10.

 In what year and in what council did Charlemagne manage to have the filioque approved?

            Charlemagne had the filioque formula adopted at the semi-Iconoclast council at Frankfurt in 794. As Aristeides Papadakis explains in his book The Christian East and the Rise of the Papacy, this addition was achieved without official papal approval or authorization. Charlemagne used the filioque as propaganda against the Byzantine state, his political adversary at that time, yet the addition was disapproved of by the papacy. Whenever Carolingian requests for an endorsement of the filioque were made, these requests were always firmly denied by the papacy. While singing the filioque at the royal chapel of Aachen was apparently permissible, tampering with the authoritative text of the Creed in a formal way was not.

            Significantly, not only did Rome condemn the filioque phrase on more than one occasion, but Rome had even been its primary opponent in the West since Charlemagne's advisors saw fit to endorse it. Until 1014, the Western Patriarchate had in fact faithfully adhered to the previous decisions of the Universal Church expressly prohibiting any addition to the Creed.

            At his coronation in 1014, the German emperor Henry II demanded that the pope include the filioque in the Creed sung at Mass (previously the Creed was not a part of the Mass in Rome). The pope balked at first, but then submitted. As a result of its adoption at that time, the altered Creed became standard throughout the West. Before long, Rome began to justify the alteration by claiming that it had doctrinal authority on its own. As papal apologists were to argue, it was sufficient that a Roman pontiff had declared it dogma. By his own petrine powers, the apologists asserted, the pope was not subject to conciliar judgment, but unlike everyone else, he had the right not only to convoke general councils, but to amplify and even revise their doctrines.

            Of course, the arguments of the papal apologists were not without glaring contradictions. The apologists failed to note the fact that the popes had earlier affirmed the original text of the Creed. Also, the papal apologists failed to mention that the popes had earlier refused to fall in line with the Carolingians in the matter of the filioque.