Acts of the Council of Constantinople (879–880)

The acts survive in Greek. A note at their head in Mansi’s volume says that they were first printed in full from a Greek manuscript in the Vatican Library, which Pope Clement XI had transcribed and sent to the Jesuit Jean Hardouin. They give the speeches, the letters read out, canons, the subscriptions of the legates and, in the sixth session, a definition on the creed signed by the emperor Basil I.

Two things should be kept in mind when reading them. The letters of Pope John VIII appear in the acts in a Greek version that differs from the Latin kept in his own register; E. Caspar, who edited the register (Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Epistolae 7, 1928), prints the two side by side and heads the Greek Versio Graeca adulterata, a falsified version with Photius as its author (Letters (Register), letter 207, p. 166). The introduction printed with the canons of 869–870 in N. P. Tanner (ed.), Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils (1990), argues, on the contrary, that there is no ground for thinking that the passage annulling that council was altered by Photius (Acts of the Council of Constantinople (869–870)). And Mansi prints beside the sixth session a note found in the margin of the manuscript, which asserts that the sixth and seventh sessions never took place and were composed by Photius himself. The acts are the record kept by the side that prevailed at the council.

The heading “Pseudo-synodus Photiana” is an editor’s. A note in the margin beside it says that the text is taken from the collection of councils of Jean Hardouin, volume 6. It passes an eighteenth-century editor’s judgement and is not a pronouncement of the Catholic Church; this wiki found no Catholic document that judges the council. For the judgement of the Orthodox churches see Encyclical of the Eastern Patriarchs and Encyclical of the Holy and Great Council of the Orthodox Church.