Ignatius

ON ST. IGNATIUS, PATRIARCH OF CONSTANTINOPLE AND CONFESSOR,

IN THE YEAR DCCCLXXVII.

PRELIMINARY COMMENTARY.

Ignatius, patriarch of Constantinople. (S.)

BY J. V. H.

§ I. The Saint's memory in the sacred calendars; his Acts written by his contemporary Nicetas; the chronotaxis of his life.

In the Roman Martyrology under this day is read: At Constantinople, of Saint Ignatius, bishop, who, when he had reproved Bardas Caesar for repudiating his wife, The Saint's memory in the calendars both Latin being treated by him with many injuries, was driven into exile: but, restored by Nicholas, the Roman Pontiff, at length rested in peace. These things are accurate to the extent that Pope St. Nicholas I rescinded the acts against St. Ignatius, and so ordered him to be restored to the see of Constantinople. But the decrees of this Pope could obtain their effect only when, the emperor Michael III, surnamed the Drunkard, having died on the 24th day of September 867, Basil the Macedonian took up the helm of the empire: and Pope Nicholas before his death, which occurred in the same year on the 13th day of November, could scarcely have known of the fatal slaying of Michael and the change of affairs in the East, and much less could he have prescribed the restoration of St. Ignatius, carried out on the 23rd day of November of the same year, as we shall see below. By his own right St. Ignatius, the persecution raised by the usurper Photius having ceased, returned to his see, and he wished, since he had been condemned by a pseudo-synod, that a legitimate synod should restore him: which afterwards was accomplished under Pope Adrian II, in the year of Christ 869, in the VIII ecumenical council, IV of Constantinople, with the highest consent of all. And since the Martyrologists Usuard and Ado died before St. Ignatius, they could not make mention of him, and so the praise of our Saint is celebrated in the Auctaria alone: namely in those of Usuard under the 14th day of June the Brussels codex has: Likewise of Saint Ignatius, bishop, whence our Du Sollier asks: whether of Constantinople, who is venerated on the 23rd of October? Which the Florence codex seems to affirm: Likewise of Saint Ignatius, bishop and Martyr of Constantinople. And certainly he can in some sense be called a Martyr, who endured such great and so cruel torments for the Church of God.

[2] and Greek: On the same day as the Latins the Greek Church keeps the memory of our Saint. In the present-day Menaea is read: Μνημη του ὁσιου πατρος ἡμων Ἰγνατιου πατριαρχου Κωνσταντινουπολεως. Memory of our holy father Ignatius, patriarch of Constantinople. The same words are used by the Supplement to the manuscript Menaea, formerly preserved in the College of Clermont at Paris, brought out of the darkness by our Sirmond, of which a copy exists in the royal library of Brussels under num. 11,324, with this one variant reading, that in place of patriarch he is called archbishop. The Menaea moreover have according to custom a distich:

Εὐρες μεταστας την παλαιαν ἀξιαν Ἰγνατιε προεδρε Ῥωμης της νεας.

Which Siberus renders in Latin Martyrologium metricum of the Greek Church, p. 346:

In your death now you have obtained your ancient glory, Ignatius, prelate of new Rome.

The Appendix to the Roman Martyrology for the Order of St. Basil repeats the elogium of St. Ignatius from the Roman, except that it adds after his name, of the Order of St. Basil: and the Basilian Calendar announces his feast in these words: Του ἁγ. ἱεραρχ. Ἰγνατιου Τ Ἡ: that is: Of the holy prelate Ignatius of our Order, ταξεως ἡμων. The Menaea present according to custom a brief elogium, which however, if we compare the manuscript codices with the printed ones, varies. We bring it forward from a book printed at Venice in the year 1843, content to indicate from the others what differs notably. Behold then the elogium: Ὁ ἐν ἁγιοις πατηρ ἡμῶν Ἰγνατιος, ὑιος μεν γεγονε Μιχαηλ βασιλεως, και Προκοπιας της βασιλισσης, ἀδελφος δε Θεοφιλου, και ἐγγονος Νικηφορου του βασιλεως. Εὐνουχος δε γενομενος, εἰτα και μοναχος ἀποκαρεις και ἡγουμενος της του Ἀρχαγγελου μονης του τοτε μεν ἐπικαλουμενον Ἀνατελλοντος, νυν δε Σατυρου· προεχερισθη ἐπειτα πατριαρχης Κωνσταντινουπολεως, και ἐκρατησεν ἐτη ἑνδεκα και μηνας πεντε· και μετα ταυτα ἐξεβληθη ὑπο Μιχαηλ βασιλεως, ἀντ᾽ αὐτου πατριαρχην προβαλεμενου Φωτιον, τον πρωτοσπαθαριον και πρωτοσηκριτην, γενομενον προτερον μοναχον. Εἰτα ἐξεβληθη και αὐτος ὑπο Βασιλειου βασιλεως, και ἀποκατεστη παλιν Ἰγνατιος, και ἐκρατησεν ἐτη δεκα· και παλιν ἐξεβληθη, και ἐγενετο Στεφανος ὁ ἐν ἁγιος. Ὁ δε ἁγιος Ἰγνατιος ἀπελθων ἐν τῃ Σατυρου μονῃ, ἐν ἐιρηνῃ ἀνεπαυσατο. In Latin the words sound thus.

[3] in which St. Ignatius is wrongly said to have been driven out a second time. Our holy father Ignatius was the son of Michael the emperor and of the empress Procopia, brother of Theophilus and grandson of Nicephorus. Made a eunuch, shorn a monk, he was made head of the monastery of the Archangel, surnamed then indeed of the East, but now of Satyrus. Ordained patriarch of Constantinople, he governed the Church for eleven years and five months. Afterwards he was expelled by the emperor Michael, who in his place substituted Photius, protospatharius and protosecretary. Then he too was cast out by the emperor Basil, and Ignatius was restored: and when he had administered the Church for ten years, he being cast out again, St. Stephen was made patriarch. But Ignatius withdrew into the monastery of Satyrus and rested in peace. The two sets of Menaea which we have in manuscript Royal Library of Brussels, num. 11,324, manuscripts, fol. 102 verso and 142 agree closely in sense with the one recited, if you except two things. For they add that St. Ignatius lived 79 years, and that his synaxis or feast is kept in the said monastery of Satyrus. But the second is more serious: for St. Ignatius is said to have been driven from his see again, and Stephen substituted for him. But this is affirmed against the credit of history; since it is established from all the ancient monuments both that St. Ignatius met his day in his see of Constantinople, and that not Stephen but Photius succeeded him, who indeed, being expelled a second time, made room for Stephen in the year 886, that is nine years after the death of our Saint. At first indeed I suspected that in the printed Menaea a whole phrase had dropped out, by which the restoration of Photius was reported, so that then both the second ejection of Photius and the substitution of Stephen in his place would proceed correctly: but a conjecture of this kind cannot be sustained, for straightway there is subjoined the withdrawal of St. Ignatius into the monastery of Satyrus, ἀπελθων ἐν τῃ Σατυρου μονῃ;; which words clearly indicate, not that Ignatius was carried dead into the monastery, but that he betook himself there alive. But why this deflection in the present-day Menaea from the ancient ones? Was it so that the second misfortune of Photius should be veiled?

[4] the Acts by Nicetas Many things indeed occur to be noted in the brief elogium which we have edited, but for now we forgo unrolling them, since we shall be able to explain the same things more fully in the Life to be given below. That Life has as its author Nicetas

the Paphlagonian, or, as others say, David the Paphlagonian, writer of various little works, whose titles may be seen in Casimir Oudin [Commentary on Ecclesiastical Writers, vol. II, col. 214. Compare Aubert Le Mire, Auctarium on Ecclesiastical Writers, p. 42, in the Ecclesiastical Library]: some, supported by no authority, have called him a bishop, and indeed of Dadybra in Paphlagonia. For Nicetas, most holy bishop of Dadybra, is read as a subscriber to the acts of the second synod of Nicaea, celebrated in the year 787, that is 91 years before the death of Ignatius Labbe, Councils, vol. VII, col. 146: but these things can in no way fit our biographer, who would have had to sustain the episcopal dignity for nearly a hundred years, which can in no way be believed, especially because he is neither read as having attended the eighth synod, which restored St. Ignatius, nor could a man already having a hundred years in the episcopate have written a Life so copiously. Let it suffice then to know of Nicetas that he was, as Johann Albert Fabricius writes Bibliotheca Graeca, vol. VII, p. 747, Hamburg edition 1802, a philosopher, historian and rhetor, and indeed also a monk; which I conjecture from the fact that he bears the double name of Nicetas and David: for monks were accustomed to change the name borne in the world, as we shall show below in the case of our Ignatius. That Nicetas was, further, contemporary with the events he narrates is the unanimous view of the learned, if you except Walch in his Patristic Library, saying that Nicetas was renowned in the eleventh century Bibliotheca Patristica, p. 61 and 377, Jena edition of Danz, year 1834: but he seems to have confused the scholiast of St. Gregory Nazianzen, Nicetas, first bishop of Serrae and then metropolitan of Heraclea in Thrace, who truly flourished in the eleventh century Fabricius, Bibliotheca Graeca, vol. VIII, p. 431, with the Paphlagonian of the same name.

[5] written by a contemporary; For the rest, the book itself on the life of St. Ignatius betrays its age most manifestly. For it was written both after the year 879, in which Constantine Caesar, son of Basil the Macedonian, died, and before the year 886, in which Photius was expelled a second time. The untimely death of Constantine Caesar, and the disaster of Syracuse, which took place in the year 878, the biographer Nicetas adduces as a punishment inflicted for the impiety of Photius, in these words at num. 65: For these and worse causes the wrath of God came upon the sons of unbelief. For suddenly the emperor's son, both dearest and eldest, Constantine, was snatched away… Then also the great city of the Syracusans perished in a horrible disaster, and the whole island and all the towns and fields are foully laid waste even to this very day by a hostile hand, are plundered and ruined. Constantine, further, must be said to have met his day in the year 879; since the letter of Pope John VIII, mutilated by Photius, is inscribed in the month of August, indiction XII, or the year 879, to the emperors Basil, Leo and Alexander, the name of Constantine, who was already dead, namely being omitted Labbe, Councils, vol. IX, col. 134. Similarly the sack of Syracuse took place, as Muratori shows Annali d'Italia, vol. V, p. 135, in the year 878; for it is established from the Saracen-Sicilian Chronicle that Syracuse was taken on the twenty-first of the month of May, on the fourth feria Muratori, Writers of Italian Affairs, vol. I, Part II, p. 245; and since the dominical letter of the year 878 was E, the twenty-first day of May falls on the fourth feria. But neither did the biographer Nicetas write after the year 886, in which Photius was cast out from the see of Constantinople a second time, since most assuredly he would not have omitted the punishment and infamy branded upon Photius, whom in the course of the work he harasses in every way, if this had occurred before the completion of the lucubration. And so we assert nothing rashly when we tie the work of Nicetas to about the year 880; from which it accordingly follows that the biographer was a contemporary, and a suitable witness of the things he wrote.

[6] their Latin version has to be reworked here and there: Nicetas' biography was rendered from Greek into Latin by Federico Mezio, a member, as it seems, of the Roman Oratory, inasmuch as Caesar Baronius names him as his own at the year 847, § XXXV Compare Fabricius, Bibliotheca Graeca, vol. VII, p. 749: A monument, he says, hitherto unknown to the Latins, drawn from a Greek codex of the Colonna library, which belonged to Cardinal Sirleto, a most learned man, our Federico Mezio, turning it into Latin, has enriched our annals with an outstanding gift Acta SS., vol. VII of Sept., p. 280, num. 3. Another version was composed and made public in a separate book by Matthäus Rader of the Society of Jesus Ibid., loc. cit., from which it then flowed down into various collections of the Councils. It is not, further, to be denied that Rader, more often than is proper, even where the Latin phrase by no means requires it, departs from the Greek text. Although I am not one who would wish Greek monuments, especially of that age, to be rendered into Latin word for word, which can scarcely be done, since the Greeks generally heap up synonyms and epithets, not rarely idle; yet I judge that Rader has deflected too far from the Greek text, with no necessity compelling him, and indeed sometimes has expressed the sense not accurately enough. Nevertheless we shall give the version of Rader, as being the more widespread, though we shall use that of Mezio as often as needed; nor shall we warn the reader, lest on account of such rather light changes the number of annotations should grow excessively to the reader's disgust.

[7] the Saint was born in the year 798; In setting in order the chronological series of the life of St. Ignatius, we must before all things establish certain points of time, from which we may deduce the rest: and two certain ones occur, namely his becoming a monk, when he had reached fourteen years: next his expulsion from the see of Constantinople, after he had occupied the patriarchal throne for eleven years, four months, twenty days. As regards the former, namely the age at which St. Ignatius professed the monastic life, this the biographer Nicetas declares limpidly at num. 2: having reached fourteen years, τεσσαρεσκαιδεκαετης γεγονως, he too put on the monk. Since then the emperor Michael, the father of St. Ignatius, was expelled and shorn with all his family in the year 813, it follows that our Saint was born in the year 798 or 799; and indeed I prefer 798 as the year of birth, because, as the Life teaches at num. 55, he died an octogenarian, which accords better with the year of death which we shall investigate below. But about the year in which he took up the headship of the monastery nothing can be defined. Nicetas indeed says at num. 7 that, his father and tutor being removed from life, the care of the brothers' souls and the headship were immediately committed to Ignatius: but the word father is not to be understood of Michael, formerly emperor, inasmuch as he prolonged his life for thirty-two years after taking up the monastic state, and so died in the year 845; namely only one year before his son St. Ignatius ascended the patriarchal throne; whose deeds, done in the headship of the monastery and in the presbyterate, cannot be enclosed in the narrow space of one year. And so by father and tutor, whose names are hitherto unknown and the time of whose death is uncertain, I understand those men who, the instructors of St. Ignatius in the monastic life, left their inheritance to their most holy disciple.

[8] made bishop in the year 846, A second chronological point we find in the Synodic Libellus of a contemporary writer Labbe, Councils, vol. VIII, col. 653: Photius was pretending that Ignatius, who had occupied the patriarch's throne for eleven years, four months, twenty days, had never been elected. We must therefore inquire into the year of the ejection of St. Ignatius, so that from it we may come to the year and day of his ordination. Our Bolland in the Acts of St. Theodora, empress of Constantinople, at the 11th day of February, says Acta SS., vol. II of Feb., p. 566, num. 88 that St. Ignatius was driven from his see in the month of November of the year 858. But this chronotaxis is rightly contradicted by Pagi in his Critique of Baronius at the year 858, § XI. For St. Theodora was thrown down from the throne and shorn, after, as our Nicetas has it at num. 39, she had governed the empire with her son Michael for fifteen years, eight months, and not long after, says the same biographer at num. 15, he drove out the patriarch Ignatius. Now Theodora together with her son Michael began the administration of the empire on the 20th day of January 842, to which if fifteen years and eight months are added we come to the month of September of the year 857: and since St. Ignatius is reported to have been cast out of the see not long after the shearing of St. Theodora, we run into the month of November of the same year; from which going back through eleven years, four months, twenty days, we fall upon the 4th day of July 846, which was a Sunday (the year being marked with the dominical letter C), and so suitable for celebrating an episcopal ordination according to the ancient custom. We have said above from Bolland that the sacrilegious deposition of the Saint took place in the month of November; and that rightly: for Nicetas says at num. 42: It was a Sunday, the twenty-third of November, on which also he had previously been driven into exile, who, by the help and clemency of God having won the complete laurel of nine completed years from the contest of virtue, was restored to the throne of his Church. Yet an error lies beneath: namely, in place of nine, ἐννεα, years one must read ten, δεκα, inasmuch as St. Ignatius ceased from the episcopate from the year 857 to 867. Whence I wonder that Pagi at the year 867, § XV, whom our Cuper followed in his Chronological History of the Patriarchs of Constantinople, num. 643 Acta SS., vol. I of Aug., p. 110*, said that he lived for eleven years, incomplete at both ends, without the pontificate.

[9] about the time of his death the opinion is various, Concerning the year of St. Ignatius' death opinions vary. Baronius, Alban Butler at this day, and the recent biographer of Photius, Canon Jager Histoire de Photius, p. 259, Louvain edition 1845, say that the Saint died on the 23rd day of October of the year 878: others however admit without ambiguity the 23rd day of October, but place the death a year sooner, that is 877: and these indeed, in my judgement, more rightly. The patrons of this opinion are Pagi at the year 878, § XI and our Cuper in the History of the Patriarchs of Constantinople, num. 655 Acta SS., vol. I of Aug., p. 112*. Those who put out the former opinion gave no reason for their chronotaxis; but the latter have confirmed the contrary opinion by valid reasons drawn from Nicetas. For Nicetas at num. 55, embracing the whole time of the patriarchal dignity, says: So then Ignatius as patriarch a second time presided for a decade: in all, for thirty years and a little more, the great prelate held the throne; and as an octogenarian in peace … he departed, Δεκα μεν οὐν ἐτη το δευτερον, τα παντα δε τριακοντα και μικρον τι προς, ὁ μεγας ἀρχιερατευσας Ἰγνατιος· ὀγδοεκοστον δε ἠδη γεγονως ἐτος ἐν εἰρηνῃ … ἀνεληφθη. And since we have tied the restoration of St. Ignatius above to the year 867, it follows that we set the year of his death in the year 877, in which a decade, lessened by one month, is completed. Nor may one suspect that any error has crept into the number of ten years alleged by Nicetas; for the same biographer a little below at num. 59, treating of Photius,

attributes to him a ten-year exile: Through all that exile of ten years, he says, he devised infinite stratagems against the Saint. Παντα δε τον δεκαετη χρονον της ὑπεροριας, μυριας κατα του ἁγιου κακανοιας κινων.

[10] we prefer the year 877. Our opinion is also confirmed by the fact that, as Nicetas says at num. 65, Syracuse was taken by the Saracens as a punishment for the sacrilegious restoration of Photius: and this, as we have shown above at num. 5, took place on the twenty-first day of the month of May, on the fourth feria, of the year 878, and so after the death of St. Ignatius, since Photius was already occupying the see of Constantinople. There are, however, two things which can be opposed to our opinion. First, Zonaras, Annals, book XVI, chap. 8, ascribes eleven years to the Saint after his restoration: but a writer of the twelfth century should not prevail over a contemporary biographer, and since error is so easy in stating numbers, there is no reason why a slip of this kind cannot be attributed to Zonaras. For what Pagi says in the same place, § XI, about Julian years, I do not understand, since Julian years, as Julius Caesar ordered them, scarcely differ from common ones; since after more than sixteen hundred years, that is down to the Gregorian reform of the calendar in the year 1582, they were only ten days away from the true reckoning. But if by Julian years Pagi means lunar ones, which Sanclemente calls Pompilian De vulgaris aerae emendatione, p. 485, then, since the epact or difference of the solar and lunar year is in a round number eleven days, our Ignatius would have occupied the see of Constantinople for ten years, three months and about twenty days from his restoration. But enough of mere conjecture. The second thing which could weaken our opinion is that the same Nicetas says that St. Ignatius sat for thirty years in all; whereas, having been ordained, as we have seen above, on the 4th day of July in the year 846, he should rather be said to have occupied the throne of Constantinople for a whole thirty-one years, three months and twenty days. But this difficulty in no way favours the patrons of the contrary opinion, as it would rather bring it about that we should have to go back to the year 876. Next Nicetas, who set down the decade as solid, although, as we have noted above, it was lessened by one month, treating further of the thirty-year period of the pontificate, adds and a little more, και μικρον τι προς;; which words it is easy to interpret not so much of months, which the biographer neglects, but even of a whole year.

§ II. The controversy between the supreme Pontiffs and St. Ignatius concerning patriarchal right over Bulgaria.

[A controversy concerning jurisdiction, which can sometimes be carried on innocently,] And here, the biographer Nicetas narrating everything most accurately and minutely, there would be an end of commenting for us, were it not that the biographer had wished to cover with silence a certain blemish of St. Ignatius. Namely, between the Roman Pontiffs and our Saint there had blazed up a grave controversy concerning the jurisdiction to be exercised over the Bulgarians, recently converted to the faith. For it was contended on both sides that the region attributed to the Bulgarians belonged to its own patriarchate. The Bulgari or Vulgari are said to have borrowed their name from the Volga, a river of Muscovy, near which they dwelt [Stritter, Memoriae Historicae, vol. II, p. 441. Acta SS., vol. II of March, p. 13, num. 3]: a fierce, warlike people, hostile to the Christian name, yet they gradually began to grow mild by their intercourse with the Europeans, and at length, in the ninth century, advanced beyond its middle, embraced the Christian faith. Our predecessors have already rather often treated of the conversion of this people, especially in the Acts of SS. Cyril and Methodius at the 9th of March Acta SS., vol. II of March, p. 13, num. 3 and in the Dissertation on the conversion and faith of the Russians, composed by our Stilting Acta SS., vol. II of Sept., p. IV; so that there is no need to hammer out the same things here: especially since we hope that a new Life of SS. Cyril and Methodius, to be composed from Slavic monuments, will shortly come forth in our work. Here, then, we shall set forth the singular point of the controversy, which, touching spiritual jurisdiction, not rarely stirs up disputes even between most holy men; while on both sides the opinion sits in their minds that each ought to vindicate with all his strength the rights entrusted to him. Nor is anything of sanctity diminished by litigation of this kind, while each party persuades itself that it is busily doing its duty: thus ecclesiastical history not rarely relates to us that men renowned for integrity and sanctity have disputed about the right belonging to them Acta SS., vol. V of May, p. 251*, num. 11 and vol. VII of Oct., p. 1063, num. 41.

[12] is set forth from William the Librarian: A summary of the whole controversy is, in my judgement, best set out by William the Librarian, a writer of the eleventh century, who continued, beginning from Adrian II, the Lives of the Roman Pontiffs of Anastasius, likewise Librarian and a participant in the present question Ceillier, Histoire des auteurs ecclésiastiques, vol. XX, p. 602. The very form of the dialogue shows sufficiently that an ancient document, perhaps written by Anastasius, lit the way for William. Behold the words Migne, Patrology, vol. CXXVIII, col. 1391: On the third day after the most sacred Synod (of Constantinople, the VIII Ecumenical, celebrated in the year 869) had been wholly brought to completion in a codex with its writings and reworked to all elegance in the church of Saint Sophia, (the legates of the apostolic see) being cunningly called together by the emperor in the palace, with the vicars of the patriarchs, namely of Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem, and at the same time the patriarch Ignatius, who was sitting there with some others, were ordered to sit, and they heard that the princes of the Bulgarians had directed letters and gifts to them through Peter and others. Whose legation, the emperor especially pressing, they received: and thus after the greeting Peter, the legate of the Bulgarians, began: The Lord Michael, the Bulgarian prince, hearing that for the benefit of the holy Church of God you have come together from various parts by apostolic authority, has gladly accepted it, and renders manifold thanks to you who have been sent from the apostolic see, because in your passage you deigned to visit him with your letters. The legates of the holy Roman Church replied: Because we know you to be sons of the holy Roman Church, we neither ought nor wished to pass you by ungreeted, whom indeed the holy apostolic see embraces as its own members.

[13] the Greek bishops say that Bulgaria is theirs, The legates of the Bulgarians said: Until today we have been pagans, and have recently come to the grace of Christianity. And therefore, lest we should seem to err in anything, we desire to know from you, who hold the place of the supreme patriarchs, to which Church we ought to be subject. The legates of the holy Roman Church replied: That you both have belonged and ought to belong to the holy Roman Church, to which, through you, O Peter, your Senior with the whole kingdom of his people has given himself to Blessed Peter, the prince of the Apostles, from whose successor, namely the excellent Pope Nicholas, he has merited to receive both precepts for living and bishops and presbyters, you show even in this, that you have both received the priests you requested from us and hitherto retain them with fitting veneration. The legates of the Bulgarians said: We confess that we have sought and received priests from the Holy Roman Church and have them hitherto, and we resolve to obey her in all things; but whether we ought more reasonably to be subject to the Roman or to the Constantinopolitan Church, define with these vicars of the patriarchs. The legates of the Holy Roman Church replied: Those things for which the holy apostolic see had commanded us to define matters with the Easterners we have, with the Lord's help, finished: but concerning your cause, to be finished otherwise than it has been defined, since we have received nothing in our mandates, we neither define anything nor judge that anything should be defined to the prejudice of the Holy Roman Church. Indeed, because your whole country is everywhere full of our priests, we promulgate by a definitive sentence, as far as is in us, that you ought to belong to none but the Holy Roman Church.

[14] because there were Greek priests in it: The vicars of the Eastern patriarchs said to the Bulgarians: When you took that country, to whose power was it subject, and did it have Latin or Greek priests? Tell us. The legates of the Bulgarians said: We won that country by arms from the power of the Greeks, in which we found not Latin but Greek priests. The vicars of the Easterners replied: If you found Greek priests there, it is manifest that that country was under the ordination of Constantinople. The legates of the Holy Roman Church replied: You ought not to take an argument from Greek priests, because diversity of languages does not confound the ecclesiastical order: for the apostolic see, though it is itself Latin, yet appointing in many places, by reason of the country, Greek priests both always and until now, neither ought to nor has had to feel any detriment of its privilege. The vicars of the Eastern patriarchs said: Even if you show that the ordination of the Greek presbyters was of your right, yet you will never be able to deny that that country belonged to the kingdom of the Greeks. The legates of the Holy Roman Church replied: As in saying that the ordination of Bulgaria belongs to us in a different manner we do not speak a lie, so indeed we never deny that this same Bulgaria was of the kingdom of the Greeks. But it is fitting for you to observe that the rights of sees order one thing, the divisions of kingdoms suffer another. We are not treating of the division of kingdoms, but we speak of the right of sees.

[15] refuted by the Roman legates; The vicars of the Eastern patriarchs said: What you say about Bulgaria belonging to you in a different manner we wish to learn. The legates of the Holy Roman Church replied: The apostolic see, as you can be taught from the decretals of the most holy Roman prelates, in ancient times canonically ordained and held both Epiruses, namely the new and the old, and the whole of Thessaly and Dardania, in which the city of Dardania is also shown today, whose country is now called Bulgaria from these Bulgarians. And by this it did not take away from the Constantinopolitan Church, as is feigned, the ordination which it had then let go through the incursion of the pagan Bulgarians, but itself received it from these men made Christians. In the second way, because the Bulgarians, subjugating the country to themselves by the law of nations, have retained for so many years what they took, committing themselves, as we said above, specially to the patronage and ordination of the apostolic see, ought not undeservedly to be subject to us, whom they chose as teachers of their own free will. In the third way, because the same Bulgarians the holy apostolic see, by order of the late most holy Pope, the Lord Nicholas, both through some of us who are here, and we, dedicating many churches there, created priests, and through Paul, Dominic, Leopardus and Formosus, venerable bishops, and also Grimoald, our fellow bishop, whom these * Bulgarians have hitherto confessed in our sight to have with many of our priests, carrying them over from various errors to the truth of the Catholic faith with much sweat, the grace of Christ going before, behold, for more than three years it has held, holds, ordains and disposes. And therefore it does not follow that without the knowledge of the Roman supreme Pontiff the Roman Church should be despoiled of those things with which she is seen to be presently clothed.

