Fourth Council of Constantinople

Disciplinary status: Church discipline
Evidence type: Historical account
GuideCatholic recognition of the council as ecumenical is authoritative; most of its immediate determinations concern ecclesiastical order, persons, and jurisdiction rather than a new dogmatic definition.
Contents

Fourth Council of Constantinople was the council of 869–870 recognized by the Catholic Church as the eighth ecumenical council. It restored Patriarch Ignatius, condemned and deposed Photius, reaffirmed the first seven councils, and enacted canons on sacred images, ecclesiastical office, episcopal order, and freedom from secular domination.[1]

The Fourth Council of Constantinople was the eighth ecumenical council of the Catholic Church held in Constantinople from 5 October 869, to 28 February 870. It was attended by over 103 bishops.[9] In contrast, the pro-Photian council of 879–80 was attended by 383 bishops.[10] The Council met in ten sessions from October 869 to February 870 and issued 27 canons.

The council was called by Emperor Basil I the Macedonian, with the support of Pope Hadrian II.[11] It deposed and anathematized Photius,[12] a layman who had been appointed as Patriarch of Constantinople, and reinstated his predecessor Ignatius.

The Council also reaffirmed the decisions of the Second Council of Nicaea in support of icons and holy images and required the image of Christ to have veneration equal with that of the gospel book.[13] It was a reaction against the local Council of Constantinople (867) that excommunicated Pope Nicholas I and declared him anathema.

A later council, the Eastern Orthodox Fourth Council of Constantinople, was held after Photios had been reinstated on the order of the emperor. Today, the Catholic Church recognizes the council in 869–870 as "Constantinople IV", while the Eastern Orthodox Churches recognize the councils in 879–880 as "Constantinople IV" and revere Photios as a saint.

Whether and how far the Greek Fourth Council of Constantinople was confirmed by Pope John VIII is a matter of dispute.[14][15][16] Some argue that he did accept it, in his Letters to the Emperors Basil I, Leo VI and Alexander, which were read in the second session of the 879/80 council,[17][18] his so-called letter to Photios[19][20] and his Commonitorium.[21][22] Francis Dvornik has argued that subsequent popes accepted the council of 879 as binding, only choosing the council of 869–70 as ecumenical years later after the Great Schism due to issues with certain canons (namely the implicit condemnation of the filioque).[23] Siecienski disagrees with Dvornik's assessment.[24] The previous seven ecumenical councils are recognized as ecumenical and authoritative by both Eastern Orthodox and Catholic Christians.[25]

The contested patriarchate

The crisis began when Emperor Michael III's government removed Patriarch Ignatius of Constantinople in 858. Photius, an exceptionally learned lay official, was rapidly advanced through clerical orders and installed as patriarch. His supporters regarded Ignatius as having resigned or been lawfully deposed; opponents held that coercion invalidated the vacancy and that Photius's elevation violated canonical order. The dispute combined real questions of ordination and jurisdiction with court politics, rival episcopal networks, and the unstable government of Caesar Bardas and Michael III.

Pope Nicholas I initially sent legates to investigate, but a Constantinopolitan council in 861 recognized Photius and deposed Ignatius. Nicholas judged that his legates had exceeded their mandate, rejected the deposition, and declared Ignatius the lawful patriarch. Roman synods condemned Photius. In 867 a council associated with Photius in turn condemned Nicholas and raised wider disputes about Latin missionary practice in Bulgaria and the addition of the Filioque in western profession. The estrangement was serious, although it had not yet become the permanent East–West schism.

Basil I seized the imperial throne in 867, removed Photius, and restored Ignatius. Seeking legitimacy and communion with Rome, he asked for a general settlement. Pope Hadrian II held a Roman synod in 869 that condemned Photius and supplied his legates with a formula of satisfaction. The council that followed was therefore not a neutral academic conference between two equal patriarchal claimants. It convened within a Roman and imperial judgment already favorable to Ignatius, then examined adherence and enacted its own definition and canons.

