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Ecumenical Council: Eighth Ecumenical Council
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The Eighth Ecumenical Council was a reunion council held at Constantinople in 879-880. This council was originally accepted and fully endorsed by the papacy in Rome (whose legates were present at the behest of Pope John VIII), but later repudiated by Rome in the 11th century, retroactively regarding the robber council of 869-870 to be ecumenical. The council of 879-880 affirmed the restoration of St. Photius the Great to his see and anathematized any who altered the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed... condemning the Filioque.
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The case of the Eighth Ecumenical Council provides the occasion not only for clarifying this divergence, but ... for indicating the arbitrary conciliar development of the Church of Rome after its separation from the Eastern Orthodox Churches. For Roman Catholics the Eighth Ecumenical Council is a Council that was held in Constantinople in 869/870 — also known as the Ignatian Council, because it restored Ignatios to the Patriarchal throne — which among other matters procured the condemnation of Ecumenical Patriarch Photios.6 It is clearly confirmed by modern scholarship, however, that this Ignatian Council was rejected by another Constantinopolitan Council which was held exactly ten years later in 879/880. This Council is also known as the Photian Council, because it exonerated and restored to the Throne of Constantinople St. Photios and his fellow Hierarchs and was signed by both Easterners and Westerners.7 How did it happen that Roman Catholics came to ignore this conciliar fact? Following Papadopoulos Kerameus, Johan Meijer — author of a most thorough study of the Constantinopolitan Council of 879/880 — has pointed out that Roman Catholic canonists first referred to their Eighth Ecumenical Council (the Ignatian one) in the beginning of the twelfth century. In line with Dvornic and others, Meijer also explained that this was done deliberately because these canonists needed at that time canon 22 of that Council. In point of fact, however, they overlooked the fact that "this Council had been cancelled by another, the Photian Synod of 879-880 — the acts of which were also kept in the pontifical archives."8 It is interesting to note that later on the Roman Catholics called this Photian Council "Conciliabulum Oecumenicum Pseudooctavum", thereby acknowledging it implicitly as another Eighth Council rival to that of their own choice!9
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It is clear that Pope Leo II ... anathematized Honorius...in a letter to the Emperor, confirming the decrees of the sixth Ecumenical Council...in his letter to the Spanish bishops...and in his letter to the Spanish King Ervig. Of the fact that Pope Honorius had been anathematized by the sixth Ecumenical Synod, mention is made by...the Trullan Synod, which was held only twelve years after...Like testimony is also given repeatedly by the seventh Ecumenical Synod; especially does it declare, in its principal document, the decree of the faith: "We declare at once two wills and energies according to the natures in Christ, just as the sixth Synod in Constantinople taught, condemning...Sergius, Honorius, Cyrus, etc." The like is asserted by the Synod or its members in several other places...To the same effect the eighth Ecumenical Synod expresses itself. In the Liber Diurnus the Formulary of the Roman Chancery (from the fifth to the eleventh century), there is found the old formula for the papal oath...according to which every new Pope, on entering upon his office, had to swear that "he recognised the sixth Ecumenical Council, which smote with eternal anathema the originators of the heresy (Monotheletism), Sergius, Pyrrhus, etc., together with Honorius" (Charles Joseph Hefele, A History of the Councils of the Church (Edinburgh: Clark, 1896), Volume V, pp. 181-187).
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On the Eighth Ecumenical Council the Roman Catholic Hubert Jedin writes: "The Catholic Church recognizes the assembly of 869-70 as an ecumenical council. Not so the Greek Church. St Photios was rehabilitated and at the death of Ignatius he was once again raised to the patriarchal see. A synod assembled by him in 879-80 rejected the decisions of the previous council. The Greeks count this synod as the eighth ecumenical council, but a second schism was apparently avoided" (from his Ecumenical Councils of the Catholic Church: A Historical Outline, Herder: Freiburg, Nelson: Edinburgh, London 1960, p. 58). Jedin is inaccurate on several counts, but this is typical of most Western writers.
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Pope Adrian II sent his legates to the Eighth Ecumenical Synod (787) with an express declaration to the Emperor Basil that they were to act as presidents of the council. The legates, Bishop Donatus of Ostia, Bishop Stephen of Nepesina, and the deacon Marinus of Rome, read the papal rescript to the synod. Not the slightest objection was raised. Their names took precedence in all protocols; they determined the duration of the several sessions, gave leave to make speeches and to read documents and to admit other persons, they put the leading questions, etc. In short, their presidency in the first five sessions cannot be disputed. But at the sixth session Emperor Basil was present with his two sons, Constantine and Leo, and, as the Acts relate, received the presidency.
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The World Council of Churches Eighth Assembly, Dec 3-14, 1998, was held in Zimbabwe. Various disagreements within the Catholic Church were addressed. The delegates ... appealed to the developed world to cancel the developing world's debt.
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Eighth Ecumenical Council