[16] St. Ignatius promises obedience. The vicars of the Eastern patriarchs said: But which of these ways you now wish to dispense, declare. The legates of the Holy Roman Church replied: The holy apostolic see, because you are in truth inferiors,

neither chooses you as judges over its cause, nor has chosen you through us, inasmuch as it alone has the right of judging specially concerning the whole Church; nor has it committed to us to pronounce sentence on this cause. For which reason what we have not received from it to do, the judgement of that inquiry we reserve entire to it, which by the multitude of its books is able to bring forward many things in its own defence; and by which all your sentence is despised with as much ease as it is pronounced with levity. The vicars of the Eastern patriarchs said: It is indecent enough that you, who disparaging the empire of the Greeks cling to treaties with the Franks, should preserve rights of ordaining in the kingdom of our prince. For which reason, since we have ascertained that the country of the Bulgarians was formerly under the power of the Greeks and had Greek priests, we judge that it should be restored now through Christianity to the Holy Church of Constantinople, from which it had withdrawn through paganism. The legates of the Holy Roman Church, crying out, said: The sentence which, neither chosen nor admitted, whether from pride or from favour, or whatever it is, you have just precipitated rather than pronounced, we altogether rescind by the authority of the Holy Spirit, until the definition of the holy apostolic see, so that it may in no way merit even the name of a sentence. And we adjure you, patriarch Ignatius, by the authority of the Holy Apostles, the princes, before God and his Angels and all who are present, that according to this letter of your most holy restorer, the lord Hadrian, supreme Pontiff, which behold we offer you, you keep your diligence immune from all ordination in Bulgaria, by sending none of yours there; lest the holy apostolic see, which has restored to you what is yours, should seem through you to lose what is its own. But rather, if, which we do not believe, you judge that you have a just complaint, do not omit solemnly to suggest it to the Holy Church, your restorer. Then the patriarch Ignatius, receiving the apostolic letter, although, much admonished, he put off reading it, replied: Far be it from me that I should entangle myself in these presumptions against the dignity of the holy apostolic see, who neither act so youthfully that I may be taken by surprise, nor rave so senilely as myself to omit what I ought to reprehend in others. With this end that conference was finished.

[17] Nevertheless, Bulgaria already having been occupied through Photius, Further, it is beyond controversy that the conversion of the Bulgarians took place while St. Ignatius was in exile and the patriarchal throne of Constantinople was usurped by Photius; whether we now tie the epoch of the Bulgarian king's baptism to the year 861, as Pagi would have it in his Critique of Baronius at the year 866, §1, or to the year 864 according to Giovanni Domenico Mansi, as is noted in the same place. And certainly Photius himself glories in the conversion of Michael, prince of the Bulgarians, which he says was effected by his work; for which reason in a letter directed to him he calls him the outstanding ornament of his labours, καλον ἀγαλμα των ἐμων πονων;; and below, the true and genuine offspring of his spiritual travail, των ἐμων πνευματικων ὠδινων εὐγενες και γνησιον γεννημα. And indeed that intercourse with the people of Constantinople furnished the occasion for the Bulgarian conversion is sufficiently probable, if Cedrenus Historiarum Compendium, vol. II, p. 151, Bonn edition and others narrate true things; namely that the sister of the king of the Bulgarians, led captive to Constantinople, had been imbued with Christian doctrine in the imperial court; in turn Theodosius, surnamed Cupharas, a captive in Bulgaria, had attempted to cast certain seeds of piety into the minds of the barbarians: and as time went on the king inclined his mind to the Christian religion, and summoned from Constantinople, where he had frequent dealings in business, those who might instruct him and his people in the Christian faith. Cedrenus adds that Photius was sent to baptise. This I believe was the foundation for arrogating jurisdiction over the Bulgarians. But the Bulgarian king, formerly Boggoris, called Michael from his baptism, in the month of August, indiction XIV, or in the year 866, sent his legates to Pope Nicholas I, and, says Anastasius the Librarian in the Life of St. Nicholas Migne, Patrology, vol. CXXVIII, col. 1374, conferred no small gifts both on the holy places and on the same supreme pontiff, suggesting to his apostolate what it behoved him to do more salutarily, or what ought to be done regarding the rest of the Bulgarian people still lacking sacred baptism, that they might receive the sacraments of the faith. Nicholas therefore directed into Bulgaria the bishops Paul of Populonia and Formosus of Porto, who set up the ecclesiastical order among the Bulgarians.

[18] St. Nicholas the Pope indeed protesting, And indeed that Pope Nicholas wished his right over the Bulgarians preserved was shown by his replies to the Consultations of the Bulgarians, who had first of all asked that a patriarch be ordained for them: the Pontiff replies that this depends on the number of Christians; meanwhile, he says Labbe, Councils, vol. VIII, col. 541, have a bishop, and when by the increase of divine grace Christianity shall have been spread there, and bishops ordained through the several churches, then one is to be chosen from among them, who, if not a patriarch, is certainly to be ordained archbishop. From these things it is clear that the Bulgarians had no mind to subject themselves to the see of Constantinople; a patriarch such as they sought could not fittingly be subordinated to another patriarch; which Nicholas also confirms by the following reply, saying that the less is to be blessed by the greater Ibid., loc. cit.; but on account of the length of the journey he permits that an archbishop elected by the bishops should be appointed; on this condition however, that he should neither sit on a throne nor consecrate anything besides the body of Christ before receiving the pallium from the Roman see, just as all the archbishops of the Gauls and of Germany and of other regions are proved to do Ibid., col. 542. Indeed, the Pope, being asked how many are truly patriarchs, replies Ibid., col. 545: Those are truly to be held patriarchs who obtain the apostolic sees by the succession of pontiffs, that is, who preside over those Churches which the Apostles are proved to have instituted, namely the Roman and the Alexandrian and the Antiochene… But the prelates of Constantinople and Jerusalem, though they are called patriarchs, yet are not of such great authority as the above. For no one of the Apostles instituted the Church of Constantinople, nor did the Nicene Synod, which is more celebrated and more venerable than Synods, make any mention of it: but solely because Constantinople was called New Rome, by favour of the princes rather than by reason its pontiff was named patriarch. From these things we have it most manifestly that Pope Nicholas never sanctioned the jurisdiction over Bulgaria arrogated by the bishops of Constantinople, seeing that he did not reckon them even among patriarchs in the true sense of the name.

[19] who demonstrates the right of the Roman Pontiffs, And indeed that the very region of Bulgaria, formerly called Dardania, belonged to the Roman patriarchate, the Greeks themselves seem by being silent to consent. For in the above-cited conference of the legates with the vicars of the Eastern patriarchs, the latter do not touch the topographical question, namely whether the Bulgarian region was contained within the bounds of the Roman patriarchate, being content to allege that Greek priests had been the ministers of Christianity to the Bulgarians: which reason the legates repel when they say that the apostolic see, though it is itself Latin, yet appointed in many places, by reason of the country, Greek priests both always and until now. And yet the topographical question, posed by the legates, dominates the whole controversy: the legates had said: The apostolic see, as you can be taught from the decretals of the most holy Roman prelates, in ancient times canonically ordained and held both Epiruses, namely the new and the old, and the whole of Thessaly and Dardania, in which the city of Dardania is also shown today, whose country is now called Bulgaria from these Bulgarians. This argument, the strongest of all, the Greeks do not touch, knowing it to be inescapable. For they did not dare to deny that all Illyricum had hitherto belonged to the Roman patriarchate. Indeed, Theodosius the Great having died, the Roman empire was divided in two between his sons, Arcadius and Honorius: to Arcadius, to whom the East had fallen, fell the part of Illyricum which was afterwards called Eastern; the western being left to Honorius Farlati, Illyricum sacrum, vol. I, p. 84. Further, there were six provinces of Western Illyricum under the vicar of the praetorian prefect of Italy, namely the Two Pannonias, Noricum Mediterraneum and Ripense, Savia and Dalmatia [Panciroli, Notitia Imperii Occidentis, p. 90. Compare Farlati, Illyricum sacrum, vol. I, p. 84 and vol. II, p. 46]. But about Western Illyricum we have no controversy.

[20] by which all Illyricum is attributed to the Roman patriarchate, As for Eastern Illyricum, it contained two civil dioceses, namely Macedonia towards the south and Dacia to the north, which were also divided into their provinces, so that Macedonia comprised Achaia, Macedonia, Crete, Thessaly, both Epiruses and part of Macedonia Salutaris; and Dacia comprised Dacia Mediterranea and Ripensis, Moesia Prima, Dardania, Praevalitana and part of Macedonia Salutaris Panciroli, Notitia Imperii Orientis, p. 41. But although Eastern Illyricum had been attributed to the empire of Constantinople, it nevertheless remained under the ordination of the Roman Pontiff, as patriarch of the whole West. This the bishops of Macedonia openly profess in the Roman Council celebrated under Boniface II in the year 531, in which Theodosius, bishop of Echinus in Thessaly, says Labbe, Councils, vol. IV, col. 1699: It is established that the venerable pontiffs of your (Roman) see, although in the whole world the apostolic see rightly claims for itself the primacy of the Churches, and it alone must be appealed to from everywhere in ecclesiastical causes, yet have specially claimed for their government the Churches of Illyricum. And the writings of all the preceding pontiffs are known to you. Pope Boniface then orders the letters brought forward to be publicly recited, among which there occurs a mandate of Siricius, committing the whole of Illyricum to the care of Anysius, bishop of Thessalonica; so that without his consent he should presume to ordain bishops in Illyricum Ibid., col. 1701: the same power is continued to Anysius by Innocent I Ibid., loc. cit., who then, Anysius having died, substituted his successor in the see of Thessalonica, Rufus, to whom he committed the care and causes, if any should arise, throughout the Churches of Achaia, Thessaly, Old Epirus, New Epirus, and Crete, Dacia Mediterranea, Dacia Ripensis, Moesia, Dardania and Praevalis; and he adds: Not determining these things for the first time, but imitating our apostolic predecessors, who wished these things to be enjoined on the most blessed Acholius and Anysius for their merits Ibid., col. 1702. Pope Boniface I confirms the same Rufus by various letters Ibid., loc. cit. and following. But since about this time some bishops were already leaning towards Constantinople, Theodosius, emperor of the East, at the request of his uncle Honorius, sanctioned that, the surreptitious claim of the bishops throughout Illyricum being removed, there should be observed what the ancient apostolic discipline and the old canons declare Ibid., col. 1710. But of these things more broadly at the 25th day of this month, where St. Boniface I will have to be treated. All of which we read as afterwards confirmed by the pontiffs Celestine Ibid., loc. cit. and Sixtus III Ibid., col. 1711.

[21] the patriarch of Constantinople being specially excluded: But the patriarchate of Constantinople having been established in the synod of Chalcedon, canon XXVIII Ibid., col. 769, to which were assigned the dioceses of Pontus, Asia and Thrace, and at the same time the bishops of the aforesaid dioceses who are among the barbarians, the bishops of the imperial city began to enlarge their fringes. But St. Leo the Pope strongly resisted endeavours of this kind by various written letters, by which Anatolius, by the indulgence of the apostolic see

bishop of Constantinople, he sets forth and condemns his ambition; thus in the letter to Marcian Augustus Ibid., vol. IV, col. 847: Bishop Anatolius, he says, greatly detracts from his own merit if he desires to grow by an illicit increase. Let the city of Constantinople have, as we desire, its glory, and under the protection of the right hand of God may it enjoy the long rule of your clemency. Yet the reason of secular things is one, that of divine things another; nor will any structure be stable apart from that rock which the Lord has placed in the foundation. He loses what is his own who covets what is not owed. Let it suffice for the aforesaid that by the aid of your piety and by the assent of my favour he has obtained the bishopric of so great a city. Let him not disdain a royal city, which he cannot make an apostolic see: nor let him in any way hope that he can be increased through offences to others. For the privileges of the Churches, instituted by the canons of the Holy Fathers and fixed by the decrees of the venerable Synod of Nicaea, can be overthrown by no wickedness, changed by no novelty. In the faithful execution of which work, with the help of Christ, it is necessary that I show a persevering service. And in this obedience to be shown to the Church of God both Leo himself and his successors persisted, especially when the prelates of Constantinople were raising their crest. Finally, the see of Constantinople having been brought over to the Latins, Innocent III in the fourth Lateran council, in the year 1215, canon V [Labbe, vol. XI, Part I, Councils, col. 154. Compare Binterim, Denkwürdigkeiten, vol. III, Part II, p. 236] assigned to the patriarch of Constantinople the second place after the Roman cathedra.

[22] for the Roman Pontiffs Illyricum For the rest, since the patriarchate of Constantinople, erected at Chalcedon by certain bishops, in no way comprised Illyricum, inasmuch as it was bounded by the dioceses of Pontus, Asia and Thrace, St. Leo, following, as he says, the example of those whose memory is to be venerated, committed his vicariate throughout Illyricum to Anastasius of Thessalonica, as he writes to the metropolitans of Illyricum Labbe, Councils, vol. III, col. 1720. But later, at the request of the emperor Justinian I, Pope Vigilius transferred the vicariate of the holy See from the cathedra of Thessalonica to Justiniana Prima, formerly Achridum, afterwards Locrida, as Novel CXXXI, chap. III has it, by which it is sanctioned that the most blessed archbishop of Prima Justiniana, our, says Justinian, native place, should always have under his jurisdiction the bishops of the provinces of Dacia Mediterranea and Dacia Ripensis and Privalis and Dardania and upper Mysia and Pannonia, and that they should be ordained by him: and that he himself should be ordained by his own council and in the provinces subject to him should hold the place of the apostolic See of Rome; according to what has been defined by the most holy Pope Vigilius. For which reason St. Gregory the Great, book II, letter 23 Migne, Patrology, vol. LXXVII, col. 558, writing to John, bishop of Justiniana Prima, says: We have transmitted the pallium according to custom, and by a repeated renewal we decree that you act in the place of the apostolic See, admonishing that you ought so to show yourselves placable towards your subjects (that is, all the bishops of Illyricum, as is sufficiently clear from the preceding letter) that they may be provoked rather to love your rectitude than to fear it. And thereafter, so far as I know, the state of the Illyrian church remained until Leo the Isaurian, in the year 730, took Eastern Illyricum away from the Roman patriarchate out of the hatred which he had conceived against the Westerners on account of their constancy in the cult of sacred images Compare Pagi, Critique of Baronius, year 730, § XI.

[23] retained under their jurisdiction; For which reason Nicholas I in the letter to the emperor Michael, given on the 25th of September, indiction IX, or the year of Christ 861, making no mention of the Bulgarians, asks Labbe, Councils, vol. VIII, col. 275 that, he says, you deign to restore in your times the ancient custom which our Church has had, so that the vicariate which our see has had through bishops established in your parts, namely the one of Thessalonica, who holds the vicariate of the Roman see through Old Epirus and New Epirus, and Illyricum, Macedonia, Thessaly, Achaia, Dacia Ripensis and Dacia Mediterranea, Moesia, Dardania, Praevalis, none may presume to gainsay to Blessed Peter, the prince of the Apostles, which in the times of our predecessors, namely of Damasus, Siricius, Innocent, Boniface, Celestine, Sixtus, Leo, Hilary, Simplicius, Felix and Hormisdas, was increased by the dispositions of the holy pontiffs. From these monuments it is manifest that the patriarchal right over all Illyria stood unmoved and unchanged for the Roman Pontiffs. But Photius, wickedly occupying the see of Constantinople when the Bulgarians were converted to the Christian faith, did not suffer such rich spoils to be lost to himself, but strove with all contention to bring them over to his side; on this account, in a letter written to the eastern patriarchs, which I cite from Pagi's Critique of Baronius at the year 867, § III, he reproaches the Westerners with being men creeping out of darkness, who with all fraudulence were attempting craftily to lead them (the Bulgarians) away from sound and pure dogmas and from the blameless faith of Christians, and to corrupt them.

[24] St. Ignatius acting to the contrary, The manifold arts at last obtained their effect Ibid., col. 971 and following, and the Bulgarians, says William the Librarian in the Life of Adrian II Migne, Patrology, vol. CXXVIII, col. 1395, persuaded by the Easterners and the people of Constantinople with gifts and promises, receiving Greek priests, cast out ours, according to what Bishop Grimoald (sent by Pope Adrian to the Bulgarians) states, who confesses that he was repulsed by them. Indeed St. Ignatius had promised, before these things took place, that he would not be entangled in these presumptions against the dignity of the apostolic See (above, num. 16); but having used general words, the Saint does not seem to have wished to bind himself in the special question of the Bulgarians, or else afterwards, thinking himself better instructed, he withdrew from his former opinion. This is certain, that our Saint, the priests sent from Rome having been removed, ordained Theophylact bishop of the Bulgarians: of which deed Pope Adrian gravely complained in a letter to the emperors, given on the 4th before the Ides of November, indiction V, or the year 872 Labbe, Councils, vol. VIII, col. 1174: By your favour, he says, our brother and fellow bishop Ignatius has presumed to consecrate a prelate in the region of the Bulgarians, at which we have wondered; and because you have turned back from your pious intention, we have been thoroughly astounded. Yet at least now, we beg, restrain the already mentioned most reverend prelate from the disposition of that region by salutary admonitions: otherwise neither will he himself escape canonical vengeance, nor will those who there usurp for themselves the name of prelacy or of another office be free, along with the excommunication by which they are already held bound, of the loss also of their own grade. Shortly after this letter was written Adrian II ended his life; and his successor John VIII did not cease vehemently to press the restoration of the diocese of the Bulgarians to the Roman patriarchate: for he sent to the emperor Basil the bishops Eugenius of Ostia and Paul of Ancona, with letters to Michael, king of the Bulgarians Labbe, Councils, vol. IX, col. 59 and 62, to Count Peter, who was discharging the legation of the same Michael at the court of Constantinople Ibid., col. 61, to the emperor Basil himself Ibid., col. 66, then to St. Ignatius and to the Greek bishops and clerics, whom he calls invaders of the diocese of Bulgaria. But of these last letters a little more broadly.

[25] on this account [ reprehended by Pope John,] First, in the letter to the Greek bishops and clerics Ibid., col. 65, Pope John reproaches them that, having trampled upon conscience, they have moved the eternal boundaries placed by the fathers and have put the sickle of judgement into another's harvest, into the provinces of Illyricum… Since therefore they are detected to have acted in manifold ways against the sacred rules, he has excommunicated them, and they are excommunicated. Whoever of them, within the space of thirty days of this apostolic sanction being known, shall not withdraw from every Bulgarian region, and shall obstinately presume beyond the aforesaid space to perform in it any ordination or disposition, by the authority of the Holy Fathers and the sentence of the judgement of the lord apostolic, let him lose his own office, not to escape the penalty or hope in any way for pardon unless repenting. No less severely does the said Pope John deal with St. Ignatius. He begins his letter Ibid., col. 63 by saying that Ignatius is now being admonished for the third time, and, having recalled to memory the benefits conferred on him by the apostolic See, he commands that he direct energetic men into the region of the Bulgarians, who, going through the whole country, shall lead back without any delay whomever they find there who are said to have received the gift of consecration from Ignatius himself or from his subjects: so that within the space of thirty days no bishop, no cleric at all, who are, he says, of your ordination, or rather inordination, may be found within all the bounds of the Bulgarians. For we do not suffer those whom you have there illicitly appointed, who are also established to be already excommunicated by the apostolic See on this account, to infect by the error of their prevarication the hearts of the new servants of the Lord; whom namely we have planted in the faith with the hand of instruction, and have watered with the water of the saving fountain of doctrines, and have offered to God, their author, for the giving of increase of spirit, that he may hold the primacy in all things. Further, if within the interval of thirty days you shall not have led out of the bounds of the whole Bulgarian region all whom you or your bishops are thought to have consecrated in any grade of the Church, and shall not have withdrawn yourself from every ecclesiastical right of that diocese, be deprived of the holy body and precious blood of our Lord Jesus Christ after two months, to be counted from the day on which you shall have received the roll of this letter, for as long as, obstinate, you shall by no means have bowed the neck of obedience to these our decrees. And now if you shall have pertinaciously remained in this indiscipline and invasion, and shall not have thrust out from there all whom either they or you are seen to have consecrated there, by the judgement of Almighty God and the authority of the Blessed Apostles, the princes, and by the sentence of our mediocrity, be alien and without share in all the dignity of the patriarchate which you had received by our favour, in no way endowed with or possessed of any privilege of the high priesthood.

[26] but always resisting; In the letters hitherto cited two things occur to be noted. Namely, all the letters are said to have been written in the month of April, on the 16th day, indiction XI, which coincides with the common year 878. But we have shown above at num. 9 that the death of St. Ignatius is to be tied to the year 877: for which reason we suspect that some error has crept in in the noting of the indiction, since, as the Maurist Benedictine Chronologists note L'art de vérifier les dates, vol. I, p. XIV, indictions very often deceive. And I can scarcely admit that Pope John, writing in mid-April of the year 878, was ignorant of the death of our Saint, which had occurred in the preceding month of October; the voyage to Constantinople was indeed difficult, especially in winter; yet I would not believe that a space of six months was necessary for making the journey, unless something out of the ordinary had happened to the couriers. The second thing worthy of note is this, that John threatens St. Ignatius with the loss of the patriarchal dignity, of which, if he refuses to obey, he will be deprived. We have said above at num. 21 that the patriarchal right was first attributed by the Roman Pontiffs to the see of Constantinople in the thirteenth century under Innocent III. But if we attend to the words of Nicholas I, cited above at num. 18, the reply will be easy.

For this Pontiff in his reply XCII to the Consultations of the Bulgarians does not abrogate all patriarchal dignity from the prelate of Constantinople, but denies that his cathedra is apostolic, or instituted by the Apostles, for which reason he teaches that it is not of such great authority as the Roman, Alexandrian and Antiochene, and further that its pontiff is called patriarch by favour of the princes rather than by the authority of the Church. Yet the Roman pontiffs did not disparage the primacy of the see of Constantinople; they forbade only this, that the ancient boundaries should be moved and that the things held valid by the synod of Nicaea should be destroyed, namely, that the bishops of Constantinople should leap over the ancient and apostolic patriarchs and usurp the second throne after the Roman Pontiff in the ecclesiastical hierarchy. And so Pope John, while indirectly acknowledging St. Ignatius as patriarch, is in no way contrary to the constitutions of his predecessors.

[27] St. Ignatius, then, was at this point when he died, that the thunderbolt of pontifical sentence and condemnation was about to be hurled at him as soon as possible. without his resistance prejudicing his sanctity But, as we said above at num. 11, such is the nature of controversies concerning ecclesiastical jurisdiction that, the sanctity of both litigating parties being safe, they are sometimes carried on with great commotions of mind. We have shown above by continuous documents that the region of Dardania or Bulgaria perpetually belonged to the Roman patriarchate: but St. Ignatius, knowing that Greek priests, whose ordination was accordingly to be derived from a Greek source, were engaged in the sacred ministry among the Bulgarians, believed that it was his duty to retain under his jurisdiction a people whom Greek priests had brought over to the Catholic faith and hitherto cultivated, and he could easily persuade himself that the Roman Pontiff, deceived by the false reports of certain persons, had wished unjustly to attribute to himself what did not belong to his patriarchate. And indeed that controversies of this kind have blazed up between most holy men frequent example in history demonstrates. SS. Lullus and Sturmius fought keenly over the jurisdiction of the monastery of Fulda Acta SS., vol. VII of Oct., p. 1063: for his see of York in England St. Wilfrid sustained not only grave suits but bitter persecutions from SS. Theodore and Brithwald, archbishops of Canterbury Acta SS., vol. III of April, p. 300 and 307. The beginning of the suit was the division of the Church of York, administered by St. Wilfrid, which St. Theodore wished divided into three bishoprics: St. Wilfrid resisted and, an appeal having been lodged with the apostolic see, won his cause at Rome. But, restored to his see, behold, scarcely five years having elapsed, he experienced another Saint as adversary, namely St. Brithwald, successor of St. Theodore in the see of Canterbury, who, at the instigation of Aldfrith, king of the Northumbrians, deposed the Saint from his see a second time, so that Wilfrid was compelled to approach the Roman Pontiff again. These Saints are venerated, Wilfrid on the 24th day of April Ibid., p. 292, Theodore on the 19th of September Ibid., vol. VI of Sept., p. 55 and Brithwald on the 9th of January Ibid., vol. I of Jan., p. 597.

[28] as is shown by various examples. That even Saints are sometimes deceived in questions of this kind, St. Bernard furnishes an illustrious example. For William, sister's son of Stephen, king of the English, and treasurer of the Church of York, had been elected archbishop of the same Church by concordant votes. But St. Bernard, moved by the complaints of abbots and others, calls this election simply an intrusion, and calls the intruder accursed, and moreover by various letters presses Celestine II, Eugene III and the Cardinals to remove so great a scandal Migne, Patrology, vol. CCXXXV, col. 422: he calls William Ibid., col. 231 publicly infamous, accused before a judge, and not cleared, nay, convicted, and consecrated in this state: and by his work he brought it about that Henry Murdac was set in the cathedra of York in the place of the cast-out William. Henry Murdac having died after ten years, as Godwin would have it De Praesulibus Angliae, Archbishops of York, p. 32, after eight years according to Alford at the year 1145, §16 Annales Ecclesiae Anglicanae, vol. IV, Part II, p. 37, after six years according to the Monasticon Anglicanum Vol. VIII, p. 1172, William was restored to the see of York, and received the pallium from Pope Anastasius IV, once his patron Alford, Annals, vol. IV, Part II, p. 63. As we run through this long controversy, who would not suspect that this William was a man of at most mediocre virtue, and not of such sanctity as to be venerated with public veneration among the heavenly ones? And yet our predecessors at the 8th day of June Acta SS., vol. II of June, p. 136 bring forward his Acts, from which it is plain that St. William stood forth glorious with miracles before and after his death, and enjoyed public cult through the Churches of England. What has been said thus far demonstrates sufficiently that disputes of this kind do not prejudice the sanctity of either litigating party: whence it is not to be wondered at that St. Ignatius, notwithstanding his resistance, was reckoned in the Roman Martyrology among the Saints to be publicly venerated.

[29] On which occasion, concerning the cult Now, often in elucidating the Acts of the Saints there occur men of this kind, who, adorned with ecclesiastical cult in some particular nation or Church, seem at first sight suspect of heresy or schism. For which reason, having obtained an opportune occasion, it will be worthwhile to discuss them briefly. In John III, bishop of Como, at the 20th day of October Acta SS., vol. VIII of Oct., p. 903 and in Octavian, likewise of Como, at the present day Above, it was shown that they very probably met their days entangled in the schism of Aquileia. This happens even more frequently in the Calendars and Menologies of the Eastern Churches, in which Saints are recorded of whose Catholic communion it is possible to doubt. Which indeed our Antonio Possevino held as a most grave impediment De rebus Moscoviticis, in the book Moscovia, p. 7, edition 1587, lest Russia should ever be received into the bosom of the Church: for it would not easily suffer its Saints to be snatched from it. But Possevino said these things more scrupulously than truly: and our Papebroch outstandingly refuted him in the Preface to the Graeco-Muscovite Ephemerides Acta SS., vol. I of May, p. III and following. For indeed we see sometimes men adhering in good faith to schism or schismatics, even made illustrious by miracles. Cardinal Baronius, most expert in these matters, reports in his Annals at the year 1036, § VII, that to the monks of Cassino, whose abbot was involved in the schism of Peter Leonis, or the pseudo-pope under the name of Anacletus II against Innocent II, the doors of the church were prodigiously opened. The miracle having been brought forward, the Cardinal subjoins the following words: But someone will say: If these were schismatics, how by that miracle were the doors of the church spontaneously opened to them? I shall say briefly: it is not the case that as soon as some abbot or bishop is a schismatic, it is necessary that all subject to him be likewise schismatics, but only those who know for certain that their prelate errs: and the others do not sin, who by persuasive reasons think that he walks on the right way and that they follow the true shepherd: nor is there in them so great a learning, or so well-explored a knowledge of events, nor the faculty of finding out whose rights are the stronger, and these are rendered free of crime by their own good conscience. Papebroch adds Ibid., p. IV: If this avails in men so closely joined as monks are with their abbot, how much more ought it to have availed in the Muscovites, who, most different from the Greeks in language and morals, generally did not even know whether the Latins and Greeks were joined or disjoined among themselves. What is here said of the Muscovites or Russians can with equal right be carried over to the Eastern peoples.

