, not on account of their death, but because they were then received in the everlasting
nuptials, in like way the feast of the Conception may be celebrated, not because she was conceived,
because she was conceived in sin, but because the Mother of the Lord was conceived; asserting that
this [hoc] was revealed to a certain Abbot, in the midst of a shipwreck; which [account] however is
not authentic. Whence it is not to be approved; since she was conceived in sin …

Upon this account Pusey notes:

The unhistorical blunders in the Epistle “de Conceptione B. Virginis,” in which this story is related as
if by S. Anselm, have been pointed out by Gerberon, in his Censura upon it, prefixed to S. Anselm’s
works. It is not only unhistoric, but, professing to be written by S. Anselm, is a forgery. Gerberon
shows that two of the miracles, upon which the celebration of the Festival is rested, are mixed with
facts contradicted by history; that the doctrine contradicts S. Anselm’s, and that the account given of
the celebration and subsequent suspension of the Feast of the Conception is untrue. The fiction as to
the Abbot Elsinus recurs in the “Miraculum de Conceptione S. Mariæ,” which, I should think, is the
original form of the fiction. The Epistle is appended to S. Anselm’s works, pp. 505 – 507, the
“Miraculum, &c.” p. 507.2

Section X An Omission of a Passage of Bartholomew of San Concordio

Bartholomew of San Concordio (c. 1260 – 1347) was a learned Italian Dominican canonist who wrote a very
popular Summa, in which the Immaculate Conception is denied. The following passage has been omitted in
an old manuscript:

1 Pusey, Immaculate Conception, pp. 203 – 204, n. 4.

2 Pusey, Immaculate Conception, p. 206, n. 1.
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Of the feast of the Conception of the B. V., it must be said, according to Thomas (3 p. q. 7), that,
although the Roman Church does not celebrate it, it tolerates the custom of some Churches who
celebrate that Festival, whence that celebration is not to be wholly reprobated, yet neither from this,
that the Feast of the Conception is celebrated, is it given to be understood that she was holy in her
conception, but, because it is not known at what time she was sanctified, the Feast of her
sanctification rather than of her conception is celebrated on the day of the Conception itself.

Pusey notes:

In his Summa, v. Feriæ, lit. B. De Alva notes the omission of the whole passage in one old MS. (n. 37), a
freedom, which scribes seem to have taken, or to have been directed to take. Quétif notices that the
library, from whose MS. the passage is missing, is the same in which De Alva owns that a MS. of
Ægidius of Zamora was altered on the Conception. i. 624.1

Section XI A Misattributed Sermon of Bonaventure and an Admission of Frequent Latin Interpolations

Bonaventure opposed the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, but a sermon has been mistakenly
attributed to him that upholds the Immaculate Conception, and it has been cited by Perrone and others in
controversy. There is also a remarkable admission by the Roman Catholic editor in 1609 that modern Latins
have frequently added to the works of older authors. Pusey notes:

Perrone (p. 29) alleges from S. Bonaventura a “Serm. 2. de B. V. M. Opp. iii. 389, Rom. 1596,”
maintaining the Immaculate Conception. The editor, however, of S. Bonaventura’s works, ed.
Moguntiae, 1609 (T. Ang. de Rocca, Augustinian, Sacristan of the Apost. Palace), says, “S. Bonaventura
(in lib. 3. Sent. dist. 3. art. i. q. 1 and 2) maintains altogether, with S. Bernard, S. Thomas, and others,
that the B. V. was conceived in original sin. Hence it must be certainly confessed that this sermon is
not S. Bonaventura’s, since he himself, in many other places, altogether and steadily maintains the
opinion, which he affirmed in the 3rd book of the Sentences.” T. iii. p. 355. And more fully in the
notice prefixed to the volume, “I wish to admonish the readers that the second sermon on the B. Mary
Ever-Virgin, is either not a genuine work of this holy Doctor (as is said in our marginal note) or that,
in regard to the Conception of the B. M. without original sin, something has been added by some
modern, as frequently occurs in many books. It is clear that this was done in the ‘Compendium
Theologiae’ printed formerly, and especially in the chapter ‘On Sanctification,’ L. iv., as is ascertained
from many MSS., from which that Compendium, which was circulated under the name of S.
Bonaventura, seems for the most part to differ, an addition being appended contrary to the opinion of
this Doctor in the same chapter of the Compendium, and in the Book on the Sentences, 3 d. 3, art. 1, q.
1, 2.” The sermon was inserted subsequently to the first collection of his sermons. It was not in the
edition of Reutlingen, 1484, nor of Hagenau, 1496. The passage, whosesoever it is, is: “Our Lady was
full of preventing grace in her sanctification, i.e., grace preservative against the foulness of original
fault, which she would have contracted from the corruption of nature, unless she had been prevented
and preserved by special grace. For the Son of the Virgin Alone was free from original fault, and His
Virgin mother. For we must believe, that by a new kind of sanctification, in the beginning of her
Conception, the Holy Spirit redeemed her, and by singular grace preserved her from original sin, –
original sin, not which was in her, but which would have been in her.” 2

Section XII Alteration of Manuscripts of Joannes Ægidius of Zamora

1 Pusey, Immaculate Conception, pp. 207 – 208, n. 6.

2 Pusey, Immaculate Conception, pp. 220 – 221, n. 6.
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Some manuscripts of the Spanish Latin scholastic Joannes Ægidius of Zamora (or Juan Gil de Zamora, c. 1241
– c. 1318) have been altered, so that where Ægidius wrote “we believe that she was conceived with sin,” a
later scribe or editor changed “with” to “without”. Pusey gives a very charitable interpretation of the matter,
but the end result is still manipulation of original documents, to the detriment of the historical record:

Joannes Ægidius of Zamora, a Franciscan, about A.D. 1274, was one of the most learned and laborious
Spaniards of his day. He was chosen by Alphonso “the wise” to be preceptor to his son. The citation
from his “Summa” illustrates how MSS. were altered naturally to express a subsequent belief, yet not
with any idea of falsification; for the MSS. were for private use only. In this case, the substitution of
“without” instead of “with” “original sin” left the passage self-contradictory.

“aMary, then, although she was ordained from eternity Mother of grace, according to the true oracles
of the Prophets, yet, since according to the flesh she was propagated of fleshly parents, we believe
that she was conceived with 2sin, and, therefore the conception of such is not to be celebrated by the
Church, but in respect to the sanctification which took place after the conception of natures, i.e. the
union of the soul with the body.”

[Pusey’s footnotes:] a) In his Summa, cap. de Maria, tom. vi. fol. 55. quater 4. (Turr. P. 6. c. 23. f. 123.)
De Alva n. 5. p. 243.
b). Deza, in what he believed to be the original, in a Franciscan convent, says “that the word ‘cum’ had
been erased, and ‘sine’ written over it, as is clearer than light to any one, however weak his sight.”
Deza continues, “and afterwards he proves this at length taking formally the words of Bonaventura
alleged above, viz. ‘this mode is more common, safer, more reasonable.’” De Alva admits that the
passage itself is inconsistent with the word “sine,” but says a MS. in the Franciscan convent at Zamora
had it (p. 244). The work was never printed.1

Section XIII An Omission of a Passage in Alvarus

The Latin Portuguese bishop Alvarus Pelagius (Álvaro Pelayo, c. 1280 – 1352), who enjoyed favour with the
Pope and Portuguese royalty, wrote as an eye and earwitness that the “Roman Church does not keep the feast
of the Conception” of Mary, but the passage has been omitted in about three manuscripts. Pusey notes:

The passage is absolutely unquestionable. … It is no argument against this, that in some 3 MSS. the
words are omitted, since we have had many instanced, in which persons, bonâ fide, expunged on this
subject from MSS. what was not consonant with the current belief. 2

Section XIV A Minor Interpolation in Odo of Châteauroux

Odo of Châteauroux (or Eudes of Tusculum, Odo de Castro Rodulphi, c. 1190 – 1273) was an influential Latin
Cardinal and bishop. There is a minor interpolation in his writings, although this interpolation is really only a
clarification and does not impact his view on the subject. He wrote:

For the B. V. drew with her [in her conception] both fault and punishment; yet she was sanctified in
her mother’s womb; but, when? we know not.

Upon the bracketed words, Pusey notes:

1 Pusey, Immaculate Conception, pp. 232 – 233, nn. 7 – 8.

2 Pusey, Immaculate Conception, pp. 255, n. 9.
 540

Alva says that the words “in conceptione” are not in the Escurial MS., and in the Toledo MS. are
inserted by a much later hand. I suppose that they were inserted to prevent the idea of any later
period than the Conception.1

Section XV An Omission of the Words “Original Sin” in Conrad of Saxony

The words “original sin” (peccati originalis), as applied to the Virgin Mary, have been omitted in a manuscript
of Conrad of Saxony (or Conrad of Brunswick, Conradus Holyinger, d. 1279), a senior Franciscan monk, as
Pusey points out.2

Section XVI An Attempt to Deny the Existence of John de Varsiaco and the Quodlibeta of Nicolas Treveth

John de Varsiaco (or Johannes de Varziaco, died c. 1278) was a Dominican “Magister in Paris and a preacher
celebrated for learning and eloquence, about 1270.” Pusey quotes a passage from his Postilla on Canticles,
cited from Turrecremata, as an evidence that this medieval author did not hold to the Immaculate Conception.
Pedro d’Alva y Astorga (or De Alva, 1602 – 1667), a Spanish Roman Catholic lecturer on theology and
Procurator-General of the Franciscans in Rome who wrote extensively in favour of the Immaculate
Conception, attempted to deny the existence of this author. However, Pusey notes,

Quétif, after speaking of his Postills on Wisdom and Canticles in a Basle MS., says, “Hence you may
easily refute F. P. De Alva, who (Sol verit. Rad. 255, Col. 1616) endeavours with all his might to prove
that this our John is a fictitious person, and that there are no writings of his” (i. 373). 3

In another place, De Alva “doubted the existence of the Quodlibeta” of the Oxford doctor and chronicler
Nicolas Treveth (or Trivet, Trevet, c. 1258 – c. 1328), which explicitly denies the Immaculate Conception.
However, as Pusey notes, “Quétif (i. 563) says that they were quoted by Henry of Erfurt, who died A. 1370,
and were still extant in the time of Bunderius.” 4 Modern scholars also recognise that the Quodlibeta are
Treveth’s. Professor Russell L. Friedman points out that a complete manuscript of this work is found in the
Universitätsbibliothek in Basel, and writes “through internal and external references as well as stylistic
considerations, [the Jesuit Cardinal Francis] Ehrle [1845 – 1934, writing 1923] makes an essentially
unassailable case that all of them [Quodlibeta] must be assigned to Trivet.”5

Section XVII Corruptions of Works of Nicolas de Lyra

Nicholas of Lyra (or Nicolaus Lyranus, c. 1270 – 1349) was a famous Franciscan commentator on the Bible.
He spoke of the belief of Mary’s “cleansing from original sin” as the “more common” (‘cleansing’ implying that
at one point Mary did have original sin, which was then removed from her), but in later centuries certain
words “were interpolated to express the then state of opinion.” Lyra wrote:

1 Pusey, Immaculate Conception, pp. 264, n. 2.

2 Pusey, Immaculate Conception, pp. 268, n. 1.
3 Pusey, Immaculate Conception, pp. 277, n. 5. Not much information has survived of this John, and in the late

13th century MS. Bodl. 390, his works were misattributed to Hugh of Saint-Cher (c. 1200 – 1263), but all
modern scholars accept his historical existence and his authorship of this work. A catalogue record, with
relevant links, is https://data.cerl.org/thesaurus/cnp00295272.
4 Pusey, Immaculate Conception, p. 258, n. 5.
5 Russell L. Friedman, Dominican Quodlibetical Literature, ca. 1260 – 1330, in Christopher Schabel (editor),

Theological Quodlibeta in the Middle Ages: The Fourteenth Century, p. 428, Leiden: Brill, 2007.
 541

Well did he say, ‘shall supervene upon thee,’ because the Holy Ghost had before come upon
the Virgin when yet in her mother’s womb, cleansing her from original sin, as is more commonly
saida. But in the Conception of the Son of God, the Holy Ghost ‘supervened,’ i.e. ‘came again’ to confer
on her greater fulness of grace, which consecrated not the mind only but the belly, or, according to
some [or (by another reading, probably a correction,) “others”], by preserving her from original sin.

[Pusey’s footnote:] a) Such was the original printed text in the editio princeps of Rome, 1471, 2;
Venice, 1482 and 1491; Nuremberg, 1493; one sine loco et anno; also in the MSS. Mert. 165, Oriel 45,
Madg. 42 (all of the XIVth century), New Coll. 12, beg. of the XVth cent. Turrecremata also quotes it
so on the Decretals. In the edition of Antwerp, 1617, the word “communius” was changed into
“communiter,” and the words “ut communiter etiam dicitur” were interpolated to express the then
state of opinion. “Alios” was also probably substituted for “aliquos”.1

Another passage of Lyra, where he writes “all, who descend from Adam, except Christ, incurred original sin,”
has been interpolated with the words “except Christ and his mother”, as Pusey notes:

De Alva (n. 226, p. 637) mentions editions in which it stands “praeter Christum et matrem
ejus;” but this is doubtless an interpolation, such as we have had other instances of. The critical
edition of 1634 rightly omitted them. The words are not in the XIVth cent. MSS, Oriel 45, Mert 165, or
in New Coll. 13, or in the Bodl. edition, s. l. et a [sine loco et anno].2

Section XVIII Revelations of Catherine and Bridget

Roman Catholics have adduced revelations and miracles in favour of the Immaculate Conception, but the
opponents of the Immaculate Conception have also had evidence of this sort. Bridget of Sweden (1303 –
1373), considered a saint by Roman Catholics, is alleged to have had visions, some of which have the Virgin
Mary claiming that she was immaculately conceived. On the other side, Catherine of Sienna (1347 – 1380),
also considered a saint by Roman Catholics, is alleged to have had a revelation that the Virgin Mary was
conceived in sin and was not sanctified until the third hour after her conception. Antoninus of Florence
writes, “If it is said that some saints had a revelation of this sort, as S. Brigit, it should be known that other
saints, illustrious for miracles, as S. Catherine of Sienna, had a revelation of the contrary;”.3 Roman Catholics
have had two responses to the alleged revelation of Catherine of Sienna. Some have explained it away by
pointing out that even true prophets can be mistaken, and that Catherine was fallible and misunderstood the
revelation of Mary, or was somehow mistaken in attributing this information to revelation whereas it was
only her own imagination. Others have accused the alleged revelation of Catherine as being unauthentic and
a literary forgery.

Section XIX Petavius’s Comments on the Lack of Diligence of Latin Writings on this Question

Denis Pétau (or Dionysius Petavius, 1583 – 1652), a learned French Jesuit scholar and cardinal, called by the
Catholic Encyclopedia “One of the most distinguished theologians of the seventeenth century,”4 has the
following remarks on the Latin works in defence of the Immaculate Conception:

In most of them [the writings in behalf of the Immaculate Conception], while I am wont to
approve of the piety, and the effort and zeal to adorn the most holy Mother of God, I miss diligence
and critical sagacity in the treatment of this question. For they do not employ faithfulness and

1 Pusey, Immaculate Conception, p. 280, n. 3.

2 Pusey, Immaculate Conception, p. 281, n. 5.
3 Pusey, Immaculate Conception, p. 288.
4 Joseph de Ghellinck, Denis Pétau, in CE, Vol. XI, p. 743.
 542

discrimination in citing authors, which is, of all things, most necessary; and, as to those which they
bring from antiquity, qualified to speak (idoneos), they distort their sayings by false interpretations,
alien from their meaning.1

Section XX Miscellaneous Errors of Perrone

Perrone makes several other errors in his book defending the Immaculate Conception, such as ascribing two
homilies to Origen, which Roman Catholic scholars had long known not to be his.2 According to Pusey (who
studied Oriental languages), when quoting the works of Ephrem the Syrian, “Perrone (p. 312) was misled by
the Latin translation ‘SINE NOXA,’ as he prints it.”3 Perrone also uses an imperfect Latin translation of
Ephrem, and lays special emphasis upon it, though it does not accurately represent the original text.4
Regarding three homilies that Perrone quotes, Pusey comments, “It seems doubtful whether any of the
passages quoted by Perrone belong to Andrew of Crete, A.D. 635. The homilies, quoted as his, and those
attributed to Germanus, A.D. 715, mutually illustrate one another. The strongest words quoted in proof of the
Immaculate Conception only bear upon it through a faulty rendering of a faulty text. They relate, according to
the genuine text, to our Blessed Lord’s Incarnation.” 5 Pusey also points out, “In John Geometra, about A.D.
980, the verse upon which Perrone insists so much, belongs to the Latin versifier, who substitutes something
of his own, not to Geometra. [Pusey’s footnote:] The line, which Perrone prints in capitals, ‘Gaude, PRIMÆVI
LIBERA LABE PATRIS,’ replaces this last line without any authority from the Greek.”6

Section XXI A Mistranslation of Isidore of Kiev by Ballerini

Isidore of Kiev (or Isidore of Thessalonica, 1385 – 1463), who apostatised from Orthodoxy and joined Roman
Catholicism at the time of the Latin Council of Florence, has been quoted in favour of the Immaculate
Conception, but his words have been erroneously translated into Latin, as Pusey notes:

Ballerini (by one of those slips to which we are all liable), rendered ὡς οἷόν τε ἦν,
“quemadmodum consentaneum erat,” instead of “as far as was possible,” thus giving the passage
exactly the opposite to its real meaning. Syll. Diss. i. 434. Ballerini frequently refers to Isidore’s
supposed belief as to the exemption of the B. V., as ii. 387, 393, 396, 413.7

Section XXII An Interpolation in Robert de Holcot

Robert Holcot (or Holkot, 1290 – 1349) was an influential Dominican scholastic and Oxford professor. In his
commentary on the Book of Wisdom (an important work of which 175 manuscripts survive), Holcot wrote a
passage affirming that the Virgin Mary “was so sanctified in the womb, that she was cleansed from original
sin,” and was thus conceived in original sin. However, some manuscripts and printed editions of his work
contain an interpolation of 16 lines contradicting this statement and promoting the Immaculate Conception.
Pusey comments, quoting Quétif:

1 Pusey, Immaculate Conception, p. 295.

2 Pusey, Immaculate Conception, pp. 299 – 300.
3 Pusey, Immaculate Conception, p. 302, n. 7.
4 Pusey, Immaculate Conception, p. 303, n. 2.
5 Pusey, Immaculate Conception, pp. 318 – 319. For details see pp. 318 – 320, nn. 8 – 9.
6 Pusey, Immaculate Conception, pp. 327 – 329. For details see pp. 327 – 329, nn. 5 – 6.
7 Pusey, Immaculate Conception, p. 349, n. 6. See pp. 349 – 350.
 543

“In the printed editions (as Basle, 1586, Lect. 58, p. 532), sixteen lines are inserted, directly
contradicting the previous statement, affirming that she was not conceived in original sin. But Deza
says that they were uniformly absent from MSS., of which he had seen ‘six very old.’ Even De Alva
owns that ‘they were absent from all MSS. except two;’ but he does not add,” Quétif says, “whether
they were on the margin or in the body of the MSS., whether in the same hand, or whether before or
after the Council of Basle. Certainly they are not in old MSS. of the fifteenth century. So, on the
ground of the decree of that Council [for the Immaculate Conception], the editors of the first edition
at Spires, A.D. 1483 falsely ascribed those lines to the author, which, whether it was rightly done, be
the Sovereign Pontiff the judge. The Roman Index, however, had not allowed this in authors anterior
to the Bull of Sixtus IV., commanding that they should remain intact” (Quétif, i. 630). The
interpolation is not in any of the Oxford MSS., viz. Bodl. 279 [14th cent.]; Merton, 161 [14th cent.];
Ball. 27 [end of 14th cent.]; Merton, 162 [beg. of 15th]; Lincoln, 110 [15th cent.]; Magd. 148 [15th
cent.].1

Section XXIII A Textual Variant in Thomas Aquinas

Some have disputed whether Thomas Aquinas did indeed deny the Immaculate Conception, and his writings
on this subject have been much discussed. One passage alleged to show that Aquinas supported the
Immaculate Conception is the following: “Maria purissima fuit quantum ad omnem culpam; quia nec
originale, nec mortale, nec veniale peccatum incurrit.”2 However, this passage has a notable textual variant,
where the most important words “omnem” and “nec originale” are omitted, and appears to contradict
Aquinas’s own words just previously (seemingly) denying the Immaculate Conception.

These passages also contradict Aquinas’s direct expressions elsewhere. Turrecremata writes (as summarised
by Pusey):

[Argument from Aquinas alleged to support Immaculate Conception:] Id. in Expositio super
salutatione angelica. “She was most pure as to fault, because she incurred neither original, nor
mortal, nor venial sin.” Ans. 1) After examining many originals, the words “nec originale” not found.
2) S. Thomas had just said the contrary; “Christ excelled the B. V. in this, that He was conceived and
born without orig. sin, the B. V. was conceived in orig. sin, not born.” … St. Thomas asserted the
contrary [of the Immaculate Conception].3

On the other side, the 20th-century Roman Catholic priest Giovanni Felice Rossi, who published a critical
edition of this work, in a more recent analysis of this passage, argues that it is authentic.4 The Roman Catholic
Thomistic scholar Réginald Garrigou-Lagrange (1877 – 1964) writes, “Sixteen out of the nineteen codices
have the words ‘nec originale’; hence Father Rossi concludes that the text is authentic.” 5 Garrigou-Lagrange
further quotes the Roman Catholic priest J. M. Vosté attempting to explain Aquinas’s apparent internal
contradiction (assuming the text is authentic):

In the explanation of the Hail Mary, St. Thomas still says: “The Blessed Virgin was conceived in
original sin,” but, as Father Voste observes: “Unless we admit an intolerable contradiction in this
same passage, it must evidently be understood … as referring to the stain that is to be instrumentally

1 Pusey, Immaculate Conception, p. 442, n. 2.

2 See the references to follow.
3 Pusey, Immaculate Conception, p. 509. Wording slightly expanded.
4 Giovanni Felice Rossi, Quid Senserit S. Thomas Aquinas de Immaculata Virginis Conceptione, Piacenza:

Collegio Alberoni, 1955.

5 Réginald Garrigou-Lagrange, Christ the Savior: A Commentary on the Third Part of St. Thomas’ Theological

Summa, Ch. XL, Art. II, n. 2478, St. Louis, MO: B. Herder, 1950.
 544

transmitted through the seed and the flesh, but not at all of formal original sin personally, contracted
by the soul and person of Mary.”1

However, the explanation that Aquinas only said that Mary had potential but not actual original sin, does not
appear to fit the context, and this variant reading was “rejected by the Thomists of the Renaissance”.2
Moreover, Aquinas wrote this work in 1272 or 1273 and Turrecremata (who was aware of these subtleties
and was very accurate) completed his treatise in July 1437, about 165 years later, so Turrecremata’s
examination of “many original” manuscripts without ever finding the words “nec originale” is significant, and
a similar pattern of interpolation has been seen elsewhere.3

Section XXIV Alleged Retractions of Maculists

Roman Catholics have alleged that certain scholastics who wrote against the Immaculate Conception later
came to retract their position. However, the evidence for some of these claims is weak. Turrecremata writes:

2) St. Thomas Aq. (answered above, cc. 12 and 29). Statement of John Vitalis, that S. Thom. wrote to
retract, omitted honestatis causa [that is, for the sake of honesty, Turrecremata passes over
responding to this claim]. … 6) Alex. de Ales said to have contradicted in last illness what he had
said. Ans. No proof of this, contrary doctrine in c. 14. 7) Ric. Middleton, said in his old age to have
written on Ave Maria, that the B. V. was not conceived in orig. sin. Ans. Not proved, and, in face of
opposite teaching, not to be believed till proved. … 10) Armachanus retracted what he said, … b)
Assertion unproved; c) improbable on grounds so slight.4

Section XXV Fraudulent Miracles Alleged for the Immaculate Conception

Turrecremata states the following, as summarised by Pusey:

Miracles alleged by John Vitalis, that Alex. Nequam, and three other Dominicans or Franciscans, had
been seized with diseases (some dying) for asserting Mary’s Conception in original sin. Ans. Such
miracles fictitious. Turrecremata had inquired of aged fathers of his order in different provinces, had
they seen or heard any thing of this sort? they ridiculed it.5

Cardinal Cajetan, who was asked by Latin Pope Leo X to report upon the subject of the Immaculate
Conception, writes:

New revelations, however, against so many saints and ancient doctors, might seem, to the wise, to
bring in an angel of Satan transformed into an angel of light, fancies and even figments. These truly,
with the so-called miracles which are cited in this cause, are rather for old women than for the holy

1 Garrigou-Lagrange, Christ the Savior, Ch. XL, Art. II, n. 2482.

2 Ignatius T. Eschmann, A Catalogue of St. Thomas’s Works, 79, in L. K. Shook (translator), Étienne Gilson, The
Christian Philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas, New York, NY: Random House, 1956.
3 For more on this and related variant readings or corruptions, see the footnote in Richard Gibbings, Roman

Forgeries and Falsifications: or, An Examination of Counterfeit and Corrupted Records; with Especial
Reference to Popery, Part I, pp. 45 – 49, Dublin: Grant and Bolton, 1842.
4 Pusey, Immaculate Conception, p. 511.
5 Pusey, Immaculate Conception, p. 512. Wording slightly expanded.
 545

Synod [the Latin Fifth Lateran Council, 1512 – 1517]; whence I do not deem them worthy of
mention.1

Section XXVI Turrecremata on the Introduction of this Doctrine

Turrecremata writes:

in many places it [the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception] was introduced with violence, threats,
defamation, of which I could mention much in detail as to the ways and practices of some in the
introduction of the aforesaid doctrine. But I pass it over, honestatis gratia.2

Section XXVII The Charta of Ugo de Summo

A spurious donation, allegedly dated to the year 1047, has been cited to show the belief of the Immaculate
Conception in that time, along with a related spurious document allegedly dated to 780 that claims that a
church was dedicated to the honour of the Immaculate Conception in this year. Preuss writes about these
documents:

Ballerini has published a collection of so-called memorials for the history of the immaculate
conception. The most remarkable of them all is the ‘Charta donationis Ugonis de Summo.’ According
to this, a certain Ugo de Summo devised a certain piece of land about the year 1047, for the purpose
of building thereon a chapel to the immaculate conception; which land, unfortunately, is no longer
recognisable, having probably been swallowed up by the Po [river]. By means of this, the said Ugo
developed the doctrine of the immaculate conception, apparently with prophetic foresight, according
to the words of Pope Alexander the Seventh. He even wrote a hymn to the immaculate conception. 3

Pusey notes the following on this Latin authority brought forth to support the historical celebration of the
Immaculate Conception, which had been cited by Ballerini:

Ballerini adds to these passages of Perrone three Latin authorities: – 1) the Charta of donation of Ugo
de Summo [of Cremona] to the “Church of S. Mary Mother,” with a date “A.D. 1047, on the Feast of
Holy and Immaculate Conception of the B. V. M.;” … What may be the origin or history of this Charta
of Ugo, I know not. But the language of Sicardus, who was, for 30 years, Bishop of Cremona, from
1185 – 1215, is absolutely irreconcilable with the date which it bears. … “Some at one time
celebrated the Conception of the B. V., and perchance still celebrate it,” is language wholly
irreconcilable with its having been celebrated for the last century and a half in the city of which
Sicardus, “a man of distinguished piety,” was for 30 years a Bishop. The Charta then must at least be
subsequent to the death of Sicardus, at the beginning of the 13th century, even if his successor
introduced the Festival, and that, not only as the Feast of the Conception, but as “the Feast of the
Immaculate Conception,” of which we know nothing. We only know that it cannot be a genuine
document.4

1 Robert Charles Jenkins (translator), The Judgment of Thomas de Vio, Cardinal Cajetan, Against the
Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Canterbury: Ashenden, 1858.
2 Pusey, Immaculate Conception, p. 515.
3 Preuss, Romish Doctrine, Ch. XIII, p. 217 (end note for p. 199).
4 Pusey, Immaculate Conception, pp. 336 – 339. Pusey goes on to discuss issues with the authenticity of

Ballerini’s two other Latin authorities for the Immaculate Conception (see pp. 339 – 341).
 546

The French Protestant theologian Athanase Josué Coquerel (1820 – 1875) wrote an appendix on the
“Iconography of the Immaculate Conception: or, the Attempted Representation of that Dogma in Painting and
Sculpture”, which quotes the Roman Catholic Monsignor J. B. Malou, Bishop of Bruges (1809 – 1865), who
published a book on the “Iconography of the Immaculate Conception of the Most Holy Virgin Mary; or, the
best Way of representing this Mystery” (Bussels, 1856). Coquerel writes:

Finally, it is impossible to establish, on behalf of any particular composition, the claims of

antiquity which are so venerated by Catholics. M. Malou refuses to admit as authentic the bequest of
the Canon Ugo di Summo, of Cremona, dated 1047, though this piece appeared at the head of the
tenth volume of the Pareri de’ Vescovi (Opinions of Bishops [on the Immaculate Conception]),
published by order of Pius IX. on occasion of the proclamation of the doctrine. Mgr. de Bruges proves
that “till the end of the fifteenth century, not a trace is found either of the image described by Ugo di
Summo, or of any symbolical image whatever of the Immaculate Conception.” We must come down
to the first years of the sixteenth century to discover any; and still no satisfactory traces have been
found to the present time.1

Thomas Morton Harper confidently cited this spurious Charta as an evidence in favour of the Immaculate
Conception, in his essay on that topic in 1866. Harper translated part of this donation and placed the entire
document in the appendix, and also mentioned another similar document by Ballerini from Ugo’s family
register that pretends that a church was dedicated to the Immaculate Conception in Cremona in the year
780.2 However, in the next volume of his work, published eight years later, Harper admitted its spuriousness
and apologised for this error, saying:

In the Essay on the Immaculate Conception a document will be found to have been produced
in the shape of a deed of gift, bearing the date of A.D. 780. In Appendix B an exact transcript was
given of this remarkable relic of antiquity; and there can be no doubt that the supposed evidence
which it afforded to the existence of a popular belief in, and devotion to the Immaculate Conception
of our Lady in the eighth century, was of more than ordinary weight, so long as its genuineness was
above suspicion. Doubts, however, had been already raised, (as we have since been informed), by a
leaned Bollandist touching its authenticity, in a contribution of his to the Études which had appeared
previous to the publication of my first volume. Unfortunately it had not come under my observation.
However, it now seems to be certain that the document in question is a simple forgery, yet so skilfully
contrived as to have taken in a no less practised and competent critic than Father Ballerini, from
whose Sylloge in fact I had taken it.

I, therefore, beg the reader to consider that, in desire and intention, those pages of my work,
which have been unconsciously disgraced by so detestable a fraud, are entirely obliterated; while, at
the same time, I wish to express, in the most emphatic way, my personal abhorrence of the
imposture.3

1 Edward Higginson and Emily Thomas Higginson (translators), Athanase Josué Coquerel, The Fine Arts in
Italy in their Religious Aspect, Appendix, pp. 243 – 244, London: Edward T. Whitfield, 1859. The earliest
known example of the Immaculate Conception depicted in art is the altarpiece painting by the Venetian artist
Carlo Crivelli (c. 1430 – 1495) in 1492, which is in the British National Gallery
(https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/carlo-crivelli-the-immaculate-conception).
2 Thomas Morton Harper, Peace through the Truth, First Series, Essay IV, § 7., pp. 358 – 359 & Appendix B.,

pp. 427 – 428 (also referred to on pp. xxxi & 418), London: Longmans, Green, Reader, and Dyer, 1866.
3 Thomas Morton Harper, Peace through the Truth, Second Series, Part I, Preface, pp. vii – viii, London: Burns,

Oates, & Co., 1874. Harper still failed to recognise various other errors in his own work (compare Harper’s
essay with Pusey’s treatise).
 547

There are other corrupted texts and errors in citations pertaining to the Immaculate Conception controversy,
several of lesser or indirect importance, which are not mentioned here, and additional research will uncover
more of this.

Ch. XXXIV A Spurious Letter of St. Ignatius to a certain Mary

There is a spurious letter attributed to St. Ignatius of Antioch, titled “The Epistle of Ignatius to Mary at
Neapolis, near Zarbus”. The relevant passage of this letter cited by Roman Catholic apologists is the
following:

Now it occurs to me to mention, that the report is true which I heard of you while you were at Rome
with the blessed father [Pope] Linus, whom the deservedly-blessed Clement, a hearer of Peter and
Paul, has now succeeded.1

This letter is now admitted as spurious by Roman Catholic scholars, and although this letter does not really
make anything substantial for the Papacy, many Roman Catholics had previously cited it as a testimony in
favour of the Papal succession, and of the early attribution of the title “Pope” to the Bishop of Rome. This
forgery increases the focus on the Bishop of Rome, his succession, and his title of “Pope”, whereas the
authentic epistles of Ignatius contain no such remark. This passage is also inconsistent with other early
chronological lists of the succession of the Roman Bishops, many of which place Cletus or Anacletus
immediately after Linus, but these lists have multiple inconsistencies of their own.

Robert Bellarmine quotes this letter in his argument for the Papacy.2 Francis de Sales boldly writes, taking
from Bellarmine:

And that you may know how ancient this name [Pope] is amongst good men – [hear] S.
Ignatius, disciple of the Apostles: “When thou wast,” says he, “at Rome with Pope Linus.” [Ad Mariam
Zarbensem] Already at that time there were papists, and of what sort! 3

Several other Roman Catholics have also cited or quoted this passage for the Papacy, such as Turrianus,4 John
Paul Donato (or Joannes Paulus Donatus),5 and the Jesuit historian Gregory Kolb.6

Ch. XXXV Pope Vigilius’s Epistle to Bishop Profuturus of Braga

In the letter of Pope Vigilius to Profuturus (which is also noticed in Appendix II on Trine Immersion), an
interpolation has been made, and a paragraph was added to the end of this epistle, the interpolated text

1 The Apostolic Fathers, IV Ignatius, Spurious Epistles, Ignatius to Mary at Neapolis, near Zarbus, Ch. IV, p.
122, in ANF, Vol. I.
2 Roberti Bellarmini, Opera Omnia, Vol. I, Controversiarum De Summo Pontifice, Book II, Ch. XXXI, p. 611,

Paris: Ludovicum Vivès, 1870.

3 Henry Benedict Mackey, Library of St. Francis De Sales: Works of This Doctor of the Church Translated into

English, Vol. III, The Catholic Controversy, Part II, Art. VI, Ch. XII, p. 294, London: Burns and Oates, 1886. I
briefly noted this error of de Sales elsewhere.
4 Turrianus, Adversus Magdeburgenses Centuriatores, Book II, p. 178, Florence: Ex Officina Bartholomæi

Sermartelli, 1572.
5 John Paul Donato, Brevis Tractatus de Jure Eligendi Ministros Ecclesiae et Præsertim Summum Pontificem,

p. 54 [pages unnumbered], Turin: Apud Franciscum Laurentinum, 1582.

6 Gregory Kolb, Series Romanorum Pontificum Cum Reflexionibus Historicis, p. 102, Freiburg: Typis Joannis

Baptistæ Waltpart, 1720.

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having Vigilius state that, as Peter was the head of all the apostles, Rome is the mother and teacher of all the
Churches. However, that paragraph is wanting in all the Codices. This paragraph reads:

VII. Nulli vel tenuiter sentienti, vel pleniter sapienti dubium est, quod Ecclesia Romana
fundamentum et forma sit Ecclesiarum, a quo omnes Ecclesias principium sumpsisse nemo recte
credentium ignorat. Quoniam licet omnium apostolorum par esset electio, beato tamen Petro
concessum est ut cæteris præmineret; unde et Cephas vocatur, quia caput est et principium omnium
apostolorum: et quod in capite præcessit, in membris sequi necesse est. Quamobrem sancta Romana
Ecclesia ejus merito Domini voce consecrata et sanctorum Patrum auctoritate roborata, primatum
tenet omnium Ecclesiarum; ad quam tam summa episcoporum negotia, et judicia, atque querelæ,
quam et majores Ecclesiarum quæstiones quasi ad caput semper referenda sunt. Nam et qui se scit
aliis esse præpositum, non moleste ferat aliquem esse sibi prælatum. Ipsa namque Ecclesia quæ
prima est, ita reliquis Ecclesiis vices suas credidit largiendas, ut in partem sint vocatæ sollicitudinis,
non in plenitudinem potestatis. Unde omnium appellantium apostolicam sedem episcoporum
judicia, et cunctarum majorum negotia causarum, eidem sanctæ sedi reservata esse liquet: præsertim
cum in his omnibus ejus semper sit exspectandum consultum; cujus tramiti si quis obviare tentaverit
sacerdotum, causas se non sine honoris sui periculo apud eamdem sanctam sedem noverit
redditurum. Data calendis Martii, Volusiano [Al. Vuilisiario male | et Joanne viris clarissimis
consulibus (Anno Domini 538).1

This letter is also contained in St. Isidore of Seville’s canonical collection, where the note in Migne says, “In
excusis additur paragraphus in quo asseritur Romanam Ecclesiam matrem esse et magistram omnium
Ecclesiarum; in omnibus nostris Codicibus desideratur.”2

See the valuable notice of this spurious paragraph in Pereira, Tentativa Theologica, XIV, pp. 56 – 58.

Ch. XXXVI The Wigton Controversy and the Literary Dishonesty of a Certain Roman Priest

The Roman Catholic priest Edmund Joseph Kelly of St. Cuthbert’s in Wigton, Cumberland, falsified texts in his
controversy with Anglican clergyman Richard Paul Blakeney (1820 – 1884). Blakeney summarizes and
provides the following evidence:

The Author was announced to deliver a lecture on Popery, in Wigton, a town of Cumberland.
The Priest of Wigton, who had the reputation of being a great controversialist, immediately published
placards, intimating his intention to be present. Accordingly a discussion took place, – the Rev. Mr
Irving, the Vicar, in the chair. At the close of the proceedings that evening, it was agreed that the
debate should be resumed at the expiration of a fortnight, upon the whole question between
Protestants and Romanists. On his return home, the Author entered into a correspondence with the
Priest, to settle preliminaries; but finding that he was tergiversating and equivocating, he addressed
him in the Carlisle Patriot, in order to render him amenable to public opinion. The Priest now
published the private correspondence in the form of a pamphlet; but added whole pages to his own
letters!
The Author repaired at once to Wigton, held three meetings on consecutive evenings, and
invited the Priest to come forward and defend himself, to which, however, he made no response.
At the meeting, Mr Brisco, a gentleman of the highest respectability in the county, was
deputed to institute a comparison between the alleged correspondence, and the Priest’s letters in his
own hand-writing. He did so in the presence of the assembly, and then gave the following
testimonial: –

1 Migne, PL, Vol. LXIX, pp. 19 B – 20 C. Also see the editor’s note in this location.
2 Migne, PL, Vol. LXXXIV, p. 832 D.
 549

“I certify that, at the public meeting in Wigton, and in the presence of all, I compared
the written correspondence of the Rev. Mr Kelly with the correspondence printed in his
pamphlet, which he sold to the public as a true and faithful copy of his correspondence with
the Rev. R. P. Blakeney. In doing so, I found most gross misstatements, interpolations, and
additions.
One of his letters in the print was so altered from beginning to end, that I could
scarcely discover that it had anything to do with the original.
I may also add, that I requested some one or any in the meeting, to come upon the
platform, and assist me in the examination.
From my personal knowledge of the neighbourhood of Wigton, I can state that the
controversy, and also the exposure of the deceptions practised by the Romish priest, have
convinced the public that the Papacy is now what it ever has been, – a tyrant over body and
soul, idolatrous, and the enemy of the human family.
24th July, 1846 Robert Brisco
Low Mill House, Egremont, Cumberland.”

Thus a Roman Catholic priest publishes a correspondence between himself and a Protestant
clergyman, but is found guilty of gross interpolation and forgery. Such base dishonesty on the part of
one having the calling of clergyman, is so thoroughly in accordance with the teaching of Rome, that,
as a matter of course, this priest was permitted to continue to officiate in the same place unrebuked
by his superiors.1

Ch. XXXVII An Alleged Greek Calumny Concerning Pope Joan

Döllinger has written an excellent chapter on the interesting myth of Pope Joan. There certainly never was a
female Pope or “Papess” of Rome, and this story forms a curious note in the history of the Middle Ages. One of
the Latin claims about the origin of this fable is that it originated with St. Photius, who allegedly invented it as
a calumny against the Latins. Döllinger writes:

The opinion published by the Jesuit Secchi in Rome, that it is a calumny originating with the Greeks,
namely with Photius, is equally inadmissible. The first Greek who mentions the circumstance is the
monk Barlaam in the fourteenth century. Pagi’s assertion also, which Eckhart supports, that the
myth was an invention of the Waldenses, is pure imagination. The myth evidently originated in
Rome itself, and the first to give it circulation were not the Waldenses, but their most deadly enemies
– the Dominicans and Minorites.2

Ch. XXXVIII Scott’s Misquotation of St. Stephen the Younger

Continuing from my comments on Sidney Herbert Scott’s notice on Trullo (where he confused St. Stephen’s
criticism of the Iconoclast Council of Hieria with the Ecumenical Council of Trullo), I have seen a commonly
repeated mistranslation and misrepresentation of Stephen’s words here with regard to determining whether
a council is ecumenical. Earlier in his book, Scott himself was aware that these words of St. Stephen were
directed against the council at Hieria. Here, Scott quotes the following objection by Anglican priest Beresford
James Kidd (1863 – 1948):

1 Richard Paul Blakeney, Popery In Its Social Aspect, Ch. VII, pp. 53 – 54, Toronto: The Gospel Witness, early
1900s (undated) [originally published 1852]. Blakeley discusses this controversy at length in his pamphlet
The Wigton Controversy: Containing a Complete Exposure of the Literary Dishonesty and Evasive Conduct of
a Romish Priest, London: Exeter Hall, [1846?].
2 Döllinger, Fables Respecting the Popes of the Middle Ages, Part I, Ch. I, p. 7. Also see p. 38. Antonio Secchi

(1818 – 1878) was a distinguished astronomer and Jesuit priest.

 550

There are, in the largest reckoning, twenty Councils, from the Nicene to the Vatican, claiming
to be œcumenical. Of these, the first eight were summoned by the emperors. They were councils of
the Οίκουμένη, or Roman empire, and œcumenical in that sense. But for œcumenicity in the wider
sense there must be representation of the episcopate as a whole, including effective co-operation on
the part of the pope, as Head of the Episcopal College. The pope did not convoke any of the first eight
councils, nor can it be shown that, by an act of subsequent confirmation, he gave to all of
them œcumenical authority. But in respect of those that were œcumenical in their celebration, he did
effectively co-operate.

Scott’s response is:

But cf. the words of S. Stephen Junior of the Iconoclast Council of Hieria: “How can you
call œcumenical a council when the Bishop of Rome has not given his consent and when the canons
forbid ecclesiastical affairs to be decided without the Pope of Rome?”1

However, Scott’s translation is very misleading, especially in regards to the paragraph he is responding to. I
will discuss the quote after pointing out several later citations of this passage.

The next instance of this quote is in B. M. Billon, who writes:

In the opinion of Eastern writers of the period under consideration, a council to be reckoned
Ecumenical had to be ratified and confirmed by the Pope. Thus St Stephen Junior protesting against
the Iconoclast council of 338 bishops convened in 753 by Constantine V. Copronymus, indignantly
asked, ‘How can you call a council ecumenical when the Bishop of Rome has not given his consent,
and when the canons forbid ecclesiastical affairs to be decided without the Pope of Rome?’2

A third instance of this quote in print is in Aidan Nichols:

During the Iconoclast crisis, which moved to an early climax at the 754 Iconoclast Synod of Hiereia,
there were few places to which Iconophile churchmen might look for support other than the elder
Rome. Thus, such a defender of the images during the “First Iconoclasm” as Stephen the Faster
challenged the assembled bishops at Hiereia by asking: “How can you call a council ecumenical when
the bishop of Rome has not given his consent, and the canons forbid ecclesiastical affairs to be
decided without the pope of Rome?”3

The Jesuit Weninger writes of Stephen against the Iconoclasts:

Undismayed by the solemn formality of pretentious words, the Confessor of Christ replied with a
smile: “How can a Council convene and legislate, without the authority and consent of the Apostolical
See?” His firm attitude silenced these creatures of a heretical court, and foiled all their schemes of
intimidation.4

1 Sidney Herbert Scott, The Eastern Churches and the Papacy, p. 75, London: Sheed & Ward, 1928.
2 B. M. Billon, The Early Eastern Tradition of the Papacy, p. 106, Ilfracombe: Arthur H. Stockwell Limited,
1979.
3 Aidan Nichols, Rome and the Eastern Churches: A Study in Schism, Ch. VI, p. 218, San Francisco, CA: Ignatius

Press, Rev. Ed., 2010 [First published 1992].

4 Francis Xavier Weninger, On the apostolical and infallible authority of the Pope: when Teaching the Faithful,

and on His Relation to a General Council, Ch. II, pp. 71 – 72, New York, NY: D. & J. Sadlier & Co., 2nd Ed., 1869.
 551

Francis Dvornik similarly misquotes Stephen the Younger.1 This misquotation is uncritically repeated in
Scott Butler and John Collorafi.2

All six Roman Catholic authors above have misquoted and misrepresented St. Stephen’s words, by cutting
short the end of the sentence. The actual passage continues past where the quote inaccurately ends. In the
original text, translated here with additional context, Stephen goes on to list the three Orthodox patriarchal
sees that did not consent to Hieria:

St. Stephen said: “Oh insanity! Having begun with a lie and having taken as a cement all of your vain
novelties, you have come to a lie, you, the accusers of Christians. For how is this “holy”, who profanes
the holy things? Have not the holy things been trampled by you? Is it not in your council that an
accusation was made against a bishop by men who were friends of Christ, because he had trampled
on a holy paten of the very pure mysteries of Christ for the reason that there were represented
sacred images of Christ, his Mother and the Forerunner? But you, preferring to images the gesture of
which it was accused, you have accepted that it is celebrated, and you have excommunicated the
friends of Christ by calling them defenders of idols! What is more hostile to holiness than that? Have
you not put the sacred veils in pieces have you not made them disappear? How, then, will your
council be called holy? Do you not, of all the saints, righteous, apostles and martyrs, suppress the
word “holy” and established dogma to say: “Where are you going?” “To the Apostles”, “Where do you
come from?” “The Forty Martyrs”, “And where are you?” “At the martyr Theodore and Akakius and
those with them”. Are these not your teachings? And how are you defiling the sacred? And how can
those that defile the sacred become sacred? Oh the stupidity! And how can [it] be ‘ecumenical’, a
council to which the bishop of Rome did not give his approval (although a canon states that one does
not regulate the affairs of the Church without the Pope of Rome) nor that [Pope] of Alexandria, as it
were, neither that of Antioch nor that of Jerusalem? What is such label that your false club can be
called an ‘ecumenical’ synod? How can it be the ‘seventh’, a council that does not follow the six
before? Everything seventh follows a first, second, third, fourth and fifth, and following the sixth
comes a seventh. But you have rejected the traditions of the six councils, so how can you call it the
‘seventh council’, I wonder.”

And as Tricacabos asked, “And why have we reneged on the saints of the ecumenical synods?”

The saint said, “Didn’t the synods take place in holy temples [churches], the first in Nicaea in the
temple of Saint Sophia, the second in Constantinople in the church of Saint Irene, the third in Ephesus
in the church of [John the] Theologian, the fourth on our own metropolis of the Chalcedonians …” 3

For comparison, Roman Catholics have cited this passage as: “How can you call œcumenical a council when
the Bishop of Rome has not given his consent and when the canons forbid ecclesiastical affairs to be decided
without the Pope of Rome?”

Yet this sentence actually reads: “And how can [it] be ‘ecumenical’, a council to which the bishop of Rome did
not give his approval (although a canon states that one does not regulate the affairs of the Church without the
Pope of Rome) nor that [Pope] of Alexandria, as it were, neither that of Antioch nor that of Jerusalem?”

It is a serious matter to suppress these words at the end. The inaccurate quote used by Roman Catholics
places the sole focus on the bishop of Rome alone, whereas St. Stephen’s point is that the rest of the Church
did not accept it, and Rome is mentioned as an important but not as the critical point of assent. Basically,

1 Francis Dvornik, Byzantium and the Roman Primacy, p. 95, New York, NY: Fordham University Press, 2nd
Printing, 1979 [first published 1964].
2 Scott Butler and John Collorafi, Keys Over the Christian World, Ch. XVII, p. 376, [Publisher and printing

location not given (USA)], 2003.

3 Translated from Marie-France Auzépy, La Vie d’Etienne le Jeune par Étienne le Diacre: Introduction, Édition

et Traduction, pp. 241 – 242, Aldershot: Variorum, 1997. Also compared with the Greek in Migne, PG, Vol. C,
pp. 1141 – 1144.
 552

Stephen is saying that the synod is not proper because four of the five patriarchates did not accept that
Council. There are other important reasons as well weighing against that council. Stephen later places
importance on the fact that the said synod did not take place in a Church, which is where the rest took place
(although Stephen may be incorrect on this point; see the notes of the editor). For a council to be considered
ecumenical, it is relevant to consider whether the Patriarchs of Rome, Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch,
and Jerusalem have agreed to its decrees.

The editor here writes in a footnote, “No canon of an ecumenical council says such a thing, and the respective
places of the sees of Rome and Constantinople do not make the thing necessary (an equality of honour of the
two sees existed since the 28th canon of Chalcedon)”1 This is certainly true – there was no canon of the sort,
so Stephen (if he was not misled by a false canon, or perhaps referring to Socrates’s (E.H., ii. 17)
misunderstanding of a passage by Julius2) was speaking of a general understanding, that there should be
harmony in important matters with the leading bishops of the Church. Most likely, Stephen is implicitly
referring to or borrowing from a passage in the Acts of the Seventh Ecumenical Council, which has likewise
been misrepresented (see the following section, also compare the short chapter above on Patriarch St.
Nicephorus on Councils and the Pentarchy).

This is the only location where Stephen brings up the Bishop of Rome in the entire controversy, whereas if
he had subscribed to the doctrine of the Latin First Vatican Council about the Papacy, he would have stated
that simply rejecting the Bishop of Rome or being outside of the communion of Rome is automatic
excommunication and proof of error. Stephen nowhere insists on refuting the Iconoclasts by saying they are
not in agreement with Rome, as if that were an infallible demonstration of their heresy.

Ch. XXXIX Allies’s Misquotation of the Seventh Ecumenical Council

A similar misquotation is found in Thomas William Allies, who writes:

This seventh Council, rejecting a former great Council of some hundred Bishops, held thirty
years before at Constantinople, from being general, says:

“How was it great and universal? for it had not the countenance of the Roman Pope of that
time, nor of the Bishops who are about him, nor by his Legates, nor by an encyclical letter, as the law
of Councils requires.”

[Allies’s Footnote:] Mansi, xiii. 207.3

However, when one turns to the reference given to Mansi, it is clear that Allies has not quoted the passage
accurately, and that the consent and approval of the other Patriarchs are also components of ecumenicity.
Mendham gives the following translation:

Again, how could that be Great or Œcumenic, which the Presidents of other Churches have never
received or assented to; but which, on the contrary, they have anathematized? It had not as its fellow
helper the then Pope of Rome, or his conclave: neither was it authorized by his Legate, nor by
Encyclic Epistle from him, as the custom is in Councils. Neither do we find that the Patriarchs of the

1 Auzépy, La Vie d’Etienne le Jeune par Étienne le Diacre, p. 242, n. 304.

2 See The Quarterly Review, Vol. CXLII, July & October, 1876, No. 284., Art. IV, The Papal Monarchy, pp. 422 –
424, London: John Murray, 1876.
3 Thomas William Allies, Per Crucem Ad Lucem: The Result of a Life, Vol. I, Ch. II, § V, I, pp. 208 – 209, London:

C. Kegan Paul & Co., 1879. Allies also quotes this in his work The See of St. Peter: The Rock of the Church, The
Source of Jurisdiction, and The Centre of Unity, § V, V, p. 127, London: Burns & Lambert, 1850 [and it is
reprinted in all four editions of this work, down to 1896].
 553

East, of Antioch, Alexandria, and the holy City, did at all consent thereto, nor any of their great
doctors or high-priests.1

More is said here against the Iconoclast council, but nowhere is the sole test of Papal approval the final
determinant of a Council’s acceptance, or of orthodox doctrine. On a related note for this and the previous
chapter, see the quotes from Patriarch St. Nicephorus on the Pentarchy in that chapter in the Papacy book.

Ch. XL Three Corrupted Letters of Pope Leo

Some of the corrupted documents of the time of Pope Leo are worth mentioning. I cite at length from
Grillmeier’s work “Christ in Christian Tradition”:

For all that the Pope saw the participation in the Council as providing the necessary control. Where
his representatives had given their assent, the work of the council was definitive. Their assent is his
approbation. This conception is very pointedly expressed in his letter to the bishops of Gaul at the
beginning of 452, thus immediately after the Council, and in another letter to Theodoret of Cyrus, if
this second letter is genuine. In the first letter Leo informs the bishops of Gaul that judgement was
passed on Dioscorus by synods presided over by his legates in his place. He adds to this letter the
text of the record of the condemnation of the Alexandrian bishop by his legates. This record,
however, is given by Leo in a translation which differs markedly from the one which the deacon
Rusticus later prepared from the Greek acta (ACO II 1, 2, p. 29, 14-20) [Rusticus was a Roman deacon
who about the middle of the sixth century went with Pope Vigilius to Constantinople, where he
compared the Greek manuscripts of the Acts, mainly using the manuscripts of the Acoemetae
monastery]. On account of the significance of the variations, we give the final sentence of both forms
of the text in parallel columns.

Leo M., ep. 103, ACO II 4, nr. 112, p. 156, 21-26

Unde sanctus ac beatissimus papa caput universalis ecclesiae per vicarios suos, sancta synodo
consentiente, Petri apostolic praeditus dignitate qui ecclesiae fundamentum et petra fidei,
caelestis regni ianitor nuncupatur, episcopali eum [D.] dignitate nudavit, et ab omni
sacerdotali opera fecit extorrem. Superest, uti congregate venerabilis synodus canonicam
contra praedictum Dioscorum proferat iustitia suadente sententiam.

(‘Whence the holy and most blessed Pope, head of the whole Church, possessing the dignity of
the apostle Peter who is called the foundation of the Church and the rock of faith, the door-
keeper of the heavenly kingdom, through his representatives, with the consent of the holy
Synod, stripped him [Dioscorus] of his episcopal dignity and suspended him from every
sacerdotal work.

It only remains that the gathered venerable Council pronounce a just sentence on the said
Dioscorus’.

Rusticus, ACO II 3, 2, p. 46, 21-25

1 Joseph Mendham, The Seventh General Council, the Second of Nicæa, held A.D. 787, Session VI, pp. 308 –
309, London: William Edward Painter, 1850. The Greek of Allies’s italicised text is “καθώς νόμος εστί τας
συνόδοις”. The meaning of the word “νόμος”, rendered “law” in Allies and “custom” in Mendham, depends on
the context, and while “law” is the usual translation of this word, in this context I believe “custom” is the best
translation here (for reference see https://biblehub.com/greek/3551.htm), and it is worth noting that there
is no written law, rule, or canon to this effect (there is moreover no Greek word corresponding to the force of
“requires”.
 554

unde sanctissimus et beatissimus archiepiscopus magnae senioris Romae Leo per nos et per
praesentem sanctam synodum una cum ter beatissimo et omni laude digno Petro apostolo,
qui est petra et crepido catholicae ecclesiae et ille qui est rectae fidei fundamentum, nudavit
eum tam episcopatus dignitate quam etiam et omni sacerdotali alienavit ministerio. Igitur
sancta haec et magna synodus quae placent regulis, super memorato Dioscoro decernet.

(‘Whence the most holy and most blessed Archbishop of great older Rome, Leo, through us
and through the present holy Synod together with the apostle Peter, worthy of all praise, who
is the rock and base of the catholic Church and foundation of right faith, stripped him
[Dioscorus] of his episcopal dignity, as well as removing him from all sacerdotal ministry.

Therefore, let this holy and great Synod in accord with the rules [canons] pass judgement on
the said Dioscorus’.)

The two forms differ noticeably. In his text Leo gives an edge to the words of his legates (as
given in the Greek text and the translation of Rusticus), which already express the primacy of the
Bishop of Old Rome clearly enough. His own position was emphasized by the insertion that the Pope
is ‘head of the universal church’. Furthermore, the equal status of the legates and the synod in the
original text was changed, with a slight alteration of language, into the subordination of the latter to
the former. Finally, in the linguistic form adopted by Leo, the Petrine principle is applied more
decisively to the Pope than happens in the formulation of the legates.

The relationship of council and Pope as understood by Leo would be even more clearly
formulated, were the disputed letter to Theodoret already mentioned genuine:

[The Lord] did not permit us to suffer any harm in our brothers [the members of the Synod],
but what he had previously defined by our ministry (ministerior definaverat) he confirmed
through the assent of the whole brotherhood, in order to show that what was previously
formulated by the first of all sees and had received the approval of the world truly proceeded
from him, so that in this also the members may be in agreement with the head.

If the letter to Theodoret, at least in this passage, were genuine, Leo would be saying that God has
defined the true faith through the mouth of the Pope and given his grace to the Council so that it
knew the definition of Rome to be prompted by God, or to stem from God, though admittedly
mediated through Leo as an instrument. In fact, such sentences point ahead to the time when the
canonical foundations of the rights of the Roman primacy would be laid. Certainly such words were
spoken from a purely Western standpoint and must not be taken on the basis of the ‘assensus’ of the
Fathers in 451.1

Grillmeier notes on the above letter,

See Leo M., ep. 120: ACO II 4, p. 78, 24-27. Is this forcing of the teaching authority of the Pope really
to be ascribed to Leo himself? The idea that either Christ or Peter is himself active in his
representative is otherwise only present in an inauthentic letter, the ‘Quali pertinacia’ addressed to
the bishops of Gaul, which is edited by G. Gundlach in MGH Epistulae III, pp. 90-91 (PL 54, 1237):
“with what obstinacy Hilarius, the Bishop of Arles, fled our decision, your holy brotherhood is not

1 Grillmeier, Christ in Christian Tradition, Vol. II, Part I, Ch. II, Sect. II, 2. pp. 126 – 129. Some scholars have
endeavoured to maintain the genuineness of the disputed letter of Pope Leo to Theodoret of Cyrus, but I
believe it is certainly interpolated with spurious content, as several leading Roman Catholic scholars have
admitted (see footnote 41 on p. 128 of “Christ in Christian Tradition”). This record from the Council is also
translated in Percival, Seven Ecumenical Councils, pp. 259 – 260; Price and Gaddis, Acts of Chalcedon, Vol. II,
Session III, p. 70, n. 100.
 555

ignorant. Whence we regard it as just that the Bishop of Arles did not expect the great moderation in
judgements of the prince of the apostles which he always displays in power through his vicars”.1

Although Pope Leo uses an interpolated document here and in other places, I give him the benefit of the doubt
in regards to his honesty, since I believe Leo was misled by corrupted records at Rome, or that his letters
were later tampered with. The Orthodox Church correctly venerates Leo as a saint, and I personally ascribe
the corruption to some partisans at Rome, who imposed these false documents upon Leo or edited his
writings afterwards. However, this is evidence against the purity of the Roman archives, and against the
perfect reliability of the pope and papal records. Also see the following chapter on the Spurious Works of
Popes Leo I and Gelasius I.

To summarize, in this section there was noticed three documents with false information to promote the
authority of the Bishop of Rome: Pope Leo’s letter to the bishops of Gaul A.D. 452, his letter to Theodoret of
Cyrus, and the letter to the bishops of Gaul where he mentions St. Hilary (Quali pertinacia).

Ch. XLI Spurious Works of Popes Leo I and Gelasius I

Many of Pope Leo I’s letters are outright spurious, or suspected as such. The learned Jesuit scholar Carlos
Silva-Tarouca in the 1920’s and 1930’s argued for the spuriousness of a large number of Leo’s letters: Epp. 36,
43, 74, 111, 112, 113, 118, 120 [mentioned in the previous chapter], 137, 141, and 154. Silva-Tarouca also
considered the following letters suspect: Epp. 27, 39, 47, 48, 49, 157, 158, 160, and 161. Some scholars think
Letter 1 of Leo spurious, and K. Künstle argued for the spuriousness of Ep. 15 (see Matthew Hoskin,
Prolegomena to a Critical Edition of the Letters of Pope Leo the Great: A Study of the Manuscripts, Appendix
III, Dissertation, Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh, 2015). Letter 12 has an alternate version and appears
to have been modified.2

There are 173 letters in Leo’s collection (in the Ballerini’s 1753 authoritative edition), and out of these 13 are
thought spurious and 9 suspect. Besides the 173 letters, two documents ascribed to Leo, Quali pertinacia
(mentioned in the previous chapter) and a spurious letter labelled JK †551, have been identified as forgeries
by Roman Catholic scholars since the 18th century (Hoskin, Letters of Leo, p. 335). All this is in addition to
the corruptions and interpolations in his letters, such as those previously noticed in Ep. 103, and which
doubtless widely apply in some degree to all Latin collections.

Several works ascribed to Pope Gelasius I. are spurious. The Roman Catholic Msgr. Aloysius K. Ziegler writes
the following:

Of the forty-three letters and decretals published by Thiel, nos. 2, 3, 10, 13, 42, and 43 are
not to be considered genuine. Cf. Walter Haacke, Die Glaubensformel des Papstes Hormisdas im
Acacianischen Schisma, Analecta Gregoriana, XX (Rome, 1939), 32-44. Besides these Thiel publishes
six tracts attributed to Gelasius and forty-nine fragments of his writings. Tractatus II, an excellent
presentation of the primacy of the Holy See, is not the work of Gelasius. Cf. Haacke, op. cit., p. 34.
Caspar considers it to be genuine (Gesch. des Papsttums, II, 750). The shortened and garbled form of
the letter to the bishops of Dardania (Thiel, Ep. 26), which Thiel prints (pp. 414-422) after the

1Grillmeier, Christ in Christian Tradition, Vol. II, Part I, Ch. II, Sect. II, 2. p. 128, n. 42.
2Edmund Hunt, St. Leo the Great: Letters, Letter 12, p. 48, n. 1, in The Fathers of the Church: A New
Translation, Vol. XXXIV, New York: Fathers of the Church, Inc., 1957. Hunt still holds to Leo’s authorship of
this letter, speculating that “Perhaps there were two original letters.”
 556

original, does not of course belong to the Gelasian corpus. The reader must be on his guard because
authors treating of Gelasius, even the more recent ones, cite works which are not authentic. 1

Thus out of 49 letters, decretals, and tracts (not counting the fragments) attributed to Gelasius, 9 are thought
inauthentic (Epp. 1, 2, 3, 10, 13, 27, 42, 43, and Tractatus II), besides the garbled form of the letter to the
bishops of Dardania (I consider the longer form of this letter to be spurious as well, as discussed in the section
above on the 28th canon of Chalcedon, and I question the reliability of the whole Collectio Avellana and
related papal letter collections) and other interpolations to his work. Ziegler’s final sentence is worth
noticing, for Francis Dvornik quotes at length from the Tractatus II (and other doubtful writings of Gelasius),
as if it were an authentic work of Gelasius (Francis Dvornik, The Idea of Apostolicity in Byzantium, pp. 116 –
117).

It is also worth quoting, from the same article, that Ziegler says,

As for Gelasius’ success in his own time, he failed utterly in his efforts to make the emperor heed and
to put an end to the [Acacian] schism. Both Caspar and Haller, who do not conceal a certain
admiration for him, find him harsh and arrogant. Most of the sharpness attributed to him, even that
which Duchesne points out, is to be found in letters which do not seem to be authentic. 2

Although spurious and misattributed works can be an issue with other ancient Christian literature, the
problem is far greater when it concerns papal writings, because of the papal claims, and the fact that these
spurious texts tend to contain more pro-papal statements and have been uncritically cited by apologists.

Ch. XLII A Forged Correspondence Between Emperors Honorius and Theodosius II

Around the middle of the first millennium, the ecclesiastics of Rome desired to gain power over more
territories, and despite the laws of the Roman Emperors, the Rome wanted authority and control in the
province of Illyricum. Although Emperor Theodosius declared that Illyricum was under the authority of the
Church of Constantinople, this was displeasing to the Latin ecclesiastics, who found an easy solution to the
difficulty, viz., to forge a correspondence between Emperors Honorius and Theodosius II, which would
abrogate this law. This forgery is found in the Collectio ecclesiae Thessalonicensis.

As previously cited in the section on the 28th Canon of Chalcedon, the Civil Law promulgated by Emperor
Justinian reiterates the following decree from the Emperors Honorius and Theodosius to Philip, Prefect of
Illyria, given July 14, 421, which authentically states:

We direct that all innovations shall be annulled and that the ancient customs, and the
ecclesiastical canons, which have been in force to this day, shall also be observed throughout all the
provinces of Illyria, and if any doubt arises, it should be referred to a church assembly and its holy
judgment, with the knowledge of the reverend bishop of the holy faith, situated at Constantinople,
which city enjoys the prerogative of Ancient Rome. 3

1 Aloysius K. Ziegler, Pope Gelasius I and His Teaching on the Relation of Church and State, in The Catholic
Historical Review, Vol. XXVII, No. 4, (Jan., 1942), p. 415, n. 10, 1942. See the entirety of this article, pp. 412 –
437; Ziegler later notes on Ep. 1, “the work seems not to be authentic” (op. cit., p. 427, n. 53), and on Ep. 27,
“The document appears not to be authentic” (op. cit., p. 434, n. 68). The work called the Decretum
Gelasianum is likewise not by Gelasius, and several others can be added as well, showing the unreliability of
the Papal collections and the doubtfulness of works said to issue from the highest authority in the Roman
Catholic communion.
2 Ziegler, Pope Gelasius I, pp. 435 – 436. So little did the Christians of Gelasius’s era believe that it was

necessary to be subject to the Bishop of Rome for salvation.

3 Corpus Juris Civilis, Codex Justinianus, Book I, Title II, 6.
 557

Jasper and Fuhrmann note:

See Schwartz, ‘Sammlung’ 142 and Silva-Tarouca, Collectio Thessalonicensis x ff. The authenticity of
the letters exchanged by the emperors Honorius and Theodosius II (Collectio Thessalonicensis nos. 15
and 16 p. 43ff.) is doubted. Presumably Theodosius’ constitution of 421 (CTh. 16.2.45; Cod.1.2.6)
that denied the authority of the Roman church in Illyricum was abrogated by these letters. The
diplomatic, linguistic, and administrative terminology all argue against the authenticity of
Theodosius’ rescript (Collectio no. 16 p.44f.), as E. Chrysos, ‘Zur Echtheir des “Rescriptum Theodosii
ad Honorium” in der “Collectio Thessalonicensis”,’ Kleronomia 4 (1972) 240ff. demonstrates; he
places the forgery of the rescript after the appearance of Justinian’s Codex (534). 1

Ch. XLIII An Interpolation of Gratian’s Commentary into the Code of Canons of the African Church

Councils were frequently called in primitive times in Africa, and in the year 418 – 419 at Carthage, all canons
of Councils formerly approved were collected into one Code. Many of these canons clearly reflect the ancient
and Orthodox ecclesiology of the Church. In some later editions and copies of Gratian’s collection, there is an
interpolation in Canon XXVIII (labeled Canon XXXI in the Greek edition). This canon decrees:

It also seemed good that presbyters, deacons, and others of the inferior clergy in the causes
which they had, if they were dissatisfied with the judgments of their bishops, let the neighbouring
bishops with the consent of their own bishop hear them, and let the bishops who have been called in
judge between them: but if they think they have cause of appeal from these, they shall not betake
themselves to judgments from beyond seas, but to the primates of their own provinces, or else to an
universal council, as has also been decreed concerning bishops. But whoever shall think good to
carry an appeal across the water shall be received to communion by no one within the boundaries of
Africa.2

Gratian, however, comments at the end of the last sentence, “Unless, perchance, they appeal to the Apostolic
chair.”3

Bellarmine admits, “This exception does not seem to square with the Council.”4

Johnson comments on the original text of this canon: “Clearly the See of Rome is here aimed at, as if Carthage
were the place designed by Providence to put a stop to the growth of power in Christian Rome, as well as
heathen. It is strange, that this canon should be received by the Church of Rome in former ages.” 5

Gratian’s commentary goes directly against what the Council in Africa decreed, when they specifically
intended to prohibit appeals to Rome in this important canon. Giving such an interpretation is itself a form of
falsification of history. In addition, in some later editions and copies of Gratian’s work, his commentary
became appended to the end of the canon, thus corrupting the canon itself. This was most likely only a matter

1 Detlev Jasper and Horst Fuhrmann, Papal Letters in the Early Middle Ages, Part I, Ch. IV, I, p. 83, n. 363. It
should be noted that some Roman Catholics still accept the authenticity of this correspondence, such as
Professor Geoffrey D. Dunn, in his 2017 article Boniface I and Roman Ecclesiastical Supervision of the
Churches of Illyricum Orientale: The Evidence of Retro maioribus to Rufus of Thessaloniki. However, I did
not find his arguments compelling, especially considering the context of other forgeries made in the interest
of Rome.
2 Percival, Seven Ecumenical Councils, p. 456.
3 “Nisi forte Romanam sedem appellaverint.” Gratian, Decretum II ii 6. 35.
4 “Hæc exceptio non videtur quadrare.” De Pont, p. 374, tom. i Prag., 1721. Gratian and Bellarmine quotes

taken from Richard Paul Blakeney, Popery In Its Social Aspect, Ch. VI, p. 48, Toronto: The Gospel Witness,
1900s (undated) [originally published 1852].
5 Percival, Seven Ecumenical Councils, p. 456.
 558

of minor negligence, since it can be hard to distinguish where the canon ends and the commentary begins in
the manuscripts, and this was corrected in the official Roman edition of the sixteenth century.

Ch. XLIV Forgeries of Adémar de Chabannes

Adémar de Chabannes (989 – 1034) was a French monk and historian who created multiple literary forgeries.
Some of his forgeries were detected and challenged by his Latin contemporaries, but they ended up still
having a significant impact in later history. The French Benedictine historian Louis Saltet (1870 – 1952) was
the first to detect the full scope of Adémar’s deception, and American professor of history Richard Allen
Landes (1949 – current) wrote a book dedicated to this topic. Most of Adémar’s forgeries are not necessarily
relevant to the controversy with the Orthodox Church, but it shows the spread of inauthentic documents
among Latins in the era of the Great Schism. Adémar’s forgeries centered around supporting the legend that
St. Martial, the third century bishop who evangelised France, was actually one of the apostles of Christ in the
first century. Adémar forged a Life of St. Martial, as if written by Martial’s successor Bishop St. Aurelian of
Limoges. After doubts spread about the authenticity of this legend, Adémar responded by inventing two great
Peace Councils of 1031 that confirmed the allegedly apostolic status of Martial, as well as a forged letter of
Pope John XIX (pope from 1024 – 1032). Adémar also composed an “Apostolic Mass for St. Martial”, which
supported the legend. He also made interpolations in texts of Isidore of Seville, Theodulf of Orléans, and
Clement of Rome confirming the Aurelian legend. 1

The most relevant forgery of Adémar to the Latin controversy with the Orthodox is his likely authorship of
the letter claiming to be from the pilgrim monks of the Mount of Olives to Charlemagne and Pope Leo III,
which contains passages that support the Filioque and the Papacy. Professor Daniel F. Callahan (1939 –
current) has published many articles on the manuscripts of Adémar of Chabannes over the past 50 years, and
is the world’s foremost scholar on Adémar. In 1992, Callahan wrote a 60-page article arguing that it is likely
that this letter is another forgery of Adémar.2 Callahan’s latest book (in 2016) re-iterates this opinion, and
after mentioning his 1992 article, Callahan says, “My subsequent studies of Ademar and his writings have
only convinced me to a greater extent that he was the author of this piece.”3 Callahan comments that letter
has

the central theme of the defense of orthodoxy and standing with the papacy in support of the true
faith. … Here again Ademar identifies with the pilgrim monks of the Mount of Olives who are called
heretics by their opponents because of their support of the Filioque in the Creed. Again and again in
the letter it is the papal authority that is the guarantee of orthodoxy or truth, 4

Callahan writes about some of the statements in this forged letter:

The purported writer Leo emphasizes the great dignity of the pope in the most fulsome terms, such
as addressing him in the introduction as “supreme pontiff of the universal apostolic see of the city of
Rome,” as having an authority “… exalted by the Lord over all priests and having a see over all sees of
Christians,” and then as called by Christ Peter the Rock (Matt. 16:18). … The monk John repeats that
the Jerusalem monks are heretics, whereupon Leo states to the audience assembled there that they

1 For more information, see Richard Allen Landes, Relics, Apocalypse, and the Deceits of History: Ademar of
Chabannes, 989 – 1034, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995. Also see Daniel F. Callahan,
Jerusalem and the Cross in the Life and Writings of Ademar of Chabannes, in Studies in the History of
Christian Traditions, Vol. CLXXXI, Leiden: Brill, 2016.
2 Daniel F. Callahan, The Problem of the ‘Filioque’ and the Letter from the Pilgrim Monks of the Mount of

Olives to Pope Leo III and Charlemagne. Is the Letter another Forgery by Adémar of Chabannes?, in Revue
Bénédictine, Vol. CII, Issues 1 – 2, pp. 75 – 134, Turnhout: Brepols, 1992.
3 Daniel F. Callahan, Jerusalem and the Cross in the Life and Writings of Ademar of Chabannes, Ch. VII, p. 174,

n. 71, in Studies in the History of Christian Traditions, Vol. CLXXXI, Leiden: Brill, 2016.
4 Callahan, Jerusalem and the Cross in the Life and Writings of Ademar of Chabannes, Ch. VII, p. 178.
 559

should not listen to John because he speaks heresy of the throne of blessed Peter. The letter goes on
to say that the monks of Mount Olivet anathematize all heresy and all who speak heresy of the Roman
apostolic see. Leo then reminds the pope that although the monks of the Mount of Olives are far from
Rome, they are still his sheep. “To you has been given the whole world, as your sanctity knows; as
the Lord said to Peter, ‘If you love me, Peter, feed my sheep.’ (John 21:17). Leo then reminds the
pope that he heard the Filioque in the Creed in the chapel of Charlemagne, [Leo also alleges that the
Filioque is found in a homily of Gregory the Great, the Rule of St. Benedict, the Dialogues of Gregory,
and in the Athanasian Creed] … The pilgrim monks next request that the pope examine Eastern and
Western authorities supporting the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Father and the Son. 1

Ch. XLV The Formula of Hormisdas

The extant Latin text of the Formula or Libellus of Hormisdas (an important document) contains several pro-
Papal statements, and has frequently been cited by apologists for the Papacy. The Easterners who allegedly
signed the Formula in 519 almost certainly signed in Greek, but that text is not extant. The Formula of
Hormisdas is not available in any Greek original, and all that is extant is what claims to be the original Latin,
and a Greek version from the Latin Fourth Council of Constantinople in 869 (which is actually lacking in the
pro-Papal statements).2 Moreover, this formula is found in the Collectio Avellana, a collection of papal
documents which contains various spurious letters, as noted previously. This document is actually
anonymous, even though it has been called the work of Hormisdas. I have grave doubts about the
authenticity of this document, and there are six versions with significant textual differences, and a dedicated
study is a desideratum.

For example, the German Roman Catholic bishop Joseph Hergenröther (1824 – 1890), who was a leading
ecclesiastical historian, canonist, and professor, points out that in some Latin copies of the Formula of
Hormisdas, the following words are missing:

I hope to be worthy to be in that one communion with you, which the Apostolic See enjoins, in which
is the perfect and true solidity of the Christian religion; promising also that the names of those who
are separated from the communion of the Catholic Church, that is, those who are not united in mind
with the Apostolic See, shall not be recited in the Holy Mysteries.3

The extant Latin text of the Libellus Hormisdae says, “for in the apostolic see the Catholic religion has always
been kept immaculate.” However, the See of the Bishop of Rome was far from immaculate in religious
matters, and some simple facts, among very numerous others, such as their repeated and persistent
corruption of the Nicene canons and Liberius’s subscription of an Arian creed (along with rejecting
communion with St. Athanasius), shows that the Roman See was a regular source of many errors, and in no
way can be even remotely “immaculate”. Moreover, this document requires conformity to Pope Leo’s letters
(when it says “we accept and approve in their entirety the letters of blessed Pope Leo, which he composed on
the subject of the Christian religion.”, and enjoins “following the apostolic see in all respects and proclaiming
all its ordinances”), but those letters (if really his) are full of errors, such as his denial of the ecumenicity of
the Second Ecumenical Council, and persistently claiming that Constantinople could not hold the second place
among the Patriarchates, which the Byzantine Emperors and Constantinopolitan patriarchs rejected, as
shown in the chapter on Canon XXVIII of Chalcedon.

1 Callahan, Jerusalem and the Cross in the Life and Writings of Ademar of Chabannes, Ch. VII, pp. 175 – 177.
2 Fortescue is in manifest error when he writes that “The Greek text is shorter than the Latin, but contains the
same essential clauses.” regarding the Papacy (Adrian Fortescue, The Reunion Formula of Hormisdas, p. 20, n.
47, Peekskill, NY: Graymoor Press, 1955). Fortescue was not writing carefully, because following his own
references shows the exact opposite, that the “essential clauses” and pro-Petrine texts are missing in the
Greek version, as recorded in the acts of the Latin Fourth Council of Constantinople (see the further reading).
3 Hergenröther, Anti-Janus, Ch. IV, p. 66. Hergenröther, before quoting this passage writes, “In many copies it

is even said:”, which means that in some copies these words are not found.
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For further reading on this subject, see: Denny, Papalism, pp. 412 – 413, n. 2; Hergenröther, Photius, Vol. II,
pp. 78 – 80, n. 16, Regensburg: G. J. Manz, 1867; Mansi, Vol. XVI, col. 316; Adrian Fortescue, The Reunion
Formula of Hormisdas, London: Catholic Truth Society 1915 [Reprinted in Peekskill, NY: Graymoor Press,
1955]; The most recent discussion, with reference to the scholarly literature, along with a translation of the
critical edition of the Formula, is found in Bronwen Neil and Pauline Allen, Conflict and Negotiation in the
Early Church: Letters from Late Antiquity, Translated from the Greek, Latin, and Syriac, Ch. II, pp. 36 – 38 &
Text 5, pp. 67 – 68, Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2020.

Ch. XLVI Pope Innocent II’s Imprecise Quotation of an Augustinian Passage

Pope Innocent II (Pope from 1130 – 1143) wrote a decretal on baptism, titled “Apostolicam Sedem”, to Bishop
Oberto II of Cremona, in which Innocent imprecisely quotes St. Augustine, and moreover ascribes the passage
to the wrong work of Augustine (to the City of God rather than the Seven Books Against the Donatists on
Baptism). Innocent writes the following:

To your inquiry we respond thus: We assert without hesitation (on the authority of the holy
Fathers Augustine and Ambrose) that the priest whom you indicated (in your letter) had died
without the water of baptism, because he persevered in the faith of holy mother the Church and in
the confession of the name of Christ, was freed from original sin and attained the joy of the heavenly
fatherland. Read (brother) in the eighth book of Augustine’s “City of God” where among other things
it is written, “Baptism is ministered invisibly to one whom not contempt of religion but death
excludes.” Read again the book also of the blessed Ambrose concerning the death of Valentinian
where he says the same thing. Therefore, to questions concerning the dead, you should hold the
opinions of the learned Fathers, and in your church you should join in prayers and you should have
sacrifices offered to God for the priest mentioned. 1

A recent scholar of Pope Innocent II gives the following comment on Innocent’s citation of Augustine:

The ascription to the City of God is mistaken, but the teaching is authentically Augustinian (from
Seven Books on Baptism), although the formulation is slightly different. Compare Innocent’s
‘Baptismus invisibiliter ministratur, quem non contemptus religionis, sed terminus necessitatis
excludit’ with Augustine’s, de baptismo contra donatistas libri vii, iv. 22 (PL, xliii, 173), ‘Sed tunc
impletur invisibiliter, cum ministerium baptismi non contemptus religionis, sed articulus necessitatis
excludit.’2

Thus it appears that Pope Innocent II speaks confidently, and although he does not really misrepresent
Augustine, yet he did not take the care to accurately reference and quote this patristic statement.

1 Roy Joseph Deferrari (translator), Henry Denzinger, The Sources of Catholic Dogma, Innocent II, ¶ 388., pp.
151 – 152, St. Louis, MO: Herder, 1957. The note in Denzinger here states “Cf. De civ. Dei 13, 7 [ML 41, 381].
De facto the Pontiff seems to have regard for St. Augustine’s De baptismo IV 22, 29 [ML 43, 173].” This
chapter is found in English in Marcus Dods, The Works of Aurelius Augustine, Vol. I, The City of God, Book XIII,
Ch. VII, pp. 527 – 528, Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1884. Note that this letter has been misattributed to Innocent
III in some collections.
2 Anne J. Duggan, Jura sua inicuique tribuat: Innocent II and the Advance of the Learned Laws, in John Doran

and Damian J. Smith, Pope Innocent II (1130 – 43): The World vs the City, Ch. X, Decretals, iii, p. 304, n. 193,
Routledge: Abingdon-on-Thames, 2016. This passage is found in English in Marcus Dods, The Works of
Aurelius Augustine, Vol. III, Writings in Connection with the Donatist Controversy, Book IV, Ch. XXII, 29, pp.
110 – 111, Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1872.
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Ch. XLVII Errors in Papal Bulls of Popes Innocent III and Leo X

In support of their Papacy, Latin Popes Innocent III and Leo X misquote Deuteronomy, and Pope Leo X refers
to a spurious document (which was mentioned earlier) and gives poor reasons from history, as Pereira points
out:

XLI. But these arguments are so weak that to wish to call what the Bull says in this place a
dogmatical definition, is to wish to hold as a dogma of the Catholic Faith, a point which is in no way
proved, either by the Pope himself or by the Theologian who conceived the Bull. The proof from
Scripture which Leo brings forward in favour of the supreme power of the Pope, is contained in these
words at the beginning: “It appears from the Book of Kings, that it is so absolutely necessary to obey
the successors of Peter, that he who will not obey shall be put to death.” [Petri successoribus, ex Libri
Regnum testimonio ita obedire necesse est, ut qui non obedierit, morte moriatur.] Now I take no
notice of the fact, that a passage is here cited from the Book of Kings, which, as is observed in the
margin of some editions of this Council, is only to be found in Deuteronomy [Deut. xvii. 12.], but it
ought not to be passed over in silence, that this text is quoted either in a mutilated or corrupted form,
not only in this Bull of Leo X., Pastor Æternus, but also in Cap. 13, Per venerabilem, of Innocent III. It is
mutilated in the Bull Pastor Æternus, because it is quoted as if we read in Scripture: “He who will not
obey the command of the Priest, shall be put to death.” [Qui non obedierit Sacerdotis imperio, morte
moriatur.] And it is corrupted in Cap. Per venerabilem, for it is made to say: “He who will not obey the
command of the Priest, shall be put to death by the decree of the Judge.” [Qui non obedierit
Sacerdotis imperio, decreto judicis moriatur.] Whereas the genuine text, according to the Vulgate,
has a very different sense, viz.: “He who will not obey the command of the Priest, and the decree of the
Judge, shall be put to death.” So that in order to deserve death, the guilty person must have
disobeyed the two, and not the Priest only. …

XLII. The proofs which Leo refers to, from tradition, are the following: – 1st. The letter of the
Synod of Alexandria to Pope Felix in the time of S. Athanasius, the whole of which, (with all the rest of
the collection of Isidore Mercator,) is now looked upon as spurious and supposititious by all writers,
(as indeed Baronius had done long ago, upon the year 357,) and more, admitting the letter to be
genuine, it does not prove what was intended. His 2nd proof is, that S. Leo the Great transferred the
second Council of Ephesus to Chalcedon, by his own authority. But this is plainly contrary to the
truth of history, which clearly shows that the Council of Chalcedon was not celebrated for a year after
the conclusion and dissolution of that of Ephesus. On the other hand, it appears certain, that the
former Council was convoked by the Emperor Marcian, although with the consent and approbation of
the Pope S. Leo. See Natalis Alexander, Diss. xi., on the fifth century. The third proof is that Martin V.,
without waiting for the consent of the Fathers transferred the General Council of Sienna to Basle. But
I find in the Bull of that Pope which begins, Dum onus, that the translation was made with the
common consent of the Fathers and the Pope: “In Concilio Senensi per nostros et Apostolicæ sedis
nuncios tum in dicto Concilio præsidentes, eodem approbante Concilio civitas Basileensis deputata
extitit.”1

Ch. XLVIII Corruption of Some Latin Documents with the Filioque

There are numerous Filioque-related forgeries, interpolations, and misquotations in the manuscript tradition
and in this controversy. Bishop (formerly Hieromonk) Enoch has written articles attempting to show that the
Latins have corrupted the textual evidence regarding the Filioque controversy.2 Much has also been written

1 Edward H. Landon (translator), Antonio Pereira de Figueredo, Tentativa Theologica: Episcopal Rights and
Ultra-Montane Usurpations, Fifth Principle, XLI – XLII, pp. 174 – 176, London: Joseph Masters, 1847.
2 “Textual Interpolations in Damasine and Gennadian Texts in Favour of the Filioque”,

https://nftu.net/textual-interpolations-in-damasine-and-gennadian-texts-in-favour-of-the-filioque/;
“Tampering with the 589 Acts of Toledo and the Filioque: A Centuries Old Slander”,
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elsewhere on the fact that the Filioque was interpolated into the Acts of the 589 Council of Toledo. With his
independent research, Enoch reviews several manuscripts and shows that the writings of Pope Damasus of
Rome (d. 384), Gennadius of Massalia (d. 496), and Gregory the Great have apparently been corrupted in
favour of the Filioque, and these corruptions have made their way into the printed editions of those authors
and into controversial Latin works against the Orthodox.

Regarding the Third Council of Toledo in 589, there is internal and external evidence that the Filioque was
interpolated into the Acts of this Council. For the internal evidence, I refer to a passage by Percival which was
quoted above, where it is seen that the Council itself professed to quote the Creed of the Second Ecumenical
Council (381), but it quoted this Creed with the Filioque. So either this Council did not know what it was
quoting, or someone later interpolated the Filioque to the Acts of this Council. For the external evidence, the
manuscripts also support the theory of interpolation. Siecienski writes “Here we must assume that either the
council was using an already interpolated creed, … or that the acts of the council had themselves been altered
and the et Filio added by the hand of a later editor. This latter (and more probable) theory was first advanced
in 1908 by A. E. Burn, who pointed out that in many early copies of the council’s acts the phrase was either
missing or obviously in another hand.”1 The Protestant professor Shawn C. Smith agrees, saying “The
common tradition says the filioque first appeared in the Nicene Creed at the Third Council of Toledo in 589.
In contrast, the manuscript evidence indicates it first appeared at the Eighth Council of Toledo in 653.”2 The
Orthodox professors George E. Demacopoulos and Aristotle Papanikolaou write “It is often thought that the
first interpolation of the filioque in the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed occurred at the Council of Toledo
(589). Though the scholarly consensus supports a later interpolation of some version of the filioque in the
acts of the Council,”.3 Note that some (such as Baronius) had erroneously ascribed the first inclusion of the
Filioque in the Creed to the Council of Toledo of 447, and allegedly by the authority of Pope Leo I

A doubtful letter of Pope Leo I (Epistle 15, to Bishop Turribus of Astorga in Spain, dated 21 July 447) refers to
the Holy Spirit as proceeding from both the Father and the Son (“alius qui de utroque processerit”). Some
accept the authenticity of this letter, but K. Künstle argued for its spuriousness (as noted in the section on
Leo’s letters above). The 1957 English translation of Leo’s letters in the Fathers of the Church series by the
Catholic University of America gives a one-sentence summary of the letter and also notes that Künstle
considered it spurious.4

http://www.stseraphimstjohnsandiego.org/St._Seraphim_of_Sarov_and_St._John_of_Kronstadt_Orthodox_Chu
rch/HISTORY/Entries/2017/7/13_Hieromonk_Enoch__Tampering_with_the_AD_589_Acts_of_Toledo_and_the
_Filioque__A_Centuries_Old_Slander.html; “‘Filioque’ Interpolation in Book II of the Dialogues of St. Gregory”
http://traditionalwesternorthodoxy.blogspot.com/2019/06/filioque-in-book-ii-of-dialogues-of-st.html [Blog
removed as of 2020]. Some of the issues mentioned here are worth a closer examination, and some readings
have been defended by Roman Catholics, such as the alleged interpolation into Gregory’s Dialogues. I would
insist here on the fact that Pope St. Zacharias (pope from 741 – 752) himself rendered St. Gregory the Great’s
Latin text (“always proceeds from the Father and the Son”) into Greek by the words “proceeds from the
Father and abides in the Son”, and although some have claimed this to be a later Greek interpolation, the
learned Roman Catholic Byzantine scholar and priest Martin Jugie (1878 – 1954) is of the opinion that this
translation was directly made by Zacharias to conform to Eastern locutions. I hold this as clear evidence that
Gregory’s words are not to be taken as teaching the Filioque, for Zacharias’s later translation gives the true
sense of Gregory’s words.
1 Siecienski, The Filioque, Ch. 3, p. 69. See A. E. Burn, Some Spanish MSS of the Constantinopolitan Creed, The

Journal of Theological Studies, Vol. IX (original series), Issue 34, January 1908, pp. 301 – 303. Dr. Andrew
Ewbank Burn (1864 – 1927) was an eminent Anglican scholar and Dean of Salisbury.
2 Shawn C. Smith, The Insertion of the Filioque into the Nicene Creed and a Letter of Isidore of Seville, Journal

of Early Christian Studies, Vol. XXII, pp. 261 – 286, Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2014.
Quoted text in article abstract.
3 George E. Demacopoulos and Aristotle Papanikolaou, Orthodox Constructions of the West, pp. 71 – 82,

Orthodox Christianity and Contemporary Thought, Vol. V, New York, NY: Fordham University Press, 2013.
4 See Siecienski, The Filioque, pp. 64 & 238. Edmund Hunt, St. Leo the Great: Letters, Letter 15, p. 67, in The

Fathers of the Church: A New Translation, Vol. XXXIV, New York: Fathers of the Church, Inc., 1957.
 563

Siecienski points out “the version of Basil’s Contra Eunomium employed by the Latins at Florence is now
known to include sections of Eunomius’s own work, added later by an ancient editor.” The inauthentic texts
used by the Latins in their Council of Florence have Basil stating that the Holy Spirit “is second to the Son,
having his being from him and receiving from him and announcing to us and being completely dependent
upon him, [as] pious tradition recounts;”.1

Richard Price writes:

At the same time, they [“the Latins”] had an overwhelming advantage in any discussion of Latin texts
where the Greeks could not detect false citations or dubious exegesis. For example, in the debate on
the Filioque the Latins appeared to have a trump card in an explicit assertion of the double
procession of the Holy Spirit in the Formula of Pope Hormisdas, a major document that had been
formally accepted (in around 519) by all the Chalcedonian bishops of the East; but in fact the relevant
passage did not come in the Formula but in another letter by Hormisdas, and even there was an
interpolation [of the words “et Filio”].

[Price’s Footnote:] Compare the interpolated text cited and accepted by Gill (The Council of Florence,
216) to the critical edition of the letter in question in Epistulae imperatorum pontificum aliorum, CSEL
35.2, ed. Otto Guenther (Vienna, 1898), 719, line 10.2

It is worth emphasising that Gill, the premiere Roman Catholic historian of their Council of Florence,
uncritically accepted this interpolated letter of Hormisdas.

The seventh-century Irish Bangor Antiphonary (or Antiphonary of Bangor, Antiphonarium Monasterii
Benchorensis), a valuable manuscript, has been interpolated with the words “et filio” in the passage:

te spiritum sanctum a patre

procedentem corde credimus

Swainson comments:

After the words a patre, but beyond the line, et filio has been subsequently added. Sic:
te spm̄ sanctum a patre et filio
procedentem3

The Stowe Missal (or Lorrha Missal), an important Irish manuscript from the late eighth or early ninth
century, has also been interpolated with the Filioque. Warren notes, “See the text of the Nicene Creed in the
Stowe Missal, where the later scribe has added the ‘filioque’ to the original text in which it was wanting.”4

An American Protestant Episcopalian writer gives the following epitome of the Church Fathers and their
historical abuse by the Latins in this controversy:

1 Siecienski, The Filioque, pp. 8, 39, & 157.

2 Richard Price, Precedence and Papal Primacy, p. 46, n. 54, in Sylvester Syropoulos on Politics and Culture in
the Fifteenth-Century Mediterranean: Themes and Problems in the Memoirs, Section IV, Ashgate: Surrey,
2014.
3 Charles Anthony Swainson, The Nicene and Apostles’ Creeds: Their Literary History; Together With an

Account of the Growth and Reception of the Sermon on the Faith, Commonly Called “The Creed of St
Athanasius”, Ch. XXII, p. 329, London: John Murray, 1875. Also see the valuable notes in F. E. Warren, The
Antiphonary of Bangor, Part II, Notes, n. 125, pp. 81, 32 & n. 35., line 15., pp. 62, 21, Henry Bradshaw Society,
Vol. X, London: Harrison and Sons, 1895.
4 F. E. Warren, The Antiphonary of Bangor, Part II, Notes, n. 125, p. 81, Henry Bradshaw Society, Vol. X,

London: Harrison and Sons, 1895. See the note of the Missal’s editor, George F. Warner, The Stowe Missal,
Vol. II, Printed Text, p. 8, n. 7, Henry Bradshaw Society, Vol. XXXII, London: Harrison and Sons, 1915.
 564

We may well begin by premising the confession of [Anglican] Bishop Pearson, that “the Greek Fathers
stuck more closely to the phrase and language of the Scripture, saying that the Spirit proceedeth from
the Father, and not saying that He proceedeth from the Son;” and again he says: “The ancient Greek
Fathers, speaking of this Procession, mention the Father only, and never, I think, express the Son, as
sticking constantly in this to the language of the Scriptures.” The Oriental theologians quote, on their
side, clear and decisive passages from Origen, S. Athanasius, Didymus Alex., Ephraem Syr., S. Basil, S.
Gregory Naz., S. Epiphanius, S. Gregory Nyssa, Cæsarius, S. John Chrysostom, S. Cyril Alex., Nonnus,
Leontius, Anastasius Sin., Hesychius, S. Maximus, and others.

From the Latin Fathers, also, – S. Hilary, Philastrius, S. Damasus, Bp. Rome, Isaac (his contemporary),
S. Ambrose, S. Jerome, S. Augustin (in many and strong places), S. Paulinus, Confession of African
Bishops, Paschasius, S. Fulgentius (very strong, though as late as sixth century), Pope Pelagius, Pope
Gregory the Great, Thalassius, Mansuetus, Bishop of Milan (with his Synod), Etherius, Beatus, and
others; all of which makes a very strong body of Latin proof for the Oriental view, besides their
having the Greek Fathers all to themselves.

Now for the evidence quoted by the Latins to prove the Filioque as it now stands in our Creed.

Bishop Pearson, as we have already said, confesses that the Greek Fathers are all against us. But
some are quoted by Romish controversialists, and we mention them to show what sort of evidence
they have been driven to in this portion of their defense – the last defense of their position which is
possible. They quote Leontius of Cappadocia, but it is a misquotation; S. Gregory Thaum., –
misquotation again; St. Athanasius, – a false reading; Didymus Alex., – a passage manifestly
corrupted; S. Basil, – an interpolation omitted even in several Latin editions, and not found in any
ancient MS.; S. Gregory Nys., – a passage given up as untenable, even by Petavius; S. John Damas., – a
passage abandoned by Bellarmine and Allatius as corrupted; Leo Philos. and Constantin Harmen., –
manifestly spurious, for both writers have left genuine works in favor of the other view;
Metaphrastes, – a mistranslation; and a few others of even less weight. Surely it was a wise course in
Bishop Pearson, to give up the Greek Fathers in a body, if this be all that can be raked and scraped out
of them in favor of the Latin view.

The appeal is made more confidently to the Latin Fathers, as furnishing strong passages in favor of
the Filioque. But subsequent research, in the more critical times that have come upon us since Bishop
Pearson’s days, have proved that the Latin authorities chiefly relied on, are little better than the
Greek ones we have just enumerated. S. Hilary is quoted, – but in flat contradiction to himself close
by, and this pretended passage was never appealed to in the early stages of the controversy. It is
thus proved to be an interpolation. St. Ambrose is quoted, – but the passage is corrupted, all the
editions of that Father giving it the other way. A second quotation from S. Ambrose is both
interpolated and garbled; a third is interpolated, and the word “Procession” is acknowledged by the
Benedictines to be used in the sense of “mission;” a fourth is from a sermon classed by the
Benedictines as “spurious;” and a fifth clearly refers to “mission,” and not to the Eternal Procession,
as it would make the Holy Spirit proceed from the Son alone, which nobody holds.

Ruffinus is quoted, but the reading is not genuine. Several pretended quotations from S. Jerome are
mere inventions. S. Augustin is the main reliance of the Latins; but the chief proof-text is, by its very
Latinity, shown to be an interpolation of the times of the Schoolmen, and does not agree with the
Latin doctrine of “Procession equally from the Father and the Son;” it is capable of a translation,
however, which would agree with the Greek view. In another place, the best MSS. are divided
between a reading which would harmonize with the Greeks, and the total omission of the critical
words. Another is from a sermon attributed to Alcuin, and no longer now included in the words of S.
Augustin. The long disputations on the Procession, which are found in the book on the “Trinity” and
in the treatise on S. John, are manifestly insertions of later date, as is proved by quotations made by
the Ven. Bede, which do not bear a trace of the passages relied on. Another passage is a corrupt and
interpolated transference from another work, in which the proof-words do not appear. Two or three
other testimonies of the same sort close the list of proofs from S. Augustin.
 565

The one passage from S. Leo the Great, is unquestionably (from historical as well as verbal grounds)
corrupt. The Confession of Eugenius of Carthage, is quoted; but this Confession is originally given in
the work of Victor of Utica, where the proof-words (as usual) do not occur. An additional proof of the
falsity of all these Latin testimonies thus far is, that Rusticus, Cardinal Deacon of the Roman Church,
and acting as Apocrisiarius at Constantinople (an office filled only by the ablest Western
theologians), at a time subsequent to all these pretended Latin authorities, expressed himself as
entirely uncertain of the double Procession.

He said: “Whether He (the Holy Ghost) proceeds from the Son in the same way that He proceeds from
the Father, I am not yet perfectly satisfied,” which he certainly would not have said if the Filioque had
been clearly taught for 150 years before his time, on the authority of those luminaries of the West –
Hilary, Ambrose, Augustin, and Jerome; and the genuineness of this passage in the Essay of Rusticus,
has never been questioned. S. Gregory the Great, was quoted at the Council of Florence, but with a
false reading; and the proof alleged in another passage disappears in a Greek translation made by a
Pope of Rome itself in the eighth century.

The last stronghold of the Filioque is thus utterly exploded. It rests only upon an inference from
Scriptural expressions, which does not necessarily follow therefrom. It has the authority of no
General Council. It cannot be established by any clear and unquestioned passages in either the Latin
or the Greek Fathers. And to make the case worse, it is supported by a vast number of pretended
quotations which, on critical examination, prove to be spurious, garbled, interpolated, mistranslated,
or misunderstood!1

Also, as remarked in the Filioque chapter, at the Latin Council of Florence the Latins erroneously denied the
authenticity of the words of St. John of Damascus, that “the Father alone is cause” of the Holy Spirit, and
wrongly accused the Orthodox of forgery and interpolation, whereas the text is authentic, and to the extent
that the words are lacking in any manuscripts, this is rather an evidence of Latin tampering with the records.
Also see the chapters above on Peter Damian’s Misquotation of the Fathers in Favour of the Filioque and the
Forged Greek Catena used by Aquinas.

Ch. XLIX An Open Admission of Pious Falsification

In the autobiography of Albert Houtin (1867 – 1926), a French Roman Catholic priest and professor who was
influential in the modernist movement and later abandoned religion altogether, there is found a small but
telling instance of a Roman Catholic priest who consciously misdescribed a religious ceremony, lying to
promote an “edifying” fiction. The matter in question is minor, but it shows the principle of “pious forgery” at
work. Houtin writes the following of M. Louis-Eugène Grimault (d. 1914), the dean of the chapter of Angers:

Although I refer the reader to this book [Grimault’s Mes Souvenirs, Angers: P. Grassin, 2 Vols., 1907 –
1910], which he will find interesting, I warn those who would use the Souvenirs and articles of
M. Grimault not always to rely upon him. He was no disbeliever in pious lying, as the following
anecdote proves. I had it from M. Ledoyen, Superior of Mongazon and of the community of Les
Dames de la Retraite of Angers. In La Semaine Religieuse M. Grimault described the ceremony of
taking the vows at the Retreat with details which were touching but inaccurate. “Who was your
authority?” asked M. Ledoyen. “It was not like that.” And he made a point of telling him exactly what
occurred. M. Grimault interrupted him, laughing: “I know it all, but one must edify people.” M.

1 The Procession of the Holy Ghost, in The American Quarterly Church Review, Vol. XXI, No. 2, July, 1869, Art
VII, pp. 245 – 247, New York, NY: No. 37 Bible House, 1869. The author appears to have read Zoernikov’s
treatise. Some of the issues mentioned here are worth a closer examination.
 566

Ledoyen, who himself was no very scrupulous historian, was astonished, and he told me of this
conversation. It must have taken place between 1891 and 1897. 1

Ch. L An Alleged Serbian Orthodox Archbishop Who Converted to Roman Catholicism

Epifanije Stefanović (Епифаније Стефановић, Epiphanius Stephanovichus) was an alleged Serbian Orthodox
Metropolitan and Archbishop of Dalmatia, who is said to have joined Roman Catholicism in November 1648,
along with two of his bishops, 15 – 80 (or even 800) monks and priests from one or three monasteries, and
about three to ten thousand Orthodox people. This claim was first made by the Roman Catholic Jesuit
ecclesiastical historian Daniele Farlati (or Farlatus, 1690 – 1773) in his magnum opus Illyricum Sacrum2 and
this claim has been uncritically repeated by others, with various figures, down to the present day. However, it
appears that there is no other evidence that Epifanije Stefanović was ever Archbishop of Dalmatia, according
to Nikodim Milas and Jevsevije Popović, who agrees with Milas,3 although there may have been a man named
Epifanije Stefanović who claimed to be an Archbishop, but he would not have had any official authority.
Gherardo Ortalli and Oliver Jens Schmitt write, “Stefanović setze sich für eine Union mit der katholischen
Kirche ein, aber bald verliert sich in den Quellen jede Spur von ihm.”4 It must be admitted that a dedicated
study on this topic is a desideratum for modern scholarship, and I have not been able to evaluate the reply of
the Roman Catholic priest Stanko Bačić (1916 – 2003),5 but this entire episode appears to be, at least,
exaggerated for Roman Catholic propaganda purposes, as seen from the inconsistency of the figures of the
number of converts, and the lack of source material concerning such a significant event.

Ch. LI Unfaithful Quotations of the Fathers at the Latin Council of Trent

Contemporary Roman Catholics at their Council of Trent recognized that some bishops during the Council
were citing inauthentic passages from the Church Fathers and Councils. Mendham, in his excellent work on
Trent, gives the following review of a letter of Visconti, a contemporary and attendee of the Council (and
papal nuncio), who wrote numerous letters during the time Trent was in session:

There is a passage in the letter of the 16th of November [1562], remarkable, as ascertaining
the fidelity of quotation in the fathers. It happens sometimes, writes Visconti, that the prelates in
congregation, for the purpose of supporting their opinions cite various pasages in writings, which
afterwards are not found to be faithful, or, if they are, it is seen, that they allege solely that part which
makes for their purpose; as it happened in the case of the bishop of Modena, who, when he gave his
vote, cited some passages of the councils, which really were not found there [“citò alcuni luoghi, de’
Concilii, che in effetto non si trouano.”]. There is more in the letter to the same purpose.6

Ch. LII The Broken Promise of a Papal Legate and the Roman Catholic Tampering of Conciliar Acts

1 Winifrid Stephens Whale (translator), Albert Houtin, The Life of a Priest: My Own Experience 1867 – 1912,
p. 23, n. 1., London: Watts & Co., 1927.
2 Daniele Farlato, Illyrici Sacri, Vol. VII, pp. 130 – 131, Venice: Sebastianum Coleti, 1817.
3 Nikodim Milaš, Pravoslavna Dalmacija: Istorijski Pregled, 1410 – 1699, 10., pp. 189 – 200, 1901; Jevsevije

Popović, Od 1054 do 1912, p. 622, 1912.

4 Balcani Occidentali, Adriatico e Venezia fra XIII e XVIII Sieclo, p. 344, Vienna: Verlag der österreichischen

Akademie der Wissenschaften (Austrian Academy of Sciences Press), 2009.

5 Stanko Bačić, Osvrt na knjigu “Pravoslavna Dalmacija” E. Nikodima Milaša, Zadar: Matica Hrvatska, 1998.
6 Joseph Mendham, Memoirs of the Council of Trent, p. 274, London: James Duncan, 1834.
 567

George Gordon Coulton gives the following account of Latin Archbishop Peter Richard Kenrick’s (1806 –
1896) Appendix on the Latin Second Plenary Council of Baltimore (of Kenrick’s work against Papal
Infallibility), which was printed in Friedrich’s Documenta, pp. 243 – 244:

Archbishop Kenrick tells how, at the Second Plenary Council of Baltimore (i.e. for the whole
U.S.A.) he protested against the unbusinesslike proceedings, and at first refused to commit himself by
signing the decrees unless the Report of the Council published his objection as follows: – “The
Archbishop of St. Louis, whose name is signed below, takes exception against all decrees passed in
the present Council, unless they have been read publicly to the Fathers in Conciliar form, and passed
by a majority of their votes.” He continues: “When I put this objection in [in writing], I said that I did
not wish to scandalise the faithful, and would therefore sign the decrees if this exception were
reported in the Acts of the Council, but not otherwise. After a certain amount of dispute on the part
of the Papal Delegate as to the wording of my exception as at first drawn up, he agreed that the thing
should be done. … In the Acts, as they were published, my exception does not appear, whether it be
that the Papal Delegate permitted himself this action, or that he was so advised in higher quarters. …
I complain that the promise given to me was violated. Either the Acts of the Council should have
been suppressed, or they should have been published in their entirety.”1

Ch. LIII A False Quote of Bishop Strossmayer Published by Cardinal Manning to Promote the Alleged
Freedom of Discussion at the Latin First Vatican Council

At the Latin Vatican Council of 1870, many Roman Catholic bishops opposed the definition of Papal
Infallibility (such as Bishop Strossmayer), but they were in the minority (although they were among the most
learned), and their freedom to openly discuss and debate the topic was restricted, which gave this council a
bad reputation. To alleviate this issue, false information began to circulate. Coulton writes:

Not the least of the injustices at this Council was the barefaced assertion of Cardinal Manning in the
Tablet that both parties had fair play and that Strossmayer himself, one of the most determined
opponents, had “made the following remark to one of the Bishops: ‘I came to the Council with certain
misgivings, fearing that we should not have full liberty, nor be able to make our influence felt. But in
truth I am filled with admiration. Our freedom is complete, and the discussion unrestrained. The
Council is a spectacle which I behold with delight.’” (The Vatican, p. 50.)

The bishop on whose authority this is quoted is Mermillod, one of the bishops in partibus who were
most definitely in the Pope’s pay, and who had reported to a diplomat that Strossmayer had used
these foregoing words to him, “with tears in his eyes.” Two days afterwards Strossmayer, in the
presence of witnesses, said “I have never spoken with Mermillod, nor even seen him outside the
Council Chamber.” [Friedrich, Gesch. d. Vat. Konzils, Vol. III., p. 334.]2

Ch. LIV The Testament of Patriarch Joseph at the Latin Council of Florence

Patriarch Joseph II of Constantinople (1360 – 1439, Patriarch from 1416 – 1439), took part in the Latin
Council of Florence. The Patriarch died on 10 June, and is alleged to have written and signed a document
where he admits the Roman Catholic claims. The Catholic Encyclopedia writes, “Almost simultaneously with

1 George Gordon Coulton, Papal Infallibility, Appendix VII, pp. 266 – 267. See Leonard Woolsey Bacon
(editor), An Inside View of the Vatican Council, in the Speech of the Most Reverend Archbishop Kenrick, of St.
Louis,, Appendix A., pp. 167 – 170, New York, NY: American Tract Society, [1871]. The Latin Second Plenary
Council of Baltimore (1866) had seven archbishops, thirty-nine bishops or their delegates, and two abbots.
2 George Gordon Coulton, Papal Infallibility, Ch. X, pp. 131 – 132, London: The Faith Press, 1932. Coulton has

written several great chapters on the Latin Vatican Council, see Chs. VIII – XIV, pp. 100 – 204.
 568

these measures the Patriarch of Constantinople died, 10 June; not, however, before he had drawn up and
signed a declaration in which he admitted the Filioque, purgatory, and the papal primacy.”1 The Catholic
Encyclopedia makes no mention of the allegations of spuriousness of this document. Thomas Stanislaus
Dolan also uses this document in controversy and writes, “It should be added here, that the Patriarch Joseph
of Constantinople, before he died, wrote down his acceptance of the union, and his acknowledgement of the
Roman Primacy.”2

Siecienski writes:

Patriarch Joseph allegedly left a will and last testament that recognized “everything … that the
Catholic and Apostolic Church of Our Lord Jesus Christ of the elder Rome understands and teaches …
further the most blessed Father of Fathers and supreme Pontiff and vicar of Our Lord Jesus Christ,
the Pope of elder Rome I confess for the security of all.” Joseph Gill, Acta graeca, 444-45 (Eng. trans.:
Joseph Gill, The Council of Florence, 267). Gill accepted the authenticity of the will largely on the basis
of its mention by Greek sources as early as 1442. However, a stronger case can be made against the
will’s authenticity, since it was never mentioned by Syropoulus or any of the other Greeks (e.g.,
Pletho, Eugenicus) in their accounts of the council, nor was it utilized by the Latin or Byzantine
delegates during the council’s final deliberations. Also the letter is dated June 11, despite the fact the
Patriarch clearly died the day before.3

The Orthodox scholar Archimandrite Amvrossy Pogodin (1925 – 2004) writes:

To the other afflictions which the Orthodox delegation suffered in Florence was added the
death of the Patriarch of Constantinople. The Patriarch was found dead in his room. On the table lay
(supposedly) his testament, Extrema Sententia, consisting in all of some lines in which he declared
that he accepted everything that the Church of Rome confesses. And then: “In like manner I
acknowledge the Holy Father of Fathers, the Supreme Pontiff and Vicar of our Lord Jesus Christ, the
Pope of Old Rome. Likewise, I acknowledge purgatory. In affirmation of this, I affix my signature.”