Photius as person and as cause

Catholic recognition of the council's judgment does not require a caricature of Photius as unintelligent or devoid of later ecclesial importance. His scholarship, subsequent restoration, and place in Orthodox memory are historical facts. The council addressed his accession, conduct, and supporters in a particular conflict. A Catholic article must state the received conciliar status plainly while avoiding the opposite errors of erasing the condemnation or treating every later Eastern Christian disagreement as an extension of one man's alleged malice.[2]

Sessions and participation

The council opened in Hagia Sophia on 5 October 869. Papal legates Donatus of Ostia, Stephen of Nepi, and the deacon Marinus held the first place, with Patriarch Ignatius and representatives of the eastern patriarchates. Attendance was initially very small because bishops had to sign the Roman formula before admission; numbers increased across ten sessions and exceeded one hundred by the close. The emperor did not preside as a voting bishop, although imperial officials attended and Basil intervened in the larger settlement.[3]

The first sessions examined bishops connected with the rival parties and the conditions for reconciliation. The legates demanded subscription to the Libellus satisfactionis, which asserted Roman judgments and required condemnation of councils hostile to Nicholas and Hadrian. Disputes arose over procedure, the treatment of Photius, and whether earlier submissions had been voluntary. Photius appeared but declined to offer the defense the assembly demanded. He was condemned and deprived, while Ignatius's restoration was confirmed.

The tenth and final session met on 28 February 870 in the emperor's presence. The council issued a definition and a body of disciplinary canons. Surviving textual history is uneven: the complete Greek acts disappeared, an anti-Photian Greek epitome preserves fourteen canons, and the Latin translation made by Anastasius Bibliothecarius preserves twenty-seven. Anastasius had attended as an imperial envoy and copied the acts after the official legates' copy was stolen. Modern accounts must identify which textual form supports a claim.[4]

Papal legates and conciliar authority

The prominent Roman role accords with Catholic teaching that an ecumenical council acts with and under the successor of Peter. It does not make the bishops decorative or every legatine demand a dogma. The fathers judged persons, received earlier councils, and enacted canons; Pope Hadrian II accepted the settlement. Catholic ecumenicity rests in that corporate act and papal confirmation, not in the maximum possible attendance. The later reversal of several personal arrangements does not by itself erase the council's place in the received list.[5]

Definition and canons

The definition solemnly received the Nicene-Constantinopolitan faith and the seven earlier ecumenical councils. It rehearsed Trinitarian and Christological doctrine, accepted Constantinople III's two wills and operations, and reaffirmed Nicaea II against iconoclasm. Its extended polemic identified Photius as an unlawful intruder and Ignatius as the canonical patriarch. The enduring doctrinal content is principally confirmation of already defined faith; the personal sentence and restoration were authoritative ecclesiastical judgments within the crisis rather than a new revealed dogma.

Canon 3 required honor for the image of Christ corresponding to the honor shown the book of the holy Gospels and extended proper honor to images of Mary, angels, apostles, prophets, martyrs, and saints. The comparison concerns relative veneration, not equality between pigment and the inspired word or adoration of material objects. By receiving Nicaea II, the council made iconoclasm part of its charge against disorder and linked right ecclesiastical governance to fidelity in worship.

Canon 11 rejected the theory that a human being possesses two souls, protecting the unity of the human person while confessing a rational and intellectual soul. Other canons regulated metropolitan and episcopal authority, prohibited bishops from invading another diocese, protected church property, controlled appeals, and required clergy to respect canonical sentences. These enactments have differing objects and later legal histories. A doctrinal statement about human nature is not weighed in the same way as a procedural deadline or penalty.

Office, formation, and secular power

The council opposed rapid promotion of a layman directly to patriarchal office by prescribing stages and intervals in clerical formation. It condemned obtaining ecclesiastical rank through secular pressure and forbade civil rulers from deposing or coercing patriarchs and bishops. The canons responded directly to the crisis, yet their principle remains recognizable: sacred office is conferred and governed by ecclesiastical authority, not owned by the state. Current canon law supplies different procedures and therefore governs present appointments.

Primacy, patriarchs, and appeals

Several texts presuppose an order among the patriarchal sees and give Rome a distinctive role in final judgment. The Libellus and Roman interventions articulate strong papal claims, while the council also protects the five patriarchs from secular accusation and deposition. Catholic theology sees the Roman primacy as belonging to the constitution of the Church, but it should not flatten ninth-century procedure into the current Code of Canon Law. Jurisdiction was exercised through legates, synods, correspondence, imperial cooperation, and contested reception.

