where Greek bishoprics had existed since the Apostolic times. When the Latin bishops could not reside there, Rome gave them titles in partibus infidelium, as if the Apostolic Church of the East had none but infidels among its members.
Innocent III. died in 1216. His successors continued his work. But the Greek Emperors of Nicea, on the verge of being overcome by the Latin Emperors of Constantinople, bethought themselves to resume the policy of their predecessors toward the Papacy. At the entreaty of the Emperor John Vataces, the Patriarch Gerraanus wrote to Pope Gregory IX. (1232.) His letter was filled with the best sentiments.[1] He first calls upon Jesus Christ, the corner-stone which joins all nations in one and the same Church; he acknowledges the primacy of the Bishop of Rome, and declares that he has no desire to contest it; and he adds: "Let us seek, with all possible care, who have been the authors of the division. If we ourselves, then point out to us the wrong we have committed and apply the remedy; if the Latins, then we cannot believe that it is your determination to remain outside of the Lord's heritage, through ignorance or criminal obstinacy. All acknowledge that the division has sprung from different beliefs, from abolishing canons and changing the ritual that has come to us by tradition from our fathers. Now all are witness that we ask supplicatingly to be reünited in the truth, after a profound examination to be made thereof, so that we may no longer hear from either party the imputation of schism." After having drawn the picture of the woes which that imputation of schism had drawn upon them from the Crusaders, Germanus exclaims, "Is it this that St. Peter teaches when he recommends the pastors to govern their flocks without
- ↑ See this letter in Labbe's Collection of Councils, vol. xi.; also in the Historian Matthew Paris.