There is no doubt whatever that Patriarch Joseph did not write this document. The German
scholar Frommann, who made a detailed investigation of the “Testament” of Patriarch Joseph, says:
“This document is so Latinized and corresponds so little to the opinion expressed by the Patriarch
several days before, that its spuriousness is evident.” [After Hefele, Histoire des Conciles, vol. VII, pt. II,
pp. 1015sq.] The “Testament” appears in the history of the Council of Florence quite late;
contemporaries of the Council knew nothing of it.4

Ch. LV Nag’s Head Fable

While not touching the Orthodox in this case, there is another example of Roman Catholics apologists using
false information in controversy with their opponents.

1 Van der Essen, Council of Florence, in CE, Vol. VI, p. 113.

2 Thomas Stanislaus Dolan, The Papacy and the First Councils of the Church, Ch. II, p. 25, St. Louis, MO: B.
Herder, 1910. There is also no mention of this document’s spuriousness.
3 Anthony Edward Siecienski, The Filioque: History of a Doctrinal Controversy, n. 134., p. 286, Oxford Studies

in Historical Theology, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010.

4 Archimandrite Amvrossy Pogodin, St. Mark of Ephesus and the False Union of Florence, VI, The Conclusion

of the Union, in The Orthodox Word, Vol. III, No. III, June – July, 1967, p. 89, Platina, CA: St Herman of Alaska
Brotherhood, 1967. Also see Holy Apostles Convent (compiler and translator), The Lives of the Pillars of
Orthodoxy: Saint Photios the Great, Patriarch of Constantinople, Saint Gregory Palamas, Archbishop of
Thessalonica, and Saint Mark Evgenikos, Metropolitan of Ephesus, [Chapter on] St. Mark of Ephesus, pp. 460 –
461, Buena Vista, CO: Holy Apostles Convent, 1990 (Reprinted 1996 & 2000).
 569

In their arguments against Anglican orders, numerous Roman Catholics have repeated the false story of the
Nag’s Head, the claim that an uncanonical and indecent Anglican ordination took place in the tavern of that
name. The Jesuit priest, author and professor Sydney Fenn Smith (1843 – 1922) writes in the Catholic
Encyclopedia:

Then the writers on the Catholic side began to controvert this position, but in the first instance not
very happily. The circumstances of Parker’s consecration had been shrouded in much secrecy and
were unknown to the Catholic party, who accordingly gave credence to a piquant rumour called “The
Nag’s Head story”. This was to the effect that, as no Catholic bishop could be got to consecrate
Parker, he and others, when together at the Nag’s Head in Cheapside, knelt down before Scory, the
deprived Bishop of Chichester, who placed a Bible on the neck of each, saying at the same time,
“Receive the power of preaching the Word of God sincerely”; and that this strange ceremony was the
fountain-head of the whole Anglican succession. This story was first published by Kellison in 1605,
in his “Reply to Sutcliffe”, and was taken up by some other Catholic writers in the following years. To
these Mason in his “Vindiciæ Ecclesiæ Anglicanæ” replied on the Anglican side, in 1613, and was the
first to call attention, at all events effectively, to the entry in Parker’s “Register” of his consecration on
17 December, 1559, in the private chapel at Lambeth. …

On the other hand, the Nag’s Head story is too unsupported by solid evidence and too incredible in
itself to be accepted as historical — although to say this is by no means the same as saying that those
who brought it forward in the first instance, or maintained it during several generations, were acting
dishonestly. It is, however, an error to suppose that the early Catholic controversialists rested their
case against Anglican orders exclusively on the spuriousness of the Lambeth “Register” or the truth
of the Nag’s Head story. On the contrary, although they intermingled some proofs like those
mentioned which have had to be abandoned, it is wonderful how sound was the position they took
up from the first in their general statement of the argument. Thus Champney, the first systematic
writer on the Catholic side, directs his first and chief attack against all orders conveyed by the
Edwardine Ordinal, whether in the reign of Edward VI or subsequently, and contests their validity on
the ground of the insufficiency of the rite itself. …

It is only when he comes to treat of Elizabethan orders in their relation to Archbishop Parker that
Champney alleges other grounds of invalidity, and he then comprises his entire case against them
under the following five heads — (1) the truth of the Nag’s Head story; (2) the spuriousness of the
Lambeth “Register”; (3) the want of episcopal character in Barlow, Parker’s chief consecrator; (4) the
insecurity of the rite used, in view of its many omissions; (5) the probability that it does not contain
the essentials of a valid Ordinal. These are the same arguments which the subsequent writers
debated and developed, except for a somewhat different handling of the fifth, the necessity for which
became apparent not long after Champney’s time. …

The Abbé Renaudot wrote a “Mémoire”, published in 1720, in which he rejected Anglican orders on
the grounds of the Nag’s Head story, and of the novelty and insufficiency of the Anglican rite. …

1. Of the Nag’s Head story nothing more need be said, as no person of intelligence now believes in it. 1

Note that the article is incorrect when it says this fable was first published in 1605. The Jesuit Christopher
Holywood published it earlier in 1604. This fact is mentioned in page one of a work defending Anglican
Orders by the Anglican priest Dr. Frederick George Lee (1832 – 1902),2 a work which is referred to later in
the same article of the Catholic Encyclopedia.

For a good discussion of this fable, see Frederick George Lee, The Validity of the Holy Orders of the Church of
England Maintained and Vindicated: Both Theologically and Historically, With Foot-Notes, Tables of

1Sydney Fenn Smith, Anglican Orders, in CE, Vol. I, pp. 493 – 494.
2Frederick George Lee, The Validity of the Holy Orders of the Church of England Maintained and Vindicated,
Ch. I, p. 1, London: J. T. Hayes, 1869.
 570

Consecrations, and Appendices, Ch. XIX, pp. 193 – 207, London: J. T. Hayes, 1869; Edward Denny, Anglican
Orders and Jurisdiction, Ch. II, pp. 23 – 35 sqq. & Appendix, Note G, pp. 173 – 175, London: Society for
Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1893; John Strype, The Life and Acts of Matthew Parker, The First
Archbishop of Canterbury in the Reign of Queen Elizabeth, Vol. I, Book II, Ch. I, pp. 101 – 122, Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1821; Arthur West Haddan (editor), The Works of Archbishop [John] Bramhall, Vol. III, Part
I, Discourse V, The Consecration and Succession of Protestant Bishops Justified, The Bishop of Duresme
Vindicated, and that Infamous Fable, of the Ordination at the Nag’s Head Clearly Confuted, pp. 21 – 112 (and
throughout the rest of the discourse), Oxford: John Henry Parker, 1844 [first printed at the Hague, 1658].

It is worth noting that Bramhall’s work in 1658 sufficiently confuted the fable, yet Roman Catholics continued
to mention this legend in their arguments against Anglican orders, and Pusey notes that John Lingard (1771 –
1851), writing in the first quarter of the 19th century, was “the first Roman Catholic writer who ventured to
discard the Nag’s Head fable”1, so this fable held official currency for over 200 years, and was still supported
by a few Roman Catholic authors later, such as the English Roman Catholic priest John Williams in 1867, who
says, “I could produce abundant matter to support its credibility; vastly more than the Protestants imagine.”2

Many examples could be given of the Roman Catholic use of this story in controversy. The entire debate
between Anglicans and Roman Catholics on the question of the validity of Anglican orders contains much
evidence of the errors and dishonesty of Roman Catholic controversialists with regard to historical facts and
records, as can be seen in the works listed above.

Ch. LVI Miscellaneous Other Errors with Historical Records

I will here briefly note some other issues with Roman Catholic dealings with historical records. Some Roman
Catholics have doubted the authenticity of St. Cyprian’s letters and the related correspondence bearing on his
controversy with Pope Stephen on rebaptism.3 However, there is no doubt of their authenticity, especially as
this controversy is mentioned at length by St. Augustine (and Augustine is quoted at length in the chapter on
this). Another issue is that Hefele, in his History of Councils, in an attempt to show the Papal power over
Councils, grossly mistranslates and misinterprets Pope Julius I, as Coulton has shown.4 There are many other
such errors throughout the works of Roman Catholics. Many do not bear on the controversy with the
Orthodox, but still show an attempt to gain power through falsification of history, such as the Canterbury
Forgeries, which asserted the primacy of the see of Canterbury over that of York in England. 5 Glastonbury
Abbey is called a “factory of fraud” by French historian Ferdinand Victor Henri Lot (1866 – 1952) for the
various fake documents it produced.6 There are several forgeries under or by Guy of Vienne, who was Latin

1 Edward Bouverie Pusey, Eirenicon, [Part I], p. 233, Oxford: John Henry and James Parker, 1865.
2 John Williams, Letters on Anglican Orders and Other Matters, Letter XVI, p. 189, London: Robert B.
Washbourne, 2nd Ed., 1867.
3 Coulton, Papal Infallibility, Ch. XII, p. 166. Such as Archbishop Martin John Spalding, speaking and debating

at the Vatican Council. Coulton summarises, “As to Cyprian, Spalding suggested forgery; a desparate
subterfuge which no respectable Romanist dares to fall back upon nowadays. If the letters be not forged (he
continued) Cyprian’s conduct is even more unfavourable to the God-given Primacy of St. Peter than to his
Infallibility;”. Coulton here also points out that Spalding “began by misquoting his own predecessor, Kenrick,
as we shall see Kenrick’s brother proving in our next chapter.”
4 Coulton, Papal Infallibility, Ch. XIV, pp. 202 – 203.
5 See R. W. Southern, The Canterbury Forgeries, in The English Historical Review, Vol. LXXIII, No. 287, April,

1958, pp. 193 – 226, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1958; Robert F. Berkhofer III, The Canterbury
Forgeries Revisited, in The Haskins Society Journal: Studies in Medieval History, Vol. XVIII, 2006, Ch. III, pp.
36 – 50, Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2007. These forgeries include a forgery of the Acts of Pope Agatho’s
council at Rome in October 679.
6 Michael Wood, In Search of England: Journeys Into the English Past, Ch. III, p. 52, Berkeley, CA: University of

California Press, 2001. Wood writes here, “As for the origins of Glastonbury Abbey itself, we have no reliable
early source. The earliest claimed document in the abbey archive purports to be from 601, a grant of land
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Pope Calixtus II (c. 1065 – 1124, Pope from 1119 – 1124, Archbishop of Vienne from 1088 – 1119).1 There is
also a forged decree of the 679 Council of Hatfield in England, forged in the late eleventh or early twelfth
century.2 Some second-millennium Latin indulgences “were founded upon precedents which were,
unhappily, by mistake or fraud, attributed to earlier Bishops of Rome.”3 The Catholic Encyclopedia entry on
Pope St. Boniface IV states that in his time there was a council in Rome held concerning certain questions on
“the life and monastic peace of monks”, but that “The decrees of the council now extant are spurious.”4 There
are also many Roman Catholic outright slanders against Protestant reformers, and although the Orthodox are
not involved in that controversy, like the Nag’s Head fable, these falsehoods are further evidences against the
integrity of Latin controversialists.

Ch. LVII An Inaccurate French Translation of the New Testament

A French edition of the New Testament published in Bordeaux in 1686 contains significant errors and
falsifications of the sacred text. This translation is titled “Le Novveav Testament de Nôtre Seigneur Iesus
Christ. Traduit de Latin en François par les Theologiens de Louvain. A Bordeaux, chez Jacques Montgiron-
Millanges, Imprimeur du Roy et du College. M.DC.LXXXVI. Avec approbation et permission.”

The Anglican scholar Joseph Mendham (1769 – 1856) notes:

It will be recollected, that at the end of 1685, the Edict of Nantes was revoked; and the immediately
subsequent period was diligently employed in various methods for the reunion of the pretended
reformed. And among these, with no neglect of the rest, a much esteemed one was a duly prepared
version of the New Testament. Mr. Butler, by way of contradicting the charge against his church as
averse to the dissemination of the Scriptures, in his Book of the Roman Catholic Church, pp. 183, 4,
reminds his readers, on the authority of Bausset, in his Life of Bossuet, that, ‘at the revocation of the
edict of Nantes, fifty thousand copies of a French translation of the New Testament, were, at the
recommendation of Bossuet, distributed among the converted Protestants, by order of Louis XIV.’

from a Celtic King of Dumnonia … However, the Latin of the fragment has no Celtic features and it cannot be
what it claims; quite possibly it is a forgery in its entirety. Glastonbury became notorious for faking
documents in the Middle Ages, a ‘factory of fraud’ as Ferdinand Lot described it. No medieval house has been
more often convicted – on better evidence – of fakery, from Arthur’s tomb to holy relics to the abbey’s
foundation charter.”
1 Mary Stroll, Calixtus II (1119 – 1124): A Pope Born to Rule, Part I, Ch. I, pp. 26 – 33, in Studies in the History

of Christian Traditions, Vol. CXVI, Leiden: Brill, 2004. These include promoting fresh forgeries, or the use of
existing forgeries, of the letters or writings of Popes Silvester I, Nicholas I, Sergius III, Leo IX, Gregory VII,
Urban II, and Paschal II.
2 Catherine Cubitt, Finding the Forger: An Alleged Decree of the 679 Council of Hatfield, in The English

Historical Review, Vol. CXIV, No. 549, November, 1999, pp. 1217 – 1248, Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1999.
3 Pusey, Eirenicon, [Part I], p. 200, Oxford: John Henry and James Parker, 1865. In the footnotes, Pusey

mentions the mistaken inference that Pope Gregory I gave indulgences, and the fraudulent indulgences
ascribed to Leo III (803) and Sergius (847).
4 Thomas Oestreich, Pope Saint Boniface IV, in CE, Vol. XIII, p. 661. Among the Canterbury Forgeries is a letter

attributed to Boniface IV, and according to the Catholic Encyclopedia here: “The letter to Ethelbert (in William
of Malmesbury, De Gest. Pont., I, 1464, ed. Migne) is considered spurious by Hefele (Conciliengeschichte, III,
66), questionable by Haddan and Stubbs (Councils, III, 65), and genuine by Jaffé [Regest. RR. PP., 1998
(1548)].” Moreover, “Equally spurious is the bull of Boniface IV, dated 27 Feb. 611, in which Mellitus is
mentioned.” (Mary Bateson, Mellitus, in Sidney Lee (editor), Dictionary of National Biography, Vol. XXXVII, p.
222, London: Smith, Elder, & Co., 1894.)
 572

They were, his original informs us, the translation of Père Amelotte, with which were associated as
many copies of the translated Missal.1

The catalogue entry for this book in the Bibliotheca Sussexiana states:

Of this very rare edition of the New Testament four copies only are known, the impression having
been directed to be destroyed. I purchased it at the sale of Cæsar de Missy’s Books and MSS. for the
sum of £24. The other copies are in the possession of the Duke of Devonshire, in the Library of the
Dean and Chapter of Durham, and in the Archepiscopal Library at Lambeth. Its publication took
place at a time when controversy ran high between the Catholics and Protestants, and this edition
was put forth as the production of the Doctors of the Louvain, and its accuracy was attested by the
Archbishop of Bourdeaux. The fraud attempted was however, soon detected, and the edition was
doomed to destruction. A great number of passages are perverted from the truth, evidently by
design, to favour the dogmas of the Roman Catholic Church. Bishop Kidder published a tract
containing reflections on this translation, which appeared at London in 1690, in quarto. To this I
refer the reader for a very particular examination of the edition; it may suffice here to allude to two
passages only, from which its character can be estimated: – Acts xiii. 2 – “Or comme ils offraient au
Seigneur le Sacrifice de la Messe;” Corinthians iii. 15, after “il sera sauvé” follows “par le Feu de
Purgatoire.”2

The Anglican scholar Pettigrew (1791 – 1865) was librarian to the Duke of Sussex. A later edition of the
Bibliotheca Sussexiana notes that eight copies are known to exist, and comments, “The indignation excited
against this abominable corruption of the Sacred Text, induced the candid Theologians of Louvain to suppress
and destroy the copies.”3 Other scholars have identified at least nine copies in England and Ireland.

The Anglican Bishop Richard Kidder (1633 – 1703) wrote an excellent examination of the Bordeaux New
Testament. His 1690 tract is also very rare, but Henry Cotton (1789 – 1879), the Anglican Archdeacon of
Cashel, reprinted it in the 19th century, along with many notes.4 Bishop Kidder identified 136 texts that have
been altered, added, omitted, or otherwise inaccurate. The learned French Protestant Pierre Jurieu (1637 –
1713) in 1688 was the first to point out the imposture of the Bordeaux version in his Pastoral Letters.5 Note
that only the first of the three volumes of his letters has been translated into English.6

I will give two of the most serious examples of this translation’s errors. One notable addition is in 1 Cor. iii.
15, which in the Anglican Authorized English Version reads, “If any man’s work shall be burnt, he shall suffer
loss; but he himself shall be saved, yet so as by fire.” In the Bordeaux New Testament, this passage reads, “Si
l’œuvre de quelq’ un brûle, il en portera la perte, mais il sera sauvé quant a luy, ainsi toutefois comme par le
feu de purgatoire.” (“yet so as by the fire of purgatory”).

Another addition is in 1 Tim. iv 1, upon which Bishop Kidder writes:

The Roman Church boasts herself as the only Catholic Church, and pillar of truth. The Holy
Scriptures (as well as all ancient creeds) are silent in this matter. But these translators have by

1 Joseph Mendham, The Literary Policy of the Church of Rome Exhibited, Appendix, pp. 357 – 358, London:
James Duncan, 2nd Ed., 1830.
2 Thomas Joseph Pettigrew, Bibliotheca Sussexiana, Vol. II, p. 543, London: Longman and Co., 1839.
3 Bibliotheca Sussexiana, Part I, p. 71, 1844.
4 The best edition, which I recommend, is Henry Cotton, Memoir of a French New Testament, London: Bell &

Daldy, 2nd Ed., 1863.

5 See Pierre Jurieu, Lettres Pastorales Addresse’es Aux Fideles De France, Qui Gemissent Sous La Captivite’ De

Babylon, Vol. II, Lettre XX, pp. 470 – 480, Rotterdam: Abraham Acher, 1688.
6 The Pastoral Letters of the Incomparable Jurieu, Directed to the Protestants in France Groaning under the

Babylonish Tyranny, London: T. Fabian, 1689. Also see The Church of England Quarterly Review, Vol. XVI, pp.
436 – 444, London: William Edward Painter, 1844; Joseph Mendham, The Literary Policy of the Church of
Rome Exhibited, pp. 357 – 358, London: James Duncan, 2nd Ed., 1830.
 573

manifest forgery wrested them to testify in behalf of this matter. In the latter times (says St. Paul)
some shall depart from the Faith (1 Tim. iv. 1): de la foy Romaine; i.e. from the Roman faith, say the
authors of this translation; and yet the Vulgar, the Rhemes Testament, and that of Mons, agree with
our English: and as this is the sense of the Greek, and the versions, so it is manifest that the addition
of Roman is nothing less than forgery and falsification of the text; a crime so great, that I want words
to express it by.1

A variety of other medieval Latin forgeries are discussed in Thomas Frederick Tout, Mediæval Forgers and
Forgeries, Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, Vol. V, pp. 208 – 234, Manchester, 1918 – 1920; and Alfred
Hiatt, The Making of Medieval Forgeries: False Documents in Fifteenth-Century England, in The British
Library Studies in Medieval Culture, The British Library and University of Toronto Press, 2004. There are
some excellent sections on Roman Catholic forgeries in general in Döllinger’s “The Pope and the Council”, and
many pages could be spent reviewing and expanding upon the forgeries mentioned in this work. 2 Also see
John Edmund Cox (editor), Thomas James, A Treatise of the Corruptions of Scripture, Councils, and Fathers:
By the Prelates, Pastors, and Pillars of the Church of Rome, for the Maintenance of Popery, London: John W.
Parker, 1843; A Preservative Against Popery, Vol. XV, The Authority of General Councils Examined, and
Roman Forgeries Therein Detected, I & II, pp. 1 – 243, containing two works by Mr. Jenkins and Dr. Comber,
which are valuable reading [also see the third and fourth parts of Comber’s work on Roman Forgeries, not
included in this series, and published London, 1695], London: British Society for Promoting the Religious
Principles of the Reformation, 1848; and Richard Gibbings, Roman Forgeries and Falsifications: or, An
Examination of Counterfeit and Corrupted Records; with Especial Reference to Popery, Part I (no further
parts were published), Dublin: Grant and Bolton, 1842. There have been many other Latin corruptions of the
Church Fathers and of the ecclesiastical records, but which do not directly touch on the controversy with the
Orthodox Church.

For hundreds of years, these false documents masqueraded as a genuine witness of Antiquity and the Fathers,
severely distorting the ability of the Latins to form an accurate judgment as to the validity of the Papal claims
and other Latin novelties, having to base their opinions on erroneous data. These numerous and widespread
forgeries provided the straw foundation of the Latins’ argument during the Middle Ages to apostatize from
the Orthodox Church.

It is worth noting that no Pope or Roman Council has ever issued a decree recognising that any of the
aforementioned forgeries are inauthentic, and there has never been an official Papal document that
apologises for the errors and frauds of the earlier Popes, Councils, and in the controversial works of the
leading Roman defenders.

But the Orthodox Church has preserved the truth, and has kept inviolate the pure and holy teachings of Christ,
the Apostles, and the Church Fathers.

1 Henry Cotton, Memoir of a French New Testament, pp. 86 – 87, London: Bell & Daldy, 2nd Ed., 1863.
2 Janus, The Pope and the Council, pp. 94 – 150, 278 – 289, 396 – 402, London: Rivingtons, 3rd Ed., 1870.
 574

Book IV Appendices

Appendix I The Apostolic Canons are of Ecumenical Authority

The Apostolic Canons certainly possess Ecumenical authority, having been explicitly approved by the 2nd
Canon of the Sixth Ecumenical Council in Trullo, which declares:

It has also seemed good to this holy Council, that the eighty-five canons, received and ratified by the
holy and blessed Fathers before us, and also handed down to us in the name of the holy and glorious
Apostles should from this time forth remain firm and unshaken for the cure of souls and the healing
of disorders.1

It is not necessarily the case that these canons were directly written by the Apostles (although some probably
were), but it is simply recognised that they have come down to us in the name of the Apostles. Also, the very
first canon of the First Ecumenical Council recognises the authority of the Apostolic Canons. William
Beveridge comments:

The Nicene fathers in this canon make no new enactment but only confirm by the authority of an
Ecumenical synod the Apostolic Canons, and this is evident from the wording of this canon. For there
can be no doubt that they had in mind some earlier canon when they said, “such men the canon
admits to the clergy.” Not, ὁυτος ὁ κανὼν, but ὁ κανὼν, as if they had said “the formerly set forth and
well-known canon” admits such to the clergy. But no other canon then existed in which this provision
occurred except apostolical canon xxi. which therefore we are of opinion is here cited.2

Hefele agrees with Beveridge’s conclusion:

This ordinance of Nicæa agrees well with the directions contained in the apostolic canons 21 – 24
inclusive (20 – 23 according to another way of numbering them), and it is to these apostolic canons
that the Council makes allusion by the expression ὁ κανὼν.3

In addition, Canon V of the Seventh Ecumenical Council explicitly quotes the Apostolic Canons, recognizing
their authority (saying “let him be dealt with according to the Apostolic Canon which says:”).4 There are
plenty of other references to the Apostolic Canons that show their ecumenical authority and acceptance by
the Church.

The Anglican patristics scholar William Cave (1637 – 1713) shows that St. Basil, in his Canon III, refers to the
25th canon of the Apostles as “an ancient canon”. Cave goes on to show that Theodoret of Cyrus records a
letter of St. Alexander, bishop of Alexandria (predecessor and mentor to St. Athanasius), to Alexander, bishop
of Constantinople, where there is a reference to the 12th and 13th canons of the apostles. Lastly, Cave points
out that Emperor St. Constantine the Great, in a letter to Bishop Eusebius, refers to the 14th Apostolic Canon.5

The Latin Eighth Ecumenical Council of 869 – 870, in its Canon XII explicitly cites an Apostolic Canon, saying:

As the Apostolic canon (31) and other synodal decrees, so do we also ordain that whoever has been
raised to the episcopal dignity through the intrigues or power of secular princes, shall be deposed.

1 Percival, Seven Ecumenical Councils, p. 361.

2 Percival, Seven Ecumenical Councils, pp. 8 – 9.
3 Hefele, History of the Concils of the Church, Vol. I, p. 376.
4 Percival, Seven Ecumenical Councils, p. 559.
5 Henry Cary (editor), William Cave, Primitive Christianity, Preface, pp. ix – x, Oxford: J. Vincent, 1840.
 575

Also its “Canon 1” says, “The ancient canons of the Apostles and of the general and particular councils, as well
as those of the fathers and doctors of the Church, must be firmly maintained.1

Of these Apostolic Canons, the Catholic Encyclopedia writes:

They were certainly current in the Eastern Church in the first quarter of the sixth century, for in
about 520 Severus of Antioch quotes canons 21-23. …

The number of these canons has given rise to no little controversy. In the Apostolic Constitutions
they are eighty-five. In the latter half of the sixth century, John of Antioch (Joannes Scholasticus),
Patriarch of Constantinople from 565 to 577, published a collection of synodal decrees in which he
included these eighty-five canons, and this number was finally consecrated for the Greek Church by
the Trullan or Quinisext Council (692), which also confined the current Greek tradition of their
Apostolic origin. On the other hand the Latin Church, throughout the Middle Ages, recognized but
fifty canons of the Apostles. This was the number finally adopted by Dionysius Exiguus, who first
translated these canons into Latin about 500. It is not very clear why he omitted canons 51-85; he
seems to have been acquainted with them and to have used the Apostolic Constitutions. …
Justinian (in his Sixth Novel) had recognized them as the work of the Apostles and confirmed them as
ecclesiastical law. Nevertheless, from their first appearance in the West they aroused suspicion.
Canon 46 for example, that rejected all heretical baptism, was notoriously opposed to Roman and
Western practice. …

Hincmar of Reims (died 882) declared that they were not written by the Apostles, and as late as the
middle of the eleventh century, Western theologians (Cardinal Humbert, 1054) distinguished
between the eighty-five Greek canons that they declared apocryphal, and the fifty Latin canons
recognized as “orthodox rules” by antiquity.

The influence of the Apostolic Canons was greatly increased by the various versions of them soon
current in the Christian Church, East and West. We have already indicated the influence of the
second Latin version of Dionysius Exiguus. They were also translated (more or less fully) into Syriac,
Arabic, Coptic, and Armenian; in general they seem to have furnished during the fifth and sixth
centuries a large element of the ecclesiastical legislation in the Eastern Church. 2

Although the Latins do not accept all 85 Apostolic Canons, even the 50 they do accept contains the canon that
deposes those who do not baptize with trine immersion (variously numbered at 49 or 50), as well as other
canons that contradict Latin practices.

Appendix II Additional Material Concerning Trine Immersion and Related Topics

Section I Additional Texts on Trine Immersion

I place here some additional texts bearing on the ancient ecclesiastical tradition of trine immersion in
baptism. It is important to note that the mode of baptism changed in the West without any official Papal or
Conciliar decree – it simply happened over time through negligence of tradition.

1 Henry Joseph Schroeder, Disciplinary Decrees of the General Councils: Text, Translation and Commentary,
pp. 157 – 176, St. Louis, MO: B. Herder, 1937.
2 Thomas Shahan, Apostolic Canons, in CE, Vol. III, pp. 279 – 280.
 576

St. Mark of Ephesus writes about the Latins in 1440: “Divergent also are baptisms – one performed with triple
immersion, the other with ‘pouring’ over the head from above; one with anointing chrism, the other
completely without.”1

There was a conference regarding trine immersion between St. Mark and the Latins in the Roman Catholic
Council of Florence, as related in Chrystal’s History of the Modes of Christian Baptism:

At that council [Florence], A.D. 1439, a passage at arms occurred between Mark of Ephesus on the
side of the Greeks, and Gregory the monk and Protosyncellus on that of the Latins. Mark laid to the
charge of the latter that they had “two baptisms, one administered by trine immersion, and the other
by pouring water upon the top of the head.” To which Gregory replies, “That there are two baptisms,
no one ever asserted, for holy baptism is one,” &c.; “and that the trine immersion is necessary is
evident, for thus has it been handed down by the saints, to signify the three days’ burial of the Lord.
So, indeed, it has been handed down, and so the rituals of the Latins teach that it shall be observed.”
Yet just below he defends, by the reason subjoined, this mingling of immersion and affusion:

“But we by no means immerse the infants’ heads; for we cannot teach them to hold the breath, nor
can we prevent the water from going through their ears, nor can we close their mouths. But we so
put them into the font as to omit nothing which is really necessary for the carrying out of the
tradition. The laver being a sort of image of the womb, and by this image of the womb setting forth
the regeneration. And lest the head, in which is the seat of all the senses, and the vehicle of the soul,
may be without holy baptism, we take up water in the hollow of the hand out of the sacred font and
pour over it, &c. For when a tyrant charged it upon Saint Apollonius as a reproach that he had not
been washed in baptism, and that, therefore, he was not a Christian, God, in kindness, heard the
saint’s prayers, and satisfied his desires. For a cloud being sent down from above bathed his head in
dew. If, therefore, pouring upon the head be not baptism, it would not have been so done, but in
some other way.”

It will be noticed that Gregory puts forth a strong view as to the value of trine immersion, and that his
plea for pouring is based upon necessity, or something akin to it.

So far as the application of his argument to the case of healthy infants is concerned, Mark might have
replied, that the whole Church found no necessity, during more than a thousand years, for departing
from the full administration by trine and total immersion, and infants were the same in his day as
before. The present Latin mode, in ordinary use, is so far removed from any immersion that a part of
Gregory’s words would not apply in its defence.2

Almost all scholars and historians agree that there is no doubt that the nearly universal standard of baptism
in the Church, East and West, was triple immersion, from at least the years 200 to 1200. For example, the
Protestant scholar Dr. William Cathcart (1826 – 1908), who does not approve of trine immersion, says, “Trine
immersion was the general practice of Christians from the end of the second till the close of the twelfth

1 The Encyclical Letter of St. Marc of Ephesus To All Orthodox Christians on the Mainland and in the Islands,
July 1440, p. 4, Boston, MA: Romiosyne, 2013.
2 Chrystal, Baptism, pp. 105 – 107. Also see Chrystal’s note on p. 106. Regarding the baptism mentioned by

Gregory, this was actually of St. Philemon, not St. Apollonius (who was a deacon). This was a miraculous
event, and all recognise the validity of baptism by pouring in rare circumstances. However, Anglican
hagiographer Sabine Baring-Gould (1834 – 1924) notes that “There are several versions of this event.
According to one, the judge and assistants were blinded whilst Philemon was carried to the river and
baptized by a priest.” (Sabine Baring-Gould, The Lives of the Saints, Vol. III, March 8, p. 158, n. 1, London: John
Hodges, 1879.) Moreover, no record says that only his head received water, and St. Philemon is recorded to
have said that he was “baptized in the cloud”, which implies his whole body was surrounded by water.
 577

century. The proof of this statement is overwhelming.” 1 However, there came to be a notable lack of
strictness in some parts of the Western Church after the middle and towards the end of the first millennium.

John Henry Moore’s article on “Trine Immersion” in the Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia states: “The early
Fathers, without a voice to the contrary, believed that triple baptism was the New-Testament form.”2
Wharton Booth Marriott writes, “Triple Immersion, that is thrice dipping the head while standing in the
water, was the all but universal rule of the Church in early times.”3

Du Pin, speaking of baptism in the first three centuries of the Church, says: “They Baptized with some
Ceremonies, those that were well instructed in their Religion, and who had given satisfactory Signs of their
sincere Conversion; they generally dipt them thrice in the Water, invoking the Name of the Holy Trinity, and
they never administred this Sacrament solemnly, but at the Feasts of Easter and Pentecost.”4 Of the fourth
century Du Pin says: “Baptism was administred to Infants and Adult Persons with many Ceremonies. They
were dipped Three times into the Water.”5 Of the twelfth century he says: “The Administration of Baptism,
even that of Infants, was reserv’d for solemn Days; but Parents were not allow’d to assist at that of their
Children, and the triple Immersion was still in use.” 6

John Mason Neale refers to the ancient rituals:

The mode of administration of the sacrament is, throughout the whole East, by trine immersion, or at
least, by trine affusion over the head, while the Catechumen is seated, or stands, in water up to the
elbows. The Constantinopolitan Ritual; The Priest baptizes him, holding him upright, and facing the
East; and saying The servant &c.; at each sentence plunging and raising him from the water. The
Coptic; He thrice immerses him, and after each immersion raises him, and breathes in his face. The
Armenian; Then the Priest takes the child in his arms, and immerses him thrice in water, as an emblem
of the three days’ burial of Christ. But the Armenian formula as given by Asseman is, as we shall
presently see, trine baptism. All the Syrian forms prescribe, or assume trine immersion. The affusion
of the Latins is not forgotten as an item in the miserable differences of the two Churches. 7

The contemporary Coptic Rite (translated from books in use in 1930) directs triple immersion:

And the deacon leads him that is to be baptized from the west and brings him to the east over against
the Jordan (the font), to the left hand of the priest. And the priest asks him his name, and immersed
him three times; and at each immersion he raises him up and breathes in his face.

At the first immersion he shall say: I baptize you, son of N. in the Name of the Father.

1 William Cathcart, The Baptism of the Ages and of the Nations, p. 15, Philadelphia, PA: American Baptist
Publication Society, 1878. Also see the first paragraph of Cathcart’s article on the subject in his work The
Baptist Encyclopedia, Vol. II, pp. 1166 – 1167, Philadelphia, PA: Louis H. Everts, 1881.
2 John Henry Moore, Trine Immersion, in The New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge, Vol.

XII, p. 16, New York, NY: Funk and Wagnalls Company, 1912. Also see Moore’s book on this subject, which
contains some additional quotations: John Henry Moore, Trine Immersion Traced to the Apostles: Being a
Collection of Historical Quotations from Ancient and Modern Authors, Elgin, IL: General Missionary and Tract
Committee, 1900.
3 Wharton Booth Marriott, Baptism, III, § 49, in William Smith and Samuel Cheetham (editors), A Dictionary of

Christian Antiquities, Vol. I, p. 161, London: John Murray, 1908. Marriott quotes in proof Tertullian, Cyril of
Jerusalem, Chrysostom, Jerome, Leo I, etc.
4 William Wotton (translator), Lewis Ellies du Pin, A New History of Ecclesiastical Writers, Vol. I, p. 182,

London: Abel Swalle & Tim. Childe, 2nd Ed., 1693.

5 Du Pin, A New History of Ecclesiastical Writers, Vol. II, p. 289.
6 Du Pin, A New Ecclesiastical History, Vol. X, p. 217, London: Abel Swal, 2nd Ed., 1698. Note that the titles

vary, but this is in the same series of Du Pin’s Ecclesiastical History.

7 John Mason Neale, A History of the Holy Eastern Church, Part I, General Introduction, Book IV, Ch. V, 6, pp.

949 – 950, London: Joseph Masters, 1850.

 578

The second time: And of the Son.

The third time: And of the Holy Spirit. Amen.1

According to the biographer of the famous Protestant minister and theologian John Wesley (1703 – 1791):

When Mr. Wesley baptized adults, professing faith in Christ, he chose to do it by trine immersion, if
the persons would submit to it, judging this to be the Apostolic method of baptizing. 2

Alexius Aurelius Pelliccia writes:

The Bishop, thus assisted by the Deacons, who were ready at hand to help him, standing on the lower
step of the Font, immersed the Catechumen in the water – this he did, in ancient times, thrice – at
each immersion invoking the Name of One of the Persons of the undivided Trinity … This manner of
Baptism the Greek Church used generally, almost to the eighth century, and at this day it prevails
everywhere throughout the East. Among the Latins, down to the sixth century, Baptism was
everywhere administered by trine immersion, after which time Baptism by one immersion became
very common, even though no urgent cause made such a form of Baptism necessary, and at Milan,
even to this day, the head of the infant is dipped three times under water at its Baptism. 3

Louis Duchesne makes very ignorant statements when arguing against Orthodox criticism of Latin baptism:

But they will say to me, if it is true that, on the whole, the first seven Œcumenical Councils
represent an orthodox faith defended against us by the Roman Church, at least we can say that we
have upheld this Orthodoxy, whereas the Roman Church has either abandoned or corrupted it.
Abandoned it? In what? Which is the dogma defined in these Councils that the Church of Rome has
since repudiated? What is the formula established by them that does not figure expressly in her
professions of faith?

Corrupted? Under this head come the accusations enumerated above, the Filioque, baptism
by affusion, unleavened bread, &c. They would do well to point out to us, in the ancient Councils, one
decree, one canon, one word which represents a prohibition relating to any one of these points.
Which of the Œcumenical Councils regulated the doctrine of the Procession of the Holy Ghost, the
mode of administering baptism, the efficacy of such or such a portion of the Eucharistic liturgy, the
choice between leavened or unleavened bread, the conditions of expiation beyond the tomb, or the
relation between the ban of original sin and the special position of the Blessed Virgin-Mother.

Much could be said on the errors of Duchesne in this passage and throughout his entire work (I have
reviewed and extensively cited the testimony of the Councils and found them against the Filioque and against
changing the Creed, as quoted extensively above), but as Duchesne asks for “one canon” prohibiting an
erroneous mode of baptism and establishing the correct mode, here is Apostolic Canon 50, which declares:

If any bishop or presbyter does not perform the one initiation with three immersions, but with giving
one immersion only, into the death of the Lord, let him be deposed. For the Lord said not, Baptize
into my death, but, “Go, make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of
the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.”

1 E. C. Whitaker and Maxwell E. Johnson, Documents of the Baptismal Liturgy, Ch. VIII, p. 137, London: Society
for Promoting Christian Knowledge, Third Ed., 2003. Note that “The initiation rite of the Ethiopian Orthodox
Church is primarily a translation of the Coptic Rite” (p. 132) and so would teach the same.
2 Henry Moore (1751 – 1844), The Life of the Rev. John Wesley, Vol. I, Book IV, Ch. III, p. 519, London: John

Kershaw, 1824.
3 John Crosthwaite Bellett (translator), Alexius Aurelius Pelliccia, The Polity of the Christian Church, of Early,

Mediæval, and Modern Times, Book I, Ch. II, § 5., p. 17, London: J. Masters & Co., 1883.
 579

The canons of Constantinople I and of Trullo both assume trine immersion as the standard. Finally, I want to
add that it is startling that Duchesne elsewhere insists, based on a shallow and scanty analysis of some
records (primarily his misinterpretation of depictions of baptism in art), that immersion was not universally
practised as the standard in the first millennium of the Church. Duchesne writes, “His Beatitude [the
Orthodox Patriarch of Constantinople Anthimus] seems to be very sure that immersion was practised in the
West up to the thirteenth century. As far as words go, appearances seem to favour his assertion.” Duchesne
goes on to argue that full immersion was not the standard mode of early baptism. “The immersion spoken of
in the old texts is nothing else but the actual pouring, practised, without doubt, with a greater effusion of
water, but without any essential difference, in early times.” However, Duchesne has fallen into a great error.
Thomas Aquinas, in the thirteenth century, specifically delineates immersion from pouring, and advises triple
immersion. The argument from ancient Christian art does not hold, as Everett Ferguson has shown in his
Baptism in the Early Church: “Despite claims that the art represents a pouring or sprinkling, the hand of the
administrator is never shown pouring water but uniformly rests on the head of the baptizand, … The triple
immersion accompanied the confession, and the administrator’s hand, therefore, was in position to guide the
candidate’s head into the water.”1 There is no doubt that the early mode of baptism was immersion, as can be
read in the numerous authors cited here (I have omitted many authorities who only speak of immersion in
general, and not specifically of triple immersion). The Roman Catholic communion has certainly abandoned
the Apostolic rite of baptism, which is being fully surrounded by water, and being “buried with Christ”.

According to many interpreters, St. Justin Martyr (c. 100 – 165) refers to trine immersion, although he is not
explicit on the subject, which is why his testimony is in this appendix. Here is the entirety of Chapter LXI
from Justin Martyr’s First Apology:

Chap. LXI. – Christian Baptism

I will also relate the manner in which we dedicated ourselves to God when we had been made new
through Christ; lest, if we omit this, we seem to be unfair in the explanation we are making. As many
as are persuaded and believe that what we teach and say is true, and undertake to be able to live
accordingly, are instructed to pray and to entreat God with fasting, for the remission of their sins that
are past, we praying and fasting with them. Then they are brought by us where there is water, and
are regenerated in the same manner in which we were ourselves regenerated. For, in the name of
God, the Father and Lord of the universe, and of our Saviour Jesus Christ, and of the Holy Spirit, they
then receive the washing with water. For Christ also said, “Except ye be born again, ye shall not enter
into the kingdom of heaven.” Now, that it is impossible for those who have once been born to enter
into their mothers’ wombs, is manifest to all. And how those who have sinned and repent shall
escape their sins, is declared by Esaias the prophet, as I wrote above; he thus speaks: “Wash you,
make you clean; put away the evil of your doings from your souls; learn to do well; judge the
fatherless, and plead for the widow: and come and let us reason together, saith the Lord. And though
your sins be as scarlet, I will make them white like wool; and though they be as crimson, I will make
them white as snow. But if ye refuse and rebel, the sword shall devour you: for the mouth of the Lord
hath spoken it.”

And for this [rite] we have learned from the apostles this reason. Since at our birth we were
born without our own knowledge or choice, by our parents coming together, and were brought up in
bad habits and wicked training; in order that we may not remain the children of necessity and of
ignorance, but may become the children of choice and knowledge, and may obtain in the water the
remission of sins formerly committed, there is pronounced over him who chooses to be born again,
and has repented of his sins, the name of God the Father and Lord of the universe; he who leads to
the laver the person that is to be washed calling him by this name alone. For no one can utter the
name of the ineffable God; and if any one dare to say that there is a name, he raves with a hopeless
madness. And this washing is called illumination, because they who learn these things are
illuminated in their understandings. And in the name of Jesus Christ, who was crucified under

1 Everett Ferguson, Baptism in the Early Church, Part II, Ch. VII, pp. 125 – 126.
 580

Pontius Pilate, and in the name of the Holy Ghost, who through the prophets foretold all things about
Jesus, he who is illuminated is washed.1

The structure of the sentences implies that after the candidate is baptized in the name of God the Father, he is
next baptized in the name of Jesus Christ, and then baptized in the name of the Holy Ghost.

The Protestant author Quinter interprets St. Justin Martyr’s passage as a reference to trine immersion.2
Moore agrees that Justin refers to trine immersion. 3 The Protestant academic Daniel Webster Kurtz (1879 –
1949), writing in the International Standard Bible Encyclopaedia, has written a favorable article on trine
immersion, where he reviews some of the historical testimony, and states, “Justin Martyr (Ap., i.61) describes
baptism which can only be understood as triune immersion.”4 William Reeves (1667 – 1726), an Anglican
scholar and notable editor of Justin Martyr’s Apologies, also sees support for trine immersion in this chapter,
commenting, “The Ancients carefully observed this Trine Immersion, as being so expressive a Ceremony of
the Three Persons in the Godhead;”.5 Everett Ferguson also sees a connection with Justin’s words and trine
immersion.6

It should also be noted that Justin says, “we have learned from the apostles” (and Justin is also referring to his
own and contemporary Christians’ baptism many year prior when he says “I will also relate the manner in
which we dedicated ourselves to God when we had been made new through Christ” and “they are brought by
us where there is water, and are regenerated in the same manner in which we were ourselves regenerated”),
which tells us that the Christians of the second century were following the Apostles with regard to the
sacrament of baptism, and this Apostolic tradition has always been held sacred by the Church, and there is no
reason to think that it was altered without detection. Let us remember that less than 40 years after the
martyrdom of Justin, Tertullian includes trine immersion as an “ancient practice … which without doubt
flowed from tradition” (see above).

With regard to St. Cyprian, although he does not specifically mention the mode of baptism, Ferguson writes,
“We may infer a triple immersion from the triple interrogatory confession.”7

One other point is that there is a notable connection concerning Jewish customs. William Wall (1646 – 1727),
an Anglican priest and theologian who wrote an exhaustive (at the time) treatise on The History of Infant-
Baptism, often affirms the Apostolic practice of trine immersion:

There were some other customs constantly used by the most ancient Christians at and after
the baptizing of any person …

I. When they baptized any one, whether infant or adult, they thought it not enough to put
him once into water; but as his body was in the water, they put his head also three times into the

1 Ante-Nicene Christian Library, Vol. II, Writings of Justin Martyr, The First Apology, Ch. LXI, pp. 59 – 60,
Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1867.
2 James Quinter, A Vindication of Trine Immersion as the Apostolic Form of Christian Baptism, pp. 6 – 9, 200 –

213, 277 – 284, Huntingdon, PA: The Brethren’s Publishing Company, 1886.
3 John Henry Moore, Trine Immersion Traced to the Apostles: Being a Collection of Historical Quotations from

Ancient and Modern Authors, pp. 29 – 33, Elgin, IL: General Missionary and Tract Committee, 1900.
4 Daniel Webster Kurtz, Trine (Triune) Immersion, The International Standard Bible Encyclopaedia, Vol. V, p.

3012, Chicago, IL: The Howard-Severance Company, 1915. Note that Kurtz also recognizes the Didache’s
teaching on trine immersion, commenting, “Here the triple action is maintained throughout, even in clinical
baptism, while immersion is the rule.”
5 William Reeves, The Apologies of Justin Martyr, Tertullian, and Minutius Felix in Defence of the Christian

Religion, with the Commonitory of Vincentius Lirinensis concerning the Primitive Rule of Faith, Vol. I, p. 97,
note f., London: T. W. & T. S. for W. Churchill, 2nd Ed., 1716.
6 Everett Ferguson, Baptism in the Early Church, Part II, Ch. VIII, p. 136.
7 Everett Ferguson, Baptism in the Early Church, Part IV, Ch. XXII, p. 353.
 581

water, so that his whole body was three times under water. This was the ordinary way (but with an
exception of sick, weakly persons, &c.)

On the next page, Wall notes a parallel with Jewish antiquities:

And for the first of the three, viz. the trine immersion; another person very learned in Jewish customs
assures me, that their way of washing any person, or any thing, that was by their law to have a
tevillah, or solemn washing, was to do it three times over: so that a vessel that was to be washed, was
drawn three times through water. And Mr. Selen says (De Synedr. lib. i. c. 3.), “it must be the same
quantity of water as that wherein a proselyte was baptized.” Whence it is probable that they gave the
proselyte a trine immersion; and that the Christians by their example did the like.1

Wall’s perspective is interesting, since most of the Church Fathers ground their statements about trine
immersion upon the direct command of Christ to baptize in the name of the three persons of the Holy Trinity
(or symbolizing Christ’s three-day burial), but the opinion also has been stated (which will be seen in the
quotation from the Council of Celichyth), that Christ himself received a trine immersion from John the Baptist,
which implies that trine immersion was a pre-existing custom. If that is the case, then it affords another
instance of the connection and harmony of the New Testament with the Old, since the full meaning of this
ancient rite was revealed by Christ’s command in Matthew xxviii. 19. Later in his treatise, Dr. Wall affirms,
“The way of trine immersion, or plunging the head of the person three times into the water, was the general
practice of all antiquity.”2

The Mandaeans, an ancient Gnostic sect, also practised trine immersion, although this was not Christian
baptism, but a repeated ceremony on special occasions. The Swedish professor and historian Anders Nilsson
Hultgård (1936 – current) argues for a Late Antiquity origin of this water ritual, and that such water
ceremonies were a feature of the Mandaean religion from its beginning.3

It is interesting that Juvenal (active ~100 AD), mentions a superstitious pagan practice of triple immersion in
the Tiber.4 This could have been a pagan attempt to imitate the Christians.

Zacharias’ Life of Patriarch Severos of Antioch also contains a passage implying triple immersion. Zacharius
(born latter half of 460s) was the Bishop of Mytilene, and he and Severos did not accept the Council of
Chalcedon. This work dates from 512 to 538, and it states: “He [Christ] taught us to repent and thereby to
take refuge in saving baptism which symbolizes the three-day burial and resurrection of Christ, the Saviour of
us all.”5 The only way baptism could symbolize the three-day burial and resurrection of Christ is through
triple immersion.

St. John of Damascus, in his An Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, writes:

We confess one baptism for the remission of since and for life eternal. For baptism declares
the Lord's death. We are indeed “buried with the Lord through baptism,” as saith the divine

1 Henry Cotton (editor), William Wall, The History of Infant-Baptism, Vol. I, Part I, Introduction, pp. 37 – 39,
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2nd Ed., 1844.
2 Henry Cotton (editor), William Wall, The History of Infant-Baptism, Vol. II, Part II, Ch. IX, § IV, p. 419, Oxford:

Oxford University Press, 2nd Ed., 1844.

3 Anders Hultgård, The Mandean Water Ritual in Late Antiquity, pp. 69 – 99, see especially pp. 74, 76, 78, 86,

94, in Ablution, Initiation, and Baptism: Late Antiquity, Early Judaism, and Early Christianity, Vol. I, Ch. II,
Berlin: De Gruyter, 2011. Also see Everett Ferguson, Baptism in the Early Church: History, Theology, and
Liturgy in the First Five Centuries, Part I, Ch. IV, p. 75, Eerdmans: Grand Rapids, MI, 2009.
4 Juvenal, Satires 6.522 – 525. Quoted in Everett Ferguson, Baptism in the Early Church: History, Theology,

and Liturgy in the First Five Centuries, Part I, Ch. II, p. 31, Eerdmans: Grand Rapids, MI, 2009.
5 Sebastian Brock and Brian Fitzgerald, Two Early Lives of Severos, Patriarch of Antioch, Translations, 1.,

Zacharias, ‘Life’ of Severos, § 65, p. 60, in Translated Texts for Historians, Vol. LIX, Liverpool: Liverpool
University Press, 2013.
 582

Apostle. So then, as our Lord died once for all, and baptized according to the Word of the Lord, In the
Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, being taught the confession in Father, Son,
and Holy Spirit. Those, then, who, after having been baptized into Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and
having been taught that there is one divine nature in three substances, are rebaptized, these, as the
divine Apostle says, crucify the Christ afresh. For it is impossible, he saith, for those who were once
enlightened, &c., to renew them again unto repentance: seeing they crucify to themselves the Christ
afresh, and put Him to an open shame. But those who were not baptized into the Holy Trinity, these
must be baptized again. For although the divine Apostle says: Into Christ and into His death were we
baptized, he does not mean that the invocation of baptism must be in these words, but that baptism is
an image of the death of Christ. For by the three immersions, baptism signifies the three days of our
Lord’s entombment. The baptism then into Christ means that believers are baptized into Him. 1

Patriarch St. Germanus I of Constantinople (or an ancient author under his name) writes:

We have been baptized with reference to (or in imitation of) the death and resurrection of Christ
himself. For by the descent into the water and the ascent, and by the three submersions, we
symbolize and confess the three days’ burial and the resurrection of Christ himself. And still further,
also, because he was baptized in the Jordan by John,” 2

St. Photius writes, “the three immersions and emersions of the rite of purification (or baptism) symbolize
death and resurrection.”3

St. Theophylact of Ochrid (ca. 1050 – ca. 1108), the Orthodox Archbishop of Ochrid, writes in his commentary
on Matt. xxviii. 19, “He gave to his disciples one rite or ordinance of purification (or baptism), by three
immersions of the body, saying, go ye therefore and teach all nations, etc.” 4 Theophylact states likewise in his
commentary on Coloss. ii. 12, and in chapter viii. of Mark.5

St. Nicholas Cabasilas (or Kabasilas, c. 1319 – 1392), nephew of Nilus Cabasilas, in his important work “On the
Life in Christ”, also mentions triple immersion as the form of the baptismal act: “But as soon as he has thrice
emerged from the water after being submerged therein during the invocation of the Trinity, he who has been
initiated receives all that he seeks.”6

The Council of Celichyth (a previous council held in this city in 785, was mentioned in the section on Trullo)
was held in England on July 25 – 27, 816. It was composed of the bishops south of the river Humber, and
within the respective kingdoms of the East Angles, Kent, Mercia, and the West Saxons. Wolfred, who
succeeded Æthelard, Archbishop of Canterbury, presided, with the assistance of twelve of his suffragan
bishops. Kenelph, King of the Mercians, with his nobles, attended it, along with the abbots, priests and
deacons of the province.7 In its eleventh canon, the council states:

1 Stewart Dingwall Fordyce Salmond (translator), John of Damascus, Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, Book
IV, Ch. IX, (82.), Concerning Faith and Baptism, pp. 77 – 78, in NPNF, Series II, Vol. IX.
2 Historia Ecclesiastica, Migne, PG, Vol. XCVIII, pp. 385 – 386. Translated in Chrystal, Baptism, p. 82.
3 Edward Beecher, Baptism: With Reference to Its Import and Modes, Part III, Ch. II, § 64., p. 202, New York,

NY: John Wiley, 1849. The Greek original is also quoted here.
4 Beecher, Baptism, Part III, Ch. II, § 64., p. 202. The Greek original is also quoted here.
5 George Gibbs, A Defence of the Baptists, Ch. II, pp. 64 – 65, London: Simpkin and Marshall, 2nd Ed., 1829.
6 Carmino J. deCatanzaro (translator), Nicholas Cabasilas, The Life in Christ, Book II, § 4., p. 73, Crestwood, NY:

St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, 1998 [first published 1974].

7 Jeremy Collier, An Ecclesiastical History of Great Britain, Vol. I, Book II, p. 348, London: William Straker,

1852.
 583

Let the presbyters know when they administer sacred baptism, not to pour holy water upon the
heads of the infants, but always to immerse them in the laver, after the example given by the Son of
God himself to every believer when he was three times immersed in the waters of the Jordan.1

William Cathcart includes additional testimonies to trine immersion:

Descriptions of Immersion sent to Charlemagne at his own Request by Two of His Bishops.

In the works of Charles the Great the following accounts of baptism are given by two of his
prelates:

“What the Greeks call baptism [baptism is a Greek word] is called immersion by the Latins.
The infant is immersed three times in the holy font, that triple immersion may figuratively exhibit the
three days’ burial of Christ. The lifting up from waters is a likeness of Christ rising from the grave.”a

The second writes: “Thus a man made for an image of the Holy Trinity, dipped by trine
immersion, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, is restored to the image
of the same Trinity.”b

[Cathcart’s Footnotes:] a) Latine tinctio dicitur, infans ter mergitur in sacro fonte ut sepulturam
triduanam Christi trina demersio mystice designaret, et ab aquis elevatio Christi resurgentis instar
est de sepulcro. Carolus Magnus, ii. p. 940. Migne. Parisiis, 1862. b) Trina submersion tinctus. Ibid.,
p. 938.2

Bishop Jesse of Amiens (d. 836), describing the order of baptism, says, “After the child has been baptized with
three immersions, …”.3

St. Rabanus Maurus (also called Hrabanus or Rhabanus, 780 – 856), the Archbishop of Mainz, a highly learned
scholar, and a student of Alcuin (who is cited on trine immersion below), writes the following on baptism:

After these things the fountain is consecrated, and the candidate draws near to baptism itself; and
thus in the name of the holy Trinity he is baptized by trine immersion; … baptism ought therefore to
be conferred by trine immersion with the invocation of the holy Trinity.4

Another disciple of Alcuin, Haymo (or Haimo, d. 853), the Bishop of Halberstadt, a German Benedictine monk
and friend of Rabanus Maurus, says the following of Christ in his commentary on Romans vi. 4: “He himself
arose on the third day alive, and we, after a third immersion, shall arise to life from the death of sins.”5

1 “Ut non effundant aquam sanctam super capita infantium sed semper mergantur in lavacro … quando esset
ter mersus in undis Jordanis.” Can. XI, Conc. Celich., Harduin, Conc. Collec., Vol. IV, p. 1224, Paris, 1715.
Translation in Cathcart, Baptism, p. 34. Other translations are found in Chrystal, Baptism, p. 177; Henry
Cotton (editor), William Wall, The History of Infant-Baptism, Vol. II, Part II, Ch. IX, § II, pp. 395 – 396, Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2nd Ed., 1844. Note that Cathcart mislabels this canon as the second (a minor
mistake due to the resemblance of the Roman and Arabic numerals). Also see Haddan & Stubbs, Councils and
Ecclesiastical Documents relating to Great Britain and Ireland, Vol. III, XV Wulfred, pp. 579 – 585, Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1871.
2 Cathcart, Baptism, pp. 122 – 123.
3 Joseph Bingham, Origines Ecclesiasticæ: The Antiquities of the Christian Church, Book XII, Ch. I, Sect. II, Vol.

I, p. 544, London: Chatto and Windus, 1875.

4 “Trina submersione baptizatur … oportet ergo cum invocation Santæ Trinitatis sub trina mersione

baptismum confici.” Cathcart, Baptism, p. 123. Latin in Lib. de Sacr. Ordin., cap. 14; Migne, PL, Vol. CXII, 112,
p. 1175.
5 “Post ternam mersionem resurgemus de morte.” William Cathcart, The Baptism of the Ages and of the

Nations, p. 124, Philadelphia, PA: American Baptist Publication Society, 1878. Latin in Expos. in Epist. ad
Rom.; Migne, PL, Vol. CXVII, p. 412.
 584

Haymo also claims that Cyprian had at first baptised by single immersion, but was rebuked by God and
changed to triple immersion:

Cyprian abounded in his understanding when he immersed children once in baptism, because what
he understood, he carried out zealously, abounding in good works, although he ignorantly did wrong
in this respect: But because he abounded in good works, afterwards, when he had been rebuked by
God, he abounded in a higher understanding, immersing children thrice.1

The Pseudo-Theodore penitential handbook is a Frankish document written in the first half of the ninth
century, incorrectly attributed to the seventh-century Archbishop Theodore of Canterbury. It was well
known in England in the tenth century, and it “repeats and enforces the Apostolic canon commanding trine
immersion.”2 This document states:

Item si quis æpiscopus aut presbiter non trinam mersionem in baptismo celebret, sed semel mergat,
quod dare videtur in morte Domini, deponatur; non enim dixit nobis Dominus: In morte mea
baptizate, sed, “Ite, docete omnes gentes, baptizantes eos in nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti.”3

Archbishop Hincmar of Rheims, defending the Trinity, writes:

If you believe and confess three immersions in the name of the Holy Trinity, Father, Son, and Sacred
Spirit, to be one baptism, because there is one God, the Father and Son and Holy Spirit, of one
essence, of one Deity, of one nature, in whose name catholic baptism is administered – … if you are
silent about this question, we shall therefore say that the three immersions are one baptism.” 4

Hincmar also writes to his priests in favour of trine immersion:

He is baptized by trine immersion in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost,
that just as the inner man, which is made after the image of the Holy Trinity, through invocation of
the Holy Trinity, is restored to the same image; and as that which fell under subjection to death by
three grades of transgression, being thrice raised out of the font rises by grace to life, and as the inner
man in the faith of the Holy Trinity is to be created anew after the image of its Creator, so also the
exterior man ought to be washed by trine immersion. So that what the Spirit works invisibly in the
soul, this the priest should imitate visibly in the water. For the original transgression was committed
by three circumstances, by delight, by consent, and by the act. And so every sin is effected either by
thought, word, or deed. Wherefore the trine ablution seems to answer to the three classes of sins.
Or, if you choose, it should be used on account of original sin, which, in infants, avails to their
destruction; or on account of those sins which, in the case of men of more advanced age, are added by
the will, word, or deed. And because, according to the Holy Scriptures, there is one God, one faith,
and one baptism, the candidate for baptism is thrice immersed in the name of the Father, and of the
Son, and of the Holy Ghost: that the mystery of the Trinity may appear to be but one; and he is not
baptized into the names of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, but into one name, which is God, according to
an Apostle. One Lord, one faith, one baptism.5

1 Exposit. in Epist. Ad Rom. 14, 5. Migne, PL, Vol. CXVII, p. 488 A. Quoted by Peter Lombard, Quatuor Libri
Sententiarum, Book IV, Distinction III, Part II, VII, and translated in Elizabeth Frances Rogers, Peter Lombard
and the Sacramental System, Appendix, p. 93, New York, NY: [no publisher listed], 1917. I am unsure where
Haymo got this story, and it may have been a corruption of the history of the re-baptism controversy. This
was cited by later authors, such as Radluphus of Ardens, who copied from Peter Lombard.
2 Haddan & Stubbs, Councils and Ecclesiastical Documents Relating to Great Britain and Ireland, Vol. I, Part II,

Appendix D, p. 154, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1869.

3 Benjamin Thorpe, Ancient Laws and Institutes of England, Vol. II, Monumenta Ecclesiastica, Liber

Pœnitentialis Theodori Archiepiscopi Cantuariensis Ecclesiæ, XLVIII, § 20., p. 58, London, 1840.
4 “Tres mersiones. … Dicimus ideo tres mersiones unum esse baptisma.” Hincm. Rhem., De Una et Non Trina

Dictate.; Migne, PL, Vol. CXXV, pp. 554 – 555. Translation from Cathcart, Baptism, pp. 94 – 95.
5 Chrystal, Baptism, pp. 101 – 102.
 585

Pelikan writes on Gottschalk of Orbais (also called Godescalc, Gotteschalchus, or Fulgentius, 808 – 868) a
Saxon theologian who was involved in controversy with Hincmar and others:

On the basis of the liturgical practice of trine immersion in what was nevertheless, by apostolic
precedent, called “one baptism,” Gottschalk maintained that Father, Son, and Holy Spirit were “one in
nature and trine in person.” In reply Hincmar pointed out that trine immersion was by no means a
universal observance, for in some provinces a single immersion had become the practice as a witness
against Arianism; and such a “difference of custom does not jeopardize the one faith of the holy
church.”1

Richerus, a historian and monk of Saint-Remi at the end of the 10th century, in his Historiarum Libri Quatuor,
gives the following description of the baptism of a pirate:

On the appointed day, in the basilica of St. Marcial the Martyr, the services of the bishops being over,
he [a pirate], received from the king himself, descended into the holy font, and was baptized by trine
immersion in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” 2

St. Fulbert (952 – 1028), Bishop of Chartres, was an esteemed teacher at the Cathedral School of Chartres. In
his exposition of Romans vi. 3, 4, he says:

As, therefore, we have been informed that the body of our Lord Jesus Christ was buried in an earthly
grave three days and three nights, so also a man immersed three times under an element allied to the
earth [water] is covered; and thus, whilst he is immersed in imitation of a vital mystery, he is buried;
when he is raised [from the water] he is awakened. In connection with this topic, reflect a little upon
what the water accomplishes and upon what the Holy Spirit performs: The water brings down the
person dying, as it were, into the tomb; the Holy Spirit brings him, as if rising again, through to
heaven.3

The Latin bishop Ivo of Chartres, considered a saint by Roman Catholics, collected several references from
previous authors on the number of immersions.4 Ivo quotes and follows Gregory the Great’s opinion as to the
number of immersions.5

Hugo (or Hugh) of St. Victor (1096 – 1141), a Latin scholastic, called “the most influential theologian of the
twelfth century”,6 treats of baptism thus:

trine immersion itself is spoken of as the sacrament of the Trinity or of the three days’ burial.
Immersion is made baptism by the invocation of the Trinity. After you promised to believe we
immersed your heads three times in the sacred font. This order of baptism is observed to show forth
a double mystery; for ye were rightly immersed three times who have received baptism in the name
of the Trinity, and ye were rightly immersed three times who have received baptism in the name of

1 Jaroslav Pelikan, The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine, Vol. III, The Growth of
Medieval Theology (600 - 1300), Ch. II, p. 67, Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 1978.
2 “In sacrum fontem descenderet … trina immersione.” Hist., Lib. IV; Migne, PL, Vol. CXXXVIII, p. 24.

Translation from Cathcart, Baptism, pp. 96 – 97.

3 “Et homo ita sub cognato terræ elemento trina vice demersus operitur, ac sic vitalis imitatione mysterii dum

demergitur sepelitur. … Aqua velut morientem deducit in tumulum; Spiritus Sanctus velut resurgentum
perducit ad cœlum.” S. Fulberti Carnot. Episc. Ep.; Migne, PL, Vol. CXLI, p. 200. Translation from Cathcart,
Baptism, pp. 97 – 98.
4 Sancti Ivonis Carnotensis Episcopi, Opera Omnia, Tom. I, Panormia, Lib. I, Cap. LVII – Cap. LXII; Migne, PL,

Vol. CLXI, pp. 1058 D – 1060 A.

5 Op. cit., Cap. LX.
6 William M’Gilchrist (translator), Adolf von Harnack, History of Dogma, Vol. VI, Ch. I, 3., p. 44, London:

Williams & Norgate, (translated from the 3rd German Ed.), 1899.
 586

Jesus Christ, who arose from the dead on the third day; for this trine immersion is a figure of the
Lord’s burial, through which ye have been buried with Christ by baptism.

Hugo then proceeds to quote the letter of Gregory the Great to Leander, approving of one immersion in
Spanish baptism, though Gregory admits that in Rome they had three.1 In another place Hugo, addressing the
administrator of baptism, says:

You immersed a man, and said, “I baptize you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the
Holy Spirit;” and you say to me, “This man is a Christian. He has been baptized in the name of the
Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. I have immersed him three times in the water, and I
said, when I immersed him, I baptize you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy
Spirit.”2

Peter Abelard (1079 – 1142), an eminent Latin teacher and theologian, adopts the language of Pope Gregory
the Great as his own, and declares that: “In baptism it is of no consequence whether you immerse the infants
once or three times; by three immersions the Trinity can be exhibited, and by one the unity of the divinity.”3

Lanfranc (1005 – 1089) was the Latin Archbishop of Canterbury, chief counselor to King William the
Conqueror, and a respected scholar of his age. In his Exposition of the Epistles of Paul, commenting on
Philippians iii. 20, he says: “For as Christ lay three days in the sepulchre, so in baptism let there be a trine
immersion.”4

Anselm, Latin Bishop of Lucca (1036 – 1086) also testifies to trine immersion and its symbolism as still
maintained.5

Latin Cardinal Robert Pullus (or Pulleyn, 1080 – 1150), a prominent professor at Oxford and the Sorbonne, in
his compendium of theology, entitled “Sententiarum Theologicarum Libri Octo” (which the Catholic
Encyclopedia says, “for a time, held its place in the school of Western Europe as the official text book in
theology.”6) writes of baptism:

Whilst the candidate for baptism in water is immersed the death of Christ is suggested; whilst
immersed, and covered with water, the burial of Christ is shown forth; whilst he is raised from the
waters, the resurrection of Christ is proclaimed. The immersion is repeated three times, out of
reverence for the Trinity and on account of the three days’ burial of Christ. In the burial of the Lord
the day follows the night three times; in baptism also trine emersion accompanies trine immersion. 7

1 “Ipsa trina immersio sacramentum dicitur vel Trinitatis vel … baptismus immersio facta est. … Postquam
vos credere promisistis tertio capita vestra in sacro fonte demersimus. … Recte enim tertio mersi estis. …
Recte enim tertio mersi estis. … Illa enim trina immersio typum dominæ exprimit sepulturæ. … Semel
mergebat in baptism parvulos.” Summa sentent., Tract. v. cap. 3; Migne, PL, Vol. CLXXVI, p. 130. Translation
from Cathcart, Baptism, pp. 99 – 100.
2 “Mersisti hominem. … Ego illum mersi tertio in aquam. Ego dixi cum mergerem.” Hugo. de St. Vict., De

Sacram., lib. ii, pars vi; Migne, PL, Vol. CLXXVI, p. 443. Translation from Cathcart, Baptism, p. 101. The
commentary here in this section on Hugo is taken largely verbatim from Cathcart, Baptism, pp. 99 – 101.
3 “In baptismate vel ter vel semel mergere, quando tribus mersionibus.” Migne, PL, Vol. CLXXVIII, p. 1510.

Translation in Cathcart, Baptism, pp. 101 – 102.

4 “Ut enim tribus diebus jacuit Christus in sepulchro, sic in baptismate trina sit immersio.” Migne, PL, Vol. CL,

p. 315. Translation from Cathcart, Baptism, p. 39.

5 “Quod dum tertio baptizatus mergitur, triduanæ sepulturæ sacramentum signatur.” S. Anselmi Lucensis

Episcopi, Collectio Canonica, Lib IX, Cap. XVII. Migne, PL, Vol. CXLIX, p. 521 A. However it appears that
Anselm permitted single immersion in Lib IX, Cap. LIV, p. 522 C.
6 William Turner, Robert Pullus, in CE, Vol. XIII, p. 98.
7 “Dum baptizandus aquæ immergitur, mors Christi insinuatur; dum sub aqua latet mersus, sepultura Christi

repræsentatur; dum sublevatur ex aquis, resurrectio Christi declaratur. Mersio repetitur tertio … in baptismo
 587

Gilbert (1070 – 1145) was the Latin bishop of Limerick in Ireland, a papal legate, and a correspondent of
Anselm of Canterbury. He wrote a tract entitled “The Constitution of the Church” (De Statu Ecclesiæ), which
was sent to “the bishops and priests of the whole of Ireland.” 1 In this work he writes of the priest: “It is his
duty to administer baptism, to dip believers who have been exorcised and who have confessed the Holy
Trinity, with three immersions in the sacred font.”2

Bernard of Clairvaux, in his Sermon on the Lord’s Supper (In Cœna Domini), says:

Baptism is the first of all the sacraments, in which we are planted together into the likeness of His
(Christ’s) death. Hence trine immersion (trina mersio) represents the triduum (or three days), which
we are about to celebrate.3

The Latin theologian Peter the Lombard (1096 – 1160), “the Master of Sentences,” gives the preference to
trine immersion, and quotes and accepts the opinion of Pope Gregory the Great, saying,

If then we are asked how the immersion should be performed; we reply briefly, either once, or thrice,
according to the varying custom of the Church. … Therefore it is settled, that those who are to be
baptized should be immersed thrice; and yet if they are immersed only once, they receive a true
baptism. And he who immerses only once does not sin, unless the custom of his Church is different,
or unless he asserts that it should be done only in this way.

Lombard makes no mention of pouring. In total, Lombard quotes three authorities on trine immersion – Pope
Gregory the Great, Haymo (who is quoted above), and the sermon misattributed to Augustine that Aquinas
later cites as well.4 Peter Lombard’s view on this subject is quoted and accepted by Radluphus of Ardens
(died c. 1200), who also refers to Gregory.5

Aquinas’s contemporary, Bonaventure (1221 – 1274), considered a saint by Roman Catholics, says that, in
contrast to pouring, “the way of dipping into water is the more common, and the fitter and safer.” 6 Dr. David
Schley Schaff (1852 – 1941), son of Philip Schaff, and also a professor of church history, writes in the
Princeton Theological Review, “Both triune immersion and single immersion were allowed by Peter the
Lombard, Bonaventura and Thomas Aquinas.” 7

The autobiographical account of the conversion of Hermann the Jew (or Herman, written early – mid twelfth
century), who was born a Jew in Cologne and later ordained as a Latin Christian priest, contains the following
interesting account of his baptism:

quoque trinam trina mersionem emersio comitatur.” Migne, PL, Vol. CLXXXVI, p. 843. Translation from
Cathcart, Baptism, pp. 39 – 40.
1 Martin Holland, Gille (Gilbert) of Limerick, in Medieval Ireland: An Encyclopedia, p. 332 – 333, New York,

NY: Routledge, 2005.

2 “Sub trina immersione sacro fonte intingere.” Migne, PL, Vol. CLIX, p. 1000. Translation from Cathcart,

Baptism, p. 70.
3 Wolfred Nelson Cote, The Archæology of Baptism, Part I, p. 30, London: Yates and Alexander, 1876.
4 “Pro vario ecclesiarum usu semel, vel ter, qui baptizatur immergitur.” Quatuor Libri Sententiarum, Book IV,

Distinction III, Part II, VII. Peter Lombard’s discussion of the question is translated in Elizabeth Frances
Rogers, Peter Lombard and the Sacramental System, Appendix, pp. 92 – 93, New York, NY: [no publisher
listed], 1917.
5 Christopher Paul Evans (translator), Radulphus Ardens, The Questions on the Sacraments: Speculum

Uniuersale 8.31-92, p. 61, Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 2010.

6 Philip Schaff, The Oldest Church Manual Called The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles, The Didache and

Kindred Documents, Chapter XVII, p. 44, 3rd Ed., New York, 1890.
7 David Schley Schaff, The Sacramental Theory of the Midiæval Church, The Princeton Theological Review,

Vol. IV, No. II, April, 1906, Art. IV, p. 216, Philadelphia, PA: MacCalla & Co., 1906.
 588

But the Lord’s-day now came, in which I was to put off the old man with his deeds, and put on the
new man through the washing of regeneration. On this day all the clergy of the city of Cologne, with
much joy and exultation, assembled in the Cathedral of Saint Peter, the prince of the Apostles, where
the fountain was ready for the celebration of this salutary mystery. At the third hour, the fountain, or
bath, was consecrated, and was impregnated for the regeneration of souls, by the invocation of the
Holy Ghost: at that hour I made a confession with all my heart of my faith in the Holy Trinity, and
entered the bath with great devotion and contrition of heart. But alas! sad it is to confess it! not
even in the article of baptism would my old enemy leave me alone. For, as the evangelist tells us,
when the boy who was about to be released from the evil spirit, by the mercy of the Lord, was just
then more grievously tormented; so did the old enemy then make a more furious onset on me, when
he saw me about to be rescued from his tyranny by the salutary sacrament of this divine institution.
And thus it happened: although I had in all other points been sufficiently instructed, according to my
capacity, in the orthodox faith, yet had I not been instructed, through the negligence of the ministers
(or rather through the fraudulent contrivance of the enemy, who was plotting against me), in the
mystery of the trine immersion, in order to set forth the name of the sacred Trinity. When, therefore,
I had entered the waters of the life-giving fountain, and with my face turned to the east, had been
once immersed, or dipped, I thought that this was the only immersion required for the renovation of
the old man. But the clergy who were standing round the baptistery, cried out, that I must be dipped
oftener. But I, who had just come out of the bath, could not very well hear what they said, or see the
signs they were making to me, owing to my thick and long hair which was then streaming with water
over my eyes and ears. When, however, I had dashed away the water from my face, I heard what the
clergy said: but as I was then suffering much from the great coldness of the water, I was little
disposed to obey their injunctions. Nevertheless, I yielded at last to the gentle expostulate of my
baptiser, and did that which ought to be done for salvation. Thinking, then, that by this second dip I
had fulfilled the divine mysteries, I began to go out of the bath, for I was almost frozen with the
extreme coldness of the water. But the clergy again cried out very loudly, that for the consummation
of the sacrament I must turn to the south and again humbly be put under the salutary stream.1

Writing on the dedication of a church, William Durand says:

The triple aspersion with hyssop of both the inside and outside of the church signifies the triple
immersion in a Baptism. … Since a church cannot be immersed in water as someone about to be
baptized is immersed, the interior is sprinkled three times with water to replace triple immersion in
water.2

The prominent French scholar Jean Charlier de Gerson (1363 – 1429) writes that both single and triple
immersion are acceptable, but he concludes in favour of single immersion: “How often should a child be
immersed? According to the usage of the church, either once, to denote the unity of the Divine essence, or
three times, to represent the Trinity of the Persons …”.3

Moreover, many ancient rituals prescribe trine immersion. The Anglican clergyman and Oxford scholar
Frederick Edward Warren (1842 – 1930), in his classic study “The Liturgy and Ritual of the Celtic Church”,
writes:

1 The Inquirer, Vol. II, September, 1839, The Baptism of Hermann the Jew, p. 454, London: Central Tract
Depot, 1839.
2 Timothy M. Thibodeau (translator), The Rationale Divinorum Officiorum of William Durande of Mende,

Book I, Ch. VI, 11., 25., pp. 64 & 68, New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 2007.
3 “Conclusio. Semel puer debet immerge. Væritur, quoties debet puer immergi? Solutio, secundum

consuetudinem ecclesiæ semel propter unitatem divinæ essentiæ, vel ter, propter trinitatem personarum de
con. distin. quarta, de trina mersione.” Wolfred Nelson Cote, The Archæology of Baptism, Part II, pp. 219 –
220, London: Yates and Alexander, 1876. Cote’s Latin is missing the word “puer”, and has some other minor
differences as well from the original text, likely due to a different edition. Latin in Ioannis Gerson, Svmma
Theologica Et Canonica, Lib. IV, De Sacramento Baptismi, Q. II, p. 125, Venice: Apud Dominicum Nicolinum,
1587.
 589

It [single immersion] is left optional in the three extant ‘Ordines Baptismi’ of the ancient Gallican
Church, while a rubric directing trine immersion is contained in the earliest Ordines Romani. Trine
Immersion, with the alternative of aspersion, is ordered in the earliest extant Irish Baptismal Office,
in the composition of which however Roman influence is strongly marked. 1

The Gelasian Sacramentary (Sacramentarium Gelasianum) prescribes trine immersion. The oldest
manuscript is in the Vatican Library, dating to the mid-8th century, and scholars (such as Louis Duchesne,
Rudolph Buchwald, and Cyrille Vogel) think it represents Roman service books from between the years 628 –
731. This Sacramentary states: “Omnipotens sempiterne Deus, hoc baptisterium caelesti visitatione
dedicatum Spiritus tui illustratione sanctifica, ut quoscumque fons ists lavaturus est, trina ablutione purgati,
indulgentiam omnium delictorum tuo munere consequantur.”2

Gregory’s Sacramentarium (also called the Gregorian Sacramentary) orders: “Let the priest baptize with a
triple immersion, with only one invocation of the Holy Trinity.”3 The Anglican scholar Joseph Esmond Riddle
(1804 – 1859) gives the following version, writing that “Trine immersion is prescribed in the Sacramentary of
Gregory the Great:”

“Baptizet sacerdos sub trina mersione, tantum S. Trinitatem semel invocans, ita dicendo: baptizo te in
nomine Patris, et mergat semel, et Filii, et mergat iterum, et Spiritus Sancti, et mergat tertio;” i.e. “Let
the priest baptize with a trine (triple) immersion, but with only one invocation of the Holy Trinity,
saying, I baptize thee in the name of the Father, (then let him dip the person once,) and of the Son,
(then let him dip the person a second time,) and of the Holy Ghost, (and then let him dip the third
time.)”4

The Gellone Sacramentary (“Codex Gellonensi”), a late 8th century manuscript from the Gellone Abbey in
Southern France, also prescribes trine immersion in two different offices:

Office I. And having received the infants from their parents, let them baptize them by trine
immersion alone, invoking but once the Holy Trinity, saying thus: ‘I baptize thee in the name of the
Father,’ and he is to immerse once; ‘and of the Son,’ and he is to immerse a second time; ‘and of the
Holy Ghost,’ and he is to immerse a third time.

Office II. [Office for baptizing a sick or weak person.] And he is to take him in his hands and baptize
him by trine immersion, once only invoking the Trinity, saying thus: ‘I baptize thee in the name of the
Father,’ and he is to immerse him once; ‘and of the Son,’ and he is to immerse him a second time; ‘and

1 Frederick Edward Warren, The Liturgy and Ritual of the Celtic Church, Ch. I, § 8., p. 65, Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1881. Note that Warren refers to the Missale Gothicum, the Missale Gallicanum Vetus, and the Missale
Vesontionense (also called the Missale Bobbiense), which are Gallican documents of the eighth century. The
“earliest extant Irish Baptismal Office” is contained in the Stowe Missal, and although it permits the
alternative of sprinkling, this is implied to be for exceptional cases, as the administrator was ordered to
“descend into the font”. In both cases of immersion and sprinkling, a three-fold action is directed. Also see
Michael S. Driscoll, The Conversion of the Nations, in Geoffrey Wainwright and Karen Westerfield Tucker
(editors), The Oxford History of Christian Worship, Ch. V, pp. 180 – 181, Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2006.
2 H. A. Wilson, The Gelasian Sacramentary: Liber Sacramentorum Romanae Ecclesiae, Liber I, XCIV, pp. 142 –

143, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1894; Also see Chrystal, Baptism, p. 109.
3 “Baptizat cum sacerdos sub trina mersione,” Gregor. Sacram. de Bapt. Infant. Translation from Thomas

Armitage, A History of the Baptists, Post-Apostolic Times, Ch. VII, p. 247, New York, NY: Bryan, Taylor, & Co.,
1887.
4 Joseph Esmond Riddle, A Manual of Christian Antiquities, Book IV, Ch. II, § 6, 1., pp. 502 – 503, London: John

W. Parker, 2nd Ed., 1843.

 590

of the Holy Ghost,’ and he is to immerse him a third time: or he shall pour water upon him with a
shell (conca). He is to raise him from the font.1

There are several ancient manuscripts from different localities of the Frankish empire, and they all agree in
directing trine immersion. In a priest’s exam (Interrogatio ad sacerdotes) from the 9th century, the priest is
asked, “How do you baptise?” The Wolfenbüttel manuscript gives the following answer:

In the name of the Holy Trinity, that is the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost, I thrice submerge
[him or her] or pour oil and chrism over [him or her] with a bowl. I wash [his or her] feet following
the Lord’s example. I dress [him or her] in white clothes according to the custom of priests. I give
[him or her] the body and the blood, as the Lord says: Unless you shall eat the flesh of the Son of Man
and drink His blood you shall not have Eternal Life.

This ritual is largely the same in the Albi and Paris manuscripts. In the St. Gallen manuscript, the answer is:

I baptise in the name of the Holy Trinity, that is the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. I
submerge [him or her] three times and anoint [him or her] with oil and chrism. I give [him or her]
the body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ according to what He says: Unless you shall eat the flesh
of the Son of Man and drink you shall have no part of me.

The Wolfenbüttel manuscript dates to the first half of the ninth century, and the Albi from the middle of the
ninth century, and the Paris and St. Gallen manuscripts are also from the ninth century. Carine van Rhijn, a
lecturer in Medieval History at the University of Utrecht, who has examined many manuscripts of this era,
remarks, “There was, in other words, room for local practices: as long as priests took care that all lay Franks
were baptised by triple immersion, many details could be filled in as was seen fit locally.” 2

Archbishop Magnus of Sens (consecrated by Pope Leo III at Rome in 801, d. 818), former chaplain of
Charlemagne, was the “author of a sort of hand book of legislation of which he made use when he journeyed
as missus dominicus, or royal agent for Charlemagne”.3 In this work he treats of baptism as follows:

Baptism in Greek is translated immersion in Latin, … and therefore the infant is immersed three
times in the sacred font, that trine immersion may mystically show forth the three days’ burial of
Christ, and that the lifting up from the waters may be a likeness of Christ rising from the tomb.4

Bishop Leidradus of Lyons (bishop from 798 – 814, d. 817), a correspondent of Charlemagne, wrote the
following on baptism, and in which there is a toleration for single immersion:

But we immerse three times that we may show forth the mystery of the three days’ burial; that whilst
the infant is drawn out of the water three times, the resurrection [at the close] of three days may be
shown forth, … in the baptism of infants there ought to be no censure for immersing once or thrice,
since in three immersions the Trinity of persons [in the Godhead] can be exhibited, and in a single
immersion the oneness of Jehovah.5

1 Chrystal, Baptism, pp. 111 – 112. See the other ancient sacramentaries given in this location by Chrystal.
Note that the alternative of pouring is only given as an option for the baptising of sick persons.
2 Carine van Rhijn, Religious Franks: Religion and Power in the Frankish Kingdoms, Part I, Ch. IX, Manchester:

Manchester University Press, 2016.

3 Georges Goyau, Sens, in Catholic Encyclopedia, Vol. XII, p. 717.
4 “Baptismum Græce Latine tinetio interpretatur … infans ter mergitur in sacro fonte ut sepulturam

triduanam Christi trina demersio mystice designaret, et ab aquis elevatio Christi resurgentis similitudo est de
sepulero.” Migne, PL, Vol. CII, p. 981. Translation from Cathcart, Baptism, p. 92.
5 “Nos autem tertio mergimus … infantum in baptismate vel ter vel semel merger; quando in tribus

mersionibus personarum trinitas, et in una potest divinitatis singularitas designari.” Migne, PL, Vol. XCIX, p.
863. Translation from Cathcart, Baptism, p. 93.
 591

Bishop Theodulphus of Orléans (750 – 821), who enjoyed the acquaintance of Charlemagne and Louis the
Pious, wrote a tract On Baptism, in which he says:

We are buried with Christ when, at the invocation of the Holy Trinity, we descent by trine immersion
into the font of the laver as if into a certain grave. When divested [by baptism] of all sins as we go out
from the font, we arise with Christ.1

Regino of Prüm (d. 915) was a Benedictine monk, abbot of Prüm, and Carolingian chronicler. In his work on
Ecclesiastical Discipline he says: “Those whom we baptize we immerse three times; and we instruct them to
renounce in words Satan and his angels.”2

Rupert of Deutz (1075/1080 – 1129), a Benedictine scholar and Abbot of Deutz, speaks of baptism in the
following terms: “Otherwise why by trine immersion are we baptized in the name of the Father and of the
Son, and of the Holy Spirit?”3

The Council of Tribur (or Teuver), held in early August 895, declares in favour of trine immersion.
Archbishop Hatto I of Mainz (850 – 913, consecrated archbishop 891) presided, and sources report from 22
to 27 bishops in attendance, almost all German. Canon XII contains the following statement: “The trine
immersion is an imitation of the three days’ burial, and the rising again out of the water is an image of Christ
rising from the grave.”4

In this chapter I focused on the East and West before the schism, and the West afterwards. The Orthodox East
continued to uphold the Apostolic tradition of triple immersion in baptism, and it is worth mentioning some
Eastern authorities after the first millennium, such as Michael Cerularius (quoted below), St. Theodosius of
the Kievan Caves Monastery (quoted below), Zonaras, Balsamon, Meletius the Confessor, and Mark of
Ephesus (quoted above), along with many others, who all uphold triple immersion.5

More authorities can be found in the excellent study of the American Protestant James Chrystal, who wrote a
book to defend the trine immersion mode of baptism, sympathising with the Orthodox Church.6

1 “Sub trina immersion in fonte lavacri, quasi in quoddam sepulcrum descendimus … de fonte quasi
egredimur.” Theodulphus Episcopi Aurelianensis, lib. de Ordine Baptismi, cap. xiii. Migne, PL, Vol. CV, p. 223.
Translation from Cathcart, Baptism, p. 94.
2 “Ter mergimus quos baptizamus.” Cathcart, Baptism, pp. 126 – 127.
3 “Alioqué cur sub trina mersione baptizamur … ?” Cathcart, Baptism, pp. 128 – 129.
4 “Trina namque in baptismate inmersio, triduanam imitatur sepulturam. Et ab aquis elevatio, instar est

resurgentis de supulchro.” Concilium Triburense or Concilii Triburiensis, A.D. 895, Can. XII. Translated in
Chrystal, Baptism, p. 102. Latin in Josephus Hartzheim, Concilia Germaniæ, Vol. II, p. 395, Cologne: Joannis
Wilhelmi Krakamp & Christiani Simonis, 1760. Also in Hardouin, Concilia, Vol. VI, p. 443. See the full text of
this canon for further context. Chrystal notes the similarity of this synod’s statement with the words of Pope
Leo the Great on trine immersion (cited above in the first section), who is quoted in this same canon.
5 Warwick Elwin, The Minister of Baptism, Ch. VIII, p. 131, London: John Murray, 1889. Also see Maria

Naumendco (translator), Against Baptism By Pouring: An Epistle of Archbishop Nikiphor of Slovania and
Kherson, 1754, Church Life, No. 1 – 2, 1959 (Reprinted in Orthodox Life, Jan-Feb, 1990, pp. 16 – 19,
Jordanville, New York: Holy Trinity Publications, 1990).
6 James Chrystal, A History of the Modes of Christian Baptism, Philadelphia, PA: Lindsay and Blakiston, 1861.

For information on the interesting character of James Chrystal (1832 – 1908), see David F. Abramtsov, The
Western Rite and the Eastern Church: Dr. J. J. Overbeck and His Scheme for the Re-Establishment of the
Orthodox Church in the West, p. 27, Pittsburgh, PA, Dissertation: University of Pittsburgh, 1961. [available at
anglicanhistory.org/orthodoxy/abramtsov.pdf]. A good short article is
orthodoxhistory.org/2009/10/29/james-chrystal-the-first-convert-priest/.
 592

Section II Whether Trine Immersion is from Tradition or Scripture

Jerome, Basil, and perhaps Tertullian are the only fathers of the first 550 years to ascribe the number of
immersions to tradition. Opponents of trine immersion have cited their passages (quoted in this work) to
allege that trine immersion is not scriptural, but merely a later tradition. However, this is a tradition which
has been passed down from the Apostles and Christ.1 Tertullian clearly states that trine immersion follows
from the Lord’s command, and Saints Basil and Jerome both see trine immersion in harmony with the Gospel,
and not as a detached tradition. St. Basil finds the trine immersion corresponding to the three invocations of
the three persons of the Trinity, and St. Jerome says that the three immersions represent the mystery of the
Trinity. Moreover, the Church Fathers ascribe trine immersion to the command of Christ in the Scriptures, or
they interpret it as the proper procedure that follows from those words and the symbolism of the Gospel.
Although I will not get into the subject here, there is a good case that the specific grammatical construction of
Christ’s words demand trine immersion, but in any case, the tradition is universal and undoubtedly
apostolical, and thus the proper interpretation of Scripture.

Section III Gregory the Great and Single Immersion

Pope Gregory the Great was the first Orthodox writer to give permission for single immersion as a regular
mode of baptism. In Spain, there was a controversy concerning trine immersion, from around the sixth to
eighth centuries. The Arians baptized with triple immersion and attempted to defend their theology from this
practice, and as some Orthodox Christians did not want to imitate the heretics in this matter, it was in this
context that Pope Gregory gave the recommendation to Bishop Leander to baptize with single immersion.

The Anglican historian Joseph Bingham writes: “Trine Immersion [was] the general Practice for several
Ages … But I must observe further, that they [the early Christians] not only administered baptism by
immersion under water, but also repeated this three times.”2 Bingham next writes a section summarizing the
controversy over trine immersion in the Spanish Churches:

Sect. VIII. – When first the Church allowed of any Alteration in it [trine immersion].

Yet there happened a circumstance in the Spanish Churches, in after ages, which gave a little turn
to this affair. For the Arians, in Spain, not being of the sect of the Eunomians, continued for many
years to baptize with three immersions. But, then, they abused this ceremony to a very perverse end,
to patronize their error about the Son and Holy Ghost being of a different nature, or essence, from the
Father. For they made the three immersions to denote a difference, or degrees of divinity in the three
Divine Persons. To oppose whose wicked doctrine, and that they might not seem to symbolize with
them in any practice that might give encouragement to it, some Catholics began to leave off the trine
immersion, as savouring of Arianism, and took up the single immersion in opposition to them. But
this was like to prove matter of scandal and schism among the Catholics themselves. And, therefore,
in the time of Gregory the Great, Leander, bishop of Seville, wrote to him for his advice and resolution
in this case; to which he returned this answer1: “Concerning the three immersions in baptism, you
have judged very truly already, that different rites and customs do not prejudice the holy Church,
whilst the unity of faith remains entire. The reason why we use three immersions (at Rome) is to
signify the mystery of Christ’s three days’ burial, that whilst an infant is thrice lifted up out of the
water, the resurrection on the third day may be expressed thereby. But if any one thinks this is
rather done in regard to the Holy Trinity, a single immersion in baptism does no way prejudice that:
for so long as the unity of substance is preserved in Three Persons, it is no harm whether a child be
baptized with one immersion or three; because three immersions may represent the Trinity of
Persons; and one immersion, the Unity of Godhead. But forasmuch as heretics use to baptize their

1 Also see Chrystal, Baptism, Ch. VIII, pp. 155 – 162, and the general arguments made throughout Chrystal’s
volume.
2 Joseph Bingham, Origines Ecclesiasticæ, Vol. III, Book XI, Ch. XI, § VI, pp. 605, London: William Straker, 1843.
 593

infants with three immersions, I think you ought not to do so; lest this multiplication of immersions
be interpreted a division of the Godhead, and give them occasion to glory, that their custom has
prevailed.” Yet this judgment of Pope Gregory did not satisfy all men in the Spanish Church: for still
many kept to the old way of baptizing by three immersions, notwithstanding this fear of symbolizing
with the Arians. Therefore some time after, about the year 633, the fourth Council of Toledo, which
was a general council of all Spain, was forced to make another decree to determine this matter, and
settle the peace of the Church. For while some priests baptized with three immersions, and the
others but with one, a schism was raised, endangering the unity of the faith. For the contending
parties carried the matter so high, as to pretend, that they who were baptized in a way contrary to
their own, were not baptized at all. To remedy which evil, the fathers of this council first repeat the
judgment of Pope Gregory, and them immediately conclude upon it, that2 “though both these ways of
baptism were just and unblameable in themselves, according to the opinion of that great man; yet, as
well to avoid the scandal of schism as the usage of heretics, they decree, that only one immersion
should be used in baptism; lest, if any used three immersions, they might seem to approve the
opinion of heretics, whilst they followed their practice. And that no one might be dubious about the
use of a single immersions, he might consider, that the death and resurrection of Christ were
represented by it: for the immersion in water was, as it were, the descending into hell, or the grave;
and the emersion out of the water, was a resurrection. He might also observe the Unity of the Deity,
and the Trinity of Persons to be signified by it: the Unity by a single immersion; and the Trinity, by
giving baptism in the name of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.” Some learned persons find fault with this
council for changing this ancient custom upon so slight a reason, as that of the Arians using it: which,
if it were any reason, would hold as well against a single immersion; because the Eunomians, a baser
sect of the Arians, were the first inventors of that practice. And, therefore, the exception made by this
Spanish council in the seventh century, cannot prejudice the more ancient and general practice of the
Church; which, as Strabo observed, still prevailed after this council: and, if Vossius says true, the trine
immersion, or, what corresponds to it, the triple aspersion, is the general practice of all Churches
upon earth at this day; and such a custom could not well be laid aside, without some charge of
novelty, and danger of giving offence and scandal to weaker brethren.

1. De trina mersione baptismatis, nil responderi verius potest, quam quod ipsi sensistis: quia in una
fide nihil officit sanctæ ecclesiæ consuetudo diversa. Nos autem quod tertio mergimus, triduanæ
sepulturæ sacramenta signamus, ut dum tertio infans ab aquis educitur, resurrectio triduani
temporis exprimatur. Quod si quis forte etiam pro summæ Trinitatis veneration æstimet fieri, neque
ad hoc aliquid obsistit, baptizando semel in aquis mergere: quia dum in tribus Personis una
substantia est, reprehensibile esse nullatenus potest, infantem in baptismate in aquam vel ter vel
semel immergere, quando et in tribus mersionibus personarum Trinitas, et in una potest divinitatis
singularitas, designari. Sed quia nunc huc usque ab hæreticis infans in baptismate tertio mergebatur,
fiendum apud vos esse non censeo: ne dum mersiones enumerant, divinitatem dividant: dumque
quod faciebant faciunt, se morem nostrum vicisse glorientur.

2. De baptismi autem sacramento, propter quod in Hispaniis quidam sacerdotes trinam, quidam
simplam mersionem faciunt, a nonnullis schisma esse conspicitur, et unitas fidei scindi videtur: nam
dum [partes diveræ in baptizandis aliqua contrario modo agunt, ab aliis] patres diverso et quasi
contrario modo agunt, alii alios non baptizatos esse contendunt. … Quapropter, quia de utroque
sacramento, quod fit in sancto baptism, a tanto viro reddita est ratio, quod utrumque rectum,
utrumque irreprehensibile, in sancta Dei ecclesia habeatur; propter vitandum autem schismatic
scandalum, vel hæretici dogmatis usum, simplicem teneamus baptismi mersionem; ne videantur
apud nos, qui tertio mergunt, hæreticorum approbare assertionem, dum sequuntur et morem. Et ne
forte cuiquam sit dubium hujus simpli mysterium sacramenti, videat in eo mortemet resurrectionem
Christi significari: nam in aquis mersio, quasi in infernum descensio est; et rursus ab aquis emersion,
resurrection est. Item videat in eo Unitatem divinitatis, et Trinitatem personarum ostendi: Unitatem,
dum semel immergimus; Trinitatem, dum [in] nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti, baptizamus. 1

1Joseph Bingham, Origines Ecclesiasticæ, Vol. III, Book XI, Ch. XI, § VIII, pp. 609 – 612, London: William
Straker, 1843. For a good historical background, see Bingham’s Book X (pp. 399 – 612), “Of the rites and
 594

Pope Gregory’s letter states the following (here is another translation):

But with respect to trine immersion in baptism, no truer answer can be given than what you
have yourself felt to be right; namely that, where there is one faith, a diversity of usage does no harm
to holy Church. Now we, in immersing thrice, signify the sacraments of the three days' sepulture;
so that, when the infant is a third time lifted out of the water, the resurrection after a space of three
days may be expressed. Or, if any one should perhaps think that this is done out of veneration for the
supreme Trinity, neither so is there any objection to immersing the person to be baptized in the
water once, since, there being one substance in three subsistences, it cannot be in any way
reprehensible to immerse the infant in baptism either thrice or once, seeing that by three immersions
the Trinity of persons, and in one the singleness of the Divinity may be denoted. But, inasmuch as up
to this time it has been the custom of heretics to immerse infants in baptism thrice, I am of opinion
that this ought not to be done among you; lest, while they number the immersions, they should divide
the Divinity, and while they continue to do as they have been used to do, they should boast of having
got the better of our custom.1

It does not appear that there has been any dedicated study or article on this letter, as far as I have been able
to find in the literature. Pope Gregory’s letter to Leander is important to this topic because it is the first
authorization by a Church Father permitting a deviation from trine immersion, and later writers have
repeatedly cited it as the primary defence for single immersion. Dr. James Barmby, the editor of the English
translation of St. Gregory’s epistles, dates this letter to 591.2

The fifth canon of the Fourth Council of Toledo in 633 (the first council to permit single immersion), after first
quoting the letter of Pope Gregory to Leander, states (here is another translation):

For, shunning the scandal of schism or the use of an heretical practice, we observe a single
immersion in baptism. Nor do they who immerse three times appear to us to approve of the claims
of heretics, although they follow their custom [of trine immersion]. And that no one may doubt the
propriety of this single sacrament, let him see that in it the death and resurrection of Christ are
shown forth. For the immersion in the waters is a descent, as it were, into the grave; and again the
emersion from the waters is a resurrection. Likewise, he may see displayed in it the unity of the
Deity and the Trinity of persons – the unity whilst we immerse once, and the Trinity whilst we
baptize in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.3

customs observed in the administration of baptism in the primitive Church.” Gerrit Janszoon Vos (or
Gerardus Vossius, 1577 – 1649) was a learned Dutch Protestant scholar and theologian.
1 “De trina vero mersione baptismatis nihil respondi verius potest quam ipsi sensistis quia in una fide nihil

officit sanctæ Ecclesiæ consuetudo diversa. Nos autem, quod tertio mergimus, triduanæ sepulturæ
sacramenta signamus, ut dum tertio ab aquis infans educitur, resurrectio triduani temporis exprimitur. Quod
si quid forte etiam pro summa Trinitatis veneratione æstimet fieri, neque ad hoc aliquid obsistit,
baptizandum semel in aquis mergere, quia dum in tribus subsistentiis una substantia est, reprehensibile esse
nullatenus potest infantem in baptismate vel ter vel semel mergere, quando et in tribus mersionibus
personarum Trinitas, et in una potest divinitatis singularitas designar. Sed si nunc hucusque ab hæreticis
infans in baptismate tertio mergebatur, fiendum apud vos esse non censeo, ne dum mersiones numerant,
divinitatem dividant, dumque quod faciebant faciunt morem vestrum se vicisse glorientur.” Epistola Papæ
Gregorii Ad Leandrum Hispalensem Episcopum. Migne, PL, Vol. LXXXIV, p. 834 A – B. This letter is also
preserved in the canonical collection of St. Isidore, from which it is here cited. James Barmby (translator and
editor), Register of the Epistles of Saint Gregory the Great, Book I, Epistle XLIII, in NPNF, Series II, Vol. XII, p.
88.
2 James Barmby (translator and editor), Register of the Epistles of Saint Gregory the Great, Book I, Epistle

XLIII, in NPNF, Series II, Vol. XII, p. 88, n. 9.

3 Cathcart, Baptism, pp. 106 – 107.
 595

Note that immersion is still required, and no authorization is here given to pouring or sprinkling. It is also
worth noting that the Eighth Council of Toledo, held twenty years later in 653, may have been the first to
include the filioque in the Creed (the tradition that says it first appeared in the Third Council of Toledo in 589
has been challenged by scholars, as noted in a previous chapter).

Hildephonsus of Toledo (or Ildefonsus, c. 607 – 667/669), in his treatise De Cognitione Baptismi, defends the
unique Spanish custom of only one baptismal immersion, echoing the view of the Council of Toledo:

That he is once immersed, he is sprinkled in the name of the one Deity. But if he were thrice
immersed, the number of the three days of the Lord’s burial is shown forth. And therefore within the
limits of our faith differing customs are not opposed to one another. But because the heretics by this
number of immersions are accustomed to rend the unity of the Godhead, it is by God’s guidance that
the Church of God observes the practice of one sprinkling only [c. 117]. 1

Alcuin (735 – 804), perhaps the most eminent scholar and theologian of his age in the West, writes the
following on Trine Immersion, in a letter to the canons of Lyons:

Spain, formerly the nurse of tyrants, is now the nurse of schismatics. There, contrary to the
universal custom of the holy Church of God, a doubt in regard to baptism has been proclaimed.
Certain persons affirm that there should be one immersion [only], performed with the invocation of
the Trinity. The apostle seems to differ from that doctrine where he says, ‘For ye are buried with
Christ by baptism.’ Rome. vi. 4. And though this is to be understood figuratively, yet we know that
Christ was three days and three nights in the sepulchre. … The three nights may signify three
immersions, and the three days thrice lifting up from [the water]. … [Alcuin then correctly quotes St.
Jerome, St. Ambrose, and Pope Leo the Great to prove that they administered baptism by trine
immersion.] This testimony was left to us by the chief teachers and most holy Fathers. … [He then
appeals to the baptismal usages known to the canons of Lyons.] The Pagan becomes one of the
catechumens. He renounces Satan and all his hurtful pomps, etc., and in the name of the holy Trinity
he is baptized by trine immersion.2

Alcuin proceeds to notice the letter of Pope St. Gregory the Great (540 – 604) to St. Leander, bishop of
Hispalis (Seville), written in the end of the sixth century, in which Pope Gregory approves of a toleration for a
single immersion in Spain, and Alcuin states, “I did not find that letter in the book of his epistles which was
brought to me from Rome, … and I doubt whether it was written by Gregory or by some founder of that
party.”3 Although Alcuin suspects that Pope Gregory’s letter is a forgery, most scholars maintain its
authenticity. Cathcart writes,

And when Alcuin failed to find the letter among Gregory’s Epistles, he concluded that it must be a
forgery, as no pope could set aside the trine immersion administered in all the churches for ages. But
Gregory did write the letter, and kept no copy of it. Leander received and preserved it. The same
thing happened to other epistles of the same pope, copies of which were not in his Book of Epistles in
Alcuin’s time.4

1 E. C. Whitaker and Maxwell E. Johnson, Documents of the Baptismal Liturgy, Ch. X, p. 164, London: Society
for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 3rd Ed., 2003. Introductory remarks from Maxwell E. Johnson, Images of
Baptism, Ch. I, p. 12, Forum Essays, No. VI, Chicago, IL: Archdiocese of Chicago: Liturgy Training Publications,
2001.
2 “Universalem sanctæ Dei ecclesiæ consuetudinem … affirmantes quidam sub invocation Trinitatis unam

esse mersionem agendam. … Possunt tres noctes tres mersiones, et tres dies elevations designare … in
nomine sanctæ Trinitatis trina submersion baptizatur … epistolam vero quam a beato Gregoria de simpla
mersione dicunt esse conscriptam.” Alcuini Epistolæ, Ep. 90. Migne, PL, Vol. C, pp. 289 – 293. Translated
from Cathcart, Baptism, pp. 118 – 119.
3 Cathcart, Baptism, p. 119.
4 Cathcart, Baptism, p. 120.
 596

As to the question of this letter’s authenticity, there are several points to make. It is interesting that Alcuin
suspected its authenticity and was unable to find this letter in the book of Gregory’s Book of Epistles in his
time, and it appears he never received confirmation of its authenticity, for he continues to argue for trine
immersion later in his life. However, a contemporary bishop, Saint Licinianus, writing to Pope Gregory,
mentions the letter that Gregory wrote to Leander on trine immersion,1 and it is recorded by St. Isidore of
Seville that St. John the Faster of Constantinople wrote to Leander in support of trine immersion (noted
below), which shows that Leander was interested in this subject and had written to the Patriarch of
Constantinople for advice as well. Moreover, numerous subsequent authors cite or mention Pope Gregory’s
letter to Leander, such as Hugo of St. Victor, Peter Abelard, Peter Lombard, the Fourth Council of Toledo,
Strabo,2 Leidradus of Lyons, the Council of Worms in 868,3 the canonical collection of St. Isidore (cited here),
the canonical collection of Ivo of Chartres (referred to here), Radluphus of Ardens (cited here), as well as
Thomas Aquinas, who was cited in the first chapter, as well as others who commented upon Lombard’s
Sentences or follow these writers.

Admitting that Gregory’s letter is authentic, which is most likely the case, he only permits immersion in
baptism, and does not countenance pouring or sprinkling. Moreover, Pope Gregory testifies that they
baptized with trine immersion at Rome. It is evident that he thought immersion itself of Divine origin.
Elsewhere, he speaks thus: “Our very descent into the water is called baptism, that is, immersion.”4 It is also
interesting that the Gregorian Sacramentary (cited in this section) prescribes trine immersion.

On another occasion Alcuin writes about baptism:

In the name of the holy Trinity a man is baptized by trine immersion, and he who was made for an
image of the sacred Trinity, by the invocation of the holy Trinity is directly restored to the same
image.5

In a treatise On the Divine Offices Alcuin writes of baptism:

Then the priest baptizes the infant by trine immersion, invoking the holy Trinity only once, and
speaking thus: ‘I baptize you in the name of the Father,’ and he immerses him once; ‘and of the Son,’
and he immerses him again; ‘and of the Holy Spirit,’ and he immerses him a third time.” 6

In Alcuin’s 81st epistle, concerning certain Spanish heresies, he writes to Paulinus:

From the midst of the thorns of the rural districts of Spain, and from the lurking places of his
envenomed perfidy, the old serpent again attempts to lift his head which had been bruised, not by the
club of Hercules, but by the power of the Gospel, and, in the cups of his ancient malice, to mingle a
new and accursed poison: and like a very freezing blast from the North he has assaulted one side of
the solid bulwarks of the Church in his endeavor to change the rule of the holy baptism of Catholic
custom, and by introducing the notion that it ought to be administered by invocation of the Holy
Trinity, indeed, but with a single immersion only. 7

1 Register of the Epistles of Saint Gregory the Great, Book II, Epistle LIV, in NPNF, Series II, Vol. XII, p. 121.
2 Cathcart, Baptism, pp. 100, 101, 103, 107, & 125, respectively.
3 Chrystal, Baptism, pp. 83 & 102, respectively.
4 Chrystal, Baptism, p. 81. Also see Ch. VII, pp. 143 – 154.
5 “Trina submersione.” Alcuini de Baptismi Cæremoniis. Migne, PL, Vol. CI, p. 614. Translation from Cathcart,

Baptism, p. 121.
6 “Deinde baptizat eum sacerdos sub trina mersione tantum sanctam trinitatem semel invocando, ita dicens,

et ego te baptize in nomine Patris, et mergat semel; et Filii, et mergat iterum; et Spiritus Sancti, et mergat
tertio.” De Divi Offic., cap. 19. Migne, PL, Vol. CI, p. 1219. Translated in Cathcart, Baptism, p. 122. Another
translation is in David Benedict (editor), Robert Robinson, The History of Baptism, Ch. XXVI, p. 264, Boston:
Lincoln & Edmands, 1817.
7 Chrystal, Baptism, p. 146.
 597

Alcuin says likewise in his 113th epistle, writing to Paulinus:

Some assert that there ought to be but one immersion, and neglect to imitate in baptism the three
days’ burial of our Saviour, even when an Apostle says ‘you have been buried with Christ in baptism.’
(Rom. 6: 4; Col. 2: 12.) But there are others, who are willing to use the trine immersion, but to invoke
the whole Trinity at every immersion; thus they study to name all the three persons thrice; but the
truth itself teaches, ‘Go ye, therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father,
and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.’ (Matt. 28: 19.) What need of thrice repeating the whole
Trinity, if once suffices?

