A Dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology

6. CERULARIUS, was chosen patriarch of Constantinople in 1043, and made himself notorious in ecclesiastical history by his violent attacks upon the Latin church. He caused so much scandal that pope Leo IX. sent Cardinals Humbert and Frederic 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).