The council's prohibition on composing attacks against the patriarchs was intended to secure ecclesiastical peace, not to create personal immunity from canonical accountability. Bishops, including patriarchs, remain capable of sin and subject to competent judgment. The pope, as supreme pastor, is not judged by a lower ecclesiastical tribunal, but he remains bound before God to revelation and the Church's constitution. The Photian crisis shows why claims of primacy and synodality require both law and communion rather than factional slogans.

Bulgaria exposed the unresolved jurisdictional competition. After the conciliar sessions, eastern patriarchal representatives considered whether the new Bulgarian church should belong to Rome or Constantinople and decided for Constantinople. The papal legates protested that the question had not been entrusted to the council and that Roman rights were violated. Mission, language, imperial policy, and ecclesiastical boundaries remained entangled even after communion was ceremonially restored.

What the council did not define

Constantinople IV did not issue a dogmatic definition of the Filioque, settle every future model of papal exercise, or declare all actions of Ignatius's party irreformable. The broader Photian controversy involved these themes, but the acts must be read for what they actually propose. Catholic doctrine on the procession of the Holy Spirit and Roman primacy rests on the whole received faith and later magisterial judgments, not on importing every ninth-century polemic into this council's formal decrees.[6]

The council of 879–880

Ignatius and Photius were reconciled before Ignatius died in 877, after which Photius again became patriarch. Pope John VIII sent legates to a large council at Constantinople in 879–880. That assembly restored full communion, received Photius, condemned unauthorized alteration of the Creed, and rejected earlier anti-Photian proceedings in language whose precise force and transmission remain debated. Rome accepted the restoration of communion while disputes continue over whether John intended a wholesale juridical annulment of 869–870.

Eastern Orthodox tradition generally rejects the 869–870 assembly as ecumenical and often regards 879–880 as the authoritative settlement, sometimes calling it the eighth ecumenical council. Catholic tradition eventually fixed 869–870 as the eighth in its list. The difference is not solved by pretending the later council never occurred or by silently replacing the Catholic enumeration. It requires historical study of papal instructions, legatine acts, translations, later canonical collections, and the changing reception of both gatherings.

The two councils are central to Catholic-Orthodox dialogue because they expose different memories of primacy, reception, and conciliarity. Dialogue can acknowledge the reconciliation of 879 without abandoning Catholic recognition of 869–870. It can also distinguish the binding faith shared from personal anathemas and disciplinary decisions whose immediate objects have passed. Charity requires exact disagreement, not a manufactured consensus in which each communion's received judgment is hidden.[7]

Catholic enumeration

For Catholic use, Fourth Council of Constantinople ordinarily means the assembly of 869–870. It is the eighth ecumenical council, following Nicaea II and preceding Lateran I. Specifying the Catholic enumeration is not a sign of uncertainty; it prevents confusion with the different Orthodox application of the same ordinal. An encyclopedia may describe both councils fully while using the title according to the Church whose authoritative perspective governs the article.

Reception and lasting significance

The council's immediate personal settlement did not last: Photius returned, communion was restored, and later politics altered the balance among Rome, Constantinople, and Bulgaria. Its deeper institutional questions endured. How may a bishop be removed? Can secular power manufacture an ecclesiastical vacancy? What formation is required before episcopal office? How do a patriarchal synod, papal judgment, and reception interact? The canons answer within ninth-century structures while supplying principles that later canon law developed differently.

Catholic recognition does not give permanent force to every deposition, procedural detail, or polemical characterization. An ecumenical council may define dogma, teach authoritatively, and legislate discipline in the same body of acts. The object and intention of each text determine its weight. Constantinople IV's reception of the first seven councils transmits dogmatic faith; its icon teaching reaffirms definitive doctrine; its regulations and personal sentences belong largely to ecclesiastical governance and history.