Unam asserentes mersionem fieri debere, triduanamque nostri salvatoris sepulturam in baptismo
negligentes, cum apostolus disceret: Consepulti enim estis cum Christo in baptismo. (Rom. 6: 4; Col.
2: 12.) Alii vero trinam volentes facere mersionem et in unaquaque mersione invocationem Sanctæ
Trinitatis: ac per hoc totas tres personas ter nominare studentes, dum ipsa veritas præciperet. Ite,
docete omnes gentes, baptizantes eas in nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti. (Matt. 28: 19.) Quid
opus est tertio replicare, quod semel dictum sifficit? 1

Walafrid Strabo (808 – 849), a German monk and theological writer, expresses the following very appropriate
sentiment on this subject:

In the beginning believers were freely baptized in rivers or fountains. Our Lord Jesus Christ himself,
to consecrate the same laver for us, was baptized by John in the Jordan. And we read elsewhere that
John was baptizing in Enon near Salim, because there was much water there. And Philip the
evangelist baptized the eunuch in a fountain which he found by the way. …

Some desire trine immersion, because of its resemblance to the three days’ burial [of Christ], and
because the Apostolic Canons and the custom of the Romans observes it. Others contended for a
single immersion to exhibit the unity of the Godhead: the council of Toledo includes a full account,
and records that when Leander asked blessed Gregory about this (among other matters), he replied,
“where there is one faith, a diversity of usage does no harm to holy Church. Now we, in immersing,
thrice, signify the sacraments of the three days’ sepulture; so that, when the infant is a third time
lifted out of the water, the resurrection after a space of three days may be expressed. Or, if any one
should perhaps think that this is done out of veneration for the supreme Trinity, neither so is there
any objection to immersing the person to be baptized in the water once, since, there being one
substance in three subsistences, it cannot be in any way reprehensible to immerse the infant in
baptism either thrice or once, seeing that by three immersions the Trinity of persons, and in one the
singleness of the Divinity may be denoted.”

Single immersion was at that time pleasing to the Spaniards, who asserted that the trine immersion
should be disused because certain heretics, for the purpose of denying the consubstantiality, had
dared to propound the dogma that there are dissimilar substances in the Trinity. Notwithstanding,
the more ancient use and the reason above stated prevailed. For if we are to desert everything
which heretics have perverted, nothing will be left us, since they have erred concerning even God
himself, and they have twisted everything which seems to pertain to his worship, and have applied it
as though it were peculiarly designed for the support of their errors.

It ought to be noted, that many have been baptized, not only by immersion, but by pouring, and so it
can still be performed if there be necessity, as we read in the passion of St. Laurentius, that one was
baptized from a pitcher which had been brought in. This even usually happens when the large size of
the bodies of the more mature, and the small size of the vessel which serves as a font, renders it
impossible that they should be immersed.

1 Alcuin ep. cxiii, ad Paulinum. Chrystal, Baptism, p. 82.

 598

Sciendem autem, primo simpliciter in fluviis vel fontibus baptizatos credentes; ipse enim Dominus
noster Iesus Christus, ut nobis idem consecraret lavacrum, in Iordane baptizatus est a Ioanne, et sicut
alibi legitur: “Erat Ioannes baptizans in Aenon iuxta Salim, quia aquae multae erant ibi”; et Phillipus
evangelista eunuchum baptizavit in fonte, quem repperit in via. …

Alii trinam mersionem volunt in similitudem triduanae sepulturae, ut in canonibus apostolorum

statutum habetur et Romanorum consuetudo observat; alii unam propter divinitatis unitatem
contendunt, ut in concilio toletano plenissime habetur, ubi etiam commemoratur, quod beatus
Gregorius interroganti super hoc Leandro inter caetera ita responderit: “quia in una fide nihil officit
ecclesiae consuetudo diversa. Nos autem, quod tertio mergimus triduanae sepulturae sacramenta
signamus, ut dum tertio ab aquis infans educitur resurrectio triduani temporis exprimatur. Quod si quis
forte etiam pro summae trinitatis veneratione existimet fieri, neque ob hoc aliquid obsistit baptizandum
semel in aquis mergere; quia dum in tribus subsistentiis una substantia est, repraehensibile esse
nullatenus poterit, infantem baptismate ter vel semel mergere, quando et in tribus mersionibus
personarum trinitas et in una potest divinitatis singularitas designari.”

Quae singularis mersio quamvis tune ita Hispanis complacuit dicentibus, trinam mersionem ideo
vitandam, quia haeretici quidam dissimiles in trinitate substantias dogmatizantes ea usi sint ad
consubstantialitatem sanctae trinitatis negandam, tamen antiquior usus praevaluit et ratio
supradicta. Si enim omnia deserimus, quae haeretici in suam perversitatem traxerunt, nihil nobis
restabit, cum illi in ipso Deo errantes omnia, quae ad eius cultum pertinere visa sunt, suis erroribus
quasi propria applicarint.

Notandum autem, non solum mergendo, verum etiam desuper fundendo multos baptizatos fuisse et
adhuc posse ita baptizari, si necessitas sit. Sicut in passione beati Laurentii quendam urceo allato
legimus baptizatum, hoc etiam solet evenire, cum provectiorum granditas corporum in minoribus
vasis hominem tingui non patitur.1

It is noteworthy that Strabo does not accept (and does not quote, out of courtesy) Gregory’s argument for
changing the mode of baptism due to heretical usage (whereas Gregory says, “But forasmuch as heretics use
to baptize their infants with three immersions, I think you ought not to do so”, Strabo says, “For if we are to
desert everything which heretics have perverted, nothing will be left us, since they have erred concerning

1Latin in Aloisius Knoepfler, Walafridi Strabonis Liber De Exordis et Incrementis Quarundam in

Observationibus Ecclesiasticis Rerum, Ch. XXVII, pp. 85 – 91, Munich: Sumptibus Librariae Lentnerianae (E.
Stahl Jun.), 2nd Ed., 1899, (Bingham has cited this source as “Strabo de Offic. Eccles. c. xxvi.”). Translation
combined from Chrystal, Baptism, pp. 84 & 146; Cathcart, Baptism, pp. 124 – 126; Alice L. Harting-Correa,
Walahfrid Strabo’s Libellus de exordiis & incrementis quarundam in observationibus ecclesiasticis rerum: A
Translation and Liturgical Commentary, Text and Translation, pp. 174 – 177, Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1996. Harting-
Correa’s work is the critical edition and complete translation of Strabo’s Libellus. Chrystal’s translation has
some slight defects that are better rendered in Harting-Correa’s work, and it must be noticed that the ending
part of Chrystal’s quote on p. 146, “But why should I speak farther. Suffice it to say, that the trine immersion
prevails everywhere in the world this day, and that it can by no means be changed unless in accordance with
a rash desire of novelty, and to the scandal of the weak.” is not found in the original text, and Chrystal (who
had cited Bingham at length) seems to have taken and translated it from a footnote in Bingham (“Quid? quod
hodie trina immersio ubique obtinet terrarum, ut omnino consuetudo ista mutari non possit sine temerario
novitatis studio et scandalo infirmorum.” Joseph Bingham, Origines Ecclesiasticæ, Vol. III, Book XI, Ch. XI, §
VIII, p. 611, note m., London: William Straker, 1843), who mistakenly appended the commentary of the Dutch
Protestant scholar Gerardus Vossius (1577 – 1649) to the end of Strabo’s quote (Bingham cites “Bibl. Patr.
tom. xv. p. 196. H 16. Lugd. 1677.”, but I examined that edition and did not find this text ascribed to Strabo,
and in an earlier edition of Bingham’s works (Vol. III, p. 284, note 1., 1834 Ed.), only references are given to
Strabo’s and Vossius’s work, without any Latin quotation). Henry Sweetser Burrage, The Act of Baptism in
the History of the Christian Church, pp. 100 – 101, Philadelphia, PA: American Baptist Publication Society,
1879, repeats this error (along with Quinter, ibid., pp. 217 – 218; both have likely copied from Chrystal), but
Burrage’s Latin citation on p. 232, does not include this part.
 599

even God himself”), but Strabo accepts Gregory’s argument that “a diversity of usage does no harm to holy
Church”, although Strabo calls trine immersion “the more ancient use”.

Pope Vigilius (Pope from 537 – 555) directs trine immersion to be done in baptism, in his Epistle to Bishop
Profuturus of Braga, written June 538, saying:

De baptismo quoque renascentium trina immersione solemniter adimplendo, similiter quid

apostolica vel sanxerit vel observet auctoritas, in subjectis tua charitas evidenter agnoscet. Illud
autem novelli esse judicamus erroris, quod cum in fine psalmorum ab omnibus catholicis ex more
dicatur: Gloria Patri, et Filio, et Spiritui sancto: aliqui, sicut indicas, subducta una syllaba conjunctiva,
perfectum conantur minuere vocabulum Trinitatis, dicendo: Gloria Patri, et Filio, et Spiritu sancto.
Quamvis ergo ipsa nos ratio evidenter edoceat quia subducta una syllaba personam Filii, et Spiritus
sancti unam quodammodo esse designant, tamen ad errorem talium convincendum sufficit vox
Domini Jesu Christii, quæ designans in invocatione Trinitatis credentium debere baptisma celebrari,
dixit, Ite, docete omnes gentes, baptizantes eos in nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus sancti. Ergo cum
non dixerit in nomine Patris, et Filii Spiritus sancti, sed æqualibus distinctionibus Patrem, et Filium,
et Spiritum sanctum jusserit nominari, constat illos omnino a doctrina dominica deviare qui aliquid
huic voluerint confessioni subtrahere. Hos itaque tua charitas modis omnibus ad confessionis rectæ
trudeat tramitem revocare: qui si in errore permanserint, socii in nobis esse non possunt. 1

In the First Council of Braga (561 or 563), convened by King Ariamir and attended by eight bishops, along
with various officials and clergy, Lucretius, the Metropolitan Bishop of Braga, ordered this important letter of
Vigilius to be read to the bishops in attendance. The Council promulgated canons which command that the
directions of the Bishop of Rome be followed. Claude W. Barlow (1907 – 1972), a professor of classics at
Clark University, writes:

The first appearance in Spain of the problem of triple immersion versus simple immersion in the
baptismal rite is in a letter from Pope Vigilius in 538 to Profuturus, bishop of Braga. Profuturus had
written to Vigilius to ask for a ruling on several questions, among them the proper form of
immersion. The Pope declared that the only acceptable baptism required a threefold immersion “in
nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti” (Matt. 28: 19). In spite of this, such observance was far from
universal in Spain during the next hundred years. In the First Council of Braga, Lucretius ordered the
letter which had been received from Vigilius 23 years earlier to be read again to the assembled
bishops. The canon which they adopted states that all bishops are to retain the baptizandi ordo as
directed in the letter to Profuturus.2

The First Council of Braga declares, in Canon V,

Concerning the Order of Baptism

1 Epistola Vigilii Papæ Ad Profuturum Episcopum, II. Migne, PL, Vol. LXXXIV, p. 831 A – B. This letter is also
preserved in the canonical collection of St. Isidore, from which it is here cited. This letter, along with useful
notes, is the first in the collection of Vigilius’s Epistles and Decretals, printed in Migne, PL, Vol. LXIX, pp. 15 B –
21 A. It is also interesting that there are textual variants in the very place where Vigilius prescribes trine
immersion (Migne, PL, Vol. LXIX, p. 17 C, nn. b & c), with some readings not including the text “trina
mersione”. Although there are doubts about the authenticity of some parts of this letter, and the textual
tradition is problematic (see the chapter in the Forgeries book on Pope Vigilius’s Epistle to Bishop Profuturus
of Braga), it is certain that at least the part enjoining trine immersion is genuine, as St. Martin of Braga (who is
cited further on) directly refers to it. Profuturus had written to Pope Silverius to ask for advice on several
questions, including the proper mode of baptising. Vigilius, successor of Silverius, replied to Profuturus and
sent him the Roman Order for Liturgy. Nothing else is known of Bishop Profuturus of Braga, a city that was
the Metropolitan See of the Kingdom of the Suebi (or Galicia, Gallæcia, Suevi).
2 Claude W. Barlow, Martini Episcopi Bracarensis Opera Omnia, Ch. VIII, De trina mersione, in Papers and

Monographs of the American Academy in Rome, Vol. XII, p. 251, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1950.
 600

It was also agreed that none should disregard the Order for the administration of baptism which
both formerly was observed by the metropolitan church of Braga, and which for the removal of doubt
was written and sent to bishop Profuturus from the see of the most blessed Apostle Peter.1

St. Martin of Braga (510 – 580), the Archbishop of Braga and a learned ecclesiastical writer and missionary,
wrote “Epistola ad Bonifatium de trina mersione”, a letter to a Spanish Bishop named Boniface, on trine
immersion. Here are some extracts from this important letter here:

Ch. 3. Now you say: “The triple invocation of the name and the triple immersion is certainly Arian.”
Here is my answer: to be immersed thrice in the single name of the Father and of the Son and of the
Holy Ghost is an ancient and apostolic tradition, which the priests of this province possess in written
form on the authority of the Bishop of Rome. This same custom was observed at Easter by the
Bishop of Constantinople in the presence of delegates appointed from this kingdom to the imperial
court. …

Ch. 4. The result is that while they try to avoid approaching the Arians, they unknowingly come near
to the Sabellian heresy, which, in retaining single immersion under a single name, claims that the
Father is the same as the Son and the Holy Ghost and that the Holy Ghost is the same as the Father. …

Ch. 5. But, as I have said, some have not foreseen this line of reasoning and have preferred to observe
a single immersion. Then, to give some authority to their audacity, they have claimed that this was
initiated by certain councils to avoid resemblance to the Arians, which is completely false. There
never was any general or any local council which expressed an opinion in favour of single
immersion.2

This is a very significant letter because it directly anticipates and preemptively refutes the errors of later
Spaniards, who authorized single immersion at the fourth council of Toledo in 633, on the very same pretexts
that St. Martin has shown to be irrational and unjustified. Martin refers to the letter of Pope Vigilius to
Profuturus, read in the First Council of Braga. The Catholic Encyclopedia writes of St. Martin,

His great learning and piety are attested by Gregory of Tours (Hist. Franc., V, xxxviii.), who styles him
full of virtue (plenus virtutibus) and second to none of his contemporaries in learning (“in tantum se
litteris imbuit ut nulli secundus sui temporis haberetur”).3

St. Martin presided over the Second Council of Braga, assembled by King Miro in 572, with twelve bishops in
attendance. The first canon declares:

That the bishop is to perambulate his diocese and catechumens are to be taught the Creed twenty
days before Easter

It seemed proper to all the bishops, and was agreed, that the bishops in every church should
perambulate their dioceses and first examine their clergy, in what manner they observe the order of
Baptism and the Mass, and how they observe any other rites: if their findings are satisfactory, thanks
be to God: if not, they shall teach the ignorant, and particularly they shall teach that catechumens (as

1 “De Ordine Baptizandi: Item placuit, ut nullus eum baptizandi ordinem praetermittat quem et antea tenuit
metropolitana Bracarensis ecclesia, et pro amputanda aliquorum dubietate praedictus Profuturus ab
episcopis scriptum sibi et directum a sede beatissimi apostolic Petri suscepit.” Collectio Canonum Ecclesiae
Hispanae: Ex Probatissimis Ac Pervetustis Codicibus, LXIII, Concilium Bracarense Primum, Can. V, p. 603,
Madrid: Ex Typographia Regia, 1808. Translation from E. C. Whitaker and Maxwell E. Johnson, Documents of
the Baptismal Liturgy, p. 157, London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 3rd Ed., 2003.
2 The Fathers of the Church: A New Translation, Vol. LXII, Iberian Fathers, Vol. I, Martin of Braga, Triple

Immersion, pp. 99 – 102, Washington, DC: CUA Press, 1969. I recommend reading the entirety of this
important letter, and would post it all here, but the translated text is in copyright.
3 Michael Ott, Saint Martin of Braga, in CE, Vol. IX, p. 731.
 601

the ancient canons command) shall come for the cleansing of exorcism twenty days before baptism,
in which twenty days they shall especially be taught the Creed, which is: I believe in God the Father
Almighty …1

Ut episcopus ambulet per dioecesem suam, et ante viginti dies Paschae catechumeni doceantur
symbolum

Placuit omnibus episcopis atque convenit, ut per singulas ecclesias episcopi per dioeceses
ambulantes primùm discutiant clericos, quomodo ordinem baptismi teneant vel missarum, et
quaecumque official quomodo peragantur; et si rectè quidem invenerint, Deo gratias, sin autem
minimè, docere debeant ignaros, et hoc modis omnibus praecipere, ut si ut antique canones jubent
ante dies viginti baptismi ad purgationem exorcismi catechumeni currant: in quibus viginti diebus
omnino catechumeni symbolum quod est: Credo in Deum Patrem omnipotentem …2

According to St. Isidore of Seville (560 – 636), Patriarch St. John IV of Constantinople (also called John
Nesteutes, Jejunator, or John the Faster, Patriarch from 582 – 595), also wrote a letter (no longer extant) to St.
Leander, in which Isidore says that John “propounds nothing of his own, but only repeats the opinions of the
ancient Fathers on trine immersion.”3

It still should be noted that when Alcuin looked to Rome for advice, he was unable to find the proper
documents to resolve the issue, showing that Rome was not a very reliable source. Let us hear again the
divine words of Alcuin on trine immersion, who calls trine immersion “the universal custom of the holy
Church of God”:

In the name of the holy Trinity a man is baptized by trine immersion, and he who was made for an
image of the sacred Trinity, by the invocation of the holy Trinity is directly restored to the same
image.4

Pope Gregory’s permission to perform baptism with one immersion was a grave mistake, founded upon poor
reasons, and it is apparent that the lax enforcement of traditional customs only leads to further and further
deviations from the proper order. First, the Latins tolerated single immersion, but still, only immersion
(whether single or triple) was permitted, then they began to allow pouring, and more commonly used
pouring and sprinkling, until now, the Latins rarely immerse in baptism. A small deviation from the truth has
led to a great error, and far from being the safeguard of Apostolic tradition, Pope Gregory (although in other
respects a great saint) has led the way in Latin innovations to the mode of baptism.

I conclude with the wise words of Strabo:

For if we are to desert everything which heretics have perverted, nothing will be left us, since they
have erred concerning even God himself, and they have twisted everything which seems to pertain to
his worship, and have applied it as though it were peculiarly designed for the support of their errors. 5

1 E. C. Whitaker and Maxwell E. Johnson, Documents of the Baptismal Liturgy, p. 158, London: Society for
Promoting Christian Knowledge, Third Ed., 2003.
2 Collectio Canonum Ecclesiae Hispanae: Ex Probatissimis Ac Pervetustis Codicibus, LXIV, Concilium

Bracarense Secundum, Can. I, p. 609, Madrid: Ex Typographia Regia, 1808. I see in this canon (with the words
“in what manner they observe the order of Baptism”) an implicit reference to ensuring that trine immersion
is practised by the clergy of the diocese, due to this canon’s connection with St. Martin of Braga (who wrote a
letter promoting trine immersion) and the First Council of Braga (which decreed a canon “De Ordine
Baptizandi”, after reading Pope Vigilius’s letter to Bishop Profuturus directing trine immersion).
3 Isidorus Hispalensis, De Scriptores Ecclesiastici Hispano-Latini Veteris et Medii Ævi, XXVI Translated in

William Macdonald Sinclair, Joannes IV, A Dictionary of Christian Biography, Vol. III, p. 367, London: John
Murray, 1882.
4 Cathcart, Baptism, pp. 118 & 121.
5 Chrystal, Baptism, p. 146.
 602

Section IV Milk and Honey at Baptism

Another issue, upon which I have seen a Protestant objection, is the mention of the tradition of receiving milk
and honey after baptism, which several other early Church Fathers mention as well, and which had been
generally discontinued, except in Æthiopia and Abyssinia.1 However, although it was widespread, this
practice was not universal in the early Church, and is notably omitted in The Testament of Our Lord, 2 and the
Oxford scholar Wharton Booth Marriott (1823 – 1871), who wrote the article on baptism in the Dictionary of
Christian Antiquities, says,

Among the traditionary customs, Tertullian mentions the tasting of a mixture (concordiam) of honey
and milk on leaving the font (“Inde suscepti lactis et mellis concordiam praegustamus.” De Cor. Mil. c.
3). But there is no reference to this in his treatise de baptismo, so that it may not improbably have
been of occasional or local usage only in his time. 3

Also, this is an incidental and auxiliary rite, and not part of the essentials or direct injunctions of baptism.
There are many other ceremonies associated with baptism, and which are not essential to it, but are the
practices of the local or universal Church. The necessity and importance of baptising by trine immersion is
far greater than that of giving milk and honey to the newly baptized, or of the other various incidental
customs. Throughout the ages of the Church, there have been many other incidental ceremonies and minor
observances, often local customs and manners, that have not been maintained (or have been newly
introduced), but the Orthodox Church has been extremely conservative in preserving tradition, and most
importantly, the Apostolic and Scriptural traditions. Of this custom William Wall writes:

The custom of giving milk and honey to the new-baptized person, whether he were a grown man or
an infant, continued down to St. Hierome’s time; for he mentions it. And how much longer, I know
not: for I remember no later mention of it. It has however for a long time been forborne. It is natural
to suppose, that this, being only an emblem to signify that the new-baptized person is as a new-born
babe, was left off at such time when, the world being come into the church, there were hardly any
more baptisms but of babes in a proper sense, who needed no such representation to signify their
infancy.4

The latest mention of it in the West that I am currently aware of is in a letter written about the year 500 to a
Senarius of Rome by John the Deacon (c. 500), the words of whom support Wall’s comments, and imply that
the milk and honey are more appropriate for adults receiving baptism:

12. You ask why milk and honey are placed in a most sacred cup and offered with the sacrifice at the
Paschal Sabbath. The reason is that it is written in the Old Testament and in a figure promised to the
New People: I shall lead you into a land of promise, a land flowing with milk and honey [Lev. 20.24].
The land of promise, then, is the land of resurrection to everlasting bliss, it is nothing else than the
land of our body, which in the resurrection of the dead shall attain to the glory of incorruption and
peace. This kind of sacrament, then, is offered to the newly-baptized so that they may realize that no
others but they, who partake of the Body and Blood of the Lord, shall receive the land of promise: and
as they start upon the journey thither, they are nourished like little children with milk and honey, so
that they may sing: How sweet are your words unto my mouth, O Lord, sweeter than honey and the

1 William Palmer, Origines Liturgicæ, or Antiquities of the English Ritual, and a Dissertation on Primitive
Liturgies, Vol. II, Ch. V, § VIII, p. 192, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1832.
2 See Cooper and Maclean, The Testament of Our Lord, pp. 24, 31, 44, 173, 221, Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1902.
3 Wharton Booth Marriott, A Dictionary of Christian Antiquities, Vol. I, Baptism, II, § 12., pp. 156 – 157,

London: John Murray, 1908; also see pp. 164, 340, 605, & 783.
4 Henry Cotton (editor), William Wall, The History of Infant-Baptism, Vol. II, Ch. IX, § VI, p. 428, Oxford: Oxford

University Press, 2nd Ed., 1844.

 603

honeycomb [Ps. 119.103; 19.11]. As new men therefore, abandoning the bitterness of sin, they drink
milk and honey: so that they who in their first birth were nourished with the milk of corruption and
first shed tears of bitterness, in their second birth may taste the sweetness of milk and honey in the
bowels of the Church, so that being nourished upon such sacraments they may be dedicated to the
mysteries of perpetual incorruption.1

Section V Salt in Baptism

The Roman Catholic ceremony of baptism prescribes placing blessed salt in the mouth of the baptismal
candidate. The Catechism of the Council of Trent states:

When, for instance, salt is put into the mouth of the person to be baptised, it evidently imports, that
by the doctrines of faith, and by the gift of grace, he shall be delivered from corruption of sin, shall
experience a relish for good works, and shall be nurtured with the food of divine wisdom. 2

The Blessed Michael Cerularius writes to Patriarch Peter of Antioch in 1054, against the Latins, “They
administer baptism by a simple immersion, and by placing salt in the mouth of the neophyte;”.3 St.
Theodosius (Feodosij), the superior of the Kievan Caves Monastery (c. 1008 – 1074), says likewise, “their
priests baptize with one immersion, whereas we do so with three, and we anoint the newly baptized person
with oil and perfume, while they sprinkle the mouth with salt.”4

The learned American writer Dr. Robert Means Lawrence (1847 – 1935) writes, “The use of salt at baptism in
the Christian Church dates from the fourth century.”5 I have not come across any detailed Orthodox
discussion on this subject, and Cerularius only mentions this custom in passing.

The imposition of a few grains of salt in the mouth of the catechumen is not an Apostolic tradition. However,
I do not think we should insist too strongly or condemn the Latins on this point, since it is a minor and
incidental auxiliary custom that is old and appears to be supported by many Western authors and saints
(such as Bede, Isidore, Gregory the Great, Rabanus Maurus, John the Deacon, Augustine, the Sarum Rite, the
tenth-century Ambrosian Manual, and the Third Council of Carthage), and this may be is a small and tolerable
difference between the rites. The oldest baptismal rites, which contain many details, do not mention placing
salt in the mouth of the catechumen, and this practice likely dates no earlier than the second half of the fourth
century. Moreover, there are almost no ancient or Patristic commentaries on the Biblical texts on salt that
clearly refer to the custom of literally giving the catechumen a taste of salt.

It is not certain if the first references to salt in baptism are referring to the placing of salt in the mouth, or if
the salt was placed in the baptismal water, rubbed on the surface of the body, or used in another incidental
manner, such as in the ointment. The first clear reference to placing salt in the mouth is found in the old
Roman Order, that is, in the Gelasian and Gregorian Sacramentaries, which are from the seventh century, but
may reflect an original Roman form that was drawn up in the early sixth century.

1 E. C. Whitaker and Maxwell E. Johnson, Documents of the Baptismal Liturgy, pp. 211 – 212, London: Society
for Promoting Christian Knowledge, Third Ed., 2003.
2 John Donovan (translator), The Catechism of the Council of Trent, p. 189, Dublin: W. Folds & Son, 1829.
3 Louis Marie de Cormenin, The Public and Private History of the Popes of Rome, from the Earliest Period to

the Present Time, Vol. I, Vacancy in the Holy See, A.D. 1054, p. 346, Philadelphia, PA: T. B. Peterson, 1846.
4 Muriel Heppell (translator), The Paterik of the Kievan Caves Monastery, Discourse 37, p. 212, in Harvard

Library of Early Ukrainian Literature, English Translations, Vol. I, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,
1989.
5 Robert Means Lawrence, The Magic of the Horse-Shoe with Other Folk-Lore Notes, The Folk-Lore of

Common Salt, VII, p. 175, Cambridge: The Riverside Press, 1898.

 604

The use of salt and its symbolism in ancient times is an interesting subject for antiquarians. Farrar’s
Ecclesiastical Dictionary states:

It would appear from a sentence of Augustine, that, in the fourth century, it was customary to use salt
in baptism, at least in Milan; and some have referred this to a heathen origin. We find, however, in
Scripture, several allusions to salt, which have been quoted in excuse for the introduction of this
custom. “Every one shall be salted with fire, and every sacrifice shall be salted with salt. Salt is good:
but if the salt have lost his saltness, wherewith will ye season it? Have salt in yourselves, and have
peace with another.” Mark ix. 49, 50. There was also an eastern custom of rubbing the body of new-
born infants with salt, to which reference is made Ezek. xvi. 4. To this custom, perhaps, we may trace
the use of salt in baptism. Salt was placed, in some churches, on the tongues of the catechumens, as
an emblem of wisdom, and an admonition to attain it. With salt, milk and honey were given. [See
Honey.] The emblems of milk and honey were in use as early as the third and fourth centuries; and
Augustine, in his “Confessions,” makes mention of the use of salt. He says, “As a boy, I heard of the
eternal life which is promised to us; … and I was signed with the sign of the cross, and seasoned with
its salt.” In the “Sacramentary” of Gregory the Great, after a form for the benediction and
consecration of salt, it is said, Hac oration expleta, accipiat sacerdos de eodem sale, et ponat in ore
infantis, dicendo, Accipe sal sapientiæ in vitam æternam: “This benediction being finished, let the
priest take a portion of the same salt, and put it in the mouth of the infant, saying, Take the salt of
wisdom to eternal life.”1

Also see John M’Clintock and James Strong (editors), Cyclopædia of Biblical, Theological, and Ecclesiastical
Literature, Vol. IX, Ecclesiastical Use of Salt, p. 260, New York, NY: Harper & Brothers, 1894; Joseph Bingham,
Origines Ecclesiasticae, Book X, Ch. II, § 16, where it is argued, from Augustine and the Third Council of
Carthage, that what the ancients call “the sacrament of the catechumens means no more than this ceremony
of giving them a little taste of salt, like milk and honey that was given after baptism”. Other ecclesiastical,
biblical, theological, and antiquarian dictionaries contain useful information on the history of the use of salt.
The Anglican clergyman Thomas Seward (1708 – 1790) makes the argument, citing classical records, that the
use of salt in baptism was derived from Gentile idolatry,2 although I cannot endorse his line of argument.

Hildephonsus of Toledo writes somewhat disparagingly of this practice in his De Cognitione Baptismi:

Exorcism is performed, that is, the power of the devil is rebuked, and insufflation is made over those
in whom the domination of his power is expelled, that they may renounce him beneath whose sway
they were held in servitude, and being delivered from the power of darkness by the sacrament of
baptism they may be translated to the kingdom [Col. 1.13] of their Lord. In some places, so it is
reported, they receive salt [sales], signifying as it were the seasoning of wisdom. Possibly the
custom is permissible: ancient custom alone commends it: it has no other grounds. For by no
document of holy scripture can it be shown that salt was given to catechumens as they attained to the
sacraments of faith: and where that is absent there can be no obligation [c. 26, cf. Isid., De Eccl. Off.,
2.21.3].3

Appendix III Excursus on the Condemnation of Honorius

Section I Liber Diurnus

1 John Farrar, An Ecclesiastical Dictionary, Explanatory of the History, Antiquities, Heresies, Sects, and
Religions Denominations of the Christian Church, Salt, pp. 511 – 512, London: John Mason, 1853.
2 Thomas Seward, The Conformity between Popery and Paganism, pp. 50 – 53, London: Printed for J. and R.

Tonson and S. Draper, 1746.

3 E. C. Whitaker and Maxwell E. Johnson, Documents of the Baptismal Liturgy, Ch. X, p. 162, London: Society

for Promoting Christian Knowledge, Third Ed., 2003.

 605

The Liber Diurnus Romanorum Pontificum is a collection of ancient documents relating to the Papal Office,
forms of faith, and other formulas, which were in use in the Roman Church probably from the sixth to the
eleventh centuries. The collection was made in Rome itself.

Here is more evidence of innovations in Rome after the 11th Century (the century when Rome left the
Church). It is noteworthy that after manuscripts for this collection were found, the Roman authorities
suppressed the publication of these documents, mainly because they affirm the condemnation of Pope
Honorius by the 6th Ecumenical Council.

Hefele writes:

In the Liber Diurnus, i.e. the Formulary of the Roman Chancery (from the fifth to the eleventh
century), there is found the old formula for the papal oath, probably prescribed by Gregory II. (at the
beginning of the eighth century), according to which every new Pope, on entering upon his office, had
to swear that “he recognized the sixth Œcumenical Council, which smote with eternal anathema the
originators of the new heresy (Monotheletism), Sergius, Pyrrhus, etc., together with Honorius, quia
pravis hæreticorum assertionibus fomentum impendit.”1

The Catholic Encyclopedia writes:

The Liber Diurnus was used officially in the papal chancery until the eleventh century, after which
time, as it no longer corresponded to the needs of papal administration, it gave way to other
collections. Twelfth century canonists, like Ivo of Chartres and Gratian, continued to use the Liber
Diurnus, but subsequently it ceased to be consulted, and was finally completely forgotten. … [An]
edition printed at Rome in 1650 was withheld from publication, by advice of the ecclesiastical
censors, and the copies put away in a room at the Vatican. The reason for so doing was apparently
formula lxxxiv, which contained the profession of faith of the newly elected pope, in which the latter
recognized the Sixth General Council and its anathemas against Pope Honorius for his (alleged)
Monothelism. The edition of Holstenius was reprinted at Rome in 1658; but was again withdrawn in
1662 by papal authority, though in 1725 Benedict XIII permitted the issue of some copies.2

From this document two discontinuities between the early Church and the Roman Catholic communion are
made manifest. First, it is admitted that the “needs of papal administration” changed after the eleventh
century. Second, it is admitted that the publishing of this work in the 17th century was censored by Papal
authority because it provides evidence that earlier popes swore to recognize the anathemas pronounced
against one of their own predecessors, Pope Honorius.

Cardinal Bona (1609 – 1674), a Roman Catholic cardinal and author who attempted to suppress the Liber
Diurnus, said plainly,

Since in the Profession of Faith by the Pope elect, Pope Honorius is condemned as having
given encouragement to the depraved assertions of heretics – if these words actually occur in
the original and there is no obvious means of remedying such a wound – it is better that the work
should not be published – præstat non divulgari opus.”3

Jacques Sirmond (1559 – 1651), a Jesuit professor whom the Catholic Encyclopedia calls “One of the greatest
scholars of the seventeenth century,”4 wrote:

It appears to me not so astonishing that the Greek Monothelites should attempt to identify Honorius

1 Hefele, History of the Councils, Vol. V, Book XVI, Ch. II, Sec. 324, p. 187.
2 Johan Peter Kirsch, Liber Diurnus Romanorum Pontificum, in CE, Vol. IX, p. 216.
3 De Rozière, Introduction, cxiii. Translated in Sparrow Simpson, Roman Catholic Opposition to Papal

Infallibility, Ch. III, p. 36, London: John Murray, 1909; Also Denny, Papalism, p. 489.
4 Nicholas Aloysius Weber, Jacques Sirmond, in CE, Vol. XIV, p. 27.
 606

with their error, as it seems extraordinary that the Romans themselves, in the newly elected
Pope’s Profession of Faith, should have branded the name of Honorius together with the
authors of heretical ideas, such as Sergius, Pyrrhus, Paul and Peter of Constantinople, for
having given encouragement to the depraved assertions of heretics. And yet such are the terms
of that Profession of Faith, as I found it among the ancient formulas of the Roman Church. It is this
reason alone which has chiefly deterred me from editing the formulary, in spite of the
promise which I made to Cardinal Sainte-Suzanne.1

Gratry (1805 – 1872), a French Roman Catholic priest and professor who opposed the doctrine of Papal
Infallibility before the Latin First Vatican Council, comments on Bona and Sirmond:

Father Sirmonel and Cardinal Bona simply then admit it. This is the natural descent of the human
misery which they follow. Each one defends himself as he can. Behold a fact which overwhelms
us! Let us prevent its being known.2

Simpson comments on this passage: “The maxim that truth may be suppressed in the interests of religion
roused Gratry’s boundless indignation.”3

Jean de Launoy (1603 – 1678), a French Roman Catholic historian, wrote “The Liber Diurnus has been printed
in Rome several years, and is detained by the masters of the Papal Court and the Inquisitors. These men
cannot bear the light of ancient truth.”4 The Catholic Encyclopedia calls Launoy “a learned critic and a
Gallican”,5 and a man “worthy of mention in ecclesiastical history … celebrated for his critical work in
ecclesiastical history”.6 Launoy argued against Ultramontane views on Honorius, and held that Honorius was
guilty of heresy.7

Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet (1627 – 1704), a Gallican Roman Catholic bishop and pulpit orator, protesting
against the suppression of the Liber Diurnus, wrote,

The condemnation of Honorius … exists in the Liber Diurnus seen and known by learned men for a
long time past. P. Garnier, a learned man of the utmost integrity of the Society of Jesus, Professor of
Theology, has published it from the best manuscripts. It was also accustomed to be read in the life of
St. Leo in the ancient Roman Breviaries down to our own time. But that Diurnus they suppress as
far as lies in their power, and in the Roman Breviary they have erased these things. But are
they therefore hidden? On all sides the truth breaks forth, and these things by so much the more
appear as they are the more eagerly erased. … A cause is clearly lamentable which needs to be
defended by such figments.8

The Catholic Encyclopedia calls Bossuet a “great man”, “genius”, and “orator, the greatest, perhaps, who has
ever appeared in the Christian pulpit – greater than Chrysostom and greater than Augustine; the only man
whose name can be compared in eloquence with those of Cicero and of Demosthenes”.9

1 De Rozière, cxix. Translated in Simpson, Roman Catholic Opposition to Papal Infallibility, Ch. III, pp. 36 – 37;
Denny, Papalism, p. 489.
2 T. J. Bailey (translator), Auguste Gratry, First Letter to Monseigneur Dechamps, XI, p. 38, London: J. T. Hayes,

1870.
3 Simpson, Roman Catholic Opposition to Papal Infallibility, Ch. XII, pp. 179 – 180.
4 De Rozière, xlix, lvii; Translated in Simpson, Roman Catholic Opposition to Papal Infallibility, Ch. III, p. 37.
5 Paul Lejay, Louis-Ellies Dupin, in CE, Vol. V, p. 204.
6 Georges Goyau, Diocese of Coutances, in CE, Vol. IV, p. 456.
7 Samuel Edgar, The Variations of Popery, Ch. XI, p. 359, Toronto: Maclear & Co., 1875.
8 Bossuet, Defensio Declarationis Cleri Gallicani, pars. iii lib. vii, cxxvi cap. ii pp. 45 – 46, Liigani, 1766.

Translated in Denny, Papalism, p. 490.

9 Ferdinand Brunetière, Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet, in CE, Vol. II, p. 699.
 607

Section II Roman Breviary

The Breviary is a book of Latin liturgical offices that all Latin priests were bound to read every day. The
Catholic Encyclopedia writes of the Breviary:

The title Breviary, as we employ it – that is, a book containing the entire canonical office – appears to
date from the eleventh century. St. Gregory VII having, indeed, abridged the order of prayers, and
having simplified the Liturgy as performed at the Roman Court, this abridgment received the name of
Breviary, which was suitable, since, according to the etymology of the word, it was an abridgment.
The name has been extended to books which contain in one volume, or at least in one work, liturgical
books of different kinds, such as the Psalter, the Antiphonary, the Responsoriary, the Lectionary,
etc. … It is constructed of the following elements: (a) the Psalter; (b) the Proper of the Season; (c)
Proper of the Saints; (d) the Common; (e) certain special Offices.1

The Catholic Encyclopedia summarizes the history of the Breviary:

If this history could be put into few words, though necessarily forming an incomplete statement, it
might be said that from the first to the fifth century it was in formation; from the fifth to the eleventh
century it was in process of development and expansion; and during the twelfth and thirteenth
centuries the Breviary properly so called was emerging into being. 2

The Breviary provides more evidence of innovation and change in Rome, and the Roman attempt to hide the
truth. Edward Denny writes that:

Similar testimony is afforded by the way in which the memory of Honorius has been treated in the
Roman Breviary. Until the sixteenth century his condemnation by the Sixth Synod was to be found
duly recorded in the third Lesson for the Feast of St. Leo, June 28, as follows: ‘In which Synod were
condemned, Cyrus, Sergius, Honorius, Pyrrhus, Paul and Peter, also Macarius with his disciple
Stephen and Polychronius and Simon, who asserted and proclaimed one will and operation in
our Lord Jesus Christ.’ There can be no doubt that this was the original form in which this
particular statement was worded from the date of the introduction of the Office of St. Leo into the
Breviary. That was not long after the date of the Sixth, which is described in it as having been ‘lately’
– nuper – ‘celebrated in the Royal city.’ When the Breviary was ‘reformed’ this inconvenient
statement was ‘reformed’ by being mutilated, the name of Honorius being omitted. The statement
was made to run: ‘In this Synod were condemned Cyrus, Sergius, and Pyrrhus, proclaiming one
will and operation only in Christ.’ 3

The Anglican ecclesiastical commissioner Arthur Edward Gayer (1801 – 1877) writes that “The name of
Honorius was first left out of the Breviary in the year 1568, nine hundred years after his condemnation.”4

The Catholic Encyclopedia concurs, but with a later date for the omission: “The condemnation of Pope
Honorius was retained in the lessons of the Breviary for 28 June (St. Leo II) until the eighteenth century.” 5
Peter Le Page Renouf says it was kept until the 17th century.6 All these different dates are true, since there
were various editions of the Breviary, and some had retained this condemnation for a longer time. Some
editions, such as the Sarum Breviary of the 14th century, the Aberdeen Breviary printed in 1510, and a
Breviary published at Viterbo in 1515, do not list any of the heretics condemned and simply mention that the

1 Fernand Cabrol, Breviary, in CE, Vol. II, p. 769.

2 Fernand Cabrol, Breviary, in CE, Vol. II, p. 774.
3 Denny, Papalism, p. 489.
4 Arthur Edward Gayer, Papal Infallibility and Supremacy tried by Ecclesiastical History, Scripture and

Reason, Ch. X, p. 94, London: Partridge and Co., 1877.

5 John Chapman, Pope Honorius I, in CE, Vol. VII, p. 455.
6 Peter Le Page Renouf, The Condemnation of Pope Honorius, p. 6, London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1868.
 608

Sixth Council condemned the Monothelite heretics. Renouf comments that it is more fair to simply omit any
mention of the condemned heretics, but “it is most unjust to suppress the name of Honorius and yet retain the
other names. Sergius presented his Confession to the Pope, who simply approved it, and he died without the
slightest intimation from Rome that his doctrine was anything but orthodox.” 1

However, the officially revised edition of the Breviary in 1568 did not include any mention of Honorius, while
still listing the other condemned Monothelites. The highest authorities of the Roman Catholic organisation
were responsible for this revision to the Roman Breviary, as the Catholic Encyclopedia states:

The Council of Trent, which effected reforms in so many directions, also took up the idea of
revising the Breviary; a commission was appointed concerning whose deliberations we have not
much information, but it began to make definite inquiries about the subject entrusted to it. The
council separated before these preliminaries could be concluded; so it was decided to leave the task
of editing a new Breviary in the pope's own hands. The commission appointed by the council was not
dissolved, and continued its investigations. St. Pius V, at the beginning of his pontificate (1566),
appointed new members to it and otherwise stimulated its activity, with the result that a Breviary
appeared in 1568, prefaced by the famous Bull, “Quod a nobis”. The commission had adopted wise
and reasonable principles: not to invent a new Breviary and a new Liturgy; to stand by tradition; to
keep all that was worth keeping, but at the same time to correct the multitude of errors which had
crept into the Breviaries and to weigh just demands and complaints. Following these lines, they
corrected the lessons, or legends, of the saints and revised the Calendar; and while respecting ancient
liturgical formularies such as the collects, they introduced needful changes in certain details. 2

Section III Testimonies to the Condemnation of Pope Honorius

“indeed all the venerable Fathers have embraced and the holy orthodox Doctors have venerated and followed
their [the Bishop of Rome’s] Apostolic doctrine; knowing most fully that this See of holy Peter remains ever free
from all blemish of error” – Latin First Vatican Council, Ch. IV.

“our [Papal] predecessors ever made unwearied efforts that the salutary doctrine of Christ might be propagated
among all the nations of the earth, and with equal care watched that it might be preserved genuine and pure
where it had been received.” – Latin First Vatican Council, Ch. IV

“Unde et unam voluntatem fatemur Domini nostri Jesu Christi. … Hæc nobiscum fraternitas vestra prædicet,
sicut et nos ea vobiscum unanimiter prædicamus” – Pope Honorius

“Anathema to Honorius the heretic! … To all who side with heretics, anathema!” – Sixth Ecumenical Council

“212 Popes have sat upon the chair at Rome, and before their deposition not one of them ever erred in a decree
regarding faith, or rendering judgement in a point regarding faith.” – Johann Eck to Martin Luther, at the
Leipzig Debate

Pope Honorius is a remarkable instance of frailty in the Bishop of Rome. It is very clear that Pope Honorius
taught heresy, and was condemned for so doing by the universal consent of the Church. Honorius was
certainly condemned as a manifest heretic by the Holy Sixth Ecumenical Council for his Monothelitism, the
heresy that our Lord Jesus Christ had only one will. The case of Honorius indeed remains a problematic issue
for the Roman Catholic doctrine of Papal Infallibility, because Pope Honorius instructed the leading Patriarchs
of the Church on a matter of faith, confirming the heresy of Monothelitism. Pope Honorius was a true Pope

1 Renouf, The Condemnation of Pope Honorius, p. 6, n. *.

2 Fernand Cabrol, Breviary, in CE, Vol. II, p. 775.
 609

for some time, so by accepting heresy, the faith of this successor of Peter did fail, and by confirming the
heresy of the men claiming to occupy the chief Patriarchal Sees, such as Sergius, at one time Patriarch of
Constantinople, while denigrating Sophronius, the saintly orthodox Bishop of Jerusalem, he did not
strengthen his brethren.

It is an unmistakable fact of history that Pope Honorius was condemned as a Monothelite heretic by the Sixth
Ecumenical Council. As related here, Popes themselves have confirmed this condemnation. The excessive
doubt cast upon the validity and authenticity of the Sixth Council’s condemnation of Pope Honorius shows
how detached the second-millennium Latins are from the Orthodox Church – the Church that anathematized
Honorius.

It is important to consider that Honorius died on October 12, 638, yet the Sixth Ecumenical Council, which
condemned him, first met on November 7, 680. It is also important to note that prior to the Sixth Ecumenical
Council, there is no record of any Roman Pontiff condemning Honorius, which is a gap of over 42 years. The
Papal successors of Honorius were not willing to condemn him by name until they ratified the Sixth
Ecumenical Council.1 This case shows the unreliability of having the Bishop of Rome as the guardian of unity
and orthodoxy.

It is quite significant that the Latins would not name Honorius as partaking in the Monothelite heresy until
the Sixth Ecumenical Council:

Further, it is not possible to plead that the authority of the previous Council, [the First Synod] of the
Lateran, held by Pope St. Martin V. in A.D. 649, had been given to the condemnation of Honorius, and
that therefore the previous consent of the Roman Bishop had been so given, for whilst by the
Eighteenth Canon of that Council all were required to anathematise Theodore, Cyrus, Sergius,
Pyrrhus, and Paulus, the name of Honorius was not mentioned. 2

In addition, the Lateran council

declared under anathema that there were two wills in Christ, divine and human, and two operations,
divine and human, in Christ our God, and condemned any one who, ‘following the wicked heretics,
should confess one will and operation of Christ our God.’ This is a clear condemnation of Honorius,
though he is not mentioned by name, in that he taught that there was one will of Christ and forbade
the use of the formula δύο ἐνεργείαι [two operations]. The Council asserted the truth to be the exact
opposite. That they knew of Honorius’ teaching is quite clear, in that the ‘dogmatic letter’ of the
Monothelite Paul was read, in which Honorius is quoted as an authority in support of that heresy, and
it is not without significance that whilst the Fathers of this Synod were careful to refute the Patriarch
Paul’s appeal to the Fathers of the Church, by an elaborate and careful statement from their writings,
they made no attempt to refute his statement with reference to Honorius: this is evidence that they
were compelled to let the assertion pass as being true, and shows that their condemnation of
Monothelitism and its professors must be held to include Honorius, who had been appealed to as one
of such professors.3

The following passages are extracted from the acts and decrees of the Sixth Ecumenical Council and related

1 With the sole exception of Pope Theodore I’s letter to Emperor Constans II, as quoted in Eutychius, if this
document is not interpolated (see below).
2 Denny, Papalism p. 492.
3 Denny, Papalism, p. 402.
 610

documents on the condemnation of Pope Honorius. Renouf notes that “In every one of these acts of the
Council the papal legates took part, and signed their names.”1

Hefele declares, in his masterful proof of the genuineness of the Acts of the Sixth Ecumenical Council: “That,
however, the sixth (Ecumenical) Synod actually condemned Honorius on account of heresy, is clear beyond all
doubt, when we consider the following collection of the sentences of the Synod against him.” 2 Hefele
mentions some of the relevant documents, which I have collected, along with others, and cited at length
below. As far as I am aware, this is the most comprehensive collection of testimonies to the condemnation of
Pope Honorius:

The Sentence Against the Monothelites

Session XIII

The holy council said: After we had reconsidered, according to our promise which we had made
to your highness, the doctrinal letters of Sergius, at one time patriarch of this royal god-protected city
to Cyrus, who was then bishop of Phasis and to Honorius some time Pope of Old Rome, as well as the
letter of the latter to the same Sergius, we find that these documents are quite foreign to the
apostolic dogmas, to the declarations of the holy Councils, and to all the accepted Fathers, and
that they follow the false teachings of the heretics; therefore we entirely reject them, and
execrate them as hurtful to the soul. But the names of those men whose doctrines we execrate
must also be thrust forth from the holy Church of God, namely, that of Sergius some time bishop of
this God-preserved royal city who was the first to write on this impious doctrine; also that of Cyrus of
Alexandria, of Pyrrhus, Paul, and Peter, who died bishops of this God-preserved city, and were like-
minded with them; and that of Theodore sometime bishop of Pharan, all of whom the most holy and
thrice blessed Agatho, Pope of Old Rome, in his suggestion to our most pious and God-preserved lord
and mighty Emperor, rejected, because they were minded contrary to our orthodox faith, all of whom
we define are to be subjected to anathema. And with these we define that there shall be expelled
from the holy Church of God and anathematized Honorius who was some time Pope of Old
Rome, because of what we found written by him to Sergius, that in all respects he followed his
view and confirmed his impious doctrines. We have also examined the synodal letter of
Sophronius of holy memory, some time Patriarch of the Holy City of Christ our God, Jerusalem, and
have found it in accordance with the true faith and with the Apostolic teachings, and with those of the
holy approved Fathers. Therefore we have received it as orthodox and as salutary to the holy
Catholic and Apostolic Church, and have decreed that it is right that his name be inserted in the
diptychs of the Holy Churches.3

Burning of Honorius’s Letters

In this session, the two letters of Honorius were ordered to be burned. Hefele writes:

Towards the end of the same session the second letter of Pope Honorius to Sergius was presented for
examination, and it was ordered that all the documents brought by George, the keeper of the archives
in Constantinople, and among them the two letters of Honorius, should immediately be burnt, as
hurtful to the soul.4

We read in the Acts of of the Sixth Council:

1 Renouf, The Condemnation of Pope Honorius, p. 4.

2 Hefele, History of the Councils, Vol. V, Book XVI, Ch. II, Sec., 324, p. 182.
3 Percival, Seven Ecumenical Councils, pp. 342 – 343.
4 Hefele, History of the Councils, Vol. V, Book XVI, Ch. II, Sec., 324, pp. 182 – 183.
 611

The holy Council said, “We, having taken knowledge of these letters, papers, and other writings, have
ascertained, that they concur in one and the same impiety. And we have judged that they, as profane
and soul-destroying, should be forthwith made over to the fire, for their complete annihilation.” And
they were burnt.1

Session XVI

Many years to the Emperor! Many years to Constantine, our great Emperor! Many years to the
Orthodox King! Many years to our Emperor that maketh peace! Many years to Constantine, a second
Martian! Many years to Constantine, a new Theodosius! Many years to Constantine, a new Justinian!
Many years to the keeper of the orthodox faith! O Lord preserve the foundation of the Churches! O
Lord preserve the keeper of the faith!
Many years to Agatho, Pope of Rome! Many years to George, Patriarch of Constantinople! Many
years to Theophanus, Patriarch of Antioch! Many years to the orthodox council! Many years to the
orthodox Senate!
To Theodore of Pharan, the heretic, anathema! To Sergius, the heretic, anathema! To Cyrus, the
heretic, anathema! To Honorius, the heretic, anathema! To Pyrrhus, the heretic, anathema!

To Paul the heretic, anathema!

To Peter the heretic, anathema!
To Macarius the heretic, anathema!
To Stephen the heretic, anathema!
To Polychronius the heretic, anathema!
To Apergius of Perga the heretic, anathema!

To all heretics, anathema! To all who side with heretics, anathema!

May the faith of the Christians increase, and long years to the orthodox and Ecumenical Council!2

It is important to remark here that the Sixth Ecumenical Council explicitly declares that Honorius is a heretic,
and moreover, this council anathematises “all who side with heretics”. If these words are pressed, it could be
concluded that anyone who dares to side with Honorius the heretic is anathema, and therefore this anathema
falls upon very many Roman Catholic priests and bishops, who are not heretical with regard to Monothelitism
(though they permit heretical language, albeit interpreted in an orthodox manner), but who have still sided
with Honorius, and for this reason are condemned with him (see the section on Latin Attempts to Deal with
the Condemnation of Honorius, where I list many Roman Catholic authorities who do indeed “side with
Honorius”).

The Definition of Faith

Session XVIII

The holy and Ecumenical Synod further says, this pious and orthodox Creed of the Divine grace
would be sufficient for the full knowledge and confirmation of the orthodox faith. But as the author
of evil, who, in the beginning, availed himself of the aid of the serpent, and by it brought the poison of
death upon the human race, has not desisted, but in like manner now, having found suitable

1 Edward Bouverie Pusey, Eirenicon, Part III, Is Healthful Reunion Impossible?: A Second Letter to the Very
Rev. J. H. Newman, D.D., pp. 194 – 195, Oxford: James Parker & Co., 1870.
2 Percival, Seven Ecumenical Councils, p. 343. The Council calls the Emperor “the foundation of the Churches”

and the “keeper of the faith”, which is an example of the grandiose language and praise that is common in the
Church to eminent individuals.
 612

instruments for working out his will (we mean Theodorus, who was Bishop of Pharan, Sergius,
Pyrrhus, Paul and Peter, who were Archbishops of this royal city, and moreover, Honorius who was
Pope of the elder Rome, Cyrus Bishop of Alexandria, Macarius who was lately bishop of Antioch, and
Stephen his disciple), has actively employed them in raising up for the whole Church the stumbling-
blocks of one will and one operation in the two natures of Christ our true God, one of the Holy
Trinity; thus disseminating, in novel terms, amongst the orthodox people, an heresy similar to the
mad and wicked doctrine of the impious Apollinaris, Severus, and Themistius, and endeavouring
craftily to destroy the perfection of the incarnation of the same our Lord Jesus Christ, our God, by
blasphemously representing his flesh endowed with a rational soul as devoid of will or operation. 1

The Prosphoneticus [Report of the Council] to the Emperor

Therefore we declare that in him there are two natural wills and two natural operations,
proceeding commonly and without division: but we cast out of the Church and rightly subject to
anathema all superfluous novelties as well as their inventors: to wit, Theodore of Pharan,
Sergius and Paul, Pyrrhus, and Peter (who were archbishops of Constantinople), moreover Cyrus,
who bore the priesthood of Alexandria, and with them Honorius, who was the ruler (πρόεδρον)
of Rome, as he followed them in these things. Besides these, with the best of cause we
anathematize and depose Macarius, who was bishop of Antioch, and his disciple Stephen (or rather
we should say master), who tried to defend the impiety of their predecessors, and in short stirred up
the whole world, and by their pestilential letters and by their fraudulent institutions devastated
multitudes in every direction. Likewise also that old man Polychronius, with an infantile intelligence,
who promised he would raise the dead and who when they did not rise, was laughed at; and all who
have taught, or do teach, or shall presume to teach one will and one operation in the incarnate
Christ.2

Letter of the Council to St. Agatho

And then tearing to pieces the foundations of their execrable heresy, and attacking them with
spiritual and paternal arms, and confounding their tongues that they might not speak consistently
with each other, we overturned the tower built up by these followers of this most impious heresy;
and we slew them with anathema, as lapsed concerning the faith and as sinners, in the morning
outside the camp of the tabernacle of God, that we may express ourselves after the manner of David,
in accordance with the sentence already given concerning them in your letter, and their names are
these: Theodore, bishop of Pharan, Sergius, Honorius, Cyrus, Paul, Pyrrhus and Peter. Moreover, in
addition to these, we justly subjected to the anathema of heretics those also who live in their impiety
which they have received, or, to speak more accurately, in the impiety of these God-hated persons,
Apollinaris, Severus and Themestius, to wit, Macarius, who was the bishop of the great city of Antioch
(and him we also stripped deservedly of his pastor’s robes on account of his impenitence concerning
the orthodox faith and his obstinate stubbornness), and Stephen, his disciple in craziness and his
teacher in impiety, also Polychronius, who was inveterate in his heretical doctrines, thus answering
to his name; and finally all those who impenitently have taught or do teach, or now hold or have held
similar doctrines.3

The Imperial Edict Posted in the Third Atrium of the Great Church Near What is Called Dicymbala

1 Percival, Seven Ecumenical Councils, p. 344.

2 Percival, Seven Ecumenical Councils, pp. 347 – 378.
3 Percival, Seven Ecumenical Councils, p. 349.
 613

Percival writes the following of this decree: “The document is very long, Hefele gives the following epitome,
which is all sufficient for the ordinary reader, who will remember that it is an Edict of the Emperor and not
anything proceeding from the council.” It should be noted, however, that the emperor himself was present in
the first and last sessions of the councils, surrounded by civil and ecclesiastical dignitaries, such as his officers
and magistrates. Moreover, as noted above, the Council calls the Emperor “the foundation of the Churches”
and the “keeper of the faith”, which adds weight to this Edict. Hefele’s Epitome:

The heresy of Apollinaris, etc., has been renewed by Theodore of Pharan and confirmed by
Honorius, sometime Pope of Old Rome, who also contradicted himself. Also Cyrus, Pyrrhus,
Paul, Peter; more recently. Macarius, Stephen, and Polychronius had diffused Monothelitism. He, the
Emperor, had therefore convoked this holy and Ecumenical Synod, and published the present edict
with the confession of faith, in order to confirm and establish its decrees. (There follows here an
extended confession of faith, with proofs for the doctrine of two wills and operations.) As he
recognized the five earlier Ecumenical Synods, so he anathematized all heretics from Simon Magus,
but especially the originator and patrons of the new heresy, Theodore and Sergius; also Pope
Honorius, who was their adherent and patron in everything, and confirmed the heresy (τὸ ν
κατὰ πάντα τούτοις συναιρέτην καὶ σύνδρομον καὶ βεβαιωτὴ ν τῆ ς αἱρέσεως), further, Cyrus, etc.,
and ordained that no one henceforth should hold a different faith, or venture to teach one will and
one energy. In no other than the orthodox faith could men be saved. Whoever did not obey the
imperial edict should, if he were a bishop or cleric be deposed; if an official, punished with
confiscation of property and loss of girdle; if a private person, banished from the residence and all
other cities.1

It is important to remark here that Pope Leo II “approved and promulgated” this Edict, and in “the Pope’s
reply to the Emperor’s letter there is not a word which indicates the slightest disapproval of any thing either
in the Edict or in the proceedings of the Council.” For example, Pope Leo II states:

By the sentence of the Synod and the decree of the Imperial Edict as by a two-edged sword of the
Spirit all ancient and recent heresies are destroyed with all their blasphemies. The holy and
ecumenical and great Sixth Synod, which by God’s inspiration your Clemency has convoked and
presided at, has in all things followed the Apostolical rule and the teaching of the approved Fathers. 2

After mentioning the above evidence, Hefele states: “From all this it cannot be doubtful in what sense Pope
Honorius was anathematised by the sixth (Ecumenical) Council, and it is equally beyond doubt that the
Council judged much more severely respecting him than we have done above.” 3

The authenticity of the Acts of the Sixth Ecumenical Council is confirmed by the great assembly of 687, as well
as by Popes John V and Conon. Emperor Justinian II had addressed a letter to Pope John V, although it was
received by Pope Conon, stating that the Emperor “undertook to preserve and maintain the [Sixth] synod
undefiled and unshaken for ever.”4

John V was present at the Sixth Council as a deacon and legate of Rome, as the Liber Pontificalis states:

1 Hefele, History of the Councils, Vol. V, Book XVI, Ch. II, Sec., 323, pp. 178 – 179.
2 See larger extracts and context given in Peter Le Page Renouf, The Case of Pope Honorius Reconsidered with
Reference to Recent Apologies, Ch. II, pp. 57 – 60, London: Longmans, Green, Reader, and Dyer, 1869.
3 Hefele, History of the Councils, Vol. V, Book XVI, Ch. II, Sec., 324, p. 184.
4 Raymond Davis, The Book of Pontiffs (Liber Pontificalis), 85. Conon, 3, pp. 79 – 80, in Translated Texts for

Historians, Vol. VI, Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 3rd Ed., 2010. I mentioned this Great Assembly
above in the section demonstrating the canonical authority of the Council in Trullo.
 614

While he was a deacon he was sent by pope Agatho of sacred memory to the imperial city with other
priests to represent the apostolic see in the holy sixth synod, which by God’s providence was
gathered and celebrated there. When it ended the clement emperor let him depart thence; he came
home bringing great joy to the church – the acts of the holy sixth synod itself, the clement prince’s
edict confirming the synod, and other imperial mandates …1

This shows that Rome was in possession of the authentic acts of the Sixth Council, relayed to them by their
legates, which could not have been tampered with by the Greeks. Pope John V knew about and approved of
the condemnation of Honorius, and there is no record or reason to think that he changed his mind when he
was elected Pope in 685, just three years after he returned from the council. When the authenticity of the acts
was confirmed at the great assembly of 687, Pope Conon (John V’s immediate successor) received notice of
this and also upheld the authenticity of the acts of the Sixth Council. Thus Popes John V and Conon, at least
implicitly, confirm the condemnation of Pope Honorius. The great assembly of 687, which was another
assembly of the Sixth Ecumenical Council, included “the patriarchs, the papal deputy, the archbishops and
bishops, and many officials of State and officers of the army”,2 who all confirmed the condemnation of
Honorius.

The next assembly of the Sixth Ecumenical Council, in Trullo, contains additional clear evidence of the
condemnation of Honorius for holding to the Monothelite heresy:

The First Canon of the Council in Trullo

Also we agree to guard untouched the faith of the Sixth Holy Synod, which first assembled in this
imperial city in the time of Constantine, our Emperor, of blessed memory, which faith received still
greater confirmation from the fact that the pious Emperor ratified with his own signet that which
was written for the security of future generations. This council taught that we should openly profess
our faith that in the incarnation of Jesus Christ, our true God, there are two natural wills or volitions
and two natural operations; and condemned by a just sentence those who adulterated the true
doctrine and taught the people that in the one Lord Jesus Christ there is but one will and one
operation; to wit, Theodore of Pharan, Cyrus of Alexandria, Honorius of Rome, Sergius, Pyrrhus,
Paul and Peter, who were bishops of this God-preserved city; Macarius, who was bishop of Antioch;
Stephen, who was his disciple, and the insane Polychronius, depriving them henceforth from the
communion of the body of Christ our God.

And, to say so once for all, we decree that the faith shall stand firm and remain unsullied until
the end of the world as well as the writings divinely handed down and the teachings of all those who
have beautified and adorned the Church of God and were lights in the world, having embraced the
word of life. And we reject and anathematize those whom they rejected and anathematized, as
being enemies of the truth, and as insane ragers against God, and as lifters up of iniquity.

But if any one at all shall not observe and embrace the aforesaid pious decrees, and
teach and preach in accordance therewith, but shall attempt to set himself in opposition
thereto, let him be anathema, according to the decree already promulgated by the approved holy
and blessed Fathers, and let him be cast out and stricken off as an alien from the number of
Christians. For our decrees add nothing to the things previously defined, nor do they take anything
away, nor have we any such power.3

The Ancient Epitome of Canon I of Trullo similarly states:

1 Raymond Davis, The Book of Pontiffs (Liber Pontificalis), 84. John V, 2, p. 78, in Translated Texts for
Historians, Vol. VI, Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 3rd Ed., 2010.
2 Hefele, History of the Councils, Vol. V, Book. XVII, Sec. 326, p. 220. I quoted more fully from this passage in

the section on Trullo.

3 Percival, Seven Ecumenical Councils, p. 360.
 615

At Constantinople a Synod was collected under Constantine which rejected Honorius of Rome and
Sergius, prelate of Constantinople, for teaching one will and one operation.

It is important to note that with Honorius’s condemnation entered into this canon, every canonical collection
that includes the canons of Trullo (or their epitomes) contains an additional record and reiteration of the
condemnation of Honorius (see the extensive section on the evidences for the ecumenicity of Trullo).

The Seventh Ecumenical Council Confirms the Condemnation of Honorius for Heresy

The next Ecumenical Council provides further evidence of the condemnation of Honorius for holding to the
Monothelite heresy. The testimony of this council is often overlooked by Roman Catholics who cannot see
that if the Sixth Ecumenical Council was mistaken in condemning Honorius, and if the Pope’s confirmation of
the Sixth Council substituted the charge of heresy against Honorius with the charge of mere negligence, then
the Seventh Ecumenical Council completely rejected this idea, because the Seventh Council condemns
Honorius for Monothelitism, just like the Sixth Council, showing the perfect continuity of the Orthodox faith
while Roman Catholics have only contradicted themselves.

Joseph Mendham, a learned Anglican who published a complete English translation of the Acts of the Seventh
Council (though he is an Iconoclast and extremely antagonistic to it), notes:

It is also to be noted that Pope Honorius, to the serious injury of Pontifical infallibility, is always
numbered with the Monothelite heretics whenever any mention is made of them, as was often the
case in this Council. Sergius, Peter, and Paul, successively Bishops of Constantinople, and Honorius
Pope of Old Rome, are all stigmatized with the same brand of heresy; and many have been the
attempts, though all in vain, to rescue Honorius from this disgraceful alliance. Whatever guilt,
therefore, belongs to Monothelitism is shared by Honorius in common with the rest of its upholders.
Such were some of the bitters with which the Council abounded; but yet, as it came up to the great
point of Roman orthodoxy at that time, [Pope] Adrian would not object to it, but gave it his
imprimatur, and did his best to defend it against the exceptions of Charlemagne and his divines. 1

The Decree of the Holy, Great, Ecumenical Synod, the Second of Nice [The Seventh Ecumenical Council,
A.D. 787].

Therefore, with all diligence, making a thorough examination and analysis, and following the trend of
truth, we diminish nought, we add nought, but we preserve unchanged all things which pertain to the
Catholic Church, and following the Six Ecumenical Synods, … [After summarising the first five
Ecumenical Councils:] We affirm that in Christ there be two wills and two operations according to
the reality of each nature, as also the Sixth Synod, held at Constantinople, taught, casting out Sergius,
Honorius, Cyrus, Pyrrhus, Macarius, and those who agree with them, and all those who are
unwilling to be reverent. To make our confession short, we keep unchanged all the ecclesiastical
traditions handed down to us, whether in writing or verbally, … Those, therefore who dare to think
or teach otherwise, or as wicked heretics spurn the traditions of the Church and to invent some
novelty, or else to reject some of those things which the Church hath received … or evilly and sharply
to devise anything subversive of the lawful traditions of the Catholic Church … if they be Bishops of
Clerics, we command that they be deposed; if religious or laics, that they be cut off from communion. 2

1 Mendham, The Seventh General Council, p. lvii.

2 Percival, Seven Ecumenical Councils, pp. 549 – 550.
 616

The Letter of the [Seventh] Synod to the Emperor and Empress.

And now having carefully traced the traditions of the Apostles and Fathers, we are bold to
speak. Having but one mind by the inbreathing of the most Holy Spirit, and being all knit together in
one, and understanding the harmonious tradition of the Catholic Church, we are in perfect harmony
with the symphonies set forth by the six, holy and ecumenical councils; and accordingly we have
anathematised the madness of Arius, the frenzy of Macedonius, the senseless understanding of
Appolinarius, the man-worship of Nestorius, the irreverent mingling of the natures devised by
Eutyches and Dioscorus, and the many-headed hydra which is their companion. We have also
anathematized the idle tales of Origen, Didymus, and Evagrius; and the doctrine of one will held by
Sergius, Honorius, Cyrus, and Pyrrhus, or rather, we have anathematised their own evil will. Finally,
taught by the Spirit, from whom we have drawn pure water, we have with one accord and one soul,
altogether wiped out with the sponge of the divine dogmas the newly devised heresy, well-worthy to
be classed with those just mentioned, which springing up after them, uttered such empty nonsense
about the sacred icons. And the contrivers of this vain, but revolutionary babbling we have cast forth
far from the Church’s precincts.1

Session Three of the Seventh Ecumenical Council

The following extracts are from the letters of the “most holy Chief Priests of the East” which were publicly
read and unanimously accepted and acclaimed by the entire Seventh Council, including the Papal legates (see
the section on Filioque for the context and confirmation of these epistles):

A Copy of the Letter sent to the Chief Priests and other Priests of Alexandria, Antioch, and the Holy City, from
Tarasius, most Holy, Blessed, and Ecumenic Patriarch of Constantinople: …

I admit also the six holy Ecumenic Councils and their sacred decrees and doctrines as having
been delivered to us by divine inspiration. …

With the sixth I believe that as Christ is of two natures, so hath He two wills and two
operations – the divine and the human – as adapted to each nature; and I anathematize Cyrus,
Sergius, Honorius, Pyrrhus, Paul, and all who were of the same opinion with them – and their
dogmata I hate as the vine of Sodom and the branch of Gomorrha, which bear the grapes of gall. 2

A Copy of the Synodals of Theodore, most holy Patriarch of Jerusalem. …

We receive, consent to, and heartily embrace the six holy Ecumenic Councils, which were
assembled at various times and in divers places by the Holy Spirit against all heresies; to which the
Churches of the orthodox throughout the world, loudly declaring their adherence, are confirmed in
right and divinely-inspired doctrine: and we admit those whom they admitted and reject those
whom they rejected. …

The First of which Councils was that assembled in Nice, …

After which the Sixth holy Council of two hundred and eighty-nine Fathers shone forth as
another sun, having found a resting place in the Royal City; where, having exposed those who

1 Percival, Seven Ecumenical Councils, pp. 572.

2 Mendham, The Seventh General Council, pp. 94 – 95.
 617

denied the two self-operating wills and energies in the incarnate dispensation of our Lord, and
absurdly declared that there was but one will and operation in the Godhead and Manhood of our
Saviour Jesus Christ: it anathematized them all – namely Sergius, Pyrrhus, Peter, Cyrus, Honorius,
Theodore of Pharan, and that old dotard Polychronius; with all who had defined, did then define, or
should hereafter dare to define, that there was but one will and one operation in the two natures of
Christ. For if, as a wise man in a certain place has observed, we leave the human nature of our Lord
without a will and an operation, how can the integrity of the human nature be preserved? Therefore,
having determined that there were two wills and two operations corresponding to the two natures of
Christ as their natural properties, they most plainly unfolded the great mystery of the dispensation of
the Saviour, and safely preserved for all who are truly wise the orthodox faith of all the Churches of
God, free from ambiguity or perversion!

These six holy Councils are all that we consider Œcumenic; and indeed, besides these, we
wish for no other, since there is not now left anything, whether of Apostolic Tradition or of legitimate
exposition of the Fathers, which needs any amendment or any addition or improvement of any kind
whatever. Therefore, with our whole heart and soul we anathematize collectively and distributively
all evil-minded heretics as the seed tares, followers of Satan, and soul-destroying teachers, from their
abandoned head Simon Magus, down to their most execrable tail; and specially those whom the six
holy Œcumenic Councils have anathematized. Together with these I denounce Severus head of
the Monophysite Acephali, together with his followers; Peter the Fuller, who audaciously dared to
make addition to the Trisagion, and presumed to impute suffering to the impassable Deity; and all
who follow his blasphemies. Nor do we reject, but altogether approve, all the various local Synods
which have been convened, and the canonical regulations and soul-profiting ordinances which, under
the influence of the Holy Spirit, have been set forth in them.1

Session Six of the Seventh Ecumenical Council

Gregory reads: –
“Our holy Synod, therefore, which has been assembled together to the number of Three
Hundred and Thirty-Eight Bishops, following the usual synodical regulations, joyfully receives and
heartily proclaims the decrees and traditions which former Councils, having firmly established, have
transmitted to us to hold in like manner.” …

[A review of the first five Ecumenical Councils]

Epiphanius reads: –
“These holy Ecumenic Councils and those which preceded, Sergius of Constantinople, Cyrus
of Alexandria, Honorius of Rome, and their Monothelite party, received; but, nevertheless, they
have been anathematised as heretics by the Catholic Church, as having brawled out vain things
in the Church by their heresy: so these men [the Iconoclasts], though they receive these same holy
Synods, yet, on account of their peculiar heresy, have they been cast out of the Church. Indeed, all
they say about them is vain, idle and unworthy of any notice; for though they style these Councils
holy yet do they oppose and controvert them. Now, if they have done this in ignorance it proves their
want of discipline and of sense; but, if consciously, it argues impiety and conscience altogether
perverted. Either let them point out to us one Council in opposition to another, unless it be of the

1Mendham, The Seventh General Council, pp. 106 – 114. Regarding the letter of Tarasius and the Synodals of
Patriarch Theodore of Jerusalem, see the chapter on the Council of Trullo, where I quote from the Acts
showing that the Papal legates spoke in terms of approbation of these letters, and that they were
unanimously approved by the entire Seventh Ecumenical Council. Moreover, I note that the Synodals of
Theodore were “read and approved” at the Lateran Council in 769 under Pope Stephen III with 52 bishops,
and that afterwards Pope Hadrian I repeatedly appealed to Theodore’s Synodals. These Synodals are also
quoted in the chapter on the Filioque.
 618

number of those which having no part in the Catholic Church have been anathematised by her, like
their own; or let them follow those which are holy and approved, and what these permitted to be in
the Church let them receive. Had they admitted images they would have acted in accordance with
the Catholic Church, since these have been admitted in the six holy Ecumenic Councils; but, as they
follow not the Catholic Church, let no one give any heed to those who turn aside from her godly
traditions.”

Gregory reads: –
“In like manner, also in the times of the pious Emperor Constantine, a Council of one
hundred and seventy holy fathers was assembled in this royal city, which anathematised and
denounced Theodore of Pliaran, Cyrus of Alexandria, Honorius of Rome, Sergius, Paul, Pyrrhus, and
Peter, successively Patriarchs of Constantinople; Macarius of Antioch, and his disciple Stephen; for
having taught that there was but one will and operation in the two natures of our Lord Jesus
Christ.”1

Session Seven of the Seventh Ecumenical Council

The following is from a decree of the Seventh Ecumenical Council, recorded in the Acts of the Seventh Session:

Taught by the apostle, we held fast to the traditions ‘which we had received;’ and so we
received and embraced whatever the Catholic Church from the beginning of time received, whether
written or unwritten: among which things we recognized the representations of images and pictures.
Again, whatever our divine fathers were found to have rejected that we have also rejected, and
declared to be hostile to the Church: among which we considered this lately-sprung up innovation of
the Christian detractors which, like a gangrene, was devastating the pastures of the Church. …

Oh, their ignorance, their impiety! Oh had they reflected that even to offend one of the little
ones that believe in Christ hath His unbearable indignation, how much more then will, the perversion
of the world? But they, rejecting ecclesiastical tradition, have set at nought the word of the Lord:
wherefore the Lord also hath set them at nought, and with Arius, Macedonius, Apollinarius,
Nestorius, Eutyches, Dioscorus, Sergius, and Honorius, and their heretical fancies (He) hath
numbered the turbulent assemblage of their faction: for, as in imitation of those who have spoken
foolishly, so, together with them, have they been stoned with the sling of a true confession, and their
cabal has been broken up; for the Lord will not alway allow the rod of the wicked to rest on the lot of
the righteous.2

Canon I of the Seventh Ecumenical Council

The 1st Canon of the Seventh Ecumenical Council (cited in full above in the section on the Council in Trullo)
implies a reiteration of the Sixth Council’s condemnation of Honorius, when it states:

For all these [six ecumenical councils], being illumined by the same Spirit, defined such things as
were expedient. Accordingly those whom they placed under anathema, we likewise anathematize;
those whom they deposed, we also depose; those whom they excommunicated, we also
excommunicate; and those whom they delivered over to punishment, we subject to the same
penalty.3

1 Mendham, The Seventh General Council, pp. 329 – 333.

2 Mendham, The Seventh General Council, pp. 453 – 454.
3 Percival, Seven Ecumenical Councils, p. 555.
 619

Latin Eighth Ecumenical Council of 869

The official definition of the so-called Eighth Ecumenical Council of 869, which Roman Catholics consider
Ecumenical, contains the following summary of the Sixth Ecumenical Council:

Further, we accept the sixth, holy and universal synod, which shares the same beliefs and is in
harmony with the previously mentioned synods in that it wisely laid down that in the two natures of
the one Christ there are, as a consequence, two principles of action and the same number of wills. So,
we anathematize Theodore who was bishop of Pharan, Sergius, Pyrrhus, Paul and Peter, the unholy
prelates of the church of Constantinople, and with these, Honorius of Rome, Cyrus of Alexandria as
well as Macarius of Antioch and his disciple Stephen, who followed the false teachings of the
unholy heresiarchs Apollinarius, Eutyches and Severus and proclaimed that the flesh of God, while
being animated by a rational and intellectual soul, was without a principle of action and without a
will, they themselves being impaired in their senses and truly without reason.1

This is recorded in the Latin translation of Anastasius Bibliothecarius, who attended this Synod:

Anathematizamus Theodorum qui fuit Episcopus Pharan, et Sergium, et Pyrrhum, et Paulum, ac

Petrum, impios Præsules Constantinopolitanorum Ecclesiæ, atque cum iis Honorium Romae, una
cum Cyro Alexandriæ, necnon et Macarium Antiochiæ, ac discipulum ejus Stephanum, qui malæ
opinionis Apollinarii et Eutychetis et Severi impiorum hæresiarcharum dogmata sectantes, sine
operatione ac sine voluntate animatam animâ rationabiliet intellectuabili Dei carnem, sensibus læsis,
et revera sine ratione prædicaverunt.2

Deacon Agatho of Constantinople, Secretary to the Sixth Council

Hefele brings forward important evidence from Agatho, a notary and deacon of Constantinople who wrote 32
years after the Sixth Ecumenical Council, concerning the heretical Emperor Philippicus Bardanes, who
attempted to restore the memory of Honorius and the other Monothelites anathematized by that Council:

Baronius was not acquainted with the ἐπίλογος of the Constantinopolitan notary and deacon
Agatho, first published by Combefis. This official declares that, about thirty-two years before, he had
served the sixth Œcumenical Synod as secretary, and had written the minutes and the five copies of
the decree of the faith intended for the five patriarchs. He is now urged to draw up this paper by the
rage with which the new Emperor, Philippicus Bardanes, persecuted orthodoxy and the sixth
Œcumenical Synod. He had also ordered that the names of Sergius and Honorius, and the others
anathematized by the sixth Œcumenical Synod (καὶ τῶν λοιπῶν σὺν αὐτοῖς ὑπὸ τῆς αὐτῆς ἁγίας καὶ
οἰκουμενικῆς συνόδον ἐκβληθέντων καὶ ἀναθεματισθέντων), should be restored to the diptychs. This
notary who drew up the minutes of the sixth Œcumenical Synod must have known whether the
Synod anathematized Honorius or not. His book was composed long after the death of Theodore, and
so was certainly not falsified by him.3

1 Norman P. Tanner, Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, Vol. I, Council of Constantinople IV, Definition of the
Holy and Universal Eighth Synod, Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 1990.
2 Paul Bottalla, Pope Honorius Before the Tribunal of Reason and History, IV, p. 133, n. 99, London: Burns,

Oates, and Company, 1868. Honorius is listed in both Latin versions, see Arthur Loth, La Cause D’Honorius:
Documents Originaux avec Traduction, Notes et Conclusion, p. 97, Paris: Victor Palmé, 1870.
3 Hefele, History of the Councils, Vol. V, Book XVI, Ch. II, Sec. 324., pp. 199 – 200.
 620

Other Fathers and Testimonies

An alleged official letter of Pope Theodore I (Pope from 642 – 649) to Emperor Constans II states, as recorded
in Eutychius of Alexandria’s history:

To King Constantine, singularly faithful to pure orthodoxy, from the patriarch of Rome, Theodore.
Almighty God, who protects his church, gave us the economy of his mercy by the event of your
orthodox faith and has given us the opportunity to talk to you with joy and fervour in order to
manifest this grace. Because you have received your authority as vicars of the holy Apostles in order
to defend orthodoxy and make manifest the true religion, not as Heraclius did who does not deserve
to be called King because of his wickedness, and to be left out of the truth, nor as Sergius, Honorius,
Paul and Peter, the patriarchs of Constantinople, who opposed the truth making themselves
worthy of anathema, and that they deserved to be deprived of the place they occupied within the
church, for the falsity of their doctrine and for the doubts that they spread among the people.1

There are three letters of Pope Leo II which confirm the condemnation of Pope Honorius, one addressed to
the Bishops of Spain, one to King Erwig, and the third, which is the principal, being the confirmation of the
Sixth Ecumenical Council, is addressed to the Emperor at Constantinople and the Bishops of the East. Leo II
wrote a total of five letters on Monothelitism, and Honorius is mentioned in three of them.

Pope Leo II, in a letter to the Spanish Bishops, says:

All those who, for their crime against the purity of Apostolic tradition, have been struck with eternal
condemnation; that is to say, Theodore of Pharan, Cyrus, Sergius, as well as Honorius, who, failing in
the duty of his Apostolical authority, instead of extinguishing the flame of heresy, fomented it by
negligence.2

Pope Leo II’s letter to the Spanish King Erwig (642 – 687, reigned 680 – 687) reads:

All the authors of this impious doctrine, condemned by the sentence of the venerable Council, have
been rejected from Catholic unity, viz.: Theodore of Pharan, Cyrus of Alexandria, Sergius, Paulus,

1 “Vos siquidem potestam vestram accepistis vice apostolorum sanctorum ut fidem orthodoxam propugnetis,
et religionem veram manifestatis: non ut Heraclius, qui ob infidelitatem suam quodque veritatem deseruerit,
dignus non est qui rex appelletus; nec ut Sergius, Honorius, Paulus, et Petrus patriarchæ Constantinopolitani,
qui veritati contradixerunt, atque anathemate digni sunt, quique de Ecclesiae gradu dejiciantur ob
sententiarum suarum falsitatem, cosque quos in hominum [animas] injecerunt scrupulos.” Migne, Vol. CXI, p.
1111 D. See Roger Pearse’s translation in https://www.roger-pearse.com/weblog/2017/02/10/the-annals-
of-eutychius-of-alexandria-10th-c-ad-chapter-18d/. This letter cannot be fully authentic, at least as it stands
in Eutychius, as Patriarch Peter of Constantinople was not installed until 654, after Pope Theodore had died.
There are other problems with the accuracy of Eutychius’s history, and it appears that the correspondence
here has been interpolated (see Jack Tannous, In Search of Monothelitism, Dumbarton Oaks Papers, Vol.
LXVIII, p. 58, n. 224, Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks, Center for Byzantine Studies, Harvard University,
2014).
2 “Qui vero adversum apostolicæ traditionis puritatem perduelliones exstiterant … æterna condemnatione

mulctati sunt, id est, Theodorus Pharanitanus, Cyrus Alexandrinus, Sergius, Pyrrhus, Paulus, Petrus
Constantinopolitani, cum Honorio qui flammam hæretici dogmatis non, ut decuit apostolicam auctoritatem,
incipientem extinxit, sed negligendo confovit.” English translation from Victor Auguste, The Question of Pope
Honorius, Second Letter to Père Gratry from the Archbishop of Malines, IV, in The Vatican: A Weekly Record
of the Council, Vol. I, No. 18., April 8, 1870, p. 202, London: Henry Firmer, 1870. Latin in Hefele, History of the
Councils, Vol. V, Book XVI, Ch. II, Sec. 324, p. 185.
 621

Pyrrhus, Peter, former Bishops of Constantinople, and with them Honorius of Rome, who consented
to allow the immaculate faith transmitted to him by his predecessors to become tarnished. 1

Pope Leo II, in his letter to the Emperor (Constantine IV), dated May 7, 682, confirms the decrees of the Sixth
Ecumenical Council, saying:

We anathematize the inventors of the new dogma, Theodore Bishop of Pharan, Cyrus of Alexandria,
Sergius, Pyrrhus, Paul, Peter, intruders rather than Bishops of the Church of Constantinople, and also
Honorius, who did not strive with energy to maintain the purity of this Apostolic Church, by the
teaching of the tradition of the Apostles, but who permitted that this Church without spot should
become stained by profane treason.2

The Roman Catholic Archbishop Victor Augustin Isidore Dechamps (along with other Latins) takes these
letters as evidence that Pope Leo II did not condemn Honorius for heresy, but merely for negligence.
However, this is a forced and improper interpretation of Leo’s words, for Leo indicates no disagreement with
the Sixth Council, and if Leo had rejected the Sixth Council’s anathema upon Honorius for heresy, he would
have directly stated that the Council was in error on that point, or Leo would have been negligent in allowing
an orthodox bishop to be falsely condemned as a heretic.3

A fuller translation of this letter is given by John Chapman:

My predecessor, Pope Agatho of apostolic memory, together with his honourable Synod,
preached this norm of the right apostolic tradition. This he sent by letter … to your piety by his own
legates, demonstrating it and confirming it by the usage of the holy and approved teachers of the
Church. And now the holy and great Synod, celebrated by the favour of God and your own, has
accepted it and embraced it in all things with us, as recognizing in it the pure teaching of blessed
Peter, the prince of the apostles, and discovering in it the marks of sound piety. Therefore the holy
and universal sixth Synod, which by the will of God your clemency summoned and presided, has
followed in all things the teaching of the apostles and approved Fathers. And because, as we have
said, it has perfectly preached the definition of the true faith which the Apostolic See of blessed Peter
the apostle (whose office we unworthy hold) also reverently receives, therefore we, and by our
ministry this reverend Apostolic See, wholly and with full agreement do consent to the definitions
made by it, and by the authority of blessed Peter do confirm them, even as we have received firmness
from the Lord Himself upon the firm rock which is Christ. … And in like manner we anathematize
the inventors of the new error, that is, Theodore, Bishop of Pharan, Sergius, Pyrrhus, Paul, and Peter,
betrayers rather than leaders of the Church of Constantinople, and also Honorius, who did not

1 English translation from Victor Auguste, The Question of Pope Honorius, Second Letter to Père Gratry from
the Archbishop of Malines, IV, in The Vatican: A Weekly Record of the Council, Vol. I, No. 18., April 8, 1870, p.
202, London: Henry Firmer, 1870. Leo then includes Honorius with the rest who, “preaching one will and one
operation in the Godhead and Manhood of our Lord Jesus Christ, endeavoured shamelessly to defend the
heretical doctrine.” (Pusey, Eirenicon, Part III, p. 198.)
2 “Pariter anathematizamus novi erroris inventores, id est Theodorum Pharanitanum episcopum, Cyrum

Alexandrinum, Sergium, Pyrrhum, Paulum, Petrum Constantinopolitanæ Ecclessiæ subsessores magis quam
præsules, necnon et Honorium, qui hanc apostolicam ecclesiam non apostolicæ traditionis doctrina lustravit,
sed profunda proditione immaculatam fidem subvertere conatus est (in the Greek, subverti permisit,
παρεχωρησε), et omnes qui in suo errore defuncti sunt.” English translation from Victor Auguste, The
Question of Pope Honorius, Second Letter to Père Gratry from the Archbishop of Malines, IV, in The Vatican: A
Weekly Record of the Council, Vol. I, No. 18., April 8, 1870, p. 202, London: Henry Firmer, 1870. Latin in
Hefele, History of the Councils, Vol. V, Book XVI, Ch. II, Sec. 324, p. 185. It should be noted that there are some
textual variants and differences between the Greek and Latin versions.
3 Chapman quotes and comments upon Leo’s letters in John Chapman, The Condemnation of Pope Honorius, §

24, pp. 112 – 115, London: Catholic Truth Society, 1907.

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attempt to sanctify this Apostolic Church with the teaching of apostolic tradition, but by profane
treachery permitted its purity to be polluted.1

Chapman comments, “As a fact the words of Leo II are harsher than those of the [Sixth] Council.”,2 since Leo
directly says that Honorius was a disgrace to the Church of Rome itself and that Honorius polluted the Roman
See by profane treachery and detracted from Rome’s reputation. The Sixth Council did not apply its
statements condemning Honorius to the Bishops of Rome in general, nor did the Sixth Council criticise the
Church of Rome or its reputation, which shows that the Sixth Council was not motivated by any ill will toward
Rome.

The Fourteenth Council of Toledo (14 – 20 November 684), which approved the definition of faith of the Sixth
Ecumenical Council, gives an abstract of these letters of Pope Leo II in its Chapters I and II.3 This Council
assembled in response to a letter from Pope Leo II, and it was held under King Erwig and Saint Julian,
Archbishop of Toledo, with a total attendance of 17 bishops, six abbots, and the vicars of the metropolitans of
Tarragona, Narbonne, Merida, Braga, and Seville, and representatives of two absent suffragan bishops of
Toledo.4 This Council carefully examined and approved the Sixth Ecumenical Council, and it was received by

1 Chapman, The Condemnation of Pope Honorius, § 24, pp. 113 – 114. Chapman’s book is a decent resource
on the condemnation of Pope Honorius, however, it almost never takes account of previous studies, and he
goes out of his way to try to demonstrate that the East accepted Papal supremacy, often by citing dubious
material from the Roman collections, while Chapman does not question or inquire into the authenticity of
those materials. His work is marked by a relatively poor historical methodology (Coulton, Papal Infallibility,
Ch. XIV, p. 199), and Chapman misinterprets many documents and makes assumptions and conclusions that
are not warranted by the documents, and unsupported by any direct evidence. Chapman also does not
appear to realise that any praise he cites for the Bishop of Rome simply makes Honorius’s fall all the greater,
and shows the vanity of trusting in the Pope as a guide in matters of faith. Towards the end of his book,
Chapman implies that there are only “three or four examples in history” of significant Papal error (Chapman,
p. 111, n. 1), which is manifestly false. Chapman does not face the fact that Pope Agatho’s Letter was
approved by the Synod because it followed the Apostolic dogmas, and not simply because it proceeded from
the Pope. If the Council believed in Papal infallibility, it would merely have inquired into whether the Pope’s
Letters were issued ex cathedra. However, the theological contents of Agatho’s letter were examined and
found to be Orthodox. Honorius’s letters were examined and found to be heretical and contrary to the
Apostolic teachings.
2 Chapman, The Condemnation of Pope Honorius, § 24, p. 115.
3 T. J. Bailey (translator), Auguste Gratry, First Letter to Monseigneur Dechamps, VI, 11., p. 23, London: J. T.

Hayes, 1870. The extant Acts of this Council are in Migne, PL, Vol. LXXXIV, pp. 505 – 510.
4 Hefele, History of the Councils, Vol. V, Book. XVII, Sec. 326., pp. 215 – 219. See Tommaso Stancati (translator

and editor), Julian of Toledo, Prognosticum Futuri Saeculi, Ch. II, pp. 132 – 137, in Ancient Christian Writers,
No. 63, Mahwah, NJ: The Newman Press, 2010. It is worth quoting Stancati’s comments that “In any case, at
the end of the work of the Fourteenth Council of Toledo, the doctrine of the Third Council of Constantinople
was approved, but, as T. González justly underlines, not only because the pope had requested it, but because
the acts, analytically studied and assimilated by the Spanish bishops, had been found in agreement with the
Christological definitions of the preceding general councils and they were thus able to be signed with full
trust by all the bishops and to be entered as part of the official collection of the magisterium texts of the
Church of Spain. There is no wonder, as justly observed by Madoz, that the Spanish bishopric dedicated such
scrupulous analysis to the conciliar acts. It must be remembered, in fact, that the doctrine about the
infallibility of the pope and of the ecumenical councils was not entirely clear in the seventh century.” (p. 137,
Stancati’s footnotes omitted). Stancati is a Latin priest and professor of dogmatic theology at the Pontifical
University of St. Thomas Aquinas in Rome, but his last words appear to contradict the Latin First Vatican
Council, which declared that “indeed all the venerable Fathers have embraced and the holy orthodox Doctors
have venerated and followed their [the Pope’s] Apostolic doctrine; knowing most fully that this See of holy
Peter remains ever free from all blemish of error” (cited above).
 623

all the bishops in Hispania and nearby regions, and was accepted by Pope Benedict II. The Italian Dominican
professor Tommaso Stancati writes that the fathers of this Council

studied thoroughly and critically, in an intense week of work, the acts of the Third Council of
Constantinople, the sixth ecumenical council, comparing them to the texts of the first four ecumenical
councils: Nicaea, Constantinople, Ephesus, and Chalcedon. At the end of this analytical and
comparative study, in addition to condemning Monothelitism … they approved the conciliar acts sent
by Pope Leo II, considering them from then on official acts of the Catholic Church to be inserted
immediately in the Canonical Collection of Spain, after the acts of the Council of Chalcedon.1

Although the name of Honorius is not in the short few pages of its extant Acts, no Monothelite heretics are
listed here at all, and it is clear that this Council was certainly aware of Honorius’s condemnation, for it gave
an overview of Pope Leo II’s letters, which condemn Honorius, and this Council judiciously reviewed and fully
supported all of the Sixth Ecumenical Council’s decisions.2

Pope Adrian II, allegedly in a Roman Council of 868, writes in his third address to the Latin Eighth Ecumenical
Council, which was read in that Council:

We have read that the Roman Pontiff has judged as to the Prelates of all Churches; but we
have not read that any one has judged him. For although Honorius was after his death
anathematized by the Easterns, we should know that he had been accused for heresy, on account of
which alone it is lawful for inferiors to resist the ways of their superiors, and freely to reject their
wrongful minds. Although in this too neither Patriarchs nor any other Bishops would have a right to
utter any sentence whatever without the authority of the previous consent of the Pontiff of that same
first See.3

1 Stancati, Julian of Toledo, Prognosticum Futuri Saeculi, Ch. II, pp. 135 – 136.
2 Stancati notes, “In the Church of Toledo, Pope Honorius’s condemnation contained in the acts of the
ecumenical council must have made a certain impression, though it was probably not received with any
amazement, since the same pope, only decades before, had made a strange diatribe against the Spanish
Church, accusing the bishops of being “dogs incapable of barking” against the Jews. The Spanish bishops, as
will be seen later, were quick to defend themselves against the accusation of negligence and pastoral timidity,
in a firm letter of protest written by Braulio of Saragossa on behalf of all the bishops of Spain.” (Stancati,
Julian of Toledo, p. 513, n. 553.) This is another instance of Honorius causing trouble, by making false
accusations against the Spanish Church (and hypocritically accusing them of not being vigorous defenders of
the faith, when he himself promoted heresy). There is much interesting information in the history of the
Spanish Church of their ancient relations and conflicts with the Church of Rome (see Stancati’s references).
3 “Licet enim Honorio ab orientalibus post mortem anathema sit dictum, sciendum tamen est quia fuerat

super hæresi accusatus propter quam solum licitum est minoribus majorum suorum motibus resistendi, vel
pravos sensus libere respuendi; quamvis ibi nec Patriarchum nec ceterorum antistitum cuipiam de eo
quamlibet fas fuerit proferendi sententiam nisi ejusdem primæ sedis Pontificis consensus præcesserat
auctoritas.” Translation in Pusey, Eirenicon, Part III, pp. 199 – 200, n. 4. Other translations of this passage,
some partial or paraphrases, are: by Henry Boynton Smith, “Although the Orientals pronounced the anathema
upon Pope Honorius after his death, it must be considered that it was because he was accused of heresy, on
which ground alone the lower are allowed to resist the decrees of their rulers.” (Henry Boynton Smith, Bishop
C. J. Von Hefele on the Case of Pope Honorius, in The Presbyterian Quarterly and Princeton Review, Vol. I
[New Series.], No. 2., April, 1872, Art. IV, p. 300, New York, NY: J. M. Sherwood, 1872); by Richard Field, “None
of the inferior sees may judge the greater, and specially Rome, unlesse it be in case of heresy; in which case
they of the East did anathematize and accurse Honorius: which yet they would not have adventured to do, if
the Roman Church had not gone before them in such condemnation of her own bishop.” (Richard Field, Of the
Church, Vol. III, Book V, Ch. XLIII, p. 466, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1847); and in an article in
the Irish Ecclesiastical Record, “We have read that the Roman Pontiff judges the pastors of all the Churches,
but we do not read that he is judged by anyone. For if the Oriental Bishops pronounced an anathema against
 624

This passage has given rise to various interpretations. Hefele comments upon this, “What would Pope Adrian
have said to the theory of Mergerie, that Honorius was condemned by the Council only for mauvaise
administration?”1

Paul Bottalla comments:

Nor can the expressions used by Pope Adrian II., in his third address to the Council, afford the least
support to Mr. Renouf’s view, since Adrian II. never asserted that Pope Honorius had been
condemned for heresy, but that he had been super hæresti accusatus.2

The Roman Catholic apologist William George Ward (1812 – 1882) writes:

And Adrian II. long afterwards pointed out, “that no bishop would have had the right of expressing
concerning” Honorius “any judgement whatever, unless the authority of the Primatial See had gone
before.”3

Renouf comments:

Adrian lived too long after the sixth council to be considered as evidence as to what really
took place, although many writers, and among them some ardent partisans of papal infallibility,
believe this Pope to have spoken according to the documents preserved in the Roman archives. He
may only have taken for granted that the Council must have proceeded according to the method
described by him. But in other respects the evidence of Adrian is most important. He knows of no
other charge against Honorius than heresy, it is the only charge upon him which he allows that the
council could have condemned the Pope, and he has no doubt that the sentence of the council was
preceded by the consent of the Roman Pontiff.4

Pope Adrian II’s letter contains several inaccuracies. Adrian implies that the Roman Church condemned
Honorius before the East, and that the East relied on such a condemnation as a precedent before it
pronounced its anathema. However, there is no record of this, since the name of Honorius was conspicuously
absent in the lists of Monothelite heretics condemned by Rome for many years, and he was even allegedly
defended by Pope John IV,5 and the Sixth Ecumenical Council was the first to explicitly pronounce anathema
upon Honorius.6 However, it is possible that Adrian is referring to Agatho’s uncorrupted letter to the Council,
which I speculate condemned Honorius by name. Also, Adrian was the immediate successor to the wicked
Pope Nicholas I, and it was pointed out that Adrian II directly quoted from the Pseudo-Isidorian decretals, and
he also condemned St. Photius at the pseudo Latin Eighth Council at Constantinople in 869, where he also
unsuccessfully attempted to dissuade the Bulgarians from adhering to Constantinople.

Honorius, after his death, we must remember that he had been accused of heresy, and that this is the sole
reason for which inferiors may lawfully judge their superiors by freely rejecting their pernicious opinions.
And still no Patriarch, no Bishop, could ever have pronounced against him if the Pontiff, ruling in this same
Primatial See, had not previously given them the authority.” (The Irish Ecclesiastical Record, Vol. VI, February,
1870, The Resurrection of Gallicanism, III, p. 207, Dublin: William B. Kelly, 1870.)
1 Henry Boynton Smith, Bishop C. J. Von Hefele on the Case of Pope Honorius, The Presbyterian Quarterly and

Princeton Review, Vol. I [New Series.], No. 2., April, 1872, Art. IV, p. 300, New York, NY: J. M. Sherwood, 1872.
2 Paul Bottalla, Pope Honorius Before the Tribunal of Reason and History, § IV, pp. 134 – 135, London: Burns,

Oates, and Company, 1868.

3 William George Ward, The Condemnation of Honorius, § V, p. 27, London: Burns and Oates, 1879.
4 Peter Le Page Renouf, The Case of Pope Honorius Reconsidered with Reference to Recent Apologies, pp. 65 –

66, London: Longmans, Green, Reader, and Dyer, 1869.

5 See in Arthur Loth, La Cause D’Honorius: Documents Originaux avec Traduction, Notes et Conclusion, Paris:

Victor Palmé, 1870; and see the commentary of Chapman (who is speculative and evasive) on Adrian’s letter.
6 With the sole exception of Pope Theodore I’s letter to Emperor Constans II, as quoted in Eutychius, if this

document is not interpolated (see above).

 625

Adrian also says that it was the “Orientals” who condemned Honorius, but Western bishops and Papal
representatives were present and fully agreed with the sentence. Adrian also writes imprecisely and seems
to give room for the interpretation of Bottalla, although Bottalla is mistaken. Adrian says that the only
grounds for judging superiors (specifically the Bishop of Rome) is heresy, which is incorrect because schism
and canonical violations are other grounds for judging and deposing bishops. Adrian also implies (likely
relying upon the Symmachian Forgeries) that no Bishop of Rome can be judged for heresy while he still lives,
since Adrian says it was necessary to first have the approval of the Bishop of Rome to condemn a previous
Bishop of Rome, which logically means that the entire Church is compelled to accept a heretical Roman
Bishop while he still lives.

It is important to reiterate that Adrian says that Honorius was “accused of heresy”, which contradicts later
Roman Catholic authors who say that Honorius was accused merely of negligence. The charge against
Honorius was heresy, not negligence. Adrian also clearly signifies that even a Bishop of Rome may become a
heretic, which makes the theory of Papal infallibility quite useless (for a Pope could fall into heresy right
before issuing an ex cathedra decree). Adrian’s claim that heresy is the “sole reason” and only ground for
judging superiors, and that the Sixth Council had Papal authority in pronouncing against Honorius,
completely refutes claims that Honorius was only guilty of negligence or silence, for Adrian concedes that it
was for heresy, and could have only been for heresy.1

The Monothelites certainly recognized Honorius as one of their own. Macarius appealed to Honorius four
times in the Sixth Ecumenical Council. Macarius, the Monothelite Patriarch of Antioch, with his disciple
Stephen (a priest and monk) and two Bishops on behalf of the Monothelite delegation of Antioch, presented
their Confession of Faith to the Sixth Council, saying with regards to Monothelitism, “We consent as well to
the five Councils, as to Honorius taught of God, to Sergius, Paulus, and Peter,” and Denny notes, “in thus
reckoning Honorius foremost amongst the Monothelites, he evidently refers to Honorius’ letters; in fact, the
Confession itself is almost entirely made up of the letter of Sergius and the reply of Honorius thereto.” 2 In the
first session, on 7 November 680, the same Monothelite delegation of Antioch said, “We did not publish new
expressions, but what we received from the holy and œcumenical Synods, and from holy approved Fathers,
from the prelates of the royal city, that is from Sergius, Paul, Pyrrhus, and Peter, and also from Honorius, who
was Pope of old Rome, and Cyrus, who was Pope of Alexandria, with regard to the operation and will. Thus
we have believed and do believe and preach, and we are ready to offer proof.” 3 In the eighth session, on 7
March 681, Macarius says that the “heresy of Maximus” “was rejected before our time by our blessed Fathers,
I mean Honorius and Sergius and Cyrus”.4 Later at the Sixth Ecumenical Council, an excerpt of Macarius was
read in which he says that the opposite party (perhaps the Lateran Council) has “anathematized absolutely all
those who held one will of the Lord, of whom one was Honorius of the Romans, who most clearly taught one
will.”5

Pyrrhus, the Monothelite Patriarch of Constantinople, appealed to Pope Honorius as plainly teaching one will,
in a public disputation in Carthage in July 645, with St. Maximus the Confessor and many Bishops, where
Maximus allegedly convinced Pyrrhus that Honorius was not a Monothelite. Pyrrhus asked, “What dost thou
say of Honorius, who clearly taught one will of Our Lord Jesus Christ in his letter to my predecessor?”6 The
conversation implies that other Monothelites likewise saw the words of Honorius in their favour.

1 See the good commentary upon this passage of Adrian in Edward Denny, Papalism, pp. 490 – 492.
2 Denny, Papalism, pp. 403.
3 Chapman, The Condemnation of Pope Honorius, pp. 74 – 75.
4 Chapman, The Condemnation of Pope Honorius, p. 89.
5 Chapman, The Condemnation of Pope Honorius, p. 90.
6 Joseph P. Farrell (translator), Saint Maximus the Confessor: Disputations with Pyrrhus (also titled The

Disputation with Pyrrhus of Our Father among the Saints Maximus the Confessor), ¶ 147, p. 49, Waymart, PA:
St. Tikhon’s Monastery Press, 2014 (first printed 1990).
 626

Paul, another Monothelite Patriarch of Constantinople, in a letter to Pope Theodore, after quoting some
Church Fathers in his own favour, says, “with which testimonies Sergius and Honorius of pious memory are
in agreement and accord, who adorned respectively the Sees of new and elder Rome.” 1 At the 649 Lateran
Council, this dogmatic letter of Paul was read and inserted into the Acts, and not a word of contradiction was
offered by the Pope or Council (see Renouf’s notice of this important fact).

Maximos the Confessor, in a letter to a high official in the East, named Peter, also notes that the Monothelites
have claimed Honorius on their side, in the acts they have composed in defence of the heretical Ecthesis (a
Monothelite document).2

Sergius, the Monothelite Patriarch of Constantinople, adduced Honorius in support of his doctrine when in
controversial discussion with St. Sophronius of Jerusalem, “Then Sophronius went to Sergius, Patriarch of
Constantinople, and perceived that he spoke the same way as Cyrus, affirming also that Honorius, Patriarch of
Rome, professed his doctrine.”3

An early Syriac Life (dated from 662 – 680) of St. Maximus the Confessor by the Monothelite historian George
of Resh’aina, a former member of Sophronius’s clergy in Jerusalem, is written against Maximus and calls him
“wicked” and a “blasphemer”. This work groups Honorius with the other Monothelite patriarchs and
mentions the synod in Cyprus c. 634, to which Honorius sent his Monothelite deacon Gaios, and records that
the “four sees” (Rome, Constantinople, Aledanxdria, and Antioch) embraced Monothelitism, saying:

This Sophronios at once sent a letter to Arkadios, inviting him to send to the holy Kyros of Alexandria
and to Honorios patriarch of Rome and to Sergios, patriarch of Constantinople, (saying) that there
should be a synod and gathering of bishops wherever they liked, and they should make trial of these
things [the Monothelite controversy] …

The holy Kyros of Alexandria did not shrink from the labour of the journey, but came at once without
any delay to Arkadios in Cyprus, together with five bishops from his jurisdiction. Honorios sent his
deacon Gaios, a virtuous man, wise in understanding and illustrious in the divine scriptures;
Sergios, the chaste patriarch of Constantinople, sent to them his archdeacon Petros. …

When the above-mentioned men reached the imperial city they entered before the victorious
emperor Heraklios, and the letter containing the doctrine of Sophronios and the rascal Maximos
was read out in their presence, whereupon they perceived that it was alien to the entire Christian
teaching. The emperor at once made a document called an ‘Edict’, and sent it to the four
(patriarchal) sees. In it he rejected this despicable doctrine and ordered it to be brought to naught
as being pernicious, and he laid down in the definition he made that everyone who confessed (this
doctrine), or believed on such lines, should be ejected from his position.

When this order from the emperor arrived and was received by the four sees and all the bishops,
they added the signatures of their agreement, and anathematized everyone who added or subtracted
anything. Thereupon all who held this doctrine were in fear, and in this way there was peace until
the death of the victorious emperor Heraklios, and (the doctrine) came to nothing and faded out.

Now Maximos confined himself in a small cell out of fear of the emperor and the patriarchs who had
anathematized his teaching.4

1 Chapman, The Condemnation of Pope Honorius, p. 38.

2 Chapman, The Condemnation of Pope Honorius, p. 39.
3 From Eutychius of Alexandria’s quote of Pope John IV’s apology for Honorius (Migne, Vol. CXI, pp. 1108 et

sqq., see Roger Pearse’s translation in https://www.roger-pearse.com/weblog/2017/02/10/the-annals-of-

eutychius-of-alexandria-10th-c-ad-chapter-18d/).
4 Sebastian Brock, An Early Syriac Life of Maximus the Confessor, §§ 8 – 17, in Analecta Bollandiana, Vol. XCI,

Issues 3 – 4, pp. 315 – 317, Brussels: Société des Bollandistes, 1973. George of Resh’aina may be mistaken in
his description of the “Edict” and confusing the Ekthesis of 638 with the psephos of 634 (see Brock’s
 627

There is more to this effect, but that would require more of a history of the controversy, whereas I wish here
to present a comprehensive (as far as possible) collection of testimonies to the condemnation of Pope
Honorius.

St. Anastasius of Sinai, or the author of Synopsis de Haeresibus et Synodis (c. shortly after 700), discusses the
Monothelite controversy, and mentions Honorius as a condemned Monothelite: “Damnavit vero et
anathemate mactavit Honorium, qui Romanus pontifex fuit, Sergium, Pyrrhum, Paulum, … qui usque in finem
huic Monothelitarum sententiae pertinaci impietate adhaeserunt.” 1

In a late seventh or early eighth-century (dated between 685 and 726) collection of dogmatic Christological
writings called the Doctrina Patrum (or more fully, Antiquorum Patrum doctrino de Verbi incarnatione), by
an uncertain author, Honorius is included in a list of anathematized Monothelite heretics.2 The Doctrina
Patrum is a very valuable and ancient florilegium, and was first edited by Franz Diekamp in 1907 from a
manuscript in the Vatican Library, and an improved second edition was published in 1981.

Patriarch St. Germanus I of Constantinople, in his De Haeresibus et Synodis (c. 723 – 733), writes the following
on the sixth council, mentioning Honorius twice, including him with the Monothelite heretics:

Quo turbine abrepti fuerunt Honorius quoque Romæ, et Cyrus Alexandriæ, et deinde Petrus ac Paulus
et Pyrrhus qui per ea tempora præsules fuerunt, aliique plurimi quos inter Polychronius, et Macarius
Antiochæ, ac Stephanus ejus discipulus, qui contra synodum deinceps steterunt. …

Jamque hic congregata erat, regnante Constantino Constantis filio, ejus qui in Sicilia fuit, sexta
synodus Patrum CLXX, in qui Georgius quidam nostris præerat. Adfuerunt etiam nonnulli ex urbe
Roma episcopi … Fit igitur definitio, qua sanciuntur prædictæ quinque synodi, idemque fidei
symbolum proponitur, et duæ naturæ in uno Domino nostro Jesu Christo recte affirmantur, duæque

commentary pp. 323 – 324), but this is still an attestation that Rome was held to have officially supported
Monothelitism. George implies that it was not until Maximus and his pupils went to Pope Martin that Rome
embraced dyothelitism (Orthodoxy) when he says, “they then went up to Rome itself, and by means of their
deceitfulness even Martinos the patriarch there was ensnared, and he fully accepted his doctrine, with the
result that he gathered a synod of 190 bishops to confirm the doctrine of Maximos.” (§ 20, p. 318; also see p.
339, where the same is repeated in the Chronicles of Michael the Syrian and an anonymous Monothelite
Syriac chronicle: “Maximus went up to Rome and led astray Martin the Patriarch”, and “He also went to
Martin the Patriarch of Rome, and led him astray”, respectively.) George’s testimony with regards to
Honorius’s deacon Gaios is especially important, for George was present at this very synod in Cyprus and thus
personally met him, so George’s praise of Gaios must be understood to mean that Gaios (an official
representative of Pope Honorius, sent by Honorius to discuss the Monothelite controversy with other
patriarchs and their representatives along with other bishops) was an open and evident Monothelite,
especially considering how readily George applies opprobrious terms to the Orthodox Christians (specifically
St. Maximus).
1 Jean-Baptiste Pitra (editor), Iuris Ecclesiastici Graecorum Historia et Monumenta, Vol. II, II, Sancti Anastasii

Sinaitae capitulum in quo brevis sermo est de haeresibus quae ab initio fuerunt, et de synodis adversus eas
habitis, p. 270, Rome: Typis S. Congregationis De Propaganda Fide, 1868.
2 Jack Tannous, In Search of Monothelitism, Dumbarton Oaks Papers, Vol. LXVIII, p. 60, Washington, DC:

Dumbarton Oaks, Center for Byzantine Studies, Harvard University, 2014.

