Pages: 424

Format: Hadcover

In the years of our Lord 879-880, a council convened in Constantinople for the sake of restoring broken relations between East and West. Its decisions remain until today the  critical and obligatory basis for unity. 

The Acts of this council, known as the Eighth Œcumenical Council, deal with the restoration of Saint Photius, the healing of the schism that had been provoked in the church of Constantinople, the issues involved in establishing the church in Bulgaria and the Pope’s repeated request for the East to recognize his jurisdiction over it, and the mutual recognition of canonical punishments in the patriarchates of both Rome and Constantinople. Most critically, however, to subsequent centuries and indeed the eleventh century and the “Great Schism,” this council condemned any addition or subtraction to the Nicean Creed, implicitly forbidding the West’s insertion of the Filioque.

The Acts of this Œcumenical Council give us deep insight into how the Church sought to handle those in the West who were sowing the seeds of schism and heresy. They provide the reader with invaluable primary source material from an Œcumenical Council which was attended by 383 bishops from all five patriarchates and accepted in Rome for 200 years.

This edition is enriched further with the inclusion of both an introduction and insightful commentary by the holy Patriarch of Jerusalem, Dositheus, an extensive scholarly introduction and copious footnotes by Professor Constantine Siamakis, and two exceptionally enlightening appendices on Old Rome’s reception of the Council’s decisions and accord with Saint Photius and the East.