Letters

The letters are the pope’s side of the Photian Schism in his own words. Letter 91, sent to the eastern patriarchs and bishops on 13 November 866, repeats the decrees of a Roman synod: Photius, a layman suddenly made bishop while Ignatius of Constantinople was alive, is stripped of every priestly office, and the papal legates who had sided with him are punished. Letter 100, of 23 October 867, written to Hincmar of Reims and the Frankish bishops, lists the accusations the Greeks were making against the Latin church.

Nicholas writes as a judge who has already decided, and his account of events at Constantinople rests on what Ignatius’s supporters told him. The letters are evidence for what Rome claimed and decreed, and for what Rome understood the eastern objections to be.