following accusations against the Latins. It will be seen that he has raked up any charges he can find. There are five points: 1. The Latins make the Bulgars fast on Saturday (so they do: that was then the universal custom in the Roman Patriarchate). 2. They eat butter, milk, and cheese during the first week of Lent (that is: we do not begin Lent till Ash Wednesday, whereas the Byzantines do on Quinquagesima Monday). 3. They despised married priests and thereby show themselves to be infected with Manichæan error. 4. They do not acknowledge Confirmation administered by a priest.[1] 5. They have changed and corrupted the Creed by adding to it the Filioque. The doctrine that the Holy Ghost proceeds from God the Father and God the Son he described as "godless, atheistic, and blasphemous." Photius then declares: "We, by the decree of our holy synod, have therefore condemned these forerunners of apostasy, these servants of Antichrist who deserve a thousand deaths, these liars and fighters against God … and we have solemnly excommunicated them."[2] He then proceeded to pretend to depose Pope Nicholas for these offences, and he tried to get the Western Emperor, Lewis II, to carry out his sentence. It should be noted that all these five points are local customs of the Latins. No one has ever tried to make Easterns fast on Saturday, eat cheese in Quinquagesima week, be celibate, stop priestly Confirmation, or say the Filioque in the Creed. The only quarrel against them was the iniquitous usurpation of Photius. In trying to turn his personal quarrel into a general dispute between the two great Churches he can find nothing better to say than to complain of some differences of custom, that were in no way his business, and on the strength of them to excommunicate all of us, over whom he had no pretence of jurisdiction, as well as our Patriarch, who was his own overlord as well. From this point the quarrel has shifted to a general one. It is no longer a question of Ignatius or Photius; it has become what it still is, an issue between Latins and Greeks. And no one can doubt who in that issue was the
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THE SCHISM OF PHOTIUS
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