St. Photios the Great (ca. 810-ca. 893)

BRENDA LLEWELLYN IHSSEN

St. Photios was an intellectual, a member of Byzantine aristocracy, and a teacher, theologian, and bibliophile. He remains one of the most highly venerated patriarchs of Constantinople, a position he held from 858 to 867 and again from 877 to 886.

Photios was born to aristocratic Christian parents and was related to both the imperial family and the ecumenical patriarch. Devoted at a young age to scholarship, at the completion of his education he became a teacher of philosophy and dialects, and was eventually appointed to the position of Protoasecretis in the Byzantine bureaucracy. Though a layman, Photios was elevated to the ecumenical patriarchate when Patriarch Ignatios was forced to resign by Caesar Bardas, uncle of Emperor Michael III. Though widely admired as an intellectual and administrator, Photios himself was surprised at the high clerical appointment he had not sought, not least because of his lay status.

Pope Nicholas I, who along with the other three patriarchs received the customary letter declaring Photios’ dedication to Orthodoxy, had previously been contacted by supporters of Ignatios, and sent delegates to a synod in 861 to investigate the resignation of Ignatios and the elevation of Photios. Further complicating the situation was the dispute over the territories of Sicily, Calabria, and Illyricum, which had been removed from Roman jurisdiction and transferred to Constantinople during the first phase of iconoclasm. The question of the jurisdiction of the newly formed Bulgarian Church was aso a lively issue at this time. While the papal legates found Photios’ election legal, Nicholas subsequently declared that he had deposed Photios and reinstated Ignatios; pronouncements which the East at first ignored.

Photios’ denunciation in 867 of Nicholas’ claims for papal primacy, and his critique of the Latin innovation of the filioque, manifested to Christianity the first clear sign of significant theological differentiation and large-scale division between the churches of the East and of the West.

At the death of Emperor Michael III in 867, Emperor Basil I sought reconciliation with Rome. Ignatios was elevated to the patriarchate for a second term, while Photios was deposed and subsequently condemned and anathematized at the Fourth Council of Constantinople (869–70). This synod is not recognized as having ecumenical status by the Orthodox Church. After Ignatios died, Photios was again reinstated as patriarch until his forced resignation in 886, after which he devoted the remainder of his life to his academic pursuits.

Details of the schism with Rome tend to overshadow Photios’ additional accomplishments, including his support of vigorous missionary activity to the Bulgars, Georgians, Moravians, and Khazars; achievements which were not divorced from his advancement of Hellenic culture, his noble leadership in the city during the siege of the Rhos (Rus) and their subsequent baptism, and his development of a refined prospectus on the relationship between church and state. Furthermore, Photios’ scholarly contributions are remarkable in both quantity and diversity of subject matter. He wrote extensively not just on theology and philosophy, but also on scientific matters, on history, mathematics, astronomy, music, poetry, and law. One of his most important theological contributions is The Mystagogy of the Holy Spirit, a sweeping indictment of the major theological distinction between Orthodox and Latin Christianity, the filioque. He is one of the first, and the most significant, to set out the critical issues involved.