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HOME MENTIONS ANALYTICS UPLOAD TOOLS Jacob N Van Sickle
Cleveland State University
Adjunct

Welcome to my academic homepage on academia.edu. I

How Difficulties in Transmitting the am a scholar and teacher of Christian theology, especially
the theology of the Early and Byzantine Church. I am also a
Texts of Basil’s Adversus Eunomium 3.1 priest of the Orthodox Church in America serving at St.
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and Maximus’ Letter to Marinus Led to PAPERS FOLLOWERS

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the Rise and Fall of Ferrara-Florence
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Medieval Studies, Textual Criticism, Medieval Theology, Orthodox Theology, Manuscript Studies,
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The purpose of this essay is to demonstrate how issues of textual transmission stymied
productive discussion at Ferrara-Florence on the doctrine of the Llioque and led to a schism The Interpretation of the Epiclesis from the
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must be balanced by another. Writing less than a decade after

the council, the Greek representative Bessarion (now a Roman
Catholic Cardinal) recounts that
At first, in the course of the conciliar deliberations were
presented five, rather six books, four of which were
made of parchment and were very old, while two were
made of paper. Three of them belonged to the
archbishop of Mitylene while the fourth belonged to the
Latins. As for the paper ones, the first belonged to our
mighty emperor and the second to the holy patriarch…
Of these six, five contained the [pro-filioque reading]…
Only one manuscript—that is the one that belonged to
the Patriarch—was different. 16
Given such lopsided testimony, it is no wonder that
virtually all of the Greek representatives eventually capitulated
and signed off on the Latin statement of the procession of the
Holy Spirit. Only the bishop of Ephesus withheld his mark. The
weight of the external evidence was pressing: five manuscripts,
17
some of which were centuries old, against one. However,

16
Bessarion goes on to contradict the statement of Mark of Ephesus
regarding the manuscripts in Constantinopleμ “After the conclusion of the
ώoly Synod,” he writes, “and our return to Constantinople, I examined
almost all the books of those holy monasteries. And I discovered that all
those more recent ones that were written after the controversy had the
sentence abridged, while those written in an older hand/script before the
outbreak of the fight among us had remained intact and complete.” Basilios
Bessarion, De Spiritus Sancti processione ad Alexium Lascarin
Philanthropinum, ed. Emmanuel Candal, Concilium Florentinum documenta
et scriptores, ser. B, vol. 7, fasc. 2 (Rome: Pontifical Oriental Institute,
1961), 6–κν translated in Alexakis, “ύreek Patristic Testimonia,” 158.
17
The Greek Acts are in disagreement with Bessarion about the age of
the manuscript Mark of Ephesus used. Bessarion recalls that it was a paper
codex which would suggest a recent date given the low durability of paper.
According to εark of Ephesus’ statement in the Acts, his manuscript was
very ancient. Acta Graeca, 296.

Mark of Ephesus was not deterred. He rested his case upon the
internal evidence. He was able to produce a slew of passages
from Basil that he argued were at odds with the “δatin” reading
of the contested passage. It is not possible, he determined, that
Basil could have written those words.18 So confident was Mark
of Ephesus in his knowledge of the fathers that, when pressed to
state positively which writings he accepted (for there were
several others he contested), he declaredμ “I receive as authentic
only those texts that are in accord with the letter of the divine
Maximus and the writings of St. Cyril. All those that are
contrary I reject as false.”19 He here staked out what he
considered the “clear” texts of the fathers by which the others
were to be interpreted.
Such an argument from internal evidence did not fall on
deaf ears. Indeed, the venerable but expiring Patriarch Joseph,
present at the council and desirous of seeing the fruition of his
efforts before he died, is reported to have held private
conferences with each of the Greek representatives, after all
arguments had been exhausted, in order to make a similar
appeal. “Why do you not listen to meς” he pleads, “Why did
you not second my opinion? Think you, then, that you can
judge better than others about dogmas? I know as well as
anybody else what the fathers taught.”20 The issue, of course,
was authority. All agreed that authority rested with the holy
fathers, but by what authority was it determined what the fathers
had actually written, given the uncertainty of textual

