The Orthodox Eastern Church/Chapter 6

by Adrian Henry Timothy Knottesford Fortescue

 

PART III

THE ORTHODOX CHURCH SINCE THE SCHISM

 

 

One of the many deplorable results of the great Eastern schism was that from that time the people of Western Europe—that is the nations that were in every way the leaders of civilization—gradually lost sight of their fellow-Christians on the other side of the Adriatic. The Popes never forgot the ancient Churches now cut off from their communion. We shall see how they tried to close up the breach; always from the 11th century to the 20th Rome has schemed, arranged, worked in every possible way for the re-conversion of the Eastern schismatics. And for a time, after the 11th century, people in the West were still conscious of that wonderful city on the Bosphorus, where in half-mythical splendour reigned the great prince whom they now barbarously called the "Greek Emperor."

The Crusades brought Eastern and Western Europe together for a time, but really only as enemies; already, then, these Greeks were almost as strange to our fathers as the Saracens and Turks whom they went out to fight. Then came the fall of Constantinople, and a thick cloud falls over all the Eastern Churches, till in the 19th century at last the first beginnings of Christian independence in the Balkan Peninsula drew people's attention incidentally to the metropolitans and popes who helped the insurrections.

The period from the schism in 1054 to the beginning of Greek independence in 1821 is cut in half by the fall of Constantinople in 1453. During the first half the facts that will most interest Catholics are the attempts at reunion and the Crusades, as far as they affect the Eastern Churches; concerning the period after 1453, one should have some idea of the conditions under which the Christians subject to the Turk lived, of their relations to the Roman See, of perhaps one or two of their theologians during this time, and especially of the great affair of Cyril Lukaris and the Synod of Jerusalem in 1672.

 

 

 

CHAPTER VI

 

THE REUNION COUNCILS

 

The Popes, after the schism had become an undeniable fact, never lost hope of undoing it. Of the numberless attempts made by them, the messages, conferences, proposals, that were taken up by one Pope after another, the most important were three councils—at Bari in 1098, Lyons in 1274, and Ferrara-Florence in 1439. We may notice at once that the attitude of Rome towards the Eastern schismatics has always been rather different from that towards Protestants. First, to the canonist and theologian, who do not measure the dignity of Churches by their riches or numbers, the loss of the great Apostolic Eastern Churches is much more deplorable than that of the Protestant bodies. Secondly, there is not the special bitterness about the Eastern schism that there is about the Reformation. The first Protestants were the children of the Pope's own patriarchate, whose fathers had been converted from Rome, who had used the Roman rite, and had received the Holy Orders they now rejected from the Pope. Thirdly, the Eastern Churches are far nearer to us than any Protestant congregation. Practically, as we shall see, the only thing wrong with the Easterns is the schism. Their faith hardly differs at all from ours. And they are corporate bodies, Churches in themselves, quite properly constituted with a hierarchy whose orders no one has ever thought of questioning. And with such bodies the Roman Church can treat. So Rome has always been very much more conciliatory to the Eastern Churches than to Protestants. With the numberless Protestant sects she can have no communication; out of a disorderly crowd of rebels^[1] each member must come back and be reconciled by himself, with the Eastern Churches corporate reunion is a really possible ideal. We express it all roughly, but quite well, when we call Protestants heretics and the "Orthodox" schismatics, and when we pray for the conversion of Protestants and for the reunion of the Eastern Churches.

 

1. The Council of Bari, 1098.

The Western Church did not realize at once, in 1054, that a permanent rupture had now come. There were still relations in one or two cases before all intercourse came to an end. Pope Alexander II (1061–1073) sent Peter, Bishop of Anania, in 1071 to the Emperor Michael VII (1071–1078), apparently to discuss political questions only. The Emperor received Peter very kindly and entertained him for a whole year, but the Patriarch John VIII (1064–1075) and his clergy would have no communion with him. There were still some theologians in the Byzantine Church who saw no reason for schism, and who wrote to protest against the absurd fuss that was being made about harmless local Latin customs, such as Theophylactus of Achrida (successor of the Leo who had opened the campaign), who, about 1070, wrote an allocution defending the Latins, except in the matter of the Filioque.^[2] They were the first members of the Latinizing party that has existed ever since in the Orthodox Church. But gradually all friendly relations ceased and every one realized that a definite schism had now established two rival communions. And then, as always happens, the differences become fossilized, and the two streams, once parted, flowed farther and farther apart. At last some Latin writers, unfortunately, began making unworthy reprisals and, forgetting the dignified tradition of their side in this miserable quarrel, found fault with various quite harmless Byzantine customs in the same mean spirit as their charges against us.