[30] of the Saints inscribed in Eastern Calendars, Next, just as the monks of Cassino received the Sacraments with fruit from their abbot, whom they did not know to be a schismatic and whom they followed as a true shepherd, so also men unaware of the matters and of good conscience in the parts of the East. It is indeed controverted among theologians whether a Catholic can receive sacraments from a presbyter or bishop whom he knows for certain to be entangled in heresy or schism [Compare Arcudius, De concordia Ecclesiae Orientalis et Occidentalis, book IV, chap. 5. Carlo Soglia, Institutiones juris canonici, Part II, book III, chap. 2, §235]; and I do not judge it to be the place here to dispute on this question: but the case is altogether different for those who in good conscience approach their presbyter or bishop, whom they follow as a true shepherd, and ask and receive the Sacraments from him: for such persons there is held to exist at least a title, as the theologians speak, estimated or reputed by the faithful to be present. They receive legitimate Sacraments, therefore, that is, most abundant helps of sanctity, by whose aid they can acquire the highest virtues, and so, if it please God, become illustrious by miracles. Because, then, someone lived after the rise of a schism and has been enrolled in the Catalogue of the Blessed, it does not seem that he should forthwith be struck out. And certainly as often as there has been dealing in Councils about concord between the Latin and Eastern Churches, disputed questions have been proposed and settled, without there ever having been any treatment of reforming the calendar or liturgical office of the Saints. Nor is this to be put down to forgetfulness or negligence. For in the Council of Florence, peace having been made between Latins and Greeks, the Latins conferred with the Greeks about various rites: for example, about the hot water poured into the chalice, about the anointing of the dead, etc. Labbe, vol. XIII, col. 523. Since there was thus a deep silence about the cult of saints, it is to be judged that the Fathers of Florence left the Greeks their Saints: at that time certainly there was in force Rule of law 43 in the Sext: He who is silent is seen to consent: much more must he be said to tolerate who was silent when he could speak.

[31] especially of the Muscovites, is treated. Finally, it is known, and Prospero Lambertini testifies in the Work on the Beatification and Canonisation of Saints, book 1, chap. 10, num. 1, that as far as Alexander III, or until the middle of the twelfth century, the episcopal jurisdiction of beatifying by its own right and without subjection to the authority of the supreme Pontiff persisted. And the power which we attribute to the Latin bishops we cannot deny to the Eastern bishops, namely that they too decreed cult to persons illustrious for sanctity. In issuing decrees of this kind, just as Latin bishops could err, so too could Greek. Nevertheless the apostolic see often holds a cult of this kind valid, and such an approval is called an equipollent beatification, which is in no way an infallible sentence: for as the praised Prospero Lambertini has it, book 1, chap. 42, num. 9: In apostolic letters permitting cult there is customarily inserted the clause: Saving however in the foregoing the authority of the Congregation of the same Cardinals. Which added clause shows that the Pontiffs in truth recognise that a judgement permitting cult is neither infallible nor pertaining to the faith: since they leave the sacred Congregation free, notwithstanding the indulgent and approving approval, to withdraw from it if new foundations supervene. In one word, the judgement intervening in equipollent beatification rests on fame, rests on antiquity, rests for the most part on foundations or indults of cult, indeed not without great reason, yet not on a cause in judicial

law taken cognisance of. And if these things are so concerning the dead who have been equipollently beatified, what shall we think of so many others, the origin of whose cult is plainly uncertain and whose continuation was never proved to the Holy See? Certainly Baronius at the year 1027, § XII, believed that among them there not only can be, but in fact are or at some time have been, those who in no way merit heavenly honours Compare Acta SS., vol. VIII of Oct., p. 373. And these things our most kind mother the Roman Church tolerates with the best right even in Latin dioceses: why then will she be less patient in tolerating blemishes, if there are any, among the Easterners?

[32] Bulgaria at length went over to the see of Constantinople. But, to return to where we digressed from, after St. Ignatius died Pope John did not cease to press the restoration of Bulgaria to the Roman patriarchate: for in the very letters by which he set Photius over the Church of Constantinople, he signifies to him Labbe, Councils, vol. IX, col. 143: Our diocese of Bulgaria, which the apostolic see recovered by the contest of the most holy lord Pope Nicholas of apostolic memory, and had possessed in the time of Hadrian, a prelate equally most blessed, we wish to be restored to us with the highest speed, and henceforth we cut off by apostolic authority all ecclesiastical ordination by the prelates of the Church of Constantinople in the same Bulgarian diocese: and do you strive that the bishops ordained there and all other clerics of lower order may withdraw themselves from it, and altogether restrain themselves from the invasion of our Bulgarian diocese. When Photius published the apostolic letters in Greek, he changed and omitted many things; among others in this letter of his institution he entirely deleted the things which pertained to the Bulgarian diocese. No less bravely did Pope John press both the emperors of Constantinople and Michael, king of the Bulgarians, that his rights might remain intact for the Roman Church. And the emperors indeed seem to have acquiesced in the pontifical petition; since John renders them many thanks because, he says Ibid., col. 181, you have permitted with a glad mind, for love of us, Saint Peter to have the diocese of the Bulgarians, as was just. But Michael, king of the Bulgarians, wavered between the two sides; for, as is established from a letter of Pope John Ibid., col. 206, he had promised that he would send legates to Rome; but Michael did not discharge his pledge, since John accuses him of a neglected promise in another letter Labbe, Councils, vol. IX, col. 212. And at last, the Roman Pontiffs perhaps conniving, the patriarchal jurisdiction over Bulgaria was drawn off to the see of Constantinople.

* isti or istic?

LIFE OF ST. IGNATIUS, PATRIARCH OF CONSTANTINOPLE,

By Nicetas, or David the Paphlagonian, a contemporary, from vol. VIII of the Councils of Philippe Labbe, S. J.

Ignatius, patriarch of Constantinople. (S.)

BY NICETAS, A CONTEMPORARY AUTHOR.

PROLOGUE.

It is at once illustrious and salutary to set forth and narrate the deeds in life of all the other Saints, and to hand down to later ages instructions for life, and likewise incitements to virtue; but most of all those of the men who have been endowed with the venerable pontificate, and who by the splendour of their life have provoked a bitter adversary to the gravest envy, and with an unconquered endurance of all labours and greatness of soul have displayed outstanding fortitude against their persecutor. And if it should happen that these same men come closer to the last times and our own age, then indeed they are to be remembered and proclaimed with every praise much more than all others, as being able, on account of the nearness of the times, to benefit the Church much more. For what is very ancient and removed by long intervals of time, although it merits credit on account of the authority of the writer, yet the zeal of imitating is despaired of by most, as they think that in those ages of our forefathers it was much readier than in ours to live with virtue. But the things believed to have been rightly done in our memory, those, I think, much more keenly inflame the minds of the pious to emulate the glory of virtue ^a. For which reason a great desire of soul has impelled me to pursue this cause or contest in speech, and, God being my leader and helper, the Spirit of truth, to show to those who do not know, what a man Ignatius was, of what sort and how great this prelate and shepherd of the royal city was in the manner of his life. This Ignatius, I say, who, though later in age, flourished in our time, yet yielded nothing to those earlier venerable pontiffs in faith or confession or contest for justice, or in the praise of piety towards God. While I examine his whole course of life with singular care from its very beginning to its end, and set forth, without any indulgence of feeling or fraud, the truth of the things most fully attested among us concerning him, received whether by report or by writing, I am firmly persuaded that it will come about, first, that, with living and self-subsistent truth as witness, I shall write what is fair; next, that I shall dispel and scatter the cloud thickened by the interval of however many years and wrapping minds in the darkness of ignorance: so that those who wish to perceive the truth deeply may truly know, celebrate with praises and emulate the cultivator of fairness and virtue, and may rightly detest the architect of malice and wickedness. But from here we must now begin.

CHAPTER ONE.

The Saint's illustrious birth; misfortunes; monastic state and presbyterate.

St. Ignatius, born of an imperial grandfather and father This most blessed and divine prelate Ignatius had Constantinople as his earthly homeland, this, I say, the most illustrious royal seat of the whole dominion and empire: and for parents the emperor Michael and the empress Procopia, most noble and most religious sovereigns ^b. And Michael was born of the patrician Theophylact, a most splendid man; and Procopia was begotten by Nicephorus, the pious emperor. Further, Nicephorus having been called to the heavenly empire ^c, and his son Stauracius having died when he had administered the kingdom for a short time ^d, this Michael, son-in-law of Nicephorus, as has been said, after the death of Nicephorus, since he held the first place among the palatines (for he was curopalates ^e), under God's auspices and by decree of the senate took up the sceptre of the empire. His religion towards God and all the ornaments of his virtue I leave to be narrated by those who wish to follow his deeds in detail. For us it may suffice for recording his glory to mention the gentleness of his morals and his clemency, which he displayed unfeigned by his very deeds. For when he had most holily administered the empire for not a full two years, he yielded freely and willingly to Leo the Armenian, invading by tyranny ^f, although he himself had previously committed to him the command of the army in the East. For when he had undertaken an expedition against the Bulgarians ^g, to the man plotting defection there through treachery the blessed man conceded the empire of his own accord, and withdrew himself from all pride and civil wars and the envy of kingship, judging that a voluntary abdication of the kingdom and peace would be much more advantageous and useful for himself and the commonwealth, as one born for true peace. So he left the city with his whole family and withdrew to the Princes' Islands ^h; and there he led the monastic life with his wife and children, not only in dress of body but in very fact, leaving his cause to the supreme deity.

[2] born, This blessed Michael, to be attended with all admiration, who exchanged the kingdoms of the earth for those of heaven, is said to have had five children in all: two of the female stock, Georgo the first and eldest, and Theophano the youngest, who, having preserved the praise of virginity through all their life, died happily: and three of the male stock, Theophylact, Stauracius, Nicetas; of whom the eldest, Theophylact, and Stauracius were distinguished with the imperial diadem; but Stauracius, being very young, met his death before his father's abdication; while Theophylact, shorn a monk then together with his parents, was named Eustratius ⁱ. Nicetas, first at ten years old, they say was created domestic of the Hicanati by his grandfather Nicephorus ^k, for whose sake that office was first instituted: and having reached fourteen years, leaving the earthly palace together with his good parents, he too put on the monk and was surnamed Ignatius ^l.

[3] when all things in the commonwealth So Leo, that wild beast of ill-omened name, when he had brought forth the iniquity which he had conceived, having seized the empire by force and tyranny, took no account of the all-seeing eye, nor did he revere the modesty and fairness of the blessed exiles, and he was unmindful of all the benefits with which those blessed ones had adorned the unworthy man: by whom they had been so enticed by the arts of his wicked mind that the emperor designated him sponsor and godfather of the royal children in the sacred dipping of baptism. But none of these things could bend his harsh and ferocious mind. For having sent them into exile, he separated one from the other, assigned to each his own island, and surrounded them with a firm guard. Moreover he took away the manhood of the sons, punishing them with castration of the members, more than inhuman and cruel. Hence indeed, when he had laid such impious foundations of his rule, he ended his life with an exit answering to its beginnings. For the impious and God-hated sect of the Iconomachs, once devised by that impious Leo ^m and strengthened by Constantine, the son of Leo, worse even than his father ⁿ, but by divine providence piously and rightly put to sleep and removed through the holy seventh Synod ^o, this hateful dragon and distorted interpreter of the truth attempting to recall, rose up against the bulwark of orthodox piety, Nicephorus [p], I say, then prelate of religion and patriarch of the ruling city, and assailed him with threats and blandishments alike. But when he found him much firmer than he had hoped, he thrust him down from the throne by tyrannical force and, importunate, cast him out to the right-hand region of the Stenum [q], that is, of the narrow strait, into a certain monastery (when he had cared for the Church apostolically for nine years), where that blessed man, seventeen years having been passed in illustrious confession, departed to God.

[4] and in the Church were thrown into confusion And on the throne of Constantinople that most profane man placed a certain Theodotus [r], nurtured in profane morals and business, and wholly lacking in all doctrine and liberal discipline (having this one quality, however, that he was held to be an emulator of the heresy of the Iconomachs calumniating the Christians), made a cleric. Hence, a savage and cruel harassment of the pious having been set on foot, according to his ways he received the wages of sin, death Rom. VI, 23. For within a little more than seven years, the royal power being cut off from him [s], in the very sanctuary of the temple of the Mother of God (which they call Pharos in the palace [t]), the wretch was finished off by swords in the fashion of a dog. Thus the harvest of his labours also he reaped from the seed of impiety he had sown with such great exertion. For Michael the Stammerer, then commander of the guards, having been denounced for aiming at the kingdom and given into custody, was by his fellow soldiers and his companions in the conspiracy, who, feigning the dress of clerics, secretly entered the palace at earliest morning and killed the tyrant, straightway saluted as emperor: who ordered the cut-up tyrant, thrown into a sack, to be contemptuously buried in the island of Prote [u] without any ceremony, and his sons to be castrated and shorn: so that, as scripture testifies, his labour was turned upon his head, and his iniquity came down upon his crown Ps. VI, 17.

[5] by the Iconomachs, Further Michael, of Amorium by homeland and a Sabbatian by sect [v], having handled the sceptres of the empire for nine years and a half, took no care for right religion; yet from time to time he brought force upon those devoted to true piety. Theodotus, whom they used to call Cassiteras, having died, Michael summoned Antony, surnamed Byrsodepsa, already metropolitan of Perge and a sharer of the heresy, then unoccupied, and proclaimed him patriarch of the royal city. After Michael, Theophilus, son of Michael [w], the sceptres

having been obtained, reigned for thirteen years; in other respects not bad, and also a champion of fairness. But in the persecution of the sacred images he was held and believed to be inferior to none of the Iconomachs of the past: and it was thought that he did this chiefly at the impulse of John, whom he had substituted as patriarch for Antony.

[6] puts on the monk, While affairs both civil and ecclesiastical were in this state, the Catholic Church being tried for a full thirty years by innumerable dangers and hardships and slaughters, as the impious trampled holy things with profane feet and handled sacred things with polluted hands, Nicetas or Ignatius, like a most noble shoot planted in the house of the Lord and reared in the courts of the monastic life, neither unfruitful to him who had planted him, nor to be seen for show with abundant leaves only, like that accursed fig tree Matth. XXI, 19, that is, with garments containing nothing good; but placed beside the courses of the heavenly waters and the most abundant fountains of the Holy Spirit, and having meditated on the whole Old Testament and the whole New, zealously devoted to the monuments of the Holy Fathers, strengthened by imitating their deeds and turning over their contemplations in his mind, and fattening the whole inner man, he brought forth to God the sweetest fruits of virtue [x]. First, then, he displayed temperance in abstinence, zeal in keeping vigil, in singing psalms when it was ordered, and in praying: add calluses on the knees, tears, beatings of the breast, restraint of the tongue, and the endurance of stripes inflicted by a gloomy tutor and man of depraved judgement, who, to gratify the Iconomachs, reared him very harshly. In addition, gentleness and lowliness of soul, and obedience towards every brotherhood that is according to God. While the Blessed man was exercised first in these things and deeds, while he was occupied in these pursuits and illustriously composed himself, growing in due order together with the years and the body, leading his boyhood he was strengthened for more perfect things. And thereafter he brought forth to God more perfect fruits, I say faith, hope and charity: offering perfect faith from a perfect and entire mind to the perfect God; sincere faith, hope that does not confound; unfeigned charity, from a pure heart towards God and neighbour, rightly formed according to the precept.

[7] and cultivated in virtues, abbot While this sacred Ignatius produced these fruits of virtue, and from his tender years spent all his time in these pursuits of right actions, in the time when the impious were provoking God to anger, he was ascending to every praise of religion. For, his father and tutor having been removed from life, the care and headship of the brothers and of souls being immediately committed to him, he showed at the very beginning of his office what force of the Holy Spirit would thereafter shine forth from him. So much indeed did he feed the minds of his own by frequent discourses and wise exhortations, and always lead them to the green pastures of God, that the gift of grace and of spiritual mastery grew in him wonderfully, and he so increased by his instructions the fold of Christ that neither one place nor one house could any longer hold it, but four monasteries were raised up and established by his zeal; so that each should have its own suitable dwellings and sacred furnishing [y] and the other things necessary for the use of a monastery. Finally, having taken up the care, that great man furnished and set in order all things with a seemly apparatus suited to them. And all were taught by that master and parent that it was first of all theirs to celebrate God with praises and to give time to prayer; then that each should perform his own ministries, and refer everything to the praise and glory of God. And so Plate and Hyatros and Terebinthus, which they call the Princes' islands [z], inhabited by his care and zeal, were turned into sacred buildings and dwellings of monks. For opposite these, on the mainland situated by the sea, this, I say, the outstanding monastery of the great prince of the heavenly ones, Michael, he founded last, at the end of his life [aa], and dedicated it to God; the nobility, magnificence and renown of whose temple, its outstanding splendour, and all its adornment and majesty (since I can in no way express it according to its dignity) I leave to the eyes of those who behold it, and at the same time I proceed to set forth the remaining acts of his life.

[8] and presbyter, for the consolation of all By these things, then, the Saint, approved by God, by the decree of the Holy Spirit and by the opinion of the holy pontiffs, those, I say, who were fighting for true piety and suffering all extremities, was distinguished with the sacred honour of the presbyterate by the hand of Basil [bb], who, bishop of the sacred Church of Parium, was tried for the cult of sacred images by innumerable misfortunes and most grievous hardships. By the notable hand, I say, of this Basil, but by the force and power of the most Holy Spirit, he was consecrated first as lector, or holy herald of the sacred scriptures, then subdeacon, next deacon and priest, according to the law and order of the ecclesiastical grades [cc]. And he was constantly zealous for this, that he might return to the bestower of grace the talent increased by manifold interest, and not bury it through sloth Matth. XXV, 24. And as while he was living in the monastery he drew many by his piety and zeal, so through the priesthood again, washing an innumerable number of infants with baptism, he sealed them to God. For since for a very long time, the heretical gloom, like a dense night, and the tyranny of hirelings pressed down, nearly all those who defended the right faith at Constantinople, and those who inhabited the towns of Bithynia, stirred one another up by proclaiming Ignatius with praises, and led their children to him, and begged that they should be baptised by him and dedicated to God. And one could see him, like some one of the first disciples of Christ, when he eagerly received and instructed those coming to him, as if sent by Christ: who indeed so seized upon his instructions, while he taught and exhorted each one to champion the sincere and Catholic religion, and to turn away from the perversity and madness of the heretics, and all to purge themselves from every stain of mind and body, and to procure the praise of every virtue and temperance and honesty. These and similar things he taught the parents, and their children, first duly instructed, he consecrated to God through water and the Holy Spirit [dd].

[9] is ordained, And a grave and violent storm was then pressing the Church, and a bitter harassment the sacred things, and whoever thought they must risk themselves for the image of Christ on account of its prototype. But a tranquil and serene harbour for all those tossed by the storm had been destined by the supreme right hand of the deity in this sacred Ignatius, and his whole house. For who of those contending for piety did not receive from him refreshment of his ills and hardships? Who, given into custody, who, cast into exile, who, tortured with chains and hunger, was not relieved by him and liberally furnished with the necessary aids? For whoever suffered the violence and robberies of the tyrants, and were stripped of their goods and fortunes, and were tried by the want of all things, especially sacred and religious men, had no other refuge of life and hardships than this outstanding Ignatius, and Procopia, the parent of Ignatius, and his sister, who prolonged their age for many years, and so kindly and cheerfully poured out their wealth and emulated the mercy of God, that most truly that sacred oracle might be seen published and fulfilled concerning them Ps. XXXVI, 26: For all the day in a manner they showed mercy and lent, and their seed was in blessing. And he indeed in this manner fought together with the athletes of Christ, grieved with those grieving, bore up afflicted with the afflicted, furnished aid to those in need: assiduous in the zeal of prayer, and in the Eucharist and the Communion of the bread, and sharing in the necessities of the Saints according to the Apostle Rom. XII, 13, thus he prepared himself for greater contests for virtue: these signs of the grace to be put forth in his future patriarchate he showed to those who beheld him, so that that great man in the wrestling-ground of virtue, Theophanes, illustrious for prodigies and miracles [ee], he, I say, the founder of the monastery of Sigrianum or Agrianum, once when that blessed man, then a youth, came to him as a traveller, with his right hand stretched out, even then blessed him as a patriarch.

ANNOTATIONS.

according to the opinion of certain persons he had held the empire for two months and six days: namely from the 25th of July to the 1st of October. From what has hitherto been recited it is open that Stauracius was stripped of the purple while living, and died while leading a private, nay monastic, life Compare Lebeau, Histoire du Bas-Empire, vol. XIV, p. 259 and following.

p. St. Nicephorus, on whose Acts at the 13th of March our Henschenius has commented Acta SS., vol. II of March, p. 293, occupied the see of Constantinople from the year 806 to 815, and died an exile in the ninth year of his banishment [Compare William Cuper, Chronological History of the Patriarchs of Constantinople, vol. I of Aug., p. 103*].

q. The Stenum, or Narrow strait, is that part of the Bosphorus which runs from the city of Constantinople to the Euxine Sea, as our men note at the 14th day of September in the Commentary on St. John Chrysostom, num. 641 Acta SS., vol. IV of Sept., p. 530.

r. The successors of the expelled St. Nicephorus were three heretics, from the year 815 to 842, namely Theodotus, of whom our biographer speaks, Antony, surnamed Byrsodepsas, and John VII, or Jannes, whose most abandoned morals our William Cuper describes in his Chronological History of the patriarchs of Constantinople Ibid., vol. I of Aug., p. 103* and following.

s. Leo the Armenian reigned from the 11th day of July 813 to the 24th day of December 820, and so for seven years, five months and fourteen days. His slaying is pursued at length by the continuator of Theophanes Byzantine Writers, Theophanes Continuatus, p. 38: It was just beginning to grow light, he says, as soon as Michael (afterwards the successor of Leo, but on the very point of being destroyed by fire) wished to open the filth clinging to his soul to one of the religious men through Theoctistus, whom he also afterwards adorned with the dignity of Caniclius (guardian of the writing purple). The emperor permitted it and gave leave for this matter. And Michael said to Theoctistus: “Do indeed declare to the conspirators that I shall denounce everything to the emperor, unless, undertaking something energetically, you free me from this death and prison.” Further, having heard this, the conspirators built up a plan of this kind. It was the custom that the sacred clergy, not as now within the palace (which was introduced thereafter and on that occasion), but each staying at his own home, should then at the beginning of the third watch gather at the ivory gate, to render morning praises to the Lord God. Mixing themselves with these clerics, the conspirators, daggers hidden under their armpits, since they lay hidden by the darkness and the priestly garments, entered freely with them, and settling down in a certain low dark place, awaited the signal. And so the hymn being performed, when the emperor, placed not far from the singers, as he often used, began that strain: “They spurned all things for love of the highest prince:” (for he was by nature of tuneful voice, and in modulating the divine praises he surpassed all mortals of his age by its sweetness), they leapt out in a mass, and at the first impetus and attack they were deceived in the head of the clergy, either because he was very like the emperor in body, or because he had covered his head with a similar covering: for since in the roughness of winter a huge cold stiffened, both endured it with the same covering, that is, protecting the head with a very pointed cap. But he indeed, the cap being drawn off his head, his baldness being displayed, easily secured safety. But Leo, withdrawing himself into the inner sanctum of the altar, sought protection in a vain attempt: he however attempted to defend himself: for which reason, seizing the chain of the censer, or, as others relate, the divine cross, he strove to repel the attack of the assailants. But they, rushing upon him not singly but in a wedge, inflicted wounds, while even so he avenged himself and with the help of the cross the blows of the swords

he repelled: but at length, sought from every side in the manner of a beast, he grew exhausted; when also, salvation being despaired of, seeing one of tall stature, not unlike a giant, delivering a blow, he adjured him by the grace dwelling in the temple, and openly implored that he should spare him. That man was sprung from the stock of the Crambonitae; and he said to him, “This is a time not of oaths but of slaughters,” and moreover himself swearing by the divine grace, he struck his hand with a wound from the front with such force that he not only entirely cut it off from the collar-bone, but also the arm of the cross, cut through, leapt far away. At the same time also another, his head being cut off, left the body a trunk. This end of life fell to Leo.

t. The temple of the Mother of God of Pharos was, according to Du Cange Constantinopolis Christiana, p. 95, the domestic oratory of the emperors, built within the circuit of the great palace of Constantinople: whence the name of Pharos came, further, is uncertain: some interpreting it of the Mother of God as a star, others because the building was constructed at the lighthouse of the palace.

u. Prote is one of the Princes' Islands, on which see above, annotation h.

v. Amorium was an episcopal city of Phrygia Salutaris or Magna [Compare Acta SS., vol. I of March, p. 457 and Cellarius, vol. II, p. 128, Leipzig edition 1773]. The error of the Sabbatians, further, lay in this, that they rejected the sanctification of the Lord's day, introduced by the Apostles, and retained the Sabbath with religious observance in the Jewish manner Compare Dictionnaire des Hérésies, under Sabbatiens.

w. Michael, surnamed the Stammerer, held the empire for eight years and about nine months, having ended his life on the 3rd day of October 829: he was succeeded by Theophilus, his son, who died on the 20th of January 842, and so held the sceptres for twelve years, three months and eighteen days; since therefore our biographer ascribes to him thirteen years of reign, it must be understood of incomplete years.

x. This whole text, as is clear enough, has been taken by accommodation from the first Psalm.

y. Under the name of sacred furnishing, των ἱερων σκευων, comes the whole liturgical equipment, and so the vessels, vestments and ornaments of the altars. Set over the keeping of these was the guardian of the treasures of the church, σκευοφυλαξ: whose office was, on the testimony of Allatius, On the Agreement of Both Churches, book III, chap. 8, §6 P. 1029, Cologne edition 1648, when the prelate performs the sacred rite, to stand before the sceuophylacium, and if anything should be needed from the sceuophylacium, whether a vessel or a book or a candle or a vestment or anything else, to produce it. Compare Du Cange, Glossary of Middle Greek, under Σκευοφυλαξ.

z. Of these islands we have treated above in annotation h.

aa. This monastery in consequence obtained various names; for it was called Ἀνατελλοντος or of the East, then Ἀρχιστρατεγου or of the commander, namely of the Angels, finally Σατυρου or of Satyrus. Du Cange treats of it in Constantinopolis Christiana P. 189. It was situated on the Asian shore of the Propontis, opposite the royal city. Compare the historical Atlas of Spruner, table LXII.

bb. Basil, bishop of Parium, is venerated among the Greeks on the 12th day of April, under which our men treat of him [Acta SS., vol. II of April, p. 95. Compare Le Quien, Oriens Christianus, vol. I, col. 788], and the Menaea.

cc. In the Latin Church, as is well enough known, there are seven orders, namely five minor and three major: but in the Greek Church there are only five: although, as may be seen here, four, namely of lector, subdeacon, deacon and presbyter, are enumerated. For the minor Order of the Deputy or Candle-bearer is omitted Compare Morin, De sacris ordinationibus, p. 66, Antwerp edition 1695.

dd. Although St. Ignatius, abbot and monk, could confer baptism on account of the heresy prevailing everywhere, which infected very many presbyters, yet it must be noted that formerly, as Edmond Martène says De antiquis Ecclesiae ritibus, vol. I, p. 5, Venice edition 1783, it is most certain that a privilege of this kind was granted to certain churches of monks, even from the beginning, on account of the apostolic institute of their life and the reverence which the power of their sanctity required from the peoples. The praised Martène then brings forward more examples of such a concession.

ee. Of St. Theophanes, abbot and Confessor, our men treat at the 12th day of March Acta SS., vol. II of March, p. 216.