The council remains a warning against manipulating sacred office for political necessity. Basil's support helped restore order but did not make imperial control the Church's norm. Photius's extraordinary learning could not by itself cure a disputed accession. Ignatius's suffering did not make every supporter prudent. Roman primacy served unity through judgment and confirmation, yet its historical exercise unfolded amid imperfect information and legatine conflict. The lasting Catholic lesson is ordered communion under truth, not the triumph of one cultural bloc.

Authority in Catholic doctrine

Catholics owe the council the assent proper to what it actually taught and enacted. Defined doctrines it received from earlier councils retain their dogmatic authority. Its authentic restatements are received according to their object. Disciplinary canons bound within their legal scope and may be superseded. Historical allegations are judged from the acts and other evidence. This differentiated reception is not selective obedience; it is the Church's ordinary method for reading a council whose documents contain several kinds of authority.[8]

Background

With the coronation of Charlemagne by Pope Leo III in 800, the papacy had acquired a new protector in the West. This freed the pontiffs to some degree from the power of the emperor in Constantinople but it also led to a schism, because the emperors and patriarchs of Constantinople interpreted themselves as the true descendants of the Roman Empire.

After the Byzantine emperor summarily dismissed St. Ignatius of Constantinople as patriarch of that city, Pope Nicholas I refused to recognize his successor Patriarch Photios I of Constantinople. Photios did not at this stage raise the Filioque issue.[26] The Council condemned Photios and defrocked his supporters in the clergy.

Photian schism

In 858, Photius, a noble layman from a local family, was appointed Patriarch of Constantinople, the most senior episcopal position save only that of Rome. Emperor Michael III had deposed the previous patriarch, Ignatius. Ignatius refused to abdicate, setting up a power struggle between the Emperor and Pope Nicholas I. The 869–870 Council condemned Photius and deposed him as patriarch and reinstated his predecessor Ignatius.[27] It also ranked Constantinople before the other three Eastern patriarchates of Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem.

Support for icons and holy images

One of the key elements of the Council was the reaffirmation of the decisions of the Second Council of Nicaea in support of icons and holy images. The council thus helped stamp out any remaining embers of Byzantine iconoclasm. Specifically, its third Canon required the image of Christ to have veneration equal with that of the gospel book:[28]

We decree that the sacred image of our Lord Jesus Christ, the liberator and Savior of all people, must be venerated with the same honor as is given the book of the holy Gospels. For as through the language of the words contained in this book all can reach salvation, so, due to the action which these images exercise by their colors, all wise and simple alike, can derive profit from them. For what speech conveys in words, pictures announce and bring out in colors.

The council also encouraged the veneration of the images of the Virgin Mary, angels and saints:[13]

If anyone does not venerate the image of Christ our Lord, let him be deprived of seeing him in glory at his second coming. The image of his all pure Mother and the images of the holy angels as well as the images of all the saints are equally the object of our homage and veneration.

Lay people

Canon 22 set out to restrict the influence of lay people in ecclesiastical matters, although it acknowledged that on invitation, a lay person could contribute to ecclesiastical debate. A statement by Basil to the Council was quoted by Pope Gregory XVI in his letter to the Swiss clergy, Commissum divinitus on 17 May 1835. Gregory was responding to a Swiss initiative, the Baden Articles, which gave some of the Swiss cantons authority over church matters including marriage. Gregory quoted Basil's speech:

What more can I say about you lay people? I have nothing else to say except that it is not permitted for you to speak concerning ecclesiastical matters. It is the duty of patriarchs, popes, and priests, to whom the duty of governing has been entrusted, to investigate and study these matters. They have the power of binding and loosing and of sanctifying. They are the ones who have the ecclesiastical and heavenly keys, not those who must be fed, sanctified, bound, and loosed.[29]