The first council held between, at any rate, some members of either side after the schism was at Bari, in Apulia, in 1098. Pope Urban II (1088–1099) was carrying on the fight of Gregory VII against the Emperor Henry IV (1056–1106), and in 1095 had proclaimed the First Crusade at the Council of Clermont. Then, possibly in connection with that movement, he held this synod at Bari. The hero of the council was our St. Anselm of Canterbury († 1109), and as its Acts have been lost the little we know about it is from Eadmer's life of his master.^[3] Anselm had fled from the Red King the year before (1097) and was now in the Pope's company.

The "Greeks" at Bari were probably bishops of the Byzantine rite in Southern Italy.^[4] The Normans were then conquering those parts, and whatever pretence of jurisdiction the Patriarch of Constantinople had advanced over "greater Greece" was now coming definitely to an end (p. 46). But these Italian Greeks shared the ideas of their fellow-countrymen across the Adriatic about the Filioque, and this council was held to convert them on that point. Although Cerularius had made so little of the Filioque grievance, it will now be (with the Primacy) always the chief difference between the two Churches. It is not known how many Greeks were present nor who they were. Nor is the result of the council known, except that under the pressure of the Norman Government all these Italo-Greeks did eventually accept both the Pope's jurisdiction and the Catholic faith about the procession of the Holy Ghost. There was never again any question of schism in greater Greece. All we know of the council is this scene described by Eadmer, who was present with St. Anselm. Pope Urban begins by explaining our faith in the double procession. Then the Greeks answer him and the Pope seems to have got into difficulties, for he cries out: "Father and master, Anselm, Archbishop of the English, where are you?" St. Anselm was sitting in the front rank of the fathers, "and I," says Eadmer, "sat at his feet." Now he stands up and answers: "Lord and father, here I am, what do you want?" "What are you doing?" says the Pope, "why do you not speak? Come, I beg you, help us to fight for your Mother and ours. Look at these Greeks who are trying to soil her purity by dragging us into their error." St. Anselm then goes up and stands by the Pope, and all the Fathers begin talking at once and asking who this stranger may be. Urban tells them to be quiet and explains to them Anselm's fame, his great holiness, and how he is now an exile for the faith. Then Anselm speaks and refutes all the difficulties of the Greeks. When he has done the Pope says: "Blessed are the words that came from your lips." Unfortunately Eadmer cannot tell us much about what St. Anselm actually said. Instead of listening to what was going on he had been staring about him. First he notices that the Archbishop of Beneventum was wearing by far the finest cope. Then he suddenly recognizes this cope as one sent to Beneventum by Egelnoth, a former Archbishop of Canterbury, in exchange for a relic. He is further surprised to see that the Pope is not wearing a cope but a chasuble with the pallium over it. However, Eadmer's distractions do not much matter, because St. Anselm afterwards wrote down all his arguments in a treatise "Of the Procession of the Holy Ghost," which is published with his other works.^[5] This same Synod of Bari was about to excommunicate William Rufus of England, but St. Anselm persuaded the Pope to be patient with him yet a little longer. That is all that is known about it.

 

2. The Second Council of Lyons, 1274.

All through the 13th century, since the Crusaders had taken Constantinople in 1204 (p. 225), the Eastern Empire, now shut up in a corner of Asia Minor around Nicæa between the Latins and the Turks, was reduced almost to the last gasp. In their despair the Emperors saw the only hope in an alliance with the West. If the Crusaders, instead of attacking them, would join them against the Turk, there might yet be some chance for the old Empire. And they saw that the first step to such an alliance must be reunion with the Latin Church. So there are a succession of embassies, proposals, arrangements made for this purpose by the Emperors, which eventually lead to reunion at the Council of Lyons in 1274. But the people over there were against the union all the time. Now especially, after the outrages they had suffered from the Crusaders, their hatred of the Franks had grown tenfold, and even to the Government the union was really only an annoyance to be borne for political reasons. So naturally the union did not last. Only in the West was there a real enthusiasm for reunion for its own sake. The Patriarch of Constantinople, Germanos II (1222–1240), now in exile with the Emperor at Nicaea, wrote to Pope Gregory IX (1227–1241) in 1232 acknowledging his Primacy, and asking for reunion. The Pope sent four friars, two Dominicans and two Franciscans, with letters to Nicæa. They were very well received by the Emperor (John III, 1222–1254), but they could not arrange a union. Michael Palaiologos (Michael VIII, 1259–1282), after he had reconquered Constantinople (1261), again opened negotiations with the Pope. He was still afraid of having to defend his city against another Crusade. If only the Latins would acknowledge him and help him fight the common enemy of all Christians, the Turk, he might yet save or even enlarge his Empire.

As soon as Gregory X (1271–1276) became Pope, he set about arranging for a general council. This council was once more to arouse the Western princes to a great Crusade, so as to save the remnants of the Latin princedoms in the Holy Land, now in deadly danger, and to arrange a reunion with the Eastern Churches.

