second schism of photius
The Photian Schism — that ninth-century rupture between Constantinople and Rome occasioned by the deposition of Patriarch Ignatius and the elevation of Photius in 858 — occupies a singular position in the depth-psychology library not as a case study in neurotic projection or archetypal conflict in the Jungian sense, but as a paradigmatic instance of how institutional memory, legend-formation, and the politics of ecclesiastical identity conspire to distort historical fact across generations. Dvornik’s foundational 1948 study, the definitive voice in this corpus, prosecutes a sustained argument that what later tradition called the ‘Photian Schism’ was, in its historical substance, largely a confection of partisan hagiography, canonical forgery, and retrospective myth-making. The tension the corpus maps is therefore epistemological as much as ecclesiological: between the recoverable event and the legend that superseded it. Dvornik traces how Ignatian extremists, post-Gregorian canonists, Baronian apologists, and Byzantine dynastic propagandists each contributed strata to a legend that served their distinct ideological purposes. The so-called ‘second Photian schism’ receives particular scrutiny as an almost entirely legendary construct. What the corpus ultimately illuminates is the psychodynamics of institutional self-justification — the mechanisms by which a Church, East or West, remakes its past to authorize its present claims.
THE PHOTIAN SCHISM HISTORY AND LEGEND BY FRANCIS DVORNIK D.D., D.-ès-Lettres (Sorbonne), Hon. D.Lit. (London)
This is the title page of Dvornik’s foundational monograph, which frames the entire inquiry as a distinction between the historical events of the schism and the legendary accretions that subsequently obscured them.
, The Photian Schism: History and Legend, 1948thesis
In our examination of the relations between Stephen V, the Emperor Leo VI and Photius, the problem of the so-called second Photian schism made it necessary to reverse the chronological sequence of events and temporarily to abandon the historical method previously followed.
Dvornik signals that the ‘second Photian schism’ is a historiographical problem requiring special critical treatment, implying its status as legend rather than established fact.
, The Photian Schism: History and Legend, 1948thesis
lasted without a single break till the patriarchate of Michael Cerularius. No hint of any quarrel between the two Churches did we find under Pope Formosus, though at least some traces of it should have been left in tradition, had the two Churches fallen into schism in his reign.
Dvornik argues that the supposed schism under Formosus is historically groundless, as the record shows unbroken communion between Rome and Constantinople up to Cerularius.
, The Photian Schism: History and Legend, 1948thesis
He was the first to use the historic method by trying to establish that no attempt to create a schism ever had a truly dogmatic cause behind it. He also directly attacked the first Greek controversialists.
Dvornik credits Patriarch John Beccos with the pioneering historical argument that the Photian schism lacked genuine dogmatic foundations, a thesis Dvornik himself extends and deepens.
, The Photian Schism: History and Legend, 1948thesis
Political intrigues stirred up dissension between the party of the Empress and that of her brother Bardas in league with the young Emperor Michael III and brought the Patriarch with his followers into sharp conflict with the government (858).
Dvornik establishes that the origins of the Photian affair were fundamentally political rather than doctrinal, rooted in Byzantine factional struggle rather than ecclesiastical principle.
, The Photian Schism: History and Legend, 1948thesis
Dissensions were to revive again, as occasions arose, because Byzantium was never without its partisans of rigidity and its partisans of adaptation, its extreme conservatives and its Moderates: only the issues varied.
Dvornik situates the Photian schism within a structural pattern of Byzantine ecclesiastical conflict between rigorists and moderates, recurring cyclically regardless of the specific protagonists.
, The Photian Schism: History and Legend, 1948thesis
Hence arose the legend of Michael as a drunkard, an atheist, a mocker of the sacred liturgy… By the same token, Ignatius was placed by the writers of the Porphyrogennetos school in a brighter and more sympathetic light than his rival.