 628

phisicæ volendi facultates seu voluntates, cum singularum propriis operationibus, Sergius que et
Honorius ejusque consectanei anthemate percelluntur.1

An anonymous work on the first six Ecumenical Councils, which Joseph A. Munitiz dates to the 730s, but
perhaps was originally written 685 – 692,2 also lists Honorius among those condemned at the Sixth Council:

Sexta sancta & oecumenica Synodus habita est Constantinopoli sub Constantino patre Justiniani, &
sub Agathone Papa Romæ, & Georgio Patriarcha Constantinopolitano. Adfuerunt CLXX. Sancti Patres
Congregati sunt autem adversus eos, qui innovaverunt hæresin in sancta catholica Ecclesia, adversus
Theodorum inquam Episcopum Pharanitanum, Honorium Romanum, Cyrum Alexandrinum, Sergium,
Pyrrhum, Petrum & Paulu Constantinopolitanos Episcopos.3

The Greek life of Pope St. Martin I, dated to 730 – 740, records the anathemas announced by the Sixth
Ecumenical Council against the instigators of the Monothelite heresy including Honorius of Rome, Sergius,
Pyrrhus, Paul, Peter, Cyrus of Alexandria, Theodore of Pharan, Macarius of Antioch and his disciple Stephen,
and the presbyter and monk Polychronius.4

On the Liber Diurnus, which was discussed earlier, I now cite from the learned Anglican scholars of The
Church Quarterly Review:

Gregory II., who is believed to have drafted that profession of faith contained in the Liber Diurnus, to
be made by each Pope at his coronation, wherein Honorius is again specified as a heretic; so that, for
the many centuries this profession was made, every Pope had to pledge himself to the assertion that
Honorius had been bound by the sentence of perpetual anathema, for having added fuel to the
execrable and heretical dogma of Sergius and the other Monothelites.5

The Liber Pontificalis’s entry on Pope Honorius does not mention his heresy or the controversy at all,6 and its
record of the Sixth Council in the entry on Pope Agatho does not mention Honorius at all, although the other

1 Migne, PG, Vol. XCVIII, pp. 73 et sqq. A French translation, with parallel Latin and Greek, is given in Arthur
Loth, La Cause D’Honorius: Documents Originaux avec Traduction, Notes et Conclusion, Paris: Victor Palmé,
1870.
2 Joseph A. Munitiz, The Manuscript of Justel’s “Anonymi Tractatus de Synodis”, in Byzantion, Vol. XLVII, pp.

248 – 249, Leuven: Peeters Publishers, 1977. Munitiz discusses this treatise and manuscript on the Six
Councils, and gives a critical edition of the Greek text. The name of Honorius will be found on p. 256, VI, line
6.
3 Henri Justel and Guillaume Voel, Bibliotheca Juris Canonici Veteris, Vol. II, 1164, Paris: Ludovicum Billaine,

1661. Parallel Latin and Greek text here.

4 Bronwen Neil, Seventh-Century Popes and Martyrs: The Political Hagiography of Anastasius Bibliothecarius,

Part I, Ch. III, 3., p. 107, in Studia Antiqua Australiensia, Vol. II, Sydney: Brepols, 2006. Paul Peeters, Une Vie
Grecque du Pape S. Martin I, Analecta Bollandiana, Vol. LI, Ch. XIII, Brussels: Société des Bollandistes, 1933.
5 “Auctores vero novi hæretici dogmatis, Sergium … una cum Honorio, qui pravis eorum assertionibus

fomentum impendit … cum omnibus hæreticis scriptis atque sequacibus, nexu perpetui anathematis
devinxerunt”. The Church Quarterly Review, Vol. XVIII, April – July 1884, The Legal Flaws in the Later Papacy,
p. 450. De Rozière (editor), Liber Diurnus, pp. 194 – 201.
6 Raymond Davis, The Book of Pontiffs (Liber Pontificalis), 72. Honorius, pp. 62 – 63, in Translated Texts for

Historians, Vol. VI, Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 3rd Ed., 2010.
 629

heretics are listed.1 However, the next entry, for Agatho’s successor Pope Leo II, states:

He received the acts of the sixth holy synod written in Greek; this was recently celebrated by God’s
providence in the imperial city, within the royal palace called Trullus, with the pious and clement
emperor Constantine attending in his official capacity, and with him the legates of the apostolic see,
two patriarchs, of Constantinople and Antioch, and 150 bishops. In it were condemned Cyrus, Sergius,
Honorius, Pyrrhus, Paul and Peter, also Macarius and his disciple Stephen, and Polychronius the new
Simon – those who said or preached that there was one will and operation in the Lord Jesus Christ, or
would again in future preach or defend this. … [Two men absolved by Agatho] now set forth in their
own handwriting their faith in accordance with the holy synod’s definition and anathematized all the
heretics and their abovenamed followers, the men whom the holy synod and the apostolic see
anathematized.2

The Venerable Bede (673 – 735), the eminent English monk and historian, in his work The Reckoning of Time,
testifies to the anathematization of Pope Honorius, although Bellarmine has suspected his name was
interpolated here. Bellarmine asserts:

I have counted Bede among the former ones, in spite of Cano. I have no doubts about the
Britannic Saint’s opinion, though Honorius’ name does suddenly appear in Liber I, “De sex aetatibus”
among the hierarchs excommunicated by Synod VI.

At the late period when the copyist was working, this semi-erudite intellectual [the copyist]
probably added Honorius to the list Bede had transmitted, [since] the name was almost everywhere
associated with Cyrus, Sergius, etc… in the accounts of the Sixth Constantinopolitan Council.

One really gathers from Venerable Bede’s second book of his History of the Angles that the
author had constantly known that even after his death Honorius’ reputation was reminiscent of
holiness (among contemporary Romans). Bede repeatedly cites him as an example of the Good
Shepherd, i.e. in his Vita Sancti Bortolfi, Abbatis (the Life of Abbot Saint Bortolfus), where he qualifies
Honorius sometimes as holy (sanctus), sometimes as blessed (beatus). He says among other things:
“Honorius has been a hardy, wise, venerable Pontiff, steady of purpose, illustrious for his doctrine, of
conspicuous mildness and humility.” And a little further on, “This holy pope did not forget Bortolfus,
his (spiritual) father, and invested him with the charge that the latter had wished to get. He
moreover endowed him with the privilege of depending directly upon the Holy See, so that no bishop
could pretend to exert any jurisdictional power over the above-mentioned monastery.”

This did Venerable Bede write about Honorius. He would never have done so if he had
believed that St. Gregory’s disciple had been excommunicated because of heresy.3

1 Raymond Davis, The Book of Pontiffs (Liber Pontificalis), 81. Agatho, ¶ 14., p. 75, in pp. 72 – 76, in
Translated Texts for Historians, Vol. VI, Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 3rd Ed., 2010.
2 Raymond Davis, The Book of Pontiffs (Liber Pontificalis), 82. Leo II, 2., p. 76, in Translated Texts for

Historians, Vol. VI, Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 3rd Ed., 2010. Critical Latin edition in Theodor
Mommsen (editor), MGH, Gestorum Pontificum Romanorum, Vol. I, Liber Pontificalis, Part I, LXXXII, Leo II, p.
200, lines 12 – 13, Berlin: Apud Weidmannos, 1898. Renouf makes an argument from the word ‘nuper’
(lately) in reference to the recent assembly of the Sixth Council, which “affords a convincing proof that this
biography is not by Anastasius, but by a much earlier writer.” (Renouf, The Case of Pope Honorius
Reconsidered, p. 64). This passage appears to have been copied or extracted from the Liber Pontificalis and
used by the Liber Diurnus and Breviary.
3 Translated in M. Jean-Andre Perlant, The Sullied Reputation of a Holy Pope, The Francinta Messenger, June

1994. This is an article in a small traditionalist Roman Catholic newsletter. The author claims that Honorius
was a “Holy Pope”.
 630

Bellarmine’s claim that “the copyist was working” at a “late period”, and the assumption that the text was
corrupted with the name of Honorius by a single “semi-erudite intellectual”, is refuted by the following
evidence, where I point out that all extant manuscripts of Bede’s work contain the name of Honorius in the
list of those condemned at the Sixth Council, and that there are at least 104 manuscripts, “45 of which were
written within 70 – 100 years of the completion of the work” (see below), which is an extremely strong
attestation.

Bellarmine’s next assertion, regarding the second book of Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English Nation,
is too strong, for although Bede quotes at length two letters of Honorius (to King Ædwin and Archbishop
Honorius of Canterbury, written A.D. 634),1 he never calls Honorius ‘holy’ or ‘blessed’, whereas Bede does
give these titles to other Roman Popes, such as Gregory and Boniface (Honorius’s immediate predecessor).
Bede does not give any description of Honorius, and merely writes in a positive, but neutral, manner when
quoting the letters. Bede was not here concerned with the affairs of the Roman bishop, but only in so far as
his actions were relevant to the Christians of the British Isles, and Honorius’s letters are valuable in showing
the relations between the English and Roman Churches.

Bellarmine’s final assertion, concerning the Vita Sancti Bortulfi, is inaccurate, for this was not written by
Bede. The author of the life of the abbot St. Bertulf of Bobbio (died 640) is the Italian monk and hagiographer
Jonas of Bobbio (c. 600 – after 659), writing in the mid-seventh century, who was a contemporary and friend
of Pope Honorius (the Abbey of Bobbio is located in northern Italy). Bellarmine’s mistake on this matter is
due to the fact that the hagiographies of Jonas had been misattributed to Bede.2 The life does contain those
praises of Honorius, but Jonas was writing before the condemnation of Honorius, and died before the Sixth
Ecumenical Council.

I examined many other records of English and Anglo-Saxon history, and in none of them have I found any
direct praise of Pope Honorius, or the appellation ‘holy’ or ‘blessed’ conferred upon him, although many
contain a passing mention of Honorius (not mentioning his condemnation). I was only able to find an
anonymous late eleventh-century manuscript of Abingdon Abbey in the Bodleian Library (Ms. Digby 39),
which calls Pope Honorius ‘blessed’ in passing, in the context of Honorius sending St. Berin to England. 3

In a masterful study titled “A Treatise of the Corruptions of Scripture, Councils, and Fathers: By the Prelates,
Pastors, and Pillars of the Church of Rome, for the Maintenance of Popery”, first published in 1611 by the
Anglican scholar Thomas James (1573 – 1629), first librarian of the Bodleian Library in Oxford, Bede’s text is
discussed:
The forty-seventh place corrupted, in “Bede de 6. Ætatibus, seu de temporum ratione.”

“aMacarius, with those which came after him, as well as those that went before him, Cyrus,
Sergius, Honorius, Pyrrhus, Paul and Peter, was anathematized.”

Proved

By this one place of Bede it is plainly proved that Honorius the pope was amongst them that
were condemned in the sixth synod; and by consequence, that the pope may err, and be an heretic.
Which God forbid, say they; and therefore bBellarmine doth think that the word Honorius is thrust
into Bede’s book. But, I reply, that this is but a guess of a distrustful mind: for in a very ancient

1 Note that Sergius’s letter to Pope Honorius was likely written in the final months of 634, and Honorius’s
heretical reply came not long after, so the two letters Bede quotes were perhaps written before Honorius’s
formal heresy.
2 For example, they were included in the 1612 Cologne edition of Bede’s works. Also see George Metlake,

Jonas of Bobbio: The Biographer of St. Columbanus, in The Ecclesiastical Review, Vol. XLVIII, No. 5, May, 1913,
p. 573, Philadelphia, PA: American Ecclesiastical Review, The Dolphin Press, 1913.
3 John Edward Field, Saint Berin: The Apostle of Wessex: The History, Legends, and Traditions of the

Beginning of the West-Saxon Church, Appendix, Note VII, p. 238, London: Society for Promoting Christian
Knowledge, 1902.
 631

manuscript of cBede the word Honorius is to be read. The copy is without suspicion of forgery
written many hundred years ago.

[James & Cox’s Footnotes:] a) Macarius, cum suis sequacibus simul et præcessoribus, Cyro, Sergio,
Honorio, Pyrrho, Paulo et Petro, anathematizatus est.
b) “Videtur enim aliquid sciolus, addidisse nomen Honorii in libro Bedæ.” Bell. de Pont. Lib. IV. cap. 2.
Disput. de Contr. Tom. I. p. 219.
c) In the Public Library.1

Roman Catholic scholars after Bellarmine, of the few who have mentioned the subject of the name of
Honorius in Bede, have abandoned the theory of interpolation and admit that the original treatise of Bede
includes the name of Honorius. All of the ancient manuscripts contain the name of Honorius, and there is no
textual basis to reject this reading, in which the collators of the numerous manuscripts concur. It would be
absurd to imagine that the Greeks foisted in the name of Honorius, when Bede wrote on the opposite end of
Europe.

Theodor Mommsen (1817 – 1903) was an eminent German scholar, and he collated many manuscripts to
create the authoritative Latin edition of the Chronicles of Bede. In his critical edition, the word “Honorio” is
found without variations in all the manuscripts.2

The medievalist scholar Charles William Jones (1905 – 1989) collated many manuscripts to create the
modern authoritative Latin edition of Bede’s Opera de Temporibus, and according to the author of the English
translation of Bede in the Translated Texts for Historians series,

Jones examined 104 manuscripts for his edition, 45 of which were written within 70 – 100 years of
the completion of the work. This shows how important The Reckoning of Time was for the
Carolingian schools. The text is astoundingly stable, despite occasional scribal perplexity over the
computistical jargon.3

It is worth emphasising that these 45 manuscripts, written within a century of the completion of Bede’s work,
all contain the name of Honorius. Jones writes in his first Latin edition,

I have omitted the chronicles, which were included in De Temporum Ratione and De Temporibus,
because I could not notably improve Mommsen’s sound editions in Monumenta Germaniae Historica,
Chronica Minora III.4

1 John Edmund Cox (editor), Thomas James, A Treatise of the Corruptions of Scripture, Councils, and Fathers:
By the Prelates, Pastors, and Pillars of the Church of Rome, for the Maintenance of Popery, Part II, p. 166,
London: John W. Parker, 1843. Note that James is writing over 400 years ago, and moreover on the same
island as Bede, who lived into the 8th century, so the “very ancient manuscript” he refers to likely approaches
closely to the original autographs. One example in confirmation of this is the well-preserved St. Gallen
manuscript (dating to around A.D. 860), which contains the name of Honorius among those anathematized
(St. Gallen, Stiftsbibliothek, Cod. Sang. 251, p. 170, line 7 – Assorted works of natural history by the Venerable
Bede (http://www.e-codices.unifr.ch/en/list/one/csg/0251).
2 Theodor Mommsen (editor), Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Scriptores, Auctorum Antiquissimorum, Vol.

XIII, Chronicum Minorum Saec. IV V VI VII, Vol. III, Bedae Chronica Maiora, De Temporum Ratione, LXVI, A.M.
4639, 559, p. 314, line 8, Berlin: Weimar, 1898.
3 Faith Wallis (translator), Bede: The Reckoning of Time, Introduction, p. lxxxvii, in Translated Texts for

Historians, Vol. XXIX, Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1999.

4 Charles W. Jones, Bedae, Opera De Temporibus, Preface, p. viii, Cambridge, MA: The Mediaeval Academy of

America, 1943.
 632

In the edition of Jones published in 1977, which includes the chronicles, the text of Mommsen is “reproduced
without change”.1

The name of Honorius is also found in the collated Latin edition of the Anglican historian and clergyman John
Allen Giles (1808 – 1884),2 who examined several sources and based his “edition from a collation of the
[1529] Basle text with MSS. in the British Museum, … which are very good and of a very early date”.3

The relevant section from Bede is the following passage:

Pope Agatho, at the request of the most pious rulers Constantine, Heraclius and Tiberius,
sent envoys to the royal city, amongst whom was John, then a deacon, but not long after bishop of
Rome, to bring about the unification of the holy churches of God. They were received very graciously
by Constantine, the most reverend defender of the catholic faith, and were ordered to lay aside all
philosophical debates in order to search for the true faith in peaceful discussion, and all the works of
the Fathers that they asked for were given to them from the library of Constantinople. One hundred
and fifty bishops were present there, under the presidency of the Patriarchs George of the royal city
[Constantinople] and Macarius of Antioch. And they were convinced. They added that those who
asserted that there was one will and operation in Christ falsified very many statements of the catholic
Fathers. With the conflict settled, George was corrected, and Macarius, together with his followers
and their predecessors Cyrus, Sergius, Honorius, Pyrrhus, Paul, and Peter, were anathematized. In
[Macarius’] place Theophanius, an abbot from Sicily, was made bishop of Antioch. Such great
gratitude accompanied the envoys of the catholic peace, that John bishop of Porta, who was one of
them, publicly celebrated mass in Latin in the presence of the emperor and the patriarch in the
church of Sancta Sophia, on the Sunday of the octave of Easter.

Agatho Papa ex rogatu Constantini Heraclii et Tiberii principum piissimorum, misit in regiam
urbem legatos suos, in quibus erat Johannes Romanæ ecclesiæ tunc Diaconus, non longe post
episcopus, pro adunatione facienda sanctarum Dei ecclesiarum. Qui benignissime suscepti a
reverentissimo fidei catholicæ defensore Constantino, jussi sunt remissis disputationibus
philosophicis pacifico colloquio de fide vera perquirere, datis eis de bibliotheca Constantinopolitana
cunctis antiquorum partum quos peteband libellis. Adfuerunt autem et Episcopi CL præsidente
Georgio Patriarcha regiæ Urbis, et Antiochiæ Macario. Et convicti sunt, qui unam voluntatem et
operationem astruebant in Christo falsasse patrum catholicorum dicta perplurima. Finito autem
conflict Georgius correctus est. Macarius vero cum suis sequacibus, simul et prædecessoribus Cyro,
Sergio, Honorio, Pyrrho, Paulo et Petro anathematizatus, et in locum ejus Theophanius abbas de
Sicilia Antiochiæ episcopus factus. Tantaque gratia legatos catholicæ pacis comitata est, ut Johannes
Portuensis episcopus, qui erat unus ex ipsis, dominica octavarum Paschæ missas publice in ecclesia
santæ Sophiæ coram principe et patriarcha Latine celebraret.4

Moreover, this passage of Bede containing an account of the first six Ecumenical Councils, is copied, quoted,
and repeated by numerous other later authors and chronicles, such as the following, each of whom includes
the name of Honorius among those anathematised in the Sixth Council:

1 Faith Wallis (translator), Bede: The Reckoning of Time, Introduction, p. xcviii, in Translated Texts for
Historians, Vol. XXIX, Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1999. See Charles W. Jones, Bedae, Opera
Didascalica, 2. De Temporum Ratione, Corpus Christianorum Series Latina, Vol. 123B., Turnhout: Brepols,
1977.
2 John Allen Giles, The Complete Works of Venerable Bede, Vol. VI, De Temporum Ratione, Cap. LXVI, Sexta

Ætas, A.M. 4639, p. 327, London: Whittaker and Co., 1843.

3 Giles, The Complete Works of Venerable Bede, Vol. VI, Preface, vi – vii.
4 Faith Wallis (translator), Bede: The Reckoning of Time, § V, Ch. 66, A.M. 4639, p. 231, in Translated Texts for

Historians, Vol. XXIX, Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1999. Latin in John Allen Giles, The Complete
Works of Venerable Bede, Vol. VI, De Temporum Ratione, Cap. LXVI, Sexta Ætas, A.M. 4639, pp. 326 – 327,
London: Whittaker and Co., 1843. Bede uses the Liber Pontificalis as a source.
 633

The Chronicon universale usque ad annum 741 (World chronicle to 741), written in France c. 768 – 775.
(Societas Aperiendis Fontibus Rerum Germanicarum Medii Aevi (editors), Monumenta Germaniae Historica,
Scriptorum, Vol. XIII, I Chronicon Universale, p. 15, lines 44 – 45, Hannover: Impensis Bibliopolii Hahniani,
1881.)

Hincmar of Rheims, in 870 (cited later in this chapter).

John the Deacon’s Chronicon Venetum, c. 1008. (Georg Heinrich Pertz (editor), Monumenta Germaniae
Historica, Scriptorum, Vol. VII, I Chronicon Venetum, p. 10, lines 15 – 16, Hannover: Impensis Bibliopolii Avlici
Hahniani, 1846.)

The Annals of Quedlinburg, written between 1008 and 1030 in the German convent of Quedlinburg Abbey.
(Martina Giese (editor), MGH, Scriptores Rerum Germanicarum in Usum Scholarum Separatim Editi, LXXII,
Die Annales Quedlinburgenses, p. 417, lines 4 – 5, Hannover: Hahnsche Buchhandlung, 2004.)

The Chronicon Vedastinum, c. 1024 – 1050. (Societas Aperiendis Fontibus Rerum Germanicarum Medii Aevi
(editors), Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Scriptorum, Vol. XIII, LIV Chronicon Vedastinum, p. 695, line 20,
Hannover: Impensis Bibliopolii Hahniani, 1881.)

Cardinal Humbert, c. 1050 (cited later in this chapter).

The Annales Hersfeldenses, written about 1077 – 1079 by Lambert of Hersfeld (1025 – c. 1088), a German
monk and scholar. (Georg Heinrich Pertz (editor), Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Scriptorum, Vol. III, II –
V, Annales Hersfeldenses, p. 32, lines 40 – 41, Hannover: Impensis Bibliopolii Avlici Hahniani, 1839.)

The Chronicle of Marianus Scotus, c. 1082. (Georg Waitz (editor), Monumenta Germaniae Historica,
Scriptorum, Vol. V, XIX Mariani Scotti Chronicon, p. 544, lines 30 – 31, Hannover: Impensis Bibliopolii Avlici
Hahniani, 1844.)

The Universal Chronicle of Eccard, c. 1125. (Georg Waitz (editor), MGH, Scriptorum, Vol. VI, I Ekkehardi
Chronicon Universale, p. 155, lines 11 – 12, Hannover: Impensis Bibliopolii Avlici Hahniani, 1844.)

Alexander the Minorite’s (or Alexander of Bremen, d. 1271) Commentary on Revelation, completed in 1249 –
1250, quotes the passage from Bede that includes the name of Honorius among the anathematised
Monothelites, but it appears he did not recognise Honorius was Bishop of Rome, for immediately after this
quote Alexander praises the manifest consistency of the Roman Church in defending the faith. (Alois Wachtel
(editor), Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Quellen zur Geistegeschichte des Mittelalters, Vol. I, Alexander
Minorita Expositio in Apocalypsim, p. 280, lines 16 & 23 – 25, Weimar: Hermann Böhlaus Nachfolger, 1955.)

Ivo of Chartres, in his Decretum, part IV, “has extracted from the Liber Pontificalis the passage relating to the
condemnation of Honorius.” Ivo in this part also mentions the letters of Pope Leo II bearing on the
condemnation of Honorius. (T. J. Bailey (translator), Auguste Gratry, [Four Letters to Monseigneur
Dechamps], Letter I, pp. 23 – 24, London: J. T. Hayes, 1870.)

The Chronicon pontificum et imperatorum Basileensia, perhaps written in Switzerland c. 1216, similarly
copies from the Liber Pontificalis the passage mentioning Honorius with the others condemned for
Monothelitism at the Sixth Council. (Oswald Holder-Egger (editor), MGH, Scriptorum, Vol. XXXI, II Chronicon
pontificum et imperatorum Basileensia, p. 283, lines 27 – 31, Hannover: Impensis Bibliopolii Hahniani, 1903.)

The Chronica pontificum et imperatorum Tiburtina, perhaps written in Italy c. 1242, also copies from the
Liber Pontificalis the passage mentioning Honorius. (Oswald Holder-Egger (editor), MGH, Scriptorum, Vol.
XXXI, II Chronica pontificum et imperatorum Tibertina, p. 250, lines 7 – 14, Hannover: Impensis Bibliopolii
Hahniani, 1903.)
 634

Thomas Ebendorfer (1388 – 1464), an Austrian Latin historian and professor of theology at the University of
Vienna, in his book Chronica pontificum Romanorum, written at the end of 1463, likewise copies from the
Liber Pontificalis. (Harald Zimmermann (editor), MGH, Scriptorum Rerum Germanicarum Nova Series, Vol.
XVI, Thomas Ebendorfer, Chronica Pontificum Romanorum, LXXXII, Leo II, p. 218, lines 3 – 5, Munich:
Monumenta Germaniae Historica, 1994.)

St. Ado of Vienna (Archbishop of Vienne from 860 to his death in 870) in his Chronicles also mentions the
condemnation of Honorius. (Döllinger, Fables Respecting the Popes of the Middle Ages, p. 242.)

In the longer version of an early Byzantine commentary on the Jesus Prayer, the commentator details
particular heresies countered by the prayer, and the following heretics are named: Arius, Eutyches,
Dioscorus, Nestorius, Bishop Theodore of Pharan, Honorius of Rome, Sergius, Pyrrhus, and Peter the Terrible
(Peter the Fuller). This commentary must date earlier than 1105, which is the date of the earliest manuscript
copy, and its first editor, the Roman Catholic professor Robert E. Sinkewicz writes, “Prior to A.D. 1105 there
were two periods that could have given rise to this commentary, namely, the seventh to eighth centuries that
marked the close of the christological controversies and the end of the eleventh century that witnessed a
resurgence of christological debates.” After some discussion of the date, Sinkewicz concludes, “Thus, the
more probable context is that of the earlier christological debates of the seventh to eighth centuries.” 1

The Vita of St. Stephen the Younger by Stephen the Deacon (composed 808/809 and included in the 10th
century collection by Symeon Metaphrastes, as mentioned in the section on the Council of Trullo) includes the
name of Honorius in an enumeration of heretics and enemies of the faith:

Siquidem statim a prima ætate in eum innumerabiles hostium turmae insurrexere: at impugnavere,
non expugnavere. Quin imo vires ejus invietas patefecerunt, propriamque infirmitatem
prodiderunt. Primi quidem Judæi adversus Salvatoris nostri gregem bellum conflarunt, sed propriis
armis debellati sunt. Nam cruce, quam illi quidem fixerunt, tanquam clava usus bonus pastor, eos
quasi lupos, pastoris more, ab ovibus abegit. Hos secuti sunt idolorum cultores, qui a veritatis
defensoribus confusi sunt, ac cum illis Simon, ejusque discipuli Menander et Cerdonas, deinde
Marcion et Valentinus, postea Cerinthus et Saturninus, Basilides et Carpocrates, Marcus et Tatianus,
Montanus et Bardisanes, Artemon et Navatus, Sabellius et Nepon, Paulus et Manichæus, Photinus et
Marcellus: quique ab illis profecti sunt, Arius, Aetius, Eunomius, Macedonius, Maximus, Nestorius,
hydra multiceps Eutyches et Dioscorus, Zosimus, Apollinarius. Origines, Petrus miser, Theodosius,
Jacobus, Julianus, Zeno, Sergius, Pyrrhus, Cyrus, Macarius, Honorius et impius Mahomet, et si quis
alius mihi, utpote homini, latuit. Quippe me dies deficeret, si impietatis defensorum et auctorum
nomina enumerare aggrederer, quorum ipsam memoriam recte tempus abolevit. Isti ergo omnes,
uno animo, ut ita loquar, adversus apostolicas prædicationes suscepto bello, e Dei memoria et ab

1Robert E. Sinkewicz, An Early Byzantine Commentary on the Jesus Prayer: Introduction and Edition, in
Mediaeval Studies, Vol. XLIX, pp. 209 – 211, Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1987. The
Christological controversies were terminated early in the eighth century, since the last Monothelite emperor
was Phillipicus Bardanes, who was deposed on 3 June 715 (and died in that same year) and was replaced that
day by orthodox emperor Anastasius II, and that was the last of the Monothelite controversy, so Sinkewicz
dating this document to the “christological debates of the seventh to eighth centuries” must be after 681 (the
year the first assembly of the Sixth Council concluded) and not long after 715 (the Iconoclast controversy was
not, strictly speaking, a Christological controversy). This Byzantine Commentary on the Jesus Prayer is an
important commentary that is worth reading, and if it really dates to within forty years of the Sixth Council,
then it forms an especially strong witness to the authentic record of those condemned.
 635

Ecclesia merito rejecti sunt. Ipsa autem Ecclesia, licet armis semper lacessita, amplioribus etiam
victoriis statum tenuit pacificum.1

Patriarch St. Tarasius of Constantinople (Patriarch from 784 – 806), who was quoted above on Honorius in
the Seventh Ecumenical Council, also wrote a work Apologeticus ad populum (784), in which he lists some of
the heretics anathematised at the first six Ecumenical Councils, including Honorius as a Monothelite, and
moreover condemning the followers of the Monothelite heretics:

Itaque apostolicas et paternas traditiones sequentes, audemus autem dicere, conspiratione

sanctissimi Spiritus consonantes, invicemque collecti [convenientes] universi concordantem nobis
habentes traditionem Ecclesiæ catholicæ, consonantiis quæ formatæ sunt a sanctis sex universalibus
conciliis concordes effecti sumus, anathematizamus Arii vesaniam, Macedonii rabiem, Apollinarii
insensatum sensum, Nestorii humanam culturam [culturam hominis], Eutychetis et Dioscori
confusibilem vanitatem, et cum illis polycephalon hydram; Origenis, Didymi et Evagrii desipientes
fabulationes; Sergii, et Honorii, et Cyri, et Pyrrhi, et asseclarum eorum unius, imo nequam moris
voluntatem: nec non et his similem vanitatem, quæ post has vane garrivit contra venerabiles
imagines, …2

As for Tarasius’s immediate successor, Renouf writes, “St. Nicephorus of Constantinople in his synodical letter
to Pope Leo III names ‘Theodore Bishop of Pharan, Honorius, Cyrus, Sergius’ &c. ‘who taught one will and one
energy in Christ our Saviour and God.’”3 St. Nicephorus (or Nikephoros) of Constantinople (758 – 828) was a
scholar and Patriarch of Constantinople from 806 to 815.

The Letter of the Three Patriarchs (those of Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem) to Emperor Theophilus in the
year 836, which is said to report the arguments presented at a very large Church council in Jerusalem in April
836 (with 185 bishops, 17 abbots, and 1153 monks in attendance), contains the following statement on the
Monothelite heretics condemned at the Sixth Council, in a review of the Seven Ecumenical Councils:

Later again, those attackers of the ecclesiastical bulwarks, Honorius of Rome, Sergios of
imperial city, Paul of Alexandria, Macarios of Antioch, bishops and patriarchs, [led] by the resourceful
arch-leader of evil, burst out into the land of the monothelites and were lawfully sentenced for their
impiety to the condemnation of anathema by the devout Justi[nia]n along with the help of the
hundred and seventy holy Fathers.

These and many other heresies were scattered to the wind like straw from the threshing
floor in the summer, or like stormy sea-waves were broken up.4

1 Migne, PG, Vol. C, pp. 1107 D – 1110 B. Marie-France Auzépy, La Vie d’Etienne le Jeune par Étienne le Diacre:
Introduction, Édition et Traduction, p. 242, n. 304, Aldershot: Variorum, 1997. It is interesting that the Vita
lists Muhammad (d. 632) right after Honorius (d. 638) and the other Monothelites.
2 Migne, PG, Vol. XCVIII, p. 1431 A – B.
3 Renouf, The Case of Pope Honorius Reconsidered, p. 63.
4 Charalambos Dendrinos, Joseph A. Munitiz, Julian Chrysostomides, Eirene Harvalia-Crook (editors), The

Letter of the Three Patriarchs to Emperor Theophilus and Related Texts, p. 94 (Greek on p. 95), Camberly:
Porphyrogenitus, 1997.
 636

St. Photius the Great notes the condemnation of Honorius in an entry in his Bibliotheca or Myriobiblion,
written in the 9th century:

Read the Acts of the sixth Council, at the sessions of which Sergius, Cyrus, and Pyrrhus of
Constantinople were excommunicated, together with Honorius of Rome, Polychronius, and others,
who had ventured to assert that there was only one will and one energy in Christ. The dogma of
truth was confirmed.1

Honorius is also listed among the condemned Monothelite heretics in Photius’s Nomocanon.2 Photius’s work
Interrogationes decem states, “Sed et Honorius papa Monothelitarum amplexus hæresim a Pontificia
dignitate et fidelium communione dejectus fuit.”3 Photius’s important letter to Tsar St. Boris I of Bulgaria
contains a summary of the Seven Ecumenical Councils, and lists Honorius as condemned at the Sixth Council,
“Along with the other holy and blessed Fathers these prelates condemned Sergios, Pyrrhos, and Paul, all
patriarchs of Constantinople, Honorius of Rome, Kyros of Alexandria, and Theodore of Pharan and snapped
the cords of deceit, woven by others.”4

The Chronicle of George the Monk (written c. 842 – 867) includes Honorius of Rome among those condemned
at the Sixth Council:

Eo tempore convocata est sexta synodus, Constantinopolitana tertia, in quam convenerunt

ducenti viginti septem Patres, anno decimo septimo regni Constantini, filii Constantis et patris
Justiniani. Illi præerant Theodorus et Georgius presbyteri et Joannes diaconus, legati Agathonis
papæ Romani; Georgius Constantinopolitanus; Theophanes Antiochenus patriarcha, ab ipsa synodo
subrogatus prædecessori Macario quem tunc desposuerat tanquam suis oppositum orthodoxis
definitionibus; et pro Hierosolymitana autem nemo, quipped quæ sedes suis patriarchis a
Saracenorum gente orbitæ errant; contra Theodorum Pharensem episcopum, Honorius Romæ,
Cyrum Alexandriæ, Sergium, Pyrrhum, Petrum et Paulum Constantinopolis olim episcopus, necnon
contra eos qui horum hæreticorum errors in illa sacra synodo renovaverant, scilicet Macarium
dictum Antiochiæ antistitem, Stephanum ejus discipulum, et Polychronium puerilem senem, dicentes
unicam voluntatem unicamque operationem esse in Salvatore nostro Jesu Christo Deo, quibus
anathemate percussis, synodus declaravit duas voluntates naturales duasque operations inesse in
uno Christo et Deo nostro.5

1 J. H. Freese, The Library of Photius, Codex XIX, pp. 24 – 25, London: Society for Promoting Christian
Knowledge, 1920.
2 Migne, PG, Vol. CIV, pp. 447 A & 448 A. It was previously mentioned that Photius’s Nomocanon had been

translated in the eleventh century into Slavonic for the Russian Church, which would contain Honorius’s
name in that version as well.
3 Interrogationes decem cum totidem responsionibus, Interrogatio I. Migne, PG, Vol. CIV, pp. 1221 A & 1222

A.
4 “Qui una cum cætis sanctis Patribus Sergium, Pyrrhum, Paulum Constantinopolitanum, Honorium

Romanum, Cyrum Alexandrinum, et Theodorum Pharan, implicatilem mendacii catenam contexentes

diripuerunt.” Despina Stratoudaki White (translator), The Patriarch and the Prince: The Letter of Patriarch
Photius of Constantinople to Khan Boris of Bulgaria, p. 49, in Archbishop Iakovos Library of Ecclesiastical and
Historical Sources, No. 6, Brookline, MA: Holy Cross Theological School Press, 1982. Latin in Migne, PG, Vol.
CII, pp. 647 B & 648 B. This part of the letter was extracted by Henri Justel (or Justellus) and Guillaume Voel
(or Voelli, Voellus) in their Bibliotheca Juris Cononici Veteris, Vol. II (Paris, 1661) and has been referred to as
Photius’s “De Synodis”. There is apparently a textual variant of this letter where Honorius’s name has been
omitted here, and multiple Roman Catholics have mentioned this as an evidence that Photius did not hold
Honorius to be a Monothelite, or that the original records of the Sixth Council did not list Honorius (Jodocus
Coccius, Thesaurus Catholicus, in quo Controversiae Fidei, Book VII, Art. XIII, p. 897, Cologne: Arnoldi
Quentelii, 1599; followed by others including Archbishop Dechamps, who is quoted below).
5 Georgi Hamartoli, Chronicon., Lib. IV, Cap. CCXXXIX. Migne, PG, Vol. CX, pp. 891 – 894.
 637

Hincmar, Archbishop of Rheims, in his treatise, De Una Et Non Trina Deitate (On One and Not a Threefold
Deity, c. 865), writes that Honorius was condemned for “his opinions contrary to the faith”:

Nos queque pastores et doctores nobis commissarum plebium, et episcopi ac gubernatores

Ecclesiæ, atque monasteriorum rectores, qui vocantur abbates, ad nosipsos redire debemus, et
diligenter attendere, quia si inebriatus est gladius Dei in cœlo, et ut magnus Petrus dicit: Si Angelis
peccantibus Dominus non pepercit, sed rudentibus inferni detractos in tartarum tradidit cruciandos, in
judicium reservari (II Petr. ii, 4), nec nobis parcet fide et aetibus a se apostatantibus, sicut nec sacra
concilia, ut in eis valemus relegere, pepercerunt episcopis etiam nominatissimarum sedium, videlicet
Alexandrinæ, Antiochenæ, Hierosolymitanæ, Constantinopolitanæ, Nicodemiæ. Insuper et Honorium
magnæ Romæ papam, quia contra fidem sensisse, et prave sentientibus consensisse detectus ac
evidentissime comprobatus est, sicut in sexta synodo (synodi vi act. 13) invenitur, etiam post mortem
anathematizaverunt, in hoc sæculo manifestata culpa, justo Dei concordantes judicio, quod jam
egerat in occult. Nam si idem Honorius hoc in præsenti sæculo non meruisset, et cum ipso merito de
hoc sæculo non exisset, sibi potius quam illi nocerunt maledictum jaculantes, non judicio justitiæ, sed
livore, vel temeritate; sicut bona facta pro defunctis suis potius eis prosunt qui illa faciunt, quam illis
pro quibus fiunt: si tamen ipsi defuncti in hac vita non meruerunt, ut eis in illa vita suorum viventium
benefacta prodesse prævaleant.1

The Anglican James Cowles Prichard (1814 – 1848), vicar of Mitcham and fellow of Oriel College, paraphrases
the relevant section of Hincmar:

As the angels who rebelled were not spared, the holy synods which have met from time to time to
settle the faith, have pronounced condemnation on bishops and patriarchs of the highest sees, of
Alexandria, Antioch, Jerusalem, Constantinople, and Nicomedia. Even Rome itself has not escaped,
but pope Honorius was, even after death condemned and anathematized by an Œcumenical Council. 2

Hincmar adds the remark, according to the paraphrase of Döllinger, that Honorius “must have deserved
anathema in his life, otherwise those who sat in judgment upon him would have harmed themselves rather
than him.”3

Hincmar, in his treatise Opusculum LV Capitulorum (A Brief Work in Fifty-Five Chapters, written 870), quotes
Bede’s account of the six Ecumenical Councils, which lists Honorius among those anathematised at the Sixth
Council.4

1 Migne, PL, Vol. CXXV, pp. 508 – 509. Hincmari Rhemensis Archepiscopi Opera Omnia, Tom. I, De Una Et Non
Trina Deitate, 446 – 447, , Paris: Jacques-Paul Migne, 1852.
2 James Cowles Prichard, The Life and Times of Hincmar, Archbishop of Rheims, Ch. III, p. 193, Littlemore:

Alexander Ambrose Masson, 1849.

3 Döllinger, Fables Respecting the Popes of the Middle Ages, Ch. VIII, pp. 240 – 241.
4 Rudolf Schieffer (editor), Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Concilia, Vol. IV, Supplementum II, Die

Streitschriften Hinkmars Von Reims Und Hinkmars Von Laon 869 – 871, Hinkmar von Reims, Opusculum LV
capitulorum, Ch. XX, p. 219, line 26, Hannover: Hahnsche Buchhandlung, 2003.
 638

Honorius is listed among those anathematised at the Sixth Council, in “a small treatise on the six first councils
found in the Introduction to the Vita Methodii.”1 Horace G. Lunt writes, “The Vita Methodii (VM) must have
been written immediately after the death of Methodius (885)”.2 The Vita Methodii states:

Agathon, le pape apostolique, avec deux cent soixante-dix Peres et le venerable empereur Constantin,
jugula, au sixième concile, de nombreux perturbateurs et, [en accord] avec tous les Peres, [les] ayant
chasses, il les anathématisa, à savoir Theodore de Pharan, Serge et Pyrrhos, Cyre d’Alexandrie,
Honorius de Rome, Macaire d’Antioche et leurs autres auxiliaires; ayant base la foi chrétienne sur la
vérité, ils la consolidèrent.3

The Synodicon Vetus also affirms the heresy of Honorius, in two entries on the Council in Rome and the Sixth
Ecumenical Council:

In addition, the thrice-blessed Pope John of Rome – for he had succeeded the monothelite Honorius
– assembled a divine and sacred synod and, anathematizing Sergius, Cyrus, and Pyrrhus, proclaimed
two natures and energies in our Master and God Jesus Christ, and afterward he sent a decree of
orthodoxy to David and Heraclius, the sons of Heraclius. …

After receiving this (decree), the Christ-loving Emperor ordered the Sixth Holy and Ecumenical
Council to be convoked in Constantinople. Its presiding leaders were the Roman Pope Agatho’s
representatives, the presbyters Theodore and George and the deacon John; George the Patriarch of
Constantinople who had succeeded Peter; Thephanes, archbishop of Antioch in Syria; Peter the monk
and presbyter representing Alexandria – this city and Jerusalem being without patriarchs due to the
Agarene occupation. (It was summoned) against Theodore, the bishop of Pharan, Honorius of Rome,
Cyrus of Alexandria, Sergius, Pyrrhus, Paul and Peter the former patriarchs of Constantinople,
Theodore of Egypt, Macarius of Antioch already mentioned, his pupil Stephanus, and Polychronius
“the foolish old man.” Having condemned and anathematized these men, it issued a divine decree in
agreement with the Western synods, which proclaimed two natures and two wills and energies in the
one Christ Jesus our God and Savior.4

Eutychius, the Melkite (Orthodox) Patriarch of Alexandria (876 – 940, Patriarch since 933), in his history of
the world (Eutychii Historia Universalis, or Eutychii Annales), wrote several pages on the Monothelite
controversy, in which he provides some important information on the controversy, and mentions Pope
Honorius multiple times and quotes at length from Pope John IV’s apology, yet Eutychius states that Honorius
embraced the Monothelite doctrine (calling it the Maronite doctrine), and was anathematized as a heretic:

In the eighth year of his caliphate died Honorius, patriarch of Rome, who had professed the doctrine
of Maron, thus giving rise to different opinions within the church. …

By the help of the goodness of God and by the elevation of the meekness of Constantine the orthodox
king, this issue was resolved with a judgment against the Monothelites, who were anathematised.
There presided at this holy [Sixth] synod George, patriarch of Constantinople, and Theophanes,

1 Dvornik, The Photian Schism, p. 313, n. 3.

2 Horace G. Lunt, The Beginning of Written Slavic, Slavic Review, Vol. XXIII, No. 2, June 1964, p. 212,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1964. Since the Seventh Ecumenical Council is not mentioned, this
treatise was perhaps originally written before 787.
3 Francis Dvornik, Les Legendes de Constantin et de Methode, Vie de Methode, Ch. I, p. 384, Prague, 1933.
4 John Duffy and John Parker, The Synodicon Vetus, Text and Translation, ¶¶ 137 & 141, pp. 115 & 119,

Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks, Center for Byzantine Studies, Harvard University, 1979. Greek text on
opposing pages.
 639

patriarch of Antioch, … excommunicated was Honorius, Patriarch of Rome; … They finished

pronouncing the anathemas against the Monothelites, continued sitting, and settled what was the
true faith, orthodox, pure and blameless …

This is the profession and the symbol of faith of the sixth council.1

Cardinal Humbert lists Honorius among the heretics anathematized by the Sixth Council, in his response to
Nicetas Stethatos during the controversy in the prelude to the Great Schism (~1050):

Et convicti sunt qui unam voluntatem et operationem astruebant in Christo, falsasse Patrum
catholicorum dicta per plurima. Finito autem conflictu, ea hora tantæ aranearum telæ in medium
populi ecciderunt, ut omnes mirarentur. Ac per hoc significatum est quod sordes hæreticæ pravatis
depulsæ essent. Et Gregorius quidem correctus est. Macharius autem cum suis sequacibus simul et
prædecessoribus, Cyro, Sergio, Honorio, Pyrrho, Paulo et Petro anathematizati, et in loco ejus
Theophanius abbas de Cilicia episcopus factus.2

The Orthodox Church in the second millennium continued to include Honorius among the condemned.

Michael Psellus (or Psellos, 1017 – 1078), an eminent Byzantine scholar, historian, theologian, and statesman,
wrote a short verse account of the Ecumenical Councils, in which he writes the following of the Sixth,
including the name of Honorius:

Sexta Synodus iterum Constantinopoli

Convenit et abolevit dogmata Theomachorum
Quorum duces docti et multi et varii,
Pharæ Theodorus, Honorius Romæ,
Cyrus Alexandriæ, Sergius et Pyrrhus,
Necnon Paulus Samosatensis, præterea Petrus,
Miser Macarius atque Petrus,
Non duas Verbi incarnati naturas dicebant,
Sed unam quamdam compositionem unamque actionem.
Cum his omnino represserunt Polychronium,
Atque duas sanxerunt incarnati Verbi
Naturas, utpote pii, sicut et duas voluntates.3

1 “Anno ejusdem octavo mortuus est Honorius patriarcha Romanus, qui etiam Maronis doctrinam amplexus
fuit, atque per ipsum divisa est Ecclesiæ sententia. … Bonitate ergo auxilii divini, ac mansuetudinis
Constantini imperatoris fidelis præstantia, peractum est hoc negotium quo in unius voluntatis assertores
statutum est, quos anathemate percusserunt: fuitque hujus concilii sexti præses … Anathema ergo dixerunt
in … Honorium patriarcham Romanum” Migne, PG, Vol. CXI, pp. 1108 – 1114. Eutychii Patriarchæ
Alexandrini Annales, Ch. XVIII, 324 – 351. See Roger Pearse’s translation in https://www.roger-
pearse.com/weblog/2017/02/10/the-annals-of-eutychius-of-alexandria-10th-c-ad-chapter-18d/ and
https://www.roger-pearse.com/weblog/2017/02/28/the-annals-of-eutychius-of-alexandria-10th-c-ad-
chapter-18f-the-reign-of-muawiyah/. Also see Andrew J. Ekonomou, Byzantine Rome and the Greek Popes:
Eastern Influences on Rome and the Papacy from Gregory the Great to Zacharias, A.D. 590 – 752, Ch. III, pp.
107 & 111, nn. 114 & 171, Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2007.
2 Migne, PG, Vol. CXX, pp. 1028 C – D. Contra Nicetam, XVII. The comment of Döllinger on this point seems

correct, that Humbert was not aware that he was listing a condemned Pope of Rome (Döllinger, Fables
Respecting the Popes of the Middle Ages, Ch. VIII, pp. 242 – 243), and appears to have simply copied Bede.
3 Migne, PG, Vol. CXXII, p. 818 C.
 640

Nicetas Choniates (or Niketas Akominatos, 1155 – 1217), a Greek Byzantine government official and
historian, includes the name of Honorius among the Monothelite heretics, in his Thesaurus Orthodoxæ Fidei,
Book XV, where he writes of the Sixth Synod:

decerniturque duas voluntates et duas operationes in Christo esse dicendum et credendum. Subjecti
autem sunt anathemati Monothelitarum hæresis principes, etsi jam vivere desierant, Honorius
Romæ, Cyrus Alexandriæ, Sergius et Pyrrhus, Paulusque et Petrus Constantinopolis, Macarius
Antiochiæ, et Stephanus, ejus discipulus, et insanus Polychronius. 1

Zonaras, in a review of the Sixth Ecumenical Council, lists Honorius among those whom the council was
convened against, and who were cut off from the body of the Church.2

Aristenus writes the following short review of the Sixth Council, that Honorius and Sergius, who preached one
will, were rejected: “Constantinopoli sub Constantio collecta est synodus, quæ Honorium Romæ, et Sergius
Constantinopolis præsulem, voluntatem et unam operationem prædicantes, rejecit.”3

Balsamon, in his review of the Sixth Council, lists Honorius of Rome among the anathematized Monothelites,
who taught one will.4

The Bulgarian Synodikon of Orthodoxy, also referred to as Boril’s Synodikon, anathematizes Honorius with
the other heresiarchs. This document was composed in Bulgarian by order of Tsar Boril (1207 – 1218), likely
around the time of the synod of Tă rnovo on the 11th of February 1211, and this section listing Honorius has
“been taken directly from the horos of the 6th Ecumenical Council.”5

The Thesaurus of Theognostus likely lists Honorius among the condemned heretics at the Sixth Ecumenical
Council.6

Andronicus II Palaeologus (or Andronikos II Palaiologos, 1259 – 1332) was the Byzantine Emperor from
1282 – 1328. In a synod in September 1304, Andronicus, who was largely influenced by Patriarch St.
Athanasius I of Constantinople, noted that St. Maximos the Confessor “was not outside the Church but in full
communion with the Churches of Rome and Jerusalem, which, with the exception of Pope Honorius, had
maintained orthodoxy against the monothelite heresy.” 7

St. Nilus Cabasilas, writing against Papal supremacy, discusses the condemnation of Honorius, and quotes
session xvi of the 6th Council, the oration of the Council to the Emperor, and the epistle of Pope Leo II to the
Emperor.8 Although Nilus is writing in the East in the mid-14th century, almost 700 years after the council,
his accurate citations still provide an additional attestation to the documents.

1 Migne, PG, Vol., CXL., p. 86.

2 Migne, PG, Vol. CXXXVII, pp. 499 – 500 C. It appears there is a typo in the text, where Cyrus of Alexandria’s
name is missing.
3 Migne, PG, Vol. CXXXVII, pp. 517 – 518 B.
4 Migne, PG, Vol. CXXXVII, pp. 499 – 500 A.
5 Anna-Maria Totomanova, The Synodikon of Orthodoxy in Medieval Bulgaria, Studia Ceranea, Vol. VII, p. 172,

Łó dź : Łódź University Press, 2017.

6 Joseph A. Munitiz (translator), Theognostos, Treasury, Corpus Christianorum in Translation, Vol. XVI,

Turnhout: Brepols, 2013. I believe Honorius’s name is included here, but I have not examined this book yet.
7 John Lawrence Boojamra, Church Reform in the Late Byzantine Empire: A Study for the Patriarchate of

Athanasios of Constantinople, Ch. VI, p. 142, in Analecta Vlatadon, Vol. XXXV, Thessaloniki: Patriarchal
Institute for Patristic Studies, 1982.
8 Thomas Gressop (translator), Nilus Cabasilas, A briefe treatise, conteynynge a playne and fruitfull

declaration of the Popes vsurped primacye, [pages unnumbered], London: Henry Sutton for Rafe Newbery,
1560.
 641

Matthew Blastares, in his Refutation of the Errors of the Latins, written in about the year 1340, lists Honorius
as a heretic.1

The Orthodox monk and deacon Athanasius, in his discussions with the papal legate Peter Thomas
(considered a saint by Roman Catholics), who was sent to Constantinople in 1357, brings forward the
condemnation of Pope Honorius by the Sixth Ecumenical Council as an argument against the claims of the
Papacy. Dvornik writes that “This is probably the only time when the case of Honorius was used in Greek
polemical literature as proof against Roman Primacy”,2 although Nilus Cabasilas and Mark of Ephesus also
bring up this issue for controversial purposes.

Nilus, the Metropolitan of Rhodes (flourished about 1360), in his short summary of the nine ecumenical
councils, lists “Honorium Papam Romę” among those whom the Sixth Council was against.3

St. Symeon of Thessalonica (1381 – 1429), the Orthodox Archbishop of Thessalonica, wrote a work titled
“Dialogus in Christo Adversus Omnes Hæreses”, in which he discusses various heresies. In the section on
Monothelitism, Symeon lists Honorius among the Monothelite heretics.4

St. Mark of Ephesus also mentions the heresy of Honorius.5

It is likely that additional evidences to the condemnation and heresy of Honorius can found in unpublished
Greek, Syriac, Slavonic, Arabic, Armenian, and Georgian manuscripts dealing with the Monothelite
controversy, many of which were unknown or unstudied prior to the 20th century.6

The American Presbyterian theologian and professor, Henry Boynton Smith (1815 – 1877), writes, “Before
the sixteenth century no one denied that Honorius was condemned by the Sixth Council; the edition of the
Acts of this [Sixth Ecumenical] Council, published at Rome by Paul V., 1608, contains his condemnation and
the anathema;”.7

In spite of this proof, it appears that most of the members of the Latin Vatican Council of 1870, who defined
the infallibility of the Pope, did not believe that Pope Honorius taught heresy. It would take an entire volume
to adequately discuss the Roman Catholic handling of this issue, but I will review some of the attempts of
Latin sophistry to counter this fact. It should be sufficient here to state that Roman Catholic writers are not at
one as to how the matter is to be treated. This lack of unity is significant because some Roman Catholics
consider Honorius to have been orthodox, yet others consider him to have been a heretic. In what manner

1 Konstantinos A. Palaiologos, An Annotated Edition of the Refutation of the Errors of the Latins by Matthaios
Blastares, Part I, p. 55, Doctoral thesis: University of London, 2011.
2 See the note in Francis Dvornik, Byzantium and the Roman Primacy, p. 170, New York, NY: Fordham

University Press, 2nd Printing, 1979 [first published 1964].

3 Christophorvs Ivstellvs (Christopher Justellus), Nomocanon Photii Patriarchae Constantinopolitani, Nili

Metropolitae Rhodii De Sanctis Et Oecvmenicis Synodis Enarratio Synoptica, Sexta, p. 280, Paris: Abrahamum
Pacard, 1615.
4 Beatissimi Symeonis Archiepiscopi Thessalonicensis, Opera Omnia, Vol. I, Dialogus in Christo Adversus

Omnes Hæreses, Cap. XV; Migne, P.G., Vol. CLV, pp. 81 – 82.
5 Christiaan Kappes, Orthodox Reception of Ps.-Pope Sylvester I and Ps.-Symmachus’s Canon: “The First See is

Judged by no Human Being”: Byzantine Canon Law from Photios to Markos of Ephesus, in SLEC [Society for
the Law of the Eastern Churches] 23rd Congress – Primacy and Synodality, Debrecen, Friday, September 8,
2017, p. 29.
6 See references in Jack Tannous, In Search of Monothelitism, Dumbarton Oaks Papers, Vol. LXVIII, p. 60,

Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks, Center for Byzantine Studies, Harvard University, 2014.
7 Henry Boynton Smith, Bishop C. J. Von Hefele on the Case of Pope Honorius, in The Presbyterian Quarterly

and Princeton Review, Vol. I [New Series.], No. 2., April, 1872, Art. IV, p. 276, New York, NY: J. M. Sherwood,
1872.
 642

did Honorius err, if at all? Did Honorius die as the supreme ruler of the Church and true Vicar of Christ or as
an “insane rager against God”? Do his letters assert the infallible truth of God, or are they “hurtful to the soul”,
“following the false teachings of the heretics”? Roman Catholics are divided and on the wrong side of this
issue because they do not follow the tradition of the Church, nor have they had any subsequent Pope who has
claimed to infallibly settle the issue beyond all dispute. Pusey rightly commented that “If Honorius was not
guilty of heresy, the Church had been guilty of one long false-witness.”1

The Sixth Ecumenical Council decreed that Honorius was a heretic, proclaiming “Anathema to the heretic
Honorius!” The only acceptable position is that Pope Honorius was a heretic, and was infallibly condemned
as such by the Sixth Ecumenical Council. This cannot be a matter of indifference since the question was
settled by the collective judgement of the bishops in the Sixth Ecumenical Council, who also declared
“Anathema to all those who side with heretics”. After the decision of the Sixth Ecumenical Council, it is
difficult to withhold the charge of schism to those who defend the orthodoxy of Honorius, because the Church
has judged and has expressly condemned Honorius as a heretic, and Christians are bid to obediently follow
the decrees of the Church.

Our opinion is, that the only honest position on this subject that a Roman Catholic can take, is that the Sixth
Council truly condemned Honorius for heresy, and that he was indeed a heretic, but that his declarations
were not Ex Cathedra, that is, they did not technically meet the criteria for Papal infallibility established in the
Latin First Vatican Council, and thus that the doctrine of Papal infallibility is not violated.

Section IV First Millennium Defences of Honorius or Omissions from Condemnation

There are a few first millennium sources that Latins cite in defence of Pope Honorius:

A defence of Honorius is found in the Collectanea addressed by Anastasius Bibliothecarius to John the Deacon
in 874. The Roman Catholic author Bottalla (who attempted to defend Honorius from heresy) writes:

But apart from this, whoever is acquainted with the Collectanea addressed by Anastasius to John the
Deacon, and published by the learned Sirmondi, must be aware that the Roman Librarian never
harboured the idea that Pope Honorius had said, or taught, or held in any manner, that in Jesus Christ
there was only one will and one operation. He calls those “calumniators” who said that Pope Honorius
had ever asserted one only will in Christ; and he distinctly maintained that the Pope can by no means
be considered as condemned for heresy in the Sixth Synod. (Pro Papa Honorio a calumniatoribus
impetito, quod unam D. N. J. C. tantum scripserit voluntatem.) …

The Roman librarian Anastasius, who, as Mr. Renouf tells us, “took an active part in the Eighth Council,”
does not assert that the Sixth Synod condemned Honorius for heresy, but only that it anathematized
him, as if he were a heretic (quasi hæretico); that is to say, the Council put him on a par with the others
in the severity of its sentence, but not in the crime for which he was condemned. 2

I think this is rather good evidence that Anastasius Bibliothecarius was not a careful preserver of history, and
that he was prejudiced in attempting “to discredit Constantinople, and to lend prestige and orthodoxy to the

1Pusey, Eirenicon, Part III, pp. 196 et sqq.

2Paul Bottalla, Pope Honorius Before the Tribunal of Reason and History, IV, pp. 124 – 135, London: Burns,
Oates, and Company, 1868. This letter of Anastasius to John the Deacon, in a critical Latin edition with parallel
English translation, is found in Bronwen Neil, Seventh-Century Popes and Martyrs: The Political Hagiography
of Anastasius Bibliothecarius, Part II, Texts and Translations, 1., pp. 148 – 161, in Studia Antiqua
Australiensia, Vol. II, Sydney: Brepols, 2006.
 643

papacy.”1

Roman Catholics have asserted that Theophanes, Zonaras, and even Photius “have abstained from giving
Honorius the name of heretic”.2 However, it has been seen that this is explicitly false in the cases of Zonaras
and Photius, who are quoted above. Regarding the Chronicle of Theophanes the Confessor, it has many
serious chronological errors, and mistakes in various details, especially with regard to who was bishop of
Rome at what time, as the editors have pointed out. The author of this Chronicle discusses the Monothelite
controversy for about three pages, and although several heretics are listed and remarked upon, there is no
mention of Pope Honorius at all. However, no attempt is made to give an exhaustive list of the Monothelites
condemned at the Sixth Council.3

A passage of the Latin Eighth Ecumenical Council of 869 – 870, taken from the Formula of Hormisdas, claims
that, throughout the course of history, “in the Apostolic See the Catholic religion has always been kept
unsullied.” However, these words are lacking in the Greek version of the Acts and the Acts of this Council
have serious issues of corruption. In any case, both Latin versions of the text of this Council affirm the
condemnation of Honorius, and the letter read from Pope Adrian II at this Council also affirms Honorius’s
condemnation for heresy, as quoted above, which is irreconcilable with these words. To evade this and
similar claims about the indefectibility of the Roman See, some Roman Catholics have made a distinction
between the See and its occupants.4

The letter of Pope Agatho to the Sixth Ecumenical Council has often been brought forth in defence of
Honorius, as Agatho insists on the Orthodoxy of the past Bishops of Rome. Agatho’s letter seems to strongly
state that all the Roman Bishops were Orthodox, but his claim was implicitly amended and corrected by the
Sixth Ecumenical Council, and his letter was accepted only on the basis of its teaching true theology. It is also
certain that there has been corruption in the text of Agatho’s letter, some of which Renouf points out
(Agatho’s letter is likely corrupted – I speculate that the original text must have spoken in much lighter terms
of his predecessors, and likely condemned Honorius by name, which is why the Council referenced Agatho’s
letter when condemning Honorius, although the Council still independently examined the question). If the
letter is mostly authentic, Agatho likely did not want Honorius to be condemned, but if he were to be
condemned, Agatho wanted to make sure that this instance of Honorius’s heresy did not compromise the
perceived orthodoxy of the Roman Bishops, or that See’s alleged reputation for orthodoxy. Agatho wanted to
make the point to the Council bishops that Rome has, in multiple difficult circumstances, been orthodox, and
not mentioning Honorius was a political way, but I must insist that Agatho’s legates at the Council fully
subscribed Honorius’s condemnation, and quite probably had his prior authorisation to do so. The Council
did not need to directly assert that Agatho made an error, but acted in a polite and conventional diplomatic
way (similar to when the Bishops at Chalcedon quoted the true 6th Nicene Canon after the Roman legates
quoted the false and interpolated version, without directly confronting the Roman legates), and implicitly

1 Bronwen Neil, The Politics of Hagiography in Ninth-Century Rome, Chris Bishop (editor), Text and
Transmission in Medieval Europe, Ch. IV, p. 69, Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2007.
2 T. J. Bailey (translator), First Letter to the Rev. Father Gratry (Priest of the Oratoire, Member of the

Academy), by Monseigneur Dechamps, Archbishop of Malines, II, p. 46, London: J. T. Hayes, [1870].
Archbishop Dechamps follows Bellarmine in this assertion, and I have seen other Roman Catholics make the
same claim.
3 Cyril Mango, Roger Scott, and Geoffrey Greatrix, The Chronicle of Theophanes Confessor: Byzantine and

Near Eastern History, AD 284 – 813, AM 6121, pp. 460 – 463 & AM 6171, pp. 499 – 500, Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1997. Another translation is in Harry Turtledove, The Chronicle of Theophanes: Anni Mundi 6095 –
6305 (A.D. 602 – 813), Annus Mundi 6121, pp. 31 – 34 & Annus Mundi 6171, p. 57, Philadelphia, PA:
University of Pennsylvania Press, 1982. One example of this Chronicle’s error is when it states “After Martin’s
exile Agathon was chosen pope of Rome.” (AM 6121). Turtledove here comments, “Theophanes, poorly
informed as to affairs in Rome, has omitted the names of four popes.” (p. 33, n. 82.) Some Roman Catholics, in
listing old writers who omit the name of Honorius, have mistakenly referred to this author as Theophanes
Cerameus (or Kerameus).
4 The Irish Ecclesiastical Record, Vol. VI, February, 1870, The Resurrection of Gallicanism, III, p. 208, Dublin:

William B. Kelly, 1870.

 644

corrected his statement. Renouf appropriately comments, “In declaring that Peter spoke by the mouth of
Agatho the Council referred exclusively to the doctrine of the Incarnation as contained in his letter, not to
obiter dicta about the conduct of his predecessors.”1 Moreover, Agatho’s claims are directly contradicted by
Pope Leo II’s letters regarding Honorius.2

It is interesting that John of Damascus does not mention or include the name of Honorius among the
anathematised heretics at the Sixth Council, although other condemned heretics are listed (but not all the
Monothelite heretics are listed, such as Theodore of Pharan, Polychronius, and Apergius of Perga), in a brief
summary of the first six Ecumenical Councils.3

Paul the Deacon does not include the name of Honorius in his list of those condemned at the Sixth Council,
and completely omits any mention of him, although the other Monothelites are listed.4 Paul the Deacon’s
work on this subject is not an independent source, since he has manifestly borrowed from the Liber
Pontificalis and St. Bede (see my notes on Paul the Deacon in the section on the Council of Trullo), although it
appears he borrows only from the part in the Liber Pontificalis that does not mention Honorius (the entry for
Pope Agatho), and ignores the other part of the Liber Pontificalis that does mention Honorius, as well as Bede
on this point. Perhaps Paul consciously avoided mention of Honorius’s name.

It is worth noting, and indeed must not be forgotten, that Pope John IV’s defence of Pope Honorius speaks of
Patriarch Sergius of Constantinople as of “reverend memory” (“reverendæ memoriæ”), and does not cast the
slightest doubt upon the orthodoxy of Sergius, who is now acknowledged by all to be a Monothelite heretic,
yet John gives an utterly false account of Sergius’s letter when writing to Emperor Constantine.5 John IV’s
statements only further reveal the unreliability of statements from the Bishop of Rome, and the Pope’s failure
(although Pope John IV was himself nominally orthodox) to discern heresy from orthodoxy in the leading
bishops of the Church and his own predecessor Honorius. Such a man can be no judge of the faith and of
Christians, and if Pope John IV had dared to defend the orthodoxy of Honorius after the judgment of the Sixth
Ecumenical Council, John IV would have been anathematized as one who sides with heretics. If the Sixth
Council had indeed condemned men merely for negligence, it would have condemned Pope John IV for
negligence in discerning the heresy of Patriarch Sergius and Pope Honorius. Recently, the full textual
authenticity of John IV’s defence has been questioned.6

1 Renouf, The Case of Pope Honorius Reconsidered, p. 48.

2 As a side note, Denny notes that Pope Agatho’s letter contains one of the first instances of the Petrine text,
that Peter’s “faith fail not”, being applied to the Bishops of Rome. The Church Fathers of the first six centuries
are ignorant of this interpretation, and the Roman Catholic interpretation of these texts unsurprisingly grew
out of Rome and the West (for an examination into the Church Fathers’ interpretation of these passages see
Denny’s section on The Petrine Texts). Littledale notes that the Papal interpretation of this text “cannot be
traced to any earlier writer than Pope Pelagius II in his First Letter in 586 to the Bishops of Istria, who, in
their reply, denied the truth of his interpretation and of the inference drawn from it.” (Littledale, The Petrine
Claims, Ch. II, p. 83.)
3 Migne, PG, Vol. XCIV, p. 1431 B.
4 William Dudley Foulke (translator), Paul the Deacon, History of the Langobards (Historia Langobardorum),

Book VI, Ch. IV, pp. 252 – 254, Philadelphia: The Department of History, University of Pennsylvania, 1907.
5 Renouf, The Case of Pope Honorius Reconsidered, pp. 31 – 33.
6 See Heinz Ohme, Wer hat den Dyotheletismus erfunden? : zur Frage der Authentizität der Apologia Honorii

Papst Iohannes IV (640-642), in Byzantinische Zeitschrift, Vol. CX, Issue I, pp. 89 – 140, 2017. Although I do
not agree with Ohme’s conclusions about Maximos the Confessor and Monothelitism, Ohme does provide
evidence that the letter of Pope John IV was modified at a later date, and he points out in the abstract that this
letter “is preserved only in a Latin retranslation from Greek by Anastasius Bibliothecarius made in 874/75”.
This apology of John is mentioned and quoted at length by Eutychius of Alexandria (877 – 940) (Migne, Vol.
CXI, pp. 1108 et sqq., see Roger Pearse’s translation in https://www.roger-
pearse.com/weblog/2017/02/10/the-annals-of-eutychius-of-alexandria-10th-c-ad-chapter-18d/).
 645

St. Maximus the Confessor, who attended the Lateran Council, defends Honorius from heresy in three places1
(if the writings ascribed to Maximus are fully authentic). Pope John IV used a similar argument in defence of
Honorius. According to the Catholic Encyclopedia’s article on St. Maximus:

When in 641 John IV wrote his defence of Pope Honorius, it was re-echoed by St. Maximus in a
letter to Marinus, a priest of Cyprus. He declares that Honorius, when he confessed one will of our
Lord, only meant to deny that Christ had a will of the flesh, of concupiscence, since he was conceived
and born without stain of sin. Maximus appeals to the witness of Abbot John Symponus, who wrote the
letter for Honorius.2

Our opinion is that Abbot John Symponus is not a man to be trusted, as one who composed a heretical letter
for Honorius and who sided with that heretical pope, and his convoluted interpretation of the letter was made
to retain his ecclesiastical standing and to cover up the heresy of Honorius, and that Symponus deceived Pope
John IV and St. Maximus with regard to the allegedly orthodox intended meaning of Honorius. I agree with
the Roman Catholic scholar Sir Peter le Page Renouf concerning the character of Abbot John.3 Moreover, it
was a Roman Abbot named Anastasius who related to Maximus what Abbot John Symponus had said, which
would make it a second-hand testimony, and this testimony is misleading and does not accurately convey
what Honorius wrote.4

The Lateran Council of 649 in Rome, attended by 105 mostly Western bishops, does not mention Honorius as
directly guilty of heresy, although it gives a long list of heretics and Monothelites in its 18th Canon.5 Sir Peter
le Page Renouf makes an important note on this subject, from the silence of the Lateran Council when
Honorius’s name was brought up in defence of Monothelitism:

At both Councils the least false reference to a pope’s authority was energetically protested against by
the representatives of the Holy See. The fact that Pope Martin I and the Lateran Council heard
Honorius quoted in a ‘dogmatic letter’ as an authority for Monothelism without any contradiction being
offered, is a sure sign that his cause was no longer held to be defensible. And no defence, as far as we
can learn, was even attempted at Constantinople. The papal legates, who were strictly tied by their

1 In Maximus’s letter to Marinus (641) (this letter has great importance in the Filioque controversy, and
Siecienski has extensively written on its authenticity, and it has been discussed by Siecienski and others, as I
cite in the chapter on the Filioque); his Disputation with Pyrrhus (July 645) (translated in Joseph P. Farrell
(translator), Saint Maximus the Confessor: Disputations with Pyrrhus (also titled The Disputation with
Pyrrhus of Our Father among the Saints Maximus the Confessor), ¶¶ 147 – 151, pp. 49 – 50, Waymart, PA: St.
Tikhon’s Monastery Press, 2014 (first printed 1990)); and his letter to Peter (648), a high official in the East,
of which parts have been preserved (translated in Chapman, The Condemnation of Pope Honorius, pp. 39 –
40).
2 John Chapman, Maximus of Constantinople, in CE, Vol. X, p. 79.
3 See Peter Le Page Renouf, The Condemnation of Pope Honorius, pp. 15 – 17, London: Longmans, Green, and

Co., 1868. Peter Le Page Renouf, The Case of Pope Honorius Reconsidered with Reference to Recent
Apologies, pp. 31 – 36, London: Longmans, Green, Reader, and Dyer, 1869. Also in Renouf’s June 20, 1868
letter to the Westminster Gazette.
4 Chapman, The Condemnation of Pope Honorius, p. 30, n. 2. Chapman here notes that “St. Maximus uses the

same arguments [as Pope John IV] in his letter to Marinus, and he tells us that he had heard from the holy
Roman abbot, Anastasius, that he had heard the Abbot John Symponus, the writer of Honorius’ letter, affirm
that he never made any mention in it of the abolition of the natural human will in our Lord, but only of the
lower will of the flesh, adding that the letter had been corrupted by the Greek translators. This seems to be
untrue of the version read at the sixth Council, as it was examined and approved by the papal representatives.
St. Maximus has perhaps slightly exaggerated the testimony of Abbot John in repeating it (Mansi, x. 695).” It
is strange that Chapman accuses Maximus of exaggeration, rather than Abbots John or Anastasius.
5 Roy Jospeh Deferrari (translator), Henry Denzinger, The Sources of Catholic Dogma, The Lateran Council

649, ¶¶ 271. – 272., pp. 104 – 105, St. Louis, MO: Herder, 1957. For the Acts of this Council see Richard Price,
Phil Booth, and Catherine Cubitt, The Acts of the Lateran Synod of 649, in Translated Texts for Historians, Vol.
LXI, Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2014.
 646

instructions, must have had Pope Agatho’s consent to the condemnation of Honorius. 1

The letter of Pope St. Martin I (590/600 – 655, Pope from 649 – 655) to Bishop St. Amandus of Maastrict (ca.
584 – 675, Bishop from 628 – 675), written in the aftermath of the 649 Lateran Synod, contains a summary of
the Monothelite controversy, but fails to put any blame on the Bishop of Rome, and even claims that Rome
consistently fought against the Monothelites. Pope Martin wrote:

For we believe that it has reached your ears how fifteen years ago, more or less, Sergius the false
bishop of Constantinople, with the help of the then emperor Heraclius, upsetting the orthodox faith
and trampling upon the catholic church, disseminated an execrable and abominable heresy that
renewed the error of the Apollinarians and Severans, Eutycheans and Manichees, and which his
successor Pyrrhus, [now] an ex-bishop, who usurped the see of Constantinople in the pride of
ambition, made even worse. For this reason the apostolic see repeatedly admonished them,
with numerous exhortations, entreaties and rebukes, to renounce this error and return to the
light of piety from which they had fallen away. Not only did they totally refuse to do so, but in
addition his successor Paul, a violator of the faith and ex-bishop of Constantinople, has now thought
up another and even more wicked attempt to prejudice the catholic faith, on the pretence of
annulling the heretical teaching of his predecessors, and induced our most clement prince to issue
with sacrilegious audacity an imperial Typos full of total infidelity, which lays down what all Christian
congregations are obliged to believe. We therefore judged it necessary, lest we be saddled with
culpable guilt for a neglect damaging to the souls entrusted to us, to convene in this city of Rome a
general assembly of our brothers and fellow bishops. In their presence the criminal writings of the
said heretics were examined and laid bare, and by the apostolic sword and the decrees of the fathers
we condemned them with one voice and one mind, so that everyone, through learning of the error
contained in them, would wholly escape the stain of their pollution. 2

This letter of Pope Martin, if fully authentic (which I doubt), is directly contradicted by Pope Leo II, who at the
very least admitted that Honorius neglected to admonish the Monothelites. Martin became Pope less than
eleven years after Pope Honorius died, and at this time the Lateran Council of 649 met, when the works of
Honorius should have been in recent memory. Martin I and the Lateran Council’s failure to condemn
Honorius shows us that the Romans, though orthodox, lacked sufficient humility to condemn one of their own
predecessors, and this very omission became a stumbling block for the Monothelite heretics. It is very
interesting that at one point during the Sixth Ecumenical Council, the Patriarch of Constantinople asked that
his predecessors might be spared public anathema by name, which shows that a similar tendency operated
with some Greeks, but this request was rejected by the Council, and this was not insisted upon any further
and did not come up again. The Ecumenical Council would not permit its decisions and condemnations to be
mitigated for the sake of any See’s honour.

A tenth-century short Latin textbook on the councils (Paris National Library, Latin MS. No. 1451) omits the
name of Pope Honorius when listing the Monothelite heretics condemned at the Sixth Council.3

More information and original sources, some in defence of Honorius, or omitting him from the list of
Monothelites, can be found in Greek, Latin, and French, collected in Arthur Loth, La Cause D’Honorius:

1 Peter Le Page Renouf, The Condemnation of Pope Honorius, p. 17, London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1868.
In his second work on the subject, Renouf notes that other Roman Catholics agree with him or also make this
argument, such as Thomassin, Turrianus, Combefis, and Natalis Alexander, among other writers (Peter Le
Page Renouf, The Case of Pope Honorius Reconsidered with Reference to Recent Apologies, pp. 39 – 40,
London: Longmans, Green, Reader, and Dyer, 1869). Döllinger also makes this argument in his Fables
Respecting the Popes of the Middle Ages, Ch. VIII, pp. 232 – 233.
2 Richard Price, Phil Booth, and Catherine Cubitt, The Acts of the Lateran Synod of 649, Letters of Pope Martin,

(2), Letter of Pope Martin to Bishop Amandus, pp. 410 – 411, in Translated Texts for Historians, Vol. LXI,
Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2014.
3 Francis Dvornik, The Photian Schism: History and Legend, Part II, Ch. II, p. 313, Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press, 1948.

 647

Documents Originaux avec Traduction, Notes et Conclusion, Paris: Victor Palmé, 1870. The mosaic of Pope
Honorius and the Latin inscription in the apse of Sant’Agnese fuori le Mura in Rome is simply an
acknowledgment that he built or largely restored this church.1

The Catholic Encyclopedia’s article on Monothelitism states:

It cannot be too carefully borne in mind that theological accuracy is a matter of definition, and
definition is a matter of words. The prohibition of the right words is always heresy, even though the
author of the prohibition has no heretical intention and is merely shortsighted or confused. Honorius
replied reproving Sophronius, and praising Sergius for rejecting his “new expression” of “two
operations.” He approves the recommendations made by Sergius, and has no blame for the capitula of
Cyrus. In one point he goes further than either, for he uses the words: “Wherefore we acknowledge
one Will of our Lord Jesus Christ.” We may easily believe the testimony of Abbot John Symponus, who
wrote the letter for Honorius, that he intended only to deny a lower will of the flesh in Christ which
contradicted His higher will; but in connexion with the letter of Sergius such an interpretation is
scarcely the more obvious one. It is clear that Honorius was not any more a wilful heretic than was
Sergius, but he was equally incorrect in his decision, and his position made the mistake far more
disastrous. In another letter to Sergius he says he has informed Cyrus that the new expressions, one
and two operations, are to be dropped, their use being most foolish. …

The letter of Honorius had been a grave document, but not a definition of Faith binding on the whole
Church. …

The pope’s [St. Martin I] opening speech [at the Lateran Council] gives a history of the heresy, and
condemns the Ecthesis, Cyrus, Sergius, Pyrrhus, Paul, and the Type. John IV had spoken of Sergius with
respect; and Martin does not mention Honorius, for it was obviously impossible to defend him if the
Type was to be condemned as heresy. … The letter of Sergius to Honorius was not read, nor was
anything said about the correspondence of the latter with Sergius. …

[At the Sixth Ecumenical Council, Patriarch of Antioch] Macarius had appealed to Honorius; and after
his condemnation a packet which he had delivered to the emperor was opened, and in it were found
the letters of Sergius to Honorius, and of Honorius to Sergius. As these were at best similar to the Type,
already declared heretical, it was unavoidable that they should be condemned. The fifth council had
set the example of condemning dead writers, who had died in Catholic communion, but George
suggested that his dead predecessors might be spared, and only their teaching anathematized. The
legates might have saved the name of Honorius also had they agreed to this, but they evidently had
directions from Rome to make no objection to his condemnation if it seemed necessary. …

It would seem that in 687 Justinian II believed that the sixth council was not fully enforced, for he
wrote to Pope Conon that he had assembled the papal envoys, the patriarchs, metropolitans, bishops,
the senate and civil officials and representatives of his various armies, and made them sign the original
acts which had recently been discovered. In 711 the throne was seized by Philippicus Bardanes, who
had been the pupil of Abbot Stephen, the disciple “or rather leader” of Macarius of Antioch. He
restored to the diptychs Sergius, Honorius, and the other heretics condemned by the council; he
burned the acts (but privately, in the palace), he deposed the Patriarch Cyrus, and exiled some persons
who refused to subscribe a rejection of the council. He fell, 4 June, 713, and orthodoxy was restored by
Anastasius II (713 – 15). … This was the last of Monothelitism.2

1 This is mentioned in his entry in the Liber Pontificalis and in the Notitia ecclesiarum urbis Romae (a guide to
saints’ graves around Rome, written 625 – 649), see Paweł Nowakowski, The Cult of Saints in Late Antiquity,
E05765 - http://csla.history.ox.ac.uk/record.php?recid=E05765. This is likely another indication of the Liber
Pontificalis’s exaggeration of facts regarding the bishops of Rome, for it claims that Honorius “built from the
ground up the church of St. Agnes the martyr”, while the Notitia says, “This [church] was also wonderfully
repaired by bishop Honorius.”
2 John Chapman, Monothelitism, in CE, Vol. X, pp. 505 – 507.
 648

Section V Claims that Popes were Always Orthodox and that None were Heretical

The following are the Roman Catholics or Latins who have stated that no Roman bishops were heretics, or
implicitly denied that Pope Honorius was a heretic, without entering into the question of Honorius’s heresy
and condemnation:

Aeneas of Paris, in his Liber adversus Graecos, claims that “no heretic has ever sat on the Roman chair”, while
criticising Constantinople for having had heretical bishops, apparently ignorant about the case of Honorius
less than 200 years earlier.1

Pope Gregory VII (1015 – 1085, Pope from 1073) writes in his letter to Archbishop Gregory of Tsamandos, on
6 June 1080,

The holy Roman Church, which by St. Peter, as it were by a certain privilege, from the very beginning of
belief itself, is described by the holy fathers as the mother of all churches, and which will be held as
such to the very end, in which as yet no heretic was known ever to preside nor ever, as we hope can
do so, especially as the Lord promises so; for the Lord Jesus says: – ‘For I did pray for thee that thy
belief do not grow less,’”2

Pope Honorius III (1150 – 1227, Pope from 1216), in a letter to Archbishop Stephen of Canterbury in 1224,
calls Pope Honorius I “our predecessor of happy remembrance” in passing,3 but Honorius III does not
enter into any discussion of the question, and appears completely unaware of his predecessor’s
condemnation.

Döllinger writes that the memory of Honorius was almost completely forgotten in the West from the tenth to
the fifteenth century:

The oblivion into which the fate of Honorius had fallen is specially astonishing in the letter of Pope
Leo IX. to Michael Cerularius, patriarch of Constantinople, and to Leo of Achrida, a in which all the
scandals and heretical errors of their Church and its bishops are set before these prelates. The pope
confidently contrasts the steadfast orthodoxy of the bishops of Rome with the numerous cases of
heresy which had occurred in Constantinople, and calls attention to the way in which the popes,
especially in the Monothelite controversies, had continually exercised their judicial office over the
patriarchs of Constantinople, and had condemned them; evidently not having the slightest suspicion
that Michael and Leo, by quoting the condemnation of Honorius, pronounced at Constantinople and
accepted at Rome, could have demolished his whole argument. On the contrary, deceived by the
Roman apocryphal documents, he represents to his opponents that Sylvester had decided that the
First See (that is the Roman) can be judged by none, and that Constantine, together with the whole
council of Nicæa, had approved this.b

Again, Anselm of Lucca would not have maintained with such confidence that at the eight
œcumenical councils which had been held up to that time, it had been proved that the patriarch of
Rome was the only one whose faith had never wavered, if he had known that it was precisely at the

1 Anthony Edward Siecienski, The Papacy and the Orthodox: Sources and History of a Debate, Ch. V, p. 225, in
Oxford Studies in Historical Theology, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017. Migne, PL, Vol. CXXI, pp. 686 –
687.
2 Schulte, The Power of the Roman Popes over Princes, p, 26, n. 9. Gregory VII does not appear to be aware of

Honorius at all.
3 John Edward Field, Saint Berin: The Apostle of Wessex: The History, Legends, and Traditions of the

Beginning of the West-Saxon Church, Ch. XI, p. 166, London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge,
1902.
 649

last three of these eight synods that Honorius had been condemned for heresy. c In like manner,
Rupert of Duetz would not, as he has done, have contrasted the steadfast orthodoxy of the popes with
the heretical aberrations of the patriarchs of Constantinople, if he had not shared the general
ignorance respecting the sixth council.d

[Döllinger’s Footnotes:] a) Harduin, iii., 921. [Michael Cerularius and Leo, archbishop of Achrida and
metropolitan of Bulgaria, provoked the correspondence in 1053, by a letter to the bishop of Trani, in
Apulia, warning him against the errors of the Latins. The pope replied from his virtual captivity at
Benevento. After quoting the text, “Ego autem rogavi pro te, ut non deficiat fides tua; et tu aliquando
conversus confirma fratres tuos,” the pope proceeds: “Erit ergo quisquam tantæ dementiæ, qui
orationem illius, cujus velle est posse, audeat in aliquot vacuam putare? Nonne a sede principis
Apostolorum, Romana videlicet ecclesia, tam per eumdem Petrum quam successors suos, reprobate
et convicta, atque expugnata sunt omnium hæreticorum commenta; et fratrum corda in fide Patri,
quæ hactenus nec defecit, nec usque in finem deficiet confirmata?
Præterimus nominatim replicare nonaginta et eo amplius hæreses ab Orientis partibus, vel
ab ipsis Græcis, diverso tempore ex diverso errore ad corrumpendam virginitatem catholicæ
ecclesiæ matris emergentes. Dicendum videtur ex parte, quantas Constantinopolitana ecclesia per
præsules suos suscitaverit pestes; quas viriliter expugnavit, protrivit, et suffocavit Romana et
Apostolica sedes.”]
b) [“Illi nempe facitis præjudicium de qua nec vobis, nec cuilibet mortalium licet facere judicium;
beatissimo et Apostolico Pontifice Silvestro divinitus decernente, spiritualique ejus filio Constantino
religiosissimo Augusto cum universa synodo Nicæna approbante ac subscribente, ut summa sedes a
nemine judicetur.”]
c) Contra Guibertum Antipapam, Bibl. Patrum Lugd., xviii., 609.
d) De Divinis Offic., 2, 22.1

Martin of Opava (or Martin of Poland, Martinus Polonus, Martini Oppaviensis, d. 1278/1279), a Dominican
friar who was appointed Latin archbishop of Gniezno (Primate of Poland) shortly before he died, wrote a
highly influential Latin chronicle on the Popes and Emperors (Chronicon pontificum et imperatorem). The
short mention of Pope Honorius I contains only positive statements about him, with no reference to the
Monothelite controversy or his heresy and condemnation.2 There are many such medieval Latin chronicles
that simply remark upon Honorius in a neutral or positive way, without mentioning at all his involvement in
the Monothelite controversy, and most of these chronicles have copied from (or have as their source) the
Liber Pontificalis’s entry on Honorius.

Bartolomeo Platina (1421 – 1481), a learned Italian scholar who was appointed Vatican librarian by Pope
Sixtus IV, wrote an important history of the lives of the bishops of Rome, written by order of Pope Sixtus IV
and dedicated to him. Platina’s life of Pope Honorius I contains the following passage of historical fiction:

It is said that at this time Heraclius, distrusting his own strength, struck up an inglorious peace with the
Saracens, and that being imposed upon by the arts of Pyrrhus, patriarch of Constantinople, and Cyrus,
bishop of Alexandria, he fell off to the heresy of the Monothelites, a sect so called from their asserting
one Will only in Christ. But these seducers, at the instance of Honorius, who was very diligent to
reclaim Heraclius, were afterwards banished.3

Döllinger comments:

1 Döllinger, Fables Respecting the Popes in the Middle Ages, Ch. VIII, pp. 243 – 245. Döllinger goes on to
provide important additional evidence of Honorius’s forgottenness in the Middle Ages.
2 Ludwig Weiland (editor), MGH, Scriptorum, Vol. XXII, II Martini Oppaviensis Chronicon Pontificum et

imperatorum, p. 423, lines 3 – 14, Hannover: Impensis Bibliopolii Avlici Hahniani, 1872.
3 W. Benham (translator), Bartolomeo Platina, The Lives of the Popes, Vol. I, From the Time of Our Saviour

Jesus Christ to the Accession of Gregory VII, Honorius I, p. 148, London: Griffith, Farran, Okeden & Welsh,
1888.
 650

Hence it has come to pass that Platina has even made Honorius a decided opponent of Monothelitism,
and he represents Heraclius as banishing Pyrrhus and Cyrus at the suggestion of Honorius. But that
towards the close of the sixteenth century the learned Panvinio, whom Ciaconi then copied in turn,
should allow this to pass unchallenged, is scarcely conceivable.1

Onofrio Panvinio (or Onuphrius, 1529 – 1568), another scholar at the Vatican Library, published revised
editions of Platina’s De Vitis Pontificum (Venice: Michele Tramezzino, 1562 [with a dedication to Pope Pius
IV] and Cologne: Cholinus, 1568), with many critical annotations,2 yet retained Platina’s error regarding Pope
Honorius. Alphonsus Ciaconi (or Alphonsus Ciacconius, Alfonso Chacón, 1530 – 1599) was a Spanish
Dominican scholar (and titular Patriarch of Alexandria, though he resided in Rome), and copied this error
regarding Honorius as well. Many other Roman Catholics were misled by Platina’s history, such as Pighius
and Hosius.

The Latin historians Flavius Blondus (or Flavio Biondo, 1392 – 1463),3 Æneas Sylvius (1405 – 1464, later
Pope Pius II in 1458) (writing an Epitome or Abbreviation of Blondus’s Decades), Johannes Vergenhans
(Nauclerus) (1425 – 1510), and Marcus Antonius Coccius Sabellicus (1436 – 1506), speak of Honorius as a
catholic bishop, but appear unaware of the records of Honorius’s condemnation.

John Huss (1372 – 1415), writing in 1413, was apparently unaware of Honorius’s condemnation, even though
it would have been especially pertinent and to his advantage to bring forth this example, among all the popes
he accuses of heresy, error and disrepute, such as Boniface VIII, Clement VII, Boniface IX, John XXIII, Gregory
XII, Benedict XIII, and the spurious story of the female papissa Agnes under the name of John VIII. David
Schley Schaff, the editor and translator of Huss’s treatise De Ecclesia, writes:

Repeatedly did Huss return to the list of popes heretical and popes flagitious. The rudest
layman, a woman, a heretic, yea antichrist himself may be a pope. But in none of these lists does the
name of Honorius I appear, the pontiff on whose case Bishop Hefele, in 1870, rested the argument
against the doctrine of papal infallibility.4

In the formal debate against Martin Luther at Leipzig in 1519, the “principal adversary of Luther” (Catholic
Encyclopedia, Johann Eck), Dr. Johann Eck, declared: “212 Popes have sat upon the chair at Rome, and before
their deposition not one of them ever erred in a decree regarding faith, or rendering judgement in a point
regarding faith.”5 Eck is wrong in many cases, including the error of Honorius.

However, other Roman Catholics, speaking in general terms and without mentioning Honorius, have admitted
in general terms that many popes have deviated from the faith. For example, Nicholas of Lyra (c. 1270 –
1349) says, “Many popes have fallen from the faith.” The Latin Council of Basil (mid-15th century) says in its
synodical epistle: “We read that many popes have fallen into errors and heresies.” Æneas Sylvius says, “Of the
popes of Rome we might shew forth very many examples, if time would suffer it, that they have been found
either heretics, or else defiled with other vices.”6

1 Döllinger, Fables Respecting the Popes in the Middle Ages, Ch. VIII, p. 246. Note that there is a typo in the
English translation (both editions) which reads ‘Cianoni’ instead of ‘Ciaconi’.
2 Stefan Bauer, The Invention of Papal History: Onofrio Panvinio between Renaissance and Catholic Reform,

Ch. IV, pp. 152 – 153, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020.
3 Flavius Blondus, Historiarum ab Inclinatione Romanorum Imperii Decades, Decadis I, Liber IX, [no page

numbers, but about ten pages into this chapter], Venice: Octavianus Scotus, 1483 [written from 1439 – 1453].
4 David Schley Schaff (translator and editor), John Huss, De Ecclesia: The Church, Introduction, p. xvi, New

York, NY: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1915.

5 Paul T. Schumm, Luther’s Break With Rome, in Theological Quarterly, Vol. XXII, No. 4., October, 1918, p. 200,

St. Louis, MO: Concordia Publishing House, 1918.

6 Richard William Jelf (editor), The Works of John Jewel, Vol. IV, p. 476, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1848.

However, Roman Catholics do not officially recognise these actions of the Council of Basil after 1437, and I
have read elsewhere (such as by Peter Dens, quoted below) that Æneas Sylvius denied the heresy of Honorius
and claimed that the Acts of the Sixth Council were corrupted (if true, this would make him the very first
 651

Most significantly, the official decrees of the Latin First Vatican Council in 1870 assume that no Pope has ever
taught heresy, and that no Pope ever will. It is not necessary to show that Pope Honorius’s letters were ex
cathedra to contradict the decrees of the First Vatican Council. For example, the Vatican Council says in Ch. III
that “the Church of Christ may be one flock under one supreme pastor, through the preservation of unity both
of communion and of profession of the same faith with the Roman Pontiff”. Pope Honorius wrote “we confess
One Will of our Lord Jesus Christ” (“unam voluntatem fatemur Domini nostri Jesu Christi”), and given that all
are required to profess the same faith as the Roman Pontiff Honorius, then all are bound to profess the same
heretical faith as Honorius. The second chapter requires all to be “associated (“consociata”) in the unity of
that See [Rome] whence the rights of communion spread to all”, and again, I must press this point, then the
whole church needed to be associated, or affiliated, with the heretic Honorius. In Ch. IV, the Vatican Council
approvingly quotes the Latin Eighth Ecumenical Council of 869 – 870, stating that “in the Apostolic See the
Catholic religion and her holy and well-known doctrine has always been kept undefiled. Desiring,
therefore, not to be in the least degree separated from the faith and doctrine of that See, we hope that we may
deserve to be in the one communion, which the Apostolic See preaches, in which is the entire and true solidity
of the Christian religion.” But Honorius is admitted to have defiled the faith.

Ch. IV goes on to say “To satisfy this pastoral duty, our predecessors ever made unwearied efforts
(indefessam semper operam dederunt) that the salutary doctrine of Christ might be propagated
among all the nations of the earth, and with equal care watched that it might be preserved genuine and
pure where it had been received.” This is proven false by Pope Honorius, who propagated heresy to other
nations. Moreover, this sentence does not permit even the charge of mere negligence upon Honorius, for he
certainly could not have “made unwearied efforts” to promote the truth if he was negligent. Few Roman
Catholics have realised this, that if they concede that Honorius was merely negligent, they are contradicting
the Vatican Council. Ch. IV states that “the faith cannot fail” in the Apostolic See, though it did fail with
Honorius. Ch. IV states that “the Holy Spirit was … promised to the successors of Peter, … that by his
assistance they might inviolably keep and faithfully expound the revelation or deposit of faith delivered
through the Apostles.” It then paraphrases the passage ascribed to Pope Agatho, which was allegedly read at
the Sixth Ecumenical Council, “And indeed all the venerable Fathers have embraced and the holy orthodox
Doctors have venerated and followed their Apostolic doctrine; knowing must fully that this See of holy Peter
remains ever free from all blemish of error according to the Divine promise of the Lord our Saviour made
to the Prince of His disciples: I have prayed for thee that thy faith fail not, and, when thou art converted,
confirm thy brethren.” Despite these claims being refuted in the Sixth Ecumenical Council, the Vatican
Council uncritically repeats them. The Vatican Council also claims that “This gift, then, of truth and never-
failing faith was conferred by Heaven upon Peter and his successors in this Chair”. The claim of “truth” is
refuted by the widespread acceptance of false documents and forgeries at Rome. More to the same effect is
found in this Council. It is clear the Latin Vatican Council held views utterly irreconcilable with the
condemnation of a Pope for heresy.

Pope Pius IX’s Syllabus of Errors in 1864 condemns the following proposition: “Roman pontiffs and
ecumenical councils have wandered outside the limits of their powers, have usurped the rights of princes, and
have even erred in defining matters of faith and morals. – Damnatio ‘Multiplices inter,’ June 10, 1851.”
(Syllabus of Errors, No. 23.) Pius IX’s Breve Multiplices inter of June 10, 1851, referred to here in the Syllabus,
contains the following declaration when condemning a book: “At last, not to think of other errors, it rises to
such a degree of temerity and blasphemy, that it asserts with unheard-of boldness, the Roman popes and
Oecumenical Councils had overstepped the limits of their power, had assumed the rights of princes, and had
likewise erred in decisions of faith and words.”1 Pope Pius IX assumes that no Pope has ever erred in
decisions of faith or in defining matters of faith (although Roman Catholics may make the distinction that Pius

author to claim falsification of the Acts), but Sylvius simply wrote an Epitome of Blondus’s Decades (cited
above) and did not enter into the question either (Aeneas Sylvius, Supra Decades Blondi ab Inclinatione
Imperii … Epitome, in Opera Omnia, pp. 144 – 281; Also called Abbreviatio supra Decades Blondi, and printed
after Blondus’s work in some old printed editions), apparently also unaware of the records of Honorius’s
condemnation.
1 Schulte, The Power of the Roman Popes, p. 18.
 652

is referring to ex cathedra determinations). Yet Pope Honorius’s heretical letter states: “Moreover, as regards
the ecclesiastical dogma and what we ought to hold and teach, …” (see Edward Denny’s notes below).

Section VI Latin Attempts to Deal with the Condemnation of Honorius

As to the Roman handling of this issue, the Protestant historian Schaff rightly remarks: “The condemnation of
a departed pope as a heretic by an ecumenical council is so inconsistent with the claims of papal infallibility,
that Romish historians have tried their utmost to dispute the fact, or to weaken its force by sophistical
pleading.”1

Cardinal Rauscher (1797 – 1875), who was a professor of church history and canon law, and later the Prince-
Archbishop of Vienna, exclaimed in the Latin Vatican Council that he was ashamed to name the subterfuges by
which many theologians sought to avert the force of Honorius’s condemnation. 2

It is clear that there are many extremely influential leaders of the Latin communion who did not consider
Honorius to be a heretic. These men have had a major influence in the Roman system. It is quite shocking to
see to what absurdities these Roman Catholics will go to reconcile the condemnation of Honorius with their
claims about the unity of the Church.

There is abundant evidence in the following pages that the pillars of the Roman Catholic communion defend a
heretic.

It is important to keep in mind that when the Roman Catholic controversialists try to argue that Honorius was
not a heretic, they are substituting their personal judgment of Honorius’ letters for the judgment of the 289
bishops of the Sixth Ecumenical Council, and the 367 bishops of the Seventh Ecumenical Council, as well as
numerous other fathers, who judged and recognized that Honorius was a heretic. This is precisely what
Roman Catholics condemn Protestants for doing – departing from the tradition of the Church Fathers to
embrace their own personal opinions or interpretations. If, as some Roman Catholics argue, when the Pope
accepted the decrees of the Sixth Council, he substituted their condemnation of Honorius for heresy with a
condemnation merely for negligence (and thus not for heresy), then the Fathers of the Seventh Council must
have rejected this Papal decision (which would further show that the Seventh Council believed that the
authority to decide which decisions of a council have ecumenical authority does not belong to the Pope), for
the Fathers of the Seventh Council affirm in no uncertain terms that they fully agreed with the Sixth Council in
its anathema against Honorius for his Monothelitism, and reiterate this anathema. Indeed the singular fact
that the Seventh Ecumenical Council reiterated Pope Honorius’s condemnation has never been adequately
dealt with by the Roman Catholic side, and is fully conclusive of the matter. No person is above the divine
authority of an ecumenical council. We Orthodox continue to hold to the Holy Fathers’ decision.

Many Roman Catholic authorities have false and contradictory views regarding the condemnation of
Honorius. The Catholic Encyclopedia has a good article on the “typical views” of this controversy:

Bellarmine and Baronius followed Pighius in denying that Honorius was condemned at all. Baronius
argued that the Acts of the Council were falsified by Theodore, a Patriarch of Constantinople, who had
been deposed by the emperor, but was restored at a later date; we are to presume that the council

1 Philip Schaff, History of the Church, Vol. III, Third Period, Ch. V, § 60, p. 301, New York, NY: Charles
Scribner’s Sons, Rev. Ed., 1884 [same as that titled the Fifth Ed. of 1906].
2 “Subterfugiis, quibus theology non pauci in Honorii causâ usi sunt, derisui me exponere, sophismata

adhibere et munere episcopali et naturâ rei, quæ in timore Domini pertractanda est, indignum mihi videtur;
sed et prudentia ab artificiis hisce me prohibit. Si autem in quâcumque causâ probare possent, me ad artes
eos exprobatas ipsum confugisse triumphum agerent Protestantes.” Synopsis. The British Quarterly Review,
Vol. LVIII, July and October 1873, Art. III, Catholicism and Papal Infallibility, § III, n. 3, p. 88, London: Jackson
& Walford, 1873.
 653

condemned him, but that he substituted “Honorius” for “Theodorus” in the Acts. This theory has
frequently been shown to be untenable.

The more famous Gallicans, such as Bossuet, Dupin, Richer, and later ones as Cardinal de la Luzerne
and (at the time of the Vatican Council) Maret, Gratry, and many others, usually held with all Protestant
writers that Honorius had formally defined heresy, and was condemned for so doing. They added, of
course, that such a failure on the part of an individual pope did not compromise the general and
habitual orthodoxy of the Roman See.

On the other hand the chief advocates of papal infallibility, for instance, such great men as Melchior
Canus in the sixteenth century, Thomassinus in the seventeenth, Pietro Ballerini in the eighteenth,
Cardinal Perrone in the nineteenth, have been careful to point out that Honorius did not define
anything ex cathedra. But they were not content with this amply sufficient defence. Some followed
Baronius, but most, if not all, showed themselves anxious to prove that the letters of Honorius
were entirely orthodox. There was indeed no difficulty in showing that Honorius was probably not a
Monothelite. It would have been only just to extend the same kindly interpretation to the words of
Sergius. The learned Jesuit Garnier saw clearly, however, that it was not as a Monothelite that
Honorius was condemned. He was coupled with Sergius, Pyrrhus, Paul, the Ecthesis, and the Type. It is
by no means clear that Sergius, Pyrrhus, and the Ecthesis are to be accounted as Monothelite, since
they forbade the mention of “one operation”; it is quite certain that Paul and the Type were anti-
Monothelite, for they prohibited “one Will” also. Garnier pointed out that the council condemned
Honorius for approving Sergius and for “fomenting” the dogmas of Pyrrhus and Paul. This view was
followed by many great writers, including Pagi.

A theory put forward by Pennacchi at the time of the Vatican Council attracted an unnecessary amount
of attention. He agreed with the Protestants and Gallicans in proclaiming that the letter of Honorius
was a definition ex cathedra; that the pope was anathematized by the council as a heretic in the strict
sense; but the council, not being infallible apart from papal confirmation, fell in this case into error
about a dogmatic fact (in this point Pennacchi was preceded by Turrecremata, Bellarmine, Assemani,
and many others), since the letter of Honorius was not worthy of censure. Leo II, in confirming the
council, expressly abrogated the censure, according to this view, and substituted a condemnation for
negligence only (so also Grisar – see above). There is evidently no ground whatever for any of these
assertions.

Bishop Hefele before 1870 took the view that Honorius’s letter was not strictly heretical but was
gravely incorrect, and that its condemnation by an ecumenical council was a serious difficulty against
the ‘personal’ infallibility of the popes. After his hesitating acceptance of the Vatican decrees he
modified his view; he now taught that Honorius's letter was a definition ex cathedra, that it was
incorrectly worded, but that the thought of the writer was orthodox (true enough; but, in a definition of
faith, surely the words are of primary importance); the council judged Honorius by his words, and
condemned him simply as a Monothelite; Leo II accepted and confirmed the condemnation by the
council, but, in doing so, he carefully defined in what sense the condemnation was to be understood.
These views of Hefele's, which he put forth with edifying modesty and submission as the best
explanation he could give of what had previously seemed to him a formidable difficulty, have had a
surprisingly wide influence, and have been adopted by many Catholic writers, save only his mistaken
notion that a letter like that of Honorius can be supposed to fulfil the conditions laid down by the
Vatican Council for an ex cathedra judgment (so Jungmann and many controversialists).1

Many writers suggest that perhaps the Acts of the Sixth Ecumenical Council have been falsified. Roman
Catholics used to claim that the council’s acts and the letters of Honorius were corrupted, and on this question
the Catholic Encyclopedia recognizes the study of Hefele (who extensively demonstrates that the Acts are
authentic) as conclusive: “There has been in the past, owing to Gallicanism and the opponents of papal
infallibility, much controversy concerning the proper sense of this council’s condemnation of Pope Honorius,

1 John Chapman, Pope Honorius I, in CE, Vol. VII, pp. 455 – 456.
 654

the theory (Baronius, Damberger) of a falsification of the Acts being now quite abandoned (Hefele, III, 299-
313).”1 Roman Catholic scholars after Bellarmine, and by the 19th century, have generally conceded that the
records are not corrupted, but there are notable exceptions.

The following are the Roman Catholics who have explicitly commented on the case of Honorius. Most have
either denied the heterodoxy of Honorius or claimed that the acts were forged. It appears to be the nearly
unanimous view of non-Gallican Roman Catholics that Pope Honorius I was not a Monothelite heretic:

Manuel Kalekas (or Emanuel Calleca, Emmanuel Chaleca, various spellings, d. 1410), in 1390, writing against
the Orthodox for being separated from the West, mentions the Sixth Council’s condemnation of Honorius, but
he refers to the excuse which Maximus makes for Honorius, without considering that the authority of an
ecumenical council is higher than that of a theologian.2 Hans Kung writes, “Thus it seems the event
[Honorius’s condemnation] had been forgotten in the high and late Middle Ages. It was only as a result of the
translation of the works of Manuel Kalekas against the heresies of the Greeks by Ambrosius Traversari that
the West again became aware of the condemnation of Honorius.” 3

Nicholas of Cusa (1401 – 1464), in his work De concordantia Catholica (The Catholic Concordance), written in
1434 while Nicholas was present at the Latin Council of Basil, says:

And again, although some popes such as Liberius, Honorius, and others who sat for a time in the chair
of Peter fell victim to the error of schism, the see remained unblemished. It should especially be kept
in mind, I think, that it is a certain rule and secure strength that the sees which have been founded by
the Roman see when they are united to it as its daughters are considered [part of] one see and
cathedra, although certain pontiffs, both in the direct succession in a straight line from the Roman
pontiffs and in collateral ones [from other bishops] have fallen into heresy. For the generations from
Abraham to Christ are named by Matthew in succession, [and] although not all in the line were holy,
it reached to Christ. So in the church, which this succession symbolizes, a straight line of pontiffs
reaches to Christ despite the evil conduct of intermediate popes. For that line or holy cathedra will
endure without defect even to the consummation of the world. 4

Cardinal John de Torquemada (Turrecremata, 1388 – 1468), writing in about the year 1450, “says that we
must suppose that the Orientals were misinformed about Honorius, and so had condemned him under a
mistake.”5

Albert (Pigghe) Pighius (1490 – 1542) attempted to disparage the authenticity of the Acts of the Sixth Council,
claiming that they were forged, and denied that Honorius was condemned at all. Thrown into a world utterly
inconsistent with the Ultramontane theory, Pighius writes, “There is nothing Roman, nothing worthy of the
majesty and authority of the Roman Church, neither in the things that are inserted into the letters of the

1 Thomas J. Shahan, Councils of Constantinople, A., IV, The Third Council of Constantinople (Sixth General
Council), in CE, Vol. X, p. 310.
2 Döllinger, Fables Respecting the Popes of the Middle Ages, Ch. VIII, p. 246.
3 Cited in Stylianos S. Harkianakis, The Infallibility of the Church in Orthodox Theology, p. 180, Redfern, NSW:

St. Andrew’s Orthodox Press, 2008. See Döllinger, Fables Respecting the Popes of the Middle Ages, Ch. VIII,
pp. 245 – 246. Some Roman Catholics, apparently following Panvinio, had mistakenly thought that Kalekas
wrote shortly after the Latin Second Council of Lyons (1274).
4 Paul Eugene Sigmund (editor and translator), Nicholas of Cusa: The Catholic Concordance, Book I, ¶ 58., p.

40, in Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991.
Cusa’s notice of this subject revived the issue in the West.
5 “Creditur quod hoc fecerint Orientales ex mala et falsa sinistra informatione de præfato Honorio decepti.”

Torquemada, Summa De Ecclesia, Book II, Ch. XCIII. Döllinger, Fables Respecting the Popes of the Middle
Ages, Ch. VIII, p. 247.
 655

Roman Pontiff, nor in the words and acts of the legates in the council.” 1 This sweeping skepticism extends to
the letters of Pope Leo, the acts of the Seventh Council, and ever so many other documents. Pighius taught
that a Pope cannot become a heretic at all.

Cardinal Stanislaus Hosius (1504 – 1579) held that the acts and records that concerned Honorius were
falsified or interpolated by the Greeks.2 Elsewhere Hosius says, “Reckon all the Popes that ever were, from
Peter until this Julius [the Third] that now is: there never sat in this chair any Arian, and Donatist, any
Pelagian, or any other that professed any manner of heresy.”3

Melchior Canus (1509 – 1560) “argued that Honorius, in writing to Sergius, really erred in the faith, but that
his error was that of a private man, and not of the pope.”4

Franciscus Turrianus (c. 1509 – 1584) writes, according to John Rainoldes:

Torrensis, a friend of the Popes too, declareth, that a part of the epistle of Honorius is helped
reasonably by the secretaries exposition [alleged by Maximus]: but it fitteth not another part thereof,
in which it is plaine by his own words, that he was a Monothelite. 5

Thomas Harding (1516 – 1572), an eminent English Roman Catholic priest, professor, and controversialist,
writes:

For Honorius in deede fel into the heresie of the Monothelites. But he fel into it, when as yet it was not
euidently condemned by the Churche in any general Councel. He fel into it, but he defended it not: and
yet the crime of heresie is not properly incurred, without a stubborne defence of falsehood.

Againe, he did not only not make any heretical Decree, touching the defence of that heresie, by the
authoritie of the See Apostolike, but rather as a publike person, he did resist that heresie. For he
induced Heraclius the Emperour to bannishe Pyrrhus the Patriarke of Constantinople, and Cyrus the
Patriarke of Alexandria, who were giltie of the Monothelite heresie. How then standeth it together, that
Honorius did bothe favour and hate the selfe same heresie? …

Whereby it came to passe, that he both deposed Monothelites openly, and yet favoured their opinion
priuily. And this is the only Pope, who may iustly be burdened with heresie.

