We do not deny it; but historical impartiality demands that it should be confessed, at the same time, that the Papacy, which set these expeditions on foot, failed to give them the character of grandeur they would have had, if, instead of circumscribing them to the West, it had united in a fraternal embrace the Eastern Christians with the Crusaders. Rome sacrificed all to her hatred of the Eastern Church.
The Emperor Basil died shortly after receiving the letter of Pope Stephen V. Leo, the Philosopher, son of Basil, succeeded him upon the throne of the East. He drove Photius from the see of Constantinople, to put there his own brother Stephen. As a pretext for this usurpation, he sent two of his officers to the Church of Saint Sophia, who ascended the pulpit and publicly read off the crimes which it pleased the Emperor to impute to Photius; and the Patriarch was next accused of having been concerned in a plot, the object of which was to place one of his relatives on the throne. Not a single proof of this charge could be adduced. Then Leo had Bishop Stylien brought to court, who was a personal enemy of Photius, and the two composed an infamous letter for the Pope (A.D. 886) in which they collected all the accusations of the enemies of Photius — accusations which had been declared to be calumnies by John VIII., and by a council of four hundred bishops. This letter of Stylien is one of the principal documents of which the Western writers have made use in their accounts of what they call the schism of the East.[1]
Its value may be estimated at a glance. Stylien's letter only arrived at Rome after Stephen's death, (891.) Formosus, his successor, replied that Photius had never been any thing more than a layman; that the bishops whom he had ordained were likewise nothing but lay-
- ↑ The Abbé Jager innocently says, "The letter of Stylien is a historic monument upon which we have frequently drawn." Hist. of Phot. book ix. p. 887, edit. 1854.