The council met on May 7, 1274, in the Cathedral of Lyons;^[6] five hundred bishops and one thousand abbots were present, also King James I of Aragon, and ambassadors from the (Western) Empire, France, England, and Sicily, as well as the Latin Patriarchs of Constantinople and Antioch (p. 224); the Greek bishops arrived at the third session, on June 24th. This is the Second Council of Lyons and the fourteenth œcumenical council. The Latin Patriarch of Constantinople was given the second place after the Pope—the first recognition on the part of the Roman Church of the old claim of Constantinople to that place, now made in favour of a man whom the patriarch of the old line of course abhorred. The greatest theologians in the Church were summoned. St. Thomas Aquinas died on the way (March 7, 1274);^[7] St. Bonaventure was the soul of all the discussions till he too died (July 15, 1274) during the council. Meanwhile, at Constantinople Michael VIII had been doing everything he could to bring about the union. A Franciscan, John Parastron, himself a born Greek, had been travelling backwards and forwards, arguing and persuading, but the Patriarch Joseph I (1268–1274) would have nothing to say to any peace with the Latins. So they shut him up in a monastery and told him that if the union succeeded he would have to stay there, but if it did not he might come back and be Patriarch again. Meanwhile John Bekkos (John XI, 1274–1282) was set up in his stead. This Bekkos had been an enemy of the Latins, but he now became or professed to be as eager for reunion as the Emperor himself. They sent to Lyons as ambassadors Germanos, an ex-Patriarch of Constantinople (he had been Germanos III, 1267),^[8] Theophanes, Metropolitan of Nicæa, George Akropolites the Imperial Chancellor, and two other lay statesmen. These persons arrived, having been plainly told to concede anything and to make sure of the union whatever happened; so there were practically no discussions and there was no difficulty at all. In the name of their Emperor, the Patriarch, and the Orthodox Church they admitted the Roman Primacy, the Filioque, and everything. The Orthodox were to restore the Pope's name to their diptychs, to keep all their own rites, customs, and laws, and were not to add the Filioque to their Creed over there, although they were to acknowledge the doctrine. On the feast of St. Peter and St. Paul High Mass was sung according to the Latin rite, the Epistle and Gospel were sung in Latin and Greek, after the Latin Creed the same Creed was sung again in Greek by Germanos and the Italo-Greek bishops, and they had to sing "who proceeds from the Father and the Son" three times. And St. Bonaventure preached. In the last sessions the decrees of the council were drawn up and were promulgated by the Pope on November 1st.^[9] The first dogmatic decree is that the Holy Ghost proceeds from God the Father and the Son as from one principle in one "Spiratio."^[10] The Byzantine delegates then went back with letters from the Pope to the Emperor, the Patriarch, and all bishops of their Church.

As soon as they arrived the Pope's name was restored to the diptychs, and a great Liturgy was celebrated at which the Epistle and Gospel were sung in Greek and Latin— a return for the compliment at Lyons. But the people did not want the union, and an insurrection against it was cruelly put down. John Bekkos then wrote and argued in favour of it, and two bishops and two Dominicans sent by the Pope as Legates were received with great honour. But gradually, as the Emperor saw that no Crusaders came to fight for him, his ardour cooled too. Pope John XXI (1276–1277) made the fatal mistake of requiring them to add the Filioque to their Creed, in spite of the agreement at Lyons. This greatly increased the anti-papal party. Michael VIII then gave up quarrelling with his own people for the sake of a policy that had failed, and the union became the merest shadow of a pretence. Pope Nicholas III (1277–1280) finally excommunicated Michael as a favourer of schism. As soon as Michael died his successor, Andronikos II (1282–1328), broke the last link. He formally repudiated the union, brought the ex-patriarch, Joseph I, out of the monastery where he had been shut up, restored him (although he was on his death-bed), and deposed John Bekkos. Then the Emperor did public penance for having formerly accepted the union, and made every one else do so too. The whole movement had never been a really genuine one, and it now came to an utter end. Already it was the enemies of the union who could pose as the conservative party, and the intensely conservative instinct of all Easterns in Church matters made that position a stronger one as each century passed, strengthening the schism merely by making it older.^[11]

 