But now consider good Reader the worke of God, when he should come to confirme his brethren, that
is to say, to doo any open thing, whereby the other Bisshoppes might be established in their faith: then
was he constrained to doo that, which might edifie, and not hinder the true faith, that God might be
iustified in his words, who sayd to S. Peter, vppon this rocke I wil builde my Churche, and Hel gates shal
not preuaile against it, and thou being once conuerted confirme thy brethren: feede my sheepe, feede my
lambes. …

Now concerning the matter of Succession, the publike person is only to be regarded, which in Pope

1 “Nihil Romanum, nihil dignum majestate et authoritate Romanæ Ecclesiæ, nec in literis quæ inseruntur
Romani Pontificis, nec in verbis et actis legatorum in Concilio.” Renouf, The Condemnation of Pope Honorius,
p. 10.
2 Döllinger, Fables Respecting the Popes of the Middle Ages, Ch. VIII, p. 248.
3 In Conf. Petricoviens. c. 29. Translated in William R. Whittingham (editor), John Jewel, The Apology for the

Church of England, Ch. XI, p. 204, n. p., New York, NY: Henry M. Onderdonk, & Co., 1846.
4 William H. Neligan (editor), Artaud de Montor, The Lives and Times of the Roman Pontiffs: From St. Peter to

Pius IX., Vol. I, Honorius I, pp. 150 – 151, New York, NY: D. & J. Sadlier & Co., 1867.
5 John Rainolds, The Svmme of the Conference Betweene Iohn Rainoldes and Iohn Hart: Tovching the Head

and the Faith of the Chvrch, Ch. VII, Division II, p. 237, London: George Bishop, 1588.
 656

Honorius was Catholike. For that is the personage, whiche may hurte, or hinder the Church. 1

Harding in the margin here cites “Platina in Honorio”, showing that Harding was misled by and relied upon
the fictional account of the papal biographer Platina (which was remarked upon above) to defend Honorius.
Harding resorts to speculation in attempts to defend his thesis “Honorius Pope no publike teacher of heresie.”
Harding claims that although Honorius “in his owne person he favoured that heresie” and supported
Monothelitism in “his owne priuate minde”, yet he did not “doo any open thing, whereby the other
Bisshoppes might be established in their faith”, and that Honorius was “Catholike” in his “publike personage”
and in “the publike office, which he beareth”. Harding later again cites Platina, writing:

For when Honorius came to this pointe, whether in publike Consistorie the Monothelite heresie (which
taught, that there was but one wil in Christe) should be allowed or no: then, as Platina recordeth, the
Pope infourmed the Emperour, as wel by letters, as by messangers, that Christe had two willes: and
that was done by the common assemblie, and the letters went, as the deede of the See, and Church of
Rome: whereas in the meane time Honorius was of an other minde within him selfe.2

Harding misrepresents the situation, apparently unaware of the fact that Honorius wrote publicly and to the
next highest ranking bishop in the Church, and that Honorius’s letters were publicly referred to by other
bishops, including the Monothelites. If teaching heresy to the leading Patriarchs of the Church is not public,
then what is? Honorius was not just condemned for thoughts that he held only in his own mind, or for a
private table conversation, or for what he wrote in a private journal. It is noteworthy that the true facts of
history refute Harding’s application of the three Petrine texts to the Bishops of Rome.

Diogo Paiva de Andrada (or Andradius, with various spellings, 1528 – 1575), a Portuguese theologian who
took a prominent role in the proceedings of Trent, and whose “Defence” (Defensio Tridentinæ fidei) of its
doctrines was dedicated to, and approved of by, Pope Gregory XIII, admits that the council condemned the
pope, but affirms that they were wrong in what they did: “Quocirca etsi Sexta Synodus errare in
condemnanda sententia, quam Honorii esse putabat, non potuerit, in Pontifice certe iam vita functo
damnando falli potuit.”3

Francis Coster (1532 – 1619), a Jesuit theologian, asserts that the letters of Honorius were forgeries or
interpolated.4

Thomas Stapleton (1535 – 1598) says, “In a matter of fact, the council labored under a delusion” and
“Honorius the Pope was no heterike … Therefore vndoubtedly either that Councell is nowe corrupted, as the
fifte general Councell was by heretikes, or els Honorius was condemned not as Pope, nor as decreeing and
defending that heresy by publike authority”.5 First observe that Stapleton, who professes to have an
“invincible argument” defending Honorius, and who claims to speak “undoubtedly”, doubts whether the acts
of the Sixth Council were corrupted, so he is certainly not a position to speak undoubtedly about this subject.

Baronius (1538 – 1607), who promoted the theory of a falsification of the Sixth Council’s Acts, says that if the
acts are to be depended upon, “nothing more wicked, nothing more outrageous or absurd can be imagined”.6

Only two people considered saints by Roman Catholics have directly discussed the controversy over Pope

1 Thomas Harding, A Detection of Sundrie Foule Errours, Lies, Sclaunders, corruptions, and other false
Dealinges, touching Doctrine and other matters uttered and practized by M. Jewel, pp. 253 – 255, Louvain:
Ioannem Foulerum, 1568.
2 Harding, A Detection of Sundrie Foule Errours, p. 254.
3 Dieguo Payua Dandrada, Defensio Tridentinæ Fidei Catholicæ, Liber II, p. 105 (pp. 101 – 105), Lisbon: Per

Antonivm Riberivm Typographvm, 1578. This work was published posthumously, as a response to Martin
Chemnitz’s Examen Concilii Tridentini, and it is regarded as Andrada’s best work.
4 Döllinger, Fables Respecting the Popes of the Middle Ages, Ch. VIII, p. 249.
5 Thomas Stapleton, A returne of untruthes upon M. Iewelles replie, 1566.
6 Annales, 681, 22.
 657

Honorius: Bellarmine and Liguori (Francis de Sales only says in passing that Honorius was “perhaps” a
heretic). Robert Bellarmine (1542 – 1621) accuses the Greeks of forging the Acts of this Council, and boldly
asserts that Honorius’ letters contain no heresy, stating that if the records were not forged, then the “council
laboured under intolerable error and impudence”.1 Bellarmine’s opinion on the Pope’s infallibility is “It is
probable that the Pope, not only as Pope, cannot err, but, as a private man, cannot fall into heresy, or hold any
obstinate opinion contrary to faith.”2 St. Robert Bellarmine ended the sixth chapter of his fourth book about
the spiritual power of the popes by noting “… that up to now no supreme Pontiff has ever been an haeretic,
since it certainly cannot be proven of any of them that he was an haeretic: therefore it is a sign (from Heaven)
that such a thing cannot happen”.3 Bellarmine further says, “In these letters there are not any errors.”
Bellarmine cites from the letters of Honorius and endeavours to show that they are Orthodox, and further
says, “So we do maintain that no heresy is to be found in Honorius’ letters.” Bellarmine then goes on the
attack:

No doubt the enemies of the Roman Church have achieved (this inclusion of) Honorius in the list of
those condemned by the sixth council, as well as interpolating every charge invented against him in the
conciliar register. That is what I demonstrate first of all through the testimony of Anastasius the
librarian who reports in his ‘History’ that (that particular) treachery really happened, according to the
description of the Greek Theophanus Isaurus; secondly by reminding people that it was an almost
universal practice among Greeks to falsify texts.4

Bellarmine and later Roman Catholics attempt to defend their belief in the Orthodoxy of Honorius by citing
letters of St. Maximus (which was discussed), who was writing before the time of the Sixth Council, which is
the final authority on the question. This same Bellarmine who accuses the Greeks of forgery, has himself been
shown to cite greatly from forged documents (in a former section it was pointed out that many of the
citations he uses to prove the supremacy of the Pope are forgeries), showing that a low estimate should be
placed on the truthfulness and reliability of Roman Catholic sources. Let no one think Bellarmine’s assertions
have any validity. Later Roman Catholic scholars have demonstrated conclusively that Honorius’s
condemnation is authentic, and the compilation of testimonies above adds to the evidence. The testimony of
history has shown that the Latins were more frequently forgers, and the Orthodox were often compelled with
the weight of these false documents in controversy. Bellarmine also dismisses the Seventh Ecumenical
Council: “On the third point I answer the Fathers of the seventh Council have only followed the archives of the
sixth. They have merely repeated what they could read. They were but misled by the forged records.” 5 I say,
the 367 Fathers of the Seventh Ecumenical Council, inspired with the Holy Spirit, and representing the
testimony of the records of the Universal Church from East to West, living about a hundred years after the
condemnation of Honorius, were not misled, and rather it is Bellarmine, living almost a millennium after the
condemnation of Honorius, who is misled. Bellarmine has this to say, discussing the question of deposing
heretical popes:

The third opinion is on another extreme, certainly, that a Pope cannot be deposed either through
secret heresy, or through manifest heresy. This recalls and refutes Bishop Turrecremata and
certainly is an improbable opinion. Firstly, that a heretical Pope can be judged, is expressly held in
Can. Si Papa dist. 40, and with Innocent III (serm. 2 de consec. pontif.) And what is more, in the 8th
Council, (act. 7) the acts of the Roman Council under Pope Hadrian are recited, and therein contained,
that Pope Honorius appears to be justly anathematized, because he had been convicted of heresy,
which is the only reason permitted for inferiors to judge superiors. It must be noted, that although it
is probable that Honorius was not a heretic, and that Pope Hadrian II was deceived from corrupt

1 De Rom. Pontif. lib. iv. cap. 11.

2 Bell. de Rom. Pont., lib. 4, c. 6, sect. 1., Prag., 1721. Translated in Charles Hastings Collette, Popish
Infallibility: Letters to Viscount Feilding on His Secession from the Church of England, Letter V, p. 35, London:
Arthur Hall, 1850.
3 Controversiarum De Summo Pontifice, Liber Quartus, De Potestate Spirituali, Caput VI.
4 Translated in M. Jean-Andre Perlant, The Sullied Reputation of a Holy Pope, The Francinta Messenger, June

1994.
5 Perlant, The Sullied Reputation of a Holy Pope.
 658

examples of the VI Council, and Honorius was reckoned falsely to be a heretic, nevertheless we
cannot deny, in fact Hadrian with the Roman Council, nay more the whole 8th general council had
sensed, in the case of heresy a Roman Pontiff can be judged. Add, what would be the most miserable
condition of the Church, if she would be compelled to acknowledge a manifestly prowling wolf for a
shepherd.1

John Hart (d. 1586), debating against the Anglican scholar John Rainoldes at Oxford in 1582, mentions
Bellarmine’s work and says,

Whether Pope Honorius helde that heresie or no: the Catholikes are of diuers iudgments: some
thinking that hee did, some that he did not. … They [Pighius, Hosius, and Onuphrius, as cited by
Bellarmine] shew by good reasons that he [Honorius] is falsely slaundered. For Pighius and Hosius do
bring the testimonies of historians, Platina, Sabellicus, Nauclerus, Blondus, and Æneas Silvius: who say,
Honorius did condemne the heresie of the Monothelites. Whereto Onuphrius addeth the authorities of
Emmanuel Calêca, a Grecian: Iohn of Turrecremata, Cardinall of San-sisto: who have proued by their
writings that he was a Catholike Bishop. … And it is plaine by him [Maximus] that Honorius did not
subscribe to that heresie: yea, that of a certaintie he did condemne it.2

Jacob Gretser (1562 – 1625), a German Jesuit scholar and controversialist, asserted Greek interpolation of the
records.3

Peter Arkoudios (or Petri Arcudii, 1562/1563 – 1633), a Roman Catholic priest and scholar of Greek
background who converted to Roman Catholicism from Orthodoxy, follows Bellarmine and says,

that Honorius was orthodox, is evident more clearly than the sun from his epistles, and if the sixth
synod condemned him, it was a grave error, and an intolerable mistake, and it laboured under
impudence. If the synodical Acts are corrupted, the Fathers of the Seventh Council were deceived by
the false sixth synod, as Honorius was undeservedly condemned …4

André Duval (1564 – 1638), a French priest and Doctor of the Sorbonne, asserted Greek interpolation of the
records.5

Francis de Sales (1567 – 1622) writes: “Thus we do not say that the Pope cannot err in his private opinions,
as did John XXII.; or be altogether a heretic, as perhaps Honorius was.”6 However, this contradicts various
other Roman Catholic theologians, who hold the opinion that “God will never permit a Pope, even personally,
to be a formal heretic.”7

1 Translated in M. Jean-Andre Perlant, The Sullied Reputation of a Holy Pope, The Francinta Messenger, June
1994. Bellarmine’s final sentence fails to account for the fact that according to Pope Adrian II, the Church
must acknowledge a heretical Pope (but reject his doctrine) while he lives, until a subsequent orthodox Pope
permits the condemnation of his predecessor.
2 John Rainolds, The Svmme of the Conference Betweene Iohn Rainoldes and Iohn Hart: Tovching the Head

and the Faith of the Chvrch, Ch. VII, Division II, p. 237, London: George Bishop, 1588.
3 Döllinger, Fables Respecting the Popes of the Middle Ages, Ch. VIII, p. 248.
4 “Respondeo, cum Honorius fuerit orthodoxus, ut sole clarius constat ex ejus epistolis, si synodus sexta eum

damnavit, graviter erravit, et intolerabili errore, et impudentia laboravit. Si autem Acta synodica ab aliquo
sunt corrupta, Patres septimi concilii decepti ex falsata sexta synodo, immerito damnarunt Honorium …”
Migne, PG, Vol. CLXI, p. 475 D.
5 Döllinger, Fables Respecting the Popes of the Middle Ages, Ch. VIII, p. 248.
6 Henry Benedict Mackey, Library of St. Francis De Sales: Works of This Doctor of the Church Translated into

English, Vol. III, The Catholic Controversy, Part II, Art. VI, Ch. XIV, pp. 305 – 306, London: Burns and Oates,
1886.
7 Review of Renouf’s The Case of Honorius Reconsidered, in The Dublin Review, Vol. XIV (New Series), No.

XXVII, January – April, 1870, Art IX, p. 257, London: Burns, Oates, & Co., 1870.
 659

Henricus Spondanus (1568 – 1643), a French priest and historian, admits that the Sixth Council condemned
Honorius for heresy and the genuineness of the Acts, but says that the Sixth Council erred in its decision.1

Johannes Wiggers (1571 – 1639), Doctor of Louvain, excuses Honorius and inclines to the idea that his letters
were interpolated. Wiggers says that the Seventh Ecumenical Council merely repeated the Sixth and was
deceived: “Ad Synodum septimam respondetur, Patres illius Concilii secutos fuisse Synodum sextam, &
tantùm repetisse quod in ea legerant: & proinde ex ila deceptos fuisse: quæ vel corrupta fuit, ut diximus, ut
per errorem damnaverat Honorium.”2

Adam Tanner (1572 – 1632), an Austrian Jesuit and university professor, asserted Greek interpolation of the
records.3

Dominic Gravina (1573 – 1643), a Dominican professor and theologian, asserts that the letters of Honorius
were forgeries or interpolated.4

Binius (1573 – 1641) asserts the acts of the Council to be corrupt, but, distrusting his own arguments, adds
that if the acts are genuine, “the ecumenical council, in a question of fact, had gone astray”.5

Jodocus Coccius (1581 – 1622), a Jesuit scholar who converted from Lutheranism, argued that Honorius was
orthodox and not infected by heresy.6

Denis Pétau (1583 – 1652) said that “The memory of this pontiff [Honorius] … would have been among the
most glorious, had he not shown himself somewhat negligent in rooting out at its commencement the heresy
of the Monothelites”.7

Isaac Habert (1598 – 1668), a Sorbonne doctor, royal counsellor, and bishop, “rejects the hypothesis of the
falsification of the Acts of the Sixth Council, and explains the sentence in question as arising from an error as
to fact, which even an Œcumenical Synod is liable to.” Habert asserts that “the letter of Honorius, because
misunderstood is condemned” by the Council, and that “those epistles contain nothing heretical”. 8

Raymond Caron (1605 – 1666), an Irish Franciscan friar and author, held that Honorius was guilty of heresy.9

Antoine Godeau (1605 – 1672), a French bishop and author, held that Honorius was merely guilty of
remissness and inactivity, in neglecting to suppress the rising heresy of Monothelitism.10

Philippe Labbé (1607 – 1667), the Roman Catholic scholar known for his edition of the Church Councils,
attempts to take scandal off from Honorius, saying, “This is but meanly proved upon him.” 11

1 Samuel Edgar, The Variations of Popery, Ch. XI, p. 358, Toronto: Maclear & Co., 1875.
2 Ioannis Wiggers Diestensis, Commentaria de Virtvtibvs Theologicis, Tractatus de Pontifice, Q. I, Art. X,
Dubium VI, ¶. 228., p. 76, Louvain: Cypriani Coenestenii, 1666.
3 Döllinger, Fables Respecting the Popes of the Middle Ages, Ch. VIII, p. 248.
4 Döllinger, Fables Respecting the Popes of the Middle Ages, Ch. VIII, p. 249.
5 “Concilium Œcumenicum (quod fieri posse sentient omnes Catholici) in questione facti aberrasse.” Concil.

tom. x, p. 576. Quoted in Renouf, The Condemnation of Pope Honorius, pp. 8 – 9.

6 Jodocus Coccius, Thesaurus Catholicus, in quo Controversiae Fidei, Book VII, Art. XIII, pp. 896 – 898,

Cologne: Arnoldi Quentelii, 1599 (reprinted in 1618 in 2 volumes).

7 Petau, Theolog. Dog., vol. iv., Book 1, chap 19. This is a paraphrase cited from Montor, The Lives and Times

of the Roman Pontiffs, p. 150.

8 Hergenröther, Anti-Janus, Ch. V, Anti-Janus, p. 82.
9 Samuel Edgar, The Variations of Popery, Ch. XI, p. 359, Toronto: Maclear & Co., 1875.
10 Samuel Edgar, The Variations of Popery, Ch. XI, p. 359, Toronto: Maclear & Co., 1875.
11 Laurence Howell, The History of the Pontificate: From its Supposed Beginning, To the End of the Council of

Trent, p. 94, London: J. Pemberton, Second Ed., 1716. [Title begins as “A View of the Pontificate” in the First
Ed.]
 660

Francesco Sforza Pallavicino (or Pallavicini, 1607 – 1667), an Italian cardinal and historian of the Latin
Council of Trent, said the Sixth Council erred in a matter of fact.1

Louis Maimbourg (1610 – 1686), a French Jesuit and historian, held that Honorius was guilty of heresy.2

Christian Wolf (Christianus Lupus, 1612 – 1681) a learned and influential Augustinian professor of theology
at Louvain, pleaded for the “pio intentio” (pious intention) and orthodoxy of Honorius, and held the idea of
Marchese (see below).3

Jean Garnier (1612 – 1681), a learned French Jesuit scholar and Church historian, argued that Honorius was
not a manifest heretic, and was condemned not on account of positive, but of “negative” heresy, that is, for
countenancing other heretics and favouring their false doctrine.4

Richard Arsdekin (or Archdekin, 1618 – 1693), an Irish Jesuit, said the Sixth Council erred in a matter of
fact.5

Jean-Baptiste Duhamel (or du Hamel, 1624 – 1706), a French theologian and intellectual, held that Honorius
taught what was orthodox, but was condemned for leniency to heresy, and for favouring the Monothelites.6

Jean-Baptiste Tamagnini (or Tagmanini, 17th century), a French author who wrote a book on the history of
the Monothelite controversy (Celebris historia Monothelitarum, atque Honorii Controversia scrutiniis octo
comprehensa, Paris, 1678), held that Honorius taught what was orthodox, but was condemned for leniency to
heresy, and for favouring the Monothelites.7

The Roman Oratorian Francis Marchese (or Marchesi, 1623 – 1697) asserts in a book of his own (Clypeus
Fortium, sive Vindiciæ Honorii Papæ, Rome, 1680) that Honorius was not condemned at the Sixth Council,
while it was general and ecumenical, that is, until its eleventh sessions, but afterwards, when it was already
dissolved, presumably at the Quinisext Council, the Acts of which were allegedly transferred to the Sixth
Council.8

Antoine (1624 – 1699) and François Pagi (1654 – 1721), the French Church historians, held that Honorius
taught what was orthodox, but was condemned for leniency to heresy, and for favouring the Monothelites. 9

Cardinal d’Aguirre (1630 – 1699) says that the Sixth Council erred in its decision.10

François-Séraphin Régnier-Desmarais (1632 – 1713), a member of the Académie Française, defends the
orthodoxy of Honorius.11

Natalis Alexander (or Noël Alexandre, 1639 – 1724), a French theologian and historian, says, “Honorius spoke
in a Catholic sense; locatus est mente Catholica, siquidem absolute duas voluntates Christi non negavit, sed

1 Samuel Edgar, The Variations of Popery, Ch. XI, p. 358, Toronto: Maclear & Co., 1875.
2 Samuel Edgar, The Variations of Popery, Ch. XI, p. 359, Toronto: Maclear & Co., 1875.
3 Döllinger, Fables Respecting the Popes of the Middle Ages, Ch. VIII, p. 248. Renouf, The Case of Pope

Honorius Reconsidered, p. 39.

4 Döllinger, Fables Respecting the Popes of the Middle Ages, Ch. VIII, p. 252, n. 1.
5 Samuel Edgar, The Variations of Popery, Ch. XI, p. 358, Toronto: Maclear & Co., 1875.
6 Döllinger, Fables Respecting the Popes of the Middle Ages, Ch. VIII, p. 250.
7 Döllinger, Fables Respecting the Popes of the Middle Ages, Ch. VIII, p. 250.
8 Montor, The Lives and Times of the Roman Pontiffs, p. 151.
9 Renouf, The Case of Pope Honorius Reconsidered, p. 53 (and elsewhere).
10 Döllinger, Fables Respecting the Popes of the Middle Ages, Ch. VIII, p. 251, n. 1.
11 Revue Catholique, New Series Vol. III, Full Series Vol. XXIX, Des Plus Decentes Publications Françaises Sur

L’Infallibilité Papale, p. 352, Louvain: Aux Bureaux de la Revue, 1870.

 661

voluntates pugnantes.”1

Cardinal Celestino Sfondrati (1644 – 1696) says that the Sixth “council fell into error” (Regale Sacerdotium, p.
555) in its condemnation of Honorius, and defends Honorius on the internal testimony of the Pope’s letters,
although he condemns the attacks made by other Roman Catholics on the genuineness of the ancient texts.2

François Fénelon (1651 – 1715), an influential French Roman Catholic archbishop and theologian, did not
admit the heresy of Honorius.3

Bernard Désirant (1656 – 1725), a hermit of Saint Augustine, published an apology entitled “Pope Honorius
defended, saving the integrity of the sixth council, or the History of Monothelism, against the last subterfuge
of the Jansenists”.4 His Latin work “Honorius Papa Vindicatus” (Pope Honorius Vindicated, 1711) was
published with the approval of the Archbishop and Roman Legates, endeavours to show that “Honorius’
response was orthodox” (“Honorii respensoria fuerint orthodoxa”), and that the Sixth Council made an
innocent mistake, because the letters of Honorius were Catholic (“quòd Error Concilii VI. sueris innocenti,
quia Catholica Epistola Honorii”). Désirant also asserts that Sergius’s original letter was “orthodox, but the
heretical portions of the letter produced in the Sixth council [was] forged or interpolated by Macarius.” 5

Honoré Tournély (1658 – 1729), a French Roman Catholic professor of theology at the Sorbonne, alleges
forgery, according to Renouf:

Another very great theologian, Tournely, appears among the defenders of Honorius. He believes
the Greek translation of Pope Honorius’ first letter to be corrupt, forgetting that the text was compared
with the Latin original and acknowledged by a Papal legate at the Council as authentic. And if the text
be recognised as authentic what remains of the following judgment of Tournely?

“Equidem Sexta Synodus errore facti decepta ob perversam epistolæ Honorii e Latino in
Græcum sermonem translationem, existimavit Honorium reipsa unam in Christo voluntatem non duas
admisisse … Sexta quidem synodus, inspecta, quam præ oculis habebat, epistolarum Honorii versione
seu interpretatione Græca quæ falsum et erroneum sensum præ se ferebat, jure ac merito tanquam
hæreticam damnavit Honorii doctrinam.”6

Luigi Andruzzi, writing against Patriarch Dositheus of Jerusalem, defends the orthodoxy of Honorius.7

1 Sac: vii diss. 2, prop. 3. Cited in Victor Auguste, The Question of Pope Honorius, Second Letter to Père Gratry
from the Archbishop of Malines, III, The Vatican: A Weekly Record of the Council, Vol. I, No. 18., April 8, 1870,
p. 201, London: Henry Firmer, 1870.
2 Regale Sacerdotium Romano Pontifici Assertum, Respondetur ad objecta contra infallibilitatem S. Pontificis,

Lib. III, § IX, Obj. XIII, pp. 546 – 551, St. Gallen: Cyriandri Donati, 1684. Peter Le Page Renouf, The Case of
Pope Honorius Reconsidered with Reference to Recent Apologies, pp. 8 – 9, London: Longmans, Green,
Reader, and Dyer, 1869. Döllinger, Fables Respecting the Popes of the Middle Ages, Ch. VIII, pp. 249 – 250, n.
3.
3 Hergenröther, Anti-Janus, Ch. V, Anti-Janus, p. 81.
4 Bernard Desirant, Honorius Papa vindicatus, salva integritate Concilij VI. sive Historia Monothelismi contra

ultima Jansenistarum effugia, Aquisgrani: Typis Arnoldi Metternich, 1711 [the date is incorrectly given on the
title page as 1611].
5 Renouf, The Case of Pope Honorius Reconsidered, p. 49, n. *.
6 Renouf, The Case of Pope Honorius Reconsidered, p. 9. The Catholic Encyclopedia writes of Tournély, “The

learned Lafiteau, Bishop of Sisteron, even then declared him ‘one of the greatest men who has ever been in
the Sorbonne’, and his works were highly esteemed by St. Alphonsus Liguori.” (Antoine Dégert, Honoré
Tournély, in CE, Vol. XIV, p. 800.)
7 Aloysio Andruzzi, Vetus Græcia De Sancta Romana Sede Præclare Sentiens, Sive Responsio Ad Dositheum

Patriarcham Hierosolymitanum, Lib. III, pp. 220 – 254, Venice: Apud Baltassarem Julianum, 1713.
 662

Jacques-Hyacinthe Serry (1659 – 1738), a French Dominican theologian and professor at the University of
Padua, agrees with Witasse on Honorius.1

Charles Witasse (or Vuitasse, 1660 – 1716), a professor of theology at the Sorbonne, defends the orthodoxy of
Honorius, yet says he deserved condemnation because of his imprudent dissimulation and his not putting
down the new heresy.2

John Gisbert, a Jesuit, printed at Paris in 1688 a defence of Honorius, in which he argues:

Those letters, when they were written, did not directly injure the faith; the cause between the Catholics
and the Monothelites was still pending; and while a cause is pending, the judge can impose silence on
both parties, saving the right of one of them. Subsequent to that, when the sixth council terminated
that controversy, the letters of the pontiff began directly to wound the faith; for, where a controversy is
at an end, all hesitation or vacillation in the faith is contrary and offensive to the faith. Consequently,
although Honorius did not adhere to the opinion of the Monothelites, the general council could yet
condemn his letters as documents which, issuing from the Papal See, began to be injurious to the
faith.3

The Roman Catholic author Anton Dezallier, in his “History of the Monothelites” (1678), a work principally
undertaken to defend Honorius, concedes that the Pope was condemned by the Council and the Council was
not to be blamed, and that Pope Leo the Second owned both the Council and the Sentence, and that Honorius
was sentenced as a heretic, but Dezallier would abate this guilt by saying that Honorius erred as a private
person, and not as head of the Church, because his Epistle was hortatory, and not compulsive. 4

Edward Hawarden (1662 – 1735) takes a somewhat different path to excuse Honorius. Hawarden was a very
learned and eminent English Roman Catholic theologian, controversialist, and respected professor who held
eminent positions among the premier universities of his day. In one of his principal works defending the
Roman Catholic confession, in a section marked by his Index as “Pope Honorius Excus’d”, he writes, “Did not
Pope Honorius favour the Monothelites? He did. But the Catholick Church had not then condemn’d, or
examin’d their Error: Nor were they, at that Time, a separate Sect.” 5 This excuse could be made for all
heretics not yet formally condemned by the Church, but Honorius, the alleged leader of the Catholic Church,
had examined the error of the Monothelites, and agreed with them.

Charles du Plessis d’Argentré (1673 – 1740), a French Roman Catholic theologian and bishop who rejected
Papal Infallibility, wrote a dissertation on Honorius in which he held that Honorius was not a heretic, but only
a favourer of heresy.6

After some research, I have not been able to find any Pope in the second millennium or after Pope Adrian II in
the ninth century, who directly discusses the case of Honorius. However, much of their statements and
proclamations seem to imply that there never was any heretical Pope, and even when they discuss the
hypothetical possibility of a heretical Pope, they do not mention Honorius.

Benedict XIV (1675 – 1758, Pope from 1740 – 1758), who was the most prolific writer of any Pope (his
complete works were printed in 17 large volumes (the best edition is that of Prato: Aldina, 1839 – 1847), and
later Roman Catholic scholars have published a few more of his works), discussed the question of the

1 Montor, The Lives and Times of the Roman Pontiffs, p. 151. Renouf, The Case of Pope Honorius
Reconsidered, p. 49.
2 Carolus Witasse, Tractatus Theologici, Vol. III, Q. VI, pp. 281 – 309, Venice: Joannem Baptistam Recurti, 1738.
3 Montor, The Lives and Times of the Roman Pontiffs, p. 151.
4 Thomas Tenison, A Discourse Concerning a Guide in Matters of Faith: With respect, especially to the Romish

Pretence of the necessity of such a one as in Infallible, p. 29, London: T. Basset, 2nd Ed., 1687.
5 Edward Hawarden, Charity and Truth, Ch. III, Q. 18., p. 282, n. 7., Brussels, [Publisher not identified], 1728.
6 Charles du Plessis d’Argentré, Collectio Judiciorum de novis erroribus, Vol. I, Praef., p. 3, Paris: Lambertum

Coffin, 1724. Hergenröther, Anti-Janus, Ch. V, Anti-Janus, p. 81.

 663

Maronites, where he attempts to vindicate their ancestors from the charge of Monothelitism. Pope Benedict
XIV makes the following statement in a commemorative address to the Cardinals on July 13, 1744:

You are aware that at the end of the seventh century, when the Monothelite heresy had spread and
corrupted the inhabitants of the Antiochene Patriarchate, the Maronites saved their people from that
corruption by electing a patriarch confirmed by the Roman Pontiff. 1

This shows that Benedict XIV did not have historical integrity, and he was more concerned with presenting a
version of history to increase the perceived authority of the Bishop of Rome. Benedict portrays the Roman
Pontiff as the solution to heresy, and although orthodox bishops of Rome later helped heal the Monothelite
controversy, it cannot be passed over or omitted that Honorius was a Monothelite heretic who spread heresy.
Further, and especially in this regard, it was the Bishop of Rome who had helped corrupt Macarius, the
Monothelite Patriarch of Antioch, for as quoted elsewhere:

“Macarius had appealed to Honorius; and after his condemnation a packet which he had delivered to
the emperor was opened, and in it were found the letters of Sergius to Honorius, and of Honorius to
Sergius.” – Chapman

“In fact, as Bossuet says, ‘it is not less certain that these decrees of Honorius were carried to the
churches and spread throughout the East,’ – for when Macarius, the Monothelite Patriarch of Antioch,
the remaining Patriarchate, presented his Confession of Faith to the Sixth Council, he said, ‘We
consent as well to the five Councils, as to Honorius taught of God, to Sergius, Paulus, and Peter,’ and
in thus reckoning Honorius foremost amongst the Monothelites, he evidently refers to Honorius’
letters; in fact, the Confession itself is almost entirely made up of the letter of Sergius and the reply of
Honorius thereto.” – Denny

The famous work of the Roman Catholic theologian Peter Dens (1690 – 1775) discusses this issue:

Whether the Pope at least as a private person may be a heretic? (97.)

Although this would be no impediment to the preceding conclusion, as has been said, yet the
negative opinion seems the more probable, so that the privilege of Peter, Luke xxii. 32: ‘I have prayed
for thee that thy faith fail not,’ may also be transferred to the successors of Peter: and it is agreeable to
divine providence, that he who is a teacher of the faith, should himself not fail from the faith.
It is proved also by this that it could never yet be proved concerning any Pope that he was a
formal heretic; …
Obj. III. Honorius I. was a Monothelite; therefore; &c.
The antecedent is proved; because, in a letter to Sergius, he teaches that in Christ there was one
will and not two.
Ans. I deny the antecedent: for proof, it is said that in these letters, he did not deny that in Christ
there are two wills, divine and human but he only denied that there were two human wills warring
against each other, the one of the flesh, the other of the spirit; such as we find in ourselves, by which,
from our depraved nature, the flesh lusts against the Spirit: and he enjoined that they should abstain
from the words, ‘one or two wills,’ lest from the different interpretation of the words, a schism might
arise.
You will urge: the Sixth Synod condemned Honorius as a heretic; therefore, &c.
Ans. Sylvius, with some others, contends that the acts of this Synod have been corrupted, and
the name of Honorius substituted in place of Theodorus: but this plea, Thomassinus refutes in a
learned manner, in his 20th dissertation on Synod 6.
Others say that the sixth Synod, in condemning Honorius, erred, namely by a mistake of a merely
personal fact, not about the literal sense of the dogmatical texts; for, they say the judgment of the

1Golden Jubilee: Nineteen Hundred Sixty Two: Atlanta Maronite Community, Solemn Dedication, Maronite
Church of Saint Joseph, Rectory and Parish Hall, p. 30, Atlanta, GA: Saint Joseph’s Maronite Church, 1962.
 664

Synod was merely criminal, not dogmatical: for the question was principally concerning the person of
Honorius; and hence his letters were not primarily discussed, in order that inquiry might be made
concerning doctrine, but only that the person might be judged; in which judgment it was admitted, No.
84, that the church might err.
Others say, that Honorius, in the sixth Synod, was condemned as a favourer of heresy, but not as
a heretic; and the fact favours this opinion, that Leo II., who confirmed the Synod, in various passages,
blames only the negligence and imprudence of Honorius, by which he permitted the immaculate
faith to be stained; also that Constantine Pogonatus, the emperor, who was present at this Council,
condemns Honorius as the favourer, abettor, and confirmer of heresy. It is indeed true that an
anathema was pronounced upon Honorius as a heretic; but the Fathers seem not to have distinguished
between heretics and the favourers of heresy; at least, the very words of the Fathers blame the
connivance of Honorius, rather than his open profession of heresy.
Obj. IV. Dist. 46 Can. If the Pope, &c.: the Pope is said to judge all persons, and to be judged by
none, unless he shall be detected deviating from the faith; therefore he may be a formal heretic.
Ans. I deny the inference: for it is only said what may be done in case that the Pope fails from the
faith; but we think that this case never has happened, and never will occur.’1

Cardinal Orsi maintained that Honorius composed this letter to Sergius as “a private teacher” (doctor
privatus). Giuseppe Agostino Orsi (1692 – 1761), was an esteemed cardinal, professor, theologian, and
ecclesiastical historian.2

Franciscus Antonius Cavalcanti (1695 – 1748), Archbishop of Cosenza, in his posthumous work edited by
Dominico Andrea Cavalcanti (1698 – 1769), Archbishop of Trani, and published at Rome in 1749, admits that
Honorius was condemned as a heretic by the Sixth Council, but argues that the letters of Honorius are very
perplexed and obscure, and consequently that the Bishops of the Council, who were no great scholars, might
have mistaken their meaning, and did not understand them so well.3

Alphonsus Maria de Liguori (1696 – 1787) writes:

Not just the heretical, but even some Catholic writers, have judged, from these expressions of Pope
Honorius, that he fell into the Monothelite heresy; but they are certainly deceived; because when he
says that there is only one will in Christ, he intends to speak of Christ as man alone, and in that sense,
as a Catholic, he properly denies that there are two wills in Christ opposed to each other, as in us the
flesh is opposed to the spirit; and if we consider the very words of his letter, we will see that such is
his meaning. … We do not, by any means, deny that Honorius was in error, when he imposed silence

1 Joseph F. Berg, A Synopsis of the Moral Theology of Peter Dens, as prepared for the use of Romish
Seminaries and Students of Theology, Translated from the Latin of the Mechlin Edition of 1838, pp. 236 – 238,
Philadelphia, PA: J. B. Lippincott & Co., 4th Ed., 1856. Peter Dens is considered a master Roman Catholic
theologian, scholar, and authority, and his textbook, which I have cited here, was used as the standard work
on theology in many Roman Catholic universities and seminaries. He is also praised by the Catholic
Encyclopedia: “He completed his earlier studies under the direction of the Fathers of the Oratory at Mechlin,
and in 1711 became a master of arts of the University of Louvain, where he afterwards devoted himself to the
study of theology. He lectured on this subject to the religious of the Afflighem Abbey (1717-1723), and after
receiving the licentiate in theology at the University of Louvain (5 October, 1723), he was successively
professor of theology at the seminary of Mechlin (until 1729), pastor of the metropolitan church there (1729-
1737), president of the seminary (1735-1775), canon and Scholasticus (1737), then penitentiary (1751), and
finally archpriest of the chapter (1754-1775). He was always distinguished by his simplicity, solid piety, and
love for the poor, and above all by his zeal for the moral and scientific training of the clergy.” (Alphonse Van
Hove, Peter Dens, in CE, Vol. IV, p. 773.) Dens’s assertion that Æneas Sylvius “contends that the acts of this
Synod have been corrupted” is incorrect, as remarked in the previous section.
2 Janus [Döllinger et al.], The Pope and the Council, Ch. III, Sect. 31, p. 405, London: Rivingtons, 3rd Ed., 1870.
3 Vindiciae Romanorum Pontificum, Lib. VIII, Dissertatio IV, p. 371, Rome: Typis, et sumptibus Hieronymi

Mainardi, 1749. Samuel Hanson Cox (editor), Archibald Bower, The History Of The Popes, Vol. I, Agatho, pp.
482 – 482, Philadelphia, PA: Griffith & Simon, 1844.
 665

on those who discussed the question of one or two wills in Christ, because when the matter in
dispute is erroneous, it is only favouring error to impose silence. Wherever there is error it ought to
be exposed and combated, and it was here that Honorius was wrong; but it is a fact beyond
contradiction, that Honorius never fell into the Monothelite heresy, notwithstanding what
heretical writers assert, and especially William Cave, who says it is labour in vain to try and defend
him from his charge. … Noel Alexander proves that Honorius was not condemned by the Sixth
Council as a heretic, but as a favourer of heretics, and for his negligence in putting them down, and
that he was very properly condemned, for the favourers of heresy and the authors of it are both
equally culpable. He adds that the common opinion of the Sorbonne was, that although Honorius, in
his letters, may have written erroneous opinions, still he only wrote them as a private doctor, and in
no wise stained the purity of the faith of the Apostolic See; and his letters to Sergius, which we
quoted in the last paragraph, which we quoted in the last paragraph, prove how different his
opinions were from those of the Monothelites.1

Antoine (or Antonio) Boucat, writing in 1725 in Theologia Patrum Scholastico Dogmatica, denies “that
Honorius was condemned by the sixth council, and think[s] that, against the will of the Fathers in council, the
name of Honorius was inserted instead of that of Theodorus.”2

A certain Roman Catholic priest named Merlin, the author of a dissertation which appeared in 1733, under
the title of “An exact and detailed Examination of the action of Honorius”, agrees with Boucat above. 3

Even the minor charges of negligence are denied by some. Giuseppe de Novaes (1736 – 1821) a Portuguese
Roman Catholic priest, Jesuit, and historian of the Papacy, writes, as quoted by Montor:

“Monsignor Jean-Baptiste Bertoli, bishop of Feltre, in his excellent Apology for Honorius I. (Feltre, 1750;
4to), takes an absolutely new way of defending Honorius, not from the charge of an error as to the
faith, for he will not for an instant, imagine that error, but from any negligence of any kind whatever.
His arguments have such a manly solidity, and are adorned by such powerful erudition, as to dissipate
all doubt. All must follow the road marked out by the prelate.” The elaborate note of Novaes ends in
following words: “I submit my judgment in this matter to that prelate, and to the fine extract from him
given by Zacchary, in his Literary History of Italy, vol. ii., book., chap. 24, p. 21, et seq.”4

Gaetano Moroni (1802 – 1883), an important official of the papal court and personal papal assistant, likewise
quotes Novaes.5 Latin bishop Francis Patrick Kenrick (who will be quoted later) notes upon the letters of
Honorius: “Jean Baptist Bartholi, Bishop of Feltri, in an Apology for Honorius, maintains, that the first letter to
Sergius has been adulterated, and that the second is a forgery, of which nothing was known at Rome.” 6

Hieremias à Bennettis (1709 – 1774) of the Capuchin Order, defends the orthodoxy of Honorius. 7

Alban Butler (1710 – 1773) denies the heresy of Honorius, saying:

1 John Thomas Mullock (translator), Alphonsus Maria de Liguori, The History of Heresies, and Their
Refutation; or, The Triumph of the Church, Ch. VII, Article II, 8. – 9., pp. 181 – 182, Dublin: James Duffy, 2nd
Ed., 1857.
2 Montor, The Lives and Times of the Roman Pontiffs, p. 151.
3 Montor, The Lives and Times of the Roman Pontiffs, p. 151.
4 Montor, The Lives and Times of the Roman Pontiffs, pp. 151 – 152. Giuseppe de Novaes, Elementi Della

Storia De’Sommi Pontefici Da S. Pietro, Vol. II, Sec. VII, 72., Onorio I, pp. 17 – 22, Siena: Rossi, 1802.
5 Dizionario Ecclesiastico, vol. xlix, p. 24. Renouf, The Condemnation of Pope Honorius, p. 11, n. †.
6 Francis Patrick Kenrick, The Primacy of the Apostolic See Vindicated, Part I, Ch. XI, § 5, p. 146, n. *,

Baltimore, MA: John Murphy & Co., 7th Ed., 1875.

7 Hieremie A Bennettis, Privilegiorum in Personal Sancti Petri Romano Pontifici A Christo Domino Collatorum

Vindicæ, Part II, Vol. V, Art. XII, pp. 382 – 391 & Appendix, § VI, pp. 665 – 686, Rome: Typis Hæredum J. L.
Barbiellini, 1759.
 666

It is evident, from the very letters of Honorius himself, which are still extant, from the irrefragable
testimony of his secretary who wrote those letters, and from others, that he never gave into the
Monothelite error; though, had he fallen into heresy, this would have only hurt himself; nor is the
question of any other importance than as a historical fact. Favourers are sometimes ranked with
principals. Honorius had, by unwariness and an indiscreet silence, temporized with a powerful heresy,
before his eyes were opened to see the flame, which he ought to have laboured strenuously to
extinguish when the first sparks appeared.”1

Antonio Pereira de Figueredo (1725 – 1797), discussing the Liber Diurnus, admits “the condemnation of Pope
Honorius I. as a heretic, or favourer of the Monothelites, by the Sixth Synod, and many other things which in
ancient time passed into laws, but are now unpalatable to the Papal Chair”.2

Jean Joseph Havelange (1747 – 1798), rector of the University of Louvain, writing in Ecclesiæ Infallibilitas In
Factis Doctrinabilus Demonstrata, published in 1788, defends Honorius from heresy and suggests that his
name was intruded into the acts instead of Theodorus.

Cardinal De Laurea says that the Sixth Council erred in its decision.3

Count Joseph de Maistre (1753 – 1821), an influential Roman Catholic philosopher, claimed that Pope
Honorius “ceased not, till his last breath, to profess, to teach, to defend the truth; to exhort, to threaten, to
reprimand those same Monothelites” (p. 88), and that Honorius was “eminent for piety” (p. 365). De Maistre
also suggested that the records were falsified, and that the condemnation of the pope was a piece of Greek
impudence. This work was originally written in 1816-17, published 1819, and is considered one of his most
important books. De Maistre writes, “In treating the affair of Honorius, I have not at all touched upon the
great question of the falsification of the acts of the Sixth Council, which authors entitled to respect have
nevertheless considered proved.” (p. 90.) De Maistre claims the Popes have historically been trustworthy:
“Replying to the whole world for eighteen centuries, how often have the Popes been found to be incontestably
wrong? Never. Cavils have been raised; but never has it been found possible to allege anything decisive.” (p.
76); “But the Pope, on the contrary, having never ceased, during eighteen centuries, to pronounce on all kinds
of questions with prudence and accuracy truly miraculous …” (p. 89); “The Popes have condemned several
heresies in the course of eighteen centuries. When were they contradicted by an oecumenical council? Not
one instance can be alleged.” (p. 107). It should also be noted that De Maistre uncritically cites the Pseudo-
Isidorian letters and other forgeries, when he copies at length a passage from Francis de Sales on the Papal
titles (pp. 82 – 90), which were already discussed above.4

The Chevalier Alexis-François Artaud de Montor (1772 – 1849), a French historian, has written a summary of
the Roman Catholic views of this question, and says, “… Christ, in whom nevertheless Honorius recognized
two wills. Some authors, calumniating Honorius, have declared him a secretary of the Monothelites. The
most that could be said is, that he was only guilty of negligence when he should have extinguished that
heresy, which did so much mischief to the Church, and which was condemned by the sixth general council, in
680.”5

John Bell, an English Roman Catholic priest, says,

It is evident notwithstanding, from the most authentic monuments, that Honorius never assented to
that error, but always adhered to the truth. (see Nat. Alex. sæc. 7. Witasse and Tournely, Tr. de Incarn.)

1 Alban Butler, The Lives of the Primitive Fathers, Martyrs, and other Principal Saints, June 28, St. Leo II, Vol.
VI, p. 368, Edinburgh: J. Moir, Third Ed., 1799.
2 Edward H. Landon (translator), Antonio Pereira de Figueredo, Tentativa Theologica: Episcopal Rights and

Ultra-Montane Usurpations, Fifth Principle, XVII, pp. 139 – 140, London: Joseph Masters, 1847.
3 Döllinger, Fables Respecting the Popes of the Middle Ages, Ch. VIII, pp. 251 – 252.
4 Aeneas McD. Dawson (translator), Joseph de Maistre, The Pope; Considered in His Relations with the

Church, Temporal Sovereignties, Separated Churches, and the Cause of Civilization, London: C. Dolman, 1850.
5 Montor, The Lives and Times of the Roman Pontiffs, p. 150.
 667

However, his silence was ill-timed, and might be deemed a species of connivance; and he himself
together with Sergius and the other chief abettors of Monothelitism, was by name condemned in the
sixth general council, celebrated at Constantinople in 680. 1

James Warren Doyle (1786 – 1834), an Irish bishop, maintained that Honorius was not a Monothelite, saying
that he “firmly believes Pope Honorius was never a Monothelite”.2

Giovanni Battista Palma (1791 – 1848), a professor of history at the Roman College, asserts that the council
certainly anathematized Honorius, but that Honorius was not a manifest heretic, and was only condemned for
favouring heretics.3

In a section called “Vindication of Honorius” in his work on “The Primacy of the Apostolic See, Vindicated”,
Francis Patrick Kenrick (1793 – 1863), Bishop of Philadelphia (later Archbishop of Baltimore) (note that his
brother was Archbishop Peter Richard Kenrick, who opposed Papal Infallibility before and during the First
Vatican Council, but accepted it afterwards), says,

I owe it to truth and justice, and to the memory of a Pontiff illustrious for zeal, to express my conviction
that the charge of heterodoxy advanced against him is without solid foundation. The letters of
Honorius, which are still extant, express the doctrine of One Divine Operator, or Actor, in the two
natures, which is, in substance, the Catholic doctrine, of two operations, each nature having its own
operation.4

Note that this book is prefaced with a letter from Pope Pius IX to the author in 1848, in which Pius says:

We cannot find words to express how highly we applaud your pious undertaking in vindication of the
rights of this Holy Apostolic See, and of the primacy of the Roman Pontiffs, in the work published by
you in the English language. The new edition of this work published this year, and dedicated to Us, in
token of your filial attachment and devotedness, which, however, we are unable to read, being
unacquainted with English, will, we trust, prove highly useful for the defence of our rights, and of those
of the Apostolic See against the impious attacks of our enemies.5

Kenrick thinks that Honorius was orthodox, possibly guilty only in negligence. In this section, Kenrick
comments after citing the letter of Pope Agatho to the Council,

‘Let, then, your serene clemency consider, that the Lord and Saviour of all, whose gift faith is, and who
promised that the faith of Peter should not fail, charged him to confirm his brethren; but it is notorious
to all that the apostolic Pontiffs, my predecessors, have always fearlessly done so.’ It would seem as if
all this was expressly directed to repel any charge likely to be made against Honorius, and the applause
which followed the reading of the letter: ‘Peter has spoken through Agatho;’ implies the assent of the
Council to the statement: yet the records of the proceedings contain censures on the memory of
Honorius, which force us to believe, that the fathers there assembled considered him to have been
guilty, if not of culpable connivance, at least of an untimely dissimulation. Without disrespect to their
authority, they may be supposed to have been mistaken in a matter of fact, merely personal,
namely, the spirit and intention with which the letters were written. It is not necessary to insist more
particularly on this vindication of an individual Pontiff. I have not undertaken to prove, what indeed
no Catholic divine asserts, that the Pope may not, by the artifices of heretics, be betrayed into measures
prejudicial to the faith; neither have I deemed it necessary to maintain what I am deeply convinced of

1 John Bell, The Wanderings of the Human Intellect, Monothelism, p. 299, Newcastle: Edward Walker, 1814.
2 Gideon Ouseley, Dr. Doyle and His Infallible Church!, p. 3, Dublin: Thomas I. White, 1828.
3 Ioannes Baptista Palma, Prælectiones Historiæ Ecclesiasticæ, Vol. I, Caput LXIX – LXXI, pp. 296 – 322, Rome:

Ex Typographia Polyglotta, 1875. Döllinger, p. 252, n. 1.

4 Francis Patrick Kenrick, The Primacy of the Apostolic See Vindicated, Part I, Ch. XI, § 5, p. 146, Baltimore,

MA: John Murphy & Co., 7th Ed., 1875.

5 Kenrick, The Primacy of the Apostolic See Vindicated, p. 7
 668

from the special prayer of Christ, which is always heard, that God will never suffer him to propound
error in a solemn doctrinal definition directed to the universal Church. My object has been to show
that the Popes, as primates of the Church by divine right, exercised high judicial authority in
determining and maintaining the doctrines of faith.1

John M’Encroe (1793 – 1868), Roman Catholic Chaplain at Norfolk Island, who wrote a work against
Protestantism, says:

Sergius, the crafty patriarch of Constantinople, and sycophant of the emperor, wrote in captious terms
to Pope Honorius, to tolerate a silence as to one or two wills in Christ. Honorius never assented to
this error, but, through an ill-timed silence, seemed to some to connive at this heresy. All errors at
their commencement work underhand, and seek to gain strength by secret means before they show
forth to the public eye.2

The use of the words “silence”, “seemed”, “some”, and connive” all mitigate the true force of the matter. Are
these “some” not the Sixth and Seventh Ecumenical Councils? It is ironic that the author proceeds here in
manifest contradiction to the entire thesis of his work, which the author expresses by a quote from St.
Augustine on the cover page: “Is it so that you, untinctured by any poetical skill, dare not open ‘Terence’
without a master, but you rush without a guide on the ‘Sacred Books,’ and venture to give an opinion on them
without the aid of a teacher?” I ask why the author has privately interpreted ecclesiastical history, and
ventured to acquit Honorius of heresy, in defiance of the hundreds of divine teachers of the Sixth and Seventh
Ecumenical Councils (guided by the Holy Spirit, and who have interpreted the true sense of the case of
Honorius), thus revealing the wanderings of his own mind and of other Roman Catholics in searching history,
which is shown by the variations of Roman Catholic opinion on the subject.

Joseph Ferdinand Damberger (1795 – 1859), asserted the falsification of the acts of the Sixth Council. 3

Archbishop John Baptist Purcell (1800 – 1883), an attendee at the Latin First Vatican Council, wrote that the
following was said at the Vatican Council (after the case of Honorius was mentioned):

The question was also raised by a Cardinal [at the Vatican Council], ‘What is to be done with the Pope if
he becomes a heretic?’ It was answered that there has never been such a case;”4

This is evidence that the First Vatican Council was a schismatic assembly, for its attendees publicly rejected
the judgments of the Church.

Orestes Brownson (1803 – 1876), a prolific American Roman Catholic author, writes, “the pope was
orthodox: a conclusion I had come to years ago, from the pope’s own letters to Sergius.” 5 In a later section,

1 Kenrick, The Primacy of the Apostolic See Vindicated, p. 147.

2 John M’Encroe, The Wanderings of the Human Mind in “Searching the Scriptures:” Being a Concise History of
the Origin, Progress, and Condemnation of the Principal Heresies That Have Arisen in the Several Ages of
Christianity, From the Private Interpretation of the Holy Bible, in a Series of Letters to a Candid Inquirer after
Truth, Letter XIX, p. 42, Sydney: W. A. Duncan, 1841.
3 Thomas J. Shahan, Councils of Constantinople, A., IV, The Third Council of Cosntantinople (Sixth General

Council), in CE, Vol. X, p. 310. This passage was quoted above.

4 James Joseph McGovern, Official Edition of The Life and Life-work of Pope Leo XIII., Ch. XVIII, p. 241,

Vancouver, BC: J.M. MacGregor Pub. Co., 1903. This book on the title page claims to be “Endorsed by the
Entire Catholic Hierarchy of America”. The words of the Vatican Council are related at second-hand, and it
would be interesting to examine the Acts of this Council as bearing on this question. Earlier, regarding
Honorius and other popes said to have erred in matters of faith, Purcell writes “I was most happy to hear the
entire council, as one man, concerning those of whom I spake, answer me, ‘Those Popes never addressed such
doctrines to the universal Church. They only spoke to individuals. They did not speak as pastors of His
universal Church, therefore they did not speak ex cathedra.’” (p. 240.)
5 Brownson, The Works of Orestes A. Brownson, Vol. XIII, p. 363.
 669

Brownson says, “Pope Honorius was condemned by a general council, after his death, not for having erred in
his faith … but for his culpable negligence in refusing to exercise his pontifical authority to crush the
monothelite heresy in its incipiency”.1

Dom Prosper Louis Pascal Guéranger (1805 – 1875), a Benedictine priest and scholar, extensively attempted
to defend Honorius, and wrote, “Did Honorius, in the first place, teach error in his letter to Sergius? … To the
first question, it is easy to answer that the Pontiff did not teach error.” 2 This book was written with an
introduction by Roger William Bede Vaughan (1834 – 1883), who later became Archbishop of Sydney. Gratry
replied, exposing many of Guéranger’s absurdities.3 Guéranger boldly dares to justify the erasure of
Honorius’s name from the Roman Breviary, on the grounds that Honorius ought not to have been condemned,
“Every honest man would have done what the commissioners of St. Pius V. did, in erasing the name of
Honorius from a list on which it ought not to appear.”4

Francis Xavier Weninger (1805 – 1888), was an eminent Roman Catholic Jesuit missionary, author, priest, and
university professor. Directly treating the subject of Pope Honorius, he said, “No Pope has erred in matters of
faith.” (p. 334). Later he implies Greek falsification of the original documents, “We turn now to the case of
Honorius, first premising, as in Liberius, that the documents from which our opponents borrow their
accusations, are very open to more than suspicion of fraud and fiction. This was a common occurrence
among the Greeks in those days of manuscripts, of slow and uncertain communication, and in a time,
moreover, of constantly renewed, though often baffled attempts at schism.” (p. 342). Weninger goes on to
cite parts of Honorius’s letters and insists that they only proclaim “the true Catholic dogma.” (pp. 344 & 347).
Weninger, ever rising the heights of absurdity, says,

But they ask us whether Honorius was not condemned by the Sixth Œcumenical Synod, and by Leo II,
in his letters to the Bishops of Spain and to the Emperor Pogonatus? We answer, that in the first place,
learned and trustworthy authors have proved that these acts of the Council, as well as the letters of
Leo, are open to the gravest suspicions of having been fraudulently changed by the Greeks. We might
therefore first require our adversaries to establish their historical sources on a more evident and
substantial basis. As they can not do it, we shall pass over the difficulty, and admit, for discussion’s
sake, the objection as it is proposed by them. Our answer is positive. The Fathers of the Council, and
St. Leo, did not condemn Honorius for having promulgated an erroneous definition of faith to the whole
Church, nor yet for having professed Monothelism, but simply blamed him for not having used more
vigorous means for its suppression, and by imposing silence on the disputants, having rather favored
and increased the spread of that heresy. … In this light, and in no other, did the Fathers of the Council
regard the fault of Honorius. That they did not look upon him as an adherent to Monothelism, is
evident from the acts of the Council, which we have agreed to admit as genuine. … There is not, in any
act of the Council, any thing that leads us to believe that the Fathers condemned Honorius for having
held the Monothelistic error, but only that they blamed him for having temporized with Sergius, and
for having listened to his advisers, imposing silence on the discussion, instead of speaking definitively,
and teaching the East and the whole Church what they had to believe. If the Greeks themselves
believed that Honorius had taught Monothelism, the Fathers of the Seventh and Eighth General
Councils in the East would have acted differently from what they did. 5

That Honorius was a Monothelite “is impossible” (p. 353). Weninger’s statements contain many errors.
There is no doubt as to the authenticity of the acts, as the best Roman Catholic scholars have proved. Then,

1 Brownson, The Works of Orestes A. Brownson, Vol. XIII, p. 424.

2 Romuald W. Woods (translator), Prosper Guéranger, Defence of the Roman Church against the Accusations
of Father Gratry, p. 24, London: R. Washbourne, 1870.
3 See T. J. Bailey (translator), Auguste Gratry, [Four Letters to Monseigneur Dechamps] (especially the Fourth

Letter), London: J. T. Hayes, 1870.

4 Guéranger, Defense, p. 44.
5 Francis Xavier Weninger, On the Apostolical and Infallible Authority of the Pope: when Teaching the

Faithful, and on his Relation to a General Council, Objection IX, pp. 334 – 353, New York, NY: D. & J. Sadlier &
Co., 2nd Ed., 1869.
 670

when Weninger claims to consider the acts as genuine, he cannot see the answer right in front of him, that the
council declared, “And with these we define that there shall be expelled from the holy Church of God and
anathematized Honorius who was some time Pope of Old Rome, because of what we found written by him to
Sergius, that in all respects he followed his view and confirmed his impious doctrines.” And it is also read,
“also Pope Honorius, who was their adherent and patron in everything, and confirmed the heresy”. There is
no evading the force of those words. Weninger says that if “If the Greeks themselves believed that Honorius
had taught Monothelism, the Fathers of the Seventh and Eighth General Councils in the East would have acted
differently from what they did.” Yet I do not find in this a strong objection, for it is recorded in the Acts of the
Seventh Ecumenical Council, “These holy Ecumenic Councils and those which preceded, Sergius of
Constantinople, Cyrus of Alexandria, Honorius of Rome, and their Monothelite party, received; but,
nevertheless, they have been anathematised as heretics by the Catholic Church, as having brawled out vain
things in the Church by their heresy”. Again in the Seventh Ecumenical Council, “We have also anathematized
the idle tales of Origen, Didymus, and Evagrius; and the doctrine of one will held by Sergius, Honorius, Cyrus,
and Pyrrhus”. I advise the reader to read and re-read the collection of documents I have laboured to collect,
for they are unflinching in their anathematization of Honorius’s heresy and a stopping block to the repeatedly
refuted arguments of Roman Catholics.

Cardinal Henry Edward Manning (1808 – 1892) said of Pope Honorius, “Whatever be the fault of Honorius,
supineness or hesitation, heterodox he was not; heretical he could not be, for his own letters remain to prove
the orthodoxy of his teaching.” According to the Catholic Encyclopedia, Manning was a distinguished member
of the Latin First Vatican Council and “was put on the Committee ‘De Fide’. To this Committee, in March,
1870, was referred the question of Papal Infallibility”, 1 and Manning was one of the principal defenders of the
Infallibility dogma after the Council. Manning made multiple other comments on Pope Honorius to the same
effect.

In his work “The Vatican Council and its Definitions: A Pastoral Letter to the Clergy”, first published
immediately after the Latin Vatican Council in 1870, Manning writes the following on Honorius, within five
pages of his English translation of the Council’s definition of Papal infallibility: “his two epistles are entirely
orthodox” (p. 223). Manning then says, “To this I add the following excellent passage from the recent
Pastoral of the Archbishop of Baltimore:”, which says, “The case of Honorius forms no exception” [to the
dogma of Papal infallibility] and, “in his letters he clearly taught the sound Catholic doctrine” (p. 224).
Manning also says, “We have historical proof that Honorius did not err in faith. We have his two letters,
which are perfectly orthodox. In whatever sense the words of the Council may be understood, they
cannot be understood to accuse Honorius of heresy, with the proof of his orthodoxy under his own
hand.”2 Here Manning must be blind, when he asserts that the words of the Sixth Council “cannot be
understood to accuse Honorius of heresy”. I request that my readers re-read the documentation from the
Sixth Ecumenical Council, and compare it with the claims of Cardinal Manning. Against Manning’s wild
assertions it will suffice to quote part of one sentence from the Roman Catholic bishop Hefele: “The
affirmation that the Letters of Honorius are entirely orthodox is false.” (Die Behauptung … die Briefe des
Honorius sind durchaus orthodox … ist falsch) (Conciliengesch. xvi.).

Manning is referring to Archbishop Martin John Spalding of Baltimore, who also attended the Vatican Council
and denied the heretical nature of Honorius’ letters. Cardinal Manning was one of the most conservative and
influential Roman Catholics of the 19th century, and he was considered a likely candidate for the Papacy. I do
not think that bishops in such error on the case of Honorius as Spalding and Manning should have had any
business in a council defining the infallibility of the Pope. How could they be competent to judge whether
Popes can speak infallibly if they could not recognize this heresy of Pope Honorius? Are they members of the
same church that anathematized Honorius?

Moreover, Cardinal Manning wrote a series of articles in the Nineteenth Century magazine, titled “The True
Story of the Vatican Council”, in which he says “silence when truth is denied is betrayal. This is what, it seems,

1William Henry Kent, Henry Edward Manning, in CE, Vol. IX, p. 607.
2Henry Edward Manning, The Vatican Council and its Definitions: A Pastoral Letter to the Clergy, Appendix,
Ch. VI, pp. 239 – 240, 4th Ed., New York, NY: P. J. Kennedy, 1896.
 671

Honorius did”.1 Even Manning’s admission, that Honorius was silent or withheld the truth and committed
betrayal, contradicts the Vatican Council’s claim that “our predecessors ever made unwearied efforts that the
salutary doctrine of Christ might be propagated among all the nations of the earth, and with equal care
watched that it might be preserved genuine and pure where it had been received” (Ch. IV). These words of
the Vatican Council are inconsistent with the idea that a Pope was a betrayer. The Vatican Council’s claim is
extended to all Popes, but it is certainly false in the case of Pope Honorius. How can it be said that a betrayer
of the truths of the faith “ever made unwearied efforts that the salutary doctrine of Christ might be
propagated among all the nations of the earth, and with equal care watched that it might be preserved
genuine and pure where it had been received”? If these words cannot be said of Pope Honorius in particular,
then they cannot be true.

The Roman Catholic bishop Stephen Vincent Ryan, who was a member of the Vatican Council, defends
Honorius, and says “rigid historical research has fully vindicated [Liberius and Honorius] from the charge of
teaching error.”2 Ryan also says, “With the letters of Honorius before us, and after a careful study of the
subject as presented by the clear, keen, argumentative mind of Bossuet himself, Honorius cannot, in our
opinion, be convicted of heresy, he wrote nothing but what is capable of a Catholic meaning.”3 Ryan claims
that the Sixth Council only condemned Honorius for negligence: “In this sense, then, and in this sense only, did
the council condemn Honorius, … Not as a heretic, then, but as one who had actually by his culpable
indecision become an abettor of heresy and heretics, and he was justly blamed and severely taken to task”. 4

The Latin archbishop Dechamps, who defended papal infallibility during the Vatican Council, said, “far from
teaching Monothelism in his letters, which are not definitions of faith, Honorius taught exactly the opposite,
and that this is evident.”5 Dechamps also quotes the Monsignor Ginoulhiac, Bishop of Grenoble (1806 –
1875), who leans to the idea that Honorius was merely negligent, and not a manifest heretic, writing:

Did the VIth General Council condemn Pope Honorius as a heretic? Although this name may have been
given him, was not a distinction made between his cause and that of Sergius and Pyrrhus? – Had the
word heretic in ecclesiastical antiquity a determined sense? – Could it not be maintained, without
impugning the authority of the Church on dogmatic points, that the VIth Council was mistaken as to
the real sentiments of Honorius?6

Dechamps insinuates a suspicion that the Greeks have falsified the Acts of the Sixth Council, and wrote the
work “La Question d’Honorius” against Gratry.

Joseph (or Giuseppe) Pennacchi (1831 – 1923), a Roman Catholic professor of ecclesiastical history at the
Roman University, and for some years Consultor to the Sacred Congregation of the Index, claimed that
Honorius was orthodox and that his letters were ex cathedra. In 1870, Pennacchi wrote his work on Pope
Honorius, which was addressed “to the Fathers of the Vatican Council”, and was sent to all the bishops of that
Council. Henry Boynton Smith’s appendix to Döllinger’s chapter on Honorius notes that this work

is written in a worthier spirit, but it attempts to prove that ‘the epistles of Honorius are absolutely
catholic and give no countenance to the Monothelite heresy.’ In an Appendix to the German edition of
his essay on Honorius, Bishop Hefele effectually disproves Professor Pennachi’s position. 7

1 The Nineteenth Century, July 1887, p. 806.

2 Stephen Vincent Ryan, Claims of a Protestant Episcopal Bishop to Apostolical Succession and Valid Orders
Disproved: With Various Misstatements of Catholic Faith and Numerous Charges Against the Church and Holy
See, Corrected and Refuted, Part II, Ch. IX, p. 47, Buffalo, NY: Catholic Publication Company, 1880.
3 Ryan, op. cit., Part II, Ch. X, pp. 57 – 58.
4 Ryan, op. cit., Part II, Ch. X, p. 60.
5 Victor Auguste, The Question of Pope Honorius, Second Letter to Père Gratry from the Archbishop of

Malines, III, in The Vatican: A Weekly Record of the Council, Vol. I, No. 18., April 8, 1870, p. 201, London:
Henry Firmer, 1870.
6 Auguste, The Question of Pope Honorius, p. 202.
7 Döllinger, Fables Respecting the Popes in the Middle Ages, Appendix F., p. 461.
 672

Far from being condemned for its radical errors (that the letter of Honorius, which the Sixth Council
condemned as “follow[ing] the teachings of the heretics”, was actually an infallible dogmatic pronouncement
by the true Vicar of Christ), this book has a flattering preface from Boniface Wimmer (1809 – 1887), a
German-American Benedictine monk, who “highly approves of this dissertation,” writing, “What the author of
this dissertation on this topic managed to say, in my opinion, is much more satisfying to anyone sincerely
seeking the truth.” Also Wimmer says this dissertation “logically draws conclusions so strictly true and right,
that they cannot be challenged.”1

Carlo Piccirillo (1821 – 1888), an Italian-American Jesuit professor of theology in Woodstock College,
Maryland, who had been the editor of the Civilità Cattolica from 1868 to 1874, and was also the confessor of
Pope Pius IX, who entrusted him with many delicate affairs, strongly insists on the orthodoxy of Honorius,
and writes, “We simply deny that Honorius ever held any erroneous doctrine, or ever promulgated any
censurable definition of faith, or that he was ever condemned for such doctrine or such definition.”2 “Now,
these letters, as the illustrious contemporaries of Honorius acknowledged, contain no Monothelite doctrine;
he cannot then, with any shadow of reason, be said to have erred in matters of faith.” (p. 113). And later,
“That Honorius was not a Monothelite, is clear from what has been already said. Either then he was not
condemned at all, or, if condemned, at least he was not condemned of heresy. And the latter we hold to be the
case.” (p. 115); and “We say, therefore, that Honorius was not condemned, because he taught error; but
because by the silence which he ordered, he did not resist it; not because he gave an erroneous definition, but
because he gave no definition at all, when one was needed.” (p. 116). This Jesuit also raises suspicions
regarding the authenticity of the documents.

Gerhard Schneemann (1829 – 1885), a German Jesuit and professor, wrote a pamphlet on Honorius against
Döllinger, where he denies that Honorius was a heretic, and attempts to interpret his letter in a non-
Monothelitic way, saying that Honorius was only condemned for favouring heresy.3

William Humphrey, an English Jesuit priest and Chaplain to the Bishop of Brechin, writes, “What Honorius
wrote was perfectly orthodox, in the sense in which he wrote it.” Humphrey later supports “the personal
orthodoxy of that Pontiff”, and states, “The Pontifical and conciliar censures of Honorius come to this – that
they condemned him precisely for not exercising his gift of Infallibility, for negligence in his Pontifical duty,
for too great credulity in believing the protestations and explanations of Sergius, and for his ‘economical
silence,’ whereby he permitted the Faith to be endangered through the machinations of that wily heretic.”
Humphrey also suggests the possibility of the falsification of the Acts of the Council, citing “The very fact of a
large number of the learned maintaining their spuriousness”, although Humphrey believes it is most probable
that the Acts are genuine.4

The “American Catholic Quarterly Review” claims, “That Honorius was not sound in the faith we have shown
to be false. The Council did not condemn heresy as having been maintained by Honorius. Therefore his
orthodoxy is unquestionable.”5 The American Catholic Quarterly Review was edited and contributed to by
many learned laymen, priests, and bishops of Roman Catholicism, and is mentioned in at least 20 articles in
the Catholic Encyclopedia, which has many biographical articles on the merits of the contributors to this
Quarterly, and claims that this Quarterly had achieved “success”. A library source states “The journal
received the blessing of Pope Leo XIII in 1884, and was overseen for many years by Archbishop Patrick John

1 Josephi Pennacchi, Liber de Honorii I. Romani Pontificis Causa, Preface, pp. 1 – 2, Ratisbon: Fridericum
Pustet, 1870.
2 The True Faith of Our Forefathers, Ch. VII, p. 109, New York, NY: The American News Company, 1880.
3 Studien Über die Honorius-Frage, Freiburg im Breisgau: Herdersche Verlagsh, 1864. Hefele, History of the

Councils, Vol. V, Book. XVII, Ch. II, Sec. 324., pp. 190 – 191, n. 4.
4 William Humphrey, The Divine Teacher, pp. xiii – xiv, London: Burns & Oates, 5th Ed., 1885 [printed with the

Nihil Obstat and Imprimatur of the Roman Catholic authorities].

5 American Catholic Quarterly Review, Vol. VII, 1882, pp. 162 – 168.
 673

Ryan.”1

Amédée de Margerie (1825 – 1905), a French professor, wrote a letter in defence of Honorius.2

James Kent Stone (1840 – 1921), who claims to have thoroughly studied the question of the charges against
Honorius, writes: “In a word, he erred, not in faith, but in judgment; he was condemned, not for heresy, but
for negligence; non erravit definiendo, sed tacendo, et omittendo quod definiendum fuerat.” 3

Henry Ignatius Dudley Ryder (1837 – 1907) poses the question of Honorius, “Did his letters contain heresy?”
and answers, “It is almost critically demonstrable that such Monothelitish phraseology as he uses he uses
with an orthodox meaning.” Another question Ryder asks is, “Did the Ecumenical Sixth Council, i.e., the
assembled Fathers and Pope Leo II., who confirmed it, combine to declare as a dogmatic fact that Honorius’
letters to Sergius contained heresy?”, and the sophistical answer given is,

No such dogmatic fact as the heresy of the Honorian letters was defined by the Sixth Council and Leo
II., inasmuch as no such statement appears either in the definition or in the Papal confirmation. It is
true that the letters are produced and spoken of (Actio xiii.) in equivalent terms as heretical; but they
are merely used as the pièces justificatives of a criminal trial. They were brought in to afford practical
evidence of a conspiracy (wilful or otherwise) with heresy. That they were generally thought by the
Fathers to go farther than this, and to exhibit themselves Monothelite doctrine, would seem highly
probable; but they were subjected to no final dogmatic scrutiny, and appear no more.4

In a letter by Ryder (written before the Vatican Council and his “Catholic Controversy”) to Dr. Ward, on
Ward’s “Theory of Infallible Instruction”, he offers a differing perspective against Ward’s more radical views.
Ryder argues that papal infallibility is not attached to as wide a scope of Papal documents as Ward claims it is.
For example, Ryder disagrees that it is strictly necessary to hold that Papal encyclicals are infallible. To
justify his claim, Ryder discusses the case of Pope Honorius:

Another instance of incorrectness in a direct doctrinal instruction of the Pope, is that of Honorius’
first letter to the Patriarch of Constantinople. I believe that it may be fairly maintained against
Gallicans, that, when Honorius said: ‘Fateor unam voluntatem Christi Domini,’ and declared that it
was not his province, but that of grammarians, to decide whether the ‘operatio Christi,’ is one or
twofold, he did not define de fide, inasmuch, as he did not propose aught as a test of unity, or express,
according to the universal custom of the day, an anathema upon dissentients, nor even imply it. But,
on the other hand, I maintain against you, that he indubitably uttered therein a direct doctrinal
instruction, failing of the truth. The Patriarch Sergius had asked Honorius what he was to believe;
adopting the form of the day in such cases, he had requested that the Pope would make his
profession or confession of faith, in order that he might conform his own thereto; and the Pope
complied, directly, and unequivocally. Without venturing to condemn the pious ingenuity of the
theologians who undertake the defence of these Papal anomalies, I must enter my protest against
your committing the Pope’s infallibility to a class of document from which it is impossible to exclude
what are at best such very suspicious instances.5

William George Ward (1812 – 1882) wrote an Essay titled “The Condemnation of Pope Honorius” in 1879. In
the Preface (p. 4), Ward writes “And I am bound to say I am quite as confident as I was in 1868-70, that no

1 OhioLINK Finding Aid Repository, American Catholic Quarterly Review collection, History,
http://ead.ohiolink.edu/xtf-ead/view?docId=ead/ODaU0039.xml;chunk.id=bioghist_1;brand=default.
2 Amédée de Margerie, Le Pape Honorius et Le Bréviaire Romain, Paris: Charles Douniol, 4th Ed., 1870.
3 James Kent Stone, The Invitation Heeded: Reasons for a Return to Catholic Unity, Part III, Ch. VI, p. 335,

London: Burns, Oates & Co., 1870. The Latin is from Ballerini, De Vi ac Ratione Primatus, c. xv, § 9.
4 Henry Ignatius Dudley Ryder, Catholic Controversy: A Reply to Dr. Littledale’s ‘Plain Reasons’, pp. 28 – 30,

Eighth Ed., London: Burns & Oates, [Undated, 1890s, first published 1881].
5 Henry Ignatius Dudley Ryder, A Letter to William George Ward, Esq. D.Ph. on His Theory of Infallible

Instruction, p. 14, London: Longmans, Green, Reader, and Dyer, 1868.

 674

kind of theological difficulty is presented to a Catholic, by Honorius’ condemnation and its attendant
circumstances.” Ward attempts to defend the thesis that “No authority, which Catholics account infallible,
has condemned Honorius for heresy … It is certain that his Letters are not heretical” (p. 5). Ward begins his
essay with these words,

We cannot for a moment admit, that the Honorius case presents any real difficulty against the dogma of
Papal Infallibility. Nevertheless it involves so many circumstances primâ facie startling to a Catholic,
that we cannot be surprised at the stress laid on it, whether by Gallicans in time past, or by non-
Catholics since the Vatican Council. Our purpose in this Essay is to exhibit the facts in what we believe
to be their true light; and to show that they cannot, without paradox and extravagance, be adduced
against the dogma which they are alleged as disproving. … Our own conviction is – as we shall in due
course set forth – that Honorius was entirely free from the very slightest tinge of Monothelism.”
(pp. 7 – 8).

In his essay, Ward also claims

Honorius’ Letters most certainly therefore were not Monothelistic. At the same time we frankly admit,
that they do contain one doctrinal mistake; for they affirm that the phrase ‘two energies’ is an
inappropriate expression of Catholic dogma. We need hardly however point out, (1) that in his time no
Pope had spoken ex cathedrâ on this particular question; and (2) that the gulf is most wide between
heresy in dogma and mistake in dogmatic expression. We have now, we trust, amply vindicated S.
Leo’s implied judgment, that Honorius was personally no heretic. (p. 56)

Ward approvingly cites Paul Bottalla, who agrees with Ward that the letter of Honorius was not
Monothelistic, arguing that “Pope Honorius, when asserting one will in Christ our Lord, had in view the
Sacred Humanity only, in which he denied the existence of two contrary wills”. Bottalla wrote a work titled
“Pope Honorius Before the Tribunal of Reason and History” in which he writes of the opinion “that Honorius
was condemned for neglect” that “at the present day, this is the opinion most commonly held among
Catholics.” (p. viii). In his chapter on the “Orthodox Doctrines contained in the two Letters of Pope Honorius
to Sergius”, Bottalla begins by citing Pierre de Marca (1594 – 1662), writing:

Two hundred years ago De Marca, a learned man of his time and a Gallican, left the following
words in a manuscript dissertation, prepared by him as an apology for Pope Honorius, and which he
had promised to his friend the erudite Labbe. “Quod ad Honorii doctrinam attinet, jam alii probaverunt
eum prorsus aversum fuisse ab errore Monothelitarum, neque illis unquam consensisse; ut inutilis
omnino future sit mea opera, si velim hanc partem suscipere probandam.” Baluze [1630 – 1718], who
put together the notes prepared by De Marca for the projected work which death prevented him from
completing, does not question the correctness of his view. We may say, then, without fear of
contradiction, that the view which represents Pope Honorius as having actually held Monothelite
doctrine, has for nearly two centuries become almost exclusively the possession of Protestants
and schismatics.” (p. 45).

Bottalla wants his reader to “see clearly that Pope Honorius did not in any manner teach the heresy of the
Monothelites in his letters” (p. 47). In another work on the Infallibility of the Pope, Bottalla has an extensive
chapter on the condemnation of Pope Honorius, writing,

The Catholics of the Roman School, on the other hand, adopted various lines of opinion. Some rejected
the authenticity of those passages in the Sixth Council, and in the Letters of Pope Leo II., which speak of
the condemnation. Others admitted their authenticity, but they maintained that the Council was
misled by calumnious information with regard to Honorius. Some again thought that Pope Honorius
mistook as to the right conception of the Catholic doctrine but, that his error was not taught by him ex
cathedrâ. Others finally accept all the Acts of the Council, and, although they deny the Letters of
Honorius to be an utterance ex cathedrâ, yet they maintain that they convey no dogmatical error. We
 675

agree with these last.”1

The Ultramontane priest and controversialist Luke Rivington (1838 – 1899) writes:

For if there is one fact that stands out from the whole history of the Sixth Council, it is surely the
universal acceptance of Papal authority. … In the twelfth Act, the letter of Sergius, Patriarch of
Constantinople, to Pope Honorius, which was full of Monothelite teaching, was read; and then the
Pope’s letter to Sergius. There was nothing heretical in the Pope's letter; but he had wished such
matters not to be discussed, instead of reproving the Patriarch. … Looking, then, to all the facts of the
case, we must conclude, in opposition to Mr. Gore’s contention, that it cannot be proved that the
bishops in the Council meant to brand Honorius with personal heresy, and that if any of them
meant this, their wish was denied them by failure of confirmation on the part of Leo II. … One thing,
then, Honorius never did – he never taught the Church anything heretical. One failure he certainly
showed – a failure in detecting an Eastern Patriarch’s wiles, and sternly reprimanding an incipient
heresy.2

The Dublin Review has in numerous articles addressed the case of Pope Honorius’ condemnation. The Dublin
Review was an important English Roman Catholic publication supported by the Roman Catholic authorities,
and according to the Catholic Encyclopedia, it demonstrates “the power of a good Catholic Press”, and “The
review was intended to provide a record of current thought for educated Catholics and at the same time to be
an exponent of Catholic views to non-Catholic inquirers. Beginning before the first stirrings of the Oxford
Movement, it presents a record of the intellectual life of the century and produced articles which had an
immense influence upon the religious thought of the times.”3 Of the founder of the Dublin Review, Michael
Joseph Quin, the Catholic Encyclopedia writes, “his most lasting work was the ‘Dublin Review’, which has ever
since remained the leading Catholic periodical in the British Isles.”4 The Dublin Review is cited in about 100
different articles in the Catholic Encyclopedia. In an article responding to the work “The Condemnation of
Pope Honorius” by Renouf in 1868, the Dublin Review writes:

It is most certain that Honorius was never infallibly condemned for heresy. ‘To Honorius the heretic
anathema’ has never been pronounced by any infallible voice, either directly or equivalently. … For
ourselves, of course, we totally deny that Honorius fell into heresy at all … we are very confident that
his Letters neither express nor imply any heretical tenet whatever; and of course therefore, that they
have never been infallibly condemned as containing any such tenet. And as it is far from an
unimportant truth that no Pope has hitherto fallen into heresy, we will pursue Mr. Renouf’s argument
further. … For ourselves, we are thoroughly prepared to defend Honorius’ orthodoxy on intrinsic
grounds alone. His Letters contain no one syllable savouring of Monothelitism; and his First
Letter, the only one remaining entire, is conclusive for the perfect Catholicity of his doctrine. … as
sound criticism has advanced, the opinion has most widely prevailed among them [“Ultramontane
theologians”], that God will never in fact permit a Pope to fall into formal heresy.”5

Another article in the Dublin Review states:

As to what Honorius really taught or meant, there are two opinions among Catholic theologians and
divines. Dr. Ward, with Archbishop Dechamps, Archbishop Kenrick, and Cardinal Manning, maintain

1 Paul Bottalla, The Pope and the Church Considered in the Mutual Relations, Part II, The Infallibility of the
Pope, pp. 262 – 263, 1870. It is worth noting that in his Preface, Bottalla misquoted Renouf as saying “It is
stupid bigotry to assert that Honorius was in good faith.” (Bottalla, Pope Honorius Before the Tribunal of
Reason and History, p. viii), and this incident shows that Bottalla was not interested in accurate citations and
fairly representing the viewpoints of his opponents – see the rest of Renouf’s work in reply to Bottalla for
more examples of Bottalla’s unfaithfulness in quotation.
2 Luke Rivington, Dependence; or the Insecurity of the Anglican Position, pp. 79 – 85, 1889.
3 Andrew Hilliard Atteridge, Catholic Periodical Literature, England, in CE, Vol. XI, p. 673.
4 Edwin Burton, Michael Joseph Quin, in CE, Vol. XII, p. 613.
5 Dublin Review, Vol. LXIII, pp. 205 – 231, July – October, 1868.
 676

that he teaches perfectly orthodox doctrine throughout his two letters. On the other hand, Hefele and
Pennacchi consider that his language was heretical whilst his thought was orthodox. There is no doubt
that, in one sentence Honorius seems to talk absolute heresy; for he says, in so many words, ‘Unde et
unam voluntatem fatemur Domini nostri Jesu Christi.’ Mr. Willis makes a great deal of this. And yet, to
a calm inquirer, reading the context carefully, there is nothing more clear (it seem to us) than that this
very sentence is perfectly orthodox, as it stands in the Pope’s letter. The context proves beyond any
doubt that Honorius is here proclaiming, not the unity or identity of the human and divine will, but the
despotic power of Our Lord’s rational will (or perhaps personal will) over his lower nature, in which He
differed from other men, who suffer volitions or impulses which they cannot check or despotically
regulate. No doubt Honorius misapprehended the point of St. Sophronius’s ‘two wills’ and Sergius’s
‘one will.’ No doubt, again, he afterwards refers to the question of the distinction of the divine and
human wills, and equally disapproves of the expressions ‘two wills’ or ‘one will,’ which was material
negligence. But as Hefele insists, his premisses all through are perfectly orthodox; and there is
certainly no formal heresy in any conclusion he draws. Dr. Ward argues to this effect at length (pp.
38 sqq.), giving an interesting account of the Monothelite heresy itself.”1

Another article in the Dublin Review, written by Bottalla and titled “Orthodoxy of Pope Honorius I”, which
endeavours to prove just that, states, “Honorius in his letter to Sergius had not intended to deny the natural
will in the humanity of Christ; but only the sensual and carnal will. … No, at the time of the Lateran Council
[of A.D. 649] no such idea [“that Honorius had been an unorthodox Pope, whose orthodoxy was no longer
defensible”] found a place in the mind of the assembled Fathers: on the contrary, it was considered that no
possible ground could be alleged for any charge of heresy against him.”2

An earlier article in the Dublin Review mentions the “masterly and most learned disquisition” of a Jesuit
priest and scholar named Colombier on the controversy, and says “On the whole doctrinal aspect of the case,
F. Colombier takes exactly the view which to us also appears the most probable. He holds with great
confidence, that the Greek bishops did condemn Honorius’s letters as heretical; and adds, of course,
that such condemnation was monstrously unjust.”3 Colombier “defends the orthodoxy of the incriminated
letters of Honorius in a series of articles in the Etudes Religenses, Historiques, et Littéraires.”4 Colombier
“maintained in the ‘Études,’ that S. Agatho died one year earlier than is commonly supposed; and that no
attempt was made in the Council to touch Honorius’s memory, until the legates lost their full authority by the
Pope’s death.”5 This theory is untenable due to the fact that the Seventh Ecumenical Council fully reaffirmed
the condemnation of Honorius, with the agreement of the Church of Rome, as well as all the evidence adduced
above.

An article in the Irish Ecclesiastical Record states that:

There is no heresy, strictly speaking, in the letters of Honorius. … Honorius erred only in this,
that, not fully aware of the bearings of the controversy which had arisen in the East, he sought to
suppress it by imposing silence where he should have spoken aloud to proclaim the truth. By this
grave mistake, exaggerated perhaps by our opponents, but certainly to be deplored, he contributed
eventually to the extension of the disease instead of applying a remedy; and for this alone he was
included in the anathemas by which the fathers condemned the heretics themselves. 6

In 1868 a Summary of the Councils, in two volumes, was published (La Somme des Conciles Generaux et
Particuliers, Paris: Palme) by the French Abbot Marie Thé odore Guyot (1812 – after 1869). In this volume

1 The Dublin Review, Third Series, Vol. II, p. 537, 1879. The author goes on to cite Dr. Ward approvingly.
2 The Dublin Review, New Series, Vol. XIX, pp. 94 – 100, 1872.
3 The Dublin Review, New Series, Vol. XIV, p. 533, 1870.
4 Catholic World, Vol. XI, p. 716.
5 The Dublin Review, New Series, Vol. XX, p. 137, 1873.
6 The Irish Ecclesiastical Record, Vol. VI, February, 1870, The Resurrection of Gallicanism, III, pp. 206 – 207,

Dublin: William B. Kelly, 1870. This periodical bears the Imprimatur of Cardinal Paul Cullen, Latin
Archbishop of Dublin.
 677

Guyot specifically discusses the question of Honorius, and Guyot denies the heresy of Honorius, saying (with
poor logic), “For sure, Honorius was not eutychian; therefore neither monothelite.” (Vol. I, p. 345, 2nd Ed.,
1869). In the section where the judgment of the Sixth Ecumenical Council is pronounced in the thirteenth
session, Guyot quotes the text of the Council’s decision at length, yet he cuts out the following words from the
decree: “At the same time we have cast out of the Catholic Church and anathematised Honorius, Pope of old
Rome, because we have found, in his letters to Sergius, that he adopts his teaching in all things, and confirms
his impious judgments.” (Vol. I, p. 315, 1st Ed., 1868; Vol. I, pp. 335 – 336, 2nd Ed., 1869). The words
immediately before and after the above passage are included in the quote, and no sign is given of an omission
at this point.1 The second edition retains this omission, and although Guyot says the theory of a falsification
of the texts condemning Honorius is not tenable, ironically, Guyot himself has now corrupted those Acts.

Louis Pététot (d. 1887), superior-general of the French Congregation of the Oratory, wrote a pamphlet on
Honorius, replying against Hefele, in which Pététot asserts that Honorius was not infected with
Monothelitism, but was guilty only of negligence and silence, “by imposing silence on the wills, he has
favoured the progress of error; that many of the Catholics saw in it, albeit wrongly, a true collusion with
heresy;”.2

Another famous and widely circulated Roman Catholic newsletter, published in New York with the approval
of numerous bishops and priests, is the Catholic World. Writing while the Vatican Council was in session, the
Catholic World paper mentions more defenders of Pope Honorius:

Then comes L’Univers with a letter from M. Amédée de Margerie, Professor at Nancy, in defence of
Honorius. We can merely enumerate other defenders of Honorius who have entered the lists. They are
the Abbé Constantin, (Revue des Sciences Ecclesiastiques,) the editors of the Civilta Cattolica, Canon
Lefebre, (Revue Catholique de Louvain,) Abbé Larroque, Abbé Bélet, Father Roque and Father Ramière.
The Avenir Catholique endeavors to demonstrate that Honorius wrote the letters in dispute not as
pope, but as a simple doctor. M. Léon Gautier published a series of articles on the question of
infallibility, the last of which is specially devoted to Honorius. These articles collected have lately been
published by Palmé in a pamphlet entitled L’Infaillibilité devant la Riaison, la Foi et l’Histoire. Then
comes a second letter from Bishop Dechamps, and, finally the Bishop of Strasburg issues an energetic
condemnation of the letters of Father Gratry.3

A later article in this paper says:

The Sixth Council condemned the Monothelite heresy. This heresy had its origin in
Constantinople and Alexandria, from the patriarchs Sergius and Cyrus, who so far deceived Pope
Honorius that he failed to discover its true significance and to condemn it, for which oversight he was
severely censured by subsequent Councils and Popes; censured, that is, for failing to exercise his
supremacy by condemning the patriarchs of Constantinople and Alexandria, and their heresy.

The Monothelite heresy ruled at Constantinople, Alexandria, and Antioch for about sixty years,
headed by Sergius and several of his successors, and sustained with force and violence by the
emperors. Although Sergius had succeeded in hoodwinking the honest and unsuspicious Honorius, he
was no Monothelite, and his unfortunate letter to Sergius, in which he endeavored to hush up the
controversy between him and Sophronius of Jerusalem, who detected and denounced the heresy, was
unknown in the West.4

1 This is also remarked upon by Gratry, see T. J. Bailey (translator), Auguste Gratry, [Four Letters to
Monseigneur Dechamps], Second Letter, pp. 39 – 41, London: J. T. Hayes, 1870.
2 “qu’en imposant silence sur les volontés, il a favorisé les progrès de l’erreur; que plusieurs parmi les

catholiques y ont vu, quoique à tort, une véritable collusion avec l’hérésie;” Louis Pététot, Post-Scriptum Sur
Honorius, Ch. III, p. 30, Paris: J. Albanel, 1870.
3 Catholic World, Vol. XI, pp. 716 – 717, 1870.
4 Catholic World, Vol. LXIV, pp. 67 – 68, 1896.
 678

Louis Jouin (1818 – 1899), a German Jesuit theologian and lecturer, answers an objection against Papal
infallibility, writing:

But Honorius was condemned as a heretic by the Sixth General Council. Let us suppose that the acts of
the council have not been interpolated by the Greeks,– a feat of which they were by no means
incapable, as in the same council some of their number were found to have altered certain texts of the
Fathers. If, then, Honorius was condemned,– which fact is granted by many Catholic writers,– we say
with all Catholics, and this on solid grounds, that he was condemned, not because he taught heresy,
much less because he proposed a heretical doctrine to the Church, but simply because he had been
negligent in suppressing the Monothelite heresy, and thus was condemned as one who favored heresy;
men of that stamp being also called, in the style of the day, heretics. He was deceived by Sergius,
Bishop of Constantinople, and sanctioned the policy of suppressing all discussion about one or two
wills in Christ. This was his only fault. That his letters were not positively favorable to the heresy,
appears from the fact that Sergius did not make use of them, and that they remained unknown till they
were exhibited at the council. Besides, the very letters which formed the basis of accusation against
Honorius, contain the true Catholic doctrine, because in them he says expressly: “We are bound to
confess that in the one Christ both natures are united in natural unity, active and acting in unison one
with the other; the divine nature operating what belongs to the Godhead, the human executing what
things are of the flesh.” … And in fact not a single definition of a Pope, acting as head of the Church, can
be pointed out as having been rejected by a council.1

William Cleophas Gaynor (1855 – 1917), an Irish-American Roman Catholic priest and author, makes the
completely unfounded claim that Honorius “lived long enough, however, to learn that he had been deceived
by Sergius, and … [Honorius] therefore recalled his decision; but he died before he could more thoroughly
vindicate himself on the matter”. Gaynor then cites Baron Henrion, who wrote, “If the natural and
grammatical sense of Honorius’ letter is blamable, its general bearing, at least, has been clearly justified;
hence it does not affect the infallibility of the Church in matters of faith. Besides, Honorius continued till the
hour of his death to profess and defend the truth, to entreat and threaten the very Monothelites, whose
opinions he was afterwards charged with supporting.” A Roman Catholic author by the pen name of “Veritas”,
in the same volume edited by Gaynor, writes, “On the contrary, his [Honorius’s] letters acquiesced in Sergius’
preference to remain silent, to make no definition; and it was precisely for this silence – for not defining and
denouncing the error in question, which savored of Monothelitism, that he was condemned as a heretic – that
is, for fostering heresy by his silence when he ought to have denounced it.”2

John Nicholas Murphy (1815 – 1889), a Count of the Papal States, devotes a few pages to the subject and
concludes, “All this tends to strengthen the conclusion, that it was only for having favoured heretics by his
negligence in restraining them that Honorius was condemned.”3

A popular Latin edition and commentary of Aquinas’s Summa Theologica has a note (by the modern editor):
“In no way, as some pretend, did Pope Honorius of Rome fall into this error; yet showed negligence in this

1 Louis Jouin, Evidences of Religion, Part. II, Ch. XIII, 11. – 12., pp. 358 – 360, New York, NY: P. O’Shea, 1877.
The final statement of Jouin is incorrect in many cases, for example, the Council in Trullo in its 36th Canon
rejected Pope Leo’s rejection of the 28th Canon of Constantinople, and the council held in Carthage under St.
Cyprian rejected Pope Stephen’s definitions on baptism.
2 William Cleophas Gaynor, Papal Infallibility: Letters of “Cleophas” in Defence of the Vatican Dogma, pp. 16 –

17 & 70, Saint John, NB: 1885. I may perhaps note that in 1907 Gaynor was accused of “immorality which had
resulted in the ruin of a lady in his congregation” and was deposed from the priesthood by his bishop for
being the father of an illegitimate child by that lady (Wiles D. Hamilton, Dictionary of Miramichi Biography,
William Cleophas Gaynor, Saint John, NB: W. D. Hamilton, 1997) along with financial misconduct. If the action
had not resulted in public scandal, Gaynor would most likely not have been deposed.
3 John Nicholas Murphy, The Chair of Peter, Ch. VI, p. 114, London: Burns & Oates, 1886.
 679

regard.”1 Also note that in all his works, Aquinas makes no mention of Honorius at all, and the subject is
never mentioned by the scholastic theologians, who are apparently ignorant of this episode.

The Jesuit scholar John Gerard (1840 – 1912) claims Honorius was only guilty of negligence, writing
“Honorius misapprehended, not the Catholic doctrine, but Sergius’ meaning … he [Honorius] lays down the
correct doctrine on the very point in question. … But whatever fault he may have committed, he certainly
defined nothing … It is moreover probable that he was blameless in the whole transaction”.2

William Francis Barry (1849 – 1930), an English Roman Catholic priest and professor, writes, “Honorius (625
– 638), the victim of an imprudent answer to a captious question in divinity, was anathematised by the Sixth
General Council, but was otherwise blameless.”3

Reuben Parsons (1841 – 1906), an American Roman Catholic priest and historian, writes the following of
Honorius’s words on the ‘one will’ in Christ: “Nor do we wish to reject it, for there is not a more orthodox
passage in the whole patrology.” (p. 440), and Parsons states, “it is plain that the epistles of Honorius are
thoroughly orthodox” (p. 442). Parsons writes of the Council’s condemnation of Honorius and his being
grouped with the heretics in the anathema, “And nevertheless, this action of the Council does not prove
that Honorius was a heretic.” (p. 443).4 Parsons’s work received the Imprimatur from Latin Archbishop
Michael Augustine Corrigan of New York, and Pope Leo XIII in 1901 wrote a Brief of Approbation, printed in
Latin and in an English translation at the beginning of this work, saying, “your fervent zeal in defense of the
Catholic cause from audacious calumny … In the execution of your laborious design, you have had only one
object in view; namely, such a refutation of historical errors as would impel separatists to enter into the
Catholic Fold. May God second your endeavors, dear son!” Pope Leo XIII therefore endorsed these schismatic
statements, showing that the Pope was negligent and not interested in historical truth.

Joseph Hergenröther (1824 – 1890) writes in 1876,

Pope Honorius may be reproached with having encouraged error indirectly by not proceeding against
it with timely vigour, but it cannot be said that he defined error, which would alone tell against the
dogma [of Papal Infallibility]. … A Pope is not infallible in proceedings such as those of Honorius, who
contributed unintentionally to the increase of heresy by not issuing decisions against it. His letters [to
Sergius] contain no decision neither do they contain any false doctrine. No decision of his ever was
or could be condemned as false, otherwise the Sixth Council would have contradicted itself, for it
recognised that the Holy See had at all times the privilege of teaching truth. He was condemned for
having rendered himself morally responsible for the spread of heresy by having neglected to publish
decisions against it; and in this sense alone was his condemnation confirmed by Leo II.5

Bertrand Louis Conway (1872 – 1959), a popular Roman Catholic missionary priest and writer, approvingly
quotes these words of Hergenröther.6 Conway’s work has the Nihil Obstat from Remigius Lafort (d. 1917), a
scholar and the New York theological censor librorum, and the Imprimatur from Archbishop John Murphy
Farley (1842 – 1918) of New York. Hergenröther also says,

1 “Honorius Romanus pontifex, nullatenus quidem, quod aliqui praetenderunt, in hunc errorem lapsus est;
remissius tamen hac in re egit.” Summae Theologicae, Part III, Question XVIII; Vol. IV, p. 127, note De
Monothelismo, Paris: P. Lethielleux, 1888 [Faucher edition]).
2 John Gerard, A Course of Religious Instruction for Catholic Youth, Part II, Ch. XIII, p. 113, London: Burns and

Oates, 1901.
3 William Francis Barry, The Papal Monarchy: From St. Gregory the Great to Boniface VIII (590 – 1303), Ch. IV,

p. 66, London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1902.

4 Reuben Parsons, Studies in Church History, Vol. I, Ch. XXXIV, pp. 440 – 443, New York, NY: Fr. Pustet & Co.,

2nd Ed., 1906 (first published 1886).

5 Joseph Hergenröther, Catholic Church and Christian State, Vol. I, Essay II, Part I, § 3, p. 83, London: Burns &

Oates, 1876.
6 Bertrand Louis Conway, The Question Box Answers: Replies to Questions Received on Missions to Non-

Catholics, p. 310, New York, NY: The Catholic Book Exchange, 1903.
 680

On the other hand, we must set by the side of the Council’s sentence the letter of confirmation by Pope
Leo II.; and however we may explain the Pontiff’s words, more we cannot extract from them, than that
the anathema punished a forgetfulness of duty, rather than a moral complicity in the
Monothelite errors. This has been the view hitherto taken by the most distinguished
theologians, and among others, by many doctors of the Sorbonne, to wit, that Honorius was not
a heretic, but only a favourer of heresy.1

Daniel Lyons (1841 – 1895), an American Roman Catholic priest and missionary, favourably quotes these
words of Hergenröther, as well as other Roman Catholics. Lyons’s work has the approval of the Italian-
American Jesuit censor and college president Dominic Pantanella (1831 – 1922) and Nicholas Chrysostom
Matz (1850 – 1917), the bishop of Denver. Lyons himself writes, “That is, in other words, Honorius was
censured for a moral fault – a neglect of duty, not for a doctrinal error. His crime was not that he taught error,
but that he omitted to teach the truth – a circumstance which not only is no objection to Infallibility, but does
not even militate against his personal orthodoxy.”2

Columba Edmonds (1861 – 1923), a Roman Catholic Benedictine monk and scholar who contributed 10
articles to the Catholic Encyclopedia, in a polemic work that has the Nihil Obstat from a Benedictine Deputy
Censor, the Imprimatur by the Archbishop of Edinburgh, along with a commendatory introduction by the
Bishop of Aberdeen, dismisses this objection to Papal Infallibility:

Then Pope Honorius was condemned by the Fourth General Council of Constantinople. Not, however,
as a heretic, in the technical sense of the word, but rather as having through his neglect, indirectly
permitted the spread of heresy and so being involved in the same condemnation as the heretics
themselves. The letter which he wrote to the Monothelite Patriarch was not sufficiently firm, but it
cannot be shown that heresy was contained therein; and even were it otherwise, it was a purely
private document, and neither in form nor substance did it purport to be an instruction for the
Universal Church.3

A Catholic Dictionary, in an extended article on the subject says:

(1) What is the independent judgement which would be fairly passed on the letters of Honorius, apart
altogether from the fact of their condemnation by Pope and council? (2) What is the judgement of the
Church on the matter? (3) Were the letters of Honorius ex cathedra? Catholic writers of great name
have given very different answers to each of these questions. Pighius, Baronius, and in modern times
Damberger, have maintained that the documents and particularly the Acts of the Sixth Council have
been falsified. This view is not likely to find a respectable defender in the future, and may be
summarily dismissed.
…
(1) The Orthodoxy or Heresy of Honorius. – … But while Honorius was free from heretical
error, and did not teach heresy, he neglected the only means by which the new heresy could be met.
He prohibited and contemptuously dismissed the formula “two operations,” which exactly summed up
the orthodox faith, and though he meant only to assert a moral unity in the two wills of Christ, he did so
in language which lent itself easily to abuse on the part of the Monothelites, and he abstained from
stating the existence of two wills in Christ, just when the occasion imperatively demanded this
statement. … This first part of our thesis may claim the support of many Catholic critics, and among
them of the learned Jesuits, Garnier and (in recent times) Schneemann, of Ballerini, and of Hefele.
(2) The Judgement of the Church. – Ballerini, in his famous treatise ‘De Primatu,’ and many
others, hold that it was only in the sense given above that the council condemned Honorius. It was,

1 Hergenröther, Anti-Janus, Ch. V, p. 81.

2 Daniel Lyons, Christianity and Infallibility – Both or Neither, Ch. V, pp. 232 – 234, New York, NY: Longmans,
Green & Co., 2nd Ed., 1892 (same in the 1st Ed. of 1891).
3 Columba Edmonds, The Early Scottish Church: Its Doctrine and Discipline, Part I, Ch. XVI, p. 85, Edinburgh:

Sands & Co., 1906.

 681

they say, for negligence, not for heresy, that the Pope was anathematised. We confess that we cannot
see how the words of the council, taken by themselves, are capable of this sense, and here again we
have great authorities on our side, and these far from Gallican. Pennachi allows that Honorius was
condemned as a formal heretic, and Hefele’s view in his second edition is substantially the same. But
how, it may be asked, can we defend the orthodoxy of letters which the Church has branded as
heretical? We answer that it was the council, not the Church, which did so, for the Church consists of
head as well as members. The decisions of the council, on Catholic principles, are binding only so far as
confirmed by the Pope, and Leo II. approved the Pope’s anathema on Honorius so far as it implied the
assistance which his neglect had given to heresy, not so far as it implied the formal heresy of Honorius
himself. Whether we say with Schneemann that the Pope confirmed the decrees of the council under
this reserve, or, with Hefele, that he determined the precise sense which the words of the council were
to bear (“Sie [i.e. die Briefe Leo’s] präcisiren nur die Schuld des Honorius genauer und expliciren
dadurch den Sinn in welchem die Conciliensentenz zu fassen sci”) does not appear to make any
essential difference.
(3) Were the Letters of Honorius ex Cathedra? – Hefele, even in his second edition, answers this
question in the affirmative, and we follow him in believing that Honorius exercised his apostolic
authority, and did implicitly address the whole Church. He addresses Sergius, but lays down rules
to be observed everywhere. Nor is there, so far as we can see, any reasonable doubt that Honorius
issued a doctrinal pronouncement.1

William E. Addis was a “Secular priest: sometime Fellow of the Royal University of Ireland”, and Thomas
Arnold, M.A., was “Fellow of the same university” (title page). This work bears the Nihil Obstat from the
Deputy Censor, Edward S. Keogh of the London Oratory, and Imprimatur from Cardinal Archbishop Henry
Edward Manning, and an Imprimatur from John McCloskey, Archbishop of New York. Cardinal Newman also
approved this work, which includes contributions from several other Roman Catholic scholars. However, I
want to say again that, if Pope Leo II, when confirming with his Papal authority the decrees of the Sixth
Ecumenical Council, truly did abrogate the Sixth Council’s condemnation of Honorius as a heretic, and replace
it with merely a condemnation for negligence, then the Seventh Ecumenical Council must have rejected Pope
Leo II’s formal and allegedly infallible Papal decree ratifying an Ecumenical Council, and replaced it with its
clear reiteration of the heresy of Honorius.

The French Gallican Roman Catholic priest Jean Joseph Laborde (1804 – 1855) briefly mentions the issue, and
Laborde considers the documents authentic, and holds that Honorius was justly anathematized, and implies
that the same fate could befall Pope Pius IX if he defines the Immaculate Conception as a matter of faith.2

Archbishop Vincent Tizzani (1809 – 1892), a professor of the Roman College, defends Honorius, and argues
that the documents that condemn Honorius are altered. 3

Louis-Nazaire Bégin (1840 – 1925), later Cardinal and Archbishop of Quebec, wrote an essay on the
condemnation of Honorius, saying the following in 1873:

Thus, amid all the accusations brought against Honorius by the Fathers of the Sixth Council, none of
them amounted to formal heresy; all of them were limited to incriminating this pope for having
followed the advice of Sergius, who prescribed silence on the doctrine of the two operations in Jesus
Christ, by which the error was propagated due to the audacious activity of the Monothelites and the
blind obedience of Catholics, by which the heresy was not rejected and condemned in principle with
the courage and energy which ought to be found in the supreme pastor; but in none of this do you see

1 William Edward Addis and Thomas Arnold, A Catholic Dictionary, Honorius, pp. 409 – 411, New York, NY:
The Catholic Publication Society Co., Third Ed., 1884.
2 Arthur Cleveland Coxe (translator), Abbé Jean Joseph Laborde, The Impossibility of the Immaculate

Conception as an Article of Faith: In Reply to Several Works which Have Appeared on that Subject of Late
Years, Supplement, Letter to his Holiness, Pope Pius IX, pp. 142 – 143, Philadelphia, PA: Herman Hooker,
1855.
3 Vincent Tizzani, Les Conciles Généraux, Paris: A. Jouby et Roger, 1869.
 682

the council accuse Honorius of having professed a doctrine contrary to that of the Church. His
negligence–this was his entire crime, this is why he was reproached, and this is what brought him
condemnation. …

I conclude that Honorius could have been condemned as a heretic by these three councils, and that he
in fact was, not for having taught error, but solely for not having exerted the necessary vigor in his
duties as Head of the Church, for not having vigorously used his authority to repress heresy, for having
prescribed silence about the manner of expressing a truth, and having thus contributed to the diffusion
of error. This is the same conclusion which was reached by almost everyone who dealt with this
question during the Vatican Council. …

As for the personal culpability of this Pontiff, I believe there was absolutely none. …

We have scoured the immense catacombs of history, and we cannot exhume the name of one single
Pope who erred in his divine mission and made a lie of the divine word which came from the mouth of
Jesus Christ Himself: “Feed my lambs, feed my sheep; confirm your brothers in the faith; you are Peter,
and on this rock I will build my Church.”1

Bégin admits the authenticity of the documents, but reaches inconsistent conclusions. To refute Bégin’s
errors, re-read the compilation of materials cited above on Honorius.

The well-published 19th century scholar Abbé Joseph Chantrel (1818 – 1884) replied against Gratry2 and was
praised for his defence of Pope Honorius. In Chantrel’s work on Ecclesiastical History, he says (after citing
the heretical words of Pope Honorius):

There is nothing in these words but what is perfectly orthodox; the Pope believes absolutely what St.
Sophronius believes; he proscribes only, in the interests of peace, expressions which might give rise to
new disputes. This conduct of the pope, cleverly manœuvred by the heretics, has left some doubts
about the orthodoxy of Honorius; it has been said that he erred in the faith, and that he was
anathematised as a heretic by the sixth œcumenical council, the second of Constantinople. But
historical critics refute these accusations: it is certain that Pope Honorius did not maintain anything
contrary to the faith; and that the anathemas that are found against him in the acts of the sixth
œcumenical council were fraudulently added to it by the Greeks, after the acts of this council had been
approved by Pope Agatho. In a word Honorius, led astray by inexact reports, was perhaps deceived as
to the best remedy to apply to the evil; he was possibly guilty of negligence, but he was never a
heretic, and never taught heresy.”3

The Hon. Colin Lindsay (1819 – 1892), says “Then with respect to Pope Honorius, it is evident, after reading
his extant letters, that he was no heretic, though he was blameworthy in not detecting the deceit of Sergius,
Patriarch of Constantinople.”4

John Henry Newman appears to admit the authenticity and validity of the documents, and argues that
Honorius did not make any ex cathedra utterance, and that Honorius was not personally and intentionally a
heretic. Newman says in 1874:

1 Novus Ordo Watch (translators), Louis-Nazaire Bégin, The Primacy and Infallibility of the Sovereign Pontiffs:
The Case of Pope Honorius I, https://novusordowatch.org/primacy-infallibility-pope-honorius-i/, Originally
titled La Primauté et l’Infaillibilité des Souverains Pontifes, Québec: L. H. Huot, 1873.
2 Joseph Chantrel, Questions Du Jour: Le Pape Honorius: Première Lettre a M. L’Abbé Gratry, Paris: Victor

Palmé, 1870.
3 Joseph Chantrel, History of the Church, Vol II, p. 288, Authorized Translation from the Fourth Edition, Paris:

1879, Dublin: 1883. The title page of this work, states “Approved by his Lordship Mgr. Gigneoux, Bishop of
Beauvais, Noyon, and Senlis.”
4 Colin Lindsay, The Evidence for the Papacy: As Derived from the Holy Scriptures and from Primitive

Antiquity, Introductory Epistle, p. xxv, London: Longmans, Green, & Co., 1870.
 683

the condemnation of Honorius by the Council in no sense compromises the doctrine of Papal
Infallibility. At the utmost it only decides that Honorius in his own person was a heretic, which is
inconsistent with no Catholic doctrine; but we may rather hope and believe that the anathema fell,
not upon him, but upon his letters in their objective sense, he not intending personally what his
letters legitimately expressed.1

The Roman Catholic scholar and Parisian priest Abbé Joseph-Epiphane Darras (1825 – 1878), who wrote a
25-volume “General History of the Church”, while devoting many words to the topic, refuses to anathematize
Honorius for heresy and resorts to skepticism of the authenticity of the acts of the Sixth Ecumenical Council,
as well as other documents, blaming the Greeks, as well as the conduct of the Bishops at the Council. At most,
he will admit the possibility of some negligence of Pope Honorius. However, the Abbé Darras says that
Honorius’s “two letters are intrinsically orthodox though after the usual language, he wrote as it was
customary to do so before the condemnation of monothelitism, and not as it became necessary to do so after
this sentence.”2 The Abbé Darras was the “Honorary canon of Ajaccio, the Historical Institute of France” and
an acclaimed historian. His work was so well regarded that in 1866, an English translation of the first volume
appeared, the “First American from the Last French Edition, with an Introduction and Notes by the Most Rev.
M. J. Spalding, D.D., Archbishop of Baltimore.” The first few pages show the high regard with which this work
was received, and recommendations with glowing praise are printed from John McClosky, Archbishop of New
York, J. B. Purcell, Archbishop of Cincinnati, and Spalding, who writes, “the History of Darras, so warmly
commended by many learned men in France, … This Church History will also be found very opportune and
useful in our numerous Seminaries, Colleges, and Academies.” Furthermore, below the title page is featured a
commendatory letter from Latin Pope Pius IX to the author, in Latin and English, dated 1855, which says, “The
plan of your work testifies your zeal for sound doctrine and your singular and praiseworthy devotion towards
us and the Apostolic See.”

