Page:Orthodox Eastern Church (Fortescue).djvu/188

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152
THE ORTHODOX EASTERN CHURCH

after his own flock at home. Instead he sends one Dominic, who sets up his chair at Achrida,[1] having been ordained and having received the Pallium at Rome. The Bulgarian Church was established as part of the Roman Patriarchate. The Pope at the same time sent Legates to the Emperor to explain and defend what he had done; but they were turned back from the frontier. The question then of who should have Bulgaria in his patriarchate very much embittered the quarrel between Photius and the Pope. The Byzantines had always wanted Illyricum to belong to them (pp. 44, 45) and they had been first in the Bulgarian field. On the other hand the Roman Patriarch had a much older claim to Illyricum; he had founded the Bulgarian Church by setting up the first bishops, and the Bulgars themselves were on his side. Indeed Bogoris, when the Latin bishops had come, promptly drove out all the Greek missionaries and refused to accept Photius's chrism. This made Photius specially angry; but from the point of view of the Latin bishops it was quite correct. The right of sending the consecrated chrism has long been a sign of jurisdiction in the Eastern Churches, just as much as that of ordaining bishops—to say nothing of the fact that Photius's chrism was consecrated by an excommunicate usurper. Eventually, when the schism was an established fact, the Bulgars went over to the side of Constantinople. But at last, after long centuries, the Church that Photius was so anxious to keep has in our own time become the chief thorn in the side of his successors, and the children of the men who drove away Photius's missionaries are now again refusing the Byzantine chrism (p. 316).

5. The Filioque.

Photius, now thoroughly angry with the Roman Court, at last prepares a final manifesto against it. In 867 he sends an Encyclical round to the Eastern Patriarchs, and, by way of carrying the war into the enemy's camp, he draws up the

  1. Now Ochrida, in Macedonia. Achrida was long the Metropolitan See of Bulgaria, see pp. 305, 317.