3. The Council of Ferrara-Florence, 1438–1439.

The most famous reunion council was that held by Eugene IV at Ferrara and Florence. Its story is very much like that of the Second Council of Lyons. Again the Eastern Empire is in the direst distress from the Turks, again the Emperor wants union with the Latins for purely political reasons—that they may come and fight for him—and again the union is hated and soon denounced by the Byzantines. Pope Eugene IV (Gabriel Condolmer, 1431–1447) was having great trouble with the Council of Basel. At that time the schism of the West was just over, and the whole Catholic world had been scandalized by seeing two and then even three rival claimants to the Papacy. In that horrible confusion many people saw only one means of restoring order, a general council. This was the cure for all evils, and so they were always demanding general councils. There had been a great council at Pisa in 1409, another at Constance from 1414–1418, and as soon as Eugene IV was elected again every one clamoured for another general council to reform the Church. Since the confusion of the Western schism people had begun to distinguish between a council and its president the Pope, and the watchword of the reforming party was that a council is above every one, even the Pope. The Pope must obey a general council like any one else; once it has been lawfully summoned it can do even depose the Pope. This had been defined at Constance in the third session—before it became an œcumenical synod. Wyclif and Hus had appeared, strange antinomian sects already abounded who taught the wildest extravagances and entirely rejected all ecclesiastical authority. The first breath of the great storm that was coming—the Protestant Reformation—was in the air. Eugene IV had sworn at his election to summon yet another council; so unwillingly he had to do so. He opened the synod at Basel on July 23, 1431, through his Legate, Cardinal Cesarini. Then, as very few Fathers came, he dissolved it almost at once and summoned it to Bologna. But the council would not go there, it got out of hand almost at once, demanded the retractation of the bull of dissolution, renewed the decree of Constance that a general council is above the Pope, summoned Eugene to appear before it, then declared him contumacious, deposed him, and set up Duke Amadeus of Savoy as anti-Pope—Felix V. By this time all the moderate members had left Basel; no one wanted a renewal of the time when the Church was torn by the claims of two Popes, Æneas Silvius Piccolomini (afterwards Pius II, 1458–1464) and Nicholas of Cusa, Bishop of Brixen, who were at first the leading spirits at Basel, went over to the Pope's side. The schismatical council, now reduced to about twenty or thirty bishops under Cardinal d'Allemand, Archbishop of Aries, lost the sympathy of every one by its extravagance, and at last even Duke Amadeus went quietly home, and the whole movement whittled out almost unnoticed in 1443.

Meanwhile Eugene IV had again changed the place where his council was to be held, and summoned it from Bologna to Ferrara on September 11, 1437. The bishops at Basel, who made up their number by admitting a crowd of parish priests and doctors of divinity, excommunicated every one who took any part in the proceedings at Ferrara. Eugene excommunicated all the rabble at Basel. The object of the council at Ferrara was to be reunion with the Eastern Churches. It would be, indeed, a triumph for the Pope if he could show the Christian world that just now, when he was at war with what called itself an œcumenical council, he had once again joined all the Easterns to the West under his authority. And the Byzantine Court, at any rate, was very willing to be reunited. The Eastern Roman Empire was then at its very last gasp. The Ottoman Turks had come into Europe, taking Adrianople in 1354; then gradually they had swallowed up more and more of the Empire. Macedonia, Thessaly, Thrace, Bulgaria, Servia had all gone. Every one knew that they meant to take Constantinople, and, unless help came from the West, it could only be a question of time, and of a very short time, till they did so. So again during the early part of the 15th century there had been negotiations with the Latins. Already at Constance in 1418 an embassy from the Eastern Emperor had appeared; Pope Martin V (1417–1431) had had relations with the other patriarchs. The Emperor John VII (Palaiologos, 1425–1448) at last made up his mind that some steps must be taken at once. Unfortunately there were two powers, each claiming to represent the Latin Church, that wanted to treat with him. Pope Eugene and the Basler Fathers. Eugene was first in the field and sent a fleet of ships to Constantinople to bring the Emperor and his bishops to Ferrara; while they are waiting another fleet arrives, sent by the Council of Basel. The Pope's admiral is so angry at this that he is hardly prevented from sailing out to fight the council's fleet. So the first time the Byzantines saw these Latins who had come to preach the absolute necessity of union to them they enjoyed the edifying spectacle of a violent schism nearly leading to battle between two Latin parties. However, consistent to their own traditions, the Greeks thought that if they were to have any dealings with the Latins at all it must be with the Latin Patriarch, so they would have nothing to say to the Basler Council. The Pope agreed to pay all expenses and to entertain them as long as they were in Italy. The Emperor came himself with a gorgeous train. The dying Empire still had wonderful jewels, brocades and vestments, relics of a better time, and all these were shipped onto the Pope's vessels to impress the Latins. With the Emperor came the Patriarch of Constantinople, Joseph II (1416–1439, his own brother and a very old man), twenty-two other bishops, and a train of seven hundred followers; the Patriarchs of Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem sent legates.

They land at Venice on February 8, 1438, are received by the Doge with great pomp and are enormously impressed by the splendour of the city.^[12] From this time the question of reunion was enormously complicated and confused by the most absurd quarrels about precedence and etiquette. It was the lirst time an Emperor of the old line had come to the West for nine hundred years. Pathetically true to the theory on which his whole system was based, even now on the eve of utter disaster, John VII insists on acting as the successor of Julius Cæsar; he is Augustus, Autocrat of the Romans, Lord of the Christian World. The people he meets in Italy are still to him and to his Court barbarians, Franks, savage tribes with whom the Roman Emperor condescends to treat. But the Western princes, who had almost forgotten the existence of the Eastern Empire, see in him only a poor Greek king who has come to beg their protection against his enemies.