The English Jesuit priest Charles Coupe (1853 – 1910) wrote, “Did the letter of Honorius contain heresy?
Most assuredly not.”3

Audishu V. Khayat (or Khayyat, Khayyath, 1827 – 1899), the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Chaldee and
Patriarch of Babylon, who had ventured to sign a protest in Rome against the Infallibilist theory before the
Vatican Council, makes an abject recantation in a letter to Pope Pius IX, where he mentions his change of view
about Pope Honorius,

finally having had the good fortune to meet with a very ancient manuscript of a history composed by
a Nestorian, containing a convincing exculpation of Pope Honorius from all error in faith: for
these reasons and for other conscientious motives, I feel myself constrained to affirm, most Holy
Father, not only that belief in the inerrancy of the Sovereign Pontiff when deciding ex cathedra in
matters of faith and morals, is mine, and that I have always held it, but also that under the
circumstances it appears to me reasonable, by no means dangerous on the contrary, very advisable
that the Universal Council should dogmatically determine that the Infallibility or supreme authority
exercised by the Sovereign Pontiff as universal doctor of the Church is of the institution of Christ, is
founded in Holy Scripture and in Tradition, consequently that it is of faith. 4

1 John Henry Newman, Certain Difficulties Felt by Anglicans in Catholic Teaching Considered, Vol. II, A Letter
Addressed to His Grace the Duke of Norfolk on Occasion of Mr. Gladstone’s Recent Expostulation, § 8, 4., p.
317, London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1914.
2 “ses deux lettres sont intrinsèquement orthodoxes, quoique, d’après le langage usuel, il ait écrit comme il

était habituel de le faire avant la condamnation du monothélisme, et non comme il devint nécessaire de le
faire après cette condemnation.” Abbé Darras, Histoire Générale De L’Eglise, Vol. XVI, p. 428, 1881.
3 Charles Coupe, The Alleged “Failures” of Infallibility; or, the Cases of Liberius, Honorius, and Galileo, p. 12,

London: Catholic Truth Society, 1897.

4 Simpson, Roman Catholic Opposition to Papal Infallibility, Ch. XIV, pp. 214 – 215.
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According to the Catholic Encyclopedia, “In 1893 Mgr. Khayat, the Maronite Patriarch, obtained the
restoration of the [Maronite] college from Leo XIII. The Holy See gave part of the funds, the remainder was
collected in France, and in 1894 the new college was inaugurated.” 1 From this letter, it is clear that Pope Pius
IX was directly and personally informed that one of his archbishops denied the heresy of Honorius, yet I am
not aware of any Papal statement on this matter. I am not sure exactly to which “history composed by a
Nestorian” Khayat is referring, but a history written by a heretic cannot overthrow the judgment of the
Ecumenical Councils of the Church (and I have shown above that the Monothelite heretics themselves said
and provided evidence that Honorius was with them).

Joseph Turmel (1853 – 1943), who had been a French Roman Catholic priest and professor for some time, but
later rejected Christian revelation, writes in the year 1906,

To allow that a Pope had been solemnly charged with heresy even as a private doctor was too much
for the infallibilists. On the other hand, the Gallicans could not forget Bossuet’s retort, “When can a
Pope have cause to speak ex cathedra if not when consulted by the entire East?”2

Thomas Patrick Gilmartin (1861 – 1939), a Roman Catholic archbishop and historian, says,

Pope Honorius, who, though not himself a Monothelite, gave his approval to the written justification
sent to him by Sergius. … the originators of the new doctrine were anathematised and their writings
condemned to be burnt, among them being Honorius, because in his epistle to Sergius he had
acquiesced in and approved the latter’s impieties. … Honorius was not at heart a Monothelite3

Dom John Chapman (1865 – 1933), a Roman Catholic priest and a very highly learned scholar and professor,
writes in the conclusion to his work on “The Condemnation of Pope Honorius”, published by the Catholic
Truth Society: “Unquestionably no Catholic has the right to deny that Honorius was a heretic (though in
the sense that Origen and Theodore of Mopsuestia were heretics), a heretic in words if not in intention.”4
This is a very interesting statement, because it has been seen that many Roman Catholics, who claim to be
truly Catholic, do indeed “deny that Honorius was a heretic”, maintaining that Honorius’ words are orthodox,
as shown above. I think that this denial separates them from the Church that has declared Honorius to be a
heretic. However Chapman writes, “It has been made clear that Honorius’ meaning was far better than his
expression, and that his real mind was confused rather than unorthodox.”5 John Chapman himself is the
author of the article on Pope Honorius in the Catholic Encyclopedia, and the view of Chapman has been cited
as a common view on the subject by the author of the article on the Sixth Ecumenical Council. Chapman
wrote at least 50 other articles for the Catholic Encyclopedia, and his works are cited numerous times as well,
as he was a leading and very learned Papal apologist of his age.

Louis Duchesne (1843 – 1922), a prominent French Roman Catholic priest, scholar, and professor, wrote the
following, in a section where he argues against the Orthodox Church:

It is true that we also find that of Pope Honorius [among the names of those condemned at the Sixth
Council], who had made the mistake, quite at the beginning of the affair, of allowing himself to be
guided by the Patriarch Sergius, under whose inspiration he wrote imprudent letters, which his clergy
and successors hastened to repudiate.6

On the next page, Duchesne appears to deny that Honorius was a heretic, when he implies that Honorius was

1 Umberto Benigni, Roman College, in CE, Vol. XIII, p. 135.

2 Turmel, Hist. Théol. Positive, p. 317. Cited in Simpson, Roman Catholic Opposition to Papal Infallibility, Ch.
III, pp. 39 – 40. Note that Turmel’s work was placed upon the Index.
3 Thomas Patrick Gilmartin, A Manual of Church History, pp. 164 – 165, 1890.
4 Chapman, The Condemnation of Pope Honorius, § 24, p. 116 [the last page].
5 Chapman, The Condemnation of Pope Honorius, § 1, p. 7.
6 Arnold Harris Mathew (translator), Louis Duchesne, The Churches Separated From Rome, Ch. III, p. 48,

London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co., 1907.

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only guilty of “hesitation, faults of conduct”. The claim that Honorius’s successors “hastened to repudiate” the
letters of Honorius, is not supported by the records, for Honorius’s next successor but one, Pope John IV, who
took the Papacy within six months of Honorius’s death, explicitly defended Pope Honorius as orthodox in a
letter to the Emperor Constantine, as remarked above, and Pope John and Abbots Anastasius and John
Symponus deceived St. Maximus into believing that Honorius was orthodox. Moreover, the Lateran Council of
649 in Rome, under Pope Martin, failed to repudiate Pope Honorius, or even to directly address his case. This
shows that Rome was an unreliable source of truth, and that Rome continued to spread falsehood (first by
propagating heresy, and then by defending the Papal heretic or remaining silent), until the sentence of the
Sixth Ecumenical Council put a stop to their errors and omissions. Many in Rome lacked the humility to
publicly accept that a bishop of their city was expressly condemned as a heretic.

Adrian Fortescue (1874 – 1923) also denies that Honorius was a heretic, saying;

[Pope] Leo [II] examined the Acts and confirmed them all, except that he distinctly refused to
acknowledge the condemnation of Honorius as a heretic. He, too, condemned him, but only because
“he had not crushed out the flame of heresy at once, as behoved his Apostolic authority, but rather
fostered it by his negligence.” So the statement made by the council that Honorius was a heretic, not
having been confirmed by Rome, affects us Catholics as little as the Canons of Constantinople I. …

The Byzantines never cease making the most of Pope Honorius’s case, till at last they persuade
themselves that he, whose fault in any case only consisted in seeming to accept what their Patriarch,
Sergius had written, had been the original author and founder of the whole Monothelite heresy. 1

Thomas Stanislaus Dolan (1869 – 1918), a learned Roman priest who wrote several works in defence of the
Papacy, says:

The opponents of the doctrine of Papal Infallibility, have devoted themselves with much enthusiasm,
to attempting to demonstrate that Honorius was condemned for teaching heresy ex cathedra, which
were it true, would deal a death blow to our doctrine. The best and sanest endeavors in the matter,
have been those which, while admitting the heretical character of the letters of Honorius, and his
condemnation as a heretic, because of those letters, prove that he taught no heresy ex cathedra. One
of the most entertaining writers upon the subject is Baronius. To save the Pope, Baronius is willing
to go to any length. He assumes, and endeavors to prove, that the Acts of the Sixth Ecumenical Synod
have been hopelessly falsified. The attempt is little short of ludicrous. Baronius is thoroughly
confused upon some of the most important details of the contemporary history, and brazenly
assumes wholesale forgeries, without a particle of respectable evidence, to bolster up his bold but
utterly untenable hypothesis, which Hefele dissects with a master-hand, and then throws aside as
worthless.a
The theory of Pennacchi,b namely, that the letters of Honorius were perfectly orthodox, but
that the Synod could not understand them, would indicate that the bishops composing the Council,
were an imposing assembly of fools.
The Sixth Ecumenical Synod, unquestionably condemned Honorius as a heretic, and
Pope Leo II, who confirmed the Council, reiterated the condemnation. The documents in the
case are unimpeachable, and the words of the Council and the Pope, surely constitute evidence of the
first quality. The Synod, in its sentence of condemnation of the Monothelite letters of Sergius of
Constantinople to Cyrus of Phasis, and to Pope Honorius, as well as the letters of Honorius to Sergius,
and of the persons of Sergius, Cyrus of Alexandria, Pyrrhus, Paul and Peter of Constantinople, and
Theodore of Pharan, closes its list of worthies with the name of Pope Honorius. “Cum his vero simul
projici a sancta Dei catholica ecclesia, simulque anathematizari praevidimus et Honorium, qui fuerat

1Adrian Fortescue, The Orthodox Eastern Church, Part I, Ch. III, pp. 80, 96, London: Catholic Truth Society,
2nd Ed., 1908. It is certainly an exaggeration to say that the “Byzantines never cease making the most of Pope
Honorius’s case,” and Fortescue gives no evidence for the latter claim, that Honorius “had been the original
author and founder of the whole Monothelite heresy”, and there are no authors I know of to whom this can
apply.
 686

Papa antiquae Romae, eo quod invenimus per scripta, quae ab eo facta sunt ad Sergium, quia in
omnibus ejus mentem secutus est, impia dogmata confirmavit.” “And with these we decide that
Honorius also, who was Pope of old Rome, shall be cast out of the holy Church of God, and be
anathematized with them, because we have found through letters, which were written by him to
Sergius, that he followed his view in all things, and confirmed his impious dogmas.”c Pope Leo II in
his confirmation of the Sixth (Ecumenical Synod, thus expresses himself: “And in like manner we
anathematize … Honorius, who did not illumine this Apostolic See with the doctrine of apostolic
tradition, but by profane treachery allowed its purity to be polluted. …” The Latin translation of the
Greek original, is unfaithful in the last portion of the above sentence. The Latin reads: “profana
proditione, immaculatam fidem vertere conatus est;” “who attempted to corrupt its spotless faith.”
The two renditions are very different, since [“allowed”] implies at most neglect, but “conatus est”
implies a positive attack upon the purity of orthodoxy.d How one can deny, in the face of the two
quotations just given, that the Synod actually condemned Honorius for heresy, is extremely difficult
of explanation. The language of Honorius to Sergius, is unquestionably heretical; yet as one inspects
his famous answer to the bishop of Constantinople, the conviction gradually forces itself on the mind,
that Honorius was very much confused. To put it in common phrase, he seems not to have known
what he was talking about. That he was orthodox in intention, hardly admits of any doubt, but
he was expressly a heretic, and the Council had to deal only with his expressions. Under the
circumstances, it is difficult to see, that there was any other course open to the Council beside that
which it pursued.

[Dolan’s Footnotes:] a) Hef. V, 191, et sqq. 2; b) 2. Pennacchi De Honorii I Romans. Pontif causa in
Conc. VI, pp. 378, 181; c) Mansi XI, 550, et sqq.; d) Mansi XI, 726.1

The Belgian Jesuit Walter Devivier (1833 – 1915) writes:

There remains then the case of Pope Honorius I (A.D. 625), who is said to have espoused the cause of
the Monothelites, and to have been, on that account, condemned both by the sixth Ecumenical
Council, held in Constantinople in the years 680-681, under Pope Agatho, and by Leo II (A.D. 682).
Our answer, based on unimpeachable authorities, to be quoted hereafter, implies an emphatic
denial of the charge taken from documents subject to the gravest suspicions of fraudulent
interpolations. The Fathers of the Council and St. Leo did not condemn Honorius for having
promulgated an erroneous definition of Faith addressed to the Universal Church, nor for having
himself professed Monothelism, but simply blamed him for not having used more vigorous means for
its suppression, and because, by imposing silence on the disputants, instead of checking the spread of
heresy, he rather fomented it.

Devivier elsewhere writes with reference to Honorius: “The Pope as Pope can never err in Faith, for he is that
rock against which the gates of hell shall never prevail.”2 Pope Pius X himself approved the English
translation of this work, as can be read in a letter from Cardinal Merry Del Val (p. viii.), and the Foreword
states that this book “was approved and highly praised by six Cardinals, thirty-two Archbishops and Bishops,
and by the Catholic Press of both countries [Belgium and France].” … The English translation was also well
received by “five Archbishops and fifteen Bishops”, and was recommended as a suitable textbook for use in
English-speaking Catholic Colleges and Universities (p. ix). This work suffers from many other defects in
historical accuracy.

1 Thomas Stanislaus Dolan, The Papacy and the First Councils of the Church, Ch. VIII, pp. 162 – 165, St. Louis,
MO: B. Herder, 1910. Dolan’s work has the Nihil Obstat from the Roman Catholic Censor, and the Imprimatur
from Archbishop Joannes J. Glennon in 1909. In a previous work by Dolan in defence of the Papacy, Dolan is
praised by American Roman Catholic Cardinal James Gibbons (1834 – 1921), who says, “Father Dolan being a
man of natural ability, perfected by long training, and broadened by large erudition”.
2 Joseph C. Sasia (translator), Walter Devivier, Christian Apologetics: A Rational Defense of the Catholic

Religion, Vol. II, pp. 168 & 281, New York, NY: Joseph F. Wagner, New Ed., 1924 [1st English ed. 1903; 1st
French ed. 1884; this work went to at least 24 editions in French].
 687

An article discussing the condemnation of Honorius by the Alumni Association of St. Francis Seminary in
1919 states, “Honorius was orthodox; but in his desire of reconciling the lost sheep to the Church, he
acquiesced in formulas into which he placed no false teaching, but which formulas the monothelites wrested
to the ruin of faith. Honorius erred in prudence and perhaps in courage. The VI Œcumenical Council in its
wild indignation against the wily monothelites caught Honorius in the whirlwind of its condemnation of
monothelitism.”1

The Jesuit priest Jakob Linden (1853 – 1915) writes, with the approval of a Roman Catholic archbishop and
two censors:

Non-Catholics contend that Popes Liberius and Vigilius rendered false decisions in matters of faith,
and that Pope Honorius was condemned as a heretic by later Popes. But this is altogether wrong.
These accusations are based partly on falsified documents, partly on misunderstandings. Liberius
and Vigilius rendered no decisions at all in matters of faith, and Pope Honorius was criticized by his
successor, Leo II, merely because he had not opposed with sufficient vigor the heresy of the
Monothelites and thus had become coresponsible for its spread. 2

The Jesuit priest and professor at Boston College Francis X. Doyle (1886 – 1928) writes, “For instance,
Honorius I, (625-638) did not teach heresy, but was condemned by the Council of Constantinople for his
negligence in suppressing heresy.”3

Clement Raab (1874 – 1939), a German-American Franciscan priest and seminary professor, writes, “In
neither letter did Honorius teach any heresy.”4

The 20th century Roman Catholic communion is full of more learned authorities and apologists who assert
that Honorius did not teach heresy, such as the Jesuit Joseph F. Costanzo, who was a professor at Fordham
and Georgetown universities (1949 – 1952, 1955 – 1970). In his book against a liberal Roman Catholic
theologian, Costanzo devotes a section to Honorius and tries to defend the “orthodoxy that Honorius
repeatedly reaffirms”. His somewhat unique, although logically flawed argument is “that condemnation” [“of
all who held and taught Monothelitism”] “must fall equally no less upon Pope John IV, who defended
Honorius’ explanation within the terms of Honorius intentions – and this no one has ever done” 5 This is an
invalid argument because Pope John IV was orthodox, and the mere fact that Pope John IV misunderstood the
letters of Honorius (being deceived by the Abbot John Symponus, who is also said to have written John IV’s
apology for Honorius, as the secretary for both Popes) and thought that Honorius was not a Monothelite, does
not make John IV a Monothelite, but merely negligent, and the Sixth Council was charitable enough to not
condemn this sort of error, but only outright heresy. Note that the explanation of Pope John IV is discussed
and refuted by Renouf.

Francis Dvornik, in his book Byzantium and the Roman Primacy, says:

In truth, it must be said that at the beginning of this dogmatic quarrel when the patriarch Sergius, the
promoter of Monothelitism, had asked advice of Pope Honorius I (625-638) on this doctrine, the

1 The Alumni Association of St. Francis Seminary, The Salesianum, Vol. XV, p. 60, St. Francis, WI: Salesianum
Publishing Co., 1919.
2 Jakob Linden, The Truth of the Catholic Religion, 5., p. 67, St. Louis, MO: Herder, 2nd Ed., 1924.
3 Francis X. Doyle, The Defense of the Catholic Church, 418., p. 270, Cincinnati, OH: Benzinger Brothers, 1927.

Doyle’s obituary states that this work of his “was the first in a series of Apologetics, which Father Doyle was
preparing. It is being used this year as a text book of Religion by the freshman class.” (The Heights, Vol. VIII,
No. 17, 31 January 1928, p. 4, Boston College, MA).
4 Clement Raab, The Twenty Ecumenical Councils of the Catholic Church, p. 43, London: Longmans & Co.,

1937.
5 Joseph F. Costanzo, The Historical Credibility of Hans Kung: An Inquiry and Commentary, Part II, Honorius,

North Quincy, MA: Christopher Publishing House, 1979.

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Pope who, of course, professed the orthodox doctrine gave in his rather evasive reply the
impression – which was false – that he was favorable to the thesis of Sergius.1

Warren H. Carroll concludes, “Pope Honorius, therefore, was never condemned for heresy by the supreme
Church authority, but only for negligence allowing a heresy to spread and grow, when he should have
denounced it;”2

Karl Keating (1950 – current), a Roman Catholic apologist, writes the following:

Actually, Honorius elected to teach nothing at all. Ronald Knox, in a letter to Arnold Lunn reprinted
in their book Difficulties, put the matter like this: “And Honorius, so far from pronouncing an infallible
opinion in the Monothelite controversy, was ‘quite extraordinarily not’ (as Gore used to say)
pronouncing a decision at all. To the best of his human wisdom, he thought the controversy ought to
be left unsettled, for the greater peace of the Church. In fact, he was an inopportunist. We, wise after
the event, say that he was wrong. But nobody, I think, has ever claimed that the Pope is infallible in
not defining a doctrine.” [Ronald Knox and Arnold Lunn, Difficulties (London: Eyre & Spottiswoode,
1952), 126-27.]3

It is quite significant that a standard Roman Catholic collection of Canons and Papal decrees, Denzinger’s
Sources of Catholic Dogma, contains extracts from the two heretical letters of Pope Honorius to Patriarch
Sergius, including Pope John IV’s erroneous defence of Pope Honorius.4 Heinrich Joseph Dominicus
Denzinger (1819 – 1883) was a German Roman Catholic theologian and scholar, and his magnum opus was
revised by later scholars, to contain a large source collection of authoritative decrees of Popes, Councils,
dogmatic definitions, and articles of faith. An extract printed in this collection contains the heretical words of
Honorius “we confess one will of our Lord Jesus Christ”. The fact that two heretical Papal documents are
included among an authoritative collection of “Catholic Dogma”, is an evidence that the Roman Catholic
communion is schismatic, and departs from the decisions of the Ecumenical Councils.

I could provide many more evidences of Roman Catholics denying the heresy of Honorius, or falsely
representing historical facts, and siding with the heretic Honorius. Much more could be written criticising
and analysing each of the Latin defences of Honorius, but this is not especially necessary, as many authors fall
into the same errors or repeat the errors of those before them. Against the Latin attempt to defend Honorius,
I recommend simply re-reading the testimonies to Honorius’s condemnation that has been collected in the
previous sections, and to consider that the judgments of the Sixth and Seventh Ecumenical Councils, with the
consensus of the Church, on Honorius, should not be rejected in favour of a modern interpretation.

Some say that Pope Honorius did not declare anything ex cathedra, or infallibly (assuming such a concept
existed in the 7th century), but was only condemned as a private theologian in his private letters. Percival
remarks,

1 Francis Dvornik, Byzantium and the Roman Primacy, p. 90, New York, NY: Fordham University Press, 2nd
Printing, 1979 [first published 1964].
2 Warren H. Carroll, A History of Christendom, Vol. II, The Building of Christendom, Ch. IX, p. 254, Front Royal,

VA: Christendom College Press, 1987.

3 Karl Keating, Catholicism and Fundamentalism: The Attack on “Romanism” by “Bible Christians”, Ch. XVIII,

San Francisco, CA: Ignatius Press, 1988. Keating here favourably cites Ronald Knox (1888 – 1957), a learned
Roman Catholic priest.
4 Roy Joseph Deferrari (translator), Henry Denzinger, The Sources of Catholic Dogma, ¶¶ 251. – 253., St. Louis,

MO: Herder, 1957.

 689

Most Roman controversialists of recent years have admitted both the fact of Pope Honorius’s
condemnation (which Baronius denies), and the monothelite (and therefore heretical) character of
his epistles, but they are of opinion that these letters were not his ex cathedrâ utterances as Doctor
Universalis, but mere expressions of the private opinion of the Pontiff as a theologian.1

However, as I noted above, it is not necessary to show that Honorius taught heresy ex cathedra to refute the
claims of the First Vatican Council, since the Vatican Council assumes that no Pope was ever a heretic, or even
negligent in matters of faith, when it decreed: “our predecessors [the Popes] ever made unwearied efforts
(indefessam semper operam dederunt) that the salutary doctrine of Christ might be propagated among all the
nations of the earth, and with equal care watched that it might be preserved genuine and pure where it had
been received.” (Ch. IV.)

It is also difficult to reconcile the condemnation of a Roman Pontiff for heresy with Latin Pope Boniface VIII’s
ex cathedra pronouncement in 1302 that “it is absolutely necessary for salvation that every human creature
be subject to the Roman Pontiff.”2 Following this logic, it would have been necessary for every Christian to be
subject to Pope Honorius, and thus they would have all followed a heretic, and hazarded their salvation.

Section VII Summary

Thus the lack of unanimity is evident of the Roman Catholics, who have corrupted original documents,
accused the Orthodox of forgery, relied on heretical documents, made poor arguments, and rejected the
Ecumenical consensus of the Church in their attempts to acquit Honorius from heresy. In the attempt to
defend the infallibility of the Pope, it has been seen that Roman Catholic authorities have fallen into many
errors. Whatever may be said about the letter of Honorius, what is certain is that he did not strengthen his
brethren, nor bring unity to the Church.

I think it worthwhile to include here an extract from Edward Denny’s Papalism, who ably recounts the issue
of Pope Honorius’s promotion of Monothelitism, and his relations with his brethren, the Patriarchs of the
Church:

Sergius enclosed copies of his letters to the Emperor and to Cyrus, and concluded by praying
Honorius to read what he had written, and to complete what he found defective, and to communicate
to him his view by his holy letters.

This letter of Sergius is clearly heretical. Whilst apparently equally prohibiting the use of either
formula, ‘one’ or ‘two’ ‘energies,’ he accords to them distinctly different treatment. … There can be no
doubt that Sergius, in thus approaching Honorius, had for his object to obtain his approval and support
for the line he took, a line which clearly meant that Monothelitism was approved as orthodox. It may
be added that the Monothelite character of the letter is further shown by the fact that a ‘great inner
relationship’ exists between it and the Ecthesis condemned by the Lateran Synod of A.D. 649, much of
the heretical part of which is taken verbatim from it, as well as by the fact that it was condemned by the
Sixth Ecumenical Council.

What reply did Honorius make to this ‘dogmatic letter’? Not only did he not say a single word
which can be construed as expressing disagreement with the doctrine taught by Sergius, but he
expressly accepted it as orthodox. He approved that neither the formula “one energy” nor the formula
“two energies” should be used, agreeing with Sergius’ words and opinions throughout. But Honorius,
moreover, made it quite clear that he accepted and approved Sergius’ heretical doctrine not only thus,
but by the definite statement ‘we confess One Will of our Lord Jesus Christ’ — unam voluntatem
fatemur Domini nostri Jesu Christi — a statement based upon the argument that the will is to be

1 Percival, Seven Ecumenical Councils, p. 351.

2 Latin Pope Boniface VIII, Bull ‘Unam Sanctam’, November 18, 1302.
 690

attributed to the person and not to the nature, whence it would follow that as the Word assumed a
human nature but not a human personality, He had only one will. This, it may be added, is the exact
teaching of the Monothelite Paul, one of the successors of Sergius in the Patriarchate of Constantinople,
who, in his ‘dogmatic letter’ addressed to Pope Theodore in reply to a letter from him, said, ‘We …
recognise also only one will of our Lord in order not to ascribe to the one Person a contradiction of
wills or think of that Person as conflicting with himself, and so as not to be found to admit two wills.’

Honorius concluded by saying, ‘These things your fraternity will preach with us, as we
ourselves preach them like minded with you, and we urge you to avoid the expression which has
been brought in of one or two operations, and preach with us in orthodox faith and Catholic unity the
Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of the living God, true God working in two natures, the works of the divinity
and the humanity.’

Sophronius meanwhile had been raised to the Patriarchate of Jerusalem, and had, in accordance
with the custom which then prevailed of a new Bishop sending to other Bishops an account of his creed
on entering on his office, sent forth his Epistola Synodica, which Hefele describes as ‘almost the most
important document in the whole Monothelite controversy; a great theological treatise, which
expatiated on all the chief doctrines, especially the Trinity and the Incarnation, and richly discussed the
doctrine of the two energies in Christ.’

This letter was sent to Honorius by the hands of envoys, amongst whom was Stephen, Bishop of
Dor, in like manner as it was sent to other Bishops, with the request that he should signify by his holy
letters his judgment on the question before him, and supply what is deficient in his own statement of
doctrine.

What was the result of the reception by Honorius of this ‘dogmatic letter’ of Sophronius? That
Patriarch had set forth in it clearly the orthodox doctrine as to the two energies, yet in the face of this,
which gave him the opportunity of reconsidering the question and withdrawing the heretical teaching
of his letter to Sergius, Honorius maintained in a second letter to the same Patriarch his previous
position. He says, ‘We have also written to Cyrus of Alexandria that the newly invented expression may
be rejected, one or two energies … for those who use such expressions imagine that, according as
Christ has one or two natures, there must be one or two operations, it is altogether frivolous to think or
declare that our Lord Jesus Christ, the Mediator between God and man, has one or two operations.’ …
‘These things we have decided to make manifest by the present letters to your most holy
fraternity for the instruction of those in perplexity. Moreover, as regards the ecclesiastical
dogma and what we ought to hold and teach, on account of the simplicity of man and to avoid
controversies we must, as I have already said, assert neither one nor two energies in the
Mediator between God and man, but must confess that both natures are naturally united in the one
Christ, that each in communion with the other worked and acted, the divine works the divine and the
human performs that which is of the flesh without separation and without mixture, and without the
nature of God being changed into the manhood or the human nature into the Godhead. For one and the
same is lowly and exalted, equal to the Father and inferior to the Father. … Ridding ourselves,
therefore, as we have said, of the scandal of the new invention, we must not define or preach one or
two operations, but instead of one operation as they say, we must confess in truth one Christ, one
Lord; operating in both natures, and instead of two operations, rejecting the expression “twofold
operations,” they should preach with us that the two natures, that is, the divinity and the flesh assumed
in the one Person of the Only begotten Son of the Father, operate what is peculiar to them without
confusion, division, or change. And these things we have decided to make manifest to your most
blessed fraternity in order that by putting forward of one Confession we may show ourselves to be of
the same mind as your Holiness, clearly agreeing in one spirit with a like teaching of the faith to our
common brethren, Cyrus and Sophronius, that they may not persist in the new expression of one or
two energies, but preach with us the one Christ, the Lord operating on both natures human and divine
things, and as for those whom our brother and fellow-bishop Sophronius sent to us, we have provided
that in future he should not persist in the expression two energies. They promised to us fully, on
condition that Cyrus should also desist from proclaiming ‘two energies.’ [Denny’s Footnote: With
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reference to the concluding statement in this extract, it is to be noted that Bossuet observes (Defensio
Declarationis Cleri Gallicani, Pars iii. lib. xii. c. xxii. tom. ii. p. 38. Edit. Lugani, 1766): ‘The legates of
Sophronius did indeed promise this, but it is well known that Sophronius persevered in the right
opinion, and that his legates only, having been badly instructed by Honorius, whom they had duly come
to consult, promised that which was wrong and opposed to the faith.’] …

But further, what were the circumstances under which Honorius thus set forth heresy?

(a) He was applied to by the Patriarch of the Second See, Sergius of Constantinople, in a ‘dogmatic
letter’ as the Sixth Ecumenical Synod entitled it. His answer must be of an equally authoritative
character — his letters are, in fact, the ‘the holy letters’ which Sergius asked for, and by that expression
Easterns always meant documents issued in virtue of the official position of those from whom they
emanated, and so possessing their authority.

(b) Moreover, Honorius not only wrote to Sergius but to Cyrus, Patriarch of Alexandria, and to
Sophronius, Patriarch of Jerusalem; it is impossible to question the official character of his letters, it is
the first Patriarch declaring to the second, and the third and the fifth, what is de fide concerning a most
important question.

In fact, as Bossuet says, ‘it is not less certain that these decrees of Honorius were carried to the
churches and spread throughout the East,’ – for when Macarius, the Monothelite Patriarch of Antioch,
the remaining Patriarchate, presented his Confession of Faith to the Sixth Council, he said, ‘We consent
as well to the five Councils, as to Honorius taught of God, to Sergius, Paulus, and Peter,’ and in thus
reckoning Honorius foremost amongst the Monothelites, he evidently refers to Honorius’ letters ; in
fact, the Confession itself is almost entirely made up of the letter of Sergius and the reply of Honorius
thereto.

On Papalist principles it is plain that Honorius, in issuing these letters and giving this
instruction, would be acting as the ‘teacher of all Christians,’ exercising ‘the supreme power of
teaching,’ which was his in virtue of his ‘Apostolic Primacy.’ His ‘decision’ on this matter of faith would
be ex cathedra. So clearly has this been perceived by certain Ultramontane writers, that they have, as a
last resource, alleged that these letters were either forgeries, or corrupted by the enemies of the
Roman See.

There is, of course, no justification for such an allegation, as Hefele admits, ‘the two letters of
Pope Honorius, as we now possess them, are unfalsified,’ and the learned writer maintains that they
were put forth auctoritate Apostolica [by Apostolic Authority], ‘seeing Honorius intended to give to the
Church of Constantinople, and implicite to the whole Church, an instruction on doctrine and faith ; and
in his second letter he even uses the expression, ‘Ceterum quantum ad Dogma ecclesiasticum
pertinent … non unam vel duas operationes in mediatore Dei et hominum definiri debemus’ [Moreover, as
to ecclesiastical dogma … we must define that there is neither one nor two operations in the Mediator
of God and man]. He says also that ‘it is in the highest degree startling, even scarcely credible, that an
Ecumenical Council should punish with anathema a Pope as a heretic!’ But ‘startling’ to whom? Not to
the Fathers of the Sixth Synod, or those of the Quinsext Synod, nor to those of the Seventh Synod, nor to
those of the so-called ‘Eighth’ Synod, who, in their condemnation of Honorius, placed him in the same
category with, and on the same level as, the other heretics they included in their anathema, thus
showing that they were entirely ignorant of the possession by Honorius of any authority differing in
nature from that possessed by the others, nor to Pope Leo II., who anathematised all those condemned
by the Sixth Synod, nor to his successors in the Roman See, who, till the eleventh century, made the
solemn profession of faith prescribed in the Liber Diurnus; but to Papalists it must indeed be ‘startling’
to encounter a so well attested fact which contradicts in the most explicit manner that which they
assert to be a ‘dogma divinely revealed.’1

1 Edward Denny, Papalism, pp. 398 – 403.

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Popes have spoken, Ecumenical Councils have spoken, hundreds of holy Fathers and scholars have spoken,
and over thirteen hundred years have passed since the death and condemnation of Honorius, yet Roman
Catholics are still uncertain whether this link in the chain of Apostolic Succession was truly the Vicar of Christ,
or a heretic.

The case of the fall of Pope Honorius inevitably proves that following the Bishop of Rome is no guarantee of
true doctrine and can be dangerous to salvation.

For further reading, see: Peter Le Page Renouf, The Condemnation of Pope Honorius, London: Longmans,
Green, and Co., 1868; Peter Le Page Renouf, The Case of Pope Honorius Reconsidered with Reference to
Recent Apologies, London: Longmans, Green, Reader, and Dyer, 1869; T. J. Bailey (translator), Auguste
Gratry, [Four Letters to Monseigneur Dechamps] (most especially the first letter), London: J. T. Hayes, 1870;
Pusey, Eirenicon, Part III, pp. 189 – 200; Henry Smith (editor), Alfred Plumber (translator), Döllinger, Fables
Respecting the Popes in the Middle Ages, Part I, VIII, pp. 223 – 256, and Appendices E. – F., pp. 447 – 461, New
York, NY: Dodd & Mead, 1872; Henry Boynton Smith, Bishop C. J. Von Hefele on the Case of Pope Honorius,
The Presbyterian Quarterly and Princeton Review, Vol. I [New Series.], No. 2., April, 1872, Art. IV, pp. 273 –
301, New York, NY: J. M. Sherwood, 1872; Edward Francis Willis, Pope Honorius and the New Roman Dogma,
London: Rivingtons, 1879; William R. Clark (translator & editor), Charles Joseph Hefele, A History of the
Councils of the Church, Vol. V, Book XVI, Sec. 324., pp. 181 – 205 (although Honorius is mentioned
occasionally throughout the entire volume), Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1896; Dom John Chapman, The
Condemnation of Pope Honorius, London: Catholic Truth Society, 1907 (Originally published in The Dublin
Review, beginning July 1906. It appears that not a single dedicated study on Pope Honorius has appeared in
English after Dom John Chapman’s in 1907.); Edward Denny, Papalism, pp. 395 – 404 & 482 – 492, 1912. The
most recent dedicated scholarly studies on Honorius are Georg Kreuzer, Die Honoriusfrage im Mittelalter und
in der Neuzeit, Stuttgart: A. Hiersemann, 1975 [in German]; Anton Thanner, Papst Honorius I (625-638), St.
Ottilien: EOS Verlag, 1989 [in German]; Homero Johas, Um Papa Heré tico, Rio de Janeiro: Santo Tomá s, 2003
(2 Vols.) [in Portuguese]; G. L. C. Frank, Honorius I: The “heretical” Pope, in Studia Historiae Ecclesiasticae,
Vol. XV, no. 2, pp. 76 – 98, Pretoria: Church History Society of Southern Africa, 1989. Some relevant original
source texts can be found translated in Henry R. Percival, The Seven Councils of the Undivided Church, VII, pp.
324 – 360, Oxford: James Parker and Company, 1900 [A complete English translation of the Acts of the Sixth
Council remains a desideratum]; Pauline Allen, Sophronius of Jerusalem and Seventh-Century Heresy: The
Synodical letter and Other Documents, Oxford Early Christian Texts, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009.
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Appendix IV A Note on Protestantism

Due to some of the errors of Rome described above and rampant corruption in the Latin Church,
many of the Papal subjects began to protest against the abuses of the Latins. However, this did not lead most
of these people to Orthodoxy, but to novel doctrines. Luther and many others who had formerly been priests
or monks in the Roman Catholic communion led the Protestant Reformation in the early 16th century. The
Protestant movement today is very far from imitating the early Church, and even deviates from their original
reformers, as their own historians readily admit. Today, there are over a dozen Protestant denominations
that differ in doctrine or way of life, although there appears to be only two main doctrinal differences among
them, which relate to the controversy between Calvin and Arminius.

In Europe, the Reformation was more successful in the Northern regions. Roman Catholics lost all of
Scandinavia, comprising Sweden (with Finland and Gotland and other Baltic islands), Norway, Denmark (with
Iceland, Greenland, and the Faroe Islands), along with much of the lands around the Baltic coast (including
most of the residents in the area comprising modern-day Estonia and Kaliningrad, and two-thirds of modern-
day Latvia, and a significant portion of Poland), the territories of the British Crown (including England,
Scotland, Wales, the Isle of Man, the Shetland Islands, and the Bailiwicks of Jersey and Guernsey, and over
10% of Ireland), two-thirds of the Netherlands, two-thirds of Germany, well over half of Switzerland, 10% of
what was once Austria-Hungary (including over a quarter of Hungary), 20% of Belgium (at the peak), almost
10% of France (at the peak), and a significant number of followers in various other territories. Many
Protestant converts (of those who were not killed for their beliefs) left Spain, Portugal, and Italy and went to
Protestant countries, or emigrated from Europe to avoid religious persecution. Protestantism made relatively
very few converts from Orthodoxy.

The Orthodox Church also charges Protestants with the error of the filioque (which most of them did not
reject from Rome), which I believe is inconsistent with their professed reverence for the plain words of the
Bible.

I have personally studied the issue in depth and sincerely believe that Protestantism is not the Church that
Christ established. I do not find their tenets in the Bible, but to show this would be far beyond the scope of
this work. I simply ask the reader to read the acts of the Ecumenical Councils and ask if this is the voice of
those of the Protestant communions.

The Protestant sect that comes closest to the early Church is the Anglican High Church party before WWI. It is
interesting that with regard to the many theological controversies brought up between the Protestants and
Roman Catholics, some Orthodox theologians have leaned more to the Roman Catholic side, while some
others have preferred the Protestant side.

Many Protestants are very confident that theirs is the true faith because they compare themselves to Roman
Catholicism and reject many of its actual errors, but they do not consider Eastern Orthodoxy, which is a blind
spot for them. Indeed, many Roman Catholics and Protestants have been unaware of the existence of the
Orthodox Church for a long time.

One example of the narrow Protestant view of the Middle Ages in Church history is found in the popular book,
A Sketch of the Various Denominations of the Christian World, which states, on Christianity in general:

From the 6th to the 16th century, ecclesiastical history presents little else than one black record of
ignorance, superstition, and tyranny. The Roman pontiff, by his monstrous usurpations over
conscience, disposed of the property and the lives of men. 1

1James Hews Bransby, John Evans, Evan’s Sketch of the Various Denominations of the Christian World,
Christianity, p. 30, London: Longman & Co., 18th Ed., 1841. This book, by the Welsh Baptist minister John
Evans (1767 – 1827), sold a total of over 100,000 copies in the author’s lifetime. It should be noted that the
chapter this passage is from was not in many of the earlier editions (it seems to have been added by the
 694

Miss Charlotte Mary Yonge (1823 – 1901), an Anglican novelist, writes in her Preface to Madame Romanoff’s
book on the Orthodox Church:

In the memory of many of us, the Greek Church was almost ignored. There were numerous
persons who divided Christendom into Protestants and Roman Catholics, and supposed all the
former to hold the truth, all the latter to be in error, and if the existence of Eastern Christians was
pressed on them would have classed them as a more ignorant and debased species of Roman
Catholics. Clearer knowledge has, however, dawned on us. We have become accustomed to regard
foreign communions with more discrimination and more candour. The prayers for unity, which have
so long been repeated with the most vague and undefined sense of what was therein asked, seem at
last to be so far answered that there is a certain heaving and moving in the dissevered fragments,
almost a yearning to be one again, and even a few absolute efforts which, though as yet uncertain and
spasmodic, may yet, under God’s grace, lead to something more definite and authoritative.1

The Orthodox Lebanese/Syrian traveller Assaad Yakoob Kayat (1811 – 1865) writes of his experience
interacting with the people across Great Britain and Ireland:

I was also much astonished at the ignorance of a great many respecting the Eastern
Christians and the Greek Church. Some people were so unacquainted with the subject, and talked
with so little consideration, that I felt ashamed to tell them they were unknowingly uttering untruths.
I took great pains to ascertain the cause of this ignorance in such an enlightened country, and among
men whom I expected to find possessed of more knowledge, and who were well informed on other
topics. I found the chief cause to be this: that the Protestants have been repeatedly so justly engaged
in the Romish controversy; and, unfortunately, the controversy among themselves demanded so
much of their attention, that until lately they had no time for inquiries respecting Eastern Christians;
and no books certainly do exist in the English language which treat the subject faithfully and fully.
The only information is to be obtained from reports in newspapers, and few readers will devote
much attention to them. I have more than once read columns of such reports; and I am sorry to say
that they were full of incorrect statements. The only two publications that are worth reading on the
subject are Pinkerton’s “Russia,” published in 1833, and Mason’s “Apology of the Greek Church,”
published by Hatchard, 1844.2

The Orthodox Church teaches that the Church is infallible, and that we should belong to her for salvation.
This is demonstrated from the Russian Catechism, which teaches, citing from the Missive of the Eastern
Patriarchs on the Orthodox Faith. Art. 12., “We undoubtingly confess as sure truth, that the Catholic Church
cannot sin, or err, nor utter falsehood in place of truth: for the Holy Ghost ever working through His faithful
ministers the Fathers and Doctors of the Church preserves her from all error.” The Russian Catechism goes
on: “to have part in His salvation, we must necessarily be members of His body, that is of the Catholic
Church.”3

fifteenth London edition). It is also interesting to compare the section on the Greek or Russian Church
between the earlier and later editions.
1 H. C. Romanoff, Sketches of the Rites and Customs of the Greco-Russian Church, Introduction, pp. v – vi,

London: Rivingtons, 1868.

2 Assaad Yakoob Kayat, A Voice From Lebanon, with The Life and Travels of Assaad Y. Kayat, pp. 361 – 362,

London: Madden & Co., 1847.

3 Richard White Blackmore, The Doctrine of the Russian Church, The Longer Catechism of the Russian Church,

Part I, Art. IX, p. 81, Aberdeen: A. Brown and Co., 1845. Also see Stylianos S. Harkianakis, The Infallibility of
the Church in Orthodox Theology, p. 180, Redfern, NSW: St. Andrew’s Orthodox Press, 2008.
 695

For reference, the best works written in the English language in defence of Protestantism against Roman
Catholicism are the following:

Charles Elliott, Delineation of Roman Catholicism, London, 1877. This is perhaps the very best volume
written against the Roman Catholic confession from the Protestant perspective.

Jeremy Taylor, Dissuasive From Popery, London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, 1852. This is found
in Vol. VI of The Whole Works of Jeremy Taylor (10-volume edition of 1852).

A Preservative Against Popery (18 Vol.) and Supplement (8 Vol.), London, 1848 – 1850. This is an excellent
collection of Anglican discourses on the Roman Catholic controversy, mostly written during the reign of King
James II and in the 1680’s.1

Andrew Willet, Synopsis Papismi (10 Vol.), London, 1852. These volumes are harder to find, but this is
another very high quality study.

Many Protestant scholars and professors today, including those who engage in debates, are not even aware of
their own best arguments in favour of their own position and against Roman Catholicism. These works often
contain arguments against doctrines and practices that the Latins share with the Orthodox Church, but these
are noticeably weaker than the arguments against those that the Latins hold alone, and if one considers the
distinctions, he will see that Orthodoxy is the best solution to the controversies raised.

Appendix V A Note on an Article by a Sedevacantist Group

Sedevacantists hold that the recent claimants to the papacy (since John XXIII, elected 28 October 1958) are
not true popes, because they have become modernist and heretical. There are many interesting aspects to
discuss about this view and the groups that hold this or similar views, but I will here simply focus on one
difficulty in an article by Brothers Michael Dimond and Peter Dimond of the Most Holy Family Monastery
organisation, who hold to a strict interpretation of the doctrine of “outside the Church there is no salvation”
(“extra Ecclesiam nulla salus”) and reject “baptism of desire” or “baptism of blood”, holding that those not
baptised in water cannot be saved, and that even catechumens and martyrs who desired baptism, if they had
not received baptism in water before they died, would not be saved. However, there are many difficulties
with this position, and Most Holy Family Monastery wrote an article in an attempt to address a witness to the
contrary position.

Latin Pope Pius X prescribed a catechism which contains the following question and answer on Baptism of
Blood/Desire:

Q. Can we somehow make up for the lack of Baptism?

A. The lack of the sacrament of Baptism can be replaced by martyrdom, which is called Baptism of
blood, or an act of perfect love of God or of contrition, which is combined with the at least implicit
desire for Baptism, and this is called Baptism of desire.2

1 Additional useful literary information may be found in Thomas James (editor), A Catalogue of the Collection
of Tracts For and Against Popery (Published in or about the Reign of James II.), Manchester: Chetham Society,
2 Vols., 1859 – 1865.
2 “D. Si può supplier in qualche modo alla moncanza del Battesimo? R. Alla mancaza del sacramento del

Battesimo può supplire il martirio, che chiamasi Battesimo di sangue, o un atto di perfetto amor di Dio o di
contrizione, che sia congiunto col desiderio almeno implicito del Battesimo, e questo si chiama Battesimo di
desiderio.” Pope Pius X, Compendio Della Dottrina Cristiana Prescritto da Sua Santità Papa Pio X Alle Diocesi
 696

This catechism states the following on those outside the external body of the Church but who are “united to
the soul of the Church”:

Q. But if a man through no fault of his own is outside the Church, can he be saved?
A. If he is outside the Church through no fault of his, that is, if he is in good faith, and if he has
received Baptism, or at least has the implicit desire of Baptism; and if, moreover, he sincerely seeks
the truth and does God’s will as best as he can, such a man is indeed separated from the body of the
Church, but is united to the soul of the Church and consequently is on the way of salvation. 1

In reference to this passage, the Most Holy Family Monastery article states:

Further, this catechism is proven not to be infallible by the fact that it teaches the abominable heresy
that there is salvation “outside” the Church (as I will show)! Certain statements in this catechism are,
sadly, an example of the heresy that was percolating before Vatican II. …

Further, notice that the catechism attributed to St. Pius X teaches the heresy that persons can be
united to the “Soul” of the Church, but not the Body. 2

However, based on their article, the Dimond Brothers do not appear to be familiar with the full details of this
catechism and the extent of its approval, as well as Pius X’s letter prescribing this catechism, and they
incorrectly date the catechism to 1912, whereas it was first published in 1905 (in Italian and at Rome by the
official Vatican Press), and the second edition was published in 1906, and several other later printings
followed. It was also soon translated into English and widely published. In a letter to Italian Cardinal and
professor Pietro Respighi (1843 – 1913) printed at the beginning of this catechism, Pope Pius X writes (here
is the full letter):

To Cardinal Pietro Respighi Our Vicar General

Cardinal,
The need to provide as far as possible for the religious instruction of tender youth has
advised us to print a Catechism, which clearly exposes the rudiments of holy faith, and those divine
truths, to which the life of every Christian must be informed. Therefore, having examined the many
textbooks already in use in the Dioceses of Italy, it seemed appropriate to us to adopt with slight
tweaks the text approved for several years by the Bishops of Piedmont, Liguria, Lombardy, Emilia
and of Tuscany. The use of this text will be mandatory for public and private teaching in the Diocese
of Rome and in all the others of the Roman Province; and we trust that the other Dioceses will also
want to adopt it to arrive at that single text, at least for all of Italy, which is in universal desire.
With this sweet hope we wholeheartedly impart to you, Cardinal, the Apostolic Blessing.
From the Vatican, 14 June 1905.
Pius PP. X3

Della Provincia di Roma, Catechismo Maggiore, Part IV, Ch. II, § 4, p. 204, Rome: Tipografia Vaticana, 2nd Ed.,
1906.
1 “D. Ma chi si trovasse, senza sua colpa, fuori della Chiesa, potrebbe salvarsi? R. Chi, trovandosi senza sua

colpa, ossia in buona fede, fuori della Chiesa, avesse ricevuto il Battesimo, o ne avesse il desiderio almeno
implicito; cercasse inoltre sinceramente la verità e compisse la voluntà di Dio come meglio può; benchè
separato dal corpo della Chiesa, sarebbe unito all’anima di lei e quindi in via di salute.” Pope Pius X,
Compendio Della Dottrina Cristiana Prescritto da Sua Santità Papa Pio X Alle Diocesi Della Provincia di Roma,
Catechismo Maggiore, Part I, Ch. X, § 2, pp. 119 – 120, Rome: Tipografia Vaticana, 2nd Ed., 1906.
2 Brothers Michael Dimond and/or Peter Dimond, The Catechism attributed to St. Pius X, March 17, 2016,

https://vaticancatholic.com/catechism-of-st-pius-x/. I have not copied the emphasised bolded and

underlined style of the text.
3 “Al Signor Cardinale Pietro Respighi Nostro Vicario Generale, Signor Cardinale, La necessità di provvedere

per quanto è possibile alla religiosa instituzione della tenera gioventù Ci ha consigliato la stampa di un
Catechismo, che esponga in modo chiaro i rudimenti della santa fede, e quelle divine verità, alle quali deve
 697

Pius X’s letter says that the use of his catechism is “obligatory” or “compulsory” (“obbligatorio”) “in the
Diocese of Rome and in all the rest of the Roman province”, hoping that “at least all of Italy” will adopt it, and
this was the “universal desire”, implying its validity outside Italy as well. Regardless, Latin Pope Gregory VII
said the Roman Church could never err: “The Roman Church has never erred. Nor will it err, to all eternity –
Scripture being witness.”1 If a heretical catechism was mandated for the Diocese of Rome by the pope then
this would be a contradiction.

In summary, what the Dimond Brothers call “abominable heresy”, Pope Pius X prescribed in an “obligatory”
(“obbligatorio”) catechism, “which clearly exposes the rudiments of holy faith, and those divine truths, to
which the life of every Christian must be informed.” It would seem inconsistent then for the Dimond Brothers
to consider Pope Pius X a true pope and even a saint, when he mandated a document that “teaches heresy”.
Therefore, this group appears to have a weak basis to claim to be able to judge popes for heresy.2

informarsi la vita d’ogni cristiano. Pertanto fatti esaminare i molti libri di testo già in uso nelle Diocesi
d’Italia, Ci parve opportune di adottare con lievi ritocchi il testo da vari anni approvato dai Vescovi del
Piemonte, della Liguria, della Lombardia, della Emilia e della Toscana. L’uso di questo testo sarà obbligatorio
per l’insegnamento pubblico e privato nella Diocesi di Roma e in tutte le alter della Provincia Romana; e
confidiamo che anche le alter Diocesi vorranno adottarlo per arrivare così a quel testo unico, almeno per tutta
l’Italia, che è nell’universale desiderio. Con questa dolve speranza impartiamo di tutto cuore a Lei, Signor
Cardinale, l’Apostolica Benedizione. Dal Vaticano, li 14 Giugno 1905. Pius PP. X.” Pope Pius X, Compendio
Della Dottrina Cristiana Prescritto da Sua Santità Papa Pio X Alle Diocesi Della Provincia di Roma,
[unnumbered, before p. 1], Rome: Tipografia Vaticana, 2nd Ed., 1906.
1 Pope Gregory VII, Dictatus Papae, n. 22.
2 The very fact that Roman Catholics have so widely disagreed on the case of Pope Honorius (MHFM admits

that he was a heretic) shows that there is no certain and objective measure to determine whether a claimant
to the papacy is valid and orthodox.
 698

Appendix VI Geocentrism and the Papal Condemnation of the Heliocentric Model

“Galileo was sent to the inquisition for affirming that the earth was a sphere; the government had declared it to
be as flat as a trencher, and Galileo was obliged to abjure his error. This error however at length prevailed, the
earth became a globe” – Thomas Jefferson, American Founding Father (Notes on Virginia, Query XVII, 1785; The
Works of Thomas Jefferson, Federal Edition (New York and London, G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1904-5)., Vol. IV, p. 48)

"The Bible teaches us how to go to heaven, not how the heavens go.” – Cardinal Baronius

“That the sun is in the centre of the universe and immovable from its place, is absurd, philosophically false, and
formally heretical, because it is expressly contrary to Holy Scripture.
That the earth is not the centre of the universe nor immovable, but that it moves, and also has diurnal motion, is
absurd, philosophically false, and, theologically considered, is at least erroneous in faith” – Decree of the Holy
Office of the Inquisition, approved by Pope Paul V in 1616

“The decrees of the Apostolic See and of the Roman congregations impede the true progress of science.” –
Proposition (No. 12) condemned in The Syllabus of Errors by Pope Pius IX, 1864.

There has been much misinformation about this controversy, and this topic is invariably brought up in
discussions on the relation between “science and religion”, often by those whose motives are to show a
conflict with the Church and intellectual progress. The best way to understand this issue is by going to the
original Latin sources. I admit as freely as possible the defences made of the treatment of Galileo and of the
Roman Catholic communion’s promotion of science, which extenuates many of the circumstances, and refutes
almost all objections of modern anti-Christians. I only argue that Roman Catholic authorities made an error
in condemning a model of the solar system that scientific observation has vindicated, and making this a
matter connected with faith and the proper interpretation of the Holy Scriptures.

Thomas Jefferson was mistaken about the controversy (although this doesn’t affect the context of his
argument on free enquiry), and many others also have falsely believed that the scholars of the Middle Ages
thought the Earth was flat. The Galileo issue had to do with the model of the solar system, not the spherity of
the Earth. Other misconceptions are that Galileo was burned at the stake, sent to jail, or tortured by the
Inquisition.

Geocentrism is the theory that the Earth is at the center of the universe and does not move. Geocentrism is
principally defended by interpreting certain Scripture passages in an extremely literal and unnatural manner.
The arguments for interpreting scripture to support Geocentrism are very weak, and my purpose here is not
to examine them.1

Galileo was an intelligent astronomer who virtually invented the telescope, and he found evidence that
geocentrism is a false theory, that the Earth and other bodies in the solar system do orbit the Sun. However,
the Pope and top Cardinals of Rome desired to condemn this idea. This is an important case of Papal error,
because in this case, one can clearly test the truth of the Roman interpretation of Scripture (which Rome
claims to infallibly understand) by observation of the Solar System. The Papal condemnation of the motion of
the Earth and the immobility of the Sun gives us an excellent example of the unreliability of decisions by the
top authorities of the Roman Catholic organisation. In the current era, it has been proved beyond all doubt
that the Earth revolves around the Sun. This was also admitted by almost all Roman Catholics of the 19th
century. One device that demonstrates the rotation of the Earth is the Foucault pendulum, introduced in
1851.

The very insightful Catholic Encyclopedia article on Galileo Galilei states:

1 However, it should suffice to reference an article by Professor Danny R. Faulkner from the Protestant
organization Answers In Genesis (Danny R. Faulkner, Geocentrism and Creation, Technical Journal (now
Journal of Creation) Vol. XV, no. 2 (August 2001), pp. 110 – 121).
 699

In these circumstances, Galileo, hearing that some had denounced his doctrine as anti-
Scriptural, presented himself at Rome in December, 1615, and was courteously received. He was
presently interrogated before the Inquisition, which after consultation declared the system he
upheld to be scientifically false, and anti-Scriptural or heretical, and that he must renounce it.
This he obediently did, promising to teach it no more. Then followed a decree of the Congregation of
the Index dated 5 March 1616, prohibiting various heretical works to which were added any
advocating the Copernican system. In this decree no mention is made of Galileo, or of any of his
works. Neither is the name of the pope introduced, though there is no doubt that he fully
approved the decision, having presided at the session of the Inquisition, wherein the matter
was discussed and decided. In thus acting, it is undeniable that the ecclesiastical authorities
committed a grave and deplorable error, and sanctioned an altogether false principle as to the
proper use of Scripture. …

That both these pontiffs [Paul V and Urban VIII] were convinced anti-Copernicans cannot be
doubted, nor that they believed the Copernican system to be unscriptural and desired its
suppression. The question is, however, whether either of them condemned the doctrine ex
cathedra. This, it is clear, they never did. As to the decree of 1616, we have seen that it was issued by
the Congregation of the Index, which can raise no difficulty in regard of infallibility, this tribunal
being absolutely incompetent to make a dogmatic decree. Nor is the case altered by the fact that the
pope approved the Congregation’s decision in forma communi, that is to say, to the extent
needful for the purpose intended, namely to prohibit the circulation of writings which were
judged harmful. The pope and his assessors may have been wrong in such a judgment, but this
does not alter the character of the pronouncement, or convert it into a decree ex cathedra.

As to the second trial in 1633, this was concerned not so much with the doctrine as with the person
of Galileo, and his manifest breach of contract in not abstaining from the active propaganda of
Copernican doctrines. The sentence, passed upon him in consequence, clearly implied a
condemnation of Copernicanism, but it made no formal decree on the subject, and did not receive
the pope’s signature.1

This article repeatedly stresses that the Pope did not make an “ex cathedra” pronouncement. However, it is
important to note that the doctrine of what constitutes an infallible ex cathedra decision was only formally
promulgated in the Vatican Council of 1870, about 250 years after the Galileo affair. It is not a surprise that
this Council attempted to exclude such Papal condemnations from possessing infallibility, since almost all
Roman Catholics knew by 1870 that Geocentrism was most certainly false. The true case is much worse for
the Papal side than the Catholic Encyclopedia admits. However, they concede that the Pope, the “Supreme
Judge of the faithful”, “fully approved the decision” of a congregation of the top authorities of the Roman
religion, held in the presence of the Pope, and decreed that Copernicanism is “scientifically false, and anti-
Scriptural or heretical”, and that the Pope “may have been wrong in such a judgment”, which he certainly was.

Indeed, a strong argument can be made that the decree against Copernicanism was ex cathedra, but I will not
endeavor to prove that here, rather focusing on the serious errors of the Popes and Roman Catholic
authorities, which is good evidence of the unreliability of Papal decisions and the authorities of the Latin
Church.

On March 5th 1616, the Congregation of the Index, a Committee of Cardinals appointed by the Pope for the
prevention of the circulation of dangerous books, published the following decree:

Since it has come to the knowledge of this Holy Congregation that the false Pythagorean doctrine,
altogether opposed to the Divine Scripture, of the mobility of the earth, and the immobility of the sun,
which Nicolas Copernicus, in his work De revolutionibus orbium caelestium, and Didacus a Stunica in
his Commentary on Job, teach, is being promulgated and accepted by many, as may be seen from a

1 Galileo Galilei, in CE, Vol. VI, pp. 344 – 346.

 700

printed letter of a certain Carmelite Father (Foscarini), entitled, &c., wherein the said Father has
attempted to show that the said doctrine is consonant to truth, and not opposed to Holy Scripture;
therefore, lest this opinion insinuate itself further to the damage of Catholic truth, this Congregation
has decreed that the said books, Copernicus De revolutionibus and Stunica on Job, be suspended till
they are corrected, but that the book of Foscarini the Carmelite be altogether prohibited and
condemned, and all other books that teach the same thing.1

The name of Galileo and his Dialogue remained on the Index until 1835, when they were left out for the first
time, along with the works of Copernicus and Kepler.

In the preface to what is commonly called the Jesuit’s edition of Newton’s Principia in 1742, the authors write:

Newton, in this third book, supposes the motion of the earth. We could not explain the author’s
propositions otherwise than by making the same supposition. We are therefore forced to sustain a
character which is not our own; but we profess to pay the obsequious reverence which is due to the
decrees pronounced by the sovereign Pontiffs against the motion of the earth. 2

The Holy Office of the Inquisition formally declared:

That the sun is in the centre of the universe and immovable from its place, is absurd,
philosophically false, and formally heretical, because it is expressly contrary to Holy Scripture.

That the earth is not the centre of the universe nor immovable, but that it moves, and
also has diurnal motion, is absurd, philosophically false, and, theologically considered, is at
least erroneous in faith.3

Concerning the first point condemned, it is true that the sun is not the center of the universe, and it does
move, along with the solar system, through the galaxy. Moreover, the sun does spin, and it also revolves
around the center of mass of the solar system (which is inside the radius of the sun). However, by stating that
the sun being at the center of the universe is “expressly contrary to Holy Scripture”, the Inquisition can only
be referring to Scripture passages that seem to imply the sun moving relative to the Earth, and it has
therefore failed to properly interpret Scripture. In regards to the second point, the Earth is not the center of
the universe, which is condemned as “at least erroneous in faith.”

I wish to note that many intelligent and wise Roman Catholics, both laymen and clerics, defended Galileo at
the time and held that Scripture does not teach the immobility of the Earth, nor the mobility of the sun around
the Earth.

Also see William W. Roberts, The Pontifical Decrees Against the Doctrine of the Earth’s Movement and the
Ultramontane Defence of Them, London: Parker & Co., 1885. Roberts was a Roman Catholic priest opposed to
Ultramontanism. A good modern book that discusses this topic, and with a good bibliography, is Jerome J.
Langford, Galileo, Science and the Church, South Bend, IN: St. Augustine’s Press, 1998 (first published in
1966). Langford was a Roman Catholic Dominican priest. A scholarly modern work is Maurice A.
Finocchiaro, Retrying Galileo: 1633 – 1992, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2005. Professor
Finocchiaro (1942 – current) is the world’s foremost scholar on Galileo, and his various other books and
studies on Galileo are worth reading.

1 George Salmon, The Infallibility of the Church, Lecture XIV, p. 236, London: John Murray, 3rd Ed., 1899.
Salmon’s entire chapter on “The Blunders of the Infallible Guide” (Lect. XIV, pp. 225 – 261) is worth reading.
2 George Salmon, The Infallibility of the Church, Lecture XIV, pp. 237 – 238, London: John Murray, 3rd Ed.,

1899.
3 William W. Roberts, The Pontifical Decrees Against the Doctrine of the Earth’s Movement and the

Ultramontane Defence of Them, p. 70, London: Parker & Co., 1885.

 701

Appendix VII Lists of Latin Errors from Important Documents

I will list here the Latin or Roman Catholic errors mentioned in some important Orthodox documents on the
controversy.1

Photius’s Encyclical to the Eastern Patriarchs in 867 lists the following Latin errors: fasting on Saturday,
despising the marriage of priests, limiting the role of priests (and requiring bishops) in Chrismation, adding
the Filioque to the Creed, and teaching the Filioque.

Michael Cerularius’s Letter to Peter of Antioch lists the following Latin errors: adding the Filioque to the
Creed, teaching the Filioque, forbidding married men to become priests, and various Judaizing practices
including using unleavened bread in the Eucharist, eating the meat of beasts that have been strangled,
shaving facial hair, observing the Sabbath (by fasting), eating unclean meats, monks eating pork fat (lard) and
all the skin right down to the meat, behaving in the same manner in the first week of Lent (Cheese-fare Week)
as in the week before, and eating meat on Wednesday and cheese and eggs on Friday, but fasting all day on
the Sabbath. Cerularius also mentions the Western practices of allowing multiple Eucharists in a day,
allowing two brothers to marry two sisters, bishops wearing rings, bishops going to war and staining their
hands with blood, administering baptism by a single immersion only, and placing salt in the mouth of the
baptismal candidate. Cerularius also asserts that there were Latins who did not adore the relics of the saints
or venerate icons, and do not accept the teaching of the three hierarchs Gregory the Theologian, Basil the
Great, and John Chrysostom.

Mark of Ephesus’s Encyclical to the Orthodox Christians on the Mainland and in the Islands in 1440 lists the
following errors of the Latins and Greek Unionists: teaching the Filioque, adding the Filioque to the Creed, the
inconsistency of the unionists who believe the Filioque to be orthodox and lawfully added to the Creed yet
who do not say the Filioque in the Creed (thus uttering two divergent Creeds), inventing Thomistic
distinctions between generation and procession, the inconsistency of the unionists who believe the Eucharist
to be rightly consecrated in unleavened bread yet who do not personally use it (resulting in two discordant
Liturgies), pouring in Baptism instead of triple immersion, not anointing with Chrism after Baptism, the
attempt to have a “middle ground” between Latins and Orthodox, and the union resulting in divergent and
discordant rites, fasts, church usages, and other similar matters. Mark also brings up the essence-energies
distinction, the immediate judgment after death to heaven or hell, the belief in a purgatorial fire, and Papal
supremacy.

The Encyclical of the Eastern Patriarchs in 1848 lists the following Latin errors: teaching the Filioque, adding
the Filioque to the Creed, sprinkling instead of triple immersion in baptism, denial of the divine Cup to the
Laity, elevation of the Host, the use of wafers, unleavened bread, the disuse of the Epiklesis or Invocation in
the Liturgy, not anointing (Chrismating or Confirming) infants, not giving the Eucharist to infants, excluding
married men from the Priesthood, the Supremacy and Infallibility of the Pope, adulterating the sacred
writings of the Church Fathers (by forgeries), and various Scholastic novelties.

The Patriarchal Encyclical of 1895 lists the following Latin errors: the inconsistencies of the Papal
communion accepting Greek unionists who do not say the Filioque in the Creed, having one party baptise by
sprinkling and another by triple immersion, one using leavened bread in the Eucharist and another using
unleavened bread, one giving the Cup to the Laity and the other giving only Bread, as well as these Latin
practices themselves. Also, purgatorial fire, the immaculate conception of Mary, the temporal power,
infallibility, monarchy, and supremacy of the Pope, the Filioque, omitting the Epiklesis or Invocation in the
Liturgy, the Papal treasury of merit and the superabundance of the virtues of the saints, the full reward for
the just before the universal resurrection and judgment, claiming that Peter was the chief founder of the
Church of Rome (whereas Paul played the larger role in its founding), and the mass of forged and spurious
documents used by the Papal communion.

1For citations, see the beginning of the Bibliography and the works listed in the Filioque chapter, under the
heading of The Great Schism of 1054.
 702

Several miscellaneous objections were also brought up, such as Latin immorality, the behavior of their
missionaries, historical questions, etc.

Appendix VIII Conversion of Thomas William Allies to Roman Catholicism

Since I cite and recommended Allies’s work against the claims of Papal supremacy, I wish to include some
comments on this author’s later conversion to Roman Catholicism from Anglicanism. Concerning the
Orthodox Church, Allies says, after his conversion,

Thus, the false principle which worked in the Church of Constantinople from the beginning, in that it
sought to be exalted on the ground of its rank as new Rome, the new Rome of the Christian Emperor,
against the Rome of St. Peter and St. Paul, has, in the course of fifteen hundred years, spread its taint
to the corruption of the whole body.1

However, it has been shown that this was not a false principle, nor a corruption, but the principle of the
Universal Church confirmed in Ecumenical Councils, and admitted by Rome, when it conceded the second
rank to Constantinople (see the section on the 28th Canon of Chalcedon).

Julian Joseph Overbeck comments,

Thus far Mr. Allies. He is gone since; gone where we cannot follow him; gone where nobody expected
him to go. Nobody did wonder at Dr. Newman joining the Romish Church. His propensity was, ever
since he looked out for the Catholic Church, plainly Romish. He never looked to the East, never was
kind to the East. But Mr. Allies studied the Eastern Church, loved it, defended it against the Romish
pretensions. Why then is he gone where our eyes follow him sorrowing? Mr. Allies was a Western
mind, born and trained in a Western atmosphere, imbued with Western notions. The Western mode
of thinking, of feeling, of worshipping had pervaded, as it were, his system. He looked for the Catholic
Church, i.e. that part which was in unison with his Western mind and heart, the Romish Church,
which, in spite of her errors and innovations, is still the only exponent of Western Catholicism. 2

The Russian theologian Aleksei Stepanovich Khomyakov, in his correspondence with William Palmer,
comments,

Pardon me if I speak thus boldly; but the examples of Mr. Newman and Mr. Allies are, in my opinion,
conclusive. They were certainly better Christians formerly than they are now; their open-
heartedness is gone for ever; they have crippled themselves instead of expanding. 3

The Under-Procurator of the Most Holy Governing Synod, chamberlain to the Tsar, and Russian historian,
Andrew Nicolaievitch Mouravieff (1806 – 1874), has the following to say on Allies and Roman apologetics:

Among the most recent foreign writers, I would earnestly press every one who takes any interest in
this question, to read the remarkable treatise of the late Anglican Priest Allies, intitled, “The Anglican
Church freed from the charge of Schism by the testimony of the Seven Œcumenical Councils, and of

1 Thomas William Allies, Per Crucem Ad Lucem: The Result of a Life, Vol. I, Introduction, Section III, p. 69,
London: C. Kegan Paul & Co., 1879. Allies appears to have lost his sense of criticism after he joined Roman
Catholicism, and I have pointed out that he commits a serious misquotation of the Seventh Council in two of
his books (see the chapter on Allies’s Misquotation of the Seventh Ecumenical Council).
2 Julian Joseph Overbeck, Catholic Orthodoxy and Anglo-Catholicism, pp. 58 – 59, London: N. Trübner & Co.,

1866.
3 William John Birkbeck (editor), Russia and the English Church During the Last Fifty Years, Vol. I, Ch. XV, p.

124, London: Rivington, Percival & Co., 1895.

 703

the Holy Fathers.” Nowhere are all the testimonies of the Primitive Universal Church against Roman
pretensions set forth so fully or so clearly as in this book.

Though the object of the writer was, apparently, to defend his own Church, his proofs have all
reference to the Eastern Church, for the Anglican was as yet little heard of in those times of the
Councils from which he draws his testimonies: and it may be said with truth that his book is one of
the best for the defence of the Œcumenical rights of the East, so far as it can be said to need any
defence from us at all. From it I shall borrow some testimonies to the rightfulness of our side, arising
from certain critical passages of history, which reveal the truth. The readers of this book need not be
disturbed by the fact which the Romans urge against it, that the author after having written so much
against Rome, has in spite of himself become a convert to Rome. The fact is true: but it can scarce
have been from his having come to be convinced of the truth of the Roman pretensions, after all the
unanswerable proofs which he had before brought together against them from the holy Fathers and
the Canons of the Councils: more probably it was owing to the unhappy state of that Church to which
he himself belonged. To his eyes, as to those of many others, it had almost ceased to be a Christian
Church from the time that by a decision of its Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury, concurred in by
the Archbishop of York, though against the opinion of the Bishop of London, and given by these
Archbishops as members of a secular Court in conjunction with certain lay Lords, a new rule was
established respecting the question which had been moved between a Priest and his Bishop, whether
Baptism washes away original sin? They decided that it was free to preach either way affirmatively or
negatively on this point, though the doctrine involved is the very foundation of Christianity. Allies,
and many others beside him, thought that it was better to belong to the Roman Church, even with its
excessive pretentions, than to belong to no Church at all, seeing that the Archbishops of the Anglican
Church had now ceased to maintain the fundamental doctrine of Christianity, that is the doctrine of
Baptism. Here we see one of the causes of that great success which has attended the proselytizing
efforts of the Roman Catholics in England, especially of late years, when so many men of
distinguished learning, who had been striving to revive primitive orthodoxy within their own
Anglican Church, have all at once gone over to the Roman. But this ought not to prevent any
investigator of truth from distinguishing between that which is attributable to the force of
circumstances, and those testimonies which may be found in the works of the writers themselves.

The main art – not to say artifice – of Rome in her controversies with the orthodox, consists in the
attempt to draw off their attention from practice to theory, from that unbroken series of
Ecclesiastical facts and Canons of Councils which during a succession of many centuries from the
beginning bear witness in favour of the East, but which need to be known, to that imposing system of
the Roman monarchy which grew up after the rupture, and dazzles the eyes of the ignorant by the
splendour of a pretended universality. Some particular expressions of Fathers and Councils cut out
from their context, and viewed apart without any adequate accompanying idea of the time and
circumstances, and some particular passages of Ecclesiastical history urged and commented upon
with similar unfairness, are laid as the foundation of this system, which is utterly contradictory to the
primitive constitution and life of the Church.1

1John Mason Neale (translator and editor), Voices From The East, Ch. I, Catholic Orthodoxy and Roman
Catholicism, pp. 4 – 6, London: Joseph Masters, 1859.
 704

Book V Orthodox Bibliography and Recommended Resources

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge: but fools despise wisdom and instruction. (Prov. i 7) The fear
of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom: and the knowledge of the holy is understanding. (Prov. ix 10) Take fast
hold of instruction; let her not go: keep her; for she is thy life. (Prov. iv 13) Wisdom is the principal thing;
therefore get wisdom: and with all thy getting get understanding. (Prov. iv 7) Receive my instruction, and not
silver; and knowledge rather than choice gold. (Prov. viii 10)

This bibliography is a comprehensive collection of first millennium Christian sources and of traditional
Orthodox writings available in English. I have aimed to include all writings from the Church Fathers and
authors in Christian lands, in the West to the eleventh-century, and in the East and by Orthodox authors to the
beginning of the twentieth-century. Many of the works not listed individually will be found in the multi-
volume series recommended.

Many of the following resources are publicly and freely available on the Internet. In the last two decades,
millions of books have been digitised and made viewable by organisations such as Google Books, Internet
Archive, HathiTrust, and Project Gutenberg. Those who take the time to familiarize themselves with these
works will learn much on the teachings and beautiful harmony of the Orthodox Church and gain a thorough
understanding of the Roman Catholic controversy, as well as the details of Christian history and faith.

The Holy Bible

The Orthodox Study Bible is an excellent version. The King James Version is also a good English translation of
the Old and New Testaments. If you have a smart phone, there are several convenient Bible apps.

Part I Recommended Works on the Roman Catholic Controversy:

Ecumenical Patriarch St. Photius the Great of Constantinople: Encyclical to the Eastern Patriarchs (866/867).
Translated in Holy Transfiguration Monastery (translators), On the Mystagogy of the Holy Spirit, pp. 49 – 54,
[Boston, MA]: Studion Publishers, 1983. This is not a close translation, as the footnote on p. 54 remarks. The
original text is in Migne, PG., Vol. CII, pp. 721 – 741.

The Encyclical Letter of St. Marc of Ephesus To All Orthodox Christians on the Mainland and in the Islands,
July 1440, Boston, MA: Romiosyne, 2013. This letter was first translated in Archimandrite Amvrossy Pogodin,
Encyclical Letter of Saint Mark of Ephesus, in Orthodox Word, Vol. III, No. II, pp. 53 – 59, March-April-May,
1967, Platina, CA: St Herman of Alaska Brotherhood, 1967.

Encyclical of the Eastern Patriarchs, A Reply to the Epistle of Pope Pius IX, “to the Easterns” (1848).
Published as Encyclical Epistle of the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church to the Faithful Everywhere:
Being a Reply to the Epistle of Pius IX to the Easterns, dated January 6, 1848, in Papers of the Russo-Greek
Committee, 2nd Series, No. 1., New York, NY: John F. Trow, 1867.

The Patriarchal Encyclical of 1895, A Reply to the Papal Encyclical of Pope Leo XIII on Reunion (1895).
Eustathius Metallinos (translator), Anthimos VII, Reply of the Holy Catholic and Apostolic Orthodox Church of
the East to the Encyclical of Pope Leo XIII on Re-union, Art. VII, London: J. & E. Bumpus, 2nd Ed., 1896
(Originally published in Constantinople, 1895). Also published as Marios Pilavakis, Answer of the Great
Church of Constantinople to the Papal Encyclical on Union: In the Original Greek with an English Translation,
London: Greek Christian Orthodox Brotherhood, 1984.
 705

Edward Denny, Papalism: A Treatise on the Claims of the Papacy as Set Forth in the Encyclical Satis Cognitum,
London: Rivingtons, 1912. Denny was a very learned Anglican scholar. This is the best treatise on the subject
in the English language.

Frederick William Puller, The Primitive Saints and the See of Rome, London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 3rd
Ed., 1900. Puller was a very learned Anglican scholar. This book is a kind of prequel to the above work. Also
see the book review in The Church Quarterly Review (Vol. LI, No. CII, January 1901, Art. IV, Father Puller on
the Papal Claims, pp. 350 – 369, London: Spottiswoode & Co., 1901).

Isaac Barrow, A Treatise of the Pope’s Supremacy, London: Miles Flesher, 1680 (reprinted with improved
notes in in Supplement to Gibson’s Preservative From Popery: Being Important Treatises on the Romish
Controversy, Vol. I, Barrow on the Pope’s Supremacy, London: British Society for Promoting the Religious
Principles of the Reformation, 1849). Barrow was a very learned Anglican scholar and Master of Trinity
College in Cambridge, and was also a mathematician and tutor to the famous scientist Sir Isaac Newton. This
is widely considered the standard and classic Protestant work against the Papal claims.

Bohdan Struminsky (editor and translator) et al., Lev Krevza’s A Defense of Church Unity and Zaxarija
Kopystens’kyj’s Palinodia, Harvard Library of Early Ukrainian Literature, English Translations, Vol. III, Parts I
& II, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995. This is a little-known but excellent Orthodox work of
750 pages, originally written 1620 – 1623, in reply to a Uniate Roman Catholic apologetic book of about 150
pages (also translated here), and the modern editor has provided numerous valuable notes across two
volumes.

Julian Joseph Overbeck, A Plain View of the Claims of the Orthodox Catholic Church as Opposed to All Other
Christian Denominations, London: Trübner & Co., 1881. Overbeck was a learned convert to Orthodoxy from
the Roman Catholic priesthood.

Arthur Cleveland Coxe (translator), Abbé Guettée, The Papacy; Its Historic Origin and Primitive Relations
with the Eastern Churches, New York, NY: Carleton, 1867 [1866]. Abbé Guettée was a learned 19th century
convert to Orthodoxy from the Roman Catholic priesthood. An American Protestant translated this work into
English from the French. I highly recommend the rest of Guettée’s works, which are in French.

Patrick Demetrios Viscuso (editor and translator), The True Significance of Sacred Tradition and Its Great
Worth, by St. Raphael M. Hawaweeny: A Nineteenth-Century Response to Roman Catholic and Protestant
Missionaries in the East, DeKalb, IL: Northern Illinois University Press, 2017 (originally written in 1886).
Note that the complete works of St. Raphael of Brooklyn (1860 – 1915) have been published in three volumes
in Arabic by Dr. Adnan Trabulsi in 2015, and are available from The Antiochian Village.

Edward Bouverie Pusey, Eirenicon, 3 Parts, Oxford: (John Henry and James Parker for Part I, and James
Parker & Co. for Parts II & III), 1865 – 1870. These three volumes are written from an ecumenical Anglican
perspective, but contain important information and several good arguments against Roman Catholicism,
showing its significant internal contradictions. Part II is an excellent treatise against the Immaculate
Conception, which I referred to and highly recommended in the chapter on that subject, to contrast with Pius
IX’s definition claiming the support of history.

Thomas William Allies, The Church of England Cleared from the Charge of Schism, by the Decrees of the Seven
Ecumenical Councils and the Traditions of the Fathers, Ch. II, Sect. II, p. 94, Oxford: John Henry Parker, 2nd
Ed., 1848 [written while an Anglican]. Also see the good article Allies on the Papal Supremacy, in The
Christian Remembrancer: A Quarterly Review, Vol. XXI, No. LXXI, January – June, 1851, Art. II, pp. 36 – 83,
London: J. & C. Mozley, 1851. Also see the appendix on the Conversion of Thomas William Allies to Roman
Catholicism.

Arthur Edward Gayer, Papal Infallibility and Supremacy tried by Ecclesiastical History, Scripture and Reason,
London: Partridge and Co., 1877.
 706

The Roman See in the Early Church, by William Bright, London: Longmans, Green, & Co., 1896. This essay is
printed in a volume with other studies in Church history.

Alfred Sommers (translator), Johann Friedrich von Schulte, The Power of the Roman Popes over Princes,
Countries, Nations, Individuals, in Accordance with Their Teachings and Actions since Gregory VII. Reviewed
in Estimating Their Infallibility, and Contrasted with the Reverse Teachings of the Popes and Councils of the
First Eight Centuries, Concerning the Relation of the Temporal Power to that of the Church, Adelaide:
Andrews, Thomas, & Clarke, 1871. This work is necessary reading to gain a view of the Papal claims over
secular authorities.

Gerard Shelley (translator), Chrysostomos A. Papadopoulos (Archbishop of Athens and All Greece), The Third
Oecumenical Council and the Primacy of the Bishop of Rome: A Reply to the Encyclical “Lux Veritatis” of Pius
XI, London: Faith Press, 1933.

Z. Xintaras (translator), John N. Karmiris, The Schism of the Roman Church, in five chapters in the Theologia
Review, pp. 400 – 587, Athens, 1950. Karmires was a professor in the University of Athens.

John Mason Neale (editor), Basil Popoff (translator), Ivan N. Ostroumov, The History of the Council of
Florence, London: Joseph Masters, 1861 (reprinted Boston, MA: Holy Transfiguration Monastery, 1971). Basil
Popoff was a student of the St. Petersburg Ecclesiastical Academy.

Holy Apostles Convent (compiler and translator), The Lives of the Pillars of Orthodoxy: Saint Photios the
Great, Patriarch of Constantinople, Saint Gregory Palamas, Archbishop of Thessalonica, and Saint Mark
Evgenikos, Metropolitan of Ephesus, Buena Vista, CO: Holy Apostles Convent, 1990 (Reprinted 1996 & 2000).

Julian Joseph Overbeck, Catholic Orthodoxy and Anglo-Catholicism: A Word about Intercommunion between
the English and the Orthodox Churches, London: N. Trü bner & Co., 1866. Overbeck is here a notable anti-
ecumenist, and his words should be kept in mind as you read the Anglican works mentioned here.

The Orthodox Catholic Review (1867 – 1891), by Julian Joseph Overbeck. The complete set of this work is
difficult to find, but you can check WorldCat.org to find the nearest library
(www.worldcat.org/title/orthodox-catholic-review/oclc/18238446).

Julian Joseph Overbeck, The Bonn Conferences and the Filioque Question, London: Trü bner & Co., 1876;
Julian Joseph Overbeck, The Bonn Conferences: Impressions Produced by their Transactions, London:
Trü bner & Co., 1875. These two pamphlets on the Bonn Conference were first published as articles in Vol. IV
of Overbeck’s Orthodox Catholic Review. Other articles in his Review were likewise published as separate
pamphlets. Overbeck also published in German, French, Latin, Greek, and Syriac. A list of his Orthodox works
can be found in “A Plain View”.

Janus, The Pope and the Council, London: Rivingtons, 3rd Ed., 1870 (translated from the German). This was
written by Dr. Johann Joseph Ignaz von Döllinger (with the collaboration of J. N. Huber and J. Friedrich), who
was a very learned Roman Catholic historian and professor for 50 years, but left the Roman Catholic
communion as a result of the errors of the Latin First Vatican Council, unable to reconcile his mind with what
he knew was falsehood. The first edition of this work was written while he was still a Roman Catholic, but
was placed on the Index of Prohibited Books in 1869.

Quirinus, Letters From Rome on the Council, London: Rivingtons, 1870. This was also edited by Dr. Johann
Joseph Ignaz von Döllinger.

Franz Heinrich Reusch (editor), Ignaz von Döllinger, Declarations and Letters on the Vatican Decrees 1869 –
1887, Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1891.
 707

Henry Boynton Smith (editor), Alfred Plummer (translator), Johann Joseph Ignaz von Döllinger, Fables
Respecting the Popes of the Middle Ages, New York, NY: Dodd & Mead, 1872 [also published with a different
introduction, London: Rivingtons, 1871].

John Henry Hopkins, The Church of Rome in her Primitive Purity, Compared with the Church of Rome at the
Present Day: Being a Candid Examination of Her Claims to Universal Dominion, London: J. G. & F. Rivington,
Rev. Ed., 1839.

James Meyrick, Papal Supremacy Tested by Antiquity, London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longman, 1855.
Meyrick was an Anglican priest and scholar of Queen’s College, Oxford. This is a short tract that stands well
with the two works listed above and below. Also see the good article Wilberforce on the Supremacy, in The
Christian Remembrancer, Vol. XXIX, No. LXXXVIII, April, 1855, Art. IV, pp. 369 – 457, London: J. & C. Mozley,
1855.

Charles Egnert Kennet, The Claims of the Roman See to Supremacy, Disproved by an Examination of the
Testimony of Catholic Antiquity, Madras: H. W. Laurie, 1869. Kennet was an Anglican missionary, scholar,
and professor who lived in India.

Robert Charles Jenkins, The Privilege of Peter; and the Claims of the Roman Church Confronted with the
Scriptures, the Councils, and the Testimony of the Popes Themselves, London: Henry S. King & Co., 1875.

Archibald Robertson, Roman Claims to Supremacy, in Authority in Matters of Faith, The Church Historical
Society Lectures, Series II, No. XIII, V, pp. 197 – 258, London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 3rd
Ed. (same as 2nd Ed.), 1901. I disagree with the author’s general attitude, but there are some valuable
notices, as well as throughout this entire lecture series.

William Peoples, Roman Claims in the Light of History, London: W. Walker, 1904.

Papal Infallibility (1932) and Romanism and Truth, Parts I & II (1930, 1931), by George Gordon Coulton, an
Anglican scholar and historian. These three volumes are perhaps the best written on the subject since the
First World War. Many of Coulton’s other works are valuable and necessary reading.

Beresford James Kidd, The Roman Primacy to A.D. 461, London: SPCK, 1936.

Henry Edward Symonds, The Church Universal and the See of Rome: A Study of the Relations Between the
Episcopate and the Papacy Up to the Schism Between East and West, London: SPCK, 1939.

William Shaw Kerr, A Handbook on the Papacy, New York, NY: Philosophical Library, 1951 [first published
1950]. Kerr (1873 – 1960) was the Irish Anglican Bishop of Down and Dromore, and this book seems to be
the last treatise against the Papacy written by a bishop of the Anglican communion. Also see his “The
Independence of the Celtic Church in Ireland” (1931).

John Metcalf Davenport, Papal Infallibility: “Catholic’s” Replies to “Cleophas,” Refuting the Vatican Dogma,
Saint John, NB: J. & A. McMillan, 1885. Davenport (1842 – 1913) was an Anglican priest, and he is debating
William Cleophas Gaynor (who was mentioned above in the section on Honorius).

John Ayre (editor), The Works of John Jewel, Vol. I, Of the Supremacy, Art. IV, pp. 338 – 444, Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1845.

William Cave, A Dissertation Concerning the Government of the Ancient Church by Bishops, Metropolitans,
and Patriarchs, in Henry Cary (editor), William Cave, Primitive Christianity: Or, the Religion of the Ancient
Christians in the First Ages of the Gospel, pp. 363 – 464, Oxford: J. Vincent, 1840.
 708

Charles Elliott (revised, corrected, and supplemented by William Harris Rule), Delineation of Roman
Catholicism, Book. III, The Government of the Church of Rome, pp. 442 – 714, London: Wesleyan Conference
Office, Fourth Ed., 1877.

A briefe treatise, conteynynge a playne and fruitfull declaration of the Popes vsurped primacye, London:
Henry Sutton for Rafe Newbery, 1560. The original author is Nilus Cabasilas. This work was translated from
the Greek by an Anglican student at Oxford named Thomas Gressop, who mistakenly thought this work was
seven hundred years old, when it was just about 200 years old at the time. This is perhaps the earliest work
from a second-millennium Orthodox author published in the English language. The print copy of this book is
rare, and a text version can be found online
(http://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/eebo/A17511.0001.001?rgn=main;view=fulltext).

William David Webster, The Matthew 16 Controversy: Peter and the Rock, Battle Ground, WA: Christian
Resources, 1996. Webster has further material on his website (https://christiantruth.com/articles/articles-
roman-catholicism/), which helps to supplement his book, and see the following excellent articles: “Augustine
– De Unitate Ecclesiae – On the Unity of the Church – An English Translation”, “Documentation of the Patristic
Exegesis of the Rock of Matthew 16:18”, “The Church Fathers’ Interpretation of the Rock of Matthew 16:18”,
“The Papacy and the Doctrine of Development”, “Forgeries and the Papacy”, “An Ecumenical Council Officially
Condemns a Pope for Heresy”, three responses to Steve Ray (“A Refutation of the Misrepresentations of the
Writings of William Webster and of the Church Fathers by Roman Catholic, Stephen Ray, in His Book Upon
This Rock”, “A Second Response to Steve Ray: A Refutation of His Misrepresentations of the Teaching of
Cyprian and of the Comments of William Webster”, “The Papacy: A Third Response to Stephen Ray”, and this
last response consists of “A Response to Stephen Ray’s Rebuttal to the Writings of William Webster: An
Examination of the Fundamentalist Roman Catholic Approach to History and Its Teaching on Unanimous
Consent and Authority as Represented by Stephen Ray”, “A Refutation of the Misrepresentations of the
Writings of Augustine and William Webster by Roman Catholic, Stephen Ray”, “A Refutation of the
Misrepresentations of the Writings of John Chrysostom and William Webster by Roman Catholic, Stephen
Ray”) and the response to Scott Windsor (“The Papacy: A Response to Roman Catholic, Scott Windsor: A
Rebuttal of Roman Catholic, Scott Windsor, to William Webster’s Rebuttal of Steve Ray’s Misrepresentations
of the Teaching of Augustine”) [It appears that the pages with Webster’s responses to Ray and Windsor are
not currently available online, but they can be found with the Internet Archive Wayback Machine]. Webster
has compiled the most extensive collection of quotes from the Church Fathers on St. Peter and the Petrine
passages in the New Testament, but very many conciliar records and other fathers and ancient writings could
still be added to it.

The learned Orthodox apologetics group Ubi Petrus, at www.ubipetrusibiecclesia.com, which produces many
valuable articles on Roman Catholicism, focusing on the Papacy, as well as other issues. Ubi Petrus has done
some recent debates with Roman Catholics, and has also produced several high-quality videos and
participated in recorded discussions, which can be found on YouTube.

The learned Orthodox apologist Jay Dyer, at www.jaysanalysis.com, who hosts and produces many valuable
discussions on Roman Catholicism, among various other subjects, which can be found on his YouTube
channel. I have done an interview with Jay Dyer on Forgeries.

Craig Truglia is another Orthodox layman who produces good articles and discussions on Roman Catholicism,
along with other theological matters, and his website is www.orthodoxchristiantheology.com. Truglia also
has a YouTube channel, where I have done two interviews.

The above works are the best on the subject in English, and are sufficient to demonstrate the early Church’s
view of the Bishop of Rome. The following are also valuable:

Richard Frederick Littledale, The Petrine Claims: A Critical Inquiry, London: Society for Promoting Christian
Knowledge, 1889. Also see Littledale’s Plain Reasons Against Joining the Church of Rome, London: Society for
Promoting Christian Knowledge, Last Ed., 1886 (though not as good as the former).
 709

See the following articles in The Church Quarterly Review, London: Spottiswoode & Co., bearing on the
Roman Catholic controversy or Orthodoxy (https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/003917160):

(Vols. I – X) Vol. I, October 1875, Art. I, Italy and Her Church, pp. 1 – 35; Vol. II, July 1876, Art. VIII,
The Vatican Council, pp. 504 – 534; Vol. III, January 1877, Art. VII, The Filioque Controversy and the
Easterns, pp. 421 – 465; Vol. VI, April 1878, Art. I, Legal Evidence of Scripture on the Petrine Claims,
pp. 1 – 41; Vol. VI, April 1878, Art. VI, Preaching at the Council of Trent, pp. 152 – 184; Vol. VII,
October 1878, Art. I, Further Evidence on the Petrine Claims, pp. 1 – 34; Vol. VIII, April 1879, Art I,
The Petrine Claims at the Bar of History, pp. 1 – 49; Vol. IX, October 1879, Art. I, Preaching and Other
Matters in Rome in 1879, pp. 1 – 39; Vol. IX, January 1880, Art. IX, The Lack of Prescription for the
Petrine Claims, pp. 482 – 518.

(Vols. XI – XX) Vol. XI, October 1880, Art. III, S. Thomas Aquinas, pp. 59 – 77; Vol. XI, January 1881,
Art. VI, Mission and Jurisdiction – The Primitive Rule and the Roman Usurpation, pp. 397 – 412; Vol.
XII, April 1881, Art. VI, The Letters of Pope Gregory I, pp. 133 – 176; Vol. XII, April 1881, Art. VII, The
Dawn of the Papal Monarchy, pp. 177 – 200; Vol. XII, July 1881, Art II, Cardinal Beaufort, pp. 370 –
392; Vol. XII, July 1881, Art. X, Father Ryder and Dr. Littledale, pp. 539 – 571; Vol. XIII, October 1881,
Art. I, The British Church, pp. 1 – 28; Vol. XIII, October 1881, Art. VII, A Roman Ecclesiastic –
Vincenzo Anivitti, pp. 141 – 160; Vol. XIII, January 1882, Art. IV, Cardinal Kemp, p. 336 – 353; Vol.
XIII, January 1882, Art. V, The Dawn of the Papal Monarchy – II, pp. 353 – 375; Vol. XIV, April 1882,
Art. I, Ireland Before and After Emancipation, pp. 1 - 36; Vol. XIV, July 1882, Art. IV, Dr. Cyriacus’s
Ecclesiastical History, pp. 309 – 331; Vol. XV, October 1882, Art. IV, The Papal Monarchy in the Sixth
Century, pp. 77 – 109; Vol. XVI, April 1883, Art. II, Langen’s History of the Roman Church, pp. 11 – 30;
Vol. XVII, January 1884, Art. VI, The Gregorian Papacy, pp. 371 – 394; Vol. XVIII, April 1884, Art. X,
Cardinal Bourchier, pp. 175 – 187; Vol. XVIII, July 1884, Art XI, The Legal Flaws in the Later Papacy,
pp. 437 – 465; Vol. XIX, October 1884, Art. IV, Cardinal Repyngdon and the Followers of Wycliffe, pp.
59 – 82; Vol. XX, April 1885, Art. VI, Gascoigne’s ‘Theological Dictionary’, pp. 125 – 146; Vol. XX, April
1885, Art. VII, The Failure of Vaticanism, pp. 146 – 171; Vol. XX, July 1885, Art. IV, The Authorship
and Authenticity of Papal Bulls, p. 322 – 338.

(Vols. XXI – XXX) Vol. XXI, January 1886, Art. X, Mr. St. George Mivart and Papal Infallibility, pp. 403 –
410; Vol. XXIII, October 1886, Art. VI, Father Paolo Sarpi, pp. 135 – 155; Vol. XXV, January 1888, Art.
IV, Papal Infallibility and Galileo, pp. 338 – 362; Vol. XXV, January 1888, Art. V, The Italian
Renaissance and the Roman Catholic Reaction, pp. 362 – 388; Vol. XXVI, July 1888, Art. VI,
Creighton’s History of the Papacy, pp. 388 – 406; Vol. XXVII, January 1889, Art. V, The Roman
Question – Rivington and Gore, pp. 332 – 352; Vol. XXVII, January 1889, Art. X, John Gerson, pp. 425 –
438; Vol. XXVIII, July 1889, Art. IV, Döllinger and Reusch on the Jesuits, pp. 341 – 371; Vol. XXVIII,
July 1889, Art. VI, The Origins of Irish Christianity, pp. 391 – 414; Vol. XXVIII, July 1889, Art. VIII, Life
and Times of Girolamo Savonarola, pp. 426 – 456; Vol. XXIX, October 1889, Art. I, Roman Infallibility,
pp. 1 – 30; Vol. XXIX, October 1889, Art. VI, A Roman Proselyte on Ancient Church History, pp. 122 –
137.

(Vols. XXXI – XL) Vol. XXXI, October 1890, Art. IV, Pious Frauds, pp. 59 – 70; Vol. XXXIII, October
1891, Art. X, Mozley’s Letters from Rome, pp. 206 – 215; Vol. XXXV, January 1893, Art. III, Pastor’s
‘History of the Popes’, pp. 342 – 365; Vol. XXXVII, October 1893, Art. IV, W. G. Ward in the Church of
Rome, pp. 67 – 84; Vol. XXXVIII, April 1894, Art. II, The Primitive Saints and the See of Rome, pp. 27 –
49.

(Vols. XLI – L) Vol. XLI, October 1895, Art. IV, Pastor’s ‘History of the Popes’, pp. 88 – 108; Vol. XLII,
April 1896, Art. I, Purcell’s ‘Life of Cardinal Manning’, pp. 1 – 23; Vol. XLII, July 1896, Art. IV, Bright’s
‘Studies in Church History’, pp. 342 – 354; Vol. XLIII, January 1897, Art. I, The Papal Encyclical on
Unity, pp. 289 – 317; Vol. XLIII, January 1897, Art. III, St. Catherine of Siena, pp. 344 – 364; January
1897, Art. IV, The Papal Bull on Anglican Orders, pp. 365 – 400; Vol. XLIV, April 1897, Art. II, Two
Roman Controversialists, pp. 21 – 49; Vol. XLVI, April 1898, Art. XII, The Attempted Vindication of
the Bull ‘Apostolicæ Curæ’, pp. 200 – 214; Vol. XLVI, July 1898, Art. X, S. Antonino of Florence, pp.
 710

422 – 440; Vol. XLVII, October 1898, Art. V, Ward’s Life of Cardinal Wiseman, pp. 107 – 135; Vol.
XLVIII, July 1899, Art. III, Pastor’s History of the Popes, pp. 308 – 331; Vol. XLIX, October 1899, Art. I,
Rivington on the Roman ‘Primacy’, pp. 1 – 42; Vol. XLIX, Art. VII, January 1900, A Roman Apologist
and His Translator, pp. 380 – 399; Vol. L, April 1900, Art. XI, Dr. St. George Mivart and Continuity, pp.
182 – 196; Vol. L, July 1900, Art. III, Ambrose Phillipps de Lisle, pp. 307 – 343; Vol. L, July 1900, Art.
IX, The Eve of the Reformation, pp. 405 – 429; Vol. L, July 1900, Art. XI, Jacopone da Todi, pp. 443 –
458.

(Vols. LI – LX) Vol. LI, October 1900, Art. VIII, Dr. Gasquet and the Old English Bible I, pp. 138 – 146;
Vol. LI, January 1901, Art. I, Dr. Gasquet and the Old English Bible II, pp. 265 – 298; Vol. LI, January
1901, Art II, The Œcumenical Councils and Some Questions of the Day, pp. 298 – 324; Vol. LI, January
1901, Art. IV, Fr. Puller on the Papal Claims, pp. 350 – 369; Vol. LI, January 1901, Art. VIII, Hore’s
Orthodox Greek Church, pp. 413 – 428; Vol. LII, April 1901, Art. XI, A Practical Aspect of the Papacy,
pp. 188 - 200; Vol. LII, July 1901, Art. IV, A Roman Catholic University for Ireland, pp. 320 – 342;
None for Vols 53 and 54; Vol. LV, October 1902, Art. III, The Religious Condition of Italy, pp. 44 – 75;
Vol. LVI, July 1903, Art. III, The Age of the Fathers, pp. 288 – 312; Vol. LVI, July 1903, Art. IV, The
History of the Orthodox Church of Cyprus, pp. 313 – 328; Vol. LVI, July 1903, Art. VIII, Prayers for the
Dead, pp. 368 – 394; Vol. LVI, April 1905, Art. VII, Mr. C. H. Turner’s Edition of the Nicene Creed and
Canons, pp. 131 – 155; Vol. LX, April 1905, Art. VIII, Romanism, Catholicism, and the Concordat, pp.
156 – 189.

(Vols. LXI – LXXVI) Vol. LXII, April 1906, Art. VI, Nicholas of Cusa, Cardinal and Reformer, pp. 120 –
147; Vol. LXIV, July 1907, Art. VI, The Unpopularity of the Abbeys, pp. 370 – 390; Vol. LXV, January
1908, Art. VIII, The Papacy in the Nineteenth Century, pp. 384 – 415; Vol. LXIX, January 1910, Art. VI,
Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini: Pope Pius II, pp. 383 – 405; Vol. LXIX, January 1910, Art. VIII, Lollardy
and the Reformation, pp. 426 – 439; Vol. LXX, July 1910, Art. IX, Pope Gregory VII and the
Hildebrandine Ideal, pp. 414 – 446; Vol. LXXIV, July 1912, Art. I, John Henry Newman, pp. 257 – 288;
Vol. LXXVI, July 1913, Art. VII, Papalism or Federalism, pp. 382 – 405.

Volumes from 77 (1913) to 96 (1923) had no articles dedicated to the Roman controversy, except for
Vol. XC., July 1920, Art. VI, A Roman Catholic View of Reunion, pp. 289 – 300, which is more focused
on union than on controversy, interestingly mentioning the side-by-side cooperation of Anglican and
Roman Catholic chaplains on the killing fields of World War I as a strong inducement to shared
feelings. After WWI there was a significant rise of ecumenical attitudes.

The Quarterly Review, Vol. CXLII, July & October, 1876, No. 284., Art. IV, The Papal Monarchy, pp. 402 – 429,
London: John Murray, 1876.

The English Review, Vol. VIII, September 1847, Art. V, Recent Publications on the Papal Supremacy, pp. 106 –
140, London: Francis & John Rivington, 1847.

Catholicism and Papal Infallibility, in The British Quarterly Review, Vol. LVIII, July, 1873, Art. III, pp. 31 – 54,
New York, NY: Leonard Scott Publishing Company, 1873.

Johann Friedrich, Cardinal Manning’s True Story of the Vatican Council, translated in The Contemporary
Review (Part I, Vol. XXXI, March, 1878, pp. 790 – 803; Part II, Vol. XXXII, June, 1878, pp. 520 – 542), London:
Strahan and Company Limited, 1878.

The Vatican Council, in The North British Review, New Series, Vol. XIV (Vol. LIII), October 1870 – January
1871, No. CV, Art. 7., pp. 183 – 229, London: Edmonston & Douglas, 1871.

Michael Whelton, Two Paths: Papal Monarchy – Collegial Tradition: Rome’s Claims of Papal Supremacy in the
Light of the Orthodox Church, Salisbury, MA: Regina Orthodox Press, 1998 (a revised edition was published as
Two Paths: Orthodoxy & Catholicism: Rome’s Claims of Papal Supremacy in the Light of Orthodox Christian
 711

Teachingc, (printing location unknown), Protecting Veil, Rev. Ed., 2020). Also see his Popes and Patriarchs:
An Orthodox Perspective on Roman Catholic Claims, Ben Lomond, CA: Conciliar Press, 2006.

Orthodox Christian Information Center (translators), A Letter to Pope Francis Concerning His Past, the
Abysmal State of Papism, and a Plea to Return to Holy Orthodoxy, by His Eminence, the Metropolitan of
Piraeus, Seraphim, and His Eminence, the Metropolitan of Dryinoupolis, Andrew, both of the Church of
Greece, April 10, 2014, (translated and posted on OrthodoxInfo.com on Great and Holy Monday, April 14,
2014: http://orthodoxinfo.com/ecumenism/epistle-to-pope-francis.pdf).

Richard Price, Presidency and Procedure at the Early Ecumenical Councils, in Annuarium Historiae
Conciliorum, Vol. XLI, Issue II, (June 2009), pp. 241 – 274, Paderborn, Ferdinand Schöningh, 2009.

(Archpriest) Peter G. Kohanik, The Mother Church of Christendom and The Separated Christian
Denominations (also titled “The Mother Church of Christendom Is The Holy Apostolic Orthodox Greek-
Catholic Church: Roman Catholicism and Protestantism”), Wilkes-Barre, PA: SVIT – The Light, 1948.

William John Sparrow Simpson, Roman Catholic Opposition to Papal Infallibility, London: John Murray, 1909.
This work is very good in pointing out the internal inconsistencies of Roman Catholics on the question of
papal infallibility, and this text could still have been more thorough and exhaustive.

T. J. Bailey (translator), Auguste Gratry, [Four Letters to Monseigneur Dechamps], London: J. T. Hayes, 1870.

Leonard Woolsey Bacon (editor), An Inside View of the Vatican Council, in the Speech of the Most Reverend
Archbishop Kenrick, of St. Louis, New York, NY: American Tract Society, [1871].

John Chryssavgis (editor), Primacy in the Church: The Office of Primate and the Authority of Councils,
Yonkers, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2 Vols., 2016.

John C. Pontrello, The Sedevacantist Delusion: Why Vatican II’s Clash with Sedevacantism Supports Eastern
Orthodoxy, Digitally Published: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2015. I could say much more
about sedevacantism (and have personally found it interesting), but it suffices to point out that Roman
Catholic theologians teach as a matter of faith that “The Church, then, cannot err in recognizing her Head.”
and “Now the Pontificate is an essential element in the Church’s constitution. If, therefore, the Pontificate
were to lapse, the Church would be sustaining a loss in her essentials and so reveal herself as not
indefectible.” (Sydney Fenn Smith, Dr. Littledale’s Theory of the Disappearance of the Papacy, in The Month,
Vol. LXXXIII, No. 369., March, 1895, p. 310, London: Manresa Press, 1895; this article is worth reading for any
sedevacantist.) They teach that there is no need to doubt if any Pope is a true Pope, since the very fact that
the Church accepts him makes him the true Pope.

Peter Alban Heers, The Ecclesiastical Renovation of Vatican II: An Orthodox Examination of Rome’s
Ecumenical Theology Regarding Baptism and the Church, Simpsonville, SC: Uncut Mountain Press, 2015.

Laurent A. Cleenewerck, His Broken Body: Understanding and Healing the Schism Between the Roman
Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches, Washington, DC: Euclid University Press, Rev. Ed., 2009.

Andrew Stephen Damick, Orthodoxy and Heterodoxy: Finding the Way to Christ in a Complicated Religious
Landscape, Chesterton, ID: Ancient Faith Publishing, 2nd Ed., 2017.

George E. Demacopoulos, The Invention of Peter: Apostolic Discourse and Papal Authority in Late Antiquity,
Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013.

George E. Demacopoulos and Aristotle Papanikolaou, Orthodox Constructions of the West, Orthodox
Christianity and Contemporary Thought, Vol. V, New York, NY: Fordham University Press, 2013.
 712

George E. Demacopoulos and Aristotle Papanikolaou (editors), Orthodox Readings of Augustine, New York,
NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2008.

Edward H. Landon (translator), Antonio Pereira de Figueredo, Tentativa Theologica: Episcopal Rights and
Ultra-Montane Usurpations, London: Joseph Masters, 1847.

Part II Photius and the Filioque

Markos A. Orphanos, The Procession of the Holy Spirit According to Certain Greek Fathers, Athens: Typ. tē s
Apostolikē s Diakonias, 1979 – 1980. This is a somewhat little-known English work but is of high quality. It
was also published in a revised and augmented version in five articles in Θεολογία: τριμηνιαία έκδοση της
Ιεράς Συνόδου της Εκκλησίας της Ελλάδος (Vol. L, No. 4., 1979, pp. 763 – 778; Vol. LI, No. 1., 1980, pp. 87 –
107; Vol. LI, No. 2., 1980, pp. 276 – 299; Vol. LI, No. 3, 1980, pp. 436 – 461; Vol. LI, No. 4, 1980, pp. 739 –
747.)

Joannes Metaxas-Mariatos, The Filioque Controversy: Chapters from the Eastern Orthodox Reaction: An
Historical-Theological Perspective, Dissertation: University of Durham, Durham, 1988.

Anthony Edward Siecienski, The Filioque: History of a Doctrinal Controversy, Oxford Studies in Historical
Theology, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010.

Anthony Edward Siecienski, The Papacy and the Orthodox: Sources and History of a Debate, Oxford Studies in
Historical Theology, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017. Siecienski unfortunately does not enter into
discussions of the authenticity of certain passages that are cited.

Anthony Edward Siecienski, The Use of Maximus the Confessor’s Writing on the Filioque at the Council of
Ferrara – Florence (1438 – 1439), Dissertation: Fordham University, New York, NY, 2005. Also see Anthony
Edward Siecienski, The Authenticity of Maximus the Confessor’s Letter to Marinus: The Argument from
Theological Consistency, Vigiliae Christianae 61.2, pp. 189 – 227, Amsterdam: Brill, 2007.

Shawn C. Smith, The Insertion of the Filioque into the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed, Dissertation: Lincoln
Christian Seminary, Lincoln, IL, 2004. Also see Shawn C. Smith, The Insertion of the Filioque into the Nicene
Creed and a Letter of Isidore of Seville, Journal of Early Christian Studies, Vol. XXII, No. 2., pp. 261 – 285,
January 2014; Shawn C. Smith, A Critical Analysis of the Eastern Orthodox View of Reception: Divisive
Councils and the Filioque, in St. Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly, Vol. LX, No. 3., pp. 397 – 414, Yonkers, NY:
St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary, 2016. I thank Professor Smith for kindly sending me a copy of
his thesis.

St. Gregory Palamas, Apodictic Treatise on the Procession of the Holy Spirit, Thessalonica: Uncut Mountain
Press (forthcoming).

Aristeides Papadakis, Crisis in Byzantium: The Filioque Controversy in the Patriarchate of Gregory II of
Cyprus (1283 – 1289), Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, Rev. Ed., 1997.

George Dion. Dragas, The Eighth Ecumenical Council: Constantinople IV (879/880) and the Condemnation of
the Filioque Addition and Doctrine, in The Greek Orthodox Theological Review, Vol. XLIV, Nos. 1 – 4, 1999, pp.
357 – 369.

