of the three Patriarchal sees of the East, with a host of bishops, priests, and monks, the two Emperors, and the senate, took part in that assembly.[1]
The letters of Nicholas were there read, and by a unanimous vote he was held unworthy of the episcopate, and excommunication and anathema were pronounced against him. This decision was forwarded to Nicholas by Zacharias, Metropolitan of Chalcedon, and Theodore of Cyzicus. Anastasius the Librarian declares that but twenty-one among upward of a thousand signatures with which this document was covered, were authentic. We know what this man's testimony is worth. Certain it is that the document was well known in the East, and that the Council of Constantinople, which afterward annulled it, did not consider the signatures as forged. This fact speaks louder than any one mendacious writer. The sentence of the council against Nicholas was more canonical than that pronounced by Nicholas against Photius, for it was only an excom-
- ↑ The acts of this council were reversed by another, which was held shortly after for the purpose of reïnstating Ignatius. This fact, admitted by the Western writers, has not prevented certain of their number from expressing the absurd opinion that this council never was held, and that Photius invented both the council and its acts. Mr. Jager has adopted this idea in his heavy pamphlet against Photius, Book IV., p. 146.
own authority and in violation of the canons, according to which they could only be judged by their fellow-bishops in their own province. The most of them took no notice of these condemnations. The Archbishops of Trèves and of Cologne met the sentence of Nicholas by a protest, wherein, amongst other things, they say: "Without a council, without canonical inquiry, without accuser, without witnesses, without convicting us by arguments or authorities, without our consent, in the absence of the metropolitans and of our suffragan bishops, you have chosen to condemn us, of your own caprice, with tyrannical fury; but we do not accept your accursed sentence, so repugnant to a father's or a brother's love; we despise it as mere insulting language; we expel you yourself from our communion, since you commune with the excommunicate; we are satisfied with the communion of the whole Church and with the society of our brethren whom you despise and of whom you make yourself unworthy by your pride and arrogance. You condemn yourself when you condemn those who do not observe the apostolic precepts which you yourself the first violate, annulling as far as in you lies the divine laws and the sacred canons, and not following in the footsteps of the Popes your predecessors." Photius did not write to Nicholas with the rude energy of these Western bishops.