Dvornik exposes how Macedonian dynastic propaganda shaped the legendary narrative of the schism by systematically blackening Michael III and glorifying Ignatius at Photius’s expense.
, The Photian Schism: History and Legend, 1948thesis
Evidently, the name of Photius had by this time become a symbol of division between the unionists and the orthodox, the clash between the two affording the opportunity to hasten the growth of the Photian Legend, even in the Eastern world.
Dvornik demonstrates that the figure of Photius became a symbolic battleground in later Byzantine controversies over union with Rome, accelerating legendary rather than historical thinking about the schism.
, The Photian Schism: History and Legend, 1948thesis
Zonaras lived long after the events, and being himself a schismatic he favoured Photius, the promoter of a schism, praising him and concealing his crimes, patent though they were to the whole world.
Dvornik quotes Baronius’s polemical reading of Zonaras to illustrate how confessional partisanship generated irreconcilable legendary accounts of Photius on both sides of the East-West divide.
, The Photian Schism: History and Legend, 1948supporting
Humbert apparently does not even know the name of Photius, and his silence in this respect speaks volumes.
Dvornik uses Cardinal Humbert’s ignorance of Photius to argue that the 1054 schism under Cerularius was not consciously rooted in Photian precedent, thereby weakening the legend of continuous Greek anti-Latin agitation.
, The Photian Schism: History and Legend, 1948supporting
the die-hards made up the story that the Pope had condemned both his legates and Photius from the ambo of St Peter’s.
Dvornik identifies a specific moment of legend-manufacture in the anti-Photian tradition, showing how Ignatian extremists fabricated papal repudiation of the 879–80 reconciliation.
, The Photian Schism: History and Legend, 1948supporting
The assertion that John VIII had repudiated his legates’ stewardship and again condemned Photius, and that this condemnation was reiterated by his successors Marinus, Stephen V and Formosus, is based on data found in some documents included in the anti-Photian Collection.
Dvornik traces the documentary basis of the anti-Photian legend to a polemical collection of questionable documents interpolated into the Acts of the Eighth Council.
, The Photian Schism: History and Legend, 1948supporting
Photius, in his speech at the second session of his synod, clearly showed he was quite aware of the importance of the issue to John VIII; nor did he overlook the fact that reconciliation with Rome would be a hopeless proposition without some concession from his side on the Bulgarian issue.
Dvornik demonstrates that the 879–80 reconciliation was a pragmatic diplomatic negotiation over Bulgarian jurisdiction, not a capitulation or condemnation, undermining the legend of Photius’s permanent anti-Roman stance.
, The Photian Schism: History and Legend, 1948supporting
more than 160 years elapsed between Photius and Cerularius, when the Church lived in perfect peace. Beccos’ method of presenting the Photian Council is quoted to justify the assertion that the Acts of that Council were falsified.
Dvornik refutes the claim that the Photian Council’s Acts were falsified, while confirming the historical peace between Rome and Constantinople in the intervening century and a half.
, The Photian Schism: History and Legend, 1948supporting
officially the Byzantine Church counted only seven oecumenical councils and that neither the Ignatian Council of 869-70 nor the Photian Council of 879-80 were numbered among them.
Dvornik establishes that Byzantine canonical tradition neither elevated the Photian Council to oecumenical status nor accepted the Western designation of the Ignatian Council of 869–70 as the Eighth Oecumenical Council.
, The Photian Schism: History and Legend, 1948supporting
the designation of Eighth Council given to the Ignatian Council of 869–70. This closed the incident and the other editors of the Conciliar Acts had but to follow in the wake of the Western tradition set once for all by the canonists of the eleventh and twelfth centuries.
Dvornik traces how the Western canonical tradition, crystallized in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, systematically imposed the designation ‘Eighth Oecumenical Council’ on the anti-Photian synod of 869–70, cementing the legend.
