The Council of Constantinople Restores Photius

November AD 879 – March 880, firm dateFirm date

A council at Constantinople, with legates of Pope John VIII, recognizes Photius as patriarch, rejects the council that had condemned him ten years earlier and forbids any change to the creed. Orthodox documents count it among the councils of universal authority.

The council of 869–870 had anathematized Photius (the Photian schism) (Council of Constantinople (869–870), definition). After the death of Ignatius, Photius became patriarch again (Orthodox–Catholic Consultation, The Filioque (2003) II. Historical Considerations). In August 879 Pope John VIII wrote to the emperor Basil I and his sons that he received Photius as a brother and fellow bishop, on his asking for mercy before a synod, and released him and his followers from the sentences passed on them. He set conditions: no layman was again to be made patriarch, and Photius was to claim no authority over the church of Bulgaria (John VIII, Letters, 207 (August 879), pp. 169–176).

At its second session the council sat in the Great Church of Constantinople under Photius, with three legates of the pope and envoys of the patriarchs of Jerusalem and Alexandria (Council of Constantinople (879–880), session 2, Mansi 17, cols 393–394). Its first canon provides that Italian clergy, laymen or bishops whom Pope John has deposed, excommunicated or anathematized are to be held so by Photius, and those whom Photius has so sentenced by the pope, the privileges of the Roman see remaining unchanged (Council of Constantinople (879–880), session 5, canon 1, Mansi 17, cols 497–498). The legate Paul, bishop of Ancona, signed that he received Photius as lawful patriarch, that he rejected and anathematized the council held against him in the time of Pope Hadrian and did not count it among the councils, and that he reckoned the second council of Nicaea as the seventh (Council of Constantinople (879–880), session 5, subscription of the legate Paul, Mansi 17, col. 507).

On 3 March 880 a sixth session met in the palace, the emperors presiding (Council of Constantinople (879–880), session 6, Mansi 17, cols 511–514). A definition was read. It recites the creed and declares that the council holds to it with nothing taken away, nothing added and nothing changed; a cleric who composes another creed, or corrupts this one by additions or omissions, is to be deposed, and a layman anathematized. It speaks of additions in general and does not quote the Latin words “and from the Son” (Council of Constantinople (879–880), session 6, definition, Mansi 17, cols 515–518). Basil signed, confirming the seventh council, the promotion of Photius and the annulment of all that had been written or said against him (Council of Constantinople (879–880), session 6, the emperor’s subscription, Mansi 17, col. 518).

In a letter that its editor assigns to August 880 and takes to be addressed to Photius, John VIII wrote that he wondered why much of what he had laid down had been altered. He accepted what had been done at Constantinople for the patriarch’s restoration, and refused whatever his legates might have done against their instructions (John VIII, Letters, 258 (dated by its editor to August 880), pp. 226–228). A letter in his name that survives only in Greek tells Photius that Rome keeps the creed as it was handed down and counts those who first added to it as transgressors; the editor, E. Caspar, judges it, “as it seems”, wholly invented (John VIII, Letters, 258a, with the editor’s note, pp. 226–228).

The four Orthodox patriarchs, writing in 1848, called this “the eighth Ecumenical Council” and said that it anathematized the addition to the creed (Encyclical of the Eastern Patriarchs (1848) 5 (xi)); the council of Orthodox churches held on Crete in 2016 named it among later councils “of universal authority” (Holy and Great Council, Encyclical I.3). The First Vatican Council cited the “Fourth Council of Constantinople”, the council of 869–870, among the ecumenical councils (First Vatican Council, Pastor Aeternus chapter 4). No Catholic document that pronounces on the council of 879–880 was found for this entry. The heading “Pseudo-synodus Photiana”, under which the collection of councils named after G. D. Mansi prints its acts, is an eighteenth-century editor’s and not a decree of the church (Council of Constantinople (879–880), heading, Mansi 17, col. 373). A joint Orthodox and Catholic statement of 2003 says that the council of 869–870 was never recognized as ecumenical in the East, and that the council of 879–880 reaffirmed the creed of 381 without the Filioque (Orthodox–Catholic Consultation, The Filioque (2003) II. Historical Considerations).

How this is dated

Firm date. Fixed by contemporary documentation and not seriously disputed.

The acts date the second session to Tuesday 17 November in the thirteenth indiction (Council of Constantinople (879–880), session 2, Mansi 17, cols 393–394), the sixth to 3 March (Council of Constantinople (879–880), session 6, Mansi 17, cols 511–514) and the seventh to Sunday 13 March in the same indiction (Council of Constantinople (879–880), session 7, Mansi 17, col. 519). The thirteenth indiction ran from September 879 to August 880, and in those years 17 November fell on a Tuesday and 13 March on a Sunday. The first session bears no date in the text as printed. The pope’s letter recognizing Photius is dated August of the twelfth indiction, that is 879 (John VIII, Letters, 207 (August 879), pp. 169–176).

The pope’s letters to the emperors and to the bishops were read at the second and third sessions in a Greek version that departs from the Latin of his register. E. Caspar, who edited the register (Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Epistolae 7, 1928), prints the two side by side, heads the Greek Versio Graeca adulterata, a falsified version with Photius as its author, and notes that it almost nowhere follows the Latin word for word (John VIII, Letters, 207–208, editor’s headings to the Greek version and note 1, pp. 166 and 176). The introduction printed with the canons of 869–870 in N. P. Tanner (ed.), Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils (1990), holds that there is no ground for thinking that Photius altered the passage that annuls that council (Council of Constantinople (869–870), introduction). The narrative gives the pope’s terms from the Latin. A note from the margin of the manuscript, printed beside the sixth session, asserts that the sixth and seventh sessions were never held and that Photius composed them (Council of Constantinople (879–880), marginal note on session 6, Mansi 17, cols 511–512).