The Greeks then come to Ferrara and the Emperor enters the city under a great canopy at the head of his retinue, all decked out as sumptuously as possible. But the Patriarch is told he must kiss the Pope's foot. He says he will not dream of doing any such thing; if the Pope is older than he is he will treat him as a father, if the same age as a brother, if younger as a son. The Pope then agrees to kiss the Patriarch's cheek. So that trouble passed over. Although the motive that brought the Byzantines to Ferrara was really only a political one, there were on both sides men who hoped for reunion for its own sake and for religious reasons. The Pope doubtless was pleased at the idea of the triumph over the Basler schismatics that this union would bring him, but he was also a really good man, and he made very great sacrifices both of his dignity and his money for the sake of healing the lamentable breach that divided Christendom. It is also to his everlasting credit that he alone of the Western princes afterwards kept his word and really did send help against the Turk. In the Emperor's train were two bishops who also deserve to be remembered with honour by every one who cares for the cause of union between the Churches, Isidore, Metropolitan of Kiev, and Bessarion, Metropolitan of Nicæa. Both were eager for the union, and both worked hard all the time to overcome the barriers. Bessarion was one of the greatest men of his age. Afterwards he became a great leader of the Renaissance, and he is famous as a scholar and patron of letters, while we remember him, too, as always a staunch and loyal friend to the Holy See from the Eastern Church. But among the Byzantine bishops was also Mark Eugenikos, Metropolitan of Ephesus, as determined an enemy of any compromise with the Latin heretics as Isidore and Bessarion were friends of reunion. The council had already been opened on January 8, 1438, at Ferrara, the Byzantines arrive on February 28th. It sat at Ferrara for nearly a year (sixteen sessions); then in January, 1439, the Pope proposed that it should move to Florence because the pest had broken out at Ferrara. An even weightier reason seems to have been that his finances were running out (all the time he was royally entertaining the Emperor and his seven hundred followers), and that the city of Florence had offered to lend large sums of money if the council came there. The idea that he wanted to get the Greeks further away from the sea-board and therefore more entirely in his own power (afterwards suggested by some of them^[13]) is quite absurd. In any case they could not get away until he lent them his ships again. The council now stayed at Florence till the Byzantines went back home in August, 1439.^[14] There were at first endless disputes as to how the Fathers should sit, what rank each was to have, and so on. The Emperor very nearly left the council because the ambassador of the Duke of Burgundy would not do him homage. The Greeks were always turning sulky and saying that they would go back home if they were not treated properly. Although it was the Easterns who had everything to gain by the union and who had really come to be saved from utter disaster, the ridiculous pride that never forsook Byzantines made them insist on the most exaggerated deference. All through the Latins showed much more zeal for the union than they did, and the Latins humoured their pride generously. It was agreed that the Latins should sit all down the Gospel side of the church with the Pope at their head, and the Byzantines down the Epistle side under the Emperor (that is what they wanted!); after the Emperor sat the Patriarch. Only in one point the Greeks could not have their way: the Patriarch's throne had to be three steps lower than the Pope's. While the long months dragged on in this strange land the Greeks got very homesick; they understood nothing of the rites they saw around them, they complained that when they went into a Latin church they could make nothing of the ikons, there was not a single Saint they even knew by sight, the crucifixes were solid statues, all they could do was to chalk up two lines on a wall cross-wise and say their prayers before that.^[15] Indeed by this time the liturgy of either side had become a deep and suspicious mystery to the other. Towards the end of the council the Pope was to assist in state at the Byzantine Liturgy. Then he said that he was not sure what they did and that he would like to see it all done in private first before he committed himself to a public assistance. Naturally they were very indignant. On this occasion the Emperor let fall the astonishing remark that they had come all this way to reform the Latin Church. The Greeks could not bear our plainsong, but they had the comfort of being able to wear far more gorgeous vestments. The old Patriarch Joseph never went back to his own country. He died while the council was going on (June 10, 1439), having first written down his acceptance of the union and his acknowledgement of the Roman Primacy. So he was buried with great honour at Florence in St. Maria Novella. There he still lies, far away from his city, among the Latins whose ways he could not understand, and a set of Latin verses over his tomb still tells the traveller of the strange chance that brought "Joseph, the great prelate of the Eastern Church," to be buried here. Meanwhile, the real business of the council was this. First ten Fathers from either side were elected to examine the differences between the Churches. On the Byzantine side the chief members of this commission were Isidore of Kiev and Bessarion, both conciliatory, and Mark of Ephesus, steadily opposed to us. The chief Latins were Cardinal Julian Cesarini, Andrew Archbishop of Rhodes, and John of Montenegro, who on one occasion made a speech that lasted two whole days. The differences were: the Filioque, Azyme bread at Mass, Purgatory, the Epiklesis, the Primacy. They soon agreed about Purgatory when they were told that material fire is not part of the faith of the Latin Church. They gave in altogether about the Epiklesis^[16] and admitted that Consecration takes place at the words of Institution. As for Azymes, the Turkish armies at their very gates had at last made them see reason; they admitted that both leavened and unleavened bread are equally valid and lawful. Naturally the longest discussions were about the Filioque and the Primacy.