CHAPTER II.

St. Ignatius ascends the see of Constantinople, which he makes illustrious by great virtues; he gravely reprehends Bardas Caesar, who attempts to force him to abdication; the Saint refuses to yield his place.

The Catholic cause having been better established, While Ignatius was thus illustriously occupied in these excellent pursuits, Theophilus departed, and the whole empire devolved upon Theodora, the most religious and outstanding of matrons and most Christian empress, her son Michael being still very tender ^a. Hence the sect hostile to sacred images was laid to rest, and the sanctification of the Holy Church flowered. Hence John, or rather Jannes of ill-omened name (whom they used to call Lecanomantis or the magician ^b, by whom Theophilus is believed to have been driven into error) was deservedly stripped of the see of Constantinople and of the priesthood itself: and there was raised up a horn of salvation for the people of God, Methodius, truly a good shepherd of the Christian flock and a true teacher of the true doctrine of the Church ^c; who, having previously discharged many labours and dangers in defence of the holy images, was set over the Church of Constantinople by the will of God and the work of the empress. All, then, being removed from office and scattered who were infected by the stain of heresy, he founded a new Church, and set priests and bishops on the foundation of his right faith. For when heretics (as also previously under Tarasius, the sacred and divine shepherd, and the pious Irene ^d) condemned their sect and obtained pardon, and again slipped back into the destruction of heresy, the outstanding man Nicephorus ^e, still surviving, and this Methodius, their extirpation having been divinely decreed, and declared against all the heretics at the impulse of the divine man Joannicius ^f, he showed the path of truth to those still seeking to walk the right way. But when he had ruled the Church of God excellently and most holily for four years, he went away to God to obtain everlasting peace.

[11] St. Ignatius, after Methodius, When many were then designated for the administration of the Church, and others for other reasons were disappointed of their wish, so that the destined sentence of God might stand, Ignatius, the most holy presbyter, when for many years he had discharged the functions of the priesthood with great praise, and had already built up a good step for himself in much authority and in faith in Jesus Christ, and on that account was celebrated on the lips of all, although fleeing the greatness of the dignity, yet by the force of the Holy Spirit and the authority and opinion of the prelates, judged most worthy of the sacred honour, was placed in the sacred see of the ruling city, and the lamp was set on the lampstand; since before the opinions of all the bishops and people, the empress had sent to consult Joannicius the anchorite, whether he recognised through the Lord anyone worthy of this honour of the patriarchate; that outstanding Joannicius divinely pronounced Ignatius ^g. And so the good shepherd, entering by the door into the sheepfold, called his own sheep by name, whom, snatched from noxious and pestilent herbs and from every heretical plague and destruction, he led down and led into the immortal and ever-green pastures of right faith and justice. He himself both shrank from every crime and, applying himself especially to every pursuit of the principal virtues and of fairness, strove towards the summit of perfect piety. For prudence was his care, not to acquire for himself wealth and human glory and pleasures; but to understand and follow well, in the spirit of right judgement, the holy, well-pleasing and perfect will of God. And his fortitude was this, never to succumb in slavery to sin, but to be free and to rule over the nobles, and according to the prescription of the Apostle I Tim. V, 20, to chastise the sinner keenly, and this often before all, and not to subject himself in a servile manner, so that the others also, he says, may be kept in duty through fear.

[12] is set over the Church of Constantinople; Temperance he cultivated not only in his own body, which from his tender years he so perfectly attained by labours and sweats that he entirely extinguished every sensation and all the harmful desires of the body. Nor did he, then, enclose the splendour of temperance within these limits only, but by the gravity and assiduity of his morals and doctrine he advanced his whole Church to such honesty and modesty that among his intimates not even the name of fornication or of any impurity was heard. For just as he himself walked the right ways of the Lord, so the excellent paranymph led the spouse of the Lord along the blameless path of life. Now how shall I tell how tenacious he was of justice? Since he preserved justice so rigidly that for its sake he was not rarely reprehended by unjust arbiters of fairness, and the truly gentle shepherd and imitator of divine justice was most harshly condemned. For not in civil matters only, but much more in ecclesiastical disputes and judgements he was readily recognised as inclining to the weight and scale of truth and fairness; and on the contrary as most vehemently and severely pursuing falsehood and any injustice. Nor did the ardour and divine freedom of speech of the prelate shine forth only towards plebeians and the humbler sort, against whom, if they sin in anything, censure is easy and free for anyone; but also against princes, magistrates and dynasts, and the very emperors: which my discourse now declares ^h.

[13] but Bardas, the empress's brother, gravely reprehended, That Bardas, who, as I know, you all know to have been the brother, not good but very savage and cruel, of Theodora, the good sovereign ⁱ. For although he was outstanding and industrious in the administration of civil affairs, yet nobody ever called him suitable for divine and ecclesiastical matters, as one who so raged with love for his daughter-in-law that the report of this thing went through the whole city; and it clung not only among the common people, but the indignity of the deed was brought also to the ears of the patriarch. What then did the patriarch do? Not revering the man's dignity, he pressed down the crime in silence? He accused and reprehended him according to the law, and exhorted him not to go and destroy his soul by neglecting salvation, but to expiate the foul and enormous crime. He however not only did not abstain from his wickedness, but on the very feast day of the Epiphany shamelessly proceeded into the sacred building, about to receive the mysteries of the Eucharist. What did the patriarch do here? He kept him away from the sacred things, judging him unworthy of participation in the Lord's body ^k. And he, roused by a dire frenzy, raged, and armed for his own destruction threatened that he would fix a sword in the prelate's bowels. But Ignatius threatened in return, invoking God, who was able to turn the sword against him. Hence the first origin of the offences: hence the source of the ecclesiastical disturbance: hence Bardas, having conceived grave anger and hatred, sunk deep in his breast, moved every rope, as the saying is, against Ignatius, so as to accuse him before the emperor.

[14] attempts by various arts to compel the patriarch, Bardas was then patrician and domestic of the scholae ^l, and he claimed for himself the whole administration of the empire, as the uncle of Michael. This man, approaching the youth one day and capturing him with insidious words: What, he said,

Lord, do you permit the empire to your mother and sisters? Yet you are no longer an infant and immature in age; indeed, he said, having now taken a wife, you play the man; you ought therefore henceforth to bear a manly mind. So send for the patriarch and order your mother and sisters to be shorn and veiled. For that you should henceforth rule alone with the children to be begotten by you both pleases the heavenly deity and seems most fair to us. So he immediately summoned the venerable patriarch. For youth is inconstant and changeable, and is easily carried away by vain hope: and if the summit of power is added, its levity is greater still, and it often slips into greater madness and a fall. Then therefore Michael, laying the beginning of his corruptions and depraved morals, and truly the more of his impieties, said: Seize my mother and sisters forthwith, shear them, and, veiled in the religious garment, assign them to the religious life ^m. But the patriarch freely said: This it is unlawful for me to do: for when I took up the helm of the Church and the sacred see, I bound my faith by an oath in writing that I would never lay snares against your rule or carry on any plan of this kind. And indeed now, what is the crime of the queens, or what is the cause in them, that your majesty should plot such things against them?

[15] to abdicate his see As the patriarch was saying these things, Bardas indicted him for treason, and before the emperor abusively called him Gebobasileutus ⁿ (or like the pseudo-imperial stock of Gebo). This Gebo was a stolid man and of unsound mind, who in recent days had come from Dyrrachium, clothed indeed in ecclesiastical dress, but passing himself off as the son of the Augusta Theodora by another man, to whom not a few of the common people adhered as one about to reign: at that time he was held under firm guard in the island of Oxia or Acuta ^o. The patriarch, suspected on that account by Michael, immediately withdrew to the church. And Michael straightway ordered his mother with his sisters to be thrust out, carried off to the house of Carianus [p], and shorn. And not long after he drove out the patriarch Ignatius also, and cast him out into the island of Terebinthus; and on the same day he transferred that Gebo from Acuta to the Princes' islands, and having cut off his legs and arms and torn out his eyes, killed him, thinking that on this occasion he would go to take vengeance on the patriarch. Not yet had three days passed from the patriarch's departure when there came those who were reckoned the first among the bishops, asking from him a written deed or document of abdication on account of the iniquity of the present times. And who were these? Those who had previously sworn to him in writing that they would first deny the supreme majesty of the Trinity before they would suffer their shepherd to be removed from office without a canonical sentence of condemnation. But they returned with the matter undone. And within a few days patricians and the most illustrious judges, going out with the same bishops, compelled him by all engines and promises and threats to abdicate the episcopate, if he did not wish to commit himself to open danger. But he stood no less firm and unmoved than a sea cliff, fixed with deep roots in the land, yielding nothing to the assaults of the waves. So since they had nothing by which to hurt him, no cause having been given by him of which he could not render account, with bare head, as they say, and brazen brow, they descended to everything lawful and unlawful.

[16] which St. Ignatius refuses, And indeed our Lord Jesus Christ, as true God and offspring of the true Father, not only insofar as he is eternal God foresaw all things before they are, but also because, made man for us, foreknowing all things by his deified mind: It must needs be, he says Matth. XVIII, 7, that scandals come: but woe to him through whom the scandal comes. The authors, then, of all the sects which from the divine presence of Christ in humanity to the present day have crept with destruction into the Churches, as leaders of scandals, are worthy to be the first to share the evil which Christ threatens. But no less, I think, will those who have acted malignly in our age than those ancient and much-sung heresiarchs feel the wrath and vengeance of the heavenly deity, as being the authors of innumerable offences and evils to the whole world. For they will not on this account be enrolled in the roll of the just, that namely they seem to confess God by right dogmas and innumerable writings: but they will be condemned for this, that, as is in the sacred pages Tit. I, 16, they have denied God by their very deeds, made abominable and contumacious and reprobate for every good work. Nor, because feigning a mask of piety and a countenance of religion they do and accomplish everything so as to be thought just by men, are they on that account just before God, the knower and judge of hidden things: but because, the sinew of piety having been crushed, they have not conformed their morals to the precepts of the Gospel, because, blind with love of themselves, sold and delivered over to avarice and pleasures and ambition, oppressing the innocent by every kind of injuries, perjuries, tortures, snares and evil deeds, they have disturbed and overturned the excellently composed state of the Church: and have contaminated, polluted and profaned the divine matter, and the name and sacred things of the holy Church, with so many impieties and crimes, that there is danger (I might almost say) lest the mystery of piety should seem to consist in bare words rather than in deeds and truth; on that account they will incur the most just sentence of condemnation to be pronounced by God.

[17] judging that this tended to the detriment of the Church. And of all these evils the stock and root and first and most certain cause was he who was a murderer from the beginning: who, because he wholly fell away from the good, made an artificer of evil-doing, does not cease today to belch out his venom into those whom in all ages he has ready to drink it: and he pours out his poison the more largely and widely, the more apt to his purpose he finds them. And such men are often permitted to obtain mastery of affairs and to be raised to the empires of the lands, that, as is in the divine oracles Luke II, 35, the thoughts from many hearts may be revealed; and that the wheat may be separated from the chaff, and the just man, cooked by the fire of troubles like gold in a furnace, may be reserved for the heavenly treasures; and whatever, like dross, is adulterated and unworthy of the heavenly kingdom may be cast away. And to these things, I think, none of those who cultivate piety will contradict. But let us see further what next befell Blessed Ignatius, and how great the evils that the old rogue and enemy of holy men devised by his malice through his ministers against the faith and virtue hidden in him. But since I understand that I cannot go through all things one by one, and that I shall not be equal to such great matters, turning my discourse to narrating the principal things, and zealously pursuing everywhere the bare truth of the matter, I shall take care to the best of my strength not to pass over anything of the things worthy of memory.

ANNOTATIONS.

p. Carianum, as Charles Du Cange notes Constantinopolis Christiana, Book II, p. 133 and book IV, p. 154 and 166, was at once a palace, an old people's home and a monastery, situated in a most pleasant place, which the emperor Theophilus, Michael's father, had built in favour of his daughters: there is therefore an excellent reason given why Michael relegated his mother and sisters to this building.

CHAPTER III.

Photius by force and deceit usurps the see of Constantinople; he persecutes St. Ignatius, and attempts to deceive the Roman Pontiff.

Photius, a layman, imbued with every kind of letters, After, then, the royal ministers, the matter having been often attempted, could not bend Ignatius to what they unjustly sought, he bravely and constantly protecting his dignity, they asked counsel from themselves for the future: and, the matters having been long discussed among themselves and turned in every direction, at length they designated as patriarch of the royal city Photius, protospatharius and first secretary ^a: a man indeed by no means obscure and ignoble, but sprung from a renowned and illustrious birth, and most distinguished by practice in civil and political affairs, by prudence and knowledge. For he so flourished in the literature of grammar and the composing of poetry and the praise of speaking, and indeed in the study and knowledge of philosophy and medicine and nearly all the liberal external disciplines, that he was easily held the prince of his age, and indeed could already contend with the ancients. For everything had come together in him, a certain aptitude and force and felicity of nature, zeal, wealth, by which he procured for himself the greatest abundance of all books; and, what above all, the desire of glory and praise, inflamed by which he spent whole nights sleepless so as to give time assiduously to reading. And since he was about to ascend the sacred throne of the Church also (would that it had never happened), he began zealously to read over the sacred and ecclesiastical volumes too. But, to speak in the manner of the Theologian of Nazianzus ^b, which indeed was unworthy of his wisdom, he was ignorant of ignorance. For he would not notice that if anyone wishes to become wise in this world, let him be a fool, that he may be wise I Cor. III, 18. Nor did he enter the way of modesty and submission, by which one arrives at heavenly grace and true wisdom; nor, laying aside pride, did he wish to be converted and become as a little one for the sake of the kingdom of God, according to the Lord's voice Matth. XVIII, 3: nor to dig his soul and mind deeper and to lower them with all subjection, as the Lord orders, by abjection and the more humble path; and so through mortification of the affections to be joined to Christ the rock, and to set upon himself the unshaken foundation of faith, and to establish himself by pious works as a dwelling of wisdom.

[19] the see of Constantinople None of these things came into this man's mind, he thought of everything else; strengthening his heart and mind on the fragile and sandy foundation of vain and profane wisdom and insolence, of doctrine not according to Christ, inflated by the vain praises and applause of men and lifted up by empty glory, through it he joined himself to the pride that is the enemy of God, from which he was taught the material of all impiety and all offences. So having cast the blameworthy

foundations of his priesthood, he obtained an end consistent with the beginnings. For he neither repudiated the Church as committed to him profanely and sacrilegiously by profane magistrates, nor did he fear to be betrothed to her by adultery as one married to another man: but rather on the contrary, exulting, he rushed greedily and shamelessly into her embrace, and openly claimed another's as his own; he gloried in his infamy and disgrace and was praised in his iniquity: and within six days and no more, initiated by the hands of men, he invaded the coveted cathedra of the Church. And one could truly behold, as the adage has it, an extempore and fictitious or masked Saint. For on the first day he was a monk from a layman ^c, on the second a lector, then subdeacon and deacon and presbyter ^d; then on the sixth, which was the nativity of Christ, he too, ascending the sacred tribunal, announced peace to the people, thinking nothing worthy of true peace ^e, ^f. His author and initiator in everything was that Gregory, surnamed Asbestas, who they say was formerly pontiff of Syracuse ^g, then was made guilty of evil deeds at Constantinople and now at Rome had been deposed for having sinned against the canons. This man Ignatius, when he was to be consecrated patriarch, admonished not to attend his initiation, until at leisure his cause could be diligently examined. Which deed of the patriarch at the beginning many reprehended, although it was justly done.

[20] impiously and fraudulently usurps; Hence, oh, who can unfold that disaster and night which arose from these few words? Who can attain in speech the disturbances and factions and suits and the wickedness of that fine Sicilian? For as soon as he received the news of this matter, he did not show himself a philosopher and prudently cover his infamy and disgrace; but he threw down the candles received for the consecration of Ignatius ^h, and with a most shameless mouth, most foully abusing the innocent man before the whole Church, he furiously shouted that a wolf had been substituted for a shepherd. He was followed by Peter, bishop of Sardis, surnamed Miser ⁱ, and Eulampius of Apamea ^k, and others of the clergy of greater obscurity, separating themselves from the Church without cause. For eleven whole years ^l, then, from when he first received the see of Constantinople, Ignatius, attempting every means, and applying all courtesy and liberality of words, yet could never extinguish the wickedness of Asbestas ^m. For he wore out the thresholds of the more powerful, accused the man for no fault before all and bitterly tore at him with abuse, and, cursing the Saint, did not deem him worthy even of the name of a Christian. And especially to Photius and his followers he was most welcome and most honoured, and was believed to be some great man of God. Wherefore Photius was first initiated by him: who, led on by the man's authority, drank from him all his fury against the guiltless Ignatius, just as if he had been consecrated patriarch for this very purpose, to go and destroy the innocent man by all plans and in all ways; he fought so as not only to deprive him of the priesthood, but also, if he could, to strip him of life. Although written undertakings had been required from him by his metropolitans, by whom he had been received, that he should give fatherly honour to Ignatius, and do everything according to his will, and not be troublesome in anything; yet he himself, scarcely two months after his creation, having violated his oath, first cast the intimates of Ignatius into chains, and punished them with dire scourges and blows; then again using blandishments, and promising gifts and honours, he sought written deeds and strove by all means to find a cause of exile against Ignatius. And when he found none of the things which he desired, he suggested to the criminal Bardas, and through Bardas to the most light-minded Michael, to send those who should severely investigate Ignatius as one plotting against the empire.

[21] persecutes St. Ignatius, So cruel prefects and savage henchmen immediately made for Terebinthus, set up all kinds of inquiries, and tortured the servants of Ignatius with all torments. But after the searchers failed in their searching Ps. LXIII, 7, and detected nothing for which they could rightfully punish him, they went at him with open crime. For seizing the holy man and his followers they carried them over to Hieria ⁿ, and shut up Ignatius bound in a goat stable. From there they transferred him to the places which were called Prometi ^o; where that Leo, surnamed Lalaco, Domestic of the Numeri [p], so monstrously beat his cheeks with blows that he knocked out two molar teeth of the most sacred old man: then they bound his feet with two bars, like a robber's, and left him shut up in a narrow prison-house, only two boys being granted to him as attendants. And all this force and harassment tended to this, that Ignatius should write a document of abdication and of his own accord yield the patriarchal throne. But Ignatius, seeing the wolf savagely going at the flock, repressed his attack as much as he could. Not many days having elapsed from then, led into the Numera [q], they loaded him with chains in the prison: then as the month of August approached, thrown into a ship, they carried him to Mitylene [r]. Further, those who were held to be his intimates and friends they afflicted with most monstrous tortures and deadly blows; and those whom they treated most courteously they punished with exile; and from Blasius the chartophylax [s] they cut off the tongue on account of his faith and freedom of speech. Further, while Ignatius was staying at Mitylene, Photius, a church of the malignant, akin to himself, having been assembled, pronounced the deposition of the absent Ignatius in the very temple of the most glorious Apostles: nor did he only pronounce it, but he struck Ignatius with anathema and condemned him, and the same man as accuser, the same as judge proclaimed him condemned [t]. Those whom he saw favouring his faction, assenting to his insane deeds and subscribing his decrees, these indeed he held among his intimate friends and fellow initiates: but those who were offended by his madness, and did not approve his deeds (as those who would be of sincere duty), he handed over, most evilly received, to the praetorium and to chains.

[22] and attempts to impose upon the Roman Pontiff. Many therefore muttering, and condemning the wicked acts of Photius, and indeed the very conscience of his deeds protesting, Photius took a plan more wicked than wise. For he thought not to heal evil with good, but evil with evil, and to add a greater evil to a lesser. For as those who have entered the way of virtue strive up to God through good works as if by steps, so the wicked, having left the right path, are coupled through evil works to the author of malice, and do not cease to heap crime upon crime, until they are driven headlong into the depth of their evil deeds. He too therefore destined a legation to Old Rome, and asked from Pope Nicholas [u] legates, who in appearance indeed should amend the fallen discipline of the Church and entirely extinguish the remains of the condemned sect of the Iconomachs; but in reality, so that by the authority of the Roman Church he should confirm the deposition of Ignatius and render it better attested. He legated therefore Theophilus, bishop of Amorium [v], and Samuel, who up to that day had been prelate of Chonae, subject to Laodicea, and was deemed worthy by Photius of the honour of archbishop [w]. Through whom that fine man did not fear to write lies to the supreme Pontiff: that Ignatius, worn out with old age and disease and labouring under bodily infirmity, had abdicated his office, and was staying in his own island and monastery, and was attended by the princes and people and the whole Church with every honour and duties. The Pontiff, having received the legates, ignorant of the affairs done at Constantinople, sent off two legates, the bishops Zacharias and Rhodoald [x].

ANNOTATIONS.

states are they distinguished, into ἀρχαριους or of beginners, μικροσχημους or of the proficient, and μεγαλοσχημους or of the perfect. Yet the latter distinction of garments was disapproved by St. Theodore the Studite (whose Acts will be given at the 12th day of November) in his testament, which can be read in Baronius at the year 826, § LVII: you shall not give, he says, the little habit, as they call it, afterwards as if the great. For the habit is one, as also baptism, just as was the custom of the Holy Fathers. Whether, further, Photius put on this double habit in one day, it is not possible to judge: this seems certain, that nothing was lacking to him that could be of use from outward solemnity.

p. Leo Lalaco is called domestic of the Numeri, or commander of the palatine cohort Compare Du Cange, Glossary of Middle Greek, under Νουμερα: perhaps prefect of the prison, of which a little below? Yet Baronius at the year 858, § LII calls the same man domestic or count of the Sacred Largesses; which office was altogether foreign to a military command, since its scribes were called the lettered militia Panciroli, Notitia Imperii Orientis, p. 125, Geneva edition 1623.

q. The Numera was a prison at Constantinople Glossary of Middle Greek, under Νουμερα: in the Continuator of Theophanes, book IV, chap. 22, we read that Irene, widow of the brother of Photius, was accustomed at the beginning of each month to go to those who were held bound in the Chalce, in the Praetorium and in the Numera Byzantine Writers, Continuator of Theophanes, p. 175, Bonn edition. In the same way Simeon the master calls the Numera a prison Ibid., p. 668.

r. Mitylene, a city of the island of Lesbos in the Aegean sea, from which the island too today borrows its name, Metelin Baudrand, Geographical Dictionary, under this word.

s. The Chartophylax held the fifth dignity from the patriarch in the Church of Constantinople, and indeed a very great one; since, on the testimony of Codinus in the book on the Offices of the Church of Constantinople, chap. I Byzantine Writers, Codinus, De officiis, p. 4, Bonn edition, he has the paper records pertaining to ecclesiastical rights and is judge of all ecclesiastical causes and presides over the examination and settlement of matrimonial controversies: indeed, he is also judge in the other suits of clerics, as the right hand of the patriarch.

t. We have the pseudo-synod of Photius described in the collection of Councils Labbe, Councils, vol. VIII, col. 1511. And in the preface of Zonaras it is inscribed: The holy and great first and second synod of Constantinople, assembled in the temple of the Holy and most glorious Apostles. Among those therefore who read this inscription a doubt arises, for what reason, though it is one, this synod is called first and second. Zonaras then explains that there was a bitter dispute between the orthodox and the men of the opposing faction, which defiled the assembly with bloodshed. On this account after an interval of time a new assembly was held: and because of the fathers being twice convoked, it is named a double synod. So much for Zonaras. But Metrophanes, metropolitan of Smyrna, a contemporary of the events Le Quien, Oriens Christianus, vol. I, col. 743, sets out the matter otherwise in a letter given to the patrician Manuel, which is inserted in the synodal letter of the VIII ecumenical Council, directed to Pope Adrian II Labbe, Councils, vol. VIII, col. 1386. He says first that Photius was not designated by the bishops through votes according to the law and rite of the Church, but intruded by Bardas Caesar alone. For which reason all the bishops, rejecting him by a common opinion, persisted in that opinion for many days. Behold the first synod. Then, Metrophanes continues, gradually through fraud nearly all fell away, except five, among whom I also was numbered. And when we noticed that the ruder flock of bishops was corrupted, we thought that he should at least be declared by his own written deed a son of our Church, and restored to the communion of the most holy patriarch, so that in this way too we might not seem alien from the decree of the patriarch, who had sanctioned that he who was established patriarch should be from our Church in Christ. Then when, in our presence, he had attested by his written deed that he would hold Ignatius as blameless patriarch, and would neither say anything against him nor suffer it to be said by another, Photius was received by us, unwilling, as we were being pressed by the force of the princes. (Behold the second synod.) Who a little after both took away his own written deed and punished Ignatius with deposition. Baronius renders the Greek text in another way at 870, § XLVI, by which he presents an altogether different picture of the affair, which we believe it worthwhile to bring forward here. But then nearly all gradually fell away, except five, among whom I myself was. And as soon as we saw the whole multitude of bishops corrupted, we thought it would be worthwhile, even by an assent written with our own hand, to declare Photius a son of our Church of Christ, and the partner and colleague of its most holy prelate Ignatius, so that in this way we might be found in no way opposing the edicts of Bardas. For he had decreed that we should establish a patriarch for our Church of Christ, although in our presence he wrote with his own hand that he esteemed Ignatius to be a patriarch immune from all fault, and that he would never say anything against him. But if anyone should say that Photius was admitted as colleague of the patriarch: Photius was certainly admitted by us, yet unwilling, indeed by force and the rule of him who ruled. Who a little after himself also deleted the deed which he had written with his own hand and deposed Ignatius. The reader easily perceives how great is the difference between the two versions. As regards our matter, there are two things especially very unlike one another: namely that Photius was simply restored to the communion of St. Ignatius, while the other version makes him partner and colleague: the second is that it was by order of St. Ignatius that the patriarch was to be taken from the clergy of Constantinople, when it ascribes a mandate of this kind. Before all things let us bring the Greek words into the middle: Και ὡς εἰδομεν το ἀγελαιον πληθος των ἐπισκοπων ὑποφθαρεν, ᾠηθημεν δειν κᾀν δι᾽ ἰδιοχειρου ὁμολογιας τεκνον αὐτον ἀποφηναι της ἐν Χριστῳ καθ᾽ ἡμας ἐκκλησιας, και του ταυτης ἀρχιερεως ἁγιοτατου κοινωνον, ἱνα και ὁυτω προς την ἐκεινου διαταξιν μηδαμως εὑρεθωμεν διαφωνησαντες· ἠν γαρ θεσπισας, ἐκ της ἐν Χριστῳ καθ᾽ ἡμας ἐκκλησιας ψηφισασθαι πατριαρχην. Which words we render literally: And when we saw that the crowd of the ruder bishops was altogether corrupted, we thought it necessary that by a confession of his own hand he should be declared a son of our Church in Christ, and partner of the most holy archbishop of the same Church (or in communion with the archbishop): so that in such a way we might be found in no way dissenting from his mandate: for he had ordered that the patriarch should be elected from our Church in Christ. The reader sees that the whole question turns first of all on the force of the word κοινωνον, which can signify a sharer of the patriarch, and so his partner and colleague, or one communicating with the patriarch. And indeed, derived from κοινος, it generally signified ecclesiastical communion, which was constituted in the unity of the Most Holy Eucharist and prayer, as the Glossary of Middle Greek abundantly testifies, nor have I anywhere found it for association to some dignity. Nevertheless I judge that we can probably, and indeed ought to, interpret this word κοινωνον of consortship in the patriarchal dignity, as we would say today of a coadjutorship with future succession. The reason which impels me is the very uselessness of the act, if it were a question merely of lay communion, nor should Metrophanes have alleged that this was extorted from him unwilling; Bardas wanted Photius as patriarch, and so this was to some extent to be done even by the unwilling: and by associating Photius with St. Ignatius both would his dignity remain to the latter and there would be handed over to the former, with a sure hope of ascending the patriarchal throne at some time, the present ministry of the episcopal office: in this way he judged that both sides would be satisfied. Whence we judge that consortship of the dignity should be admitted through the more modest word κοινωνον, and the more so since he immediately subjoins that the patriarch was to be elected by the votes of the bishops from the bosom of the Church of Constantinople, of which Photius was a son: for if there had previously been dealing only with ecclesiastical communion, it does not appear how these things would square with one another. As regards the other difference, namely whose mandate Metrophanes confesses that he obeyed, whether that of Ignatius the patriarch or of Bardas Caesar: it is easily solved, our conjecture being admitted, and the version of Baronius, otherwise not very accurate; certainly Ignatius in no way wanted a successor or consort of his dignity; therefore the mandate of election is to be derived from Bardas. From the grammatical context of the above words nothing may be concluded, since it treats now of Ignatius the patriarch, now of Bardas Caesar. And enough of these things.

