Antioch that he had proposed an "alliance" with the Pope, and he himself says why: "That he might be well-disposed and friendly to us concerning the help he is to give us against the Franks (he means the Normans)."[1] Evidently for a moment the importance of the war against the Normans overshadowed in his mind the great plan of breaking with Rome.
But this attitude did not last long, and even while it did last his overweening pride made him suggest what he wanted in the most impossible way. His own word, alliance (σύμβασις), shows his point of view. It was to be a treaty drawn up between two equal and independent Powers, or rather not equal, for he had arrived at thinking himself a far greater man than the Pope. "You write to us," answers Leo IX, "that if we make your name honoured in the one Church of Rome, you will make our name honoured throughout the whole world. What monstrous idea is this, my dear brother?"[2] To have written such nonsense to the Pontiff who was obeyed from Sicily to Norway, and from Poland to the Atlantic, seems, if it were not meant just as another insult, to be the very madness of pride. The Pope's answer to this proposed "alliance" is: "So little does the Roman Church stand alone, as you think, that in the whole world any nation that in its pride dissents from her is in no way a Church, but a council of heretics, a conventicle of schismatics and a synagogue of Satan." He solemnly warns Cerularius against that pride that has always been so great a temptation to the Patriarchs of Constantinople. "How lamentable and detestable is that sacrilegious usurpation by which you everywhere boast yourself to be the Universal Patriarch." … "Let heresies and schisms cease. Let every one who glories in the Christian name cease from cursing and wounding the holy apostolic Roman Church." But he still hopes for peace and he ends: "Pray for us, and may the holy Trinity ever keep your honourable Fraternity."[3]
With this letter and with an exceedingly friendly one to the Emperor, "Our honourable and beloved son in Christ and glorious Augustus,"[4] the Pope sends three Legates to Constan-
