Letter and Profession of Faith to Gregory X

The letter is addressed by Michael VIII Palaiologos to Gregory X. Most of it is a confession of faith. The emperor says that the pope’s envoys, four Franciscan friars, had brought him a letter setting out the faith that the Roman church teaches; he repeats it and accepts it. It confesses the Holy Spirit as proceeding from the Father and the Son, speaks of souls cleansed after death by purgatorial pains and helped by the prayers of the living, and says that the Roman church holds the supreme and full primacy over the whole church, with the right to settle questions of faith and to hear appeals.

At the end the emperor speaks for himself. He asks that the Greek church may go on saying the creed as it said it before the schism, and keep the rites it then had; this, he writes, is no burden to the pope, and anything else is difficult for him because of the great multitude of his people. The letter is the emperor’s act. For how his clergy received it see History.