Filioque: How Leo XIV Diverges from the Council of Florence
Following the ancient Latin and Alexandrian tradition, the Western Church Fathers like Pope Leo I, Augustine, and Ambrose always confessed and explained the filioque.
The biggest disbute over the filioque was at the Council of Florence (1438–39). There, the Latins cited the numerous Greek Fathers to demonstrate that they also believed that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son.
The leader of the opposing Greek delegation was Archbishop Mark Eugenikos of Ephesus. He maintained the heresy that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father alone. His side accepted the phrase “through the Son” only in the sense of manifestation, not origin.
A turning point of the council came when Johannes von Ragusa showed an ancient codex brought from Constantinople by the philosopher–cardinal Nicholas of Cusa. It contained Basil the Great’s Against Eunomius (from the 360s) in a form that read:
“Is it necessary that the Holy Spirit, although third in goodness and order, must also be third in nature? Being second in dignity to the Son, he has his being from the Son.”
The line agrees with Basil’s other theological works, where he affirms that the Holy Spirit is given and sent through the Son. Admittedly, Basil supports neither side perfectly.
The codex once owned by Nicholas of Cusa is now lost but the scene about it is told in the Acts of the Council of Florence.
Already at Florence the Greeks claimed that the relevant passage was missing from their manuscripts, which is true. No surviving Greek manuscript of Basil contains this disputed line.
However, the oldest extant Greek manuscripts of Basil’s work date only from the late tenth century. At this time the filioque controversy was already fully inflamed (Photius, 882) and the schism of 1054 seemingly unavoidable. Between Basil’s own age and those late manuscripts lies a long, tangled textual history.
The Latin charge against the Greeks was that they had erased this passage.
Rufinus of Aquileia (4th–5th c.) had translated and paraphrased Basil loosely, and his Latin version contains the crucial expression “from the Son.”
A leading defender of the filioque at the council, Juan de Torquemada, O.P., in his Tractatus contra errores Graecorum (written ca. 1440), states plainly that the Greeks “erased” or suppressed patristic material and corrupted Basil the Great. He insists that the Latins preserved “older and purer manuscripts.”
Cardinal Robert Bellarmine, writing in the sixteenth century, develops Torquemada’s claim further. He maintains, however without additional arguments, that the Greeks erased from their copies a passage of Basil favorable to the filioque, citing Rufinus as the surviving echo of the “true” Basil.
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