u. The letter of Photius sent to Pope St. Nicholas I was made public by Baronius from a codex of the Colonna library at Rome at the year 861, § XXXIV: and Cardinal Angelo Mai presents it more accurately in Greek in his Nova Bibliotheca Labbe, vol. IV, p. 50 and following.

v. Theophilus, known uniquely from this wicked legation, was bishop of Amorium, a city of Phrygia Salutaris, on the side where it borders Galatia Compare Le Quien, Oriens Christianus, vol. I, col. 853.

w. Samuel, bishop of Chonae, was granted by Photius the title of archbishop, which however is inferior to the dignity of a metropolitan Compare Du Cange, Glossary of Middle Greek, under Ἀρχιεπισκοπος. Michel Le Quien says further Oriens Christianus, vol. I, col. 816 that the same metropolitan Samuel sat among the restorers of Photius. For the rest, to Chonae, a city of Phrygia Pacatiana, the see of Colossae was transferred Ibid., loc. cit..

x. Of Rhodoald or, as Anastasius the Librarian writes, Rhadoald Compare Ughelli, Italia sacra, vol. I, col. 112 of Porto, and Zacharias of Anagni Compare Ibid., col. 308 the praised Anastasius treats in the Life of St. Nicholas I. The supreme Pontiff, he says Migne, Patrology, vol. CXXVIII, Anastasius, col. 1362, still ignorant of the very wicked thinking of the emperor (Michael), directed two bishops there (to Constantinople), namely Radoald and Zacharias. Instructing them that whatever question arose about the sacred images they should define synodically, and that they should solemnly inquire only into the cause of the patriarch Ignatius himself and of the neophyte Photius, and report to him. Who, thinking little of the statutes of the holy pontiff, what or how great things they did there, corrupted by money, in the manner of Vitalis and Misenus, I shall run through succinctly below. A little below, then, he has thus Ibid., col. 1366: Nicholas directed from his side two bishops, Radoald, as has been said before, of Porto, and Zacharias of Anagni, whom he thought suitable for this work, instructing and commanding them that they should only inquire into the cause of the election of Ignatius himself and of the subrogation of Photius and report to him; and meanwhile that they should avoid communion with the neophyte Photius, until, returning, they should have taken care to render a sure answer about everything. But they, going off, despising what they had received in their mandates, not only communicated with the neophyte Photius against the sentence forbidden them, but also, corrupted by gifts, favouring him and his consecration, having convoked a general synod, deposed the same man, the patriarch Ignatius, anew. Indignant at such great perfidy Nicholas deposed Rhodoald and Zacharias in the Roman Synod of the year 863: Zacharias indeed, who, says Anastasius Ibid., col. 1367, was present, he deprived of the priestly grade, and indeed of ecclesiastical communion, because he was found to have overstepped apostolic prohibitions in many things. And the cause of Bishop Rhodoald was suspended, whom afterwards the pious Pope, together with the holy Synod, condemned for violating his mandates in the Gauls also, breaking excommunication and evading canonical judgement.

CHAPTER IV.

Photius, having corrupted the pontifical legates, assembles a conventicle, in which St. Ignatius is deposed and then tortured in many ways; Pope Nicholas rescinds the acts of Photius, but Michael, the impious emperor, is deceived by Photius.

St. Ignatius, relegated to the island of Terebinthus, Meanwhile the athlete of Christ, six months having been spent at Mitylene, returned from exile: he returned, by the will of the princes, restored to the island of Terebinthus, not so much to honour, quiet and solace as to ignominy, harassment and greater affliction. For how greatly the enemy acted malignly against him, and how great the hardships which Nicetas, drungarius of the royal fleet ^a, surnamed Oryphas, likewise how great the insults he inflicted in order to gratify Photius and the princes, what speech could attain? Who could set out in detail the attack, the abuse, the stripes, the tortures which he exercised with bloody hand upon his intimates? There was added another calamity for the holy man. In that season the Rhossi, a most savage people of the Scythians ^b, having made an incursion from the Euxine Sea to the Stenum ^c, plundered all the surrounding region and all the monasteries: of the Byzantine islanders also ^d they plundered in their devastation all the vessels, carried off the silver, and butchered those captured to the last man. Finally, they attacked the monasteries of the patriarch himself with barbarian fury, and despoiled them, all their furnishing being plundered, and twenty-two of his closest intimates, being captured, they butchered with axes, all on one ship's trochanter ^e. When he had heard of these disasters, he had always this one word on his lips: The Lord gave, the Lord has taken away: as it pleased the Lord, so it has been done Job I, 21, and what follows. Thus giving thanks and assiduously intent on prayer, he implored judgement and aid from God, expecting no salvation from the princes. For they, when they had heard that he was oppressed by such great evils and hardships, were so far from grieving or consoling the afflicted man, that they even took it ill that he had not perished, captured by barbarian force with his household, not so glad at those killed as sad at the safety of the living just man. Which ought not to seem a wonder; for a mind destitute of all charity and wholly imbued with hatred, consumed as by a fire set beneath it, thinks the destruction of the one it hates the only relief of its evil.

[24] in vain to the conventicle Not much time passed, and again there were conventicles, again assemblies of princes and pontiffs against the Saint. And Ignatius indeed was staying in the house of Posis ^f and observing the insidious machinations against him. And Photius with his faction and the legates of the Pontiff sent from the City occupied the sacred church of the Apostles. The emperors were there, all the princes were there, and nearly the whole city had flowed together. When, then, they were present in numbers, they first destined to Ignatius, as apocrisiarii, the provost Baanes, surnamed Angoras, and some others of the baser Romans. Who said before Ignatius: The great and sacred Synod cites you. As soon as possible, then, be present, to plead your cause concerning the crimes alleged against you, whether true or false. Here the Blessed man said: Come, I beg you, how am I to come? As a bishop, or a priest, or a monk? They, at a loss, said: Now we go away; tomorrow we shall bring you back something certain. The next day, then, the same men returning said: The legates of Old Rome, Rhodoald and Zacharias ^g, announce this to you through us unworthy men, that you be present without delay at the holy and ecumenical synod, as your conscience dictates to you. So Ignatius straightway, putting on the sacred adornment of the patriarch, with the bishops and clergy, and a great throng of monks, and the running-together and company of the citizens, entering the way on foot, when he had come to the church of St. Gregory the Theologian ^h, where a cross is set on a marble column in the middle of the public road, the patrician John, called Coxes, met him and said that he had been sent by the emperor, and that unless he came forth in the private and customary dress of a monk, the danger and punishment of death hung over him. The holy man obeyed and was made to stand before the synod. They set against him seventy-two perjured witnesses, all impious men whom they had long since suborned, common men and senators alike, of whom the leader was the patrician Leo, surnamed Creticus, and after him Theodotacius, likewise a patrician, on whom too the dignity of magister was conferred as the price of perjury.

[25] of Photius is cited: To these they joined the rest of every grade and lot, even the worst; and not only these, but heretics whom they call Dibaptists ⁱ. And, so to speak, from all the dregs and sewage of mankind they brought forward one by one all the foulest and most worthless men, led on by gold and promises of dignities, who should testify on oath that Ignatius, who had already been patriarch for nearly twelve years, had occupied the cathedra not created duly and in order. And what did their stolid judges, in whose hands are iniquities and whose right hand is filled with gifts Ps. XXV, 10? What did they decree against this perjury? They suddenly brought in the thirtieth canon, which runs thus ^k: If any bishop, using secular powers, obtains a Church through them, let him be deposed. But what follows in the same chapter: that all who communicate with him also etc., the fraudulent men maliciously kept silent. For it was necessary, since they were fighting for an apostolic sanction, to observe not a part but the whole canon; and if they had admitted the accusation, to remove from office, like Ignatius, those initiated by him and communicating with him: and thus they would have been manifestly caught as sinners in the works of their own hands. But decreeing against right and law, they pronounced only this, which served for them to overthrow Ignatius, wronged by them without cause: and what follows in the canon, by which they themselves are subjected to the same censure, they dissembled: which, they keeping silent, the patriarch himself opportunely cried out. O wickedness, O stupidity! For who does not know that Ignatius was lawfully and canonically created by the votes of all the bishops and the applause of the whole people? And that Photius himself rather, armed by the accursed Bardas and by secular princes, against the laws, and more by tyranny than by the ecclesiastical way, invaded the throne? But those who walk in the darkness of avarice and ambition did not know nor understand that they were being caught in the same snares of their counsels that they had prepared for others.

[26] and sacrilegiously removed from office After a long altercation of words, then, labour and delay, using only overwhelming power furiously, against all right and law, they first clothe him in tattered and dirty pontifical dress, and afterwards strip it off again from behind ^l. There was a certain subdeacon, Procopius by name, cast out of the Church, since the patriarch not long before had moved him from his grade as insane in mind and profane in morals. This man first, taking the pallium from the patriarch, and his other sacred dress, proclaimed this solemn word: Unworthy. Zacharias and Rhodoald and some other wicked men, vociferating the same, voted for the impious decree. All of whom however the heavenly vengeance shortly overtook, when that sickle of the holy prophet Zechariah with the best right reaped them down ^m. And by what other means would Photius betray to the whole world his hidden anger against the guiltless man, and show himself to be very far from Jesus, the peaceful and gentle shepherd, than by devising things of this kind, and by inflicting such great injuries on a just man? There was nobody who did not reprehend this judgement, and who did not turn away from the indignity, or rather the monstrosity, of the matter. For not only those who followed right reason, but also the relatives and intimates of Photius himself groaned at the infamy of these proceedings, and foreboded that all this wickedness would one day redound upon the head and destruction of the unjust judge himself. And what did he do? Did he revere men? Did he fear God, who loves justice and judgement, and from that time lay aside his anger? By no means. Rather, heaping hatred on hatred, envy on envy, crime on crime, he attempted by every reason and force not only to ruin Ignatius but, what is more atrocious, to remove him from the midst as a guilty man worthy of the last punishment. And so then, removed from office as they had begun, and condemned by public proclamation, they handed him over to most monstrous and most criminal men to be tortured until he should subscribe with his own hand his own abdication. So they punished him with blows and harassed him wretchedly; and when he was nearly wasting away with cold, they weakened him, clothed in only one little tunic, and burned and tortured him. And when they had held him for two weeks in prison, they nearly finished him off with the extremity of hunger ⁿ. Indeed they also compelled him to ascend the sepulchre or chest of Copronymus, and, having placed him on it, they hung huge stones from his feet, and often wore down his buttocks, beaten upon the sharp edge of the marble. These and more tortures, sneers and insults, the impious seed, so to speak, and impious progeny inflicted by words and deeds on the most holy man, both that stolid Theodore and John Gorgonites and Nicholas Scutelopsis son of Theodulus.

[27] they harass in every way, So after the tortures with which they had afflicted the Confessor of Christ, after the threats, after the chains and fetters cast on his venerable feet, after the slaps, and after they had moreover tortured him, stretched out in the form of a cross on his face on the marble and bound, the whole night, and had tormented him, placed on the tomb, the whole of the following night, and finally had thrown him loosed on the ground and stabbed him, so that he purpled the earth too with blood; after all this, I say, when he was still breathing slightly (for he was also pressed by a flux of the loosened bowel), then the insane Theodore, seizing the sacred hand of the man by force, and a paper being placed under it, as it were by him impressed a cross, and bringing it, handed it to Photius. Who, having received the sign, himself subscribed with his own hand: “I, Ignatius, unworthy, of Constantinople, confess that, not created by law and votes, I invaded the throne of the Church, and that in these years I have not ruled the Church duly and holily, but have exercised a tyranny.” This false written deed having been sent to the emperor, the holy man was released from custody, and in the maternal house of Poscos he breathed a little from so many hardships. But the enemy did not cease to turn over frauds in his mind and to cook up the worst plans against the innocent man. And so he suggested to the emperors that Ignatius, being led back to the church of the Apostles, should first himself publicly read his removal from office before the ambo, and pronounce anathema on himself: then, O cruel plan, O singular monstrosity! that fury was intending to dig out both his eyes and to cut off his hand. So deep a hatred had the impious conceived, that they took no account of divine vengeance: all fear of God was absent, and a kind of fury of the devil drove them.

[28] and they plan his slaying: The holy day of Pentecost was being completed, when behold a band of armed men suddenly surrounded with a ring, beyond all expectation, the dwelling in which he was living. When the holy man noticed that he was being sought, and felt the fury of the parricide Esau, he took a plan opportune against the wickedness of the times and worthy of his wisdom and of the Holy Spirit his director. What was that? He took from his servants a cheap secular garment, and carrying two baskets on his shoulders, hung from one pole, in the fashion of a porter, having deceived the guards through the night, accompanied by Cyprian alone, his disciple, he fled, entering on the road through the arcade ^o to Sybaiticus [p], with wounded and afflicted breast, like another David when he fled from the face of Saul. And indeed as he was going through the darkness there divinely met him a man, adorned with a very august face, with hair and beard seemly long, in white garment, and riding on a snowy horse, as if he were making for Blachernae [q]. And that unknown man, although on account of the lack of light he could not see him clearly, nevertheless, whoever he was, impelled by the divine Spirit, pronounced: “May God, he said, and the most holy Mother of God, most sacred lord, protect you and your companions.” When he had received this word as an oracle sent from heaven, and thought it given to him as a viaticum in place of a travelling aid, much

more eagerly he took up the journey: and, unknown in that slight and servile dress, he boarded a ship, and changing one for another, the Princes' islands, Proconnesus and other islands of the Propontis [r], he wandered through solitudes hidden in mountains and caves and caverns of the earth, to speak with the Apostle Hebr. XI, 38, in want, afflicted, distressed, and he begged food from pious Christians in the manner of a mendicant. But Photius, having lost the prey he had devoured in hope, searched all the monasteries, the whole city and the suburbs, if anywhere he might find the brand, vanished as from a fire. Since then none of the things he desired succeeded, a royal edict having been procured, that Oryphas with six swift ships to all the maritime places, and all, caught in any place, as a disturber and overthrower of the empire, he should remove him from the midst.

[29] but the Saint withdraws himself from the persecutors by flight. And so those hunting dogs, although they rather often and in several places came upon Ignatius himself, deceived by the servile tunic did not recognise him: indeed, seeking him when he passed through their midst on other occasions, like the Assyrians struck with blindness Reg. VI, 18, they did not perceive it. So they went away, as the proverb has it, like gaping wolves disappointed of their prey. Ignatius, having paid his vows to the Saviour for his protection, pressed on through many tribulations to the kingdom of heaven. And they indeed were doing these things. But as they were devising these things, could the long-suffering, just and strong God, who is not angry every day Ps. VII, 12, any longer pass over these extreme hardships of evils? By no means. For as the month of August was at hand, Constantinople was shaken by horrifying tremors; all the buildings tottered, and all the breasts of mortals throbbed with fear: and all, seized by the horror of death, cried out that the one cause of the earthquake was the injury and sacrilege committed against the patriarch Ignatius. And as the city shook continuously for a full forty days, their ferocity and monstrosity were so far softened that the princes themselves publicly attested on oath that neither his flight would be a fraud chargeable to that sacred exile, nor to the host of the exile, with whom he had lain hidden; but that, absolved of crime and pronounced innocent, he would remain securely in his monastery without anyone's molestation. When the athlete of Christ had heard this, he disclosed himself to the patrician Petronas, the maternal uncle of the emperor: who handed over to the patriarch a reliquary case [s], which hung from the emperor's breast, brought as a pledge. He, hanging it round his neck, went to Bardas, who said to the patriarch: Why, he said, do you wander as a fugitive in the manner of a runaway from place to place? To whom Ignatius said: Christ our king and Saviour has commanded: If they persecute you in one city, flee into another Matth. X, 23. Bardas, conquered by the innocence and virtue of the man, ordered him to be sent back guiltless and free to his monastery. And immediately the earth ceased to be moved, and the Bulgarians, by the providence of God, under the pressure of famine and soothed by gifts from the emperor, laid down their arms and were purified by the wave of heavenly baptism [t].

[30] Nicholas rejects the acts of his legates: The pontifical legates also, sweetly corrupted by a gift from Photius, returned to Rome. When Pope Nicholas, having questioned them about the patriarch Ignatius and severely inquired, had convicted them, captured by their own words, of having acted as presidents of a faction of assassins rather than of a lawful synod, he struck them, condemned to perpetual removal from office, with anathema. And not the legates only, but Photius himself also he pronounced a tyrant and adulterer, and by the sentence of a lawful synod struck him with the anathema of his whole Church and deposed him, and declared that he differed in nothing from Maximus the Cynic, who, insulting Gregory the Theologian, confounded the Church with all disturbances. Wherefore he subjected him, as the author of scandals, and those consecrated by him, to the same sentence [u]. Nor content with these things, he excluded his followers, and the emperor himself with all his senate, from the assembly of the faithful. When Nicholas, inflamed with divine zeal, had done these things, he transmitted the most fair sentence of his judgement to the patriarchs of the East. About the same time a huge fire broke out in the house of Sophiae [v]; nor can it be explained in words how great a calamity and how great a destruction it brought to the neighbours. Yet this did not bring back those who had resolved to act perversely to a better mind, but according to the apostolic oracle 2 Tim. III, 13, they advanced to the worse, erring and sending into error. For Bardas, aiming at empire, proclaimed first curopalates [w], soon Caesar, abused the folly of the emperor, his sister's son, and showed himself the slave of all intemperance and unrestrained lust. And Michael, his mind corrupted by youthful desires, held the divine matter for a fable or mockery, himself made the mockery of all foulness and sin, and of the father of sin himself. For certain most impure and most profane little men and buffoons, wholly devoid indeed of the divine Spirit and heavenly grace, but most equipped with the worst arts of demons, he, most demented, sacrilegiously and shamelessly consecrated as priests and prelates in profane imitation of the Church, and over them he set as patriarch a certain Theophilus, a protospatharius, a buffoon and mime, most profane among the profane, seeking for himself, detestable and ridiculous as he was, laughter and wicked jeering [x]. Through which things injury was done to the holy oblation, and the name of God, treated with insults, was blasphemed among the nations.

[31] Michael, the impious emperor, But Michael gloried so greatly in this infamy that he did not even blush to boast publicly: For me Theophilus, for Caesar Photius, for the Christians Ignatius is patriarch. Into this chaos of madness, shall I say, or rather of impiety, he at length fell. Thus that sacrilegious buffoon, as I have said, Theophilus, with his petulance put forth, licking the royal courts, with unspeakable crimes, lasciviousness and jests, by most foul imitation, through contempt of divine things, exposed to ridicule and mocked the mysteries and sacraments; which not even the nations, however impious, have ever dared. When Photius saw these things done in his presence, he neither reprehended the most unworthy thing, nor resisted the impiety, nor, because the divine matter was held in mockery, did he utter any word against it, whether grave or light. Which ought not to seem a wonder: for he was a hired herdsman, not a genuine shepherd; wherefore he had no care for the perishing flock: he was intent with his whole breast on these two things only; the one, that by flattering those who seemed to have mastery of affairs, and by gratifying and obeying them in all ways, he might make the patriarchate firm for himself; the other, that he might strip Ignatius, if in any way it could be done, even of life. And that these things are so and are not empty words the very deeds proclaim: for who, on hearing his stratagems, did not immediately perceive his atrocious mind?

[32] is deceived by Photius with false letters. For on a certain day a certain stranger, previously unknown to all, clothed in the dress of a monk, Eustratius by name, hastened straight to the patriarchal palace, and entering, held out, ready before all, two forged letters: which indeed that most wise Photius had thought up by deceit, as afterwards became manifestly plain: the one given in the name of Ignatius to Pope Nicholas, in which he set forth the changed state of his patriarchate and the injuries of the emperor, which he said the Pontiff had not even wished to look at, and which he had accordingly brought back: the other sent by Nicholas to Photius himself, by which he cleared the earlier dissension between Photius and the Pontiff, and established charity and communion for the remaining time. These letters that artificer of disturbances seized and handed forthwith to the emperor and to Caesar, and by outstanding lying inflamed the princes against the innocent man: Your majesty, he said, Ignatius exposes even to foreign nations, and the most wicked calumniator calls the power of your empire into accusation. Even if he had a just cause, yet his life would rightly be taken from him, while he devises these things against your serenity. But behold, he said, the letters, witnesses of perfidy, and let them make your words credible, which have not harmed us, but have benefited us; since the Pope has been instructed in the truth of the matter and has confirmed friendship between us. But I have judged it unworthy that your majesty should be so trampled on by him. Thus the sycophant Photius. The guard was summoned: Ignatius, circumvented by calumny, was kept in strict custody, was keenly inquired into, and interrogations were carried on as to whether the matter was so. The courier too, brought into the middle, was ordered to indicate from whom he had received the letters to Pope Nicholas. The courier replied that he had previously received the letters and his journey money from that Cyprian, the disciple of Ignatius. But when he could neither show Cyprian, even a whole month being given him for tracking him down, nor seemed to know anyone of Ignatius' company, the fraud being detected, he was most keenly punished with thongs by Caesar: and though Photius did everything to free him, yet he achieved nothing. At last, to console the man, he created him prefect of the lictors. This perfidy of Photius being detected, there was nobody who did not bear these wicked arts with the greatest indignation.

