The enemies of Photius have said that another, claimed to be his first letter to the Pope, was a work of hypocrisy in which he sought to win him over to his side by unworthy means, and chiefly by affecting great zeal against the iconoclasts. They have never been able to quote a line of this supposed letter. Those who invented it seem not to have remembered that the bishops could not hold the least intercourse before the usual letters of intercommunion. On this occasion as on many others, hatred has made the forgers blind. The first letter of Photius to the Pope is the one we have just translated.
It was brought to Rome with a letter from the Emperor. Nicholas I. took this occasion to do an act of supreme authority in the Church. This Pope is one of those who most contributed to unfold the work of Adrian I. The Jesuit Maimbourg,[1] meaning to praise him, 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 roughly than any of his predecessors, whenever he thought himself wronged in the prerogatives of his pontifical power." This is undoubtedly true, but Father Maimbourg did not appreciate either the historical importance of what he established, nor the fatal consequences of this development of papal power. Nor did he see that this vaunted development was nothing short of a radical change, and that, in the ninth century, the Papacy was no longer the Roman patriarchate of the first eight centuries.
Nicholas did not know what had taken place at Constantinople at the time of the deposition of Ignatius and the election of Photius. He only knew that Photius was a layman at the time of his election. It is true,
- ↑ Maimb. History of the Greek Schism.
