REIGN OF MANUEL: ENCROACHMENTS OF TURKS; MANUEL VISITS WEST,
SULTAN BAJAZED SUMMONED BY TIMOUR; FRIENDLY RELATIONS BETWEEN
MANUEL AND MAHOMET THE FIRST; JOHN ASSOCIATED WITH MANUEL.
SIEGE OF CONSTANTINOPLE BY MURAD; ITS FAILURE. EFFORTS AT
UNION; MISCONCEPTIONS IN WEST REGARDING GREEK CHURCH CONSTANCY
OF ATTEMPTS AT UNION; NEGOTIATIONS FOR MEETING OF COUNCIL OF
CHURCH. INTERNAL STRUGGLES IN LATIN CHURCH. EMPEROR INVITED BY
BOTH PARTIES; ACCEPTS POPE’S INVITATION; MEETING OF COUNCIL
AT FERRARA AND FLORENCE; UNION ACCOMPLISHED; JOHN RETURNS TO
CAPITAL; DIVISIONS IN GREEK CHURCH.
Manuel was with the Turkish army at Brousa when he learned the death of
his father in 1391. He escaped secretly, hastened to Constantinople,
and succeeded in being proclaimed as the sole occupant of the imperial
throne. Bajazed, who had become sultan on the assassination of his
father, Murad, in 1389, taken by surprise at the escape of his hostage,
at once presented alarming demands. He asked that the Turks should have
a resident cadi within Constantinople itself and that Manuel should
declare himself to be the sultan’s vassal and pay tribute. After a year
of fruitless negotiations, which Manuel had protracted in order that
he might send to the West to implore aid, Bajazed attacked the empire
on every side. Within a few months Turks were pillaging the Adriatic
coast, were exterminating or carrying off prisoners from Thrace,
and were laying siege to the capital. Their leader before the city
urged the citizens to declare for Manuel’s nephew, John, the son of
Andronicus, who had, indeed, been compelled by Bajazed to come forward
as a pretender. In 1395 John joined the Turks in attacking the capital,
but was defeated. The Turkish leader returned across the Bosporus,
strengthened his position on the Gulf of Ismidt, by building a castle
or fortress, probably the one now seen at Guebseh, and another on the
Bosporus known as Guzel-hissar,[97] and then once more summoned Manuel
to surrender the city. Thereupon the emperor took a step which, if the
version of Ducas is correct, justifies his historian for attributing it
to wisdom and patriotism. He arranged to share the empire with John,
to leave the city himself, and to allow him to enter on condition that
he would not hand it over to the Turks. John, however, on his side
had agreed with Bajazed that Selymbria and the other places on the
north shore of the Marmora which he had held since the death of his
father should be delivered to the Turks, and, this arrangement being
concluded, the city was saved from attack.[98]
Meantime the spread of the Turks over new territories once more alarmed
the West, and in 1394 Boniface preached a Crusade and urged in what
is now Austria and the states of Venice that immediate action should
be taken against them. The danger was pressing and the pope’s call
to battle was this time responded to. Sigismund, the Hungarian king,
informed the emperor that he had fifty-two thousand armed men, and
invited his co-operation.
[Sidenote: Battle of Nicopolis, 1396.]
But the men of the West had not yet learned how formidable the Turks
could be. In 1396 at Nicopolis on the Danube the united Christian
army was met by Bajazed, who inflicted upon it a crushing defeat. How
that defeat was accomplished will be told when giving the story of
Bajazed’s life. Bajazed recaptured all the places in Hungary which he
had previously lost, threatened to besiege Buda, boasted that he would
annex Germany and Italy and feed his horse with oats on the altar of
St. Peter at Rome. So serious was the disaster of Nicopolis and the
impression it produced that at length the Venetian senate recognised
the necessity of joining their traditional enemies the Genoese in order
to send a powerful fleet against the common enemy. Boucicaut, a skilful
sailor who was named admiral, took command. He arrived at Gallipoli
with a fleet containing fourteen hundred knights. They met near the
Dardanelles seventeen well-armed Turkish galleys and defeated them.
Shortly afterwards Boucicaut was proclaimed by Venetians and Genoese
admiral-in-chief. He pushed on to the Bosporus and arrived just in time
to relieve Galata, which was being besieged by the Turks. Manuel named
him Grand Constable. Boucicaut next endeavoured to recapture Ismidt but
without success. Elsewhere, however, he succeeded in inflicting several
losses on the Turks and especially harassed their settlements on the
eastern shore of the Bosporus. Finding he was powerless without further
aid to inflict serious damage upon them, he urged Manuel to acknowledge
the king of France as his suzerain, in order that he might receive aid.
