Early Papal Ambivalence Toward the Filioque
The use of the Creed of 381 with the addition of the Filioque became a matter of controversy towards the end of the eighth century, both in discussions between the Frankish theologians and the see of Rome and in the growing rivalry between the Carolingian and Byzantine courts, which both now claimed to be the legitimate successors of the Roman Empire. In the wake of the iconoclastic struggle in Byzantium, the Carolingians took this opportunity to challenge the orthodoxy of Constantinople, and put a particular emphasis upon the significance of the term Filioque, which they now began to identify as a touchstone of right Trinitarian faith. An intense political and cultural rivalry between the Franks and the Byzantines provided the background for the Filioque debates throughout the eighth and ninth centuries.
Charlemagne received a translation of the decisions of the Second Council of Nicaea (787). The Council had given definitive approval to the ancient practice of venerating icons. The translation proved to be defective. On the basis of this defective translation, Charlemagne sent a delegation to Pope Hadrian I (772-795) to present his concerns. Among the points of objection, Charlemagne’s legates claimed that Patriarch Tarasius of Constantinople, at his installation, did not follow the Nicene faith and profess that the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son, but confessed rather his procession from the Father through the Son. The Pope strongly rejected Charlemagne’s protest, showing at length that Tarasius and the Council, on this and other points, maintained the faith of the Fathers. Following this exchange of letters, Charlemagne commissioned the so-called Libri Carolini (791-794), a work written to challenge the positions both of the iconoclast council of 754 and of the Council of Nicaea of 787 on the veneration of icons. Again because of poor translations, the Carolingians misunderstood the actual decision of the latter Council. Within this text, the Carolingian view of the Filioque also was emphasized again. Arguing that the word Filioque was part of the Creed of 381, the Libri Carolini reaffirmed the Latin tradition that the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son, and rejected as inadequate the teaching that the Spirit proceeds from the Father through the Son.
While the acts of the local synod of Frankfurt in 794 are not extant, other records indicate that it was called mainly to counter a form of the heresy of "Adoptionism" then thought to be on the rise in Spain. The emphasis of a number of Spanish theologians on the integral humanity of Christ seemed, to the court theologian Alcuin and others, to imply that the man Jesus was "adopted" by the Father at his baptism. In the presence of Charlemagne, this council—which Charlemagne seems to have promoted as "ecumenical"—approved the Libri Carolini, affirming, in the context of maintaining the full divinity of the person of Christ, that the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son. As in the late sixth century, the Latin formulation of the Creed, stating that the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son, was enlisted to combat a perceived Christological heresy.
Within a few years, another local council, also directed against "Spanish Adoptionism," was held in Fréjus (Friuli) (796 or 797). At this meeting, Paulinus of Aquileia (+802), an associate of Alcuin in Charlemagne’s court, defended the use of the Creed with the Filioque as a way of opposing Adoptionism. Paulinus, in fact, recognized that the Filioque was an addition to the Creed of 381 but defended the interpolation, claiming that it contradicted neither the meaning of the creed nor the intention of the Fathers. The authority in the West of the Council of Fréjus, together with that of Frankfurt, ensured that the Creed of 381 with the Filioque would be used in teaching and in the celebration of the Eucharist in churches throughout much of Europe.
The different liturgical traditions with regard to the Creed came into contact with each other in early ninth century Jerusalem. Western monks, using the Latin Creed with the added Filioque, were denounced by their Eastern brethren. Writing to Pope Leo III for guidance in 808, the Western monks referred to the practice in Charlemagne’s chapel in Aachen as their model. Pope Leo responded with a letter to "all the churches of the East" in which he declared his personal belief that the Holy Spirit proceeds eternally from the Father and the Son. In that response, the Pope did not distinguish between his personal understanding and the issue of the legitimacy of the addition to the Creed, although he would later resist the addition in liturgies celebrated at Rome.
Taking up the issue of the Jerusalem controversy, Charlemagne asked Theodulf of Orleans, the principal author of the Libri Carolini, to write a defense of the use of the word Filioque. Appearing in 809, De Spiritu Sancto of Theodulf was essentially a compilation of patristic citations supporting the theology of the Filioque. With this text in hand, Charlemagne convened a council in Aachen in 809-810 to affirm the doctrine of the Spirit’s proceeding from the Father and the Son, which had been questioned by Greek theologians.
Following this council, Charlemagne sought Pope Leo’s approval of the use of the creed with the Filioque. A meeting between the Pope and a delegation from Charlemagne’s council took place in Rome in 810. While Leo III affirmed the orthodoxy of the term Filioque, and approved its use in catechesis and personal professions of faith, he explicitly disapproved its inclusion in the text of the Creed of 381, since the Fathers of that Council—who were, he observes, no less inspired by the Holy Spirit than the bishops who had gathered at Aachen—had chosen not to include it. Pope Leo stipulated that the use of the Creed in the celebration of the Eucharist was permissible, but not required, and urged that in the interest of preventing scandal it would be better if the Carolingian court refrained from including it in the liturgy. Around this time, according to the Liber Pontificalis, the Pope had two heavy silver shields made and displayed in St. Peter’s, containing the original text of the Creed of 381 in both Greek and Latin. Despite his directives and this symbolic action, however, the Carolingians continued to use the Creed with the Filioque during the Eucharist in their own dioceses.
A new stage in the history of the controversy was reached in the early eleventh century. During the synod following the coronation of King Henry II as Holy Roman Emperor at Rome in 1014, the Creed, including the Filioque, was sung for the first time at a papal Mass. Because of this action, the liturgical use of the Creed, with the Filioque, now was generally assumed in the Latin Church to have the sanction of the papacy. Its inclusion in the Eucharist, after two centuries of papal resistance of the practice, reflected a new dominance of the German Emperors over the papacy, as well as the papacy’s growing sense of its own authority, under imperial protection, within the entire Church, both western and eastern.
The Filioque: A Church-Dividing Issue?, an agreed statement by the North American Orthodox-Catholic Theological Consultation. Bolded emphases added.