, The Photian Schism: History and Legend, 1948supporting
in the fifth chapter the Pope orders the bishops to acknowledge Photius; in the next chapter, he makes his legates declare that the Roman Pontiff had the care of all the Churches, a principle often re-
Dvornik analyzes the papal Commonitorium at the 879–80 council as reflecting Roman claims to universal jurisdiction, showing how the reconciliation itself was deployed in the legend of papal supremacy.
, The Photian Schism: History and Legend, 1948supporting
Nicholas I, at the time of Photius, excommunicated even the Greeks, not one iota being missed out of the excommunication. But like the Jews, the Greeks, as he stated in his own words, are like captives among the nations.
Dvornik quotes a polemical Latin source weaponizing the Photian affair to assert Roman supremacy over the Eastern Church, illustrating how the legend served Western ecclesiological agendas.
, The Photian Schism: History and Legend, 1948supporting
Ignatius, at least at that time, was not sufficiently aware of the importance of that See and its claims on the universal Church, as was evidenced by his first official contact with the Pope.
Dvornik complicates the Ignatian hagiography by demonstrating Ignatius’s initial unawareness of Roman prerogatives, suggesting that even the ‘pro-Roman’ patriarch was not a reliable partisan of Western claims.
, The Photian Schism: History and Legend, 1948supporting
the rebels amounted to but a small minority of the Byzantine episcopacy. It is readily admitted on the other hand that the monastic world all but unanimously refused allegiance to the new Patriarch.
Dvornik quantifies the actual extent of resistance to Photius within the Byzantine Church, showing it was largely confined to the monastic rigorists rather than the broader episcopate.
, The Photian Schism: History and Legend, 1948supporting
Not only did Gratian fail to discover any new sources of information, he did not even take the trouble to verify those of the canonical works which he pressed into Service for his own compilation.
Dvornik implicates Gratian’s Decretum in the perpetuation of the Photian legend by showing how the most influential medieval canonist uncritically reproduced distorted anti-Photian materials.
, The Photian Schism: History and Legend, 1948supporting
Photius did not remain idle and did what he could to pacify the Byzantine Church; but he did more. His short treatise dating from that period… had no other purpose
Dvornik presents evidence of Photius’s active conciliatory efforts within the Byzantine Church after his rehabilitation, countering the legend of him as a purely divisive figure.
, The Photian Schism: History and Legend, 1948supporting
Barlaam merely notes in his treatise against the Latins that the origin of the schism is connected with the name of Photius; Nilus of Thessalonica has nothing about Photius in his published writings.
Dvornik surveys fourteenth-century Byzantine writers to show the surprisingly marginal role Photius played in anti-Latin polemic of that period, complicating the legend of his towering symbolic presence.
, The Photian Schism: History and Legend, 1948supporting
Photius’ words so appealed to the canonists of the post-Gregorian period that they were quoted word for word by Ivo of Chartres, and many canonists who copied them from him, who fully understood their significance and quoted them precisely for the purpose of exalting papal power.
Dvornik notes the paradox that Photius’s own writings were appropriated by Western canonists to support papal supremacy, illustrating how both sides of the legend drew on the same documentary reservoir.
, The Photian Schism: History and Legend, 1948aside
Photius knew all this and he knew that he had to make up for his invectives against the Roman Church and against true peace, the results, as I said, of human weakness.
Dvornik quotes Metochita’s nuanced unionist reading of Photius, which acknowledges his anti-Roman invective as a human failing while emphasizing his ultimate reconciliation with Rome.
, The Photian Schism: History and Legend, 1948aside
All profess that there are seven holy and oecumenical Councils, and these are the seven pillars of the faith of the Divine Word on which He erected His holy mansion, the Catholic and Oecumenical Church.
Dvornik cites Metropolitan John II of Russia to demonstrate that eleventh-century Byzantine ecclesiology formally recognized only seven oecumenical councils, with no place for the Photian or Ignatian synods.
, The Photian Schism: History and Legend, 1948aside