particularly monks, fled to Italy. Here they were received with all honour as confessors of the faith, and no one dreamed of suggesting that their Byzantine rite was in any way inferior, or that it would be an advantage to them to become Latins.[1]
Just when the trouble began, in 862, Pope Nicholas I (858-867) writes to Photius to explain that he has no kind of objection to the fact that the people have different rites, as long as there be nothing in these opposed to the holy canons.[2]
Then, in the next quarrel, when Michael Cerularius was cursing Latins because we use unleavened bread for the holy Eucharist, and with characteristic Byzantine indecency was calling the Blessed Sacrament, as consecrated by Latins, "dry mud,"[3] Dominic, Patriarch of Gradus and Aquileia,[4] wrote to Peter of Antioch in a way which is equally typical of the Latin attitude in this deplorable quarrel. He not only recognizes entirely that either use, of azyme or fermented bread, is in itself lawful; he tries to find parallel reasons to justify both customs. "We have heard that the holy Roman Church is abused by the clergy of Constantinople. They blame the most holy azyme which we sanctify and receive in the Body of Christ, and they say that because of this we are deprived of that Body, and they judge us to be separated from the unity of the Church because we offer the sacrifice without the mixture of leaven. But we, wishing to keep the unity of the Church without any kind of schism, hold the custom of azyme by the tradition, not only of the Apostles, but of the Lord himself. Yet since we know that the sacred mixture of leaven is accepted and lawfully used by the most holy and orthodox fathers of the Eastern Churches, we understand both customs faithfully, and confirm both by a spiritual meaning. For the mixture of leaven and flour, which the Churches of the East use, shows forth the substance of the Incarnate Word; but the simple azyme kept by the Roman Church, without controversy, may
- ↑ So Leo IX writes to Cerularius in 1053: "Since both in and outside Rome many monasteries and churches of the Greeks are found, none of them has been disturbed or hindered in the tradition of their fathers, or their customs; but rather, they are advised and encouraged to keep these" (Will, op. cit., p. 81).
- ↑ Nic. I ep. ad Photium, Ep. xii (P.L. cxix, 789).
- ↑ Will, op. cit., p. 105.
- ↑ The Patriarchs of Gradus and Aquileia were not finally merged into the title Patriarch of Venice till 1751. See the article "Patriarch, Patriarchate," in the Cath. Encycl.
