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Michael Cerularius

Cyclopedia of Biblical, Theological and Ecclesiastical Literature

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a noted Eastern ecclesiastic, flourished as patriarch of Constantinople near the middle of the 11th century. He gained great notoriety mainly by his violent attacks upon the Latin Church. He caused so much scandal that pope Leo IX sent cardinals Humbert and Frederick, with Peter, archbishop of Amalfi, to Constantinople in order to persuade Cerularius to a more moderate conduct. Their efforts were not only unsuccessful, but they were treated with such abuse that Humbert excommunicated the virulent patriarch. Cerularius in his turn excommunicated the three legates, and he caused the name of pope Leo IX to be erased from the diptychs. In 1057 he prevailed upon the emperor Michael Stratioticus to yield to his successful rival, Isaac Comnenus, whose interest he took care of for some time. Differences however, soon broke out between them; and when he was once quarrelling with Isaac about the respective authority of the Church and the State, he impudently cried out, "I have given you the crown, and I know how to take it from you again." Banishment was his due reward, and Isaac was about to remove him from his see when death removed him from the earth (1058). Cerularius wrote: Decisio Synodica de Nuptiis in Septino Gradu: — De Matrimonio prohibito (the former printed, Greek and Latin, in the third book, and fragments of the latter in the fourth book of Leunclavius, Jus Graeco-Roman.): — Epistole II ad Petrum Antiochenunm (Greek and Latin, in the second vol. of Cotelerius, Eccles. Graec. Monument.): — De Sacerdotis Uxore Adulterio polluta (in Cotelerius, Patres Apostol.): — Σημείωμα , s. Edictum Synodale adversus Latinos de Pittacia, seu De Excommunicatione a Latinis Legatis in ipsum ab ipso in Legatos vibrata, anno 1054, die septimo Juniifactum (Graece et Latine, in Leo Allatius, De Libr. Eccles. Gracis): — Homilia (ed. Graece et Latine, by Montfaucon, under the title Epistola Synodi Nicaeanae ad Sanctam Alexandrica Ecclesiam [Paris, 1715, fol.]). There are, farther, extant in MS. fragments of several letters, as Contra Rebelles Abbates, Contra Armenios. De Homicidio facto in Ecclesia, De Episcoporum Judiciis, etc. See Cave, Hist Lit. ad an. 1043; Fabricius, Bibl. Graec. 11:195, 196.