ANNOTATIONS.

the Greeks first gave this name to the whole strait of the sea which lies between Byzantium and the Pontus, which indeed extends more or less three hundred stadia in length. But then more recent writers used Stenum for the very shore of the Stenum: accordingly that European shore, from the head of the Ceratine harbour, where stood the monastery of St. Mamas (namely on the western side of the city), to the mouth of the Euxine Sea, was called Stenum: and this nomenclature is given especially to that maritime tract which lies opposite the city above Galata at the head of the strait. For the rest, Porphyrogenitus relates that from the Stenum the sailors who steered chelandia or other ships above the Stenum were called Stenitae. Thus far Banduri, with whom agree Du Cange Constantinopolis Christiana, Part II, p. 167 and our John Stilting in the Commentary on the Acts of St. John Chrysostom on the 14th day of September, num. 641 Acta SS., vol. IV of Sept., p. 530.

p. Of this place, says Du Cange Constantinopolis Christiana, vol. I, p. 178, Nicetas the Paphlagonian makes mention in the Life of St. Ignatius. Nor does he add more, from which the place could be indicated more closely.

q. Blachernae was at once a temple and palace, situated at the extreme north of the city Compare Spruner, Historical Atlas, table LIX.

r. The Propontis is the sea lying between the Euxine and the Aegean, today the Mer de Marmara. Proconnesus is an island of the same sea near the city of Cyzicus, towards the Asiatic shore.

s. Of the pious custom of carrying the Relics of the Saints, hung from the neck, Giovanni Crisostomo Trombelli treats at length, De cultu Sanctorum, Dissertation VII, chap. 54 Vol. II, p. 267.

t. Of the time of the Bulgarian conversion and other circumstances Pagi treats in the Critique of Baronius at the year 844, § II and 861, § X and following.

u. Mention of this matter is thrown in by St. Nicholas I, Pope, in letter VIII to the emperor Michael. When the Pontiff, adducing various examples, had shown that the right of hearing the causes of bishops lies with the Roman see, he adds Labbe, Councils, vol. VIII, col. 309: But to extend our pen specially to the prelates of Constantinople, either never at all, or certainly scarcely, is any of these found cast out without the consent of the Roman Pontiff, who nevertheless is hitherto numbered among the deposed, and is not recorded as driven out or slain by heretics or tyrants. Finally, to enumerate a few of these, was not Maximus driven from Constantinople after much labour by Pope Damasus (as his letters sent to various persons indicate)? Were not Nestorius, Acacius, Anthimus, Sergius, Pyrrhus, Paul, Peter cast out by the running consultations and decrees of the apostolic see? Why then, since this is so, have you been zealous in Ignatius alone to despise the memory of Peter and to hand it over to oblivion, unless because you wished to do everything according to your wish, establishing a Synod like in cruelty to the Second of Ephesus?

v. We have already treated of the dignity of Curopalates, chap. I, Annotation e.

w. The house of Sophiae is not to be confused with the principal temple of St. Sophia; which confusion the version of Rader helped, saying that the fire broke out in the house of Sophia: but the Greek text gives the name of Sophiae in the plural number: Ἐμπρησμος μεγας σφοδρα εἰς τας Σοφιας γενομενος: a very great fire took place in the Sophiae. And the Sophiae were a harbour, formerly called after Julian, which, once cleaned out, the emperor Justin II adorned with palaces, and named it the harbour of the Sophiae after his wife Sophia [Byzantine Writers, Cedrenus, vol. I, p. 685, Bonn edition. Compare Du Cange, Constantinopolis Christiana, Part I, p. 58 and following]. To this extent, then, Canon Jager erred in the History of Photius, when he says that the temple of St. Sophia was then damaged by fire Histoire de Photius, p. 90, Louvain edition 1845.

x. The silly and sacrilegious stolidity of the emperor Michael is depicted to the life by George Cedrenus in the Compendium of Histories. There was established in the Bosphorus, to guard against unforeseen incursions of barbarians, a series of fires which, lit in order from place to place, indicated an imminent danger. Therefore, says Cedrenus Byzantine Writers, George Cedrenus, p. 174, Bonn edition, this custom prevailing, it once happened that, while Michael with horses, at

the shrine of Mamas, was preparing himself for driving, a fire was put forth from the lighthouse. When the emperor saw it, fearing lest his charioteering should not be diligently watched, the minds of the spectators being struck by the adverse signal, he came into such great fear as could seize those placed in danger of life. So far was he from being ashamed of displaying himself in the theatre! And indeed, lest by any signal of adverse things men's minds should become more languid for watching, he forbade fire to be put forth in future from the watchtowers near the city. Again (for it is right to illustrate his madness further), when at another time he had seated himself in the chariot, and the horses were now about to be let out of the starting-gates, he himself being clothed in the Venetian (blue) habit, the logothete of the course, Constantine, in the Prasine (green), Cheilas in the white, Crasas in the Russian (rose), news was brought that Amer, prefect of Metilene, was gravely ravaging Asia, and had now reached Malagina, and that a great evil was imminent. The protonotary sadly indicated this news to the emperor, at the same time showing a letter of the domestic of the scholae. Then the emperor, looking at him with a grim and titanic face, said: “How have you dared, criminal, to interrupt me with these matters while I am occupied in so necessary a contest? When I am applying myself to this one thing, to turn aside to the left the one who holds the middle, on whom all this contest depends for me.” So great was his madness! Nor, however, labouring under this vice alone, did he abstain from other unseemly things; but moreover, pursuing modesty immoderately, he fell away also from the gravity befitting the person of an emperor. He once met a poor woman, whose son he had received from the sacred washing, returning from the bath and carrying a bucket in her hands: there, dismounting from his horse, he ordered the men of senatorial dignity who were accompanying him to go off to the palace; he himself, with the impure and libidinous little men whom he had taken up to himself, following the poor woman, took the bucket out of her hands, and “Be of good heart, he said, O woman, and receive me in your house, who desire bran broth and asbestotyrum.” When at these words the poor woman stiffened, as one who had nothing prepared for a banquet, Michael, quicker than a word, spread on the floor in place of a tablecloth the linen sheet which she was carrying, still wet from the bath, and, having snatched the key from the woman, the emperor himself performed the office of host, cook, table-layer and carver. This banquet being completed, he went back to the palace on foot at a slow pace, condemning of great stolidity and pride the earlier emperors, who had been zealous for elegance. These things therefore made him justly hated by all. And this too stirred up just angers against him, a most wicked deed, that he had with him a herd of catamites and men ready for every foulness: whom he held in honour, and in order to mock sacred things he clothed them in priestly vestments interwoven with gold, and with humerals, and compelled them foully and impurely to imitate the sacred actions. The head of this herd, Gryllus (Nicetas has Theophilus), he adorned with the name of patriarch, and called the others by that of the twelve metropolitans, himself also one of the pontiffs and governor of a colony. When there was singing to be done in performing the mysteries, he applied the cithara, now touching it gently so as to give a thin tone, now so as to produce a great sound, as in sacrifices priests sing with strained voice. They had also vessels of gold, studded with gems; these they filled with vinegar and mustard and imparted them to the communicants, in this manner mocking the undefiled mysteries. This assembly once met the blessed patriarch, when he was proceeding with a procession of clerics for a supplication: and when Gryllus saw him, very boldly and shamelessly, without any delay, the rest following his example, drawing his garment apart, he began to strike the cithara more strainedly, and to shout obscene abuse at the holy men. Further Michael once called to him his mother Theodora, still living in the palace, as if the patriarch Ignatius, whom he had feigned to be present, was about to pray blessings on her. So when the most holy woman came and religiously prostrated herself on the floor, since the impure Gryllus had up to that point hidden his beard, Gryllus rising let out a breaking of wind from the belly and babbled certain things worthy of his mouth. Theodora, taking this deed very hard, cursed her son, and prophesied that he would shortly feel the divine indignation: but it could not happen that one once turned from the right way should be corrected. Against a profanation of this kind the VIII ecumenical Council seems to have acted, when in Session IX it inflicted a penalty on those who, although laymen, clothed themselves with superhumerals and did, as far as is thought, those things which are of priests Labbe, Councils, vol. VIII, col. 1120: these were the Spatharii, Marinus, Basil and George, over whom Theophilus the protospatharius had poured out a prayer, and in this way had exercised a simulacrum of ordination.

CHAPTER V.

Photius attempts to draw the intimates of St. Ignatius to his side; Bardas Caesar is slain; Photius deposes Pope Nicholas; the emperor Michael is slain.

Photius by many gifts Not long after, the sacred anniversary day of the Ascension of Christ was being kept ^a, when towards evening the earth began to tremble with such great motion as never before, and it did not cease through the whole following night: and a certain obscure crash and bellowing, huge, put forth from land and sea, so broke men's breasts with fear that they nearly dissolved. The statue of Justinus also ^b, torn away from the knees, fell down. Then Basil, formerly bishop of Crete ^c, but transferred to Thessalonica when the Agarenes ^d invaded Crete, dared, not without infamy to Photius, then occupying the cathedra of Constantinople, himself to approach Michael, and partly with the authority of one admonishing, partly of one teaching, he dissuaded him from so impious and sacrilegious a hostile imitation and mockery of sacred things: for he affirmed that the wrath of the deity was thereby inflamed. By which reprehension Michael, most gravely offended, with most atrocious blows knocked out the teeth of the venerable old man by the roots, and so tore his back with scourges that nothing was nearer than that he should give up his soul among the tortures. About which that hired herdsman was in no way anxious; indeed he himself gradually was likewise delighted by these sacrileges, and became familiar with the impure actors and the boy and banqueted with them, and was not far removed from their familiarity and mockery. But all his care was turned to oppressing Ignatius: for he longed to hear something against him and his ears itched for it. When he happened, even by chance, upon a calumniator of his, who should spread even a slight or chance calumny about him, this man indeed he soon entered on the roll of his friends, and he heard the detractor with great pleasure. For nothing so captures minds occupied by envy and hatred as an evil narrative about the one they hate. And so through the intimates and subjects of Ignatius, as many of them as he could coax by gifts and honours and make beholden to himself, he was always investigating, and sought a cause against the soul of the just man.

[34] draws the intimates of St. Ignatius to himself, Of whom was Ignatius, that disciple of St. Ignatius; who, like Demas of old 2 Tim. IV, 9, loving the world, went over to Photius' camp, and for some time prefect of the monasteries of the Propontis, then was created by him metropolitan of Hierapolis ^e. Who, to requite the benefit, said: It comes over me to wonder, lord, in what way you are either ignorant of or altogether neglect so great an offence and crime of Ignatius. For in the middle of the street of the island a sacred church of the Forty Martyrs ^f has been raised up, and joined to it is an oratory of the Mother of God, whose altar the Rhussi recently, when they were ravaging the island, overturned, and Ignatius has restored and replaced it. What did Photius do here? Thinking the fault either small or none, did he keep silent? Or did he stir up a slight fire of disturbances for this cause? By no means: but he exaggerated the matter before the emperor as a monstrous and inexpiable crime: and, counsel having been shared with his faction, he sent off to the island the metropolitans Amphilochius of Cyzicus ^g and Theodore of Patras ^h, and also the senator Pantaleon, surnamed Bothrus, to pull down that holy court with sacrilegious hands. Photius had moreover commanded that the altar, carried down to the sea shore, should be dipped forty times in the wave, and thus at last brought back and replaced ⁱ. Why should we not wonder at you, my man? But the supreme indignity of your perversity compels me, however unwilling and averse, to tear you with abuse. What then shall we mock first, what last? The stupidity of your soul, or the depravity of your perverse mind? The greatness of your envy, or the zeal of your ambitious wickedness? Is this what the long-continued meditation of letters teaches you, and the nights kept awake, and the abundance of nearly innumerable codices? Likewise the alternation of readers and disputants, and the assiduous contest for the praise of erudition? Do the tablets of the old and new law, the sayings of profane wise men and the decrees of the holy fathers propose to you these fruits to be gathered from letters, that you should persecute a needy and beggarly man, and seek to slaughter one compunct in spirit and heart? Have the tyrannical casting down from the throne, the illicit depositions, the most unjust proscriptions, the fetters and chains, the infinite exiles, the calumnies, hardships, harassments, with which you have washed him, not satiated the implacable fury of your soul? But in truth, with as many as you have washed him, with so many you have defiled yourself.

[35] that he might be able to afflict him more and more: Nor content with these things, you are moreover zealous by altercating to exhaust the very fountain of the river, and to condemn one absolved by the deity itself, and, having got round him in the most unworthy ways, to destroy him as a guilty and harmful man: so that by this most foolish plan you may be able to decline the judgement of your crimes, just as if no God presided over human affairs, or he would not in his own time render to each according to his works. But I think that you too in the day of your visitation will hear from God saying Ps. XLIX, 16: Why do you declare my justices and take my covenant in your mouth, and what follows in the sacred page. I indeed judge that it will go better with a most unskilled man, devoid of all literature and discipline, if with a pure conscience he leads a blameless life, than with him who rolls and tosses on his lips all the oracles of divine and human wisdom, and, praised by long windings of words, yet cherishes a deadly will against another. And you, having heard the opinion of the great Basil, have no dread, when he said, wondering at someone ^k, that none of all the heresiarchs of the whole world, who have been very many, had dared to re-consecrate, apart from Eustathius of Ancyra in Galatia, whose wicked crime the synod of Gangra sets forth ^l. But on account of these things our most wise Photius not only was suffused with no shame, but even displayed himself magnificently, thinking that it would be for his honour and dignity if he devised anything new and alien from ecclesiastical discipline. And so indeed Photius conducted himself.

[36] Bardas Caesar, terrified in vain by a horrible vision, But the appearance presented to Bardas Caesar in his sleep must not (for it is not right) be passed over in silence by me. For although many things draw their cause from business done and thought of by day, and not a few are subjoined by demons through images, yet there is, when also from good

Angels, at God's command, things are suggested, especially to kings and magistrates, even though impious. For the spirit of prophecy has often known how to exercise its power, whether for the salvation of the princes themselves or of those subject to them: which we have learned to have happened to Pharaoh and Nebuchadnezzar. Thus Bardas Caesar, greatly disturbed, summoned his intimate and sure friend Philotheus, formerly logothete of the Genicon ^m. And panting much he said: My Philotheus, I have seen a dream which has crushed all my bones and dissolved all the sinews of my body. For this night I seemed to go forth as in a public procession with the emperor to the great basilica, and to see the images of the Archangels looking into the temple through the upper and lower openings: and when we had come to the ambo ⁿ, there were seen as it were two stern and fierce chamberlains; of whom one, taking the emperor himself bound, dragged him to the right side and drove him from the platform ^o as a guilty and condemned man: and the other in like manner led me away to the left. And suddenly looking about, I notice on the patriarchal throne of the sanctuary [p] a man most like Peter the prince of the Apostles, and two standing by him, formidable indeed, who displayed the dignity of provosts [q]. Further, at the knees of him who was sitting I see Ignatius a suppliant, bathed in many tears, so that Peter himself also, pitying the lot of Ignatius, groaned. And Ignatius kept crying out: Keybearer of the heavenly kingdom and rock on which Christ God has established his Church, since you know how unjustly I have been dealt with, console my most afflicted old age.

[37] still persecuting St. Ignatius, is slain: To whom Blessed Peter said: Show the one who harasses you, and God will make with the temptation a way out. And Ignatius, turning, pointed me out with his hand: and this man, he said, has afflicted me more than all, as one whom no satiety of torturing me has taken. Then he who was seated on the throne, having nodded to him who stood by at his right, a dagger being drawn [r], openly, in the hearing of all, pronounced sentence. Seize, he said, this God-hated Bardas, and cut him to pieces outside in the courtyard. Immediately, then, hurried off to punishment, I saw that he also said to the emperor with threatening hand: Wait, impious son. And thus I seemed in reality to be cut up. To Caesar, stunned and narrating these things with tears, Philotheus [s] said: Spare, lord, the most unhappy old man, and looking to the tribunal of God, injure him neither rightly nor wrongly. But Bardas did not even so wish to understand so as to do good; but, these formidable threats being buried in oblivion, he hastened to fill up his sins, so as to stir up the just vengeance of God against himself. Immediately indeed, at the very beginning of the solemn fast, he sent that Leo, surnamed Ptaoles, a kinsman of Photius, with a guard to the island, and ordered Ignatius to be guarded so strictly that he could not even perform the sacred rites, nor should anyone have the opportunity of meeting him, nor he of going out. When he had remained thus shut in up to the third month, the prediction of the dream ripened; for Michael undertaking an expedition to Crete, Bardas, having now advanced with him to the place which is called the Gardens, because he was said to be laying snares for the emperor (the heavenly vengeance of course pursuing him), paid his final penalties to God, and was wretchedly cut limb from limb with swords [t]. By so infamous a death was he extinguished that even his closest intimate inveighed against him, although, treated by him with the greatest benefits, he had received the dignity of the patriarchate. But while he was living this man cultivated him wonderfully, and extolled him with all proclamations as the protector of his life: but when he had been killed, he sang a palinode, and kept calling him an accursed sort of expiatory victim, worthy of such a death. That wicked old rogue and sophist was of this character, always to comply with the marketplace and the time and the inclinations of the princes. For he who is not driven by the heavenly spirit and guidance, destitute of faith, and has his hopes placed in mortals, since his mind rests on a vicious and rotten foundation, is at length detected as inconstant and perfidious towards all: a stroker of the powerful, but a calumniator of the poor, who is zealous for this one thing, to please the powerful, lest he be despoiled of dignity.

[38] And Photius deposes Pope Nicholas. The emperor then suddenly, turning his march around, returned to Constantinople. It was Pentecost, and he proclaimed the patrician Basil, prefect of the sacred chamber, Caesar, the diadem being placed on him [u]. But the crafty Photius, devising very many things against Pope Nicholas, having wasted his work, became the author to the emperor, stirred by many words, of assembling a synod, by which Pope Nicholas should be deposed, the same sentence being passed against him that he had recently passed against Photius. So that illustrious Photius called out all the bishops subject to him, and some other foul and sordid little men, as if legates of the patriarchs of the East, and set up a conventicle, and pronounced deposition, as he thought, and anathema, resting on no support, against Pope Nicholas. He also solicited King Louis and Queen Engelberga [v], and promised that they should be proclaimed emperors at Constantinople, if they would apply their efforts to executing his impious attempt and to driving the just man out of his Church. But though they promised quicker than a word, the fool vainly displayed his folly. Hence the subscriptions and votes of men sacred and profane, metropolitans and patricians: all vain, all sillier than theatrical fables. For the arrogant estimation of himself which had clung to him from boyhood, the same, carrying him to the highest insolence and extreme madness, led him to dare such things so boldly and shamelessly.

[39] The emperor Michael is slain. All these things having been procured, he transmitted the insane and sacrilegious Acts of his conventicle into Italy through Zacharias Cophus, created by him metropolitan of Chalcedon [w], and Theodore, translated from Caria to the bishopric of Laodicea [x]. And he himself nourished his ingrained hatred against the holy man, and as many as he could of his genuine, or rather spurious, followers he secretly drew to himself, and enticed them with the dignities of his madness, through whom he lay in wait for the heel of the innocent man. But he was disappointed of his hope, because that blessed man was now beyond all hazard of calumnies: and Photius, acting malignly, was caught in the works of his own hands. For when he hung in doubt to whom at length the supreme rule of the empire would come, he repeatedly carped at Basil before Michael, and in turn detracted from Michael before Basil, thinking that thus he would obtain for himself the friendship of both; while he feigned goodwill towards each, so that whichever of them at length obtained the empire alone, he would have him most bound to himself. And yet he did not approve himself to Basil, who was greatly offended by the tricks of that old rogue. And not so long after Michael himself was slaughtered by treachery at the church of the holy Martyr Mamas [y], having met a fate deserved and worthy of his madness, crime and impiety, when he had administered the empire together with his mother for fifteen years, eight months, and alone for nearly nine years: and since he had done evil in the sight of the Church of God, he perished [z]. And at the beginning of the first indiction, on the ninth before the Kalends of October, Basil, having occupied the palace, was saluted as emperor: who, having sent men to recall Zacharias from his journey, drew him back from the middle of the road. And on the next day after he had been proclaimed emperor, he cast Photius, thrown down from the throne, into a certain monastery called Scepe [aa]: and the day following he sent Elias, the most splendid drungarius of the royal fleet, with the royal dromon [bb], or swift ship, to the most holy patriarch, to bring him back from the island to Constantinople with the procession of honour that was proper; who placed him meanwhile in his paternal house, which they call Mangana [cc].

ANNOTATIONS.

p. The patriarchal throne of the sanctuary is in Greek: το συνθρονον του ἀδυτου; ἀδυτον, the same as sanctuary or, as is commonly said among the Latins, choir. Το συνθρονον Du Cange defines, under Θρονος, as the benches of the priests and ministers of the Church performing the sacred rites, surrounding the sacred table in the middle of the concha of the bema, in the midst of which, behind the altar itself, there rises the higher seat and throne of the patriarch or bishop.

q. Praepositi, Πραιποσιτοι, in Middle Greek were generally called those who discharged the intimate offices of the palace, as Du Cange shows by many examples under this word.

r. Sicula, in Greek μικρα μαχαιρα. Does the biographer allude to the sickle which he had attributed to Zechariah? Above, preceding chap., Annotation m.

s. Rader introduces Theophilus here: wrongly. A little above the biographer reports that Bardas Caesar narrated his vision to Philotheus, logothete of the Genicon; and the Greek text does not mention Theophilus, but, Caesar's narration being finished, continues: προς ὁν ἐκεινος … ἐιπε, to whom (Caesar) he (Philotheus) said: Although, further, the names of Philotheus and Theophilus consist of the same elements, yet by usage they are different; for which reason we have restored the name of Philotheus to the Latin text.

t. The slaying of Bardas Caesar is described by the continuator of Theophanes, and he shows that the memory of the vision was not entirely wiped out Ibid., Theophanes Continuatus, p. 204. Having narrated the dream of Bardas, which, he says, was truth: Bardas was intending to undertake an expedition against the Cretans together with Michael, all the forces being taken up. So coming to the church of our most holy Lady, the Mother of God, which they call of the Hodegi, to commend himself and his concerns and as it were to bid farewell, he entered with torches lighting the way: and in the very inner parts of the church his cloak suddenly shaken off gave a presage of the greatest evils. The same man, the day before he departed from the city, whether of his own accord or as the fate of the future event now pressed upon him, having called together his friends and received them at a banquet, admonished them to be mindful of his friendship towards them, and as if about to depart from life he distributed legacies to them… So the expedition having been begun, when they had arrived in the region of the Thracesians, at a place called Cepi (the same as Horti in the Latin text), those who had first occupied the place competed in setting up tents with diligent work. Among these it happened, whether on purpose or through the imprudence of the ministers, that Michael's tent was spread in a low and flat place, while that of Caesar was on a certain mound, a somewhat higher place: this done thus, those who were detracting to Michael against Caesar, seizing it as a kind of offered thing and unhoped-for gain, calumniated the man and laid snares for him. Yet the huge power of Caesar disturbed his enemies and made them more sluggish to dare the crime. A conspiracy then was made, which suffered its own terrors. So Michael, fearing lest in these delays, the matter being detected, he should draw the sword upon himself, through a certain most faithful man strengthened the conspirators, and, promising goods and honours, made their minds more daring: and indeed it fell little short that Caesar should go away safe from danger and escape death: so great was the fear with which the conspirators were struck, and so did their spirits languish. But a messenger being sent again, Michael signified to Basil the accubitor (afterwards emperor) that the necessity of the matter stood on the razor's edge, that he despaired of life, that he should quickly prepare himself for the slaying of Bardas. Hearing this, Basil, anxious for the emperor's safety, shook fear out of the conspirators, and by these words, “O bold and brave mind,” he soon made them eager and impelled them to the contest and to attacking the deed. Bardas, seeing them rushing upon him with drawn swords, struck with terror and noticing the present danger of his life, threw himself at the emperor's feet: yet it could not be that he should escape death. Immediately therefore they tore him away from there and cut him limb from limb, on the twenty-first of the month of April, indiction fourteen: that is, in the common year 866, not however in the following one, as Baronius would have it at the year 867, § LXXVII, whom Pagi refutes at the same year, § VII. And since in this year 866 Easter fell on the 7th day of April, and so the head of the great fast at the beginning of February, it follows that the three-month harassment of St. Ignatius is to be understood of three incomplete months.

u. The day of Pentecost, on which Basil the Macedonian received the στεμμα or imperial crown, fell this year, marked with the dominical letter F, on the 26th day of May.

v. Photius seized the occasion of the controversy raised between Pope Nicholas and Lothair, king of Lotharingia, in order to entice the Gauls to his side. For there was then being carried on the most grave question of the repudiation of Queen Theutberga and the second marriage of Lothair with Waldrada, which, approved by certain bishops of the Gauls, Pope Nicholas altogether condemned [Compare Longueval, Histoire de l'Eglise Gallicane, vol. VII, p. 303, Paris edition 1826]. Lothair had drawn to his opinion the whole royal family, and so also Louis II the emperor, grandson of Louis the Pious through the emperor Lothair, and his wife Ingeberga: Louis, in order to gratify Lothair, occupied Rome and intended to bring force upon the pontiff, when, afflicted by various calamities, he made peace with Nicholas, which took place in the year 864 Muratori, Annali d'Italia, vol. V, p. 62, edition 1762. Using the opportunity of sowing discords, Photius hoped, the realms of the East being offered even to Louis, to carry out the deposition of the Roman pontiff. For the rest, Photius fortified his usurped dignity with every protection he could. While he himself held the see of Constantinople, he busied himself to transfer the empire of the East to the western princes: moreover he was of such great cruelty that Pope Adrian II reproached him that he had inflicted exiles and various kinds of tortures, and moreover death, upon priests of Christ and other faithful, so that he surpassed Diocletian in monstrosity Labbe, Councils, vol. VIII, col. 1342. Anastasius the Librarian wove a long accusation against Photius, and besides his cruel persecution against his adversaries, he also explains the various arts by which that criminal sought out supports for his see. Some indeed, he says Ibid., col. 964, he condemns with deprivation of honours and dignities, others with proscription of their means; these he relegates to long exile and prisons, those he afflicts with various torments; and to comprise everything briefly, no profession, sex or age is left unpunished by him, unless found a sharer of his communion… This forger compiles a lying codex of false excesses against one innocent, absent and unconquered, and inserts false subscriptions of about a thousand prelates, nobody at all out of that numerous multitude of bishops agreeing with him or signing, except twenty-one prelates… For the rest, this cultivator of perverse dogmas also constructs another stratagem and persuades the emperor to order that nobody should make a testament, or dispense his alms through the hands of another, except Photius. Which the inventor of evils invented for no other reason than that, when he received and dispensed the substance of the rich, he should be thought by the less curious to have dispensed his own, and by this be loved as if bountiful and munificent: at the same time also, that at least through this all, compelled, should communicate with him, since they saw that they could not work even the very remedies of their souls (that is, alms), even placed at the very point of death, except through his hands. Moreover, weaving also another little net of his iniquity, by which he might capture the minds of the simple, as many as came to him to be instructed in exterior discipline, he compelled to promise by their own writing that they would henceforth believe according to the faith of Photius, as if there were two faiths, one namely of Christ and the other of Photius.

w. Zacharias Cophos, or the Deaf or the Unsound (for Cophos signifies both), twice occupied the see of Chalcedon: namely Basil, cast out by Photius, recovered his see under the rule of Basil the Macedonian; but, St. Ignatius having died, the restored Photius reinstated his friend Cophos at Chalcedon Le Quien, Oriens Christianus, vol. I, col. 605.

x. Michel Le Quien mentions this Theodore among the bishops of Laodicea of the province of Phrygia Pacatiana, and says that he hardly retained his see in the VIII Synod of Constantinople Le Quien, Oriens Christianus, vol. I, col. 796. As metropolitan of Caria he sat at Stauropolis, formerly called Aphrodisias Ibid., col. 900. Of this Theodore St. Ignatius himself testifies, in a letter to Pope Adrian, that he long stood forth faithful, but at length consented to Photius because of the immense torments which he inflicted on those resisting him Ibid., col. 901.

y. There are three monuments of St. Mamas at Constantinople, of which name two Martyrs of Constantinople occur Acta SS., vol. III of July, p. 303 and vol. VII of July, p. 149, namely the Church of St. Mamas and Basiliscus ἐν τοις

Δαρειου, whose feast is celebrated on the 29th of July Du Cange, Constantinopolis Christiana, Part II, p. 128; a suburban monastery of men Ibid., p. 185; and finally beside the monastery a palace, to which the emperors often withdrew for the pleasantness of the site Ibid., p. 174: and the continuator of Theophanes relates to us that he was slain in the palace, as we shall show in the following Annotation.

z. The emperor Michael gave the occasion for his slaying when, having created as Caesar a certain Basilicinus, an oarsman of the imperial swift ship, he said in the full senate that he repented of having created Basil Caesar Byzantine Writers, Theophanes Continuatus, p. 208, Bonn edition. This deed, continues the Continuator, and these words were the origin of Michael's destruction. This thing so said, sounding round the ears of all, cast excessive stupor on all, and made the voice stick in all, because in the manner of the fabulous Giants' offspring Michael daily produced emperors. Thence therefore hatred against Basil increased, and like a fire blazed up with a more violent flame, this being namely its fuel and cause, that he did not suffer himself to give himself up to vices together with his companions, nor did he comply with their unbridled licence. For rather often Michael, overwhelmed with wine and through drunkenness, broke out into such great madness that he ordered certain absurd things, and things exceeding every measure of injury, and ordered the ears of one, the nose of another, and finally the head of another to be cut off: and unless certain men, moved by pity, had thought they should be neglected and had put them off to the morrow, hoping that they would sometime be revoked by Michael, and that he would be led by some repentance for them (which also happened), there would plainly have perished as many as attended him and were assiduous and of the household in the court. Indeed it fell little short that Basil himself should be involved in like destruction, being not rarely made the mockery of that drunken man's petulance. He endured it however, and thought that at some time at length Michael would be led by some repentance. But it could not be that one bent from his first age, just like a chariot wheel, whatever happened, should recover his native and former straightness. And so more atrocious snares were built against Basil: and these were set in this, that during hunting, in appearance indeed for striking a wild beast, but in reality for piercing Basil, he should procure a guardsman's spear. This plan the very man who had received the mandate and had hurled the spear, placed at the exit of life, made manifest to all by his own confession. And he hurled the spear indeed, yet it went astray from Basil. In this manner Basil was saved, brought into the nearest danger of life, God, who trod down death, being the author of salvation for him. These things therefore, betrayed to all and made public, were the cause of the sword being sharpened against him. For lest they should see Basil (as lately Caesar and before him Theoctistus) removed by a sad slaying, whether by a decree of the senate or by the counsel of Basil's friends (for one and common destruction hung over all), he was given over to death by the emperor's own guards, in the palace of the Holy Martyr Mamas, on the 24th day of September, indiction one, of the year 6376, at the third hour of the night: that is in the common year 867. He reigned with his mother Theodora for fourteen years, alone for eleven, and afterwards, Basil having been adopted, for one year, three months. A fault has crept into the years in which Michael reigned alone, which were only ten, so that the whole time of the empire exceeds twenty-five years by some months. George Cedrenus narrates the same things briefly; but he corrects the error of the Continuator in that he attributes to Michael, reigning alone, eleven years, in which is the year of Basil as Caesar Byzantine Writers, George Cedrenus, History, vol. II, p. 182, Bonn edition.

aa. The site of the monastery of Scepe, to which Photius was relegated, we altogether do not know: indeed the biographer Nicetas in some way insinuates that he did not know the same monastery, when he says a certain monastery, in Greek: ἐν μοναστηριῳ τινι καλουμενῳ Σκεπῃ.

bb. We have already given above the meaning of Drungarius or commander. A dromon is an oblong ship, which easily cuts the waves. Du Cange, Glossary of Middle Greek, under Δρομιον.

cc. The palace of the Mangana, or simply Mangana, is read to have been built by Basil the Macedonian: but wrongly, as is clear from our text; since it stood rather as the paternal house of St. Ignatius; accordingly Du Cange judges that it was built by Michael, the parent of our Saint Constantinopolis Christiana, Part I, p. 133, although it could have been restored by the Macedonian.

