Cerularius, however, to make sure of Peter's support, now embarks on a career of lying. The first lie is that the Pope's name has not appeared on the Byzantine diptychs since the sixth general council (680), and (for he now imagines himself quite a Pope, with jurisdiction over the other patriarchs) he orders Peter to remove it from his diptychs at once, and to see that the same is done at Alexandria and Jerusalem.[1] This brazen falsehood is at once refuted by Peter. In his answer[2] he first quotes Cerularius's words, and goes on: "I am covered with shame that your venerable letter should contain such things. Believe me, I do not know how to explain it, for your own sake, especially if you have written like this to the other most blessed patriarchs."[3] He then mentions all the Popes who, since 680, have been specially reverenced at Constantinople—Agatho most of all—and he says: "When I went to Constantinople forty-five years ago, I myself heard the Pope mentioned in the holy mysteries with the other patriarchs by the Lord Patriarch Sergius of holy memory."[4]
But the unblushing Cerularius has many more lies to tell. He sends Peter this amazing account of what had happened in the affair of the Legates: the Legates had not been sent by the Pope at all, but by Argyros.[5] Argyros, who was still freebooting about Italy and pretending to fight the Normans, and whom Cerularius for some reason always hated, seems to have been a general scapegoat. Then the Legates who came, fraudulently pretending to be sent by Rome, were themselves disreputable persons; one of them had once been Bishop of Amalphi, but had been turned out from that see for just causes, and had wandered about Italy for five years (this was pure fiction); another pretended to be an archbishop, but no one could find where his diocese was (Cardinal Humbert: his diocese was Silva Candida); the third was a sham chancellor. It is tedious to repeat the pages of falsehood he sends to Antioch, how the Legates had forged letters, broken open seals,[6] and how they had excommunicated all the Easterns because they neither
