Such pretensions were not recognized in the East, which held to the doctrines of the first eight centuries on the subject of the Papacy. It was clear that if such letters as these were read in the council, all hope of peace was at an end. Hence only the substance of these letters was retained; every expression that could wound, or give reason to believe that the Pope wished to be Sovereign of the Church, was weeded out. Expressions of encomium in use in the East were added. These letters, as Fleury tells us, were thus modified, "apparently in concert with the legates, who heard them read without complaint." The first of these legates. Cardinal Peter, having asked, "Do you receive the Pope's letter?" the council replied, "We receive all that relates to the union with Photius and the interests of the Church, but not what concerns the Emperor and his provinces." By this, the Council rejected the pretensions of the Pope to Bulgaria. From such a unanimous disposition of nearly four hundred Eastern bishops, we may judge what protests the Pope's letters would have excited if the legates had not had the prudence to modify them in concert with Photius.[1] The East had always preserved this maxim, followed by all the œcumenical councils, that ecclesiastical divisions must follow those of the empire. Bulgaria, having been anciently a Greek province, depended from the Greek Patriarch and not the Latin.
Cardinal Peter having asked that the adversaries of Photius who had been excluded might be recalled, Photius replied, "The Emperor has only exiled two of
- ↑ The Abbé Jager, in his indigestible pamphlet against Photius, claims that the Pope's letters were altered by Photius alone. Would not the legates have protested against that fraud, since they heard them read in the council in their modified shape? Instead of complaining of these letters, they publicly sought to ascertain that every one was satisfied with them. Moreover, they carried them back to Rome with the acts of the council. The Pope did not protest, and it is in Rome itself that they were afterward found.
