Acts of the Council of Constantinople (869–870)

The council met in Hagia Sophia in ten sessions. Its definition praises Nicholas I, confirms his sentences and those of Hadrian II, and anathematizes Photius; its canons declare that he was never a bishop and that his ordinations are void (canons 2 and 4), and condemn the council at which he had pronounced against the pope (canon 6), whose records were burnt.

The acts are the voice of the party that had just won. Ten years later Photius was patriarch again. The introduction to the translation cited here quotes, from the Greek version read at the council of 879–880, a letter of John VIII that declares this council abrogated, and argues that there is no ground for thinking that Photius altered the text. It adds that the council is not found in the canonical collections of the Byzantines and that, according to modern scholars, it was included in the list of ecumenical councils only after the eleventh century. E. Caspar, who edited John VIII’s register (Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Epistolae 7, 1928), heads that Greek version Versio Graeca adulterata, a falsified version with Photius as its author. In the Latin of the register, as Caspar prints it, the pope releases Photius and his followers from the sentences passed on them, says that the legates of Hadrian II signed this council’s acts “until the will of their pontiff”, and argues that the Roman see can loose what bishops have bound; at that place the Latin does not declare the council void (Letters (Register), letter 207, pp. 170–171). The Orthodox Church honours Photius among its patriarchs, as in Synodikon of Orthodoxy.