discord. From Spain the Filioque spread into Gaul and Germany. Charles the Great among his many occupations found time to discuss the question, and in 794 he wrote a letter to a certain Elipand defending the addition. He ordered it to be sung in his private chapel at Aachen. The Synod of Aachen in 809 petitioned Pope Leo III (795-816) to introduce it at Rome. The Pope refused. He had no sort of doubt about the doctrine. In the West especially, since St. Augustine had defended it, the procession from both Persons was accepted everywhere, and used as a sort of anti-Arian protest. But the Pope did not see why at that time he should make any change in the Creed. At last, however. Pope Benedict VIII (1012-1024) admitted it at Rome formally. It had already long been used all over the Roman Patriarchate.[1]
The Easterns cannot maintain that any addition to any creed is unlawful. Creeds are drawn up by ecclesiastical authority, and the same authority can enlarge them. No creed contains the whole Catholic faith. None, for instance, say anything about the Holy Eucharist, or about any Sacrament except baptism. Moreover, the first Council of Constantinople made enormous additions to the original Nicene Creed.[2] The Eastern grievance as to the Creed (apart from the question of the doctrine in itself) is first that we made the addition without consulting them. To this a Catholic would answer that the Pope may certainly allow a true doctrine to be expressed in the Creed without asking any one. But even without supposing his Primacy one would point out that the amount of truth expressed by a creed is a disciplinary matter, and that the Roman Patriarch only allowed this addition in his own Patriarchate. They, we may retort, made a long list of additions to the Creed of Nicæa without consulting us — there were no Latin bishops at Constantinople II; but our Patriarch, seeing that these additions are all statements of
- ↑ For the history of the Filioque see Hergenröther-Kirsch. ii. pp. 142-146.
- ↑ It is doubtful whether these additions really were made by the first Council of Constantinople at all. Mgr. Duchesne thinks that they were added later. At any rate our present Creed is always counted as Nicene-Constantinopolitan.
