The history of the Greek schism turns upon this point, and students of church history will find high interest and solid instruction in tracing the reasons and circumstances connected with the fact that, although this addition of filioque really made no change in the doctrine of the church, although in the ninth century the western churches used it, and yet Pope Leo III. insisted on the use in Rome of the form adopted by the fathers of Constantinople, and although between the Greek and the Latin churches there was no divergence on this doctrinal point, nevertheless it was not until after the consummation of the schism of Photius and of Michael Cerularius that the Greeks began to pretend that they had never professed this dogma.
Then follows the treatment of this question by the councils of fourth Lateran, (1215,) third Lyons, (1274,) and that of Florence, (1439.)
Of course it will be seen that the importance of the action of the Council of Seleucia lies in the fact that it was composed of forty bishops, of whom one, at least, was a member of the first ecumenical council of Constantinople, and that it was called at the instigation and through the initiative of the Greek Church herself.
So that, as the lawyers say, it does not lie in the mouth of the Greek Church, at the present day, to say that it is simply opposing a Latin innovation.
In almost immediate connection with what we here remark on the Rev. Mr. Lamy's book, we may mention that the Jacobi Episcopi Edessem Epistola ad Georgium Episcopum Sarugensem de Orthographia Syriaca, so well known, at least by reputation, to oriental scholars, has at last been published at Leipsic. Assemanni and Michaelis frequently urged its printing, and Cardinal Wiseman, who took a strong and appreciative interest in the work, speaks of it at length in the first volume of his Horae Syriacae, (Rome, 1828.)
Monsignor Giuliani, of Verona, has published a work on public libraries, in which he shows that the libraries of Italy possess a greater number of volumes than the libraries of any other nation in the world. The Italian libraries number 6,000,000 of volumes; France, 4,389,000; Austria, 2,400,000; Prussia, 2,040,000, Great Britain, 1,774,493; Bavaria, 1,268,000; Russia, 882,090; Belgium, 509,100. Collections of books are much scattered in Italy. Paris has one third of all the library books in France, and most of the European capitals are rich in almost as great a proportion. This is not the case in Italy. Milan has only 250,000 volumes in the Brera library, and 155,000 in the Ambrosian.