page_title: History of the Filioque controversy
section_title: First Eastern opposition
hierarchical_section_title: History of the Filioque controversy / First Eastern opposition
caption_attribution_description: English: Icon of saint Maximus the Confessor
context_page_description: The history of the Filioque controversy is the historical development of theological controversies within Christianity regarding three distinctive issues: the orthodoxy of the doctrine of procession of the Holy Spirit as represented by the Filioque clause, the nature of anathemas mutually imposed by conflicted sides during the Filioque controversy, and the liceity of the insertion of the Filioque phrase into the Nicene Creed. Although the debates over the orthodoxy of the doctrine of procession and the nature of related anathemas preceded the question of the admissibility of the phrase as inserted into the Creed, all of those issues became linked when the insertion received the approval of the Pope in the eleventh century.
context_section_description: In 638, the Byzantine emperor Heraclius, with the support of or at the instigation of Patriarch Sergius I of Constantinople, published the Ecthesis, which defined as the official imperial form of Christianity Monothelitism, the doctrine that, while Christ possessed two natures, he had only a single will. This was widely accepted in the East, but before the Ecthesis reached Rome, Pope Honorius I, who had seemed to support Monothelitism, died, and his successor Pope Severinus condemned the Ecthesis outright, and so was forbidden his seat until 640. His successor Pope John IV also rejected the doctrine completely, leading to a major schism between the eastern and western halves of the Chalcedonian Church, which was healed when the doctrine of the Ecthesis was condemned.
  Meanwhile, in Africa, an Eastern monk named Maximus the Confessor carried on a furious campaign against Monothelitism, and in 646 he convinced the African councils to draw up a manifesto against the doctrine. This they forwarded to the new pope Theodore I, who in turn wrote to Patriarch Paul II of Constantinople, outlining the heretical nature of the doctrine. Paul, a devoted Monothelite, replied in a letter directing the Pope to adhere to the doctrine of one will. Theodore in turn excommunicated the Patriarch in 649, declaring him a heretic, after Paul, in 647 or 648, had issued in the name of Emperor Constans II an edict known as the Typos, which banned any mention of either one or two activities or wills in Christ. The Typos, instead of defusing the situation, made it worse by implying that either doctrine was as good as the other. Theodore planned the Lateran Council of 649 but died before he could convene it, which his successor, Pope Martin I, did. The Council condemned the Ecthesis and the Typos, and Pope Martin wrote to Constans, informing the emperor of its conclusions and requiring him to condemn both the Monothelite doctrine and his own Typos. Constans responded by having Pope Martin abducted to Constantinople, where he was tried and condemned to banishment and died as a result of the torture to which he had been subjected. Maximus also was tried and banished after having his tongue and his hand cut off.
  It was in this context of conflict between East and West that the Monothelite Patriarch Paul of Constantinople made accusations against Pope Theodore of Rome for speaking of the Holy Spirit as proceeding from the Father and the Son. Pope Theodore's expression was in a letter that he wrote, not in the Creed, which was not yet used liturgically in Rome.
  Maximus the Confessor wrote a letter in defence of the expression used by the Pope.
  The words with which Saint Maximus the Confessor (c. 580 – 13 August 662) declared that it was wrong to condemn the Roman use of Filioque are as follows:
  "They [the Romans] have produced the unanimous evidence of the Latin Fathers, and also of Cyril of Alexandria, from the study he made of the gospel of St John. On the basis of these texts, they have shown that they have not made the Son the cause of the Spirit – they know in fact that the Father is the only cause of the Son and the Spirit, the one by begetting and the other by procession –but that they have manifested the procession through him and have thus shown the unity and identity of the essence. They [the Romans] have therefore been accused of precisely those things of which it would be wrong to accuse them, whereas the former [the Byzantines] have been accused of those things it has been quite correct to accuse them [Monothelitism]."
caption: Saint Maximus the Confessor
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