Alexander Alexakis, The Greek Patristic Testimonia Presented at the Council of Florence (1439) in Support of
the Filioque Reconsidered, in Review des Études Byzantines, Vol. LVIII, pp. 149 – 165, Paris: Peeters, 2000.
Theodore Stylianopoulos, The Filioque: Dogma, Theologoumenon or Error?, in The Greek Orthodox
Theological Review, Vol. XXXI, No. 3 – 4, 1986, pp. 255 – 288, Brookline, MA: Holy Cross Orthodox Press,
1986.
 713

Joost van Rossum, Athanasius and the Filioque: Ad Serapionem I,20 in Nikephoros Blemmydes and Gregory of
Cyprus, in Elizabeth A. Livingstone (editor), Studia Patristica, Vol. XXXII, XI, pp. 53 – 58; Leuven: Peeters,
1997.

Richard S. Haugh, Photius and the Carolingians: The Trinitarian Controversy, Belmont, MA: Nordland
Publishing Company, 1975.

Holy Transfiguration Monastery (translators), On the Mystagogy of the Holy Spirit, [Boston, MA]: Studion
Publishers, 1983.

J. P. Farrell (translator), Patriarch St. Photius, The Mystagogy of the Holy Spirit. Brookline, MA: Holy Cross
Orthodox Press, 1987.

J. H. Freese (translator), The Library of Photius, Vol. I, London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge,
1920. This is in Series I: Greek Texts in the Translations of Christian Literature. This work is a translation of
the Bibliotheca or Myriobiblos, which contains the commentaries of St. Photius on 279 books that he read,
about half of which are no longer extant. Note that while six volumes were planned, unfortunately, Freese
was unable to publish any further volumes.

N. G. Wilson (translator), The Bibliotheca: A Selection, London: Duckworth, 1994. Some additional
translations of the Bibliotheca are available at http://www.tertullian.org/fathers/photius_01toc.htm.

Patriarch Photios of Constantinople: His Life, Scholarly Contributions, and Correspondence Together with a
Translation of Fifty-two of his Letters, by Despina Stratoudaki White, Brookline, MA: Holy Cross Orthodox
Press, 1981. This is No. 5 of the Archbishop Iakovos Library of Ecclesiastical and Historical Sources series.

Cyril Mango, The Homilies of Photius Patriarch of Constantinople, Dumbarton Oaks Studies, Vol. III,
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1958.

Despina Stratoudaki White (translator), The Patriarch and the Prince: The Letter of Patriarch Photius of
Constantinople to Khan Boris of Bulgaria, in Archbishop Iakovos Library of Ecclesiastical and Historical
Sources, No. 6, Brookline, MA: Holy Cross Theological School Press, 1982.

John Kallos (editor), Saint Photios, Patriarch of Constantinople: The St. Photios Shrine Lectures, Brookline,
MA: Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 1992. This contains five lectures, mostly related to St. Photius.

Constantine Cavarnos, St. Photios the Great: Philosopher and Theologian, Belmont, MA: Institute for
Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies, 1998.

Constantine Cavarnos, Saint Mark of Ephesos, Belmont, MA: Institute for Byzantine and Modern Greek
Studies, 2008.

Asterios Gerostergios, St. Photios the Great, Belmont, MA: Institute for Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies,
1988.

George C. Papademetriou, Photian Studies, Brookline, MA: Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 1989.

Part III More on East-West Relations and the Roman Catholic Controversy

Martin Hinterberger and Christopher David Schabel (editors), Greeks, Latins, and Intellectual History 1205-
1500, Leuven: Peeters, 2011.
 714

Romilly James Heald Jenkins, Studies on Byzantine History of the 9th and 10th Centuries, London: Variorum
Reprints, 1970.

Milton Vasil Anastos, Constantinople and Rome: A Survey of the Relations between the Byzantine and the
Roman Churches, in Aspects of the Mind of Byzantium: Political Theory, Theology, and Ecclesiastical Relations
with the See of Rome, Aldershot: Ashgate, 2001.

Deno John Geanakoplos, Byzantium: Church, Society, and Civilization Seen through Contemporary Eyes,
Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, New Ed., 1986. Professor Geanakoplos (1916 – 2007) was an
Orthodox layman and renowned professor of medieval history at Yale University, and wrote many important
works on Byzantium and its relations with the West, and “was considered one of the foremost Byzantine
scholars in the world” (https://news.yale.edu/2007/10/11/memoriam-deno-geanakoplos).

Deno John Geanakoplos, The Emperor Michael Palaeologus and the West, 1258 – 1282: A Study in Byzantine-
Latin Relations, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1959.

Deno John Geanakoplos, Constantinople and the West: Essays on the Late Byzantine (Palaeologan) and Italian
Renaissances and the Byzantine and Roman Churches, Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1989.

Angeliki E. Laiou, Constantinople and the Latins: The Foreign Policy of Andronicus II, 1282 – 1328, Harvard
Historical Studies, Vol. LXXXVIII, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1972.

Archbishop Chrysostomos, Orthodox and Roman Catholic Relations from the Fourth Crusade to the
Hesychastic Controversy, Etna, CA: Center for Traditionalist Orthodox Studies, 2001.

John W. Barker, Manuel II Palaeologus (1391 – 1425): A Study in Late Byzantine Statesmanship, New
Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1969.

Tia M. Kolbaba, The Byzantine Lists: Errors of the Latins, Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2000. This is
a valuable study, but it has somewhat of an anti-Greek perspective. Also see Tia M. Kolbaba, Meletios
Homologetes On the Customs of the Italians, in Revue des Études Byzantines, 1997, Vol. LV, pp. 137 – 168;
Barlaam the Calabrian: Three Treatises on Papal Primacy, in Revue des Études Byzantines, 1995, Vol. LIII, pp.
41 – 115; and Byzantine Perceptions of Latin Religious “Errors”: Themes and Changes from 850 to 1350, in
Angeliki E. Laiou and Roy Parviz Mottahedeh (editors), The Crusades from the Perspective of Byzantium and
the Muslim World, pp. 117 – 143, Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 2001.
Kolbaba has written other valuable articles and chapters on the East-West division.

Machi Paizi-Apostolopoulou, Appealing to the Authority of a Learned Patriarch: New Evidence on Gennadios
Scholarios’ Responses to the Questions of George Branković, in The Historical Review, Vol. IX, pp. 95 – 116,
2012.

David Bradshaw, Aristotle East and West: Metaphysics and the Division of Christendom, Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2004. This book is recommended on the Essence/Energies distinction.

Henry Chadwick, East and West: The Making of a Rift in the Church: From Apostolic Times until the Council of
Florence, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010. This book takes a Western perspective.

Philip Sherrard, The Greek East and the Latin West: A Study in the Christian Tradition, London: Oxford
University Press, 1959.

Bishop Chrysostomos and Hieromonk Auxentios, The Roman West and the Byzantine West, Etna, CA: Center
for Traditionalist Orthodox Studies, 1988.
 715

Sergei Nikolaevich Bulgakov, The Vatican Dogma, South Canaan, PA: St. Tikhon Press, 1959 [Originally Paris,
1929]. Many of Bulgakov’s writings are available in English, but some of his teachings have been criticised,
and this appears to be his only work focused on Roman Catholicism.

Clark Carlton, The Truth: What Every Roman Catholic Should Know About the Orthodox Church, Salisbury,
MA: Regina Orthodox Press, 1998. This is part of a four-part book series by Dr. Carlton, an American
Orthodox convert and assistant professor who was formerly Southern Baptist. I personally felt that the
argument structure of this book was not very strong, but others have found this book helpful.

Fr. Alexey Young, Winds of Change in Roman Catholicism: An Appeal to Roman Catholics, Etna, CA: West
Coast Orthodox Supply, Rev. Ed., 1983 (Formerly titled Christianity or the Papacy). Hieroschemamonk
Ambrose (1943 – current, formerly Fr. Alexey Young) is a spiritual son of Fr. Seraphim Rose and also wrote
the following tracts on the Roman Catholic controversy: The Great Divide: The West Severs Itself from Its
Orthodox Christian Roots, An Historical Overview, Richfield Springs, NY: Nikodemos Orthodox Publication
Society, 1989 (First printed June 1985, in Orthodox America under the title “How to Survive”); and The Rush
to Embrace, Richfield Springs, NY: Nikodemos Orthodox Publication Society, 2nd Print (rev.), 1997. Fr. Young
has written various other works, such as a history of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia (ROCOR),
his letters from Fr. Seraphim Rose, and on Orthodox spirituality.

Constantine Zalalas (translator), Bishop Paul De Ballester, My Exodus from Roman Catholicism, Bethlehem,
PA: Saint Nicodemos Publications, 1998. This covers the Paul De Ballester-Convallier’s (1927 – 1984)
journey from being a Roman Catholic monk in Spain to an Orthodox bishop in Mexico, where he was
assassinated (or rather martyred) by an apparently mentally disturbed or demon-possessed person in 1984.
I could not find certain information if his murderer was actually a Roman Catholic fanatic, but his premature
death caused a setback in the growth of the Orthodox Church in Mexico. Paul De Ballester was a pious man
who knew eight languages, was a historian, author, and university professor, and was active in his
community.

Stylianos S. Harkianakis, The Infallibility of the Church in Orthodox Theology, Redfern, NSW: St. Andrew’s
Orthodox Press, 2008.

George Ayliffe Poole, The Testimony of Saint Cyprian Against Rome: An Essay Towards Determining the
Judgment of Saint Cyprian Touching Papal Supremacy, London: James Duncan, 1838. This work is very good,
but could have been more thorough.

Edward White Benson, Cyprian: His Life, His Times, His Work, London: Macmillan & Co., 1897.

John Edmund Cox (editor), Thomas James, A Treatise of the Corruptions of Scripture, Councils, and Fathers:
By the Prelates, Pastors, and Pillars of the Church of Rome, for the Maintenance of Popery, London: John W.
Parker, 1843.

Richard Gibbings, Roman Forgeries and Falsifications: or, An Examination of Counterfeit and Corrupted
Records; with Especial Reference to Popery, Part I (no further parts were published), Dublin: Grant and
Bolton, 1842. Gibbings wrote other works pertaining to the Roman Catholic controversy: An Exact Reprint of
the Roman Index Expurgatorius, the only Vatican Index of this kind ever published (1837); Report of the
Trial and Martyrdom of Pietro Carnesecchi, sometime Secretary to Pope Clement VII, and Apostolic
Protonotary (1856); Were “Heretics” ever burned alive at Rome? A Report of the Proceedings in the Roman
Inquisition against Fulgentio Manfredi (1852); The Taxes of the Apostolic Penitentiary; or, the Prices of Sins
in the Church of Rome (1872).

Joseph Mendham (1769 – 1856), an Anglican clergyman and scholar, wrote many extremely valuable books
against Roman Catholicism (although he strongly disagreed with many beliefs and traditions shared with
Orthodoxy as well). Mendham was a learned literary scholar and had a very large private library. Mendham
wrote scholarly books on the Roman Catholic Indexes of prohibited books, indulgences, the Inquisition, the
Latin Council of Trent, and the Papacy. The following are all the works he wrote against Rome, that are worth
 716

reading: The Literary Policy of the Church of Rome Exhibited (1830) & Supplement (1836) & Additional
Supplement (1843); Watson’s “Important Considerations” (1831); The Life and Pontificate of Saint Pius the
Fifth (1832) & Supplement (1833); Memoirs of the Council of Trent (1834) & Supplement (1836) &
Additional Supplement (1846) [sufficient to show that the assembly was not inspired by the Holy Spirit]; The
Church of Rome’s Traffic in Pardons Substantiated (1839); The Spiritual Venality of Rome (1836); The Venal
Indulgences and Pardons of the Church of Rome (1839); An Index of Prohibited Books (1840); Additions to
Three Minor Works [the three former] (1848).

Charles Hastings Collette (1816 – 1901) was Mendham’s literary successor (though not as learned or
balanced as Mendham), and likewise wrote many works against Roman Catholicism, of which I recommend
the following: Charles Hastings Collette, A Reply to Cobbett’s ‘History of the Protestant Reformation in
England and Ireland’, London: S. W. Partridge & Co., 1869 [This is a good book defending the Anglican
communion and the English Reformation against critics]; Henry VIII.: An Historical Sketch, as affecting the
Reformation in England, London: W. H. Allen & Co., 1864; Romanism in England Exposed, London: Arthur
Hall, Second Edition, 1851 [This is a good book exposing several errors of Roman Catholics, especially the
degraded morality of St. Alphonsus Liguori]; The Roman Breviary: A Critical and Historical Review, 2nd Ed.,
London: William H. Allen & Co., 1880.

Richard Paul Blakeney, Saint Alphonsus Liguori: Or, Extracts, Translated from the Moral Theology of the
Above Romish Saint, London: Groombridge, 2nd Ed., 1852 [First Ed. titled: Awful Disclosure of the Iniquitous
Principles Taught by the Church of Rome: Being Extracts Translated from the Moral Theology of Alphonsus
Liguori]. Blakeney (1820 – 1884) was an educated Anglican clergyman who wrote many controversial works,
but this is the only one really worth reading.

Frederick Meyrick, Moral and Devotional Theology of the Church of Rome, According to the Authoritative
Teaching of S. Alfonso De’ Liguori, London: J. and C. Mozley, 1857. This work contains a correspondence with
Cardinal Manning, who attempts to defend Liguori’s morality. Also see Frederick Meyrick, The Practical
Working of the Church of Spain, Oxford: John Henry Parker, 1851.

Gabriel d’Emiliane, The Frauds of Romish Monks & Priests: Shewing the Abominable Deceptions and
Practices of the Church of Rome, London: G. Pigott, 2nd Ed., 1821 [first published 1691]. Also see d’Emiliane’s
Observations on a Journey to Naples: Wherein the Frauds of Romish Monks and Priests are Further
Discovered, London: Printed for R. Wilkin, D. Midwinter, A. Bettesworth, B. Motte, and J. Lacy, 4th Ed., 1725
[first published 1691]. D’Emiliane [there are various spellings of his name] was an educated French Roman
Catholic priest who converted to Protestantism. His books contain some exaggerations and bias, but are
generally insightful, and reveal much debauchery within the Roman Catholic communion. The most
comprehensive biographical notes on d’Emiliane were compiled by Dr. Roger Peters and can be found at
https://www.wissensdrang.com/dcon10br.htm.

Joseph McCabe, Twelve Years in a Monastery, London: Watts and Co., 3rd Ed., 1912. The author, formerly a
Roman Catholic monk, priest, and professor, later became an outspoken atheist. This book contains valuable
descriptions of Roman Catholic monastic life, and provides first-hand testimony of several sins and errors of
Latin priests and their superiors. One significant issue the author witnesses to is the large amounts of
alcoholic beverages consumed in monasteries (see pp. 43 – 44, 49, 134 – 136, and elsewhere), even from the
early age of 15 or 16, which is known to cause problems with brain development and mental vigour
(https://www.nhs.uk/common-health-questions/childrens-health/should-my-child-drink-alcohol/).
McCabe writes (p. 49), “I had never tasted beer or wine before I entered the monastery, but a little calculation
shows that I must (in my sixteenth year) have consumed fifty gallons of ale and a dozen bottles of good wine
during that first year of monastic life.” McCabe was a relatively light drinker, and the English drank much less
than others, yet he, along with the other underage monks, drank 16 units of alcohol a week, which exceeds
NHS recommendations for adult consumption: “If 15 to 17 year olds drink alcohol, they should never exceed
the recommended adult weekly limit (14 units of alcohol).” On p. 44, McCabe writes, “In Belgian and German
friaries there is an amusing intrigue constantly going on for securing the larger mugs, and there even the
youngest novices must drink at least three pints of beer a day.” Cigar-smoking was not infrequent either.
Several more serious immoralities and behaviours ill comporting with modesty and the ascetic life are
 717

recounted in this work. Also see McCabe’s The Decay of the Church of Rome, New York, NY: E. P. Dutton and
Company, 1910; and Crises in the History of the Papacy, New York, NY: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1916.

Winifrid Stephens Whale (translator), Albert Houtin, The Life of a Priest: My Own Experience 1867 – 1912,
London: Watts & Co., 1927. Houtin (1867 – 1926) was a French Roman Catholic priest and professor who
was influential in the modernist movement and later abandoned religion altogether. His autobiography
contains insightful notices of inappropriate activity among Latin clergy and monastics. The second part of
this work, from the years 1912 – 1926, was not translated and remains only in French. Also see Houtin’s A
Married Priest (1910) and The Crisis Among the French Clergy (1910). Houtin’s only other work translated
into English is his Short History of Christianity, though it is called “the least valuable of all” his works by a
friendly author.

A Preservative Against Popery, London: British Society for Promoting the Religious Principles of the
Reformation, 1848:

Vol. I, Book I, Ch. I – II pp. 1 – 195: These two chapters contain two works vindicating the Protestant
Reformation on account of its necessity and the depravity of the Roman church – “A Discourse
concerning the necessity of a Reformation with respect to the errors and corruptions of the Church of
Rome. In two parts. By Dr. Stratford, late Bishop of Chester” and “The state of the Church of Rome,
when the Reformation began, as it appears by the advice given to Pope Paul the Third, and Julius the
Third, by creatures of their own. By Dr. Claggett, late Preacher of Gray’s Inn”.

Vol. V, Book II, pp. 162 – 185: An excellent review of the inconsistencies of Roman Catholic councils,
focusing on the Councils of Constance and Basil.

Vol. XV, The Authority of General Councils Examined, and Roman Forgeries Therein Detected, I & II,
pp. 1 – 243, containing two works by Mr. Jenkins and Dr. Comber, which are valuable reading [also
see the third and fourth parts of Comber’s work on Roman Forgeries, not included in this series, and
published London, 1695].

The following chapters of Edward Stillingfleet’s A Rational Account of the Grounds of the Protestant Religion,
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1844: Vol. I, Part I, Ch. I, The Occasion of the Conference, and Defence of the
Greek Church, pp. 1 – 70; Vol. II, Part II, Ch. I, Of the Universal Church, pp. 1 – 57; Vol. II, Part II, Chs. V – VIII,
[Of the Roman Church’s Authority, Of the Title of Universal Bishop, The Pope’s Authority Not Proved from
Scripture or Reason, Of the Council of Trent], pp. 152 – 343; Vol. II, Part III, Ch. VI, The Sense of the Fathers
Concerning Purgatory, pp. 558 – 587.

George Gordon Coulton, Ten Medieval Studies, Boston, MA: Beacon Press, Third Ed., 1930. Coulton exposes
the immorality of the Roman Catholic churches and monasteries before the Reformation.

George Gordon Coulton, French Monasticism in 1503: An Abstract of the plea for reform published in that
year by Guy Jouenneaux, Abbot of St. Sulpice de Bourges, mainly in his own words, with an Introduction, and
Supplementary Documents, Medieval Studies, XI, London: Simpkin, Marshall, Hamilton, Kent & Co., Ltd., 1915.
This further collaborates the low state of Roman Catholic monasticism before the Reformation.

George Gordon Coulton, More Roman Catholic History, Medieval Studies, XV, London: Simpkin, Marshall,
Hamilton, Kent & Co., Ltd., 1921. This is a great short pamphlet that exposes more errors of Roman Catholic
apologists. Coulton also published his controversial discussion with Herbert Thurston, titled Roman Catholic
and Anglican Accuracy (1927), and another controversial correspondence was published as Catholic Truth
and Historical Truth (1906). Many other works of Coulton are worth reading.

Henry Cotton, Memoir of a French New Testament, London: Bell & Daldy, 2nd Ed., 1863. I made reference to
this book in the section “An Inaccurate French Translation of the New Testament”.
 718

James Baber Brockley (translator), Abel-François Villemain, Life of Pope Gregory the Seventh, London:
Richard Benley and Son, 2 Vols., 1874.

William Ewart Gladstone, The Vatican Decrees in their Bearing on Civil Allegiance: A Political Expostulation,
London: John Murray, 1874. Also see Gladstone’s Vaticanism: An Answer to Reproofs and Replies, London:
John Murray, 1875.

Isaac Errett, Vaticanism, in The Christian Quarterly, Vol. VII, July, 1875, I, pp. 289 – 327, Cincinnati, OH: W. T.
Moore, 1875.

Charles Clinton Marshall, The Roman Catholic Church in the Modern State, Binghampton, NY: Faith Press, 3rd
Ed., 1931. This valuable work provides evidence of the reluctance of American Roman Catholics to accept and
believe what their own Church teaches about the subordination of the State to the Church, and the Papal
power of deposing secular authorities.

Baroness von Zedtwitz, The Double Doctrine of the Church of Rome, New York, NY: Fleming H. Revell
Company, 1906. Mary Elizabeth Breckenridge Caldwell, Baroness von Zedtwitz (1865 – 1910) and her sister
Mary Guendaline Byrd Caldwell, Marquise des Monstiers-Mérinville (1863 – 1909), once strong supporters of
the Roman Catholic communion (Mary Gwendolin was honoured by Pope Leo XIII for her financial generosity,
in helping to found the Catholic University of America in Washington, DC), left and repudiated Roman
Catholicism in 1904, for several reasons, including that of the hypocrisy and immorality of Roman
ecclesiastics.

William Wetmore Story, Roba di Roma, London: Chapman and Hall, 2 Vols., 8th Ed., 1887. Also see Story’s
Castle St. Angelo and The Evil Eye: Being Additional Chapters to “Roba di Roma”, London: Chapman and Hall,
1877. William Story (1819 – 1895), son of US Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story (1776 – 1845), was an
American sculptor who lived for a long time in Rome, when the Pope ruled there, and some eye-witness
information can be found here about the corruptions of that society.

Robert Demaus, The Jesuits: A Historical Sketch, with the Bull of Clement XIV. for the Suppression of the
Order, London: The Religious Tract Society, 1873. Pope Clement XIV entirely and perpetually suppressed the
Jesuit order, and decreed that his decision “shall always and perpetually be, and continue to be, valid, firm,
and effective, and shall have and obtain its full and complete results, and shall be inviolably observed by all
and every one whom it affects or will in any way affect in future.” (p. 87.) However, later Popes did not feel
themselves bound by this decision, and they reinstituted the Jesuit order.

Mrs. M‘Kibbin (translator), Count Dmitry Tolstoy, Romanism in Russia: An Historical Study, London: J. T.
Hayes, 2 Vols., 1874.

Robert Southey, Essays: Moral and Political, Vol. II, On the [Roman] Catholic Question, Essays XI – XIII, pp. 277
– 443, London: John Murray, 1832.

William W. Roberts, The Pontifical Decrees Against the Doctrine of the Earth’s Movement and the
Ultramontane Defence of Them, London: Parker & Co., 1885. Roberts was a Roman Catholic priest opposed to
Ultramontanism, and this book contains strong evidence of the condemnation of Galileo’s ideas by the highest
authorities in the Roman Catholic communion.

Brian Tierney, Origins of Papal Infallibility, 1150 – 1350: A Study on the Concepts of Infallibility, Sovereignty
and Tradition in the Middle Ages, Studies in the History of Christian Traditions, Vol. VI, Leiden: Brill, 1988.
This book was first published in 1972 by distinguished Roman Catholic historian Brian Tierney (1922 –
2019), who argues that “There is no convincing evidence that papal infallibility formed any part of the
theological or canonical tradition before the thirteenth century;” (Conclusion, p. 281). Also see Tierney’s
Foundations of the Conciliar Theory: The Contribution of the Medieval Canonists from Gratian to the Great
Schism, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1955.
 719

Francis Christopher Oakley, The Conciliarist Tradition: Constitutionalism in the Catholic Church 1300 – 1870,
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003.

Henry Charles Lea, History of Sacerdotal Celibacy in the Christian Church, London: Williams and Norgate, 3rd
Ed., 2 Vols., 1907. This work was mentioned earlier, and its main value lies in exposing and showing the
numerous scandals and immoralities of many Roman Catholic priests bound by celibacy. Lea also wrote
extensively on the Inquisition (A History of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, 3 Vols., A History of the
Inquisition of Spain, 4 Vols., The Inquisition in the Spanish Dependencies, and Chapters from the Religious
History of Spain Connected with the Inquisition), as well as on Latin Confession and indulgences (A History of
Auricular Confession and Indulgences in the Latin Church, Philadelphia, PA: Lea Brothers & Co., 3 Vols., 1896).

Kenneth Meyer Setton, The Papacy and the Levant (1204 – 1571), Philadelphia, PA: The American
Philosophical Society, 4 Vols., 1976 – 1984. Setton (1914 – 1995) also wrote a definitive six-volume history of
the Crusades (the English bibliography on the Crusades is too extensive to list here).

The main multi-volume historical works in English on Rome and the Roman Papacy are, from the Protestant
side, by Bower (Cox’s edition), the Religious Tract Society of London (Kidder’s edition, in one large volume),
Milman, Ranke, Gregorovius, Greenwood, and Creighton; and from the Roman Catholic side, by Platina (and
his later editors), Montor (revised in 10 vols.), Miley, Mann, Cormenin, Grisar, and Pastor (the most official).
Many other works, too many to list here, have been written on individual Popes and on specific time periods.

Part IV Valuable Works Relating to Orthodoxy

John Mason Neale

Voices from the East: Documents on the Present State and Working of the Oriental Church,
Translated from the Original Russ, Slavonic, and French, with Notes (London, 1859), by the Rev. John
Mason Neale.

A History of the Holy Eastern Church (in six printed volumes: Part I General Introduction (2 Vols.),
The Patriarchate of Alexandria (2 Vols.), The Patriarchate of Antioch, and Appendix), London: Joseph
Masters, 1847 – 1873. Neale received permission from Tsar Nicholas I to dedicate the introduction
of his history to him, as recorded in the following account:

The Emperor himself had taken great interest in the progress of the “History of the Eastern
Church,” and on the 10th of June, 1851, Popoff wrote –

My Dear Sir,

His Excellency our Ambassador, Baron de Brunnow, has kindly charged me to

announce to you, that His Majesty, the Emperor of Russia, in acknowledgment of the
value of your arduous and useful work on ‘the History of the Holy Eastern Church,’
as well as an encouragement in its continuance, has been graciously pleased to grant
you a sum of £100.

(Eleanor A. Towle, John Mason Neale: A Memoir, Ch. XV, p. 175, London: Longmans, Green,
and Co., 1906; Note that £100 in 1851 is equivalent to about £13,000 today, but His
Majesty’s recognition was far more valuable to Neale.)

Essays on Liturgiology and Church History, London: Saunders, Otley, and Co., 1863.
 720

The History of Pews: A Paper Read Before the Cambridge Camden Society, Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1841.

The Ancient Liturgies of the Gallican Church, Burntisland: Pitsligo Press, 1855.

Hymns of the Eastern Church, London: J. T. Hayes, Fourth Ed., 1882.

Neale and Richard Frederick Littledale, A Commentary on the Psalms: From Primitive and Mediæval
Writers and From the Various Office-books and Hymns of the Roman, Mozarabic, Ambrosian,
Gallican, Greek, Coptic, Armenian, and Syriac Rites, London: Joseph Masters, 4 Vols., 4th Ed., 1884.

Neale and Richard Frederick Littledale, The Liturgies of SS. Mark, James, Clement, Chrysostom, and
Basil, and the Church of Malabar, London: Griffith Farran & Co., Seventh Ed., [after 1896].

Mary Sackville (Neale) Lawson, Letters of John Mason Neale: Selected and Edited by His Daughter,
London: Longmans, Green, & Co., 1910.

William Palmer

William Palmer, Dissertations on Subjects Relating to the “Orthodox” or “Eastern-Catholic”

Communion, London: Joseph Masters, 1853.

William Palmer, The Patriarch and the Tsar, London: Trübner & Co., 6 Vols., 1871 – 1876.

William Palmer, A Harmony of Anglican Doctrine with the Doctrine of the Catholic and Apostolic
Church of the East, Aberdeen: A. Brown and Co., 1846.

John Henry Newman (editor), William Palmer, Notes of a Visit to the Russian Church in the Years
1840, 1841, London: Kegan Paul Trench & Co., 1882.

Robin Wheeler, Palmer’s Pilgrimage: The Life of William Palmer of Magdalen, Oxford: Peter Lang,
2006. Reprinted as William Palmer: The Oxford Movement and a Quest for Orthodoxy, Jordanville,
NY: Holy Trinity Publications, 2021.

John Meyendorff (1926 – 1992), wrote many valuable works on Orthodox theology and history

(editor), The Primacy of Peter: Essays in Ecclesiology and the Early Church, Crestwood, NY: Saint
Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1992. Unfortunately, this book contains many concessions to modernist
thought, but the best essay is that by Meyendorff.

with Eleana Silk (editors), The Legacy of St. Vladimir, Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press,
1990.

Rome, Constantinople, Moscow: Historical and Theological Studies, Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s
Seminary Press, 1996.

Steven Runciman (1903 – 2000) wrote many valuable works on Byzantine history.

Nicholas Cabasilas (~ 1319 – 1392)

Carmino J. de Catanzaro (translator), The Life in Christ, Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press,
1974.

J. M. Hussey and P. A. McNulty (translators), A Commentary on the Divine Liturgy, Crestwood, NY: St.
Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2010 (various printings).
 721

Paul Meyendorff (translator), Patriarch Saint Germanus of Constantinople, On the Divine Liturgy, Crestwood,
NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1984.

Elizabeth Theokritoff (translator), Hieromonk Gregorios (1936 – current), The Divine Liturgy: A Commentary
in the Light of the Fathers, Mount Athos: Cell of St John the Theologian, Koutloumousiou Monastery, 2009.
This work was first published in Greek in 1982, and it is translated from the most recent (4th) Greek edition
of 2006.

Nikolai Gogol, Meditations on the Divine Liturgy of the Holy Eastern Orthodox Catholic and Apostolic Church,
Jordanville, NY: Holy Trinity Publications, 2014.

E. E. Goulaeff (translator), John Iliytch Sergieff, My Life in Christ, or Moments of Spiritual Serenity and
Contemplation, of Reverent Feeling, of Earnest Self-Amendment, and of Peace in God, London: Cassell and
Company, 1897 (frequently reprinted). This is a great spiritual work by the Russian St. John of Kronstadt
(1829 – 1908).

Catechisms

The Russian Catechism, Composed and Published by Order of the Czar, London: W. Meadows, 2nd Ed., 1725
(1st Ed., 1723). This may be the oldest Orthodox work officially printed in English.

[Philip Ludwell (translator)], The Orthodox Confession of the Catholic and Apostolic Eastern Church;
Faithfully Translated from the Originals, London: [publisher not specified], 1762. This was reprinted with
notes and corrections in 1898: Julian Joseph Overbeck and James Nathaniel William Beauchamp (J. N. W. B.)
Robertson (editors), The Orthodox Confession of the Catholic and Apostolic Eastern Church: From the Version
of Peter Mogila: Faithfully Translated Into English, London: Thomas Baker, 1898. Another reprint was
published in 2020 with small corrections by Fr. Joshua Schooping.

Robert Pinkerton, The Present State of the Greek Church in Russia, or a Summary of Christian Divinity, by
Platon, Late Metropolitan of Moscow, Translated from the Slavonian, Edinburgh: Oliphant, Waugh & Innes,
1814.

G. Potessaro, The Orthodox Doctrine of the Apostolic Eastern Church; or, A Compendium of Christian
Theology, London: Whittaker & Co., 1857.

John Thomas Seccombe, Metropolitan Platon of Moscow, The Great Catechism of the Holy Catholic, Apostolic,
and Orthodox Church, London: Simpkin, Marshall, & Co., 1867.

The Holy Catechism of Nicolas Bulgaris, Constantinople: Patriarchal Press, 1861.

Richard White Blackmore, The Doctrine of the Russian Church, Aberdeen: A. Brown and Co., 1845 (Originally
published in Moscow, 1839).

The Catechism of the Orthodox, Catholic, Eastern Church: Examined and Approved by the Most Holy
Governing Synod, and Published for the Use of Schools, and of All Orthodox Christians, by the North American
Ecclesiastical Consistory, with the Blessing of the Most Reverend Tikhon, Bishop of the Orthodox Greek
Russian Church in North America, San Francisco, CA: The Murdock Press, 1901.

H. T. F. Duckworth, Greek Manuals of Church Doctrine, London: Rivingtons, 1901.

 722

William C. King, Translation from the Original Greek of a Pamphlet entitled “Letters of the most pious King,
and of the most holy Patriarchs, concerning the establishment of the most Holy Synod; with an Exposition of
the Orthodox Faith of the Eastern Catholic Church,” New York, NY: John A. Gray & Green, 1865.

George Mastrantonis, A New-Style Catechism on the Eastern Orthodox Faith for Adults, St. Louis, MO: The
Ologos Mission, 2nd Ed., 1977 (first published 1969).

Margaret G. Dampier, History of the Orthodox Church in Austria-Hungary, London: The Eastern Church
Association, 1905.

Margaret G. Dampier, The Organization of the Orthodox Eastern Churches, London: The Eastern Church
Association, 1910.

St. Innocent of Alaska, Indication of the Way Into the Kingdom of Heaven, Jordanville, NY: Holy Trinity
Publications, 2013. St. Innocent of Alaska (1797 – 1879) was a Russian missionary who helped bring the
Gospel of salvation to the Eskimos and native inhabitants of Alaska.

Ivan Platonovich Barsukov, The Life and Work of Innocent, the Archbishop of Kamchatka, the Kuriles and the
Aleutian Islands, and later the Metropolitan of Moscow, San Francisco: Cubery & Co., 1897.

St. Theophan the Recluse (1815 – 1894), an eminent Russian bishop:

The Spiritual Life - and How to be Attuned to It, Platina, CA: St. Herman of Alaska Brotherhood, 1995.

Thoughts for Each Day of the Year, According to the Daily Church Readings from the Word of God,
Platina, CA: St. Herman of Alaska Brotherhood, 2010.

Fr. Seraphim Rose and the St. Herman of Alaska Brotherhood (translators), The Path to Salvation: A
Manual of Spiritual Transformation, Platina, CA: St. Herman of Alaska Brotherhood Press, 1998.

Psalm 118: A Commentary by Saint Theophan the Recluse, Liberty, TN: St. John of Kronstadt Press,
2014.

Four Homilies on Prayer, translated by Rev. Fr. Michael van Opstall, 2007 (available on Monachos.net
Patristic Source Texts).

Unseen Warfare – as edited by Nicodemus of the Holy Mountain and revised by Theophan the
Recluse, Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2000.

The Art of Prayer – An Orthodox Anthology, London: Faber & Faber, 1997.

Kindling the Divine Spark, Platina, CA: St. Herman of Alaska Brotherhood, 1996.

Matericon – Instructions of Abba Isaiah to the Honorable Nun Theodore, Safford, AZ: St. Paisius
Serbian Orthodox Monastery, 2001.

Sergio Tancredo Sette Camara E Silva (translator), Season of Repentance: Lenten Homilies of Saint
John of Kronstadt, Jordanville, NY: Holy Trinity Publications, 2015.

A Spiritual Psalter, or Reflections on God, excerpted by Bishop Theophan the Recluse from the works
of our Holy Father Ephraim the Syrian, Liberty, TN: St. John of Kronstadt Press, 2004.
 723

Ken Kaisch and Iona Zhiltsov (translators), Turning the Heart to God, Ben Lomond, CA: Conciliar
Press, 2001.

(Note that St. Theophan’s complete works have been published in Moscow in a set of 26 volumes, in
Russian.)

Ilarion Troitsky, Christianity or the Church?, Jordanville, NY: Holy Trinity Monastery, 1971.

Kyril Zaits, Missionary Conversations with Protestant Sectarians, Jordanville, NY: Holy Trinity Monastery,
1985.

Josiah Trenham, Rock and Sand: An Orthodox Appraisal of the Protestant Reformers and Their Teachings,
Columbia, MO: Newrome Press, 2018. There is also a chapter on the Counter-Reformers as well. Fr. Trenham
(1967 – current) is an esteemed Orthodox archpriest and professor.

Archimandrite Panteleimon (Nizhnik), A Ray of Light: Instructions in Piety and the State of the World at the
End of Time, Jordanville, NY: Holy Trinity Monastery, 1996.

Archimandrite Panteleimon (Nizhnik), Eternal Mysteries from Beyond the Grave, Chicago, IL: Holy Trinity
Publications, 2nd Ed., 2012.

Minas Charitos (translator), St. Dmitri of Rostov, The Repose of Our Most Holy and Glorious Lady the
Theotocos, and Ever-Virgin Mary and Her Translation to Heaven, Chicago, IL: Orthodox Christian Educational
Society, 1963.

Nil Sorsky: The Complete Writings. Also called Nilus of Sora (1443 – 1508), he was a Russian saint and
hesychast.

William Pollard, A Misticall Expotition of Docter Salonius borne at Vienna and Bishopp of Fraunce, uppon the
Ecclesiastes of Salomon in Manner of a Dialogue, 1615. This is the only English translation of the Latin
commentary on Ecclesiastes by Bishop Salonius of Geneva (born about 400). This exists only in a single
manuscript copy in the University of Leeds.

Saint Symeon the New Theologian (949 – 1022), one of the three saints traditionally given the appellation
‘theologian’ by the Orthodox Church, along with John the Theologian (1st Century) and Gregory the
Theologian (4th Century). Most of St. Symeon’s works can be found in the different series I have listed further
below.

George Dion Dragas, On the Priesthood and the Holy Eucharist (According to St. Symeon of Thessalonica,
Patriarch Kallinikos of Constantinople and St. Mark of Ephesus), Rollinsford, NH: Orthodox Research Institute,
2004. Also see Steven Hawkes-Teeples (editor and translator), St. Symeon of Thessalonika: The Liturgical
Commentaries, in Studies and Texts (Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies), Vol. CLXVIII, Toronto:
Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 2011.

George Dion Dragas, St. Cyril of Alexandria’s Teaching on the Priesthood, Rollinsford, NH: Orthodox Research
Institute, 2003.

James Thornton, Pious Kings and Right-believing Queens: An Encyclopedia of the Royal and Imperial Saints of
the Orthodox Church, Belmont, MA: Institute for Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies, 2013.

Christopher Walter, The Warrior Saints in Byzantine Art and Tradition, Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003.

Michael Ivanovich Pomazansky (1888 – 1988), a Russian priest, theologian, and professor.
 724

Fr. Seraphim Rose (translator and annotator), Orthodox Dogmatic Theology: A Concise Exposition,
Platina, CA: Saint Herman of Alaska Brotherhood, 3rd Ed., 2005.

The Old Testament in the New Testament Church, Jordanville, NY: Holy Trinity Monastery, 1992

Selected Essays, Jordanville, NY: Holy Trinity Monastery, 1996.

Seraphim Englehardt (translator), On the Church of Christ in the Light of the Orthodox Faith: Outside
Communion With the Heavenly Church, There is No Church of Christ, Etna, CA: Center for
Traditionalist Orthodox Studies, [2019].

Christiaan Kappes, the Academic Dean of Ss. Cyril and Methodius Byzantine Catholic Seminary in Pittsburgh,
PA, is an Eastern Rite Roman Catholic priest and scholar who has written extensively on the Roman Catholic
and Orthodox meetings in history. He has written the following relevant works:

Procession of the Holy Spirit in Thomas Aquinas and Mark Eugenicus in opposition to
John Montenero, OP, and Pseudo-Basil’s Contra Eunomium at the Council of Florence

“A Latin Defense of Mark of Ephesus at the Council of Ferrara-Florence (1438-1439),” Greek

Orthodox Theological Review 59 (2014)

Orthodox Reception of Ps.-Pope Sylvester I and Ps.-Symmachus’s Canon: “The First See is Judged by
no Human Being”: Byzantine Canon Law from Photios to Markos of Ephesus (Acta: 23rd Congress,
Society for Law of Eastern Churches)

“Markos of Ephesus and Canon Law: Synergy between the Patriarchates and the Pope of Rome”
(Society for The Law of the Eastern Churches: “Primacy and Synodality”: Deepening Insights, 23rd
International Congress, Debrecen, Hungary, September 8, 2017)

“Mark of Ephesus, the Council of Florence, and the Roman Papacy,” in J. Chryssavgis (editor), Primacy
in the Church: The Office of Primacy and the Authority of Councils (SVS Press 2016)

The Epiclesis Debate at the Council of Florence 1439, Notre Dame, ID: University of Notre Dame
Press, 2019.

Kappes has written many other valuable studies on Orthodox interaction with Roman Catholic
theology and related subjects, which can be found on his Academia page: (https://bcs-
us.academia.edu/ChristiaanKappes/).

Asterios Gerostergios, The Great Vesper and Artoklasia Services: In Honor of Sts. Constantine and
Helen, Belmont, MA: Institute for Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies, 1998.

Marios Pilavakis, Markos Eugenikos’s First Antirrhetic Against Manuel Celecas’s On Essence and Energy,
Dissertation: King’s College University of London, London, 1987.

St. John Damascene (John of Damascus)

Asterios Gerostergios, et al. (translators), Augoustinos Kantiotes (editor), The Precious

Pearl: The Lives of Sts. Barlaam and Ioasaph, Belmont, MA: Institute for Byzantine and Modern Greek
Studies, 2002.

Daniel J. Sahas (translator and editor), John of Damascus on Islam: The “Heresy of the Ishmaelites”,
Leiden: Brill, 1972.
 725

David Anderson (translator), On the Divine Images: The Apologies Against Those Who Attack the
Divine Images, New York, NY: St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, 1980.

Mary H. Allies (translator), On Holy Images; followed by Three Sermons on the Assumption, London:
Thomas Baker, 1898.

Rocio Daga Portillo, The Arabic Life of St. John of Damascus, in Parole de l’Orient, Vol. XXI, pp. 157 –
188, Kaslik, Lebanon: Université Saint-Esprit.

John of Damascus’s other works can be found in the series listed below.

Saint John Maximovitch (1896 – 1966), Archbishop of Shanghai and San Francisco.

Sermons and Writings of Saint John, published in 2004 by the Holy Dormition Sisterhood, in 4 small
volumes.

The Orthodox Veneration of the Mother of God, published in 2012 by the St. Herman of Alaska
Brotherhood.

The Russian Orthodox Church Abroad: A Short History, Jordanville, NY: Holy Trinity Publications,
1997.

[On Saint John’s life:] Peter Perekrestov (compiler), Man of God: Saint John of Shanghai and San
Francisco, Richfield Springs: New York: Nikodemos Orthodox Publication Society, 2nd Ed., 1997.

Fr. Seraphim Rose (1934 – 1982), a revered American hieromonk and theologian, considered a saint by many
Orthodox, though he has not yet been formally canonised.

Seraphim Rose, Blessed John the Wonderworker: A Preliminary Account of the Life and Miracles of
Archbishop John Maximovitch, Platina, CA: St. Herman of Alaska Press, 1999.

Blessed Paisius Velichkovsky: The Man Behind the Philokalia, Platina, CA: Saint Herman of Alaska
Press, 1994.

with Fr. Herman Podmoshensky (translators and editors), The Northern Thebaid: Monastic Saints of
the Russian North, Platina, CA: St. Herman of Alaska Brotherhood, 3rd Ed., 2004.

Orthodoxy and the Religion of the Future, Platina, CA: Saint Herman of Alaska Brotherhood, 4th
Printing (Rev. Ed.), 1979.

Nihilism: The Root of the Revolution of the Modern Age, Platina, CA: Saint Herman of Alaska
Brotherhood, 2nd Ed., 2009 (many reprintings).

The Place of Blessed Augustine in the Orthodox Church, Platina, CA: Saint Herman of Alaska
Brotherhood, 1983.

God’s Revelation to the Human Heart, Platina CA: St. Herman of Alaska Brotherhood, 2nd Ed., 2014.

Genesis, Creation, and Early Man: The Orthodox Christian Vision, Platina, CA: St. Herman of Alaska
Brotherhood, 2nd Ed., 2011.

The Soul After Death, Platina, CA: St. Herman of Alaska Brotherhood, 4th Ed., 2009.

with Fr. Herman Podmoshensky, Orthodox Survival Course, [published digitally].

 726

with Archbishop Averky (Taushev), The Apocalypse: In the Teachings of Ancient Christianity, Platina,
CA: St. Herman of Alaska Brotherhood, 2nd Ed., 1995.

as translator, Russia’s Catacomb Saints, Platina, CA: Saint Herman of Alaska Brotherhood, 1982.

Fr. Alexey Young, Letters from Father Seraphim, Richfield Springs, NY: Nikodemos Orthodox
Publication Society, 2001.

Hieromonk Damascene, Father Seraphim Rose: His Life and Works, Platina, CA: St. Herman of Alaska
Brotherhood, 3rd Ed., 2010.

Many of Fr. Seraphim Rose’s lectures have been recorded and can be listened to online.

Saint Justin Popovich (or Popović, or Justin of Ćelije, 1894 – 1979), Serbian monk and theologian.

The Truth About the Serbian Orthodox Church in Communist Yugoslavia, Graystake, IL: Free Serbian
Orthodox Archdiocese of America and Canada, 1990.

Orthodox Faith and Life in Christ, Belmont, MA: Institute for Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies,
1994.

The Orthodox Church and Ecumenism, Birmingham: Lazarica Press, 2000.

Man and the God-Man, Alhambra, CA: Sebastian Press, 2008.

Commentary on the Epistles of St. John the Theologian, Alhambra, CA: Sebastian Press, 2009.

Serge Nedelsky (translator), Two Homilies on Great Friday and Pascha, Etna, CA: Center for
Traditionalist Orthodox Studies, 1998.

Daniel Michael Rogich (translator), Saint Justin Popovic the New Philosopher: His Life and Service,
Hesychia Press, 2020.

Dumitru Staniloae (1903 – 1993), Romanian priest, theologian, and professor.

The Victory of the Cross: A Talk on Suffering, Oxford: Fairacres Publications, 1970.

Liturgy of the Community and the Liturgy of the Heart, Oxford: Fairacres Publications, 1980.

Theology and the Church, Crestwood, NY: SVS Press, 1980.

Prayer and Holiness: The Icon of God Renewed in Man, Oxford: Fairacres Publications, 1982.

Eternity and Time, Oxford: Fairacres Publications, 2001.

Orthodox Spirituality: A Practical Guide for the Faithful and a Definitive Manual for the Scholar, South
Canaan, PA: STS Press, 2002.

The Holy Trinity: In the Beginning There Was Love, Brookline, MA: Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 2012.

The Experience of God: Orthodox Dogmatic Theology, Brookline, MA: Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 6
Vols., 2005 – 2013.

St. Nikodemus of the Holy Mountain (also called Nikodemos, Nicodemuos or Nichodemus the Hagiorite, 1749
– 1809), an extremely intelligent Orthodox monk and scholar.
 727

The Works of St. Nikodemos the Hagiorite (3 Vol.), translated and edited by Fr. George Dokos
published by Uncut Mountain Press:

Exomologetarion: A Manual of Confession, 2006.

Concerning Frequent Communion of the Immaculate Mysteries of Christ, 2006.

Confession of Faith, 2007.

Peter A. Chamberas (translator), A Handbook of Spiritual Counsel, published by Paulist Press, 1989,
in the series Classics of Western Spirituality.

George Dokos (translator and editor), Prayers to Our Lord Jesus Christ & A Safeguard for the Soul,
published by the Orthodox Research Institute, 2010.

Heiromonk Patapios (translator and editor), Christian Morality, published by the Institute for
Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies, 2011.

George Dokos (translator), A Monk of Mount Athos, The Watchful Mind: Teachings on the Prayer of the Heart,
Yonkers, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2014 (Originally 1851).

The Lord’s Prayer According To St. Makarios of Corinth, Translated by Fr. George Dion. Dragas.

E. R. A. Sewter (translator), Michael Psellus, Fourteen Byzantine Rulers, Harmondsworth, Penguin Books,
1979.

Saint John Maximovitch of Tobolsk, The Royal Way of the Cross of Our Lord Leading to Eternal Life,
Wildwood, AB: Monastery Press, 2002 (originally published in Russian in 1709). This Siberian missionary
saint lived from 1651 – 1715.

Nicholas Kotar (translator), St. John of Tobolsk, The Sunflower: Conforming the Will of Man to the Will of God,
Jordanville, NY: Holy Trinity Publications, 2018.

Nicholas Kotar (translator), Saint Philaret of Moscow, Sermons on the Spiritual Life, Riverside, CA: Patristic
Nectar Publications, 2020.

Alex Maximov and David C. Ford (translators and editors), St. Tikhon of Moscow: Instructions & Teachings
For the American Orthodox Faithful (1898 – 1907), Waymart, PA: St. Tikhon’s Monastery Press, 2016.

Marianna Lilley (translator), St. Tikhon of Voronezh, Wonderworker of Zadonsk, On True Christianity, Old
Paths Press, 4 Vols., 2020. St. Tikhon of Zadonsk (1724 – 1783) is a great Russian spiritual figure and has
been called the Chrysostom of Russia.

George Lardas (translator), St. Tikhon of Zadonsk, Journey to Heaven: Counsels on the Particular Duties of
Every Christian, Jordanville, NY: Holy Trinity Monastery, 1991.

Mother Magdalena of Novo Divievo Monastery (translator), Mitrofan Vasilevich Lodyzhenskii, Light Invisible:
Satisfying the Thirst for Happiness, Chicago, IL: Holy Trinity Publications, 2011. This work was originally
published in Russian in 1912.

John Parker, The Works of Dionysius the Areopagite, London: James Parker & Co., 2 Vols., 1897 – 1899.

Lazarus Moore (translator), St. John Climacus, The Ladder of Divine Ascent, Boston, MA: Holy Transfiguration
Monastery, 2012. St. John (525 – 605; dates vary) was the Syrian abbot of the monastery at Mt. Sinai.
 728

The Essays and Hymns of Synesius of Cyrene: Including the Address to the Emperor Arcadius and the Political
Speeches, 2 Vols., London: Oxford University Press, Humphrey Milford, 1930.

The Explanation of the New Testament, by Blessed Theophylact, Archbishop of Ochrid and Bulgaria. This is
an excellent commentary on the New Testament, which has been respected by Protestants, Roman Catholics,
and Orthodox. This is currently being translated, with six volumes published so far, and the complete edition
will be published in several more volumes by Chrysostom Press.

St. Nicolai Velimirovic (1881 – 1956)

The Prologue of Ochrid: Lives of Saints, Hymns, Reflections and Homilies for Every Day of the Year,
compiled St. Nicolai Velimirovic (1881 – 1956), in two volumes, translated and published in 2008 by
Sebastian Press.

The Lord’s Prayer: A Devout Interpretation & Three Lessons of the Orthodox Faith, Safford, AZ: St.
Paisius Orthodox Monastery, 2001.

The New Ideal in Education: An Address Given Before The League of the Empire on July 16, 1916,
London: The Electrician Printing and Publishing Co., 1916.

Religion and Nationality in Serbia, London: Nisbet & Co., 1915.

Christianity and War: Letters of a Serbian to his English Friend, London: Faith Press, 1915.

The Agony of the Church, London: Student Christian Movement, 1917.

Two Churches in one Nation, London: Faith Press, 1917.

The Soul of Serbia: Lectures Delivered Before the Universities of Cambridge and Birmingham in
London and Elsewhere in England, London: Faith Press, 1916.

The Religious Spirit of the Slavs: Three Lectures Given in Lent, 1916, London: Macmillan and Co.,
1916.

Serbia in Light and Darkness, London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1916.

The Life of St. Sava, Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2013.

Prayers by the Lake (in A Treasury of Serbian Orthodox Spirituality)

Missionary Letters of St. Nikolai Velimirovich, 3 Parts (in 3 Vols.)

Daniel Michael Rogich (translator), On the Incarnation (originally written 1923).

Daniel Michael Rogich (translator), 100 Lessons on Love.

Daniel Michael Rogich (translator), Come Alive in God!: Words for Christian Living, Canton, OH:
Hesychia Press, 2021.

The New Chrysostom: Bishop Nikolaj Velimirovic.

Haymo of Halberstadt (d. 853)

 729

Robert P. Rahe, The Commentary of Haymo, Bishop of Halberstadt, On the Apocalypse: Being a
Translation of Those Chapters which Treat of the Four Horsemen, Dissertation: Loras College,
Dubuque, IA, 1945.

Vincent L. Heinrichs, An Epitome of Sacred History by Haymo Bishop of Halberstadt: A Translation,

Dissertation: Loras College, Dubuque, IA, 1959.

Robert F. Klein, A Commentary by Haymo of Halbertstadt, Dissertation: Loras College, Dubuque, IA,
1959.

Patrick Demetrios Viscuso, Guide for a Church under Islam: The Sixty-Six Canonical Questions Attributed to
Theodoros Balsamon, Brookline, MA: Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 2014.

Patrick Demetrios Viscuso, Sexuality, Marriage, and Celibacy in Byzantine Law: Selections from a Fourteenth-
Century Encyclopedia of Canon Law and Theology: The Alphabetical Collection of Matthew Blastares,
Brookline, MA: Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 2008.

Pamela O. Long, David McGee, and Alan M. Stahl (editors), The Book of Michael of Rhodes: A Fifteenth-
Century Maritime Manuscript, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 3 Vols., 2009.

Charalambos Dendrinos, Joseph A. Munitiz, Julian Chrysostomides, Eirene Harvalia-Crook (editors), The
Letter of the Three Patriarchs to Emperor Theophilus and Related Texts, Camberly: Porphyrogenitus, 1997.

Charalambos Dendrinos, Jonathan Harris, Eirene Harvalia-Crook, and Judith Herrin (editors), Porphyrogenita:
Essays on the History and Literature of Byzantium and the Latin East in Honour of Julian Chrysostomides,
Aldershot (England) and Burlington, VT: Ashgate 2003. Charalambos Dendrinos has written and contributed
to many other valuable works, see https://pure.royalholloway.ac.uk/portal/en/persons/charalambos-
dendrinos(1fa9e26a-fcb6-42c3-94de-5aa5f9b00c1c)/publications.html.

Monastic Wisdom: The Letters of Elder Joseph the Hesychast.

Saint Gregory Palamas (1296 – 1359), a monk, archbishop, and eminent theologian (the following is a
complete bibliography of his works available in English)

The Homilies, translated and edited by Dr. Christopher Veniamin, published by Mount Thabor
Publishing, 2016. These translated homilies were earlier published in several smaller books as part
of the series Sermons by Saint Gregory Palamas.

The Triads, edited by John Meyendorff and translated by Nicholas Gendle, published by Paulist Press,
in the Classics of Western Spirituality series, 1982.

Daniel Michael Rogich (translator), Treatise on the Spiritual Life, Minneapolis, MN: Light and Life,
1995.

Rein Ferwerda (translator), Sara J. Denning-Bolle (introduction), Dialogue Between an Orthodox and
a Barlaamite, Binghampton, NY: [Binghamton University’s] Center for Medieval and Early
Renaissance Studies, 1999.

Robert E. Sinkewicz (editor and translator), Gregory Palamas, The One Hundred and Fifty Chapters,
Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 1988.

Apodictic Treatise on the Procession of the Holy Spirit, published by Uncut Mountain Press, 2016.

Saint John the Forerunner Greek Orthodox Monastery, Saint Eustathios Placidas: His Life, Suffering and
Martyrdom, Goldendale, WA: Saint John the Forerunner Greek Orthodox Monastery, 2007.
 730

Jeffrey C. Anderson and Stephano Parenti (editors), A Byzantine Monastic Office, 1105 A.D., Washington, DC:
The Catholic University of America Press, 2016.

Anthony Kaldellis, A Cabinet of Byzantine Curiosities: Strange Tales and Surprising Facts from History’s Most
Orthodox Empire, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017.

Dimitri Obolensky, Six Byzantine Portraits, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988. Also see the other valuable works
of Sir Obolensky (1918 – 2001), a professor at Oxford University.

Lincoln H. Blumell and Thomas A. Wayment (editors), Christian Oxyrhynchus: Texts, Documents, and Sources,
Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2015.

Fr. Michel Najim (translator), Raphael Hawaweeny, An Historical Glance at the Brotherhood of the Holy
Sepulchur, Torrance, CA: Oakwood Publications, 1996.

J. W. Etheridge, The Syrian Churches: Their Early History, Liturgies, and Literature, London: Longman, Brown,
Green, and Longmans, 1846.

J. W. Etheridge, The Apostolical Acts and Epistles, From the Peschito, or Ancient Syriac, London: Longman,
Brown, Green, and Longmans, 1849.

William Wright, Contributions to the Apocryphal Literature of the New Testament, London: Williams and
Norgate, 1865.

G. R. Driver and Leonard Hodgson (translators), Nestorius, The Bazaar of Heracleides, Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1925. Nestorius was condemned at the Third Ecumenical Council.

Michael J. Curley (translator), Physiologus: A Medieval Book of Nature Lore, Chicago, IL: The University of
Chicago Press, 2009.

Joaquín Martínez Pizarro (translator and editor), The Story of Wamba: Julian of Toledo’s Historia Wambae
Regis, Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2005. The only other work of St. Julian in
English translation is his Prognosticum Futuri Saeculi, in the Ancient Christian Writers series, number 63.

F. C. Belfour (translator), The Travels of Macarius, Patriarch of Antioch: Written by his Attendant Archdeacon,
Paul of Aleppo, in Arabic, London: Oriental Translation Fund of Great Britain and Ireland, 2 Vols., 1836.

The Way of the Pilgrim, a classic work of Russian spirituality from the 19th century. However, this work has
been criticized by some Orthodox saints, so read with caution.

Robert E. Sinkewicz, An Early Byzantine Commentary on the Jesus Prayer: Introduction and Edition, in
Mediaeval Studies, Vol. XLIX, pp. 208 – 220, Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1987.

Maximos Constas and Peter Chamberas (translators), St. John Chrysostom and the Jesus Prayer: A
Contribution to the Study of the Philokalia, Columbia, MO: Newrome Press, 2019. This work concludes with
an additional work on the Jesus Prayer by St. Mark of Ephesus.

Robinson Thornton (editor), Richard White Blackmore (translator), Lives of Eminent Russian Prelates: I.
Nikon, Sixth Patriarch of Moscow, II. Saint Demetrius, Metropolitan of Rostoff, III. Michael, Metropolitan of
Novgorod and S. Petersburg, London: Joseph Masters, 1854.

Richard White Blackmore (translator), A. N. Mouravieff, A History of the Church of Russia, Oxford: John Henry
Parker, 1842.
 731

Matthew Raphael Johnson, Orthodoxy, Autocracy, Nationality: Lectures on Medieval Russia, np: Deipara
Press, 2009.

Nicholas S. Racheotes, The Life and Thought of Filaret Drozdov, 1782 – 1867: The Thorny Path to Sainthood,
Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2018.

Kevin M. Kain and Katia Levintova (translators), Ioann Shusherin, From Peasant to Patriarch: Account of the
Birth, Uprising, and Life of His Holiness Nikon, Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia, Lanham, MD: Lexington
Books, 2007.

Papers of the Russo-Greek Committee and of Eastern Church Association, New York, NY: John W. Amerman,
1863 – 1866 (one volume of pamphlets). [archive.org/details/paperrussogreek00eastrich.]

J. A. Douglas, The Relations of the Anglican Churches with the Eastern-Orthodox, Especially in Regard to
Anglican Orders, London: Faith Press, 1921.

A website that contains many books relating to ecumenism and relations between Anglicans and Orthodox is:
http://anglicanhistory.org/orthodoxy/index.html.

James Chrystal, A History of the Modes of Christian Baptism, Philadelphia, PA: Lindsay and Blakiston, 1861. I
frequently cited this book in my chapter and appendix on Trine Immersion.

Richard Frederick Littledale, Offices from the Service-Books of the Holy Eastern Church, London: Williams &
Norgate, 1863.

John Brownlie (1857 – 1925)

Hymns from East and West, London: James Nisbet & Co., 1898.

Hymns of the Greek Church, Edinburgh: Oliphant, Anderson & Ferrier, 1900.

Hymns of the Holy Eastern Church, Paisley: Alexander Gardner, 1902.

Hymns From the East, Paisley: Alexander Gardner, 1907.

Hymns of the Apostolic Church, Paisley: Alexander Gardner, 1909.

Hymns From the Morningland, Paisley: Alexander Gardner, 1911.

Hymns of the Early Church, London: Morgan & Scott, 1913.

Hymns of the Russian Church, London: Oxford University Press, 1920.

Bernhard Pick, Hymns and Poety of the Eastern Church, New York, NY: Eaton & Mains, 1908.

George V. Shann, Euchology, A Manual of Prayers of the Holy Orthodox Church, Kidderminster (Printers Bär &
Hermann, Leipzig), 1891 [also reprinted New York, NY: AMS Press, 1969].

George V. Shann, Book of Needs of the Holy Orthodox Church, with an Appendix Containing Offices for the
Laying on of Hands, London: David Nutt, 1894.

George V. Shann, Synopsis: Part I. The All-Night Vigil, and First, Third, and Sixth Hour Offices, (n.p., [1878?]).

Dmitry Pavlovich Sokolof (also spelled Dimitrii Sokolov), A Manual of the Orthodox Church’s Divine Services,
New York, NY: Wynkoop Hallenbeck Crawford Co., 1899.
 732

James Nathaniel William Beauchamp (J. N. W. B.) Robertson, Tables of the Apostles and Gospels for Lord’s –
Days and Feasts throughout the Year: And of the Kathismata of the Psalter, According to the Use of the Greek
Church: Together with a Paschalion for Forty Years, London: J. N. W. B. Robertson, 1899.

James Nathaniel William Beauchamp (J. N. W. B.) Robertson & George V. Shann, Vespers, New York, NY: St.
Nicholas’ Cathedral, 1905.

Isabel Florence Hapgood, Service Book of the Holy Orthodox-Catholic Apostolic (Greco-Russian) Church,
Boston, MA: Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1906.

The Service for the Burial of the Dead According to the use of the Orthodox Greek Church in London, the
Greek Text with a rendering in English, Ditchling: Douglas Piper, 1922.

Fr. Laurence of Holy Trinity Monastery (translator), The Order of Burial for Those Who Have Fallen Asleep on
Pascha & All of Bright Week, Wildwood, AB: Monastery Press, 2000.

The Services for Holy Week and Easter Sunday, from the Triodion & Pentecostarion According to the use of
the Orthodox Greek Church in London, the Greek Text with a rendering in English, London: Williams &
Norgate, 1915.

The Divine Liturgy of the Presanctified of S. Gregory the Dialogist, the Greek Text with a rendering in English,
London: Williams & Norgate, 1918.

E. C. Whitaker and Maxwell E. Johnson, Documents of the Baptismal Liturgy, London: Society for Promoting
Christian Knowledge, Third Ed., 2003.

Seraphim Englehardt (translator), Gregory Postnikov, How to Live a Holy Life, Jordanville, NY: Holy Trinity
Publications, 2005. This short work, written by Metropolitan Gregory of St. Petersburg (1784 – 1860), was
originally published in Russian in 1904.

Euchene Smirnoff, A Short Account of the Historical Development and Present Position of Russian Orthodox
Missions, London: Rivingtons, 1903. Archpriest Eugene Smirnoff (1846 – 1923) was the last chaplain of the
Russian Imperial Embassy in London.

A. N. Arnold, Stourdza on the Greek Church, E. G. Robinson (editor), The Christian Review, Vol. XXVIII,
January, Art. II, pp. 31 – 63, Rochester, NY: Benton & Andrews, 1863. This is a translation of Alexandre de
Stourdza, Œuvres Posthumes Religieuses, Historiques Philosophiques et Littéraires, Études Morales et
Religieuses, Le Double Paralléle ou L’Église en Présence de la Papauté, Paris: Dentu, 1858. Also see Alexandre
de Stourdza, Considérations Sur La Doctrine Et L’Esprit De L’Église Orthodox, Weimar: de l’imprimerie du
Bureau d’Industrie, 1816 (in French). Alexandre de Stourdza (also called Alexander or Alexandru Sturdza,
Aleksandr Skarlatovich Sturdza, Александр Скарлатович Стурдза, 1791 – 1854) was a Romanian Orthodox
author and Russian diplomat.

Herman Ivanov-Treednadzaty and Monk Gorazd, The Vatican and Russia, and Visions Outside the Church: A
View of the Spiritual and Political Trends in Roman Catholicism, Jordanville, NY: Holy Trinity Monastery,
1990.

George M. Soldatow (translator), The Right Reverend Nestor: Bishop of the Aleutians and Alaska, 1879 –
1882, Selected Letters, Documents, and Diary (2 Vol.), Minneapolis, MN: AARDM Press, 1993.

St. Alexis Toth (1853 – 1909)

George M. Soldatow (translator and editor), Archpriest Alexis Toth: Letters, Articles, Papers, and
Sermons, Chilliwack, BC: Synaxis Press, 4 Vols., 1978.
 733

George M. Soldatow (translator and editor), Selected Letters, Sermons, and Articles, Minneapolis, MN:
AARDM Press, 1982.

George M. Soldatow (translator and editor), The Writings of St. Alexis Toth, Confessor and Defender
of Orthodoxy in America, Minneapolis, MN: AARDM Press, 1994.

George M. Soldatow (translator and editor), The Orthodox Church in America and other Writings,
Minneapolis, MN: AARDM Press, 1996.

Peter G. Kohanik, The Most Useful Knowledge for the Orthodox Russian-American Young People, Passaic, NJ,
1934.

Peter G. Kohanik, Instruction in God's Law, Wilkes-Barre, PA: SVIT – The Light, 2nd Ed., 1949.

Peter G. Kohanik, Austro-German Hypocrisy and the Russian Orthodox Greek Catholic Church, New York, NY:
The Russian Orthodox Catholic Mutual Aid Society of the United States of America, 1915.

Joseph Georgirenes, Archbishop of Samos & Ikaria (Orthodox bishop from 1666 – 1671), A Description of the
Present State of Samos, Nicaria, Patmos, and Mount Athos, London: Printed by W. G., 1678.

George Ferguson Bowen, Mount Athos, Thessaly, and Epirus: A Diary of a Journey from Constantinople to
Corfu, London: Francis & John Rivington, 1852.

Theodore Edward Dowling, The Orthodox Greek Patriarchate of Jerusalem, London: Society for Promoting
Christian Knowledge, Third Ed., 1913.

George Dion. Dragas (editor), John Travis (translator), Chrysostomos Papadopoulos, History of the Church of
Jerusalem, Columbia, MO: New Rome Press, (forthcoming). This book was originally written in Greek in 1910
and is 986 pages. I contacted the publisher, who unfortunately informed us that this project is stalled and
that it is doubtful that it will be published by their press. I also tried reaching out to Fr. Dragas and Fr. Travis,
but have not heard back.

Theodore Edward Dowling, Hellenism in England: A Short History of the Greek People in this Country from
the Earliest Times to the Present Day, London: The Faith Press, 1915.

F. M. F. Skene, The Life of Alexander Lycurgus, Archbishop of the Cyclades, London: Rivingtons, 1877.

John Hackett, A History of the Orthodox Church of Cyprus, London: Methuen & Co., 1901.

Two Lives of Charlemagne, by Einhard and Notker the Stammerer, translated by Dr. Lewis Thorpe, London:
Penguin Books, 1969.

Bertram or Ratram Concerning the Body and Blood of the Lord, London: Printed by H. Clark for Thomas
Boomer , 2nd Ed., 1688.

Timothy Roland Roberts, A Translation and Critical Edition of Ratramnus of Corbie’s De Predestinatione dei,
Dissertation: University of Missouri, Columbia, MO, 1977.

William Dudley Foulke, History of the Langobards (Historia Langobardorum) by Paul the Deacon,
Philadelphia, PA: The Department of History, University of Pennsylvania, 1907.

Aleksey Chomiakoff (Aleksei Stephanovich Khomyakov), The Orthodox Doctrine of the Church, Brussels: Ve J.
Van Buggenhoudt, 1864.
 734

William John Birkbeck (editor), Russia and the English Church During the Last Fifty Years, Vol. I, London:
Rivington, Percival & Co., 1895. Unfortunately, Birkbeck (1859 – 1916) never produced Vol. II of this valuable
work, but this gap is filled in by Athelstan Riley (editor), Birkbeck and the Russian Church, London: Society
for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1917; Rose Katherine Birkbeck, Life and Letters of W. J. Birkbeck,
London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1922.

Arthur C. Headlam, The Teaching of the Russian Church: Being Notes on Points on Which It Differs from the
English Church, London: Rivingtons (Published for the Eastern Church Association), 1897.

Charles Reuben Hale

A List of all the Sees and Bishops of the Holy Orthodox Church of the East, Privately Printed, 1872.

Letters from the Eastern Church, Privately Printed, no date.

The Orthodox Missionary Society of Russia, Privately Printed, 1878.

The Russian Church: A Paper Read before the Church Congress held at Leicester, England, Privately
Printed, 1881.

Innocent of Moscow: The Apostle of Kamchatka and Alaska, Privately Printed, 1888.

The Holy Orthodox Eastern Churches, New Haven, CT: Tuttle, Morehouse & Taylor Press, 1896.

William Bright

Later Treatises of S. Athanasius, Archbishop of Alexandria, Oxford: James Parker & Co., 1881.

The Orations of St. Athanasius Against the Arians, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2nd Ed., 1884.

Select Sermons of S. Leo the Great on the Incarnation, London: J. Masters & Co., 2nd Ed., 1886.

A Lifelong Passion: Nicholas and Alexandra: Their Own Story, translated and edited by Sergei Mironeno and
Andrei Maylunas, New York, NY: Doubleday, 1997.

Joseph T. Fuhrmann, The Complete Wartime Correspondence of Tsar Nicholas II and the Empress Alexandra:
April 1914 – March 1917, Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1999.

Leonid I. Mihalap and Patrick J. Rollins (translators), Patrick J. Rollins (editor), Sergei Sergeiivich Oldenburg,
Last Tsar: Nicholas II, His Reign & His Russia, Gulf Breeze, FL: Academic International Press, 4 Vols., 1975 –
1978. Oldenburg (1888 – 1940) was a noted Russian historian and journalist, and some consider this work as
the best study of Nicholas II and his reign (https://tsarnicholas.org/2019/03/26/last-tsar-nicholas-ii-his-
reign-his-russia-by-s-s-oldenburg-1939/).

Dimitry Vladimirovich Pospielovsky, The Orthodox Church In the History of Russia, Crestwood, NY, St.
Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1998.

Dimitry Vladimirovich Pospielovsky, The Russian Church Under the Soviet Regime 1917 – 1982, Crestwood,
NY, St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2 Vols., 1984.

Jane Ellis, The Russian Orthodox Church: A Contemporary History, Indianapolis, IN: Indiana University Press,
1986.

The Love of God: The Life and Teachings of St. Gabriel of the Seven Lakes Monastery, by Archimandrite
Symeon Kholmogorov, published in 2016 by the St. Herman of Alaska Brotherhood.
 735

Seraphim’s Seraphim: The Life of Pelagia Ivanovna Serebrenikova, Fool for Christ’s Sake of the Seraphim-
Dineyevo Convent, translated and published by Holy Transfiguration Monastery, 1979.

The Life of Our Holy Father Maximus the Confessor, translated by Fr. Christopher Birchall, and published by
Holy Transfiguration Monastery, 1982.

Elder Ieronymous of Aegina, by Peter Botsis, and published by Holy Transfiguration Monastery, 2007.

St. Herman of Alaska Brotherhood, Ana Smiljanic (translator), Our Thoughts Determine Our Lives: The Life
and Teachings of Elder Thaddeus of Vitovnica, Platina: CA, Saint Herman of Alaska Brotherhood, 2017.

Assaad Yakoob Khayat, A Voice from Lebanon, with the Life and Travels of Assaad Y. Khayat, London: Madden
& Co., 1847.

Habeeb Risk Allah Effendi, The Thistle and The Cedar of Lebanon, London: James Madden, 2nd Ed., 1854.

The Saint Raphael Clergy Brotherhood, Apostle to the Plains: The Life of Father Nichola Yanney, Chesterton,
ID: Ancient Faith Publishing, 2019.

The three major forms of the “Sayings of the Desert Fathers” (Apophthegmata Patrum):

Benedicta Ward, The Sayings of the Desert Fathers: the Alphabetical Collection, Cistercian Studies
Series LIX, Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, Rev. Ed., 1984.

John Wortley, The Book of the Elders: Sayings of the Desert Fathers, the Systematic Collection,
Cistercian Studies Series CCXL, Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2012.

John Wortley, The Anonymous Sayings of the Desert Fathers, Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2013.

(Also see John Wortley, An Introduction to the Desert Fathers, Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2019.)

Henry Bettenson, Documents of the Christian Church, London: Oxford University Press, 2nd Ed., 1963. This
was first published in 1943, but the third (1999) and fourth editions (2011), edited by Chris Maunder, contain
additional content on modern liberal topics.

William Roberts, History of Letter-Writing: From the Earliest Period to the Fifth Century, London: William
Pickering, 1843. This book contains some unique translations of ancient letters in Christian society.

Harry J. Magoulias, Decline and Fall of Byzantium to the Ottoman Turks: An Annotated Translation of Historia
Turco-Byzantina, Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 1975.

Harry J Magoulias, O City of Byzantium: Annals of Niketas Choniatē s, Detroit, MI: Wayne State University
Press, 1984.

Jeffrey Featherstone (translator), Establishing a Holy Lineage: Theodore the Stoudite’s Funerary Catechism
for his Mother (Bibliotheca hagiographica graeca 2422), in M. Grünbart, ed., Theatron: Rhetorische Kultur in
Spätantike und Mittelalter, Millennium-Studien 13, pp. 13 – 51, Berlin: De Gruyter, 2007.

Elder Moses of Optina, translated and published by Holy Nativity Convent, 1996.

Papa-Nicholas Planas: The Simple Shepherd of the Simple Sheep, by Martha Nun, and published by Holy
Transfiguration Monastery, 2001.
 736

The Ascetical Homilies of Saint Isaac the Syrian, translated and published by Holy Transfiguration Monastery,
2nd Ed., 2011. St. Isaac was a 7th Century Bishop and theologian.

Saint Symeon of Emesa: The Fool for Christ’s Sake, by Leontius, Bishop of Neapolis in Cyprus, published by
Holy Transfiguration Monastery, 2014.

Saint Gregory the Sinaite: Discourse on the Transfiguration, by David Balfour, San Bernardino, CA: Borgo
Press, 1985.

J. Frishmann, Narsai’s Memre on Old testament Topics, Dissertation: University of Leiden, 1992.

Nikolai A. Lipatov (translator), St. Basil the Great, Commentary on the Prophet Isaiah, Cambridge: Edition
Cicero, 2001. This is volume 7 of the Texts and Studies in the History of Theology (TASHT) series, which
contains nine volumes, but this is the only work of the series in English.

Cyril Mango, Roger Scott, and Geoffrey Greatrix, The Chronicle of Theophanes Confessor: Byzantine and Near
Eastern History, AD 284 – 813, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997. Another translation (but only partial) is Harry
Turtledove, The Chronicle of Theophanes: Anni Mundi 6095 – 6305 (A.D. 602 – 813), Philadelphia, PA:
University of Pennsylvania Press, 1982.

Marios Philippides (translator), The Fall of the Byzantine Empire: A Chronicle by George Sphrantzes, 1401 –
1477, Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 1980. Another translation was made by Margaret
Carroll in 1985.

Marios Philippides, Emperors, Patriarchs and Sultans of Constantinople, 1373 – 1513: An Anonymous Greek
Chronicle of the Sixteenth Century, Brookline, MA: Hellenic College Press, 1986.

The Chronography of George Synkellos, translated by William Adler and Paul Tuffin (Oxford University Press,
Oxford, 2002).

John Raffan (translator), Euthymius Zigabenus, Commentary on the Psalms (“Zigabenus Psalter Commentary
Parallel Text”, https://www.academia.edu/25967928/Zigabenus_Psalter_Commentary_Parallel_Text). The
only other work of Zigabenus in English (as far as I know) is John Sanidopoulos’s complete translation of
Zigabenus’s Concerning Bogomilism, in John Sanidopoulos, The Rise of Bogomilism and Its Penetration into
Constantinople, in Patristic and Ecclesiastical Texts and Translations, No. 3, Rollinsford, NH: Orthodox
Research Institute, 2011.

Medieval Slavic Lives of Saints and Princes, Michigan Slavic Translations, Vol. V, translated by Marvin Kantor,
Ann Arbor: Michigan Slavic Publications, 1983. Note that this is the only volume of the series that directly
concerns Orthodoxy.

Kiril and Methodius: Founders of Slavonic Writing: A Collection of Sources and Critical Studies, edited by Ivan
Duichev and translated by Spass Nikolov, New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 1985.

Paul Pavlovich, The History of The Serbian Orthodox Church, Toronto: Serbian Heritage Books, 1989.
Pavlovich’s (1935 – 2009) only other book is The Serbians: The Story of a People, Toronto: Serbian Heritage
Books, 1988.

Maksim Vasiljević, The Christian Heritage of Kosovo and Metohija: The Historical and Spiritual Heartland of
the Serbian People, Los Angeles, CA: Sebastian Press, 2015.

Jelena Todorović, An Orthodox Festival Book in the Habsburg Empire: Zaharija Orfelin’s Festive Greeting to
Mojsej Putnik (1757), Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006.
 737

Anthony Preus (translator), Aristotle and Michael of Ephesus on the Movement and Progression of Animals,
Studien & Materialien zur Geschichte der Philosophie, Vol. XXII, Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1981. This appears
to be the only relevant English text from this series.

Andrew Dalby, Flavours of Byzantium, Totnes: Prospect Books.

Thomas Owen, Geoponika – Agricultural Pursuits, 2 Vols., London: W. Spilsbury, 1905 – 1906.

The Syriac Chronicle known as that of Zachariah of Mitylene, translated by F. J. Hamilton and E. W. Brooks
(London, 1899). This is part of the four-volume (although more volumes were planned) Byzantine Texts
series edited by John Bagnell Bury, but this is the only one translated into English. This work was also
translated in Translated Texts for Historians.

The Chronicle of Leontios Machairas, in Recital Concerning the Sweet Land of Cyprus, entitled ‘Chronicle’,
translated by Richard MacGillivray Dawkins, in 2 volumes, Oxford, 1932.

Bertram Colgrave, The Life of Bishop Wilfrid by Eddius Stephanus, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1927.

Warren T. Treadgold, The Unpublished Saint’s Life of the Empress Irene (BHG 2205), Byzantinische
Forschungen, Vol. VIII, pp. 237 – 251, Amsterdam: Hakkert, 1982.

Alcuin

Stephen Allott, Alcuin of York: His Life and Letters, York: William Sessions Limited, 1974 (Reprinted
1987). This text contains full or partial translations of over 150 of Alcuin’s 311 letters.

Thomas Galbraith Sturgeon, The Letters of Alcuin: Part I, The Aachen Period, 762 – 796, Ph.D. Thesis,
Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, 1953. This is a rare work and I am only aware of copies in the
Harvard University Archives and in the University of York Library. No second part was printed.

Wilbur Samuel Howell, The Rhetoric of Alcuin & Charlemagne, Princeton Studies in English, Vol.
XXIII, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1941 (Reprinted New York, NY: Russell & Russell,
1965).

Peter Godman, The Bishops, Kings, and Saints of York, Oxford Medieval Texts, Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1982 (Reprinted 2003).

John Scotus Eriugena

John Joseph O'Meara and I. P. Sheldon-Williams, Periphyseon (The Division of Nature), Montréal, QC:
Bellarmin, 1987.

Christopher Bamford, The Voice of the Eagle. The Heart of Celtic Christianity: John Scotus Eriugena's
Homily on the Prologue to the Gospel of St. John, Edinburgh: Floris Books, New Ed., 2001 (First Ed.
1990).

Paul Rorem, Eriugena's Commentary on the Dionysian Celestial Hierarchy, in Studies and Texts
(Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies), Vol. CL, Toronto, ON: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval
Studies, 2005.

Mary Brennan, Treatise on Divine Predestination, Notre Dame Texts in Medieval Culture, Vol. V,
Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2002, (First Printed 1998).
 738

Denis O’Donoghue, Brendaniana: St. Brendan the Voyager in Story and Legend, Dublin: Browne & Nolan,
1895.

Whitley Stokes, Lives of Saints from the Book of Lismore, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1890.

Leonard Bacon, The Song of Roland: Translated Into English Verse, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press,
1914. There are several different versions and translations of the Song of Roland.

John W. Watt, The Fifth Book of the Rhetoric of Antony of Tagrit, Louvain: Peeters, 2 Vols., 1986.

John McCaul, Christian Epitaphs of the First Six Centuries, Toronto: W. C. Chewett & Co., 1869.

John Henry Parker, The Archæology of Rome, 9 Vols., Oxford: Parker & Co., 2nd Ed., 1879 – 1883.

James Spencer Northcote, Epitaphs of the Catacombs, or, Christian Inscriptions in Rome During the First Four
Centuries, London: Longmans, Green, & Co., 1878.

George Petrie and M. Stokes, Christian Inscriptions in the Irish Language, Dublin: Printed at the University
Press, for the Royal Historical and Archæological Association of Ireland, 2 Vols., 1872 – 1878.

Amos Williams Patten, Early Christian Inscriptions in the Bennett Museum of Christian Archaeology, in
Garrett Biblical Institute Bulletin, Vol. III, No. V, Evanston, IL: Garrett Biblical Institute, 1915.

Iiro Kajanto, Onomastic Studies in the Early Christian Inscriptions of Rome and Carthage, in Acta Instituti
Romani Finlandiae, Vol. II:I, Helsinki: 1963.

Ernest Flagg Henderson, Select Historical Documents of the Middle Ages, London: George Bell & Sons, 1892.

Brian Tierney, The Middle Ages, 2 Vols., New York, NY: McGraw-Hill, 1999. Only the first volume (latest 6th
Ed.), titled Sources of Medieval History, contains source material. The second volume (latest 5th Ed.) is titled
Readings in Medieval History, and contains historical essays on medieval topics.

David A. Traill, Walahfrid Strabo’s Visio Wettini: Text, Translation, and Commentary, Bern: Herbert Lang,
1974. Note that this is the only first millennium English translation in the series Lateinische Sprache und
Literatur des Mittelalters, from 1974 – 2017, currently published by Peter Lang.

Walter Horn and Ernst Born, Plan of St. Gall: Study of the Architecture and Economy of, and Life in, a
Paradigmatic Carolingian Monastery, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1979 (3 Vol.)

Bernhard Walter Scholz and Barbara Rogers-Gardner (translators), Carolingian Chronicles: Royal Frankish
Annals and Nithard’s Histories, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press. This is part of the Ann Arbor
Paperbacks series, although this appears to be the only translation of a first millennium work in the Christian
world.

Maud Joynt, The Life of St. Gall, Burnham-on-Sea: Llanerch Press, 1927.

Robert Somerville and Bruce C. Brasington (translators), Prefaces to Canon Law Books in Latin Christianity:
Selected Translations, 500 – 1245, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2nd Ed., 2020.

Joseph P. Farrell (translator), Saint Maximus the Confessor: Disputations with Pyrrhus (also titled The
Disputation with Pyrrhus of Our Father among the Saints Maximus the Confessor), Waymart, PA: St. Tikhon’s
Monastery Press, 2014 (first printed 1990).

Francis Dvornik, The Life of Saint Wenceslas, Prague: State Printing Office, 1929.
 739

John Wortley, John Skylitzes: A Synopsis of Byzantine History, 811 – 1057, Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2010.

Wayne James Jorgenson, The Augustana Graeca and the Correspondence Between the Tübingen Lutherans
and Patriarch Jeremias: Scripture and Tradition in Theological Methodology, Dissertation, Boston University
Graduate School, Boston, MA, 1979.

Fr. George Mastrantonis, Augsburg and Constantinople: The Correspondence between the Tübingen
Theologians and Patriarch Jeremiah II of Constantinople on the Augsburg Confession, Brookline, MA: Holy
Cross Orthodox Press, 1980.

Rev. Franz Joseph Cöln, The Nomocanonical Literature of the Copto-Arabic Church of Alexandria, Gorgias
Press, 2013. According to Gorgias Press, this is number 7 in the Coptic Studies Library series, but it does not
appear that there are currently any other English texts in this series.

Jane Swan, Chosen for His People: A Biography of Patriarch Tikhon, Jordanville, NY: Holy Trinity Seminary
Press, 2015.

Hugo Mager, Elizabeth: Grand Duchess of Russia, New York, NY: Carroll & Graf, 1998.

Lubov Millar, Grand Duchess Elizabeth of Russia: New Martyr of the Communist Yoke, Richfield Springs, NY:
Nikodemos Orthodox Publication Society, 2009.

Marilyn Pfeifer Swezey (editor and translator), Fr. Afanasy Belyaev, The Romanovs Under House Arrest: From
the 1917 Diary of a Palace Priest, Jordanville, NY: Holy Trinity Seminary Press, 2018.

Moscow Patriarchate, The Royal Passion-Bearers of Russia: Their Life and Service, Platina, CA: Herman of
Alaska Brotherhood, 2014.

George Gustav Telberg and Robert Wilton, The Last Days of the Romanovs, New York, NY: George H. Doran
Company, 1920.

Grand Duchess Maria Pavlovna of Russia, Education of a Princess: A Memoir, New York, NY: The Viking Press,
1930.

Grand Duchess Maria Pavlovna of Russia, A Princess in Exile, New York, NY: The Viking Press, 1932.

Saint John the Forerunner Monastery of Mesa Potamos (author), The Romanov Royal Martyrs: What Silence
Could Not Conceal, Limassol, Cyprus: Saint John the Forerunner Monastery of Mesa Potamos, 2019. See
www.romanovs.eu/en-book, which contains valuable information and video documentaries.

Maria Larsen (translator), At the Ringing of the Bells: The Paschal Martyrs of Optina, Florence, AZ: Anna
Larsen Books, 2015.

Christine Benagh, An English man in the Court of the Tsar: The Spiritual Journey of Charles Sydney Gibbes,
Ben Lomond, CA: Conciliar Press, 2000.

Sisters of St. Nilus Skete (translators), Ioanichie Balan, Shepherd of Souls: The Life and Teachings of Elder
Paisius of Sihla, Platina, CA: St. Herman of Alaska Brotherhood Press, 2016.

Ioanichie Balan, A Little Corner of Paradise: The Life and Teachings of Elder Cleopa, Platina, CA: St. Herman of
Alaska Brotherhood Press, 2000.

Mother Cassiana (translator), Ioanichie Balan, Elder Cleopa of Sihastria: In the Tradition of St. Paisius
Velichkovsky, Lake George, CO: New Varatec Publications, 2001.
 740

Peter Alban Heers (translator), Elder Cleopa, The Truth of Our Faith, Thessalonica: Uncut Mountain Press,
2000 – 2006, (2 Vol.).

Sergei Lebedev, Consoler of Suffering Hearts: The Life, Counsels and Miracles of Eldress Rachel, Visionary of
Russia, Platina, CA: St. Herman of Alaska Brotherhood Press, 2001.

Jane Ellis (translator), An Early Soviet Saint: The Life of Father Zachariah, Oxford: The Alden Press, 1976.

Peter Alban Heers, The Life and Selected Writings of the New Martyr, St. Hilarion Troitsky, [Thessalonica]:
Uncut Mountain Press, (forthcoming).

Vera Bouteneff (translator), Father Arseny (1893 – 1973): Priest, Prisoner, and Spiritual Father, Crestwood,
NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1998.

Antonina Janda (translator), Archbishop Theophan of Poltava and Pereyaslavl, Selected Letters, Liberty, TN:
St. John of Kronstadt Press, 1989.

Hieromonk Ioannikios (translator), On Prayer, from the Alphabetalphabetos of St. Meletios, Liberty, TN: Saint
John of Kronstadt Press, 1991.

George Poulos, Orthodox Saints (4 Vols.), Brookline, MA: Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 2005.

Stefan Pavlenko (translator), On Prayer, from the writings of Bishop Theophan the Recluse, Liberty, TN: Saint
John of Kronstadt Press, 1983.

Ignatius Brianchaninov, On the Prayer of Jesus, Liberty, TN: Saint John of Kronstadt Press, 1995.

Alexei Stepanovich Khomiakov, The Church is One, Seattle, WA: Saint Nectarios Press, 1979. This essay was
originally translated in William John Birkbeck (editor), Russia and the English Church During the Last Fifty
Years, Vol. I, Ch. XXIII, pp. 192 – 222, London: Rivington, Percival & Co., 1895.

Mother Mary and Kallistos Ware (translators), The Great Canon: The Work of Saint Andrew of Crete,
Jordanville, NY: Holy Trinity Publications, 2nd Ed., 2017.

Anatoly Zertsalov, A Collection of Letters to Nuns: Profitable Instructions for Laymen and Monastics,
Jordanville, NY: Holy Trinity Publications, 1993.

Living Without Hypocrisy: Spiritual Counsels of the Holy Elders of Optina, Jordanville, NY: Holy Trinity
Publications, 2005.

Sotos Chondropoulos, Saint Nektarios: A Saint for Our Times, Brookline, MA: Holy Cross Orthodox Press,
1989.

Saint Nektarios of Aegina (1846 – 1920)

St. Nektarios Monastery (translators), Repentance and Confession, Roscoe, NY: St. Nektarios
Monastery, 2011.

St. Nektarios Monastery (translators), Christology, Roscoe, NY: St. Nektarios Monastery, 2012.
Peter and Aliki Los (translators), Sotos Chondropoulos, Saint Nektarios: The Saint of our Century,
Athens: Καινούργια Γή Publications, 1997.

P. M. K. Strongylis, Saint Nectarios of Pentapolis’ Life and Works: A Historical – Critical Study,
Dissertation: University of Durham, Durham, 1994.
 741

(Also see Constantine Cavarnos, St. Nectarios of Aegina, in the Modern Orthodox Saints series,
number 7.)

The Elder Moses of Optina, Boston, MA: Holy Nativity Convent, 1996.

Sophia Moshura (translator), Zinoviy Chesnokov, Elder Zenobius: A Life in Spiritual Continuity with Pre-
Revolutionary Russia, Jordanville, NY: Holy Trinity Publications, 2013.

Harry M. Boosalis, Orthodox Spiritual Life According to Saint Silouan the Athonite, South Canaan, PA: St.
Tikhon’s Seminary Press, 2000.

Leonidas J. Papadopulos (translator), Saint Paisios the Great, Jordanville, NY: Holy Trinity Publications, 1983.

Leonidas J. Papadopulos and Georgia Lizardos (translators), The Life and Sufferings of Saint Catherine the
Great Martyr, Seattle, WA: Saint Nectarios Press, 1985.

Esther Williams (translator), Robin Amis and Raymond Hébert (editors), Eugraph Eugraphovich Kovalevsky
(St. John-Nectarius [various spellings], Bishop of Saint-Denis), A Method of Prayer for Modern Times,
Newburyport, MA: Praxis Institute, 1993. St. John Nectarius (1905 – 1970) was a Russian-French bishop and
theologian.

Alexander Whyte, Father John of the Greek Church, an Appreciation, London: Oliphant Anderson & Ferrier,
1898.

Georgia Hronas and Helen Hronas, The Lives of Two Sainted Christian Families, Minneapolis, MN: Light and
Life Publishing Company, 1995.

Georgia Hronas, The Life of the Great Martyr George, Minneapolis, MN: Light and Life Publishing Company,
2000.

Georgia Hronas, The Life of the Great and Holy Martyr Barbara, Minneapolis, MN: Light and Life Publishing
Company, 1996.

Georgia Hronas, The Holy Unmercenary Doctors: The Saints Anargyroi, Physicians and Healers of the
Orthodox Church, Minneapolis, MN: Light and Life Publishing Company, 1999.

Elder Basil of Poiana Marului: Spiritual Father of St. Paisy Velichkovsky, Liberty, TN: Saint John of Kronstadt
Press, 1997.

Father John, Christ Is In Our Midst: Letters From a Russian Monk, London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1980.

David and Lauren Elizabeth Ninoshvili (translators), Lado Mirianashvili and the St. Herman of Alaska
Brotherhood (editors), Zakaria Machitadze, Lives of the Georgian Saints, Platina, CA: St. Herman of Alaska
Brotherhood, 2006.

David Marshall Lang, Lives and Legends of the Georgian Saints, Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press,
2nd Ed., 1976. The first edition was published in the series “Ethical and Religious Classics of East and West”,
which contains no other first-millennium Christian material (except perhaps “The Wisdom of Balahvar”).

W. M. Metcalfe (translator), Ancient Lives of Scottish Saints, Paisley: Alexander Gardner, 1895.

Vasily Marushchak, The Blessed Surgeon: The Life of Saint Luke, Archbishop of Simferopol, Manton, CA:
Divine Ascent Press, 2008.
 742

Philaret (Voznesensky), On the Law of God, Chilliwack, BC: Synaxis Press, 1980. Metropolitan Philaret (1903-
1985) was the third First Hierarch of the Russian Orthodox Church outside of Russia. Republished as Living
According to God’s Will: Principles for the Christian Journey, Jordanville, NY: Holy Trinity Publications, 2021.

George Williams, The Orthodox Church of the East in the Eighteenth Century: Being the Correspondence
Between the Eastern Patriarchs and the Nonjuring Bishops, With an Introduction on Various Projects of
Reunion Between the Eastern Church and the Anglican Communion, London: Rivingtons, 1868.

Darwell Stone, A History of the Doctrine of the Holy Eucharist, Vol. I, Ch. IV, Eastern Theology from the Sixth
Century to the Present Time, pp. 133 – 192, London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1909.

Petar Serovic (translator), Radovan Bigovic, Saint Basil of Ostrog, Valjevo: Valjevac, 1998. The first half of this
book is in Serbo-Croatian (Cyrillic), and the second half is in English.

H. C. Romanoff, Sketches of the Rites and Customs of the Greco-Russian Church, London: Rivingtons, 1868.

Athelstan Riley, Athos, or the Mountain of the Monks, London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1887.

Athelstan Riley, A Guide to the Divine Liturgy in the East, London: A. R. Mowbray & Co., 1922.

Athelstan Riley, Give Back Saint Sophia: A Report of the Speeches Delivered at the Opening Meeting of the
Crusade for the Redemption of Saint Sophia, held at the Cannon Street Hotel, on Jan. 23rd, 1919, London:
Faith Press, 1919.

J. A. Douglas, The Redemption of Saint Sophia: An Historical & Political Account of the Subject, London: Faith
Press, 1919.

Edward Masson, An Apology for the Greek Church, London: John Hatchard and Son, 1844.

Charles Anthony Swainson, Clement Bezold (editor and translator), The Greek Liturgies: Chiefly From
Original Authorities, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1884.

Charles Anthony Swainson, The Nicene and Apostles’ Creeds: Their Literary History; Together With an
Account of the Growth and Reception of the Sermon on the Faith, Commonly Called “The Creed of St
Athanasius”, London: John Murray, 1875.

George Margoliouth, The Liturgy of the Nile, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, October 1896, Art. XV,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1896.

Stephen G. Hatherly, The Divine Liturgies of Our Fathers Among the Saints, John the Goldenmouthed (St.
Chrysostom,) Archbishop of Constantinople, and Basil the Great, of Cæsarea, in Cappadocia, Cardiff: James
Wood, 1877. Fr. Hatherly was an Englishman who joined the Orthodox Church in 1856.

James Nathaniel William Beauchamp (J. N. W. B.) Robertson, The Divine Liturgies of Our Fathers Among the
Saints John Chrysostom and Basil the Great, with that of the Presanctified, Preceded by the Hesperinos and
the Orthros, London: David Nutt, 1894.

Thomas Brett, A Collection of the Principal Liturgies, Used in the Christian Church in the Celebration of the
Holy Eucharist, London: Rivington & Co., 1838.

Thomas Rattray, The Ancient Liturgy of the Church of Jerusalem, Being the Liturgy of St. James, London:
James Bettenham, 1744. Note that Neale has criticized certain problems in this work.

John Marquess of Bute and E. A. Wallis Budge (translators and editors), The Blessing of the Waters on the Eve
of the Epiphany: The Greek, Latin, Syriac, Coptic, and Russian Versions, London: Henry Frowde, 1901.
 743

Matti Moosa (translator), Ignatius Aphram I Barsoum, The Scattered Pearls: A History of Syriac Literature and
Sciences, Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press, 2nd Ed., 2003.

Frederick Edward Warren, The Liturgy and Ritual of the Celtic Church, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1881.

Tamara Grdzelidze, Georgian Monks on Mount Athos: Two Eleventh-Century Lives of the Hegoumenoi of
Iviron, London: Bennett & Bloom, 2009.

Stephen Graham, With the Russian Pilgrims to Jerusalem, London: Macmillan and Co., 1913.

Monk Chrysostomos (translator), St. Athanasios the Great, The Life and Conduct of the Holy and Blessed
Teacher Synkletike, Etna, CA: Center for Traditionalist Orthodox Studies, 2015.

Schemanun Seraphima, Saint Seraphim of Sofia: His Life, Teachings, Miracles, and Glorification, Etna, CA:
Center for Traditionalist Orthodox Studies, 2016.

Vladimir Moss, Saints of England’s Golden Age: A Collection of the Lives of Holy Men and Women Who
Flourished in Orthodox Christian Britain, Etna, CA: Center for Traditionalist Orthodox Studies, 1997.

Chrysostomos, Our Holy Father Dorotheus of Gaza: Various Soul-Profiting Instructions to His Disciples, Etna,
CA: Center for Traditionalist Orthodox Studies, 2017.

Chrysostomos, Abba Dorotheus of Gaza: His Letters and Various of His Sayings, Etna, CA: Center for
Traditionalist Orthodox Studies, 2017.

Hieromonk Ioannikios, Elder Jonah of Kiev: A Brief Account of His Life and Struggles (ca. 1794 – 1902), Etna,
CA: Center for Traditionalist Orthodox Studies, 1998.

Theodosia Tomkinson (translator), Saint Ambrose of Milan, Exposition of the Holy Gospel According to Saint
Luke, with Fragments on the Prophecy of Esaias, Etna, CA: Center for Traditionalist Orthodox Studies, 2nd Ed.,
1998.

Theodosia Tomkinson (translator), Saint Ambrose of Milan, On Abraham, Etna, CA: Center for Traditionalist
Orthodox Studies, 2000.

Theodosia Tomkinson (translator), Saint Gregory the Great, Homilies on the Book of the Prophet Ezekiel,
Etna, CA: Center for Traditionalist Orthodox Studies, 2nd Ed., 2008.

Santha Bhattacharji (translator), Reading the Gospels with Gregory the Great: Homilies on the Gospels, 21 –
26, Petersham, MA: St. Bede’s Publications, 2001.

Patrick Boyle (translator), A Homily of Saint Gregory the Great on the Pastoral Office, Dublin: M. H. Gill & Son,
1908. This is a translation of Gregory’s seventeenth homily on the Gospels. A full translation of all of Gregory
the Great’s Homilies on the Gospels was published in the Cistercian Studies series by Cistercian Publications.

Edmund G. Gardner (translator), The Dialogues of Saint Gregory the Great, London: Philip Lee Warner, 1911.

Dom Edmund J. Luck (editor), The Life and Miracles of St. Benedict, by St. Gregory the Great, London: R.
Washbourne, 1880.

Robert Charles Hill (translator), St. John Chrysostom: Commentary on the Psalms, Brookline, MA: Holy Cross
Orthodox Press, 2 Vols., 1998.
 744

Sebastian Dabovich, The Lives of the Saints and Several Lectures and Sermons, San Francisco, CA: The
Murdock Press, 1898.

Sebastian Dabovich, The Holy Orthodox Church, or the Ritual, Services, and Sacraments of the Eastern
Apostolic (Greek-Russian) Church, San Francisco, CA: [publisher not identified], 1898.

Sebastian Dabovich, Preaching in the Russian Church, or Lectures and Sermons by a Priest of the Holy
Orthodox Church, San Francisco, CA: Cubery and Company, 1899.

Mother Mary and Archimandrite Kallistos Ware (translators), The Lenten Triodion, Boston. MA: Faber and
Faber, 1984.

Mother Mary and Archimandrite Kallistos Ware (translators), The Lenten Triodion: Supplementary Texts,
South Canaan, PA: St. Tikhon’s Seminary Press, 2007. A translation of the Synodicon of Orthodoxy was not
included in this translation of the Triodion, but it can be found in the periodical The True Vine (Nos. 27 and
28) by Holy Transfiguration Monastery of Boston in Spring, 2000.

Timothy Ware (editor), E. Kadloubovsky and E. M. Palmer (translators), Igumen Chariton of Valamo, The Art
of Prayer: An Orthodox Anthology, London: Faber & Faber, 1966.

Christopher Birchall, Embassy, Emigrants and Englishmen: The Three Hundred Year History of a Russian
Orthodox Church in London, Chicago, IL: Holy Trinity Publications, 2014.

Leo Wiener (translator), Roderick Page Thaler (editor), Alexander Nikolayevich Radishchev, A Journey from
St. Petersburg to Moscow, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1958. This work was originally
published in Russian in 1790. Radishchev was considered a radical, and his works should be read with
caution.

Heather Coleman, Orthodox Christianity in Imperial Russia: A Source Book on Lived Religion, Bloomington,
IN: Indiana University Press, 2014.

Victor Terras (editor), Handbook of Russian Literature, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1990.

Marc Raeff, Russian Intellectual History: an Anthology, New York, NY: Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc., 1966.

Serge A. Zenkovsky, Medieval Russia’s Epics, Chronicles, and Tales, New York, NY: Dutton, 1974.

Vasily Osipovich Klyuchevsky (Василий Осипович Ключевский, various spellings, e.g., Vasilii Kliuchevskii,
1841 – 1911), one of the very best Russian historians.

C. J. Hogarth (translator), A History of Russia, 5 vols., London: J. M. Dent & Sons, 1911 – 1931.

Liliana Archibald (translator), Peter the Great, London: Macmillan, 1963.

Liliana Archibald and Mark Scholl (translators), The Rise of the Romanovs, London: Macmillan, 1970.

Natalie Duddington, A Course in Russian History: The Seventeenth Century, London: Routledge,
1994.

Alfred J. Batman and Achilles Edelenyi, Documentary History of Eastern Europe, New York, NY:
Twayne Publishers, 1970.

Marshall S. Shatz (translator), A Course in Russian History: The Time of Catherine the Great, London:
M. E. Sharpe, 1997.
 745

Marshall S. Shatz (translator), From Peter the Great to Pushkin: Essays on Russian History, Idyllwild,
CA: Charles Schlacks, 1995.

G. Edward Orchard (translator), Isaac Massa, A Short History of the Beginnings and Origins of These Present
Wars in Moscow Under the Reign of Various Sovereigns Down to the Year 1610, Toronto: University of
Toronto Press, 1982.

G. Edward Orchard (translator), Conrad Bussow, The Disturbed State of the Russian Realm, Montré al: McGill-
Queen's University Press, 1994.

Chester S. L. Dunning (translator), Jacques Margeret, The Russian Empire and Grand Duchy of Muscovy: A
17th-century French Account, Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1983.

Lazarus Moore, St. Seraphim of Sarov: A Spiritual Biography, Blanco, TX: New Sarov Press, 1994.

Helen Kontsevitch, Saint Seraphim: Wonderworker of Sarov and his Spiritual Inheritance, Wildwood, CA: St.
Xenia Skete, 2004.

Ann Shukman (translator), Metropolitan Seraphim (Chichagov), Chronicles of Seraphim-Diveyevo Monastery,

Cambridge: Saints Alive Press, 2018.

Jack V. Haney, From Italy to Muscovy: The Life and Works of Maxim the Greek, Munich: Wilhem Fink, 1973.

Alexander V. Muller (editor and translator), The Spiritual Regulation of Peter the Great, Seattle, WA:
University of Washington Press, 1972.

J. L. I. Fennell, The Correspondence between Prince A. M. Kurbsky and Tsar Ivan IV of Russia, 1564 – 1579,
Cambridge: Cambridge Universtiy Press, 1955 (Reprinted 1963).

Carolyn Johnston Pouncy, The “Domostroi”: Rules for Russian Households in the Time of Ivan the Terrible,
Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1994.

Elizabeth A. S. Dawes and Norman Hepburn Bates (editors and translators), Three Byzantine Saints:
Contemporary Biographies of St. Daniel the Stylite, St. Theodore of Sykeon and St. John the Almsgiver,
Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1977.

Adomnán of Iona (or Adamnán, Adamnanus, etc., 624 – 704)

Whitley Stokes, Fis Adamnain Slicht Libair Na Huidre: Adamnán’s vision, Transcribed and Translated
From the Book of Dun Cow, Simla: Printed at the Station Press by J. Elston, 1870.

Gilbert Márkus (translator), Adomnán’s Law of the Innocents – Cáin Adomnáin: A Seventh-Century
Law for the Protection of Non-Combatants, Kilmartin, Argyll: Kilmartin House Museum, 2008.

Adomnan’s Life of Columba is in The Historians of Scotland series, listed below.

John Carey, King of Mysteries: Early Irish Religious Writings, Dublin: Four Courts Press, 1998.

John Skinner (translator), The Confession of Saint Patrick, New York, NY: Image Books, 1998. The Confession
and Letter to Coroticus are the only two authentic works of Saint Patrick of Ireland. There are several other
translations, some of which also include the 9th century Tripartite Life. See Whitley Stokes (editor and
translator), The Tripartite Life of Patrick: With Other Documents Relating to that Saint, (in two parts), 1887,
in the Rerum Britannicarum Medii Ævi Scriptores series.

Ileana (Princess of Romania), I Live Again, New York, NY: Rinehart, 1952.
 746

Ileana (Princess of Romania), Hospital of the Queen’s Heart, New York, NY: Rinehart, 1954.

Bev. Cooke, Royal Monastic: Princess Ileana of Romania, Ben Lomond, CA: Conciliar Press Ministries, 2008.

Ioanichie Balan, Romanian Patericon: Saints of the Romanian Orthodox Church, Platina, CA: St. Herman of
Alaska Press, 1996. Three volumes have been planned, but only the first is currently available.

Daniel Michael Rogich, Serbian Patericon: Saints of the Serbian Orthodox Church, Vol. I, Platina, CA: St.
Herman of Alaska Brotherhood, 1994. Only the first volume was published, from January to April.

Daniel Michael Rogich, Great Martyr Tsar Lazar of Serbia: His Life and Service, Platina, CA: Saint Herman of
Alaska Press, 2001.

Daniel Michael Rogich, The Walking Saint: Patriarch Pavle of Serbia, Hesychia Press, 2019.

Karin Pieck-Radovanovic (translator), Bishop Sava of Sumadija, History of the Serbian Orthodox Church in
America and Canada, 1891 – 1941, Kragujevac: Kalenić, 1998.

Ana Smylyanich (translator), Vesna Nikcevic, Healings of Soul and Body: Saint Basil of Ostrog, Cetiny:
Svetigora, 2003.

Elder Paisios of Mount Athos, Elder Hadji-Georgis the Athonite, 1809-1886, Thessaloniki: Holy Monastery of
the Evangelist John the Theologian, 2nd Ed., 2002.

Elder Paisios of Mount Athos, Saint Arsenios the Cappadocian, Thessaloniki: Holy Monastery of the Evangelist
John the Theologian, 3rd Ed., 2001.

Alexander Golitzin, The Living Witness of the Holy Mountain: Contemporary Voices from Mount Athos, South
Canaan, PA: St. Tikhon's Seminary Press, 1999.

Rosemary Edmonds (translator), Archimandrite Sophrony Sakharov, Wisdom from Mount Athos: The
Writings of Staretz Silouan, 1866 – 1938, Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2001.

Rosemary Edmonds (translator), Archimandrite Sophrony Sakharov, The Monk of Mount Athos: Staretz
Silouan, 1866 – 1938, Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2001. This is a companion volume to the
above, and gives an account of Silouan’s life.

Archibald P. Wavell (translator), Alexander V. Elchaninov, The Tsar and His People, London: Hodder and
Stoughton (Hugh Rees), 1913.

Archibald P. Wavell (translator), Alexander V. Elchaninov, Tsar Nicholas II., London: Hodder and Stoughton
(Hugh Rees), 1914.

Helen Iswolsky (translator), Kallistos Timothy Ware (editor), Alexander V. Elchaninov, Diary of a Russian
Priest, London: Faber and Faber, 1967 (Reprinted often).

Kallistos Timothy Ware, The Orthodox Church, Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1963. A second edition was
published in 1993, and a third (and last) in 2015. Many prefer the first edition for its more conservative
content on certain issues.

Kallistos Timothy Ware, The Orthodox Way, London: Mowbrays, 1979.

 747

George Alexander, The Orthodox Dilemma: Personal Reflection on Global Pan-Orthodox Christian Concilliar
Unity, Alappuzha District, Kerala, India: OCP Publications, Fourth Ed., 2018. This book contains many
valuable quotes and translated passages.

Maria Hämmerli and Jean-François Mayer (editors), Orthodox Identities in Western Europe: Migration,
Settlement and Innovation, Farnham: Ashgate, 2014.

Nicholas Bjerring (translator), Archpriest Basaroff, The Russian Orthodox Church: A Treatise of Her Origin
and Life, New York, NY: E. P. Dutton & Company, 1873.

Cherubim Karambelas, Contemporary Ascetics of Mount Athos, Platina, CA: St. Herman of Alaska Brotherhood
Press, 2 Vols., 1991 – 1992.

Joseph P Farrell, The Disputation with Pyrrhus of our Father among the Saints Maximus the Confessor,
Waymart, PA: St. Tikhon’s Monastery Press, 2014.

A Priest of Mount Melleray (translator), The Holy Rule of St. Benedict, London: Thomas Richardson and Son,
1865.

Edmund John Luck (editor), St. Gregory the Great, The Life and Miracles of St. Benedict, London: R.
Washbourne, 1880. This is from the second book of Gregory’s Dialogues.

Haris Skarlakidis, Holy Fire: The Miracle of the Light of the Resurrection at the Tomb of Jesus: Seventy
Historical Accounts (4th – 16th c.), Athens: Elaia Editions, 2nd Ed., 2015. First English edition titled Holy Fire:
The Miracle of Holy Saturday at the Tomb of Christ: Forty-Five Historical Accounts (9th – 16th c.), 2011.

Jack N. Sparks, The Apostolic Fathers, Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 1982.

Cyril C. Richardson, Early Christian Fathers, New York, NY: Simon and Schuster, 1996.

William Hugh Clifford Frend (reviser), James Stevenson (editor), A New Eusebius: Documents Illustrating the
History of the Church to A.D. 337, London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1987.

William Hugh Clifford Frend (reviser), James Stevenson (editor), Creeds, Councils and Controversies:
Documents Illustrative of the History of the Church, A.D. 337 – 461, London: Society for Promoting Christian
Knowledge, Rev. Ed., 1989.