In the Filioque dispute Mark of Ephesus got into trouble for misquoting St. Basil. At last the Greeks agreed to admit the formula of their own Fathers, and both sides united in the confession that the Holy Ghost proceeds from one principle and that the truth is rightly expressed by the Latins who say "from the Father and the Son" as well as by the Greeks in their form "from the Father through (διὰ) the Son."^[17] The Easterns were not asked to add anything to their Creed—a position, by the way, that the tolerance of the Holy See has always accepted. Concerning the Primacy they admitted this formula: "The Pope is the Sovereign Pontiff, the Vicar of Christ, Shepherd and Teacher of all Christians, to guide and rule the whole Church of God, though without prejudice to the rights and privileges of the other Patriarchs."

So on July 6, 1439, the decree of the council was published, beginning "Let the heavens rejoice and the earth be glad," containing the articles as agreed to by both sides and solemnly proclaiming the restored union.^[18] It was signed by Pope Eugene IV, eight cardinals, four Latin patriarchs, sixty-one archbishops and bishops, forty abbots and four generals of religious orders on the Latin side, and by the Emperor John VIII, the Vicegerent of Constantinople (the see being vacant), the legates of the three other patriarchs, sixteen metropolitans, four deacons, and various laymen. Only Mark of Ephesus would not sign. On August 26th the Byzantines went back home on the Pope's ships. After they had gone the council went on sitting, chiefly to complete its work by reuniting the other Eastern Churches. The Armenians had already long opened negotiations with the Roman Church. John XXII (1316–1334) had founded a mission of Dominicans in Armenia and had already brought about a union. Now the Armenian Katholikos sent four legates to Florence to renew and strengthen this union. They did not arrive till the Byzantines had gone. In November the decree of this union was published. The Armenians renounced Monophysism, accepted the Council of Chalcedon and the Filioque. At the same time Eugene IV published his Instruction for the Armenians about the Sacraments, which has become famous because of its teaching concerning Holy Orders.^[19] The Copts and Abyssinians also sent a legate, the Coptic Patriarch of Alexandria sent a certain John, who was Abbot of the monastery of St. Anthony. This Abbot John was also authorized by the King of Abyssinia to act as his ambassador. There was then a rivalry and schism going on among the Syrian Jacobites, who had set up two rival patriarchates since 1293. The Eastern rival, who ruled over all the Jacobites living between the Tigris and the Euphrates, and the Metropolitan of Edessa sent legates to Rome, for in 1444 Eugene had once more moved the council, that still went on sitting, to Rome. All the Maronites who had not already been converted at the time of the Crusades now came in too, but only one Nestorian bishop (Timothy of Tarsus) with a few people. Of course all these heretics gave up their errors, accepted the Councils of Ephesus and Chalcedon and acknowledged the Roman Primacy.^[20] We count the Council of Florence as the seventeenth œcumenical synod. It is difficult to see from what point of view its œcumenical character could be denied. It was held in the presence of the Pope, the Patriarch of Constantinople, and the legates of the Patriarchs of Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem. There were many more Easterns present than there had been Latins at any of the early synods that we all agree in calling œcumenical. Even if one were to take up the shamelessly Erastian position that the Emperor's presence and consent are necessary, Florence had both. Indeed, as a last possibility, if one were to require the presence of such old schismatical bodies as the Monophysites and Nestorians (a position which the Orthodox would of course abhor, and which would involve the denial of all councils except the first two), the heads of the Armenian, Coptic, and Abyssinian Churches were represented, and there were at least some Jacobites and Nestorians present. So that except, perhaps, Nicæa in 325 no council has ever had such a clear right to be considered œcumenical. This is, perhaps, the reason why the Orthodox who now reject its decrees quite specially hate it.^[21] But the union of Florence was destined to come to as bad an end as that of Lyons two centuries before. On the Byzantine side it had been from the beginning a political move of the Government which the people had never wanted. As soon as the Emperor and his followers came home again to Constantinople they found every one in an uproar against them. They had betrayed the Orthodox faith, they had all become Azymites, Creed-tamperers, cheese-eaters, dogs, heretics, hypocrites and Latins. Mark of Ephesus was the hero of the hour. But the Emperor kept to what he had done. The successor of old Joseph II (who had died at Florence) was Metrophanes II (1440–1443), also a friend of the union, and when he gave his blessing in public the people turned away their faces not to be defiled by a Latinizer's prayer. But the Pope's name was restored to the diptychs, and officially the Byzantine Church was in communion with Rome. John VIII died in that communion, and his brother, the last Emperor Constantine XII (1448–1453), was also determined to uphold it. On the very eve of the fall of the city—on December 12, 1452—he held a great feast of the union; and when the hero-Emperor fell before the walls of his city he, too, died a Catholic. But the help from the Franks did not come. Eugene IV did everything he could to send it; he unceasingly wrote to the Western princes, imploring them to prevent the awful calamity that was at hand; but they would not listen. At least the Pope did what he himself could; he sent two galleys and three hundred soldiers, but of course so small a number could not make much difference.

It was not till after the fall of Constantinople that the union was formally repudiated by the Byzantine Church. Mohammed the Conqueror naturally did not want the Christians over whom he ruled to be friends with the great Western Powers, so the cause of "Orthodoxy" found a new champion in the Turkish conqueror, of all people.^[22] As soon as he had taken the city he sent for the leader of the schismatical party, George Scholarios (who seems to have been a layman), and had him made Patriarch (p. 241). Scholarios became Gennadios II (1453–1456). But it was not till 1472 that a synod at Constantinople solemnly rejected the union and anathematized the Council of Florence and all who accepted its decrees. During the thirty-three years then, between 1439 and 1472, the Byzantine Church was, at any rate officially, in communion with the Holy See. But the people of the city, now as wildly fanatical and intolerant as the last remnant of a lost cause always is (witness the Jews of Jerusalem during the siege), had said: Rather the Sultan's turban than the Pope's tiara; and they have had their wish.

 

4. Cardinal Bessarion.

The two metropolitans who had most favoured the union ended by coming over to live in the West. Eugene IV made both cardinals. Isidore of Kiev when he got back to Russia was promptly put in gaol for his share in the union. He escaped in 1443, came to Rome, and, as Cardinal Isidore, was Legate to Constantinople and leader of the little band of soldiers whom the Pope sent to help the Emperor. He was called the Cardinalis Ruthenus. The Cardinalis Nicenus was Bessarion. He at last despaired of his own people, and came to settle at Rome.^[23] Here he became one of the leaders of the Renaissance movement. A scholar equally versed in Greek and Latin, he was one of the first men who introduced to the Western world the forgotten Greek classics. He was an enthusiastic Platonist, and by his writings greatly helped on the study of Plato, that, with the reaction against Aristotle (who had reigned unquestioned "master of them that know" in the middle ages), was one of the chief notes of the Renaissance. He was always a generous and splendid patron to the poor Greek scholars who had fled from Constantinople; a lavish collector of Greek manuscripts^[24] that he then edited or translated. He held in his palace an Academy of Italian and Greek Humanists, and although he had left his own country he never forgot his patriotism, and lavishly helped every enterprise against its enemies. The Popes continually used him as Legate,^[25] and charged him with the reform of the Greek monasteries in Southern Italy. He was a warm friend to Grottaferrata, the chief of these monasteries.^[26] As a scholar, philosopher, and Mæcenas, he redeemed the honour of the Greek name throughout Europe; certainly no one in his age was more worthy of the sacred purple. After having very nearly become Pope^[27] he died in 1472. It was doubtless not only the religious motive^[28] that led the great Humanist to despair of the wild fanaticism, hopeless narrowness and unbearable pride of his own countrymen, and to turn away from the ugly clouds that gathered around the dying Empire to take his part in the movement that was rising like a wonderful dawn all over the broad lands of the West. And we, who know what we owe to the light of the Renaissance and who are grateful to the men who brought it, have to remember together with the Humanist Popes, with More, Erasmus and the others, also the Nicene Cardinal, Bessarion.

 

Summary.