His project met with the approval of the Venetians, the Genoese, and
of Manuel himself. Boucicaut returned to France to obtain assistance
and to employ his own influence in favour of the project, but Charles
the Sixth, being unable or unwilling to protect his proposed vassal,
refused to receive his submission.
Manuel, at the end of 1399, decided to follow the example of his
predecessor and to see whether his own efforts would not be more
successful in obtaining aid from the West. He was received, as they had
been, with imperial honours in Venice and elsewhere, but neither from
that city nor from Florence, Ferrara, Genoa, or Milan did he secure any
assistance. His public entry into Paris was with a display that was
intended more to please the Parisians than to be of use to him, and he
soon learnt that there was as little to be hoped from France as from
Italy. Nor was he more successful on his visit to Henry the Fourth in
England. After an absence of two and a half years, Manuel returned
to his capital. He found that the Turks had employed the time with
energy and had made great progress in their raids on the empire. His
own people were almost in despair. The Turks were once more besieging
the capital and were securely established on the opposite shore of the
Bosporus. The population of Constantinople had decreased. Many of its
buildings had fallen out of repair, and its territory in Thrace was
almost limited by the walls of the city.
On the other hand, he arrived at a moment when if Christendom had
been united a great and possibly a fatal blow might have been struck
against the common enemy. The lieutenant of Boucicaut was defending
Constantinople against the third attempt by Bajazed to capture the
city, when the tidings from the great Timour or Tamarlane gave the
besieger pause. Bajazed withdrew. Timour, indeed, had summoned the
sultan to give up to the Greeks all territory that he had taken
from them and had asked the Genoese to co-operate and obtain the
co-operation of other Western powers against the Turks. Bajazed not
only refused to obey the summons but went forward to attack Timour and,
as we shall see when dealing with the life of Bajazed, was in the great
battle of Angora, on July 25, 1402, defeated and made prisoner. He died
in the following year. The defeat of the sultan gave a new lease of
life to the city, but no aid came from the Christians of the West. The
Venetians and Genoese were again at war with each other and Western
Europe was as divided and as powerless for concerted action against the
Turks as it has so often been since.
The Turks in less than a generation after the withdrawal of Timour
recovered all their influence and territory. Manuel was compelled
even as early as 1403 to recognise Bajazed’s successor, Suliman (to
whom, indeed, he gave his granddaughter in marriage), as lord of a
large portion of Thrace. Suliman, however, proved himself a weak
and worthless leader of the Turks, and in 1409 the Janissaries,
preferring his brother Mousa, arrested and killed him. He was succeeded
by Mahomet, the first of that name in the Ottoman dynasty, who had
been aided by Manuel and who in return gave back to the emperor the
fortified places on the Marmora and Black Sea which had been in the
occupation of the Turks: an almost solitary instance of this kind of
generosity on the part of the Turks, who hold as a religious principle
that they must only surrender territory to force. Mahomet had, however,
given his promise to Manuel and, says Ducas, he faithfully kept it.[99]
During the next few years and until the death of the sultan, Manuel’s
relations with him were friendly. In 1415 the two sovereigns had
an interview at Gallipoli. Although the Turks were pursuing their
encroachments in Hungary and Dalmatia, Mahomet abstained from attacking
the empire. When they carried off nearly two thousand captives into
slavery from Euboea, its Venetian rulers were compelled to seek the
mediation of Manuel in order to obtain peace. Five years afterwards,
Mahomet in passing to his dominions in Asia Minor went by way of the
capital, and Phrantzes testifies that, in spite of suggestions to seize
him, Manuel refused to violate the right of hospitality. So great was
the sultan’s trust in the emperor that Mahomet named Manuel as the
guardian of his two younger sons.
Murad, the eldest son and successor of Mahomet, who became sultan
in 1420, proposed a renewal of the alliance with Manuel. The latter
would probably have consented. He was overruled, however, by the
senate, which was in favour of a policy of war and decided that John
should be associated with his father. A demand was made to Murad to
send his two younger brothers to Constantinople, and the grand vizier
returned the answer which might have been expected, that the education
of two Mussulmans could not be entrusted to the enemies of their
faith--believers to be educated by infidels.[100] War followed, and
the Greeks supported a pretender to the Turkish throne, who was soon
defeated and hanged by Murad.
[Sidenote: Siege of Constantinople by Murad, 1422.]
Thereupon, in 1422, siege was laid to Constantinople. The walls had
largely fallen out of repair and the three thousand men who were sent
as a first detachment sat down before it in hope of an easy capture. A
few days later Murad himself appeared, bringing with him in chains the
Greek ambassadors who had been sent to treat of peace. A large army of
two hundred thousand men, together with a great crowd of bashi-bazouks,
encamped before the landward walls and built an earthwork for their
protection from the Golden Gate to the Xyloporta at the end of the
walls on the Golden Horn. Among them, or arriving shortly afterwards,
was a certