Bull of Excommunication against Michael Cerularius

The bull is short. The legates say that Rome sent them to see whether the reports reaching it were true. They find the city of Constantinople, in the pillars of the empire and its honoured citizens, most Christian and orthodox, and Michael Cerularius, “wrongly called patriarch”, and his supporters guilty of a string of heresies, each matched to an ancient sect: selling God’s gift like the Simoniacs, rebaptizing Latins like the Arians, allowing priests to marry like the Nicolaitans, and, like the “Pneumatomachi”, cutting from the creed the procession of the Spirit from the Son. The anathema falls on Michael, on Leo of Ohrid, on Michael’s treasurer (sacellarius) Constantine and on all who follow them in the errors named, unless they repent.

The name of Humbert of Silva Candida stands first. The legates act on the authority of the Roman see, say that they subscribe to the anathema with which the pope had threatened Michael unless he repented, and cite the letters of Pope Leo, who had died three months earlier. The bull is evidence for what they did and thought. Its charge that the Greeks had cut a clause from the creed does not fit the history of the text: the words “and from the Son” were added in the West (The Visigoths Turn Catholic at Toledo).