Thomas J. Shahan (translator), Otto Bardenhewer, Patrology: The Lives and Works of the Fathers of the
Church, St. Louis, MO: B. Herder, 2nd Ed., 1908.

Johan Leemans et al., ‘Let Us Die That We May Live’: Greek Homilies on Christian Martyrs from Asia Minor,
Palestine and Syria, c. AD 350 – AD 450, London: Routledge, 2003.

Bryn Geffert and Theofanis G. Stavrou (editors), Eastern Orthodox Christianity: The Essential Texts, New
Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2016. Also see the Eastern Orthodox Christianity: Supplemental Texts,
available online at yalebooks.com/eoc (public link to download PDF:
http://yalebooks.com/sites/default/files/files/Media/Eastern%20Orthodox%20Christianity/97803001967
88_Supplemental%20Texts.pdf). This work compiles many valuable translations of important documents.

Kallistos Ware, Eustratios Argenti: A Study of the Greek Church under Turkish Rule, Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1964.

Stylianos G. Vayanos, Elias Meniates: Biography & Translation of his Sermons on Repentance and Confession,
Dissertation: Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology, Brookline, Massachusetts, 1998.
 748

John R. Melville-Jones, Testimonia Numaria: Greek and Latin Texts Concerning Ancient Greek Coinage,
London: Spink & Son, 2 Vols., 1993 – 2007.

John R. Melville-Jones, Venice and Thessalonica 1423 – 1430: The Venetian Documents / The Greek Accounts,
Padova (Padua): Unipress, 2 Vols., 2002 – 2006.

John R. Melville-Jones, The Siege of Constantinople 1453: Seven Contemporary Accounts, Amsterdam:
Hakkert, 1972.

Max Ludwig Wolfram Laistner, Thought and Letters in Western Europe: A.D. 500 to 900, Ithaca, NY: Cornell
University Press, 2nd Ed., 1957.

Barbara H. Rosenwein, Reading the Middle Ages: Sources from Europe, Byzantium, and the Islamic World,
North York: University of Toronto Press, 2nd Ed., 2014.

Thomas F. X. Noble and Thomas Head (editors), Saints and Saints’ Lives from Late Antiquity and the Early
Middle Ades, University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1995.

Oliver Strunk and Leo Treitler (editors), Source Readings in Music History, New York, NY: W. W. Norton &
Company, Rev. Ed., 1998 (also published in a seven-volume edition, first published 1950). The most relevant
section is II, The Early Christian Period and the Latin Middle Ages, edited by James McKinnon, where there
are several translations of first millennium works.

Bronwen Neil and Pauline Allen, Conflict and Negotiation in the Early Church: Letters from Late Antiquity,
Translated from the Greek, Latin, and Syriac, Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2020.

Lieve Van Hoof and Peter Van Nuffelen (editors), The Fragmentary Latin Histories of Late Antiquity (AD 300 –
620): Edition, Translation and Commentary, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2020.

Raffaella Cribiore, The School of Libanius in Late Antique Antioch, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,
2007.

Roger S. Bagnall and Raffaella Cribiore, Women’s Letters from Ancient Egypt, 300 BC – AD 800, Ann Arbor,
MI: University of Michigan Press, 2006.

Joan Ferrante et al., Epistolae: Medieval Women’s Letters, on https://epistolae.ctl.columbia.edu/.

Bronwen Neil, A Critical Edition of Anastasius Bibliothecarius’ Latin Translation of Greek Documents
Pertaining to the Life of Maximus the Confessor, with an Analysis of Anastasius’ Translation Methodology, and
an English Translation of the Latin Text, Dissertation: Australian Catholic University, 1998.

John Springer Langdon, Byzantium’s Last Imperial Offensive in Asia Minor: The Documentary Evidence for
and Hagiographical Lore about John III Ducas Vatatzes’ Crusade Against the Turks, 1222 or 1225 to 1231,
New Rochelle, NY: A.D. Caratzas, 1992.

Patrick J. Geary, Readings in Medieval History, North York: University of Toronto Press, 5th Ed., 2016.

Robert L. Ferm, Readings in the History of Christian Thought, New York, NY: Holt, Rinehart and Winston,
1964. All translations here are copied from other books.

Oliver Joseph Thatcher and Edgar Holmes McNeal, A Source Book for Mediæval History: Selected Documents
Illustrating the History of Europe in the Middle Age, New York, NY: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1905.

Averil Cameron (editor), Flavius Cresconius Corippus, In Laudem Iustini Augusti Minoris, London: The
Athlone Press, University of London, 1976 (Reprinted Bloomsbury, 2000).
 749

Robert Payne Smith, The Third Part of the Ecclesiastical History of John, Bishop of Ephesus, Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1860.

Charles Edward Hammond, Liturgies Eastern and Western: Being a Reprint of the Texts, Either Original or
Translated, of the Most Representative Liturgies of the Church, from Various Sources, Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1878.

Charles Edward Hammond, The Ancient Liturgy of Antioch and Other Liturgical Fragments: Being an
Appendix to ‘Liturgies Eastern and Western’, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1879.

Frank Edward Brightman, Liturgies Eastern and Western: Being the Texts Original or Translated of the
Principal Liturgies of the Church, Vol. I, Eastern Liturgies, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1896. This is a revised
and expanded edition of the section on the Eastern churches in Hammond's work. Note that Vol. II (on
Western Liturgies) was never published.

J. R. Webb, Sources for the Investiture Controversy (in English translation)

(http://webhost.bridgew.edu/jrwebb/pages/IC_english.html).

Leslie George Whitbread (translator), Fulgentius the Mythographer, Columbus, OH: Ohio State University
Press, 1971.

Arthur Vööbus, Syriac and Arabic Documents Regarding Legislation Relative to Syrian Asceticism, in Papers of
the Estonian Theological Society in Exile, 11, Stockholm: The Estonian Theological Society in Exile, 1960.

Abjar Bahkou, Defending Christian Faith: The Fifth Part of the Christian Apology of Gerasimus, Warsaw: De
Gruyter, 2014.

Abjar Bahkou, The Story of the Encounter between Monk Bahira and Muhammad as It is Recorded in the
Syriac Manuscript of Mardin 259/2: The Monk Encounters the Prophet, Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen, 2016.

Kenneth P. Wesche (translator), On the Person of Christ: The Christology of Emperor Justinian, Crestwood,
NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1991.

Asterios Gerostergios, Justinian the Great: The Emperor and Saint, Belmont, MA: Institute for Byzantine and
Modern Greek Studies, 1982.

Jean-Claude Larchet and the Brotherhood of the Monastery of St. John, Elder Sergie of Vanves: Life and
Teachings, Point Reyes Station, CA: Divine Ascent Press, 2012.

Oswald Hugh Ewart Burmester, The Canons of Cyril II, LXVII Patriarch of Alexandria, Louvain: Imprimerie
Orientaliste et Scientifique, 1936. This was originally published in the journal Le Muséon.

Basil Thomas Alfred Evetts, Oswald Hugh Ewart Burmester, Antoine Khater, and Yassa Abd al-Masih
(translators and editors), History of the Patriarchs of the Egyptian Church, 1906 – 1973. The first half of the
Arabic texts was translated by Evetts and is in the Patrologia Orientalis (in non-sequential numbers), and
Burmester led the translation of the remainder (in 6 printed volumes). Hugh Nigel Kennedy has recently
published a new edition of Evetts’ text and translation in three volumes.

Fred C. Conybeare, The Key of Truth: A Manual of the Paulician Church of Armenia, Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1898.

Ephrem Lash (translator), On the Life of Christ: Kontakia: Chanted Sermons by the Great Sixth-Century Poet
and Singer St. Romanos, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010 [Originally published San Francisco, CA:
 750

HarperCollins Publishers, 1995]. Note that this is part of the twenty-volume “Sacred Literature Trust Series”,
but it is the only volume from a Christian author of the first millennium.

Marjorie Carpenter, Kontakia of Romanos, Byzantine Melodist, Columbia, MI: University of Missouri Press, 2
Vols., 1970 – 1973. This is the only complete English translation of Romanos’s hymns.

Stephen A. Barney, W. J. Lewis, J. A. Beach, Oliver Berghof, and Muriel Hall (editors and translators), The
Etymologies of Isidore of Seville, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010.

John R. C. Martyn, Arians and Vandals of the 4th-6th Centuries: Annotated translations of the historical works
by Bishops Victor of Vita (Historia Persecutionis Africanae Provinciae) and Victor of Tonnena (Chronicon), and
of the religious works by Bishop Victor of Cartenna (De Paenitentia) and Saints Ambrose (De Fide Orthodoxa
contra Arianos), and Athanasius (Expositio Fidei), Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing,
2008.

C. R. B. Shapland, The Letters of Saint Athanasius Concerning the Holy Spirit, London: The Epworth Press,
1951.

Melito of Sardis: Sermon “On the Passover”, Lexington, KY: Lexington Theological Seminary Library, 1976.

Ernest Gilliat Smith, Songs from Prudentius, London: John Lane, 1898.

William Cureton (editor and translator), Corpus Ignatianum: A Complete Collection of the Ignatian Epistles,
Genuine, Interpolated, and Spurious, London: Francis & John Rivington, 1849.

William Cureton (editor and translator), Spicilegium Syriacum: Containing Remains of Bardesan, Meliton,
Ambrose and Mara Bar Serapion, London: Rivingtons, 1855.

William Cureton (editor and translator), Remains of a Very Antient Recension of the Four Gospels of the Four
Gospels in Syriac, London: John Murray, 1858.

William Cureton (editor and translator), History of the Martyrs in Palestine, by Eusebius, Bishop of Cæcarea,
Discovered in a Very Antient Syriac Manuscript, Paris: C. Borrani, 1861.

William Cureton (editor and translator), Ancient Syriac Documents Relative to the Earliest Establishment of
Christianity in Edessa and the Neighbouring Countries, From the Year After Our Lord’s Ascension to the
Beginning of the Fourth Century, London: Williams and Norgate, 1864.

Robert Curzon, Visits to Monasteries in the Levant, London: John Murray, 6th Ed., 1881.

Kirsopp Lake, The Early Days of Monasticism on Mount Athos, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1909.

Sebastian P. Brock (translator), Saint Ephrem, Hymns on Paradise, Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary
Press, 1990.

Sebastian P. Brock, The Harp of the Spirit: Poems of Saint Ephrem the Syrian, Cambridge: Aquila Books / The
Institute for Orthodox Christian Studies, 3rd Ed., 2013.

Carmel McCarthy, Saint Ephrem’s Commentary on Tatian’s Diatessaron: An English Translation of Chester
Beatty Syriac MS 709 with Introduction and Notes, Journal of Semitic Supplement, Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2000 (first published 1993).

Anastasia A. Koutoulakis (editor), Nicholas Palis (translator), Life-Miracles-Prophecies of Saint Seraphim of

Viritsa: The New Saint of Orthodox Russian Church 1866 – 1949, Thessalonica: Orthodox Kypseli, 2005.
 751

Anastasia A. Koutoulakis (editor), Nicholas Palis (translator), The Elder Archimandrite Anthimos K. Vayianos
(1869 – 1960), Thessalonica: Orthodox Kypseli, 1999. Many other Orthodox Kypseli publications are also
worth reading.

Vincent L. Wimbush (editor), Ascetic Behavior in Greco-Roman Antiquity: A Sourcebook, Minneapolis, MN:
Fortress Press, 1990.

Thomas Kollamparampil, Jacob of Serugh: Select Festal Homilies, Rome: Center for Indian and Inter-Religious
Studies and Dharmaram Publications, 1997.

Mary Hansbury, Jacob of Serug: On the Mother of God, Crestwood, NY: Saint Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1998.

Jeannie E. Gentithes and Ignatios Apostololopoulos (translators), An Ascetic Bishop: Stories, Sermons, and
Prayers of St. Nephon, Florence, AZ: St. Anthony’s Monastery, 2nd Ed., 2015 (first published by Light and Life
Publishers: Minneapolis, MN, 1989).

John A. McGuckin, Saint Gregory of Nazianzus: An Intellectual Biography, Crestwood, NY: Saint Vladimir’s
Seminary Press, 2001.

Nichalas David March, A Translation of Saint Gregory of Nyssa’s Antirrheticus Adversus Apolinarium,
Dissertation: Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology, 2013.

Gleason L. Archer, Jr. (translator), Jerome’s Commentary on Daniel, Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House,
1958.

Malcolm Drew Donaldson, A Translation of Jerome’s Chronicon with Historical Commentary, Lewiston, ID:
Mellen University Press, 1996.

Michael Cahill, The First Commentary on Mark: An Annotated Translation, New York, NY: Oxford University
Press, 1998. A likely seventh-century Irish work that had been misattributed to Jerome.

Michael Whitby and Mary Whitby (translators), The History of Theophylact Simocatta, Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1986.

Thomas Hodgkin, The Letters of Cassiodorus: Being A Condensed Translation of the Variae Epistolae of
Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator, London: Henry Frowde, 1886.

Charles Christopher Mierow, The Gothic History of Jordanes, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1915.

Refutation of the Errors of the Latins, by Matthaios Blastares. This 14th century work by a great Orthodox
defender is presented in a scholarly doctoral thesis annotated by Konstantinos Palaiologos.
(http://digirep.rhul.ac.uk/items/7ae2f90f-264e-b385-ff8f-bbf5cf94f7e2/1/)

I also highly advise against reading heretical books on theology or commentary on the Bible. These writings
do not add much value and may be corrupting to the heart and mind. The main good from Protestant and
Roman Catholic scholars are translations of Church Fathers or Orthodox writers, and studies in ancient
languages, Church history, or archæology. Even for these relatively secular topics, one should watch out for
partisan bias and avoid the writings of the modern liberals, which the author has analyzed and found to have
many errors, and devoid of the foundations of good sense. However, conservative non-Orthodox scholars
have written excellent works defending Christianity in general against the vain ideas of modern liberals,
unbelievers, deists, and atheists. In general, books printed before 1920 are better than more recent books. I
also generally recommend avoiding the shallow discussions of Internet blogs and forums; one would learn a
vast deal more on nearly every topic from reading complete books, treatises, formal studies, and original
sources, such as those cited here, than most of the articles that are online. I also note that there is a large
deficiency of traditional Orthodox material in the English language. There are vast libraries of excellent
 752

books written in Russian, Greek, Arabic, Romanian, Serbian, Slavonic, Latin, and other languages, by great
Orthodox writers and saints, especially those of the second millennium, but which have unfortunately never
been translated into English, and some never even published, a desideratum that the author hopes will be met
soon. However, there is enough in English to satisfy most avid readers.
 753

Part V Church Councils and Canons

The best volumes in English on the Church Councils are the following works (some are also listed elsewhere
in this book, or included in the recommended series), although some of these authors are opposed to
Orthodox councils and their teachings. This is a fairly thorough list of all English works dedicated to Church
Councils (not including Protestant councils, or the two Latin Vatican Councils), along with many articles on
Councils relevant to the Orthodox:

Denver Cummings (translator), Agapios the Hieromonk and St. Nicodemos the Hagiorite, The Rudder
(Pedalion) of the Metaphorical Ship of the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church of the Orthodox Christians,
Chicago, IL: Orthodox Christian Educational Society, 1957. This is a rare book, and probably the most
important modern Orthodox commentary on the Canons and Councils of the Church. This work was first
published in 1800 and this edition is translated from the 5th edition published in Athens, 1908.

Peter L’Hullier, The Church of the Ancient Councils: The Disciplinary Work of the First Four Ecumenical
Councils, Crestwood, NY: Saint Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1996. Also see Bishop Peter’s Ecclesiology in the
Canons of the First Nicene Council, in St. Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly, Vol. XXVII, No. 2., 1983.

Henry Robert Percival, The Seven Ecumenical Councils of the Undivided Church, in NPNF, Series II, Vol. XIV,
Oxford: James Parker & Company, 1900.

William R. Clark (translator and editor), Charles Joseph Hefele, A History of the Councils of the Church,
Edinburgh, T. & T. Clark, 1883 – 1886, (5 Vol.). Hefele’s work, originally published in German, is probably the
best study on the councils available in English. Hefele wrote the first seven volumes, and it was later
continued by Josef Hergenröther (Vol. VIII, 1887), P. Richard and Albert Michel (Vols. IX & X, 1930 – 1931),
and Charles de Clercq (Vol. XI, 1952). Henri Leclerq translated the first nine volumes into French and revised
it (1907 – 1931). However, only the first five volumes have been translated into English, up to the close of the
Seventh Ecumenical Council in 787.

Wilfried Hartmann and Kenneth Pennington (editors), The History of Byzantine and Eastern Canon Law to
1500, Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2012.

Norman P. Tanner, Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 1990,
(2 Vol.). Note that the last parts of the first volume and the entire second volume are only about the Roman
Catholic councils. Tanner (1943 – current) also wrote The Councils of the Church: A Short History, New York,
NY: Crossroad, 2001.

Peter Hünermann (editor), Henry Denzinger (Heinrich Joseph Dominicus Denzinger), Enchiridion
Symbolorum Definitionum et Declarationum de Rebus Fidei et Morum: A Compendium, of Creeds, Definitions
and Declarations on Matters of Faith and Morals, San Francisco, CA: Ignatius Press, 43rd Ed., 2012. This is the
standard Roman Catholic canonical collection.

The Holy Canons of the Seven Œcumenic Synods, Translated from the Original Greek, London: Simpkin,
Marshall, & Co., 1867.

James Thornton, The Œcumenical Synods of the Orthodox Church: A Concise History, Etna, CA: Center for
Traditionalist Orthodox Studies, 2012.

Patrick Viscuso, Orthodox Canon Law: A Casebook for Study, Brookline, MA: Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 2011,
2nd Ed.

Vasile Mihai, Orthodox Canon Law Reference Book, Brookline, MA: Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 2014.

W. J. Lillie (translator), George Dion. Dragas (editor), Panteleimon Rodopoulos, An Overview of Orthodox
Canon Law, Orthodox Theological Library, Vol. III, Rollinsford, NH: Orthodox Research Institute, 2010.
 754

Lewis J. Patsavos, Spiritual Dimensions of the Holy Canons, Brookline, MA: Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 2003.

Sergey Trostyanskiy, Seven Icons of Christ: An Introduction to the Oikoumenical Councils, Piscataway, NJ:
Gorgias Press, 2016.

John Meyendorff, What is an Ecumenical Council?, in St. Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly, Vol. XVII, No. 4.,
1973.

Bishop Hilarion (Alfeyev) of Podolsk, The Reception of the Ecumenical Councils in the Early Church, in St.
Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly, Vol. XLIII, Nos. 3 – 4., 2003.

Edward Bouverie Pusey, The Councils of the Church from the Council of Jerusalem A.D. 51, to the Council of
Constantinople A.D. 381, Chiefly as to their Constitution, but also as to their Objects and History, Oxford: John
Henry Parker, 1857.

William Lambert, Codex Canonum Ecclesiæ Universæ: The Canons of the First Four General Councils of the
Church, London: R. D. Dickinson, 1868.

Edwin Knox Mitchell, The Canons of the First Four General Councils: Nicaea, Constantinople, Ephesus and
Chalcedon, Philadelphia, PA: Department of History, University of Pennsylvania, 1912.

John Fulton, Index Canonum: The Greek Text, An English Translation and a Complete Digest of the Entire
Code of Canon Law of the Undivided Primitive Church, New York, NY, 1892, 3rd Ed.

Arthur West Haddan and William Stubbs, Councils and Ecclesiastical Documents relating to Great Britain and
Ireland, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1869 – 1878, 3 Vols. in 4 parts.

Frederick M. Powicke and C. R. Cheney (editors Vol. I), D. Whitelock, M. Brett, and C. N. L. Brooke (editors Vol.
II), Councils and Synods with other Documents Relating to the English Church, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1966
– 1981, 2 Vols. in 4 parts.

David Patrick, Statutes of the Scottish Church, 1225 – 1559, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1907.

Donald Elmslie Roberts Watt, Medieval Church Councils in Scotland, Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 2000.

Norman F. Shead, Scottish Episcopal Acta, Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer (for the Scottish History Society),
2015 – 2020, 2 Vols. (with further volumes planned).

The Six Œcumenical Councils of the Undivided Catholic Church: Lectures Delivered in 1893 Under the
Auspices of the Church Club of New York, New York, NY: E. & J. B. Young & Co., 1893.

Edward H. Landon, A Manual of Councils of the Holy Catholic Church, Edinburgh: John Grant, Rev. Ed., 2 Vols.,
1909.

William Bright, Notes on the Canons of the First Four General Councils, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1882.

John Baron (editor & translator), John Johnson, A Collection of the Laws and Canons of the Church of England,
Oxford: John Henry Parker, 2 Vols., 1850 – 1851 [originally published 1720].

Henry Joseph Schroeder, Disciplinary Decrees of the General Councils, St. Louis, MO: B. Herder Book Co.,
1937. Note that all the Roman Catholic Ecumenical councils are included.

Clement Raab, The Twenty Ecumenical Councils of the Catholic Church, London: Longmans & Co., 1937.
 755

E. I. Watkin, The Church in Council, London: Darton, Longman, & Todd, 1961.

Leo Donald Davis, The First Seven Ecumenical Councils (325 – 787): Their History and Theology, Collegeville,
MN: Liturgical Press, 1990.

Joseph F. Kelly, The Ecumenical Councils of the Catholic Church: A History, Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press,
2009.

William Porcher Du Bose, The Ecumenical Councils, Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1897, 2 nd Ed.

Clarence Gallagher, Church Law and Church Order in Rome and Byzantium, Aldershot, Burlington, OT:
Ashgate Variorum, 2002.

William Andrew Hammond, The Definitions of Faith, and Canons of Discipline, of the Six Œcumenical
Councils, with the Remaining Canons of the Code of the Universal Church, New York, NY: Stanford & Swords,
1850.

Ernest Graf (translator), Hubert Jedin, Ecumenical Councils of the Catholic Church: An Historical Survey, New
York, NY: Paulist Press, 1961.

Philip Hughes, The Church in Crisis: A History of the Twenty Great Councils, London: Burns and Oates, 1961.

Walter F. Bense (translator), Hans Jochen Margull (editor), The Councils of the Church: History and Analysis,
Philadelphia: Fortress, 1966.

Henry Tattam, The Apostolical Constitutions, or Canons of the Apostles in Coptic, with an English Translation,
London: Oriental Translation Fund of Great Britain and Ireland, 1848.

George William Horner, The Statutes of the Apostles or Canones Ecclesiastici, London: Williams & Norgate,
1904.

De Lacy O’Leary, The Apostolical Constitutions and Cognate Documents, with Special Reference to their
Liturgical Elements, London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1906.

Alfred William Winterslow Dale, The Synod of Elvira and Christian Life in the Fourth Century: A Historical
Essay, London: Macmillan and Co., 1882.

Joseph M. O’Donnell, The Canons of the First Council of Arles, 314 A.D., Dissertation: Catholic University of
America, Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 1961.

James Chrystal, Authoritative Christianity: The First Ecumenical Council; that is, the First Council of the Whole
Christian World, which was held A.D. 325 at Nicaea in Bithynia, Jersey City, NJ: James Chrystal, 1891. Note
that this book is labelled Volume I, but no other volumes for Nicaea were published.

B. Harris Cowper, Analecta Nicæna: Fragments Relating to the Council of Nice: The Syriac Text, From an
Ancient Ms. in the British Museum, London: Williams and Norgate, 1857.

John Kaye, Some Account of the Council of Nicæa, in Connexion with the Life of Athanasius, London: Francis &
John Rivington, 1853.

Hamilton Hess, The Early Development of Canon Law and the Council of Serdica, Oxford Early Christian
Studies, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002.

Christopher Stephens, Canon Law and Episcopal Authority: The Canons of Antioch and Serdica, Oxford
Theology and Religion Monographs, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015.
 756

Leslie W. Barnard, The Council of Serdica 343 A.D., Sofia: Synodal Publishing House, 1983.

Greek Orthodox Theological Review, Vol. XXVII, No. 4., pp. 359 – 453, 1982. This is a fascicle dedicated to the
Second Ecumenical Council, the First of Constantinople in 381.

James Chrystal, Authoritative Christianity: The Third World Council; that is, the Third Council of the Whole
Christian World, East and West, which was held A.D. 431, at Ephesus in Asia, Jersey City, NJ: James Chrystal,
1895 – 1908, (3 Vols.).

Richard Price and Thomas Graumann, The Council of Ephesus of 431: Documents and Proceedings,
Translated Texts for Historians, Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2020.

Gerard Shelley (translator), Chrysostomos Papadopoulos, The Third Oecumenical Council and the Primacy of
the Bishop of Rome: A Reply to the Encyclical “Lux Veritatis” of Pius XI., London: The Faith Press, 1933.

Luise Marion Frenkel, Theodotus of Ancyra’s Homilies and the Council of Ephesus (431), Leuven: Peeters,
2015.

Samuel Gideon Frederic Perry, An Ancient Syriac Document, Purporting to be the Record, in Its Chief
Features, of the Second Synod of Ephesus, Part I, Oxford: T. Combe & Co., 1867.

Samuel Gideon Frederic Perry, The Second Synod of Ephesus, Together with Certain Extracts Relating to It,
From Syriac Mss. Preserved in the British Museum, Dartford: The Orient Press, 1881.

Thomas Alexander Lacey, Appellatio Flaviani: The Letters of Appeal from the Council of Ephesus, A.D. 449,
Addressed by Flavian and Eusebius to St. Leo of Rome, London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge,
1903.

Richard Price and Michael Gaddis, The Acts of the Council of Chalcedon, Translated Texts for Historians, Vol.
XLV, Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2005, (3 Vol.).

Robert Victor Sellers, The Council of Chalcedon: A Historical and Doctrinal Survey, London: Society for
Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1953.

Patrick T. R. Gray, The Defense of Chalcedon in the East (451 – 553), in Studies in the History of Christian
Thought/Traditions, Vol. XX, Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1979.

Richard Price and Mary Whitby, Chalcedon in Context: Church Councils 400 – 700, Translated Texts for
Historians, Contexts, I, Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2011.

William Bright, Select Anti-Pelagian Treatises of St. Augustine, and the Acts of the Second Council of Orange,
Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1880.

F. H. Woods, Canons of the Second Council of Orange, A.D. 529, Oxford: James Thornton, 1882.

Richard Price, The Acts of the Council of Constantinople of 553, Translated Texts for Historians, Vol. LI,
Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2009, (2 Vol.).

Richard Crakanthorpe, A Treatise of the Fift Generall Covncel held at Constantinople, Anno 553 under
Justinian the Emperour in the Time of Pope Vigilius, London: Robert Milbourne, 1637.

Eugene Michael Ludwig, Neo-Chalcedonism and the Council of 553, Dissertation, Graduate Theological Union,
Berkeley, CA, 1983.
 757

Gregory I. Halfond, Archaeology of Frankish Church Councils, AD 511 – 768, Medieval Law and Its Practice,
Vol. VI, Leiden: Brill, 2010.

John J. Ferrainolo, Historical and Theological Background of the Third Council of Toledo (589), Yonkers, NY,
Dissertation: St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary, 1983.

Richard Price, Phil Booth, and Catherine Cubitt, The Acts of the Lateran Synod of 649, Translated Texts for
Historians, Vol. LXI, Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2014.

Catherine Cubitt, Anglo-Saxon Church Councils c. 650 – c. 850, Studies in the Early History of Britain, London:
Leicester University Press, 1995.

George Nedungatt and Michael Featherstone (editors), The Council in Trullo Revisited, Kanonika, Vol. VI,
Rome: Pontificio Instituto Orientale, 1995.

Demetrios J. Constantelos, Renewing the Church: The Significance of the Council in Trullo, Brookline, MA:
Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 2006.

John Joseph Myers, The Trullan Controversy: Implications for the Status of the Orthodox Churches in Roman
Catholic Canon Law, The Catholic University of America: Canon Law Studies, Vol. CDXCI, Ann Arbor, MI: The
Catholic University of America Press, 1990.

Richard Price, The Canons of the Quinisext Council (691/2), Translated Texts for Historians, Vol. LXXIV,
Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2020.

Milton Vasil Anastos, The Argument for Iconoclasm as Presented by the Iconoclastic Council of 754, in Late
Classical and Mediaeval Studies in Honor of A. M. Friend, 177 – 188, Princeton, 1955. Anastos also wrote The
Ethical Theory of Images Formulated by the Iconoclasts in 754 and 815, in Dumbarton Oaks Papers, Vol. VIII,
pp. 151 – 160, 1954.

Joseph Mendham, The Seventh General Council, the Second of Nicæa, held A.D. 787, London: William Edward
Painter, 1850. Although the author is very hostile to the Seventh Ecumenical Council, this book was the only
complete English translation of the Acts of that council, along with related documents, until 2018. There are a
few other English works on the Seventh Council and the councils of the iconoclast controversy, but they are
old and iconoclastic, and not of any real scholarly value.

Richard Price, The Acts of the Second Council of Nicaea (787), Translated Texts for Historians, Vol. LXVIII,
Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2 Vols., 2018.

Daniel J. Sahas, Icon and Logos: Sources in Eighth-Century Iconoclasm: An Annotated Translation of the Sixth
Session of the Seventh Ecumenical Council (Nicea, 787), Containing the Definition of the Council of
Constantinople (754) and Its Refutation, and the Definition of the Seventh Ecumenical Council, Toronto
Medieval Texts and Translations, Vol. IV, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1986.

Ambrosios Giakalis, Images of the Divine: The Theology of Icons at the Seventh Ecumenical Council, in Studies
in the History of Christian Thought/Traditions, Vol. CXXII, Leiden: E. J. Brill, Rev. Ed., 2005 (Originally
published in this series in 1994 as Vol. LIV, as a revision of the author’s Ph. D. thesis at Cambridge in 1988).

P. J. Alexander, The Iconoclastic Council of St. Sophia (815) and Its Definition (Horos), in Dumbarton Oaks
Papers, Vol. VII, pp. 35 – 66, 1953.

For the Council of Jerusalem in 836, see Charalambos Dendrinos, Joseph A. Munitiz, Julian Chrysostomides,
Eirene Harvalia-Crook (editors), The Letter of the Three Patriarchs to Emperor Theophilus and Related Texts,
Camberly: Porphyrogenitus, 1997.
 758

Francis Dvornik, The Photian Schism: History and Legend, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1948.

Johan A. Meijer, A Successful Council of Union: A Theological Analysis of the Photian Synod of 879 – 880, in
Analecta Vlatadon, Vol. XXIII, Thessaloniki: Patriarchal Institute for Patristic Studies, 1975.

Clarence Gallagher, Patriarch Photius and Pope Nicholas I and the Council of 879, in The Jurist: Studies in
Church Law and Ministry, Vol. LXVII, Number 1, 2007, pp. 72 – 88, Washington, DC: The Catholic University of
America Press, 2007.

John Lawrence Boojamra, The Photian Synod of 878 – 879 and the Papal Commonitorium (879), in Byzantine
Studies / Études Byzantines, Vol. IX, 1982, pp. 1 – 23, Tucson, AZ: Arizona State University, 1982.

Johannes Börjesson, Councils and Canons: A Lutheran Perspective on the Great Schism and the So-Called
Eighth Ecumenical Council, in Analogia: The Pemptousia Journal for Theological Studies, Vol. X (this volume
titled Ecclesial Dialogues: East and West II), pp. 107 – 125, Athens: St Maxim the Greek Institute, 2020.

George Dion. Dragas, The Eighth Ecumenical Council: Constantinople IV (879/880) and the Condemnation of
the Filioque Addition and Doctrine, in The Greek Orthodox Theological Review, Vol. XLIV, Nos. 1 – 4, 1999, pp.
357 – 369.

Daniel Michael Rogich, The Eighth Ecumenical Council, Yonkers, NY, Dissertation: St. Vladimir’s Orthodox
Theological Seminary, 1985.

Konstantinos Emm. Vasilakis, The Ecumenical Status of the Council of Constantinople (879 – 880),
Dissertation: Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology, 2011.

John Duffy and John Parker, The Synodicon Vetus, Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks, Center for Byzantine
Studies, Harvard University, 1979.

Regarding the Council of Constantinople in 920, see the bibliography in the chapter on Fourth Marriages.

Regarding the Council of Constantinople in 1054, see Michael Cerularius and the Synod of Constantinople,
The Edict, 1054, in Jaroslav Pelikan and Valerie Hotchkiss (editors), Creeds and Confessions of Faith in the
Christian Tradition, Vol. I, pp. 311 – 317, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003.

Frederick Lauritzen, Synod Decrees of the Eleventh Century (1025 – 1081), in Byzantinische Zeitschrift, Vol.
CX, No. 1., pp. 101 – 116, 2012.

Brian Tierney, The Crisis of Church and State, 1050 – 1300, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1988.

Robert Somerville, Pope Alexander III and the Council of Tours (1163): A Study of Ecclesiastical Politics and
Institutions in the Twelfth Century, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press [Center for Medieval and
Renaissance Studies, UCLA], 1977.

Gregory Thetford, The Christological Councils of 1166 and 1170 in Constantinople, in St. Vladimir’s
Theological Quarterly, Vol. XXXI, No. 2., pp. 143 – 161, Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological
Seminary, 1987.

Danica Summerlin, The Canons of the Third Lateran Council of 1179: Their Origins and Reception, Cambridge
Studies in Medieval Life and Thought, Fourth Series, Book CXVI, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2019.

Anna-Maria Totomanova, The Anti-Bogomil Anathemas in the Synodikon of Tsar Boril and in the Discourse of
Kosmas the Presbyter against the Bogomils, in Studia Ceranea, Vol. IX, pp. 107 – 122, Łódź: Łódź University
Press, 2019. Anna-Maria Totomanova, The Synodikon of Orthodoxy in Medieval Bulgaria, Studia Ceranea, Vol.
 759

VII, pp. 169 – 227, Łó dź : Łódź University Press, 2017. Also see Anna-Maria Totomanova, Synodicum
Bulgaricum, in Alberto Melloni (editor), The Great Councils of the Orthodox Churches: From Constantinople
861 to Moscow 2000, Vol. I, pp. 428 – 468, Turnhout: Brepols Publishers, 2016. These articles are on a
Bulgarian Orthodox synod convoked on 11 February 1211.

Marion Gibbs and Jane Lang, Bishops and Reform, 1215 – 1272: With Special Reference to the Lateran Council
of 1215, London: Oxford University Press, 1962.

Paul B. Pixton, The German Episcopacy and the Implementation of the Decrees of the Fourth Lateran Council:
1216 – 1245: Watchmen on the Tower, in Studies in the History of Christian Thought/Traditions, Vol. LXIV,
Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1995.

Jessalynn L. Bird and Damian J. Smith, The Fourth Lateran Council and the Crusade Movement: The Impact of
the Council of 1215 on Latin Christendom and the East, Outremer: Studies in the Crusades and the Latin East,
Vol. VII, Turnhout: Brepols, 2018.

Joseph Gill, The Church Union of the Council of Lyons (1274) Portrayed in Greek Documents, in Orientalia
Christiana Periodica, Vol. XL, pp. 5 – 45, 1974.

Deno John Geanakoplos, Michael VIII Palaeologus and the Union of Lyons (1274), in Harvard Theological
Review, Vol. XLVI, Issue 2, April 1953, pp. 79 – 89, Harvard, MA: Harvard University Press, 1953.

Mark W. Koczak, The Orthodox Reaction to the Council of Lyons: The Council of Constantinople of 1285,
Dissertation, St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary, Yonkers, NY, 1982.

G. J. Cuming and Derek Baker (editors), Councils and Assemblies, in Studies in Church History, Vol. VII,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971. The chapter most relevant to Orthodoxy is Donald M. Nicol,
The Byzantine Reaction to the Second Council of Lyons, 1274, pp. 113 – 146. Donald Nicol (1923 – 2003) was
an eminent Byzantinist and published many valuable works.

Aristeides Papadakis, Ecumenism in the Thirteenth Century: The Byzantine Case, in St. Vladimir’s Theological
Quarterly, Vol. XXVII, No. 3., pp. 207 – 217, Yonkers, NY: St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary, 1983.

Alexander Alexakis, Codex Parisinus Graecus 1115 and Its Archetype, Dumbarton Oaks Studies XXXIV,
Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 1996.

John Lawrence Boojamra, The Byzantine Notion of the ‘Ecumenical Council’ in the Fourteenth Century,
Byzantinische Zeitschrift, Vol. LXXX, pp. 59 – 76, 1987.

Regarding the Ninth Ecumenical Council, consisting of a series of councils held in Constantinople between
1341 and 1351, see works on St. Gregory Palamas, especially by John Meyendorff.

Colin M. D. Crowder, Unity, Heresy and Reform, 1378 – 1460: Conciliar Response to the Great Schism, London:
Edward Arnold, 1977.

Stephen Whatley (translator), James Lenfant, The History of the Council of Constance, 2 Vols., London: A.
Bettesworth, C. Rivington &c., 1730.

Richard Cattermole, The Council of Constance, and the War in Bohemia, London: Society for Promoting
Christian Knowledge, 1855.

Louise Ropes Loomis (translator), John Hine Mundy and Kennerly M. Woody, The Council of Constance: The
Unification of the Church, New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 1961.
 760

Antony Black, Council and Commune: The Conciliar Movement and the Fifteenth-Century Heritage, London:
Burns & Oates, 1979.

Philip H. Stump, The Reforms of the Council of Constance (1414 – 1418), Studies in the History of Christian
Thought, Vol. LIII, Leiden: Brill, 1994.

Joachim W. Stieber, Pope Eugenius IV, the Council of Basel, and the Secular and Ecclesiastical Authorities in
the Empire: The Conflict over Supreme Authority and Power in the Church, in Studies in the History of
Christian Thought/Traditions, Vol. XIII, Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1978.

William Paul Lundell, Carthusian Policy and the Council of Basel, Dissertation: Centre for Medieval Studies,
University of Toronto, 1996.

John Mason Neale (editor), Basil Popoff (translator), Ivan N. Ostroumoff, The History of the Council of
Florence, London: Joseph Masters, 1861 (Reprinted Boston, MA: Holy Transfiguration Monastery, 1971).

Igor Sevcenko (Ihor Ševčenko), Intellectual Repercussions of the Council of Florence, in Church History, Vol.
XXIV, No. 4., December 1955, pp. 291 – 323, New Haven, CT: Cambridge University Press on behalf of the
American Society of Church History, 1955. Ihor Ševčenko (1922 – 2009) was a Byzantine, Slavic, and
Ukrainian professor at Harvard University, and was Orthodox.

Deno John Geanakoplos, The Council of Florence (1438 – 1439) and the Problem of Union Between the Greek
and Latin Churches, in Church History, Vol. XXIV, No. 4., December 1955, pp. 324 – 346, New Haven, CT:
Cambridge University Press on behalf of the American Society of Church History, 1955. Also see
Geanakoplos’s An Orthodox View of the Councils of Basel (1431-39) and of Florence (1438-39) as Paradigm
for the Study of Modern Ecumenical Councils, in The Greek Orthodox Theological Review, Vol. XXX, No. 3., pp.
311 – 334, 1985.

Michael Cherniavsky, The Reception of the Council of Florence in Moscow, in Church History, Vol. XXIV, No. 4.,
December 1955, pp. 347 – 359, New Haven, CT: Cambridge University Press on behalf of the American Society
of Church History, 1955.

Joseph Gill, The Council of Florence, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1959 (reprinted New York, NY:
New York University Press, 2011). Joseph Gill, Personalities of the Council of Florence, and Other Essays, New
York, NY: Barnes & Noble, 1965. The British Jesuit professor and scholar Joseph Gill (1901 – 1989) is biased
against the Orthodox Greeks.

Archimandrite Amvrossy Pogodin, St. Mark of Ephesus and the False Union of Florence, in Orthodox Word,
Vol. III, 1967, pp. 2 – 14, pp. 45 – 59, 89 – 106, Platina, CA: St Herman of Alaska Brotherhood, 1967 [A series of
three articles, in the first three numbers of this periodical for the year.] Also see Amvrossy Pogodin, St. Mark
of Ephesus and the Florentine Union (Sviatoi Mark Efesskii i Florentiiskaia Unia), Jordanville, NY: Holy Trinity
Monastery, 1963 (in Russian). This work is 434 pages and was Pogodin’s dissertation for a Master of
Theology degree at the St. Sergius Theological Institute in Paris in 1963.

Constantine N. Tsirpanlis, Mark Eugenicus and the Council of Florence: A Historical Re-Evaluation of His
Personality, New York, NY: Kentron Byzantinon Ereunon [Κέντρον Βυζαντινών Ερευνών], 2nd Ed., 1986. This
was Tsirpanlis’s (1935 – current) Doctoral Dissertation at Fordham University in 1973, published later as Vol.
XIV in the series Byzantine Texts and Studies [Βυζαντινα κειμενα και μελεται, or Vyzantina keimena kai
meletai]. Tsarpanlis is a Greek Orthodox professor and scholar, and he replies here to the misunderstandings
of Fr. Gill.

Charalambos Dendrinos, Reflections on the Failure of the Union of Florence, in Annuarium Historiae
Conciliorum, Vol. XXXIX, June 2007, No. 1 – 2, pp. 135 – 152.
 761

Victor Henri Antoine Penel, An Investigation of the Change in Position of George Scholarios from Pro-Union of
the Western and Eastern Churches to Anti-Union, Dissertation: Anglia Ruskin University, 2014. Fr. Victor
Penel is a Greek Orthodox Archimandrite.

Constantina Scourtis Gaddis, , The Failure of Reconciliation: The Byzantine Experience at the Council of
Ferrara-Florence (1438–1439), Dissertation: University of California, Los Angeles, 2004.

Sergey Fedorovich Dezhnyuk, Council of Florence: The Unrealized Union, Dissertation: Phillips Theological
Seminary, Tulsa, OK, 2015.

Giuseppe Alberigo, Christian Unity: The Council of Ferrara-Florence, 1438/39 – 1989, Leuven: Leuven
University Press, 1991.

Wayne James Jorgenson, The Debate Over the Patristic Texts on Purgatory at the Council of Ferrara-Florence,
1438, in St. Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly, Vol. XXX, No. 4., pp. 309 – 334, 1986.

George E. Demacopoulos, The Popular Reception of the Council of Florence in Constantinople 1439 – 1453, in
St. Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly, Vol. XLIII, No. 1., 1999.

Thomas C. Ferguson, The Council of Ferrara-Florence and Its Continued Historical Significance, in St.
Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly, Vol. XLIII, No. 1., pp. 55 – 77, 1999.

Christiaan Kappes has also written several works bearing on the Latin Council of Florence, which I have listed
above.

Fr. Angelos Angelakopoulos, How Orthodoxy Overcame the False-Synod of Ferrara-Florence, (Lecture
delivered in Sofia, Bulgaria, 9 – 10 June 2017), in SotiriosNaus, sotiriosnavs.com/en/how-orthodoxy-
overcame-the-false-synod-of-ferrara-florence.

A fairly comprehensive list of authors of English books dedicated to the Roman Catholic Council of Trent are
the following (none are by Orthodox authors): Martin Chemnitz (translated by Fred Kramer), Paolo Sarpi
(translated by Brent), Pierre Jurieu, Abraham Woodhead, Michael Geddes, Benjamin Williams Mathias, Joseph
Mendham, James Waterworth, John Mockett Cramp, Theodore Alois Buckley, Laurence Louis Félix Bungener
(translated by John McClintock), Thomas Rhys Evans, Richard Frederick Littledale, James Anthony Froude,
Frederick Joseph Kinsman, Henry Joseph Schroeder, Hubert Jedin (translated by Ernest Graf; the most official
work), John O’Malley, John B. Tomaro, and Wim François and Violet Soen.

George Nedungatt, The Synod of Diamper Revisited, Kanonika, Vol. IX, Rome: Pontifical Oriental Institute,
2001. There are many other English books on the Synod of Diamper, held by Portuguese Roman Catholics in
India in 1599.

Donald Gary Ostrowski, The Moscow Councils of 1447 to 1589 and the Conciliar Period in Russian Orthodox
Church History, in Nickolas Lupinin, Donald Ostrowski and Jennifer B. Spock (editors), The Tapestry of
Russian Christianity, pp. 121 – 155, Columbus, OH: The Ohio State University Department of Slavic and East
European Languages and Cultures, 2016.

Donald Ostrowski, A “Fontological” Investigation of the Muscovite Church Council of 1503, Dissertation:
Pennsylvania State University, 1977.

Donald Ostrowski and Edward L. Keenan (editors), The Council of 1503: Source Studies and Questions of
Ecclesiastical Landowning in Sixteenth-Century Muscovy: A Collection of Seminar Papers, Cambridge, MA:
Kritika, 1977.

Jack Edward Kollmann, The Moscow Stoglav (“Hundred Chapters”) Church Council of 1551, Dissertation: Ann
Arbor University, Ann Arbor, MI, 1978, (2 Vols.).
 762

Regarding the Council of Constantinople of 1583, against various Latin errors, including the Gregorian
Calendar, see the text of its Sigillion (The Rudder, pp. 12 – 15), and a scholarly article by Bishop Cyprian of
Oreoi, The “Sigillion” of 1583 Against “the Calendar Innovation of the Latins”: Myth or Reality?, May 13, 2011
(Old Style) (https://www.hsir.org/pdfs/2011/07/04/20110704aSigillion/20110704aSigillion.pdf).

For the Moscow Synod of 1666 – 1667, called the Great Moscow Synod or Sobor, there is currently an effort to
produce an English translation of the text: https://www.gofundme.com/f/translating-the-acts-of-moscow-
16667. This translation is from the Church Slavonic text published in The Great Councils of the Orthodox
Churches, which contains a short English introduction: E. V. Beljakova, Concilium Moscoviense, pp. 687 – 733,
in Alberto Melloni (editor), The Great Councils of the Orthodox Churches: From Constantinople 861 to
Moscow 2000, Vol. II, Turnhout: Brepols Publishers, 2016.

James Nathaniel William Beauchamp (J. N. W. B.) Robertson, The Acts and Decrees of the Synod of Jerusalem:
Sometimes Called the Council of Bethlehem, Holden Under Dositheus, Patriarch of Jerusalem in 1672, London:
Thomas Baker, 1899. This is an important Orthodox Council against the errors of the Calvinists.

George T. Kosar, Russian Orthodoxy in Crisis and Revolution: The Church Council of 1917 – 1918,
Dissertation: Brandeis University, ProQuest Information and Learning Company, 2003.

Jerry Ryan (translator), Michael Plekon and Vitaly Permiakov (editors), Hyacinthe Destivelle, The Moscow
Council (1917 – 1918): The Creation of the Conciliar Institutions of the Russian Orthodox Church, Notre
Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2015.

Patrick Viscuso, A Quest For Reform of the Orthodox Church: The 1923 Pan-Orthodox Congress, An Analysis
and Translation of Its Acts and Decisions, Berkeley, CA: InterOrthodox Press, 2007.

Alberto Melloni (editor), The Great Councils of the Orthodox Churches: From Constantinople 861 to Moscow
2000, Turnhout: Brepols Publishers, 2 Vols., 2016. This is an extremely important collection of Orthodox
Church Councils after the Seventh Ecumenical Council. It includes the following Councils of Constantinople:
861, 879 – 880, 920, 1030, 1082, 1166, 1285, 1341, 1347, 1351, 1484, 1638, 1642, 1691, 1755 – 1756, and
1872, the following Councils of Moscow: 1551, 1666 – 1667, 1917 – 1918, 1948, 1971, 1988, and 2000, the
Council of Jerusalem in 1672, and the old Synodikons of Orthodoxy of Alexios Studites, Georgia, Bulgaria,
Serbia, and Russia. The introduction and commentary is in English, however, the source documents are in
their original languages. This is part of the larger Corpus Christianorum Conciliorum Oecumenicorum
Generaliumque Decreta (CCCOGD) series in the Corpus Christianorum library. Also see Acta Conciliorum
Oecumenicorum, first edited by Eduard Schwartz and Johannes Straub, and currently published by De
Gruyter, as well as the large classic collections of Labbe and Cossart, Hardouin, and Mansi. The standard
Orthodox collection is the Syntagma, edited by G. A. Rhalles and M. Potles in six volumes. The
Konziliengeschichte series, founded by Walter Brandmüller in 1979, and published by Ferdinand Schöningh,
sees itself as a successor to Hefele’s History of Councils, and currently contains 40 volumes, and is projected
to include 55 volumes. The standard scholarly journal on Council history is Annuarium Historiae
Conciliorum, founded in 1969, and currently published by Ferdinand Schöningh, with its 49th volume
published in 2020.
 763

Part VI The Early Fathers

English readers are fortunate that the best translations of the Church Fathers into modern languages have
been made into English. Many of the following series contain overlapping translations of the same original
works. The following part of this bibliography contains even more series.

Early Church Fathers Series. This excellent set contains 38 volumes of works of the early Church Fathers, and
was published by Protestant scholars from 1867 to 1900. Ten volumes are from the first set, Ante-Nicene
Fathers: The Writings of the Fathers Down to A.D. 325, and 28 volumes are from the second set, A Select
Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church. Protestant scholars have done most of
the translations and notes. It has been digitized and can be accessed in the following link:
(http://www.ccel.org/fathers.html). The first series is mostly copied from and similar to the Ante-Nicene
Christian Library (25 volumes, published by T. & T. Clark), and both series borrow from The Fathers for
English Readers series (14 small volumes, published by the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge).

Early Christian Literature Primers, published by D. Appleton and Company, from 1879 – 1884, which contains
4 volumes.

A Library of Fathers of the Holy Catholic Church: Anterior to the Division of the East and West, published by
Anglican scholars from 1838 to 1885, and contains 48 volumes.

The Oxford Early Christian Texts series, published by Oxford University Press, and edited by a variety of
scholars, contains 24 volumes. More translated texts can be found in the Oxford Early Christian Studies
series, which contains 94 volumes.

Oxford Apostolic Fathers, published by Oxford University Press, which contains 3 volumes.

The Translations of Christian Literature series, published around 1920 by the Society for Promoting Christian
Knowledge, an Anglican organization, contains about 50 volumes, grouped in multiple sub-series.

The Ancient Christian Writers Series, published by Paulist Press, and translated by Roman Catholic scholars,
contains 70 volumes.

The Early Church Fathers, which contains 22 volumes, published by Routledge, as of October 2020.

The Fathers of the Church Patristic Series (or The Fathers of the Church: A New Translation), published by
The Catholic University of America Press, is another excellent and more modern resource, by a Roman
Catholic institution, but with collaboration with Orthodox and other scholars from 1947 to the modern day,
and contains 141 volumes as of their latest volume. This can be paired with the Library of Early Christianity,
also by CUA Press, which will soon contain 5 volumes. A related series by the same publisher is Fathers of the
Church Mediaeval Continuations, which contains 20 volumes (and followed by Early Modern Catholic
Sources, for Roman Catholic works from 1450 – 1800, with 7 volumes planned, which is even less relevant to
Orthodoxy), but all of these are by 2nd-millennium Roman Catholic authors. Also see Sayings of the Fathers
of the Church, which contains 3 volumes, from 2018 – 2021. An older series is CUA Patristic Studies (1922 –
1971), which contains many first millennium translations, and contains 100 volumes of doctoral
dissertations. Other series from CUA Press are listed below.

Ancient Christian Texts, recently published by InterVarsity Press, which contains 16 volumes, consisting of
commentaries on Scripture, translated mostly by Protestant scholars. This complements the Ancient
Christian Commentary on Scripture series, by the same publisher, which consists of 29 volumes.

The Library of Christian Classics, which contains 26 volumes, published by The Westminster Press, from 1953
– 1966. The selection of authors is from a markedly Protestant and Western perspective, and reflects the
focus of a typical modern Protestant seminary course on Church history. Only the first nine volumes are from
the first millennium. The ninth volume contains the most unique translations.
 764

Cambridge Patristic Texts, which contains 11 volumes, published by Cambridge University Press, from 1899 –
1926.

The Cambridge Edition of Early Christian Writings, which will contain 6 volumes, published by Cambridge
University Press since 2017.

The Popular Patristics Series, published by St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, is from Orthodox scholars, and
contains 61 volumes.

Also see Roger Pearse’s website and blog for additional translations of Church Fathers and valuable notes on
antiquity and patristics: (http://www.tertullian.org/fathers/) and (https://www.roger-
pearse.com/weblog/).
 765

Part VII Series and Multi-Volume Works

I also recommended the following series and multi-volume works for English translations of historical
primary source writings and related traditional works and studies of relevance to Orthodox Christians. Note
that many non-Orthodox authors are included, and I have often included an entire series for the sake of a few
good books, so discernment is advised:

Cistercian Studies, by Cistercian Publications, a Roman Catholic organization, which contains over 280
volumes, but includes many Roman Catholic authors of the 2nd millennium as well.

Classics of Western Spirituality, by Paulist Press, also a Roman Catholic organization, which contains over 130
volumes, but includes a very diverse range of spiritual authors. Four volumes are of Orthodox authors.

The Archbishop Iakovos Library of Ecclesiastical and Historical Sources series, by Hellenic College Press, an
Orthodox college, which contains 21 volumes of excellent works.

The Church in History, which contains 4 scholarly volumes (note that Vol. I, Part II has not yet been
published.), published by Saint Vladimir’s Seminary Press, from 1989 – 2007. These are: Vol. I, Part I, Veselin
Kesich, Formation and Struggles: The Birth of the Church AD 33 – 200 (2007); Vol. II, John Meyendorff,
Imperial Unity and Christian Divisions: The Church AD 450 – 680 (1989); Vol. III, Andrew Louth, Greek East
and Latin West: The Church AD 681 – 1071 (2007); Vol. IV, Aristeides Papadakis (with John Meyendorff), The
Christian East & the Rise of the Papacy: The Church AD 1071 – 1453 (1994).

Cambridge History of Christianity, 9 Vols., by multiple editors and published by Cambridge University Press,
2005 – 2009. Volume 5., titled Eastern Christianity, and edited by Byzantine scholar Michael Angold, is the
most relevant for Orthodoxy.

Philip Schaff, History of the Christian Church, 7 Vols. [printed in 8 physical volumes], New York, NY: Charles
Scribner’s Sons, [completed by 1910]. This is a learned introduction to Church history in English from the
Protestant viewpoint. Philip Schaff's son, David Schley Schaff, helped complete Vol. V, which is printed in two
parts. Philip Schaff also wrote a History of the Apostolic Church (2 Vols., 1854).

John Strickland, Paradise and Utopia: The Rise and Fall of What the West Once Was, 4 Vols. (note that only the
first volume has been published so far), Chesterton, ID: Ancient Faith Publishing, 2019 and later. Also see
Strickland’s The Making of Holy Russia: The Orthodox Church and Russian Nationalism before the Revolution,
Jordanville, NY: Holy Trinity Seminary Press, 2nd Ed., 2020.

John Julius Norwich, History of Byzantium, 3 Vols., 1988 – 1995. The volumes are: Vol. I, Byzantium: The
Early Centuries (1988); Vol. II, Byzantium: The Apogee (1992); Vol. III, Byzantium: The Decline and Fall
(1995). A condensed version of this work was published as A Short History of Byzantium (1997). Also see
Norwich’s (jointly with Reresby Sitwell) Mount Athos, London: Hutchinson, 1966.

Paul Meyendorff (editor), Orthodox Liturgy Series, 3 Vols., Crestwood, NY: Saint Vladimir’s Seminary Press,
2009 – 2012.

George Dion Dragas (editor), Patristic and Ecclesiastical Texts and Translations, 5 Vols., Rollinsford, NH:
Orthodox Research Institute, 2004 – 2011. It appears that this series is variously named as “Patristic and
Ecclesiastical Texts”, “Patristic and Ecclesiastical Texts and Studies”, and “Patristic and Ecclesiastical Texts
and Translations”, and that there are two works labelled as No. 3.

David Schaff and Philip Schaff, Bibliotheca Symbolica Ecclesiæ Universalis: The Creeds of Christendom, with a
History and Critical Notes, New York, NY: Harper & Brothers, 3 Vols., 6th Ed., 1931. The most relevant parts
are Vol. I, Ch. III, The Creeds of the Greek Church, pp. 43 – 82 and Vol. II, Ch. V, Greek and Russian Creeds, pp.
275 – 544. [Also see William A. Curtis, A History of Creeds and Confessions of Faith in Christendom and
 766

Beyond, Ch. VI, Confessions in the Greek and Oriental Churches, pp. 90 – 105, Aberdeen: Aberdeen University,
1911.]

Jaroslav Pelikan, Creeds and Confessions of Faith in the Christian Tradition, 4 Vols., New Haven, CT: Yale
University Press, 2003. This work supersedes Schaff’s work.

Jaroslav Pelikan, The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine, which contains 5
volumes (1973 – 1990). The most relevant volume to the Orthodox Church is Jaroslav Pelikan, The Spirit of
Eastern Christendom (600 – 1700), Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 1977. Professor Pelikan
(1923 – 2006) was a Lutheran pastor who converted to Orthodoxy, and was a professor of history at Yale
University.

The Greek Ecclesiastical Historians of the First Six Centuries of the Christian Era, which contains 6 volumes,
published by Samuel Bagster and Sons in London from 1843 – 1847.

Christian Classics Series, which contains 7 volumes, published by the Religious Tract Society in London from
1886 – 1892.

Metropolitan Hilarion Alfeyev, Orthodox Christianity, which contains 5 volumes, by SVS Press.

Subsidia Hagiographica, by the Société des Bollandistes, which contains 96 volumes, only a few of which are
English translations.

Oxford Studies in Byzantium, which contains 18 volumes, by Oxford University Press.

Oxford Studies in Late Antiquity, which contains 11 volumes, by Oxford University Press.

Oxford Studies in Historical Theology, which contains 49 volumes, by Oxford University Press.

Onassis Series in Hellenic Culture, which contains 12 volumes, by Oxford University Press.

Changing Paradigms in Historical and Systematic Theology, which contains 12 volumes, by Oxford University
Press.

Translated Texts for Historians (TTH), by Liverpool University Press, which contains 77 volumes.

Translated Texts for Historians, Contexts (TTC) contains three volumes.

Translated Texts for Byzantinists, by Liverpool University Press, which contains seven volumes.

Exeter Medieval Texts and Studies, by Liverpool University Press, which contains 82 volumes, published since
1975.

Medieval Texts in Translation, by the Catholic University of America Press, which contains about 14 volumes.

Aris and Phillips Classical Texts, by Liverpool University Press, which contains 166 volumes, since 1980.

ARCA Classical and Medieval Texts, Papers and Monographs, by Francis Cairns Publications, which contains
55 volumes, from 1976 – 2018.

The Works of Saint Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century, by New City Press, in conjunction with the
Augustinian Heritage Institute, which contains 43 volumes so far, out of a scheduled 49 volumes, since 1990.
This is the first time in which the works of Augustine will all be translated into English.
 767

Nelson’s Medieval Classics, since 1950, which contains about 13 volumes, although most are of the second-
millennium. The three exceptions are The Chronicle of Æthelweard, The Fourth Book of the Chronicle of
Fredegar, and Regularis Concordia.

Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library, by Harvard University Press, since 2010, which contains 69 volumes, as of
May 2021. The Supplements to the Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library series contains one volume.

Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Humanities, by Harvard University Press, which contains 3 volumes.

Dumbarton Oaks Byzantine Symposia and Colloquia, by Harvard University Press, which contains 9 volumes.

Dumbarton Oaks Byzantine Saints’ Lives, by Harvard University Press, which contains three volumes.

Dumbarton Oaks Texts, by Harvard University Press, which contains 13 numbers.

Dumbarton Oaks Studies, by Harvard University Press, which contains 47 titles, as of November 2017.

Dumbarton Oaks Other Titles in Byzantine Studies, by Harvard University Press, which contains about 20
volumes.

Byzantine Monastic Foundation Documents, which contains five volumes as number 35 in the series
Dumbarton Oaks Studies.

Harvard Library of Early Ukrainian Literature – English Translations, by Harvard University Press, which
contains seven volumes. The Text Series contains ten volumes, which are untranslated.

Harvard Series in Ukrainian Studies, which contains about 30 volumes, by Harvard University Press. Also see
other publications by the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute, such as the Harvard Ukrainian Studies
journal (34 Vol.), Ukrainian Studies Fund Publications, Harvard Papers in Ukrainian Studies, Renovatio
Studies, and Studies in Ottoman Documents Pertaining to Ukraine and the Black Sea Countries.

Early Christian Studies, which contains 18 volumes, published by the Centre for Early Christian Studies
(Australian Catholic University) from 2001 – 2014.

Variorum Collected Studies, published since 1970 by Routledge (formerly Ashgate), which contains well over
1000 titles, on a range of historical subjects, some of which will be valuable to the Orthodox reader.

Publications by The Medieval Academy of America, which has several series; the Speculum Anniversary
Monographs (SAM) series contains 15 volumes, the Medieval Academy Reprints For Teaching (MART) series
contains 39 volumes, and the Medieval Academy Books series contains 115 volumes. However, most of those
volumes are concerned with Western affairs, and the volume most relevant to Orthodoxy is Samuel Hazzard
Cross and Olgerd P. Sherbowitz-Wetzor, The Russian Primary Chronicle: Laurentian Text, Medieval Academy
Books, No. 60, Cambridge, MA: Medieval Academy of America, 1953 (Reprinted 2012).

Laws of Russia, published by Charles Schlacks, which contains multiple volumes (I counted six) of translated
Russian laws dating back to the tenth century.

Society of Biblical Literature Texts and Translations (SBLTT), which contains 44 volumes, published by the
Society of Biblical Literature (SBL Press) from 1972 – 1999. SBLTT is currently continued by the same
publisher under a new title, Writings from the Greco-Roman World (SBLWGRW), which contains 45 volumes.
There are many other valuable series and books from SBL (https://www.sbl-
site.org/publications/browsebyseries.aspx).

Message of the Fathers of the Church, which contains 22 volumes, published by Liturgical Press.
Birmingham Byzantine and Ottoman Studies, by Ashgate, which contains 22 volumes.
 768

Byzantine and Neohellenic Studies, by Peter Lang, which contains 14 volumes.

Byzantioς. Studies in Byzantine History and Civilization (SBHC), by Brepols, which contains 15 volumes, from
2010 to 2019.

The Medieval Mediterranean: Peoples, Economies and Cultures, 400 – 1500, by Brill, which contains 110
volumes.

Australiensia Byzantina, by Brill, which contains 21 volumes, published since 1981.

Studia Antiqua Australiensia (SAA), by Brepols, which contains 10 volumes, published from 2006 to 2020.

Studia Byzantina Upsaliensia, by Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis (Uppsala University), from 1986 to 2018,
which contains 20 volumes.

Mittellateinische Studien und Texte, published by Brill, which contains 51 volumes, since 1965. This series
contains critical editions and translations of Latin texts of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance (6th – 16th
centuries). Only some of the texts are translated into English and from the first millennium.

The Middle Ages Series, which contains 294 volumes, published by the University of Pennsylvania Press.
Corpus Philosophorum Medii Aevi, by Union Académique Internationale.

Publications of the Journal of Medieval Latin (PJML), published by Brepols since 1997, which contains 14
volumes.

Records of Western Civilization, which contains 25 volumes, published from 1990 to 2010 by Columbia
University Press.

Readings in Medieval Civilizations and Cultures, which contains 16 volumes, published by University of
Toronto press.

Arethusa Monographs, by the Department of Classics at the State University of New York at Buffalo, which
contains 12 volumes, published from 1969 to 1988.

Manchester Medieval Sources, by Manchester University Press, which contains 35 volumes, published from
1991 onwards.

Medieval Law and Its Practice, published by Brill, which contains 24 volumes, since 2008.

Paul R. Coleman-Norton, Roman State and Christian Church, 3 Vols., London: S.P.C.K, 1966.

Notre Dame Texts in Medieval Culture, which contains 9 volumes, published by University of Notre Dame
Press, from 1997 – 2012.

Michael Psellos in Translation, which contains 3 volumes, published by University of Notre Dame Press, from
2006 – 2017.

Publications of the Society for the Promotion of Byzantine Studies, which contains 20 volumes (which are the
papers of its annual Spring Symposia), published by Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group (formerly published
by Ashgate).

Texts and Studies in Eastern Christianity, by Brill, which contains 22 volumes, as of March 2021.
 769

The History of Christian-Muslim Relations, by Brill, which contains 36 volumes. This includes the sub-series
Christian Muslim Relations: A Bibliographical History, which currently has 12 volumes.

Studien und Texte zu Antike und Christentum / Studies and Texts in Antiquity and Christianity (STAC), which
contains 114 volumes as of November 2018, published in Tü bingen by Mohr Siebeck.

Studies and Documents, most recently by the University of Utah Press, which contains 46 volumes, from 1934
to 1995, almost all of which concern New Testament textual criticism, except for numbers 12 and 37, which
are translations of the Church Fathers.

Several volumes from Edwin Mellen Press pertain to Orthodoxy and Church history, including a series titled
Texts and Studies in Religion.

CUA Studies in Canon Law, which contains 580 volumes, published by The Catholic University of America
Press. This series is making available hundreds of canon law dissertations since the 1920s, many of which
have long been unavailable. Only some of these studies are relevant to the Orthodox Church.

History of Medieval Canon Law, which contains 5 volumes, published by The Catholic University of America
Press.

Studies in Medieval and Early Modern Canon Law, which contains 16 volumes, published by The Catholic
University of America Press.

Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Latin (or Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Latin Language and
Literature), which contains 24 volumes, published by The Catholic University of America Press, 1933 – 1963.
Cursor Mundi, which contains 32 volumes, from the UCLA Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, since
2007. This series is a companion to the journal Viator: Medieval and Renaissance Studies.

Late Antique and Early Medieval Iberia, which contains 6 volumes, published by Amsterdam University Press,
since 2016.

Texts in Translation: Original Translations of Various Medieval Latin Texts by Kenneth Baxter Wolf, with
additional translation projects by others, which contains 13 English translations, available
at https://sites.google.com/site/canilup/home. Dr. Wolf is a professor of history and classics at Pomona
College.

Eastern Christian Texts in Translation, by Peeters, which contains five volumes.

Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium, by Peeters since 1903, which contains 665 volumes, only
some of which are translated into English.

Extra Seriem, which consists of monographs related to the Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum
series. There is currently only one English translation in this series, the Commentary on the Gospels by
Fortunatianus of Aquileia (Aquileiensis).

Texts and Studies in the History of Cyprus, by the Cyprus Research Centre, which contains 70 volumes, only
some of which are translations of texts in English.

Christian Arabic Texts in Translation, forthcoming by Fordham University Press, which is new and does not
yet contain any volumes.

Arabic Christianity: Texts and Studies, forthcoming by Brill, which is new and does not yet contain any
volumes, although it appears that two titles are scheduled to be published soon, by Jack Tannous and Andrew
Palmer.
 770

Corpus Islamo-Christianum, which has 32 volumes planned, with most volumes already printed.

Belfast Byzantine Texts and Translations, by Belfast Byzantine Enterprises, of the Institute of Byzantine
Studies at the Queen’s University of Belfast, which contains about a dozen volumes.

Series of Byzantine Texts, by Dr. Andreas Pelendrides, which contains two volumes.

Byzantine Texts and Studies [Βυζαντινα κειμενα και μελεται, or Vyzantina keimena kai meletai], which
contains 61 volumes.

Byzantinisches Archiv, which contains 34 volumes as of 2018, with two more volumes planned by 2020, and
is published by De Gruyter. It is the accompanying series of the Byzantinischen Zeitschrift.

Translations and Reprints from the Original Sources of European History, which contains 6 volumes,
published by The Department of History of the University of Pennsylvania, from 1897 – 1899.

Peregrina Translations Series, published by Peregrina from 1986 – 2003, which contains 21 volumes. This
series contains mostly Roman Catholic works from the Middle Ages, but some Orthodox saints are included as
well.

Penguin Classics, by Penguin Books, which is a diverse set of over 1,800 titles of classic books in world
literature, only a few of which are relevant to this subject.

Oxford World’s Classics, by Oxford University Press, contains over 800 classics in world literature, including a
few translations of first-millennium Christian authors and second-millennium Orthodox authors.

The Loeb Classical Library, published by Harvard University Press, which contains 542 volumes of the ancient
Greek and Latin classics, only a few of which are of Christian authors.

The I Tatti Renaissance Library, published by Harvard University Press, which contains 90 volumes, from
2001 – 2020. Note that none of the authors translated in this collection are Orthodox, and that the series
focuses on the Italian Renaissance, but readers may still find some useful knowledge, especially in the
histories.

The Transformation of the Classical Heritage, which contain 59 volumes, published by the University of
California Press in Berkeley, CA, since 1981.

Crusade Texts in Translation, published by Routledge, which contains 30 volumes, from 1996 – 2018.
Routledge Classical Translations, which contains 7 volumes, published by Routledge, from 2004 – 2018.
Church, Faith and Culture in the Medieval West, which contains 41 volumes, published by Routledge, Taylor &
Francis Group, from 2002 - 2017.

The Worlds of Eastern Christianity, 300 – 1500, which contains 4 volumes, published by Routledge, from
2011 – 2015.

Routledge Later Latin Poetry, which contains 5 volumes, published by Routledge since 2015.

Oxford Medieval Texts, published by Oxford University Press, which contains 87 volumes of source material,
focusing on England in the Middle Ages. Only some of the texts are from the first millennium.

Dallas Medieval Texts and Translations, 23 Volumes (with at least 24 additional volumes planned for the
future), published by Peeters. The series is based at the University of Dallas and the National University of
Ireland, Maynooth.
 771

Studies and Texts, published by the Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies (PIMS) in Toronto, which
contains 206 volumes.

Mediaeval Studies, which contains 78 volumes, published by PIMS since 1939.

Mediaeval Sources in Translation, published by PIMS, which contains 56 volumes.

Toronto Medieval Latin Texts, published by PIMS, which contains 34 volumes.

Toronto Medieval Texts and Translations, published by University of Toronto Press, which contains 13
volumes.

Durham Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Translations, published by the PIMS, which contains 6 volumes,
only one of which so far is a translation of first millennium Christian texts (Patron Saints of Early Medieval
Italy AD c. 350 – 800). Some of these volumes are shared with Durham Medieval Texts, which contains 11
volumes.

MedievalMS: Translations by Priscilla Throop, which contains about 18 volumes. Priscilla Throop (1946 –
2016) was a Latin and Greek scholar.

Oxford Theology and Religion Monographs, published by Oxford University Press, which contains 93 volumes,
since 1983.

Oxford Classical Monographs, published by Oxford University Press, which contains 111 volumes. This
replaces the Oxford Classical and Philosophical Monographs (OCPM) series.

Clarendon Ancient History Series, published by Oxford University Press, which contains 18 volumes.

Ancient Commentators on Aristotle, which contains 107 volumes as of December 2018, published by
Bloomsbury.

Makers of Christendom, published by Sheed and Ward, which contains 6 volumes, focusing on the lives of
missionaries in the Middle Ages.

Lives of Early and Medieval Missionaries, published by the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in
Foreign Parts, which contains 2 volumes.

The Alaska History Series / Materials for the Study of Alaskan History, published by The Limestone Press,
which contains 51 volumes. The Limestone Press is a one-man publishing house set up by Richard Austin
Pierce (1918 – 2004), an eminent historian of Alaska in the Russian era. Pierce also published several books
on Russian Alaska outside this series. These works occasionally contain interesting subject matter on Russian
Orthodox explorers and missionaries, most especially numbers 11, 16, 26 and 27 (which I have mentioned
above in the chapter on Orthodox missions).

Rasmuson Library Historical Translation Series, published by the University of Alaska Press, which contains
17 volumes so far. The volumes most pertinent to Orthodoxy are numbers 2, 7, and 13 (which I have
mentioned above in the chapter on Orthodox missions).

Russian Biography Series, published by Oriental Research Partners, which contains 34 volumes.

Publications of the Hakluyt Society, which contains 224 volumes across three series (not including the extra
series) since 1847, which are focused on historical travels, and include first-hand accounts of Russian
travelers and travelers to Russia and other Orthodox countries.
 772

Christian Roman Empire Series, by Evolution Publishing, from 2006 – 2019, which contains 13 volumes.
These are mainly reprints of out-of-copyright translated works from the mid-1800s to the early 1900s, with
some modifications.

Records of Civilization: Sources and Studies, by Columbia University Press, which contains 98 volumes from
1915 – 1990. Of these, numbers 2, 31, 40, 41, 60, and 95 contain the most relevant translations (numbers 3,
12, and 26 have been largely superseded by the editions in other series listed here).

Records of Western Civilization, by Columbia University Press, which contains about 26 volumes from 1990 –
2010.

AVANT: Treasures of the Armenian Christian Tradition, by St. Nersess Armenian Seminary in collaboration
with St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, which contains 4 volumes.

Hebrew University Armenian Studies, from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, by Peeters Publishers, which
contains 15 volumes, published since 2001.

Armenian Church Classics, by St. Vartan Press in New York City, which contains 4 volumes, published from
1984 – 1991.

Classical Armenian Texts, by Caravan Books, which contains 6 volumes. This series only contains
untranslated works in Armenian, but with an English introduction.

Harvard Armenian Texts and Studies, by Harvard University Press, which contains 10 volumes.

Sources of the Armenian Tradition, by Robert Bedrosian, who has published 8 volumes, from 1985 to 1991.
Also see the other various translations of Armenian sources by Robert Bedrosian (1949 – current), which are
available online and are in the public domain. His personal website (rbedrosian.com) unfortunately appears
to have been frequently offline since after September 2017, but his writings (which are all in the public
domain) can be found on archive.org
(https://archive.org/search.php?query=creator%3A%22Robert+Bedrosian%22) and a mirror copy
(http://www.attalus.org/armenian/), as well as through the Wayback Machine.

Agop Jack Hacikyan, Gabriel Basmajian, Edward S. Franchuk, and Nourhan Ouzounian (editors), The Heritage
of Armenian Literature, 3 Vols., Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 2000 – 2005.

Eastern Christian Texts, by Brigham Young University Press and the University of Chicago Press, which
contains eleven volumes as of December 2018. This series includes “On This Day”, a complete translation of
the Armenian Church Synaxarion, of which currently four volumes out of the total twelve-volume series have
been published. This series was first titled “Library of the Christian East”.

Gorgias Eastern Christian Studies, by Gorgias Press, which contains 50 volumes as of April 2018.

Texts from Christian Late Antiquity, by Gorgias Press, which contains 52 volumes as of June 2018.
Moran Etho, by Gorgias Press, which contains 18 volumes, including studies and translations, on the topic of
Syriac Christianity.

Syriac Studies Library, by Gorgias Press, which contains 209 volumes, only a few of which are English
translations.

Persian Martyr Acts in Syria: Text and Translation, by Gorgias Press, which contains 7 volumes (the latest
published September 2018).

Kiraz Liturgical Series, by Gorgias Press, which contains 68 volumes, only some of which are English
translations.
 773

Kitaz Theological Archive, by Gorgias Press, which contains 77 volumes, only some of which are English
translations.

Monastic Studies Series, by Gorgias Press, which contains 35 volumes, including many Roman Catholic
monastics of the Middle Ages.

Analecta Gorgiana, by Gorgias Press, which contains 1,094 volumes, on a wide variety of historical topics, only
a few of which are relevant to this subject.

Perspectives on Philosophy and Religious Thought, by Gorgias Press, which contains 16 volumes.

Gorgias Studies in Classical and Late Antiquity, which contains 23 volumes, published by Gorgias Press.

Gorgias Studies in Early Christianity and Patristics, by Gorgias Press, which contains 66 volumes.

Patristische Texte und Studien, which contains 79 volumes, since 1963 by De Gruyter Press. Most volumes
are in German.

Millennium-Studien / Millennium Studies, which contains 89 volumes, since 2004 by De Gruyter Press. Most
volumes are in German.

Samuel Parsons Scott, The Civil Law, Cincinnati, OH: Central Trust Co., 1932, (17 Vols.) (Reprinted New York,
NY: AMS Press, 1973). This is a translation of the Corpus Juris Civilis, also called the Code of Justinian. I
found some significant omissions and errors in this edition, and it has been widely and justly criticised for not
working from the best Latin and Greek editions. Also: Samuel Parsons Scott (editor and translator), The
Visigothic Code (Forum Judicum), Boston, MA: The Boston Book Company, 1910.

Timothy G. Kearley (editor), Fred Heinrich Blume, The Annotated Justinian Code, published online at the
University of Wyoming College of Law web site, 2009, 2nd Ed. (www.uwyo.edu/lawlib/blume-justinian/ajc-
edition-2/). This is a much better edition of Justinian’s Code and Novels.

Bruce W. Frier (editor), The Codex of Justinian: A New Annotated Translation, with Parallel Latin and Greek
Text, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 3 Vols., 2016. This is based on the translation by Fred H.
Blume, and is the best edition of the text. Another work is Thomas Collett Sandars, The Institutes of Justinian,
London: John W. Parker and Son, 1853.

David J. D. Miller (translator), Peter Sarris (editor), The Novels of Justinian: A Complete Annotated English
Translation, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2 Vols., 2018.

Alan Watson (editor), The Digest of Justinian, Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 4 Vols., 1985
(a revised English-language edition was published by the same press in 2 Vols., 1998). Corrections and
comments on the English translation have been collected on the webpage iuscivile.com/materials/digest.

The Corpus of Roman Law, which contains two volumes: Clyde Pharr (with Theresa Sherrer Davidson and
Mary Brown Pharr), The Theodosian Code and Novels and the Sirmondian Constitutions: A Translation with
Commentary, Glossary, and Bibliography, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1952; Clyde Pharr
(general editor), Alan Chester Johnson, Paul Robinson Coleman-Norton, and Frank Carl Bourne, Ancient
Roman Statutes: A Translation with Introduction, Commentary, Glossary, and Index, Austin: University of
Texas Press, 1961. Pharr had intended to translate the entire corpus of Roman law, but only these two
volumes were published.

The various Roman law texts translated and edited by Edwin Hanson Freshfield: (A Manual of Roman Law:
The Ecloga Published by the Emperors Leo III and Constantine V of Isauria at Constantinople A.D. 726,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1926; A Manual of Later Roman Law: The “Ecloga ad Procheiron
 774

mutata” founded upon the Ecloga of Leo III and Constantine V of Isauria, Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1927; A Revised Manual of Roman Law: Founded upon the Ecloga of Leo III and Constantine V of
Isauria, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1927; A Manual of Eastern Roman Law: The Procheiros
Nomos published by the Emperor Basil I at Constantinople between 867 and 879 A.D., Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1928; A Manual of Byzantine Law, Vol. VI, On Torts and Crimes, Compiled in the Fourteenth
Century by George Harmenopoulos, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1930; A Provincial Manual of
Later Roman Law: The Calabrian Procheiron on servitudes & bye-laws incidental to the tenure of real
property, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1931; Roman Law in the Later Roman Empire: The
Isaurian Period, Eighth Century, the Ecloga, Cambridge: Bowes & Bowes, 1932; Roman Law in the Later
Roman Empire: Byzantine Guilds, Professional and Commercial Ordinances of Leo VI, c. 895, from the Book of
the Eparch, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1938; Roman Law in the Later Roman Empire: Military
Discipline of the Emperor Maurice c. A.D. 590 from the Strategikon, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1947.)

The various ancient Eastern Christian texts translated and edited by the prolific scholar Sir Ernest Alfred
Thompson Wallis Budge (1857 – 1934). Many of these can be found in Coptic Texts (5 Vol.), Lady Meux
Manuscripts (6 No. in 4 Vol.) and Luzac’s Semitic Text and Translation Series (20 Vol.). The latter series also
includes texts from before the Christian Era. Budge was also the editor of the Oriental Text Series, which
appears to have only one volume (1888). Also see his two-volume The Paradise, Or Garden of the Holy
Fathers (1907).

Horae Semiticae, published by Cambridge University Press from 1903 – 1916, which contains 11 volumes.

Studia Sinaitica, published by Cambridge University Press from 1894 – 1907, which contains 12 volumes.

Semitic Study Series, edited by Richard J. H. Gottheil and Morris Jastrow, which contains 14 volumes.

Semitic Study Series (New Series), edited by J. H. Hospers, T. Jansma and G. F. Pijper, which contains 6
volumes.

Basil Thomas Alfred Evetts (translator), Sawirus B. Al-Muqaffa, History of the Patriarchs of Alexandria: The
Copts of Egypt Before and After the Islamic Conquests, London: I.B. Tauris & Co. Ltd., 2017 (3 volumes). This
was originally published in the Patrologia Orientalia. Also see Evetts’s The Churches and Monasteries of
Egypt and Some Neighbouring Countries, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1895.

Texts and Studies: Contributions to Biblical and Patristic Literature, which contains 29 volumes, published by
Cambridge University Press from 1891 – 1922.

University of Michigan Studies: Humanistic Series, which contains 50 volumes, published by the University of
Michigan from 1904 – 1951.

Publications of the Text and Translation Society, which contains 15 volumes, published by Williams and
Norgate, printed around the beginning of the 20th century.

Publications of the Ælfric Society, which contains 14 numbers in 4 volumes, published in London from 1843 –
1848. The series has been reprinted, New York, NY: Johnson Reprint Corp., 1971.

Publications of the Irish Texts Society, which contains 67 volumes in its Main Series, and 29 volumes in
its Subsidiary Series, since 1898.

Publications of the Henry Bradshaw Society, which contains 123 volumes (as of June 2018) in its Main Series,
and 8 volumes in its Subsidia, since 1891.
 775

Publications of the Early English Text Society, which has been publishing extensively since 1864. There are
350 volumes in EETS’s Original Series, 25 in the Supplementary Series, and 126 in the Extra Series. Only
some of these are translated original texts from the 1st millennium.

Rerum Britannicarum Medii Ævi Scriptores, or The Chronicles and Memorials of Great Britain and Ireland
During the Middle Ages (also known as the Rolls Series), which contains 99 works, printed in 253 volumes
from 1858 – 1911, published by the authority of the Lords Commissioners of Her Majesty’s Treasury, under
the direction of the Master of the Rolls. Most of the works are from the early part of the second millennium
and are not translated into modern English.

The Historians of Scotland, which contains 10 volumes, published by Edmonston and Douglas (Vol. I – VI) and
William Paterson (Vol. VII – X) in Edinburgh, from 1871 – 1880.

The Scottish Text Society, which publishes a wide variety of Scottish literature from the 14th to the 19th
centuries. There are currently five series, with a total of 167 volumes as of 2019, published since 1882.

Publications of the Scottish History Society, which currently has six series, with a total of 192 volumes as of
April 2020, published since 1887.

The Society for the Publication of Ancient Welsh Manuscripts, or the Welsh Manuscripts Society, which
published 8 volumes, from 1837 – 1874.

The Publications of the Surtees Society, which contains 222 volumes, published from 1835 – 2019. The
Surtees Society is focused on sources for the history of Northern England, and very few publications concern
the first millennium.

The Publications of the Chetham Society, which contains 284 volumes, published from 1844 to the present
day. The Chetham Society is focused on publishing “Remains Historical and Literary connected with the
Palatine Counties of Lancaster and Chester”, and almost no publications concern the first millennium.

The Camden Series, by the Royal Historical Society (and its predecessor body, the Camden Society), which
contains 366 volumes, in five series, from 1838 to the present day.

Sabine Baring-Gould, The Lives of the Saints, which contains 16 volumes, first published from 1872 – 1877,
with a Revised Edition in London, 1897, and republished in Edinburgh, 1914.

The Lives of the British Saints: The Saints of Wales and Cornwall and such Irish Saints as have Dedications in
Britain, which contains 4 volumes, published for the Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion, from 1907 –
1911.

The Lives of the English Saints, written by Various Hands at the Suggestion of John Henry Newman, which
contains 6 volumes, from 1900 – 1901.

Walter Farquhar Hook, Lives of the Archbishops of Canterbury, London: Richard Bentley & Son, 1879 – 1884,
(12 Vols.). Only the first volume contains lives of the first-millennium Archbishops.

Lives of Irish Saints, in 10 volumes, intended to be published in 12 volumes, with one volume for each
month. The Roman Catholic priest and scholar Fr. John Canon O’Hanlon (1821 – 1905) laboured much of his
life on this literary monument. The 10th volume was only partially completed by Fr. John’s death in 1905.

Bethada Náem Nérenn: Lives of Irish Saints, in two volumes, by Charles Plummer, and published in Oxford at
the Clarendon Press in 1922. [Also see James Henthorn Todd and William Reeves (editors), John O’Donovan
(translator), The Martyrology of Donegal: A Calendar of the Saints of Ireland, Dublin: Irish Archæological and
Celtic Society, 1864.]
 776

Viking Society for Northern Research, Text Series, which contains 20 volumes. There are dozens of other
publications, including valuable translations, by the Viking Society (also called the Viking Club).

Monograph Series in Orthodox Theology and Civilization, which contains 22 volumes.

Modern Orthodox Saints, by Constantine Cavarnos, and published by the Institute for Byzantine and Modern
Greek Studies, which contains 15 volumes. There are many other learned publications from the Institute for
Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies, located in Belmont, MA.

Books on the lives of the saints (not a formal series), which contains dozens of short volumes, mainly
translated and edited by Isaac E. Lambertsen (d. 2017), and published by Saint John of Kronstadt Press.

Books on the lives of the saints (not a formal series), published by Saint Nectarios Press.

A Treasury of Serbian Orthodox Spirituality, published by the Serbian Orthodox Metropolitanate of New
Gracanica, which contains 8 volumes.

The Optina Elders, published by the St. Herman of Alaska Brotherhood, which contains 6 volumes.

The Lives of the Saints, compiled by St. Demetrius of Rostov, which is currently being translated, to be
published by Chrysostom Press, and the complete set will contain 12 volumes.

Ascetic Strugglers of Piety, which contains two volumes, published from 2000 – 2001 by St. Paisius Orthodox
Women’s Monastery: Safford, AZ.

The Evergetinos: A Complete Text, published in 2008 by the Center for Traditionalist Orthodox Studies in
Etna, CA, which contains 4 volumes.

The Philokalia, published by Faber and Faber, which contains 4 volumes. The fifth volume was not published
in full by the original translators and editors, but see Writings from the Philokalia: On Prayer of the Heart
(1992), by the same publisher (which includes many pages translated from the fifth volume). Also see the
more recent collection of Constantine Cavarnos, who has edited two volumes of selected readings from the
Philokalia (including the fifth volume), published by the Institute for Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies.
There are some translations that can be found online, and an English text was published as part of a bi-lingual
Malayalam / English edition in India in 2006 (see http://fatherjohn.blogspot.com/2019/11/volume-5-of-
philokalia-available-in-pdf.html). There is also a translation released June 30 2020 (which I have not
examined) translated by Anna Skoubourdis and published by St. George Monastery in Australia.

Little Russian Philokalia, published by the St. Herman of Alaska Brotherhood, which contains 6 volumes.

Orthodox Theological Texts, published by St. Herman of Alaska Brotherhood Press, which contains 4 volumes.

The Complete Menaion, published in 2005 by Holy Transfiguration Monastery, which contains 12 volumes.
This edition mainly reflects the Greek Menaion.

Isaac E. Lambertsen (translator), Menaion of the Orthodox Church, 12 Vol., Liberty, TN: Saint John of
Kronstadt Press, 2003, 2nd Ed. This edition mainly reflects the Slavonic Menaion.

Isaac E. Lambertsen (translator), The Octoechos, 4 Vol., Liberty, TN: Saint John of Kronstadt Press, 2000 –
2001.

The Great Book of Needs, Expanded and Supplemented, published in 1998 and 1999 by St. Tikhon’s Seminary
Press, which contains 4 volumes.
 777

Silviu Bunta and Matthew-Peter Butrie, Ieratikon According to the Simonopetra Tradition, Cherubim Press,
2019 (4 Vols.).

Christopher Hookway, Mother Maria (Rule), and Mother Joanna (Burton) (translators), Hieromonk Makarios
of Simonos Petra, The Synaxarion: The Lives of the Saints of the Orthodox Church, which contains 7 volumes,
published by Sebastian Press.

The Great Synaxaristes of the Orthodox Church, published by Holy Apostles Convent/Dormition Skete, which
contains 14 volumes.

The Lives of the Saints, published by Holy Apostles Convent/Dormition Skete, which contains 8 volumes. The
most relevant volume to this treatise is The Lives of the Pillars of Orthodoxy, which I have recommended
above.

Monastery Builders, published by Holy Apostles Convent/Dormition Skete, which contains 5 volumes.

The Lives of Saints, published by Holy Dormition Sisterhood, in St. Marys, New South Wales, which contains
30 volumes.

Orthodox Christian Profiles Series, published by St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, which contains 9 volumes.

Treasures of Orthodox Spirituality, which contains one volume, published by St. Vladimir's Seminary Press,
beginning 2017.

Great Ascetics of Russia, published by Holy Trinity Russian Orthodox Monastery, Jordanville, NY, from 1972 –
1987, which contains 5 volumes.

English translations by Gozalov Books (not a formal series), The Hague, which has published 7 volumes,
focused on Christian ascetics and saints of Russia.

Studies in the Early History of Britain, by Leicester University Press and Bloomsbury Publishing, which
contains about 19 volumes.

Five volumes of iconography manuals by Oakwood Publications (The Painter’s Manual of Dionysius of
Fourna; Icon Painter’s Notebook: The Bolshakov Edition; Iconographer’s Sketchbook: The Postnikov
Collection (Vol. I); Iconographer’s Sketchbook: The Tyulin Collection (Vol. II); An Iconographer’s
Patternbook: The Stroganov Tradition.)

Woodbrooke Studies: Christian Documents in Syriac, Arabic, and Garshuni, Edited and Translated with a
Critical Apparatus, by Alphonse Mingana from 1927 – 1934, which contains 7 volumes.

Georges Florovsky, Collected Works, 14 Vols., Belmont, MA: Nordland Publishing, 1972 – 1979 (vols. 1 – 5) &
Vaduz: Büchervertriebsanstalt, 1987 – 1989 (vols. 6 – 14). The most valuable of Florovsky’s (1893 – 1979)
works are his patristic studies on the Eastern and Byzantine fathers (vols. 7 – 10).

The Collected Works of St. Ignatius Brianchaninov (5 Vols.), published by Holy Trinity Publications (note that
only two volumes have been printed so far).

Nicholas Kotar (translator), Vitaly Permiakov (editor), Archbishop Averky (Taushev), Commentary on the
Holy Scriptures of the New Testament, Jordanville, NY: Holy Trinity Seminary Press, 3 Vols., 2015 – 2018.
Averky (Taushev) of Syracuse (1906 – 1976) was a Russian Archbishop, abbot, and professor.

The Russian Imperial Family: The Romanovs in Their Own Words (6 Vols.), translated by Helen Azar, and
published by various publishers.
 778

The Russian Library, edited by William Thomas Stead, which contains two volumes (“Reflections of a Russian
Statesman” and “The Future of War”), published from 1898 – 1899. “The Future of War” predicts that war in
the future will become impossible (without extreme and overwhelming costs), which was a surprisingly true
understanding, confirmed by World War I.

G. Edward Orchard (general editor), Sergei M. Soloviev, History of Russia From Earliest Times, 50 vols., Gulf
Breeze, FL: Academic International Press, 1976 – 2020. This is the fullest and most comprehensive history of
Russia ever written. It was originally published by Sergei M. Soloviev (various spellings, 1820 – 1879) in St.
Petersburg in 29 volumes from 1851 – 1879, and republished in Moscow in 15 volumes from 1959 – 1966.
The English translation and edition currently contains 40 volumes in print, with more volumes in
preparation, out of a total of 50 volumes (currently published are vols. 1-18, 21-29, 31-32, 34-35, 37-43, and
45-48). Karamzin’s twelve volume History of the Russian Empire is another masterpiece, but no parts of it
have been translated into English. Soloviev, Karamzin, and Klyuchevsky (whose works I mentioned above)
are three of the best Russian historians, but there are many others, such as Kostomarov, Presnyakov,
Granovsky, Platonov, and three major Church historians of the Russian Empire are Gumilevsky, Bulgakov, and
Golubinsky.

Also see works published in the Russian Series by Academic International Press, which contains 48 volumes.

George Vernadsky (senior editor), A Source Book for Russian History from Early Times to 1917, New Haven,
CT: Yale University Press, 3 Vols., 1972. Also see Vernadsky’s History of Russia (5 Vols. in 6 printed books.)

Warren Bartlett Walsh, Readings in Russian History: From Ancient Times to the Post-Stalin Era, 3 Vols.,
Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 4th Ed., 1963.

Serge A. Zenkovsky (editor and translator), Betty Jean Zenkovsky (translator), The Nikonian Chronicle,
Princeton, NJ: Kingston Press, 5 Vols., 1984 – 1989.

The Library of the Palestine Pilgrims’ Text Society, published from 1886 – 1897 by the Committee of the
Palestine Exploration Fund, which contains 13 volumes.

Orthodox Theological Library, published from 2004 – 2010 by the Orthodox Research Institute in Rollinsford,
NH, which contains 4 volumes.

Vigiliae Christianae Supplements: Texts and Studies of Early Christian Life and Language, published by Brill
since 1987, which contains 145 volumes as of the beginning of 2019. Note that many of the volumes are not
in English.

Nag Hammadi and Manichaean Studies, formerly the Nag Hammadi Studies Series, which contains 93
volumes as of June 2018, published by Brill.

William Wright, Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles, London: Williams and Norgate, 2 Vols., 1871.

Wilhelm Schneemelcher, R. McL. Wilson, and Edgar Hennecke, New Testament Apocrypha, Louisville, KY:
Westminster John Knox Press, 2 Vols., Rev. Ed., 1992.

Tony Burke and Brent Landau (editors), New Testament Apocrypha: More Noncanonical Scriptures, 2 Vols.,
Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2016 – 2020. Brent Landau was editor only on the first volume. A third volume
is planned. The sub-title refers to texts not already collected in the standard works of Schneemelcher and
Elliot (James Keith Elliott, The Apocryphal New Testament: A Collection of Apocryphal Christian Literature in
an English Translation, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2005).

James H. Charlesworth, The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, Peabody, MS: Hendrickson Publishers, 2 Vols.,
4th Ed., 2015 (originally published 1983). As a supplement, see Richard Bauckham, James R. Davila, and
 779

Alexander Panayotov, Old Testament Pseudepigrapha: More Noncanonical Scriptures, Grand Rapids, MI:
Eerdmans, 2 Vols., 2013.

Central European Medieval Studies, published by Amsterdam University Press, which contains 5 volumes.

Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies (MRTS), which contains 558 volumes, published by the Arizona
Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies (ACMRS). It was previously published by the Center for
Medieval and Early Renaissance Studies at Binghamton University. The series Arizona Studies in the Middle
Ages and the Renaissance (ASMAR) includes co-publications with MRTS. Only some of these are relevant to
Orthodox readers.

Corpus Fontium Historiae Byzantinae, an international project by the Association Internationale des Études
Byzantines, which contains 53 volumes (several of which are printed in multiple books).

Byzantina et Neograeca Vindobonensia (before 2004 called Byzantina Vindobonensia), which contains 27
volumes, published by the Austrian Academy of Sciences Press in Vienna (Verlag der Österreichen Akademie
der Wissenschaften).

Corpus Christianorum in Translation (CCT), which contains 35 volumes, published by Brepols from 2010 to
2020. Only some of the volumes are from Orthodox authors and translated into English. This is part of the
much larger series Corpus Christianorum, which contains hundreds of Christian texts in their original
languages, although some were published with English translations.

Die Griechischen Christlichen Schriftsteller (GCS) (since 1891) and Texte und Untersuchungen zur Geschichte
der altchristlichen Literatur (TU) (since 1882) both currently published by De Gruyter. The GCS currently
comprises 83 volumes, the TU 162. Most volumes are not in English.

Adnotationes (ADNOT): Commentaries on Early Christian and Patristic Texts, published by Brepols. There is
currently only one volume in this series, on the letters of Pope Gelasius I.

Medium Ævum Monographs, published in Oxford by the Society for the Study of Medieval Languages and
Literature, which contains at least 37 volumes. Almost all of this series concerns the first half of the second
millennium in the West.

Mediæval Philosophical Texts in Translation, which contains 52 volumes, published by Marquette University
Press from 1942 – 2015. Almost all the works are by Latins in the early second millennium. The same
university has also published the series Reformation Texts With Translation, consisting of 14 volumes, from
1994 – 2016, which only concern Latin texts of the Reformation era.

The Cambridge Translations of Medieval Philosophical Texts, which contains 3 volumes, published by
Cambridge University Press from 1989 – 2002. Almost all the works are by Latins in the early second
millennium. This is intended as a companion to The Cambridge History of Later Medieval Philosophy series.

The American Paradise Series, published by St. Herman of Alaska Brotherhood Press, which contains 5
volumes.

Acquisition of the Holy Spirit in Russia Series, published by St. Herman of Alaska Brotherhood Press, which
contains 7 volumes.

Modern Matericon Series, published by St. Herman of Alaska Brotherhood Press and St. Xenia Skete, which
contains 9 volumes.

Studia Patristica, which contains 98 volumes since 1957, first published by Akademie-Verlag in Berlin, and
currently published by Peeters Publishers in Leuven. Also see Studia Patristica Supplements, which contains
7 volumes since 2012, also by Peeters.
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Kanonika, published by the Pontifical Oriental Institute (Pontificio Instituto Orientale) in Rome, which
contains 25 volumes, since 1992.

Orientalia Christiana Analecta, published by the Pontifical Oriental Institute (Pontificio Instituto Orientale) in
Rome since 1923, which contains a total of 302 volumes as of 2017. This continues the older series Orientalia
Christiana (1923 – 1935). Most volumes are not in English.

Alcuin Club Collections, which contains 92 volumes, published in collaboration with the Society for Promoting
Christian Knowledge, since 1897.

Methuen’s Old English Library, which contains 24 volumes, published by Methuen & Co., London, 1933 –
1977.

The Temple Classics, which contains more than 300 volumes, published by J. M. Dent & Co., London, 1896 –
1955. These books are on a wide variety of topics.

Bohn’s Libraries, published by George Bell & Sons, which contains at least 729 volumes on a wide variety of
topics. The complete list of Bohn’s various libraries as of 1874 is given in George Bell & Sons’ Catalogue of
Bohn’s Libraries, London: George Bell & Sons, 1874. A later catalogue is given at the end of their later
publications. The most relevant of these is Bohn’s Ecclesiastical Library, which contains 8 volumes.

Patrologia Orientalis, which contains 248 numbers in 56 volumes, from 1903 to 2019, currently published by
Brepols. Texts are in Arabic, Armenian, Coptic, Geʿez (Ethiopian), Greek, Georgian and Slavonic, besides
Syriac, published with a Latin, English, Italian or mostly French translation. This was preceded by the three-
volume Patrologia Syriaca (Vol. I published 1894, Vol. II published 1907, Vol. III published 1927). See also
(only in the original languages and not in English) Migne’s Patrologia Graeca (161 Vols.) [see the Athens
reprint, with updated critical introductions] and Patrologia Latina (221 Vols.), although many volumes have
been superseded by better and critical editions in other series, such as in the Corpus Christianorum (over 500
Vols.), Collection Budé (424 Latin Vols. and 547 Greek Vols.), Oxford Classical Texts (135 Vols.), Bibliotheca
Teubneriana (427 Vols.), Sources Chrétiennes (over 600 Vols.), Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum
Orientalium (over 600 Vols.), Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum (over 100 Vols.), Fontes
Christiani (over 100 Vols.), and Monumenta Germaniae Historica (over 300 Vols.). These are the primary
collections of early Christian and first-millennium literature.

Analecta Vlatadon, by the Patriarchal Institute for Patristic Studies in Thessaloniki, which contains 68
volumes. This is a series of academic studies and treatises of theological, ecclesiastical, historical,
archaeological, and additional content from the Orthodox perspective, only some of which are in English. The
work most bearing upon the present subject of this treatise (which was previously mentioned) is Volume
XXIII, Johan A. Meijer, A Successful Council of Union: A Theological Analysis of the Photian Synod of 879 – 880,
Thessaloniki, 1975.

Part VIII Journals and Periodicals

There are many valuable articles and translations to be found in the following journals, but this is only a
selection:

Dumbarton Oaks Papers, by Harvard University Press, which is an annual academic journal for the
publication of articles relating to Byzantine civilization. It has been published annually since 1941
(somewhat irregularly until 1956) and contains 71 volumes.

The Journal of Hellenic Studies, published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Society for the
Promotion of Hellenic Studies. It has been published annually since 1880, and contains 137 volumes.
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Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies, an academic journal by the Centre of Byzantine, Ottoman and Modern
Greek Studies at the University of Birmingham. It has been published annually since 1975 and contains 41
volumes.

The Journal of Modern Greek Studies, the academic journal of the Modern Greek Studies Association,
published by Johns Hopkins University Press. It has been published biannually since 1983, and contains 35
volumes.

The Journal of Modern Hellenism, which is a joint publication of the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Centre for
Hellenic Studies, the Center for Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies of Queens College, City University of
New York, and the Hellenic Studies Program at California State University, Sacramento. It has been published
annually since 1984, and contains 33 volumes.

Traditio: Studies in Ancient and Medieval History, Thought, and Religion, is published by Cambridge
University Press. This journal is published annually, and there are 72 volumes as of 2017.

Vigiliae Christianae: A Review of Early Christian Life and Language, published annually by Brill since 1947. It
contains 72 volumes as of 2018.

Orientalia Christiana Periodica, published semi-annually by the Pontifical Oriental Institute (Pontificio
Instituto Orientale) in Rome since 1935, and contains 83 volumes as of 2017. Articles are mainly in English,
Italian, French, and German.

Le Muséon: Revue d’Études Orientales, published semi-annually by Peeters Publishers since 1881, and
contains 131 volumes as of 2018.

Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies (GRBS), published quarterly by Duke University since 1959, and
contains 58 volumes as of 2018.

Byzantine Studies / Études Byzantines, which contains 13 volumes, published from 1974 – 1986. Volumes
for 1974 – 1976 published jointly by the University Center for International Studies, University of Pittsburgh
and Temple University; Volumes for 1976 – 1986 published by Arizona State University.

East Central and Eastern Europe in the Middle Ages, 450 – 1450, which contains 63 volumes, published by
Brill from 2007 – 2020.

Russian History, which contains 45 volumes, published by Brill since 1974.

Studies in the Bible and Early Christianity, by The Edwin Mellen Press, which contains 67 volumes, from 1981
to 2009.

Hellēnika, published by Hetaireia Makedonikon Spoudon in Thessalonica since 1928.

Analecta Bollandiana, which contains 135 volumes, published by the Société des Bollandistes since 1882.
This supplements the Acta Sanctorum, which contains 68 volumes, a monumental compilation of the lives of
the saints.

Byzantion, which contains 87 volumes, published by Peeters Publishers since 1924.

Orthodox Life, published from 1950 to 2016 in print six times a year, and afterwards with content posted on
their website (orthodoxlife.org).

The Word, published monthly in English since 1957 by the Antiochian Archdiocese.
 782

The Orthodox Word, published every two or three months by Saint Herman Press since 1965, and has over
315 issues.

Orthodox Tradition, published three times yearly by the Center for Traditionalist Orthodox Studies in Etna,
CA, since 2010.

St. Tikhon’s Theological Journal, published by the faculty of St. Tikhon’s Orthodox Theological Seminary since
2003, and contains three volumes (publication appears to have ceased after volume three, dated 2005, but
actually published 2007). Note that Vol. I contains the only English translation of Chrysostom’s short Letter
to the Italian Women.

The Greek Orthodox Theological Review, published by the Greek Orthodox Theological Institute Press of Holy
Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology / Holy Cross Theological School since 1954, and contains about 60
volumes.

St. Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly (formerly known as St. Vladimir’s Seminary Quarterly), published by the
faculty of St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary since 1952, and contains 62 volumes.

Part IX Orthodox Culture

The following are some monuments of a culture influenced by Orthodoxy:

Mikhail Glinka, A Life For The Tsar: An Opera in four Acts. The Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow performed an
excellent videotaped rendition in 1992.

Tony Palmer (director), The Harvest Of Sorrow: The Memories of Sergei Rachmaninoff, DVD video, 2009.

Bishop Jovan Purić, The Icon, Ostrog Monastery & Academy of the Serbian Orthodox Church for Fine Arts and
Conservation, Run Time 3 hrs. 35 min. (in Seven Parts), 2011. This is a video documentary on Orthodox
icons.

I also recommend the works of the great Russian novelists and poets, including Gogol, Pushkin, Goncharov,
Lermontov, Tyutchev, Dostoevsky, and Solzhenitsyn, along with many other authors.

There are far too many beautiful Orthodox musical works to list here, but I highly recommend listening to
songs and chants from Orthodox countries around the world.
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Part X Encyclopedias, Reference Works, and Bibliographies

John Anthony McGuckin (editor), The Encyclopedia of Eastern Orthodox Christianity, Chichester: Wiley-
Blackwell, 2 Vols., 2011.

George Thomas Kurian (editor), The Encyclopedia of Christian Civilization, Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 4
Vols., 2011.

Angelo Di Berardino, et al. (editors), Encyclopedia of Ancient Christianity, 3 Vols., Downers Grove, IL:
InterVarsity Press, 2014 [updates and expands Berardino’s 1992 Encyclopedia of the Early Church]. Useful
with Angelo Di Berardino and Gianluca Pilara, Historical Atlas of Ancient Christianity, St. Davids, PA: ICCS
Press, 2013. This is from the Roman Catholic perspective, and is lacking in English sources, since it was
translated from the Italian version.

Johannes Quasten, et al. (editors), Patrology, 5 vols., [various publishers], 1950 – 2008.

Alexander Petrovich Kazhdan (editor), The Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium, Oxford: Oxford University Press,
3 Vols., 1991.

Alexander Petrovich Kazhdan (editor), A History of Byzantine Literature, 3 Vols. (Alexander Petrovich
Kazhdan, Lee Francis Sherry, and Christina Angelide (editors), A History of Byzantine Literature (650 – 850),
Athens: National Hellenic Research Foundation, Institute for Byzantine Research, 1999; Alexander Petrovich
Kazhdan and Christina Angelide (editors), A History of Byzantine Literature (850 – 1000), Athens: National
Hellenic Research Foundation, Institute for Byzantine Research, 2006; Alexander Petrovich Kazhdan and
Simon Franklin (editors), Studies on Byzantine Literature of the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries, Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2009.)

Paul D. Steeves (editor), The Modern Encyclopedia of Religions in Russia and Eurasia (formerly The Modern
Encyclopedia of Religions in Russia and the Soviet Union), 7 vols., Gulf Breeze, FL: Academic International
Press, 1989 – 2001.

Harry B. Weber, George J. Gutsche, and Peter Rollberg (editors), The Modern Encyclopedia of East Slavic,
Baltic and Eurasian Literatures (formerly The Modern Encyclopedia of Russian and Soviet Literature), 10
vols. + 1 index vol., Gulf Breeze, FL: Academic International Press, 1977 – 1996, index published 2002.

Joseph L. Wieczynski, et al. (editors), The Modern Encyclopedia of Russian, Soviet, and Eurasian History,
(formerly The Modern Encyclopedia of Russian and Soviet History), 61 vols. (including indices), Gulf Breeze,
FL: Academic International Press, 1976 – 2000; George N. Rhyne, et al. (editors), The Supplement to The
Modern Encyclopedia of Russian, Soviet and Eurasian History, 10 vols., Gulf Breeze, FL: Academic
International Press, 1995 – 2011.

See the webpage “Modern Language Translations of Byzantine Sources”, which is a large bibliographic
compilation of translated primary sources, and can be accessed at the following link:
(library.princeton.edu/byzantine). The librarian David Jenkins of Princeton University maintains this
database, which contains about 1,000 titles in English. Also see the Patristic Studies Area of Monachos.net
(www.monachos.net/content/patristics) and the Byzantine Sources in Translation page on the Fordham
University website (sourcebooks.fordham.edu/halsall/Byzantium/alltexts.asp). OrthodoxInfo.com also
contains valuable materials. A valuable list of Byzantine Saint’s Lives in modern translation is on the
Dumbarton Oaks website
(https://www.doaks.org/research/byzantine/resources/hagiography/translations-byzantine-saints-lives).

I also recommend The Orthodox Encyclopedia (Православная энциклопедия - Pravoslavnaya

Entsiklopediya) (http://www.pravenc.ru/). This is the most scholarly Orthodox encyclopedia that has been
written, and is in Russian. It currently spans 61 printed volumes, and many more volumes will be printed.
 784

Each volume is over 700 pages on average. It contains much information on topics and people for which
there is not the slightest information in any English sources.

The Encyclopaedic Prosopographical Lexicon of Byzantine History and Civilization (EPLBHC), published by
Brepols since 2007, which will consist of eight volumes when completed (three volumes are completed so
far). Also see Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire (3 Vols., in 4 printed parts, by Cambridge University
Press, 1971 – 1992), Prosopography of the Byzantine Empire (PBE, originally published by Ashgate as a CD in
2001, and now available online at http://www.pbe.kcl.ac.uk/), and Prosopography of the Byzantine World
(PBW, at https://pbw2016.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/).

Robin Cormack, John F. Haldon, and Elizabeth Jeffreys (editors), The Oxford Handbook of Byzantine Studies,
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009.

Ken Parry, David J. Melling, Dimitri Brady, Sidney H. Griffith, and John F. Healey (editors), The Blackwell
Dictionary of Eastern Christianity, Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1999.

Ken Parry (editor), The Blackwell Companion to Eastern Christianity, Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010.

Ken Parry (editor), The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Patristics, Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2018.

Michael Prokurat, Alexander Golitzin, and Michael D. Peterson (editors), Historical Dictionary of the Orthodox
Church, Lanham, MD: The Scarecrow Press, 1996.

An excellent bibliography on the Eastern Church, including many 20th century works, is found in Hubert
Jedin and John Patrick Dolan (editors), Handbook of Church History, Vol. III, pp. 487 – 495 (the general
bibliography is from pp. 474 – 549), New York, NY: Herder and Herder, 1969.

Prokurat, Peterson & Golitzin, The A to Z of the Orthodox Church, Plymouth, UK: Scarecrow Press, 1996.

Carl S. Tyneh, Orthodox Christianity: Overview and Bibliography, New York, NY: Nova Science Publishers,
2003.

Rev. Dean Timothy Andrews, The Eastern Orthodox Church: A Bibliography, New York, NY: Publication
Department of the Greek Archdiocese, 2nd Ed., 1957.