CHAPTER VI.

To the dead Michael succeeds the emperor Basil, who casts out Photius, and replaces St. Ignatius in his see, an ecumenical synod being assembled at Constantinople: St. Ignatius instructs the clergy and people.

Basil, the wicked deceits of Photius being detected But that all the wicked arts against the holy man might be plain to all, he who catches the wise in their cunning Job V, 13 and scatters the counsel of the depraved, also put into the emperor's mind that he should send to Photius, and order that all the things he had taken from the patriarchal palace should be transmitted to him as soon as possible, written down in his own hand. But he swore falsely that he had taken nothing with him from the patriarchal palace, because he had been pressed to depart. While these things were being said to Baanes the provost, the provost's servants noticed seven crammed sacks, sealed with lead ^a, being carried by the tumultuous slaves of Photius to be hidden in the nearest reed-bed, and laying hands on them they snatched them and brought them to the emperor. And while they were unsealing them, they found two volumes, plated with gold and silver and veiled in silk on the outside, but on the inside elegantly and skilfully written out in lovely letters. The one contained seven synodal sessions against Ignatius, which neither are nor were ever celebrated, but were gratuitously invented merely by a cunning mind. At the beginning of each of which, by the hand of that Syracusan Asbestas himself (for outstandingly, I think to the heap of evils, he had learned also the artifice of painting), Ignatius was expressed in artful colours. O rabid fury! O furious rabidity! to which nothing could be added. And in the first session he figured Ignatius dragged about and beaten, and inscribed above his head: Devil. Do you not shudder at the atrocity of the curse? But there is no reason for you to wonder: for if they called the father of the household Beelzebub, how would they call those of his household? Matth. X, 25 In the second session he shaped him fouled with spitting and dragged with great force, with this elogium: The beginning of sin. Mich. I, 13 In the third, thrown down from the throne, with this title: The son of perdition. II Thessal. II, 3 In the fourth, bound with chains and banished, and inscribed thus: The avarice of Simon Magus. Acts VIII, 13 In the fifth, enclosed in a neck-fork, with this calumny: Who extols himself above all that is called or worshipped as God. II Thessal. II, 4 In the sixth he depicted him as if already condemned, with the saying: The abomination of desolation. Dan. IX, 27 In the seventh and last he figured him dragged about and punished in the head, and the inscription was: Antichrist.

[41] and the false documents being detected, These things I neither pronounce nor recall to mind through truth without shame: and for the same cause you should know, I would wish, that I would have passed over them in silence, had I not seen that the authors of these things and the followers of the authors not only do not blush at them, but even openly glory in them: and falsely attribute to Photius an opinion of sanctity. But he who is truthful does not lie, who said: The impious man, when he has come into the depth of evils, despises Prov. XVIII, 3: but ignominy and reproach follow him. Those who were present at the reading of those sacrilegious sessions have sworn by the fear of the Lord and the glory of his fortitude that fifty-two headings had been written for the calumny of Blessed Ignatius, false in the opinion of all, and invented from an impious rather than a furious mind. And they left also in each accusation a line, empty at the end, so that if they had snared any man worthy of the noose by a largesse of gifts and dignities, he should have a place for subscribing to the lie. And these things indeed the one book of the devil contained. The other, synodal, hurled its weapons at Nicholas, the Roman Pontiff, and comprised calumnies of every kind and atrocious curses for the deposition and condemnation of that holy man, impiously and almost in tragic manner put together, surely itself also worthy of the mastery of a Stygian teacher dictating and of the ministry of Photius. These books, when the shameless man had had them accurately written out twice, he gave to the abovementioned Zacharias and Theodore, with singular encomia of praises and many most splendid gifts, to be brought to the kings of France, so that they should throw down Pope Nicholas from the throne as deposed ^b: and two others he retained with himself. These four volumes the emperor snatched and first openly brought before the senate and the whole Church: and thus he set forth all the machinations and impious conscience of Photius to be beheld by the eyes of all and by the whole commonwealth. These being seen and heard, all were thunderstruck and stupefied, not only on account of the perverse mind of the sophist, and his crafty verbosity, but also on account of the incredible patience of God and the long delay of vengeance. These books, brought afterwards to the ecumenical synod and thrust into the face of their author in person, they gave to the fire.

[42] brings Ignatius back to Constantinople, Then indeed the emperor Basil, Ignatius being brought into the palace of the Magnaura ^c, silence being imposed, honoured him with many praises. It was a Sunday, the twenty-third of November, on which also he had previously been driven into exile, who, by the help and clemency of God having won the complete laurel of nine completed years from the contest of virtue, was restored to the throne of his Church ^d: and the lamp, more kindled, brighter than before, was set on the lampstand: and the shepherd again recognised his sheep, and was recognised in turn more clearly by his sheep. So, the whole city as it were exulting, and following him from behind and in front as he ascended to the temple, and gesturing with gladness, when he was led through the sacred well ^e to the upper parts of the temple, the patrician order, running to meet him as he entered by the right door, reverently received him: and then the sacred liturgy was being performed according to custom. Nor is it fitting that we should pass over the sacred omen which took place at the entrance of Ignatius. For as Ignatius entered the people indeed venerated him in supplication, and the priest in the sanctuary, making the oblation to God, cried out: Let us give thanks to the Lord; and straightway the people answered: It is right and just ^f. Thus the sacred Ignatius, received on his throne with good omens, and the helm of the Church having been resumed, kept away from the sacred things not Photius only and all those initiated by him, but also all his followers communicating with him: he moreover prayed the emperor to assemble an ecumenical synod, by which he judged all the wounds of the Church should be healed. Immediately therefore John, bishop of Perge ^g, the companion of Ignatius in all his misfortunes and hardships, and sharer in all his evils as far as in him lay: and from the faction of Photius Peter, bishop of Sardis ^h, were sent as legates to Pope Nicholas, to whom was joined Basil, surnamed Pinacas, who held the dignity of spatharius: and they used a double dromon when they set sail. But Peter, who was called Dilaeus, that is, Miser, endangered in the Dalmatian gulf, wretchedly perished by shipwreck. And John with Basil

escaped unharmed, and, Nicholas having already ended his life, found Pope Hadrian. And without long delay the vicars of the Pontiff came to Constantinople, the bishops Stephen and Donatus, with Marinus, one of the seven deacons, joined to them. And from the patriarchates of the East (the emperor conciliating the prince of Syria with gifts and letters) Joseph, archdeacon and syncellus from Egypt, legate of Michael, patriarch of Alexandria ^l; Thomas, metropolitan of Tyre ^m, vicar of Michael, patriarch of Antioch of Syria ⁿ; Elias, presbyter and syncellus, filled the place of Theodosius, patriarch of Jerusalem ^o. All these were present with the most holy patriarch Ignatius of Constantinople, and twelve bishops, perpetual companions in every fortune and hardship: who presided on the right, where the place of the catechumens is, of the temple which has received the name Sophia from Wisdom, the emperor Basil sitting by.

[43] and, an ecumenical synod being assembled, replaces him in his former see, The venerable wood of the life-giving cross being set forth, then, and the holy Gospels opened, the sacred senate being also present, first of all the letters sent by Hadrian, Pontiff of Old Rome, and by the patriarchs of the East, read in order, declared all the order required by sacred right, the faith, innocence and integrity of the legates, and also the right and authority of those sending them. Then on the following day, all the priests and prelates who had been consecrated by the most holy patriarchs Methodius and Ignatius, and had been carried off by arts and snares and every kind of torture to the communion of Photius, holding out documents of penance, fell down with tears as suppliants at the feet of the holy synod; and by the emperor's intercession, because they had suffered force, being deemed worthy of pardon by the opinion of the legates of the Roman Pontiff, they undertook the epitimium, or penalty, prescribed to them: and just like others blameless they received back the place and seat of bishops [p].

[44] But Photius is condemned; Thereafter that synod, celebrated by one hundred and two bishops [q], speaking and acting everything in order and decently, and with the best reason, according to the prescription of the laws and canonical decrees, compelled the accused Photius, though reluctant, to be present in person. And they severely objected to him the deadly plans undertaken against Ignatius, and the deposition made beyond reason with an insane mind: likewise the lies and calumnies, and all the other things he had secretly devised against Pope Nicholas. Then they asked of him what he would reply to that sentence of condemnation once passed at Rome against him. When he remained mute *, because he could find no true defence of his crimes; admonished by the Roman legates, and by the emperor himself and the whole senate, to pray for pardon, and at least to be received as a layman into the communion of the faithful, with a proud and contumacious mind he utterly repudiated the counsel [r]. So by the common and most fair judgement of all he was condemned, cast off and struck with anathema, as a violator and adulterer, and author of the greatest calamities and infinite offences and scandals in the Church of God: and the synod pronounced according to the sentence of Pope Nicholas, by which Photius had first been condemned, with mature judgement, by canonical or synodal deposition. The bishops subscribed the deposition with pens, not dipped in bare ink, but, at which you may utterly tremble (as I have heard those who knew the matter asserting), in the very blood of the Saviour [s]. Thus, I say, at last they removed Photius from office and condemned him, and all together those sacredly initiated by him.

[45] but, by the author's judgement, too gently, Here I seem to myself about to reprehend the synod with a certain right in some manner, and I shall reprehend, though perhaps rather boldly, this very judgement. For all the sessions and the canons defined in it, just as in the other seven ecumenical synods, so in this one too, I greatly approve and admit as holy and dictated by the Holy Spirit. This only in this eighth I do not praise; not that (as some judge), too gravely moved, it decreed too harshly against the accused; but on the contrary it is perhaps rather to be reprehended before a fair arbiter for having judged much more leniently than was fitting, some account namely being taken of persons, and sentence not being sincerely passed according to the apostolic law. The thirtieth canon ought to have been applied, by which Photius the sycophant had previously condemned the innocent Ignatius, as if he had invaded the Church through secular power [t]. So much the more was it now to be pressed, as he, seized not by the vote of God or of priests but by an incredible fury of glory and ambition, had occupied the throne through secular power with tyrannical force. For this cause, and moreover because he had wished to be consecrated by one removed from office, he was to be thrown down from his grade, and all, according to the apostolic sanction, who communicated with him, nor was it fitting for them to be more lenient than God and God's judgement and to annul the decree of the most holy Spirit. For this indulgence of theirs turned everything upside down [u]. It cannot be said how much this judgement offended and of how many evils it provided the cause. For I am persuaded that if then, according to the authority of the Apostles and canons, they had duly passed sentence both against the author of the schism and offences and against his whole faction communicating with him, all being removed from office, it would have come about that all impiety would be excluded from the Church for the future. But just as previously, under the divine Tarasius, patriarch, in the synod celebrated against the Iconomachs, since they had treated the heretics more indulgently than according to the prescription of justice, they, seizing the occasion, confirmed their impiety much more [v]: so now, this synod acting too remissly, and passing sentence out of affection and against the apostolic canon, malice again found a place against the Church. For, rejected by men previously corrupted, and condemned by those cast out, formerly his intimates, returning by postliminy, he again invaded the throne of the patriarch by force, and the sacred laws and apostolic sanctions being shut out, and all ecclesiastical traditions trampled on, when he had compelled all to become perjurers in his testimonies and written deeds and tramplers of the cross, as he himself was, and had made the last things worse than the first, he defiled and profaned the consciences of all.

[46] namely, his followers not being deposed at the same time And this is lacking in this synod, as I think, that both the lapsed were received to communion and the wolf, beyond his own expectation, was admitted into the fold. Which indeed certain people wisely conjectured from signs seen at that time. For when this synod had not yet been celebrated, but was still hoped for, a sudden fury seized some buffaloes, brought here from elsewhere and driven through the middle of the road, and, some rushing in one direction, some in another, one, carried straight towards the great church, burst in, and running reached the ambo at the ninth hour of the day, which seemed to those who knew how to assess the matter to be an evil messenger. But a greater proof than this was the plainly terrifying earthquake which occurred at the same season on the ninth of January, by which many temples, very many porticoes and buildings fell down: such great a slaughter of men and beasts was produced as cannot be expressed in any words. Indeed the august temple of God itself, Sophia, shaken in many parts, had not the singular care of the princes forestalled it, would have run the danger of ruin. And these things happened before the synod. But after the synod, at the beginning of the month of October, suddenly there came such a whirlwind, such a storm rushed on, that it threw down to the ground many temples, many palaces, and even the leaden roof of the patriarchal palace itself, rolled up like parchment: indeed even the bronze pine-cone of great weight, set on the head of the four-sided obelisk in the hippodrome, made of a single stone, was thrown far off and crushed. Nor were these prodigies which happened then indeed vain, but open signs and proofs of future commotion and disturbance hanging over the Church from the demon, the contriver of disturbances. Which perhaps would never have happened, if the synod had decided the cause of Photius according to the apostolic decree, as has been said. These things, indeed, sprinkle no stain on the glory of the patriarch Ignatius, because he did not have the authority to do what he wished: for he permitted the Romans the power of judging according to the ancient ecclesiastical tradition. Indeed the synod itself did not wish so greatly to be indulgent to those who had communicated with Photius, though unwilling and compelled, as did the simplicity, not to say the levity, of the emperor, overcome namely by the prayers of men and inflated with human praises, and, under the colour of clemency, wholly destitute of the perfect fairness of God. And these things were so done.

[47] further, St. Ignatius, restored to his see, Further the great Ignatius, again moved up to the helm of the Church, showed even to those purblind of their own accord how vainly the enemy had gloried against him. For in a manner he administered the Church more skilfully and more holily and securely than before; as one who by many and long-continued and various misfortunes and hardships had acquired for himself a greater practice of ruling. For uncorruptly, and with no account taken of persons, he gave judgement: he applied singular care in consecrations: he brought aid to those oppressed by injury, consoled the afflicted, relieved the needy, and cheerfully restored their want by his aid, as far as he could: he strengthened and consoled those weak in faith or even in body: he raised the fainthearted to hope through doctrine by the grace of the Holy Spirit. Finally, made all things to all men I Cor. IX, 22, he was zealous according to his strength to gain all in the bowels of Jesus Christ. He always had two ways set before him: the one, by which he went straight to God through pure and assiduous prayers; the other he referred to the edification and advancement of his Church. But with the same work he rightly administered both at the same time, not perfunctorily or, as some do, yawningly, but accurately and seemly from his first youth to his last old age he performed the sacred rites; and in all the temples to the most praised Mother of God and to the divine Apostles and Martyrs, with an exulting heart, with the piety that was proper and befitted the divine majesty, he kept panegyrics and feast days.

[48] the people committed to him assiduously So piously and religiously indeed, the Holy Spirit namely filling him, did he perform the divine rite, that on the very altar there were to be seen open proofs of the presence of the Holy Spirit. For the bread seemed utterly changed by divine things, and wholly, like a heavenly coal, scattering rays of the grace of heavenly flame. The sign of the cross also, which hung over the altar from above, was often seen gently shaken, when the sacred host was raised, signifying namely the overshadowing of the Holy Spirit: but on the very day of Easter it was so vehemently moved that all the presbyters and bishops, especially those who were present from other patriarchates, struck by the mystery, for a long time celebrated the deity with praises with a huge voice. Thus the great priest offered the spotless sacrifice with perfect and full faith, and, God being propitiated by it, he worked the salvation of the people, as was fitting for a priest. Further, those who came to him he instructed with instructions of this kind. Take heed Ephes. V, 15, he said, to yourselves, brothers, and see how you walk carefully, not as unwise but as wise; and do not become imprudent, but understanding the will of God. And Rom. XII, 2: Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed, according to the Apostle Ephes. IV, 23, by the renewal of your mind; that you may prove and know what is the good and well-pleasing and perfect will of God; and what the calling of your faith and hope in Christ Jesus our Lord. Let the lamp of your heart be always burning with the Holy Spirit, pure, sincere, clear and splendid, that your whole soul may be enlightened by it. Let your mind be always intent on the Lord, simple and straight, whose one labour and zeal may be, and one and principal

end proposed, the contemplation of the highest good. To that, I say, by its nature true and genuine good let your mind be always turned, and in it let it live, move and be Acts XVII, 28; in it let it be enlightened and rendered good: to it, as far as may be done, let it be made like and be deified.

[49] called away from vices For thus, the soul being raised above every nature, whether corporeal or intelligent, we shall establish our mind in the majesty of the most holy Trinity, which alone is and exists by itself inexplicable, hidden, and raised above every nature. And as one nature of divinity of Father and Son and Holy Spirit, so let us profess and believe one power, operation, glory and magnificence: and one of the most divine Trinity, the timeless Word, co-timeless with the Father, removed from the sight of the eyes, pure of the concretion of the body, of the same essence and of the same power as the Father: knowing this same one also to be the son of man, born according to our nature of the immaculate Mother of God; let us proclaim him one indeed in person, but twofold in nature, operation, will: and wholly occupied in these meditations of divine and theological things, purged by the study of the sacred scriptures, and cleansed by assiduous prayer, despising human things, let us neglect empty cares, and let us neither submit ourselves to foul desires, nor slip down to foolish thoughts. Let all beastly anger, every desire alien from reason, be excluded from us: rather, let anger be a weapon for us against sin and the author of sin: and let desire, transferred to the true and genuine good, become a helper for us in keeping the precepts of the Lord. These instructions, beloved, received first indeed from the prophets, then from the outstanding disciples of Christ and the evangelists, and then from the fathers or holy doctors, or rather dictated through one and the same Spirit, and proclaimed in various ways, let us not despise, nor carry out sluggishly and idly, but let us keenly and zealously pursue the work of virtue: that, expiated from sins by kindness to the needy and by faith, by perfect charity and sincere submission purged of all defilements of soul and body, walking according to the will of God, we may be held worthy of the kingdom of the supreme Father in Christ Jesus.

[50] and roused to all Let us crush, then, all the vitiosities of the soul and the fibres of malice, that a way to the most pure may lie open to the pure. Let us hold far from us the pernicious gluttony of the belly, as a plague of virtue and the source of all impiety: in its place let us put on temperance as a double cloak; temperance, I say, the companion of blessed minds, the tent-fellow of the heavenly ones, and the procurer and pledge of heavenly delights and pleasures. And let fornication not even be named among us, so that not only in work and deed, but not even by the monsters of impure thoughts may we be defiled. With all our strength, then, and every exertion and the highest humility of soul, and with prayers, let us scrape out the elements of lust, and let us overturn or lessen the muddy fountainhead of impurity and the hearth of pleasure, the rouser of intemperance, the most obscene idol of the heart. For thus the glory of continence will flower in us, and we shall draw the holy and spiritual spouse to us piously and holily. Let us flee avarice and the zeal of having just as we flee idolatry: for they are the same, as the law of the Apostle teaches I Tim. VI, 10, when those seeking money have strayed from the faith and have plunged themselves into many sorrows. Since then it takes away from us saving faith, and brings forth many calamities of life, how shall it not be fled and cursed with all strength by him who does not wish to sell his soul like merchandise? For which reason, if our citizenship is in heaven Philipp. III, 20, if we think of heaven, and aspire to immortal life and everlasting salvation, having food and clothing, let us be content with these I Tim. VI, 8. For thus well equipped it will be of help to overcome readily the arduous slope of virtue, not unaware that as a bird, entangled in nets on the ground, cannot strive up to heaven, so in like manner it can in no way happen that he who is bound by the resources and riches of fortune should readily run down the path leading to heaven. And anger, as akin to madness, the parent of ignominy and a sparkling of the evil demon, let us flee with oars and sails, lest we be swallowed up one day by this fire. But let us aim at meekness, evenness of soul, patience. For these are the true tokens of the clemency of Jesus: and these that supreme one commands. For nearly all the precepts of Christ the Lord contain instructions of gentleness and meekness, and of patience in enduring evils, through which also charity, the head of all virtues, is duly established and acquired.

[51] virtues. And let us detest grief and acedia, as things that fence up and close the way with thorns. Let us cast off grief, which arises from the lack of fleeting things not acquired, which presses the mind and burns the soul, and so harasses and afflicts it that it cannot look upon the bestower of sincere joy and fly up to him in the joy of the Holy Spirit. Let us cast off tedium as the offspring of depraved grief, the parent of sloth and companion of despair, loose, slack, and less fit for all divine precepts and good works. But rather let us put on that mother of penance, the sadness which pleases God, full of compunction and anointed with heavenly joy: let us put on eagerness, diligence and every cultivation of virtue: let us be fervent in spirit, serving the Lord, rejoicing in hope, patient in tribulation, persevering in prayer Rom. XII, 11; that we may be able to overcome in Christ Jesus vain and accursed glory, and pride, much worse than this, the head of crimes, the principal daughters of the devil: while through the highest lowliness of soul we hiss off and trample on the crafty old rogue of vain praise, and prostrate and crush pride, the queen of all vices, in the faith and power of God: and thus draining the whole bilge of the vices of the soul, all noxious affections being laid aside, we shall purely put on holy integrity of mind and the author of integrity, God. And thus, adorned with every embellishment of virtues, the beloved Only-begotten of God will love us, and will come to us with the Father, as he promised John XIV, and will make his dwelling with us. Such admonitions our divine Ignatius used, such precepts and instructions; and separately, by discourses strengthened by action, he attracted religious men and those removed from the crowds, as more given to action, and inflamed in them the love of religious discipline. Separately too he gave precepts for living to the rich, that they should not think magnificently and proudly, nor trust in fleeting things and uncertain fortunes: to princes, that they should not swell with pride and despise the humbler. Individually too, he himself, the greatest prelate, instructed priests and prelates in the knowledge of divine and ecclesiastical institutions. Finally, through everything that he did and taught, he set forth the heavenly law and precepts.

ANNOTATIONS.

the third of the same name, who is said to have been ordained in the month of April 870 Acta SS., vol. V of June, p. 87; between the two, in the middle, after Cosmas II, stands Sanutius, who occupied the see of Alexandria from the year 859 to the month of April 870 Ibid., p. 88. But this Sanutius must be numbered among the Jacobite, that is heterodox, patriarchs: so that an error has crept into Du Sollier's lucubration in one or other Michael the patriarch, and either the time of the episcopate of the one must be prolonged or that of the other must be drawn back. We prefer the latter, because if we anticipate the beginning of Michael III by one or two years, we have it that he could have delegated the archdeacon Joseph to the synod of Constantinople, and could obtain his place among the Catholic patriarchs.

p. The indulgence of the synod towards the lapsed bishops is keenly carped at by the biographer Nicetas below at num. 45, and he attributes to it the later evils. Yet this must be noted, that St. Ignatius himself above the others was the author of the indulgence Compare Labbe, Councils, vol. VIII, col. 1119, and indeed, the synod being dissolved, he had recourse to Pope Adrian that it might be permitted to bestow a fuller indulgence. We ask, he says Ibid., col. 1172, that it now be determined and perfectly disposed, and written entire to our humility, concerning these lectors who were shorn by the imposition of the hand of Photius, who, since they are of a nearly innumerable multitude in all regions and cities, the Churches ask out of necessity that sacerdotal promotion be made of others: so that we may know also on this matter your will and decree most certainly and most manifestly, whether they are worthy to be promoted to the greater grades of the priesthood, or not: for this doubt only they have left (namely the pontifical legates, presidents of the VIII Col. 198F synod). And further we also ask concerning our intimate son and most brave contender for the truth, namely Paul the chartophylax, that if any reason of dispensation is possible in his case, he may receive the dignity of the episcopate, as we have also earnestly requested before in our letters. He then asks the restoration of Theodore, metropolitan of Caria, ordained by himself, but who had then turned aside to the side of Photius. From these things we see that St. Ignatius, even though a patriarch, thought it illicit to relax the canons which only the Roman Pontiff could loose.

q. There subscribed the VIII ecumenical Council, celebrated at Constantinople from the 5th day of October 869 to the 28th day of February 870, one hundred and ten bishops Ibid., col. 1156; so that in place of ἑκατον δυο, one hundred and two, one must read ἑκατον δεκα, one hundred and ten. The Acts of this Synod are found everywhere in the Collections of Councils; in Latin indeed by the author Anastasius the Librarian, who was present and took part Labbe, Councils, vol. VIII, col. 961, and in Greek, but abbreviated, with the version of Matthäus Rader Ibid., col. 1278.

r. When Photius had been silent for a rather long time at the questions of the fathers in session five, and feared the danger of his silence, he at last said Ibid., col. 1039: God hears my voice, even when I am silent. The most holy vicars of elder Rome said: Through silence you will not escape a more manifest condemnation. Photius said: Neither did Jesus evade condemnation by being silent. The most holy vicars of the apostolic sees said: It is not worthy for us to render you an answer about such speech, since you have likened to the things of Our Lord Jesus Christ the things which are yours. But there is no communication of light with darkness, nor participation of justice with iniquity, nor concord of Christ with Belial, nor agreement of the temple of God with idols. With such words Photius covered his wily and proud mind: and when he was pressed either to accept or to refute the decrees of the council, he set an obstinate silence against the certain accusations.

s. François Pagi in the Breviarium of the Roman Pontiffs under Pope Theodore says Vol. I, p. 324, Venice edition 1730: This rite with a pen dipped in the chalice in the Blood of the Lord, in place of ink, was peculiar to the Greeks, yet it was used by Pope Theodore, although Anastasius made no mention of this deed, in the condemnation of Pyrrhus. He then cites what was done in the VIII Council. The praised Pagi continues further: Nothing was gravely sinned in it, as by an abuse of the Lord's Blood, by irreverence, on the part of the aforesaid Theodore and the fathers of Constantinople, as neither by Basil, when he wished a particle of the Lord's Body to be buried with him D'Achery, Spicilegium, vol. I, p. 139, Paris edition 1723. St. Gregory the Great narrates, book II of the Dialogues, chap. 24 Works, vol. II, col. 256, Paris edition 1705, that the same was done by St. Benedict, who ordered a young monk to be buried with the Body of the Lord placed with reverence on his breast. Edmond Martène also observes, book I of De antiquis Ecclesiae ritibus, chap. 5, art. 4 P. 354, Venice edition 1783, that in the solemn dedication of churches three portions taken from the Lord's Body were enclosed with lime and mortar. Finally this custom was carried over to the West: Étienne Baluze narrates in the Notes to Agobard Migne, Patrology, vol. CIV, col. 310 that peace was sanctioned between Charles the Bald and Bernard, count of Toulouse, with the Eucharistic blood Compare Mabillon, De re diplomatica, p. 170. Of this use of the chalice Jean-Baptiste Thiers treats in the Treatise on Superstitions Traités des superstitions, vol. II, p. 228.

t. We have already said above, chap. IV, annotation k, that the collection of apostolic canons differs both in number and in order in the Latin and the Greek Church. So also in this place, the thirtieth canon in the Latin collection inflicts penalties on a bishop simoniacally promoted Labbe, Councils, vol. I, col. 50, which is not to the biographer's purpose: on the contrary the thirtieth canon, or rather the twenty-ninth, in the Greek collection, condemns both Photius and all his followers: If any bishop, it says Ibid., col. 31, using secular princes, has acquired a Church through them, let him be deposed and separated, and all who communicate with him.

u. The indulgence of the Fathers of the Council of Constantinople which our biographer deplores, he explains a little below, when he says that by this indulgence a way was laid for Photius, after St. Ignatius had died, to occupy the cathedra of Constantinople anew. Compare what is said above, Annotation p.

v. Tarasius, whose Acts our men present under the 25th day of February Acta SS., vol. III of Feb., p. 572, seems to have been the author of the indulgence bestowed on the iconomach bishops. For in the second synod of Nicaea, session I, when these bishops had washed out their fault after a fashion by a public profession of faith, Tarasius said Labbe, Councils, vol. VII, col. 62: Does it seem good to you that they receive their sees… The Holy Synod said: It pleases us all. And in this way the bishops, returned from heresy, recovered their sees.

