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They later convened a ninth council in the days of Muʿāwiyah ibn Abī Sufyān, where they hurled anathemas at one another. The catalyst was that in Rome there lived a saintly monk named Maximus, who had two disciples. He went to Qusta, the governor, and rebuked him for the foulness of his doctrine and the enormity of his unbelief. Qusta therefore ordered that his hands and feet be cut off and that his tongue be torn out. He dealt with one of the two disciples in the same manner, while the other he had whipped and exiled.

When the emperor of Constantinople heard of this, he wrote to Qusta requesting that he send some of the leading bishops so that he might ascertain the substance of the dispute and learn who had originally (1) stirred it up, and so that, together with all the holy fathers, he could exclude everyone deserving of a curse. Qusta accordingly dispatched 140 bishops and three deacons (2). When they reached Constantinople, the emperor assembled 168 bishops, bringing the total to 308, and he excluded the deacons from the barṭaḥa (3).

Presiding over this council were the patriarch of Constantinople and the patriarch of Antioch, for Jerusalem (4) and Alexandria had no patriarch (5). They pronounced anathema upon all who had preceded them from