vehemently disputed in the Caroline Books—theological writings claiming the sanction of Charles the Great, who forwarded them to Pope Hadrian, and the controversy was now fully alive. After a council at Aix-la-Chapelle (a.d. 809), Charles sent legates to confer with the pope (Leo iii.) on the subject. Leo, while approving of the doctrine, hesitated about the insertion of it in the venerated creed. Four years later the council of Aries formally sanctioned the double procession.
After this, when the quarrel broke out between Photius and Nicolas, the patriarch charged the Roman Church with heresy for accepting what he reckoned an error in the Western doctrine concerning the Holy Spirit. Still, in spite of this difficulty and all other grounds of quarrel, there was no formal severance between the two churches till the middle of the eleventh century. Meanwhile the clause which was the source of so much contention was being gradually adopted by all the local churches in the West. It is a question whether the insertion of it in the creed was ever formally authorised by the Church of Rome in a council at which the pope was represented.[1]
We now approach the final rupture. Michael Cerularius, who was ordained patriarch of Constantinople in the year 1043, addressed an encyclical letter to the bishops of Apulia, some nine or ten years later, in which he sought closer union with the Western Church, at the same time mentioning some of the difficulties in the way of such union, the chief of which was the Western use of unleavened bread at the Eucharist.[2] The last item that he referred to was the Dogma of the Procession from the Son. This letter fell into the hands of the pope, Leo ix., who addressed a reply to the patriarch in a very different spirit, ending with a threat that if necessary he would not "Seethe the kid in its mother's milk," but "scrub its mangy hide with biting vinegar and salt."[3] The patriarch
- ↑ Dr. Dollinger attributed the insertion of it to Pope Benedict viii. on the demand of the Emperor Henry ii., in a.d. 1014. See Howard, op. cit. p. 38.
- ↑ Pro eo maximo, quod de azymis, etc.
- ↑ Mansi, xix. 649.
