Correct. Remember the "8th" (Photian) Council(s)? First there was one that condemned +Photius and was signed by a Pope, then 10 years later on the dime, that one was annulled and a "new" 8th council restored Photius and dropped filioque, and was signed by a Pope (a different one). Then, after the Great Schism, Rome reverted back to "first" 8th Council that condemned +Photius and it's still the "official" 8th Council in the Latin Church.
“Remember the “8th” (Photian) Council(s)?”
I never doubted for a minute that you’d catch that one! :)
Correct. Remember the "8th" (Photian) Council(s)? First there was one that condemned +Photius and was signed by a Pope, then 10 years later on the dime, that one was annulled and a "new" 8th council restored Photius and dropped filioque, and was signed by a Pope (a different one). Then, after the Great Schism, Rome reverted back to "first" 8th Council that condemned +Photius and it's still the "official" 8th Council in the Latin Church.
Oh, let us not forget the Council of Florence, first accepted by the East and then rejected. I guess inconsistency is a prerogative of the East.
As for the so-called Fourth Council of Constantinople (879) being accepted by Rome and only rejected after the Schism, let us see what Philip Schaff (neither Catholic nor Orthodox, a German Reformed scholar in the U.S.) has to say in his History of the Christian Church:
The papal legates assented to all, and so deceived their master by false accounts of the surrender of Bulgaria that he thanked the emperor for the service he had done to the Church by this synod.So Pope John briefly accepted this council because he was deceived and quickly repudiated it once he found out what it really contained.But when the pope’s eyes were opened, he sent the bishop Marinus to Constantinople to declare invalid what the legates had done contrary to his instructions. For this Marinus was shut up in prison for thirty days. After his return Pope John VIII. solemnly pronounced the anathema on Photius, who had dared to deceive and degrade the holy see, and had added new frauds to the old. Marinus renewed the anathema after he was elected pope (882).
I don’t think you can champion Photius — to me, in my opinion, he seems a very political animal, working with and against Emperors and seeking to fight a political war with the Patriarch of Rome. In my opinion, the Patriarchs of Rome at that time were also political animals, and there was an ego tussle between the PAtriarch of Rome and the Patriarch of Constantinople over who was the Big Boss.