{"id":9309,"date":"2017-05-01T16:01:01","date_gmt":"2017-05-01T16:01:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jassa.org\/?p=9309"},"modified":"2017-05-12T05:20:25","modified_gmt":"2017-05-12T05:20:25","slug":"on-the-errors-of-the-franks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jassa.org\/?p=9309","title":{"rendered":"On the Errors of the Franks"},"content":{"rendered":"

A reader asked a question about the so-called Opusculum contra Francos<\/em>: is it true that the word Lechia appears there (meaning Poland) and is true that this is dated to the ninth century? \u00a0Or, as someone told him, was this really written in 1101?<\/p>\n

Ok… so the answer is “no one really knows”. \u00a0Satisfied?<\/p>\n

Well, there is one thing that is probably not true. \u00a0It’s very unlikely that we can pinpoint the Opusculum<\/em> to 1101 (any such precising dating should be immediately suspect).<\/p>\n

But let’s start at the beginning…<\/p>\n

The Opusculum is a Byzantine polemic against the\u00a0version of Christianity practiced by the Roman\u00a0Latin Church\u00a0that is, the “Franks”\u00a0(since the Franks had by then taken over what was left of the Latins and the Popes were anointing Frankish emperors). \u00a0It is one of a number of such works and similar works also exist on the Catholic side directed against\u00a0the Byzantines, of course.<\/p>\n

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Photius enjoying some morning foot kissing<\/p><\/div>\n

The Opusculum has traditionally been ascribed to Photius<\/strong> and, if you believe that, then it is a work of Photius. \u00a0If you do not, then it is a work of Pseudo-Photius (meaning “we don’t know who wrote it but it wasn’t Photius but may as well refer to Photius since people think he wrote it”).<\/p>\n

Photius or\u00a0Ph\u014dtios <\/i>or\u00a0\u03a6\u03ce\u03c4\u03b9\u03bf\u03c2\u00a0<\/i>(circa 810 – circa 893) was the Patriarch of Constantinople (who had a hand in a schism now called by his own name (!) the “Photian\u00a0Schism” of\u00a0863-867.<\/p>\n

Apparently, the Opusculum<\/em>\u00a0was translated from Greek to Latin by Hugo Etherianus in 1178 and again in 1252 by the Dominican Bartholomew of Constantinople, who appended it to his\u00a0Tractatus contra Graecos<\/em>. \u00a0Presumably, the Latins needed to know what the Greeks’ arguments were in order to counter them effectively (the level of the polemic in the document itself is rather low with bitching\u00a0about dress and hairstyle mascara ding as theological arguments).<\/p>\n

In any event, this means that the Opusculum\u00a0was written before 1178.<\/p>\n

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The “recent fame” of the Opusculum is due to Zachariae<\/strong>‘s edition of 1839 and then to\u00a0Joseph Cardinal Hergenr\u00f6ther<\/strong> (1824 – 1890), Cardinal-Prefect of the Vatican Archives who was also, in addition to being an archivist, a church historian and\u00a0canonist. \u00a0Hergenr\u00f6ther was interested in the Schism with the Byzantine Church and in the role played in that by Photius. \u00a0In addition to a number of articles he published the following on Photius:<\/p>\n