isted of "about
one hundred pretended decrees of the early Popes, together with certain
spurious writings of other church dignitaries and acts of synods. This
forgery produced an immense extension of the papal power. It displaced
the old system of church government, divesting it of the republican
attributes it had possessed, and transforming it into an absolute
monarchy. It brought the bishops into subjection to Rome, and made the
pontiff the supreme judge of the clergy of the whole Christian world. It
prepared the way for the great attempt, subsequently made by Hildebrand,
to convert the states of Europe into a theocratic priest kingdom, with
the Pope at its head" (Draper's "Conflict of Religion and Science," p.
271). We note during this century a remarkable growth of saints.
Everyone wanted a saint through whom to approach God, and the supply
kept pace with the demand. "This preposterous multiplication of saints
was a new source of abuses and frauds. It was thought necessary to write
the lives of these celestial patrons, in order to procure for them the
veneration and confidence of a deluded multitude; and here lying wonders
were invented, and all the resources of forgery and fable exhausted to
celebrate exploits which had never been performed, and to perpetuate the
memory of holy persons who had never existed" (p. 200). The contest on
images still raged furiously, success being now on the one side, now on
the other; various councils were called by either party, until, in A.D.
879, a council at Constantinople, reckoned by the Greeks as the eighth
general council, sanctioned the worship of images, which thereafter
triumphed in the East. In the West, the opposition to image-worship
gradually died away. The _Filioque_ contest also continued hotly and
widened the breach between East and West yet more. The final separation
was not long delayed. The ever-increasing jealousy between Rome and
Constantinople had at last reached a height which made even nominal
union impossible, and the smouldering fire burst into sudden flame. In
A.D. 858 Photius was made Patriarch of Constantinople, by the Emperor
Michael, in the room of Ignatius, deprived and banished by that prince.
A council, held at Constantinople in A.D. 861, endorsed the appointment
of the emperor; but Ignatius appealed to Rome, and Pope Nicholas I.
readily took up his quarrel. A council was held at Rome, in A.D. 862, in
which the pontiff excommunicated Photius and his ad