Since the schism there have been three councils in which Eastern and Western bishops met to discuss their differences. At Bari, in 1098, Pope Urban II summoned some Greeks, apparently Calabrians or Sicilians, and argued with them about the Filioque. St. Anselm of Canterbury defended the Catholic belief; otherwise this synod is not at all important and we know little about it. Two general councils brought about a reunion, each for a short time. The Eastern Emperor, Michael VIII, sent ambassadors to the Second Council of Lyons, held in 1274 by Pope Gregory X. They accepted the faith of the Roman Church in every point at once, in the hope of getting help from the Western princes against the Turk. But when they got back home and found that no help came the union was soon rejected by the Byzantine Church. The story of the Council of Florence in 1439 is an almost exact repetition of the same thing. Sore beset by the Turks, despairing of help save from the Franks, the last Emperor but one, John VII, came to the council with a great following, to make peace with Pope Eugene IV. Again the Eastern bishops (except one, Mark of Ephesus) agree with the Latins, and the reunion is proclaimed. But it was very unpopular at Constantinople; it lingered on, at any rate in form, for one generation, and was finally repudiated after the fall of the city by a Synod of Constantinople in 1472. Other Eastern Churches, either wholly or in part, the Armenians, Copts, Abyssinians, Maronites, some Jacobites, one Nestorian bishop, were also reunited to the Catholic Church at Florence. The Uniate Churches date from this council. Cardinal Bessarion, who had been the chief promoter of the union among the Easterns, eventually came to live at Rome, and was one of the greatest of the Renaissance scholars.

 

1. One regrets having to speak disrespectfully of any religion, especially of any Christian bodies. At the same time to understand this point one must realize the attitude that the Roman See inevitably takes up, that is the only possible one from her point of view.
2. Will, o.c. pp. 229–253.
3. M.P.L. clviii.
4. There does not seem to have been any one from the East present.
5. M.P.L. clviii. St. Peter Damian also wrote a book "Against the error of the Greeks touching the Procession of the Holy Ghost," M.P.L. cxlv.
6. The first Council of Lyons (the thirteenth general council) had met in 1245.
7. Among his numberless works he had already written a "Treatise against the Greeks" (1252).
8. Especially since the schism under both Emperors and Sultans Patriarchs are incessantly being deposed, restored, and then deposed again. The line of Patriarchs of Constantinople is by far the most tangled confusion of that of any see in Christendom.
9. In Mansi, xxiv. 109–132. The council defined many other questions, chiefly of Canon Law. The most important is about Papal Election; the laws of the Conclave date from this council. All Church property was to be taxed for a great Crusade.
10. For the theology of the Filioque see p. 372.
11. The story of the Second Council of Lyons will be found in any Church History. See especially Hefele's Conciliengeschichte (ed. 2), vi. pp. 119, seq.
12. Sylvester Syropoulos, a bitter enemy of the Latins, who came in the Emperor's train, afterwards wrote an entertaining account of all their journey and adventures (done into Latin by Robert Creighton, who, however, writes his author's name wrong, Silv. Sguropuli: Vera historia unionis non veræ, Hagæ Com. 1660).
13. This is Syropoulos's idea.
14. As its decrees were published there it is generally called the Council of Florence. Not to have to remember two dates, one may connect it with the date of that publication and impress on one's mind: The seventeenth general council (reunion with the Eastern Churches) at Florence in 1439.
15. Syropoulos, 109, quoted in Creighton's Hist. of the Papacy, Longmans, 1899, vol. ii. p. 335.
16. For this question see p. 386.
17. This formula is taken from St. John Damascene, see p. 379.
18. One word in this decree has been very much discussed. The Latin text defines the Primacy and adds: "as is also contained (quemadmodum etiam continetur) in the Acts of the general councils," &c. So does the original Greek text signed by the Emperor and others and still kept at Florence (καθ’ ὃν τρόπον διαλαμβάνεται). Some Gallican theologians (Febronius) afterwards said that this was a later alteration and that the original text had: "according to the manner contained (quem ad modum et continetur)." See Hergenröther: Anti-Janus (Freiburg, 1870), pp. 118, seq.
19. Denzinger, No. 590.
20. Most of these Churches fell away again in part afterwards. But since the Council of Florence there has always been a body of Uniates from each, and all the Maronites are still Catholics.
21. For the history of the Council of Florence see the Acts in Mansi, xxi.; the decree in Denzinger, lxxiii. Also Hefele, vii. pp. 681, seq.
22. One Turk—Murad—even wrote a polemical treatise against the union!
23. He was made Bishop of Tusculum, and adopted the Latin rite. He is still always called il cardinale greco, or niceno.
24. He had a library of 746 MSS., mostly Greek, that had cost him 15,000 ducates: by the advice of Pope Paul II he left it to the Venetian Republic, the connecting link between East and West. It was the nucleus of the Library of St. Mark.
25. He was Legate at Bologna from 1450 to 1455, where he put an end to all discord, and magnificently restored and endowed the university.
26. Bessarion was made titular Abbot of Grottaferrata. They still have his chalice there. Krumbacher: Byz. Litt. pp. 117–118.
27. When Paul II died in 1471 the Conclave hesitated between Bessarion and Francis della Rovere, who was eventually elected, and became Sixtus IV (1471–1484).
28. It would be quite unjust to think, on the other hand, that his motive was only mean time-serving. He had eagerly defended the union, and had taken up an entirely Catholic attitude at the very beginning of the council, when no one could foresee what would be the end of things; and he never wavered from that position.