References

  1. 1.Second Council of Nicaea — Primary conciliar definition on sacred images expressly reaffirmed at Constantinople IV, supplying the dogmatic context for its image canon and reception of the first seven councils
  2. 2.Unitatis Redintegratio — Conciliar principles for describing separation, Eastern ecclesial patrimony, theological formulation, legitimate diversity, historical responsibility, and restoration of communion
  3. 3.Catholic Encyclopedia: Fourth Council of Constantinople — Historical Catholic account of Ignatius and Photius, Roman synods, Basil I, the ten sessions, papal legates, Bulgarian jurisdiction, canons, and later settlement
  4. 4.Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils — The critical introduction, Catholic eighth-council definition, anti-Photian proceedings, reception of Nicaea II, and twenty-seven Latin canons of 869–870; English translation and critical introduction based on Norman Tanner's edition of the conciliar texts and their manuscript tradition
  5. 5.Code of Canon Law, canons 337–341 — Current Catholic law on the supreme authority of the college of bishops, papal convocation and confirmation, and the conditions under which ecumenical conciliar decrees bind
  6. 6.Saint John Paul II, Slavorum Apostoli — Magisterial treatment of Saints Cyril and Methodius, ninth-century Roman and Constantinopolitan relations, Photius, ecclesial communion, culture, and legitimate diversity
  7. 7.Ravenna Document on conciliarity and authority — Catholic-Orthodox dialogue document on episcopal, regional, and universal conciliarity, the order of sees, Roman primacy, and the unresolved interpretation of first-millennium exercise
  8. 8.Lumen Gentium, 22–25 — Dogmatic constitution on the episcopal college with and under the Roman Pontiff, the Church's supreme teaching authority, infallibility, and the assent owed to authentic doctrine
  9. 9."Constantinople, Fourth Council of | Encyclopedia.com". www.encyclopedia.com. Retrieved 29 August 2021.
  10. 10.Richard Price, 'Constantinople III and Constantinople IV: Minorities posing as the Voice of the Whole Church', Annuarium Historiae Conciliorum 49 (2018/2019) 134.
  11. 11."Photius", in Cross, F. L., ed. The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church. New York: Oxford University Press. 2005
  12. 12."Fourth Council of Constantinople". Papal Encyclicals Online. 5 October 869. Retrieved 2023-10-08.
  13. 13.[13.2]Steven Bigham, 1995 Image of God the Father in Orthodox Theology and Iconography ISBN 1-879038-15-3 p. 41
  14. 14.Fr. Francis Dvornik argues that Pope accepted the acts of the council and annulled those of the Council of 869–870. Other Catholic historians, such as Warren Carroll, dispute this view, arguing that the pope rejected the council.
  15. 15.Siecienski, Anthony Edward (2010) says that the Pope only gave a qualified assent to the acts of the council. See "The Filioque: History of a Doctrinal Controversy" p. 104.
  16. 16.Schaff, Philip opines that the Pope, deceived by his legates about the actual proceedings, first applauded the Emperor but later denounced the council. See "The Conflict of the Eastern and Western Churches and Their Separation."
  17. 17.Mansi vol xvii, cls. 400D & 401BC
  18. 18.Dositheos op. cit. pp. 281f
  19. 19.Mansi vol. xvii cl. 416E
  20. 20.Dositheos op. cit. p. 292
  21. 21.Mansi vol. xvii, cl. 472AB. See also cls. 489/490E
  22. 22.Dositheos op. cit. pp. 345, 361
  23. 23.Dvornik, F. (1948). "The Photian Schism in Western and Eastern Tradition". The Review of Politics. 10 (3): 310–331. doi:10.1017/S0034670500042959. JSTOR 1404567. S2CID 145772692.
  24. 24.Siecienski, Anthony Edward (2010). The Filioque: History of a Doctrinal Controversy. Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780195372045.
  25. 25.Parry, Ken; Melling, David J.; Brady, Dimitri; Griffith, Sidney H.; Healey, John F., eds. (2017-09-01) [1999]. "ecumenical councils". The Blackwell Dictionary of Eastern Christianity. Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishing Ltd. pp. 171–2. doi:10.1002/9781405166584. ISBN 978-1-4051-6658-4.
  26. 26.Dvornik, The Photian Schism, 122–128
  27. 27.Karl Rahner, 2004 Encyclopedia of theology ISBN 0-86012-006-6 p. 389
  28. 28.Gesa Elsbeth Thiessen, 2005 Theological aesthetics ISBN 0-8028-2888-4 p. 65
  29. 29.Pope Gregory XVI, Commissum divinitus, paragraph 6, Papal Encyclicals Online, accessed on 7 March 2025