18
See Siecienski, Filioque, 15κ, and Alexakis, “ύreek Patristic
Testimonia,” 15ι.
19
Memoirs, 440– 442.
20
Ibid., 450 – 52. Translation from Ivan N. Ostroumoff, History of the
Council of Florence, trans. Basil Popoff (Boston: Holy Transfiguration
Monastery, 1971), 136.

transmission? Mark of Ephesus’ answer and, it would seem,

Joseph’s is whoever knows them best.21
Mark has been vindicated in his assessment of the
controversial variant of Basil by modern scholarship, though his
charge that the Latins were responsible for the addition was
off.22 They were acting in good faith. The pro-filioque reading
is known to be a very early and well-attested interpolation from,
of all things, a Eunomian source.23 The addition was
accomplished by a Greek hand probably in the seventh
century, 24 well before the outbreak of the filioque controversy
of the ninth century, but during the age of Maximus when, as
we will see, the issue was just beginning to crop up.
Maximus’ Letter to Marinus
25
The case of the Letter to Marinus, one of the texts
upon which Mark of Ephesus staked his position, is

21
Ironically, in this they are in agreement with a certain modern school
of thought in the field of textual criticism represented, among others, by R.
ύ. ε. σisbet, “ώow Textual Conjectures are εade,” Materiali e discussion
per l’ analisi dei testi classici 26 (1991): 65–91.
22
In fact, though Mark of Ephesus wrongly averred wholesale corruption
of the Latin fathers, almost every passage of Greek provenance that he
contested at the council has been found spurious by modern critics. See, for
instance, Siecienski, Filioque, 281–βκβn5βν Alexakis, “ύreek Patristic
Testimonia,” 156, 160–161ν John Erickson, “όilioque and the όathers at the
Council of όlorence,” in The Challenge of Our Past: Studies in Orthodox
Canon Law and Church History (Crestwood, σYμ St. Vladimir’s Seminary
Press, 1991), 160– 162.
23
So argues ε. van Parys, “Quelques remarques à propos d’un texte
controversé de Saint Basile au concile de όlorence,” Irénikon 40 (1967): 12 –
14. His conclusion has not been challenged to my knowledge.
24
όor this conclusion, see Alexakis, “ύreek Patristic Testimonia,” 16γ.
25
Opusculum 10 (PG 91.133a–137c). There is no complete English
translation. In French, see Emmanuel Ponsoye, trans., Opuscules
Théologiques et Polémiques, Sagesses chrétiennes (Paris: du Cerf, 1998),
181– 184. The Letter is a reply to the presbyter εarinus’ questions

considerably simpler than that of the Adversus Eunomius, but it

is perhaps even more critical to the course and aftermath of the
council. Siecienski has translated the letter’s crucial paragraph,
which I have truncated:
Therefore the men of the queen of cities26 attacked the
synodal letter of the present most holy Pope [in two of
its chapters]. One relates to the theology and makes the
statement that, “The ώoly Spirit proceeds from the Son.”
… In the first place they produced the unanimous
evidence of the Roman Fathers, and also of Cyril of
Alexandria….From this they showed that they
themselves do not make the Son the cause of the Spirit,
for they know that the Father is the one cause (αIJία) of
the Son and the Spirit, the one by begetting and the other
by procession, but they show the progression through
him and thus the unity of the essence….At your request,
I asked the Romans to translate what is unique to them
in order to avoid such obscurities. But [for various
reasons] I do not know if they will comply. Especially,
they might not be able to express their thought with the
same exactness in another language as they might in
their mother tongue, just as we could not do.27
It is likely that the Greek contingent brought this letter
with them to the council hoping that by its terms union could be
achieved. By it, the doctrine of the filioque would be accepted,
but it would be understood not to make the hypostasis of the

concerning a synodal letter of Pope Martin I that was causing a stir in

Constantinople.
26
That is, Constantinople.
27
Opusculum 10 (Pύ λ1.1γ6)ν translated in A. E. Siecienski, “The
Authenticity of εaximus the Confessor’s δetter to εarinusμ The Argument
from Theological Consistency,” Vigiliae Christianae 61 (2007): 189 –190n1.

Son in any way a “source” or “cause” of the Spirit.28 The Latin

contingent was of two minds concerning the Letter. One of their
group, Andrew of Rhodes, advanced it during the early
discussion of the liceity of making an addition to the Nicene-
Constantinopolitan Creed in order to argue that the addition of
“filioque” to the δatin Creed occurred before the schism (by the
time of Maximus) and thus was not reason to remain separate. 29
However, this proved to be a double-edged sword, because the
greater portion of the Latin representation was not willing to
reduce their doctrine to the terms expressed in the letter. When
presented with the testimony of the letter from the Latin side,
the Greeks jumped at the opportunity to offer union on its basis:
“If this letter is accepted gladly on your part,” so they are
reported to have said, “the union will happily proceed.”30 At
this the Latin delegation chastened Andrew and denied their
willingness to admit the letter for any purpose on the grounds
that it was “not found to be complete.”31
Twice more, in the course of debates over the orthodoxy
of the filioque, during which it appeared to the Greeks at times
that the Latins were saying substantively the same things as the
letter, 32 they offered the wording of the Letter to Marinus as a

28
Hans-Jürgen Marx, Filioque und Verbot eines anderen Glaubens auf
dem Florentinum (Sankt Augustin: Steyler Verlag, 1977), 122; cited in
Siecienski, Filioque, 280n25.
29
Memoirs, 334.
30
Memoirs, 336; translated in Siecienski, Filioque, 154.
31
Ibid.
32
The Latin spokesman Montenero, in response to εark of Ephesus’
presentation of the ύreek patristic witness on the matter, had declared, “We
follow the apostolic see and affirm one cause of the Son and the Spirit, the
όather….It does not confess two principles or two causes but one principle
and one cause. We anathematize all those who assert two principles or two
causes,” and he provided the ύreeks with a written statement to the same
effect. Acta Graeca, 390 –393; translated in Siecienski, Filioque, 159.

formula for union (irrespective of whatever inherent authority it

might have). They were rebuffed on both occasions. Eventually
the Greek camp itself split over the letter. When the Latins
offered what they believed to be a compromise formula, the
Greeks split over the interpretation of Maximus: did the Latin
formula accord with the letter or did it not? When Mark of
Ephesus contested that the letter in fact contradicted the Latin
formula, Bessarion responded by refusing to recognize its
authenticity. He was willing to use the letter as an expedient
formula for reunion, but doubts about its authenticity, to which
he gave credence, prevented it from holding any authority to
determine the question.
Why was the Letter to Marinus considered dubious by
the majority of the council? And why was Mark of Ephesus in
contrast so attached to its authenticity? Two reasons are given
for suspicion in the sources. The first, which we have already
seen, is that the letter is incomplete. The second, voiced by
Bessarion, is that “it was not found in the ancient codices nor
discovered among his works.”33 Both of these complaints point
to the same reality: the letter was not well established in the
manuscript tradition. At a time when all books were
handwritten and no two were identical, great stock was placed
in the “established form” of a codex, especially of important
works regarded as authorities. This was done specifically to
prevent forgeries. The letters of a father like Basil, for instance,
would be collected (in this case even before Basil’s death) and
“published” as a volume, a single codex. Copies would then be
made of the collection, and an established text of the letters

33
Basilios Bessarion, Oratio dogmatic de unione, ed. Emmanuel
Candal, Concilium Florentium documenta et scriptores, ser. B, vol. 7, fasc. 1
(Rome: Pontifical Oriental Institute, 1958), 43; translated in Siecienski,
Filioque, 164.