Page:Orthodox Eastern Church (Fortescue).djvu/225

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THE SCHISM OF CERULARIUS
187

Emperor and excites a tumult against him. That this revolution was the work of Cerularius is attested by Humbert[1] and practically confessed by himself. Poor Constantine, terribly frightened, sends an Embassy to the Patriarch, treating with him as with an independent Power, or rather as with a superior, and writing him an abject letter, which Michael himself scornfully describes as "supplicating."[2] He begs Cerularius not to be hard on him, says that all the trouble caused by this Legation was the fault of Argyros (!), is quite prepared to let Argyros be put in gaol (if they can catch him) and the bull be publicly burned; he solemnly excuses himself for having let the Legates get away unhurt "because of their character as ambassadors."[3] This letter plainly shows who was responsible for the revolution and what it was that Cerularius wanted to do to the Legates. The Patriarch then holds a synod against the Latins and their bull; and he is so pleased to see the Emperor's humiliation before himself, that he publishes his letter at the end of the Acts of the synod,[4] not realizing how he thereby makes his own crimes known to all future ages. In this same synod he reproduces the old Encyclical of Photius with all its charges against the Latins and excommunicates us all.

Meanwhile the great question was: What would the other Eastern Patriarchs do? It was, indeed, almost a foregone conclusion that they, who were all Greeks, brought up under the now overwhelming influence of Constantinople, would side with her, just as all the Latin bishops stood by Rome. The Patriarchs of Alexandria and Jerusalem were almost negligible quantities. They sat under the Moslem with their little flocks; they, of course, violently hated the Copts and Jacobites who were better disposed to the Mohammedan Government, and as Melkites who had always stood out for the "Imperial" Church they turned their eyes with reverent piety to that distant Imperial city where reigned the Orthodox Cæsar and, in happy freedom, the Orthodox Patriarch, whom they had now long looked upon as their chief. So when Cerularius sent them

  1. Will, o.c. p. 152.
  2. Ibid. p. 166.
  3. Ibid.
  4. Ibid. pp. 155–168. See also Bréhier, o.c. pp. 120–125, who is convinced that Cerularius meant to have the Legates killed.