alliance in the Norman war." … "Michael violently suppressed the Latin rite, that was used in many monasteries and churches over there, and in 1053 sent, in a letter to the Bishop of Trani in Apulia, a regular declaration of war against the Roman Church." When the Legates came "Michael himself rejected their advances. Then the Legates took the last step, and on July 16, 1054, laid an elaborate bull of excommunication on the altar of the Sophia Church, which, with prudent respect for the Court, heaped up curses, abuse, and heretical names against the Patriarch, his followers, and the practices of his Church." Afterwards Cerularius "was dishonest enough to represent the whole Embassy as having not been sent by the Pope." "As far as hatred and passion goes, both sides may have been about equal; but in chivalrous pride and judgement the representatives of the Roman Church were superior to their adversary." "As the defender of Greek Orthodoxy, Michael, however, was remembered by his Church with great honour, although without much desert, as far as his mind and character are concerned." So far a scholar who, in spite of his prejudice against Rome, at any rate knows his subject. But the small text-books of history, the handbooks and compendia that go about in England, have nothing to say about the whole quarrel except, perhaps, that Photius refused to acknowledge the Pope's assumed primacy, and that the Eastern Church under Cerularius finally threw off the yoke of Rome. All that Mr. Hutton (as one instance out of many) in a little book on Constantinople[1] has to say is: "Two great names embody in the East the final protest against Roman assumption." "Photius … owed his throne to an election which was not canonical." "The papal claim to decide between two claimants to the patriarchate was fiercely resented" (! both had formally appealed to Rome). "The position which Photius defended with skill and vigour in the 9th century was reasserted by Michael Cerularius in the 11th. He regarded the teaching of the West on the doctrine of the Holy Trinity, says Psellus, as an intolerable heresy; and he was prompt to reassert jurisdiction over the Churches of Apulia, now
- ↑ In Dent's "Mediæval Towns" series (1900), pp. 86–87.