* but when he had replied that he had nothing to say

CHAPTER VII.

The pious death of St. Ignatius, his burial and miracles; Photius, having obtained the see of Constantinople again by deceit, involves the Church in new disturbances.

Piously and holily St. Ignatius When he was now tending to extreme and last old age, he desired to be dissolved, and he awaited the end of many labours and sicknesses, and of so many hardships, which at length he also attained. For in the sure hope of attaining the future he laid down the present life, and escaped the commotions of disturbances, and the envy, hatred and persecution of the unhappy and impious, and in peace in the selfsame he slept and rested, and commended his spirit into the hands of the Lord. The Saint was added to the Saints, the great hierarch to the hierarchs, the Confessor to the Confessors, he wearied in contest to the great fathers. And indeed it is fitting that we set forth in what manner he departed from the station of life. The Saint lay drawing his last and sick breath, while he too, like that great one ^a, was awaited by the heavenly choir. Now the instruments of the voice had almost wholly collapsed, the vital breath had failed, and all his limbs were lifeless, and at last the soul itself looked to nothing but departure. When behold the minister, according to the rite of the Church, at the height of the night, with a huge voice intoned and proclaimed that solemn word: Bid a blessing, lord: and the Blessed man, gradually signing his mouth with his hand, and moderately moving his venerable lips, in a half-dead voice, which those who stood nearest perceived with difficulty, asked of what Saint the memory was being celebrated on that day. Of James, they said, lord, the Brother of the Lord, your friend ^b. Nay, the Blessed man replied with great compunction, my lord. For the rest, farewell. Then he said: Blessed be our God at all times, and now and always and for ages of ages. Amen. And at the same time with a hymn and thanksgiving he sent forth his soul and left mortal life. Immediately, then, they care not so much for a funeral as for a life (for after he was translated to life, he was life and remained so): and his household clothed him according to custom in the sacred adornment of a patriarch, and they put on him the venerable superhumeral of James, the brother of the Lord ^c, which, sent to him some years previously from Jerusalem, he had attended with as great veneration as if he beheld in it James the Apostle himself and the first pontiff. He had wished this for this reason, that he should be buried in it.

[53] dies on the 23rd day of October, And indeed on that very day, sacred to the memory of St. James, Ignatius too departed from this life to the Lord on the twenty-third day of October, by a very sure indication of intimacy

with the brother of the Lord, and of his departure to him being accepted. And thus that sacred and venerable pledge, holily and religiously composed for the funeral, was closed in a wooden sarcophagus, and carried to the church of the great Wisdom of God, was adorned with worthy and honourable obsequies. Such great piety indeed seized the people that they both pulled apart fragments of the bier on which he lay, in the manner of Relics, and the veil with which he was covered was torn into a thousand parts and divided among the pious as a sacred pledge. So when the body had been with difficulty snatched from the hands of the people, it arrived at the noble church of the great Martyr Menas ^d; and there, deposited for some time, it was also received honourably with sacred hymns, as was fitting. In which place two women, occupied by evil demons and horribly harassed, were freed by the mere touch of the tomb, the whole assembly looking on, and they obtained most certain health; and they rendered huge thanks to God with a great voice. And when from here the intimates had placed this noble treasure of Relics on a ship, and the sea had already previously swollen violently, and the storm of a violent south wind was raising the tenth waves, which seemed likely to hinder the voyage, as soon as the sacred chest touched the ship, something wonderful happened by the Lord's power: for that great prelate invisibly rebuking the storm, the waves gently falling, the sea stood calm with a placid breeze.

[54] and buried in the temple of St. Michael, So those in charge of the funeral crossed the calmed sea, praising the Lord, and carrying into the noble temple of the prince of the heavenly host and Archangel ^e its builder and worshipper Ignatius, they replaced him with great veneration on the right side of the church, laid in a marble tomb; as it were a medical workshop of various diseases, where also hostile spirits are driven out, and the sick of every kind, to say it in brief, are powerfully cured of diseases both of body and of soul when they are brought to the tomb. Thus the man of God, tried on earth by many hardships, and proved as gold in the furnace, and so shown worthy of God, attained heavenly beatitude and the honour on high which the Saints enjoy. Foolishly then did the darkness act, persecuting the light which it never overtook: nay, the more they benefited it by persecuting, the more they thought it was harassed by them. For while they persecuted the light, that, having captured it, they might trample on it and thence insult it, they indeed drove the light as far away as possible from themselves, and even unwillingly they moved it so much the nearer to the highest good, as they joined themselves the more with the extreme evil by their worst plans.

[55] he shines with very many miracles; So Ignatius, as patriarch a second time, presided for a decade; and in all, for thirty years and a little more, the great prelate held the throne: and as an octogenarian he departed in peace to that great Pontiff Christ ^f. Further, with how many and how great signs and prodigies God has celebrated him, and the Lord, celebrated in him, does not cease always to celebrate him, is not the labour of this undertaking and work, but of a history and a full volume. I shall set forth in brief a few out of many (for to follow them one by one would be infinite), which yet may moderately declare the grace of God and his faith. A boy of eight, at most nine years old, struck down by disease and suddenly wholly broken, had lost not only tongue and ears, but, seized in all his limbs, carried by his family, was thrown down at the common sacred workshop of cures for believers, at the tomb, I say, of the holy father; and on the fourth day, deemed worthy of the Saint's help, immediately standing in his own footsteps, he rose together; and opening the door with his own hand, going out healthy and whole, he spoke with and heard all whom he met, giving immense thanks to God and narrating the miracles of the Saint. Another, seized vehemently with epilepsy, through the envy, I think, of the evil demon, had foully distorted his mouth, and was deprived of the natural sound of his voice, so that a pitiable and sad spectacle was set before the eyes. This man, imploring the aid of the Saint with firmest faith, saw through a nocturnal appearance Ignatius, carrying a key in his hand, and moving it to his mouth, and turning it, as if he were opening a door, and saying to him: Do you know who I am? And when he denied it, he afterwards heard from him that he was Ignatius the patriarch. And behold now, he said, you are cured. Afterwards awaking, he found himself so safe and sound that he detected not even a trace of the disease in himself.

[56] cures dysentery, dryness, sterility, Another likewise, labouring with dysentery, was now in his last extremities and had been given up by the physicians; yet as he implored the Saint's aid from far away with full faith, he beheld him through sleep standing by him and bidding him be of good heart; and immediately his dried bowel stood firm, and the appetite for food returning, restored the man to perfect soundness. A woman also, married to a husband and parent of three children, always had dry and parched breasts, so that she was compelled to commit her offspring immediately to foreign nurses to be fed: until it came into the minds of her relatives to hasten to the Saint. Where, a liquid having been wiped off the holy man's hair and given to the woman recently delivered to drink, suddenly so great an abundance of milk was seen to overflow that the breasts supplied more milk than was necessary. And this is narrated to have happened not to her alone, but also to another, labouring under the same disease of nature, who likewise, taking from the same liquid of his hair, recovered health. Another noble and illustrious matron likewise, who, placed in marriage with a noble man, was for many years unfruitful and sterile, by the faith of her husband, who prostrated himself at the holy man's ashes, and with holy oil brought from there to his wife, and applied with faith, she, the great pontiff being invoked in supplication, suddenly made fruitful, brought forth numerous offspring.

[57] frees Sicily: And indeed not only those who have embraced the sacred tomb have experienced these miracles; to travellers also and those dwelling in the last of the lands the father full of God is present when implored. Of which thing the most ample witness is the praetor of Sicily, who most holily affirmed it on oath. About to fight against the Agarenes ^g invading Sicily, when he was tormented with huge care and dread, he invoked the great Ignatius in aid with ardent vows. Who, said the praetor, manifest in the air, as if sitting on a white horse, admonished me to bend the column to the right side, and that I would immediately see the glory of God. When the prefect, Musilices by name, had done this, he captured the enemy, conquered in a huge battle ^h. And in what manner shall we pass over in silence that woman's wonderful case and the more wonderful beneficence of the Saint towards her? When she bore a male in her womb, and was now pressed by the pains next to delivery, the boy was brought forth feet first, and sticking, could not advance further, while meanwhile the most sharp and intolerable tortures of the woman in labour increased. And when the matter was now at the point that the woman should perish together with the boy, surgeons were present to extract the foetus, divided limb by limb ⁱ. But by the better providence of the deity, they recalled to memory our great worker of miracles. And by chance one of those present brought forth a very small part of the Relics of that veil, distributed previously in the care of the funeral to the faithful peoples, and, the aid of Ignatius being implored, he moved it to her belly; and the woman being merely touched, the infant, turned onto its head, and thereupon brought forth safe and sound, was named Ignatius by the parents, that from the very name imposed on him the memory of the miracle performed by the patriarch might return. And why should this be held lower than those apostolic prodigies? In what does it yield to the power of Peter and Paul? For the force of the Holy Spirit brought it about in them that their handkerchiefs and aprons performed great signs. The same he has now effected through this apostolic man, truly God-bearing, that the coverings of the bier, which merely touched those sacred Relics, and the iron fetters with which impious men pressed his sacred feet, are believed to have done things no less for the praise of God and the salvation of the faithful.

[58] those who insult the sepulchre are punished, I omit to say how many worn out with pains of the kidneys he cured when asked with the whole soul: how many elephantiacs or lepers he has cleansed, how many blind he has given light; the broken and lying he has raised; and how he has restored those withered, here in the hands, there in the feet. I pass over the feverish, or those tortured by evil spirits, whom he has healed, and heals today, and through the venerable chains he drives out and cures nearly all diseases and all sicknesses of all who flee with sincere faith to his sacred tomb. Nor indeed, however willing, could I go through everything in speech. Yet adding that one miracle, we shall join to the history a few of the things which are narrated to have happened after the holy man's death. For how could we pass over in silence the crime of that Lydus the sacellarius ^k? Who, set on by the shameless Photius, came into the monastery in order to drive out with abuse and scourges all the sick supplicating at his sepulchre. Having done which he added crime to crime: for he ordered the ground next to the sacred tomb to be dug up deep, in appearance indeed as if the patriarch had hidden a huge quantity of gold there; but in reality so as to inflict an insult on the sacred bones: so far had envy occupied the man's furious mind that it did not depart from him even after the death of Ignatius. For as soon as he had impiously decreed this by a word, the vengeance of the deity pursued the impious man: here only the patience of God could not contain itself longer, but forthwith inflicted a stroke. So that proud man, bellowing horribly, and like a victim, flowing with blood below and above, being carried home, tongueless, within four days, punished by God, expired. These are the narratives of the deeds done by our father; these the prerogatives of the good shepherd; thus that most blessed man, while he lived on earth, conducted himself as holily and religiously as possible, referring everything to the praise of God and the edification of the Church: and having departed through death to God, he is for us with him a patron saving and most useful alike, as one who present to God intercedes for us without any medium ^l.

[59] but Photius, the simplicity of the emperor And what of him who is called Photius? Did he fear the judgement duly made concerning him, and cast away his impious plans? Or, humbled under the mighty hand of God, did he thereafter commit himself to the divine will? Or, while not renouncing his wicked machinations, was he yet made more moderate and fair? By no means. Through all that exile of ten years he devised infinite stratagems against the Saint. And when he could in no way ensnare or capture him, he attempted to win the emperor's mind to himself. So, all arts and tricks being applied, he found a way by which he might capture the emperor's simplicity and levity, and see how plausible, and how worthy of his cleverness. For observing the names of each one, I say of the emperor Basil himself and his wife Eudocia Augusta, and of the children Constantine, Leo, Alexander, Stephen, from the first letters of each name composed together he seized the occasion for composing a fraud. For weaving a history, or genealogy, which nowhere is or was, he feigned as head of the stock Tiridates, that renowned king of Armenia, who ruled in the age of the Martyr St. Gregory ^m. From him, by names thought up at his pleasure, he drew down the race, and in a fabulous narrative founded some from others: when at last he arrived at the parent of Basil, he wrote that from him there would be born just such a man as Basil was, and that his name was Beclas; whom, most happily and for the longest time of all kings before him

he prophesied would reign. Innumerable lies besides, with which he knew the hearer would be delighted, he assembled in his book, and wrote it in Alexandrian letters ⁿ on very old paper, formed to the very appearance of antiquity, and clothed it in a case or covering taken from a very ancient codex, and secretly put it back in that noble library of the palace.

[60] abusing, recovers the see of Constantinople; His faithful minister in this scene and fable was Theophanes, in that season a palace cleric, having with the emperor an opinion of erudition, and afterwards, in payment for his wicked work, created bishop of Caesarea of Cappadocia ^o. This man, at an opportune time, drew out this fictitious little book, put back in the library as has been said, and showed the book to the emperor as more wonderful than all others and more packed with secrets; and he pretended that neither he himself nor anyone of mortals could attain its mysteries except Photius alone. So it was immediately sent to Photius: he alleged that that secret could be committed to no one but the emperor alone, about whom that very thing had been written. What then? The easiness of the emperor was captured by this fable, and he returned to favour with Photius. For auspicious predictions, however vain, are wont to baffle and enervate a lofty nature, one too eager for glory, and to reduce it entirely to their power. This was the origin of the intimacy between Basil and Photius: hence the tranquil state of the Church was overturned from its foundation: this was the renewal of the first disturbance and dissension. Hence Photius, assiduous in the palace, stealthily won the goodwill of the emperor, and at last by his sleights and the enticements of his morals he claimed the whole man for himself. There soon appeared also another occasion of intimacy: that Theodore, in habit and dress a monk in appearance, but most wicked of all the wicked and most crafty of the crafty, Santabarenus, I say, of whom, I think, you have all heard. This man, found I know not how (for equals, as is said, easily flock with equals), as one most powerful in singular sanctity, foreknowledge, and knowledge of future things (of all which virtues however he not only was devoid, but on the contrary, as they say, was held remarkable for magical sleights, and arts of divining, conjecturing, enchanting and calling up souls), this man, I say, he set before the emperor, and recommended him, celebrated with immense praises. And when he now enjoyed the emperor as a most intimate and familiar friend, Photius through him lay in wait for the patriarch Ignatius, and attempted secretly to recover his lost see, and sacrilegiously procured for himself a return anew. But when he perceived that this would be difficult, he openly contended with the holy man with all his might that he should be restored to the priesthood.

[61] though previously repulsed by St. Ignatius; But the patriarch, most observant of the canons and ecclesiastical laws, although vehemently solicited, yet did not admit him, nor did he grant to the ravening wolf a return to the fold of Christ, lest he should fight with himself and contradict his own subscriptions, and himself fall from his dignity. For he contended that one removed from office by a synod, not merely provincial but general, and indeed one who had not even from the beginning lawfully obtained the sacred see, could not be absolved without a synod greater and of ampler authority. But Photius, despising the canons and laws, and of his own accord arrogating the priesthood to himself anew, sat in the palace called the Magnaura [p], appointing exarchs and conferring sacred orders. For whatever tended to the insult of the Church, the affliction of the holy man, and his own destruction, that most profane man sacrilegiously dared: so far abusing the simplicity of the emperor, or rather the long patience of God and his waiting for penance, the ambitious man of the worst example, after he had also won over the palatines and brought them over to his side, the crime hidden within being much more and more openly displayed than before, and much more force of secular power being procured than before, not a full three days having elapsed since Ignatius had died, his former parricidal and tyrannical mind being called back, he occupied the patriarchal tribunal: and his fury against the Saint being renewed, he oppressed all his household and servants with imprisonments, stripes, exiles, and other intolerable evils and hardships. And whoever resisted his promotion, made against the ecclesiastical laws and sanctions, these he overcame by a thousand arts. For some, by soothing them with gifts and honours, or with exchanges of episcopal sees, he drew to fellowship and communion. Others he first persecuted, exposing them with accusations and unheard-of calumnies and gravely tearing them, whom yet soon, if they had joined his side, he absolved, the whole cause being given to the winds. Thus he who just now was sacrilegious for him soon became for the same man a fellow initiate and fellow minister. He who previously was proved by him, on the most sworn oath, to be a thief, adulterer and profane, was soon held by the same man to be a great and venerable prelate of sacred things.

[62] having obtained the cathedra, by wicked arts And those whom he saw firm in opinion, utterly turning away from his communion (and all turned away who were truly Christians, and who were persuaded that they could not communicate, without the highest danger to salvation and destruction, with him who had been duly and holily condemned and deposed by a holy and ecumenical synod; nor coalesce in one body of Christ with him who had a thousand times trampled underfoot the venerable cross of Christ and had compelled all others, through written deeds extorted by force, to trample on it), these, I say, all, as many as he could not break with chains and scourges, he handed over to his relative Leo, surnamed Catacalus, prefect of the bigla [q] or of the watches, whom he himself had raised to this dignity, a most savage and monstrous man. Who, in order to show himself grateful for the benefit, tortured all sent to him (to comprise that butchery briefly) with a kind of Licinian monstrosity. Of whom he destroyed many who fought for the truth even to death: but more, overcome by intolerable torments, he sent back to the sender in place of an illustrious gift. Who, by immortal God, could attain in speech the tempest and iniquity of this time; or rather who the snares and machinations of that tortuous dragon? That old rogue, calumniating many with his perjured tongue, or removing them from office through false accusations, as soon as they communicated with him again, restored them with commendations, and sometimes transferred them to greater dignities. Then if anyone again, offended by his insane communion, fell away from him, he condemned him again; and if the condemned man yielded, he soon admitted him. He so burned with thirst for glory and domination that for its sake through furious ambition he threw into confusion divine laws, all rights and sacred things.

[63] was busy to draw all to his side, First of all he worked at this, to transmute the ordinations of the patriarch, and to restore to their sees those condemned by him. But when this was not approved by the emperor, behold what he attempted. He tried to re-consecrate those consecrated by St. Ignatius; and when this likewise had little success, and all bore it most indignantly and cursed it, not even so did iniquity fail. Buying up humerals and oraria and other insignia of the priestly state, he secretly pronounced certain prayers over them (if however they should be called prayers and not rather dire curses); and thus he gave them to individuals in place of a gift and largesse. And that sin might become sinful beyond measure Rom. VII, 13, everywhere he demanded the sacraments of an oath, everywhere written deeds, whether he initiated, or conferred ecclesiastical honours and dignities, or exchanged bishoprics. Whomever at last he thought he was showing a benefit, these he bound to himself, and guarded himself by demanding most attested written deeds, everywhere aiming only at his own glory and being zealous for new things. Nor did he ever believe or hope that it would go well with him by the will or providence of God; but he fortified himself through his manifold talent or artifice, or rather maleficence. And thus he threw the whole state of the Church into confusion, and offended the minds of all mortals with the worst examples, and by his impious arts brought it about that the name of Christ was blasphemed.

[64] and against all right and law So when he had again invaded the patriarchate, that Theodore (whom he himself, in exile, created metropolitan of Patras [r], whom some wittily called metropolitan of Aphantopolis, that is, of a city existing nowhere), this Theodore, I say, he destined as apocrisiarius to Pope John [s]. Through whom he wrote that, compelled by force by the whole Church and the whole commonwealth, he had again most unwillingly ascended the sacred tribunal. And in order to establish the lie written in the letter, through Peter the secretary, who afterwards in reward for his inventions was named pontiff of Sardis [t], he stole the signatures of all the metropolitans; and so he stealthily got the metropolitans themselves, ignorant that they had subscribed to the document, since he had alleged a secret purchase of an estate. So great and so signal an artificer of all frauds and wickednesses was he! But for what reason shall we silently pass over the cause of that Euphemianus, bishop of Euchaita, whose bishopric Santabarenus sought on account of its nearness? This man then he compelled to yield the bishopric, and substituted Santabarenus for him. And not this only, but also bishoprics, whichever he sought, snatched from neighbouring metropolitans, he gave to this man; nor content with these, he appointed the same man protothronus beside himself. Moreover, Nicephorus, metropolitan of Nicaea, being forcibly deposed, he committed to him the care and guardianship of the orphanage: and Amphilochius, prelate of Cyzicus, he transferred to Nicaea; and when he shortly died he substituted Gregory of Syracuse; and him also, soon removed, Photius adorned with such epitaphs that he made him equal to the great fathers in life and virtue: and for no other cause than that the unhappy man had sharpened his tongue like a razor against St. Ignatius even to the end [u].

[65] threw all things into confusion. For these and many more and worse causes the wrath of God came upon the sons of unbelief. For suddenly the emperor's son, both dearest and eldest, Constantine, was snatched away [v]: whom the bold Photius, in favour of the emperor, enrolled by his own authority in the census of the Saints, and did not fear to venerate him in temples and monasteries, in order to catch human favour. Then also the great city of the Syracusans perished in a horrible disaster: and the whole island and all the towns and fields are foully laid waste even to this very day by a hostile hand, are plundered and ruined [w], none of those who appear to administer sacred matters placating God by prayers: but as it is written Matth. IX, 36: We have become as straying sheep without a shepherd. For iniquity, grown old with time and strengthened by many examples, has passed into a law for those who do not want the law, and corrupted morals have in some way invaded the nature of the prevaricators, and in such a way the impious have provoked the wrath of God upon themselves. Indeed, to go through one by one all the things innovated and impiously done by Photius, the architect and teacher of hypocrites and enemies of the cross, and by all the successors and companions of his ambition, is the work of a full history, not the argument of this place.

[66] But we, recalling the infinite patience and clemency of God, let us beseech the Lord of all, Epilogue. that, snatching us from the lot of those who by their most wicked desires have stood forth as authors of so many scandals, offences and dissensions, he may make us also sharers, by the prayers of the undefiled and most pure Mother of God, of the chosen heavenly ones, of the Angels, of the most glorious Apostles, of the most noble Martyrs and of all the Saints, and with all these of the holy father Ignatius, patriarch of Constantinople, new confessor and Saint, of the lot of the Saints who through the faith and charity of God, humility and meekness, have been deemed worthy of the kingdom and holy priesthood of God, who is the head of all the Saints, in Christ Jesus our Lord: to whom be praise, honour, adoration with the eternal Father, and likewise his eternal and life-giving Spirit, now and always, and for all the eternities of all ages. Amen.

ANNOTATIONS.

p. Of the Magnaura, the imperial palace, Charles Du Cange treats at length [Constantinopolis Christiana, vol. I, p. 127. Spruner, Historical Atlas, table LIX]: it was situated at the extremity of the City towards the north.

q. Βιγλα, Watches or guards, is a word twisted from the Latin: the consonant letter V lacking in Greek is supplied by B.

r. Of Theodore Santabarenus compare what Michel Le Quien has Oriens Christianus, vol. II, col. 179, and what we have said above, chap. V, Annotation h.

s. For the restoration of Photius Pope John VIII is gravely carped at by Baronius in the Annals at the year 879, § V, as if, conquered by a eunuch and half-man, he should be called not a man but rather a woman; and hence he considers that the fable of Pope Joan arose. But Pagi in his Critique at the same year 879, § X, excuses Pope John, inasmuch as for the good of peace and ecclesiastical unity he relaxed, as he himself says, the decrees of his predecessors and of the ecumenical synod. For the rest, Photius sent Theodore as apocrisiarius, that is responsal or legate, to Rome, to issue some sort of profession of faith, because it was fixed to truncate, alter and interpolate the Roman instruments thereafter at pleasure.

t. This Peter, bishop of Sardis, perished in the Dalmatian gulf, when he was discharging a legation for Photius to Pope Nicholas, as is said above at num. 42: and we have annotated at this place, annotation i. Accordingly the biographer Nicetas slips when he narrates that this Peter, St. Ignatius being dead, that is ten years after, could steal the seals of all the metropolitans: this will have been done by some other secretary of Photius. For the theft of the seals can in no way be referred to the earlier times in which Photius occupied the see of Constantinople under Michael; since within a solid decade many metropolitans had probably ended their lives.

u. On Nicephorus, Amphilochius and Gregory Asbestas, or of Syracuse, let there be compared what Michel Le Quien has Ibid., vol. I, col. 646 and 757.

v. Constantine, says Cedrenus Byzantine Writers, Cedrenus, vol. II, p. 243, Bonn edition, the eldest of the sons of Basil, was carried off by a fever, leaving his father unspeakable grief. His death must have taken place in the year 879, since Pope John inscribes a letter given in the month of August, on the 16th day, indiction twelve Labbe, Councils, vol. IX, col. 134. Compare Pagi, Critique at the year 879, § XI, that is in this same year, To our most serene, beloved spiritual sons and dear to God, Basil, Leo and Alexander, emperors and eternal Augusti, the name of Constantine, the eldest, namely being omitted.

w. Pagi, in the Critique on Baronius at the year 878, § XVI, says that Syracuse was destroyed by the Saracens on the 21st day of May of the year 878: and as far as regards the day, rightly indeed, since the eyewitness Theodosius the monk indicates the same Gaetani, Vitae Sanctorum Siculorum, vol. II, p. 274: but unhappily he omitted to mark the year of the destruction. From our Nicetas, further, we have it that Constantine, the eldest son of Basil, died before the destruction of Syracuse: for Nicetas says: Then also, Αὐτικα δε και, the great Syracuse etc.; that is after the death of Constantine, which moreover the sequence of the discourse also shows. Since then according to Pagi Constantine met his day in the year 879, it follows that Syracuse was sacked either in the same year, if he died in early spring, or only in the following year, 880, if he happened to die later. The latter opinion is followed by Ottavio Gaetani in the Observations on the Lives of the Sicilian Saints Ibid., Observations, p. 103