Photius.

Photius. Patriarch of Constantinople at a critical period, was a member of a patrician family of Constantinople, and was born in the early part of the 9th century. Distinguished by his abilities, he served in various important public offices, and secured the favour of the Emperor Michael and his powerful favourite Bardas. The patriarch Ignatius, having in vain tried to correct the vices of the profligate emperor, was deposed and banished. Photius, although a layman, was appointed in his stead, hurried in a few successive days through all the stages of sacred orders, and finally installed as patriarch. Two successive councils of bishops under court influence confirmed the deposition of Ignatius and the election of Photius. In 862, however, Pope Nicholas I. (q.v.) called a new council at Rome, which declared Photius' election uncanonical and invalid, deposed and excommunicated him, and reinstated Ignatius in his see. Being supported, however, by the emperor, Photius retained possession, and retaliated on the pope by assembling a council at Constantinople in 867, in which he raised a controversy of doctrine and discipline between the churches of the East and West themselves. In all these doctrinal differences the council condemned the Western Church, excommunicated Nicholas and his abettors, and withdrew from the communion of the see of Rome. Michael being put to death by Basilus the Macedonian in 867, Photius was banished to Cyprus, and Ignatius reinstated; and in 869 the eighth general council, at which Pope Adrian II.'s legates presided, was assembled at Constantinople. Photius was again condemned and excommunicated, and the intercommunion of the churches restored. Yet on the death of Ignatius Photius was reappointed to the patriarchate. In 879 he assembled a new council at Constantinople, renewed the charge against the Western Church, and erased from the creed in the article on the Procession of the Holy Ghost the word filioque (see SPIRIT). The separation of the churches, however, was not completed till the time of Michael Cerularius (see GREEK CHURCH). Photius was finally deprived, and exiled to Armenia by Leo, the son of Basilus, in 886, and died soon afterwards, probably in 891. His chief remains are Myriobiblon, called also Bibliotheca, a summary review of 279 works which Photius had read, many of which are now lost; a Lexicon; the Nomocanon, which is a collection of the acts and decrees of the councils and ecclesiastical laws of the emperors; several minor theological treatises; and a collection of letters, many of them extremely interesting and elegant. See Hergenröther's monograph on Photius (1869).