racy. He commands the Patriarchs of Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem to make known to their faithful the decisions of the Apostolic see.
Ignatius, by his appeal to Nicholas from the judgment passed upon him, had too much flattered the pride of the Pope. To prove this it will be sufficient to quote the superscription of his appeal papers.
"Ignatius, oppressed by tyranny, etc., to our most holy Lord, apd most blessed President, Patriarch of all sees, successor of St. Peter, Prince of the Apostles, Nicholas, œcumenical Pope, and to his most holy bishops; and to the most wise, universal, Roman Church."[1]
St. Gregory the Great would have rejected such titles as diabolical inventions, as we have already seen by his letters to John the Faster; but the Papacy of St. Gregory the Great was no more; it had given place to a politico-ecclesiastical institution, with only power for its aim. Ignatius, so long as he flattered the ambition of Nicholas, could not but be right in his eyes. Photius, who held to the ancient doctrine, and looked upon the Bishop of Rome simply as first bishop, without granting him any personal authority, could not but be wrong. Accordingly, without further question, Nicholas pronounced anathema against him, in a council which he held at Rome at the commencement of the year 863. "We declare him," he says, "deprived of all sacerdotal honour and of every clerical function by the authority of God Almighty, of the Apostles St. Peter and St. Paul, of all the saints, of the six general councils, and by the judgment which the Holy Spirit has pronounced by us."[2] He ventured in the sentence to accuse Photius himself of the persecutions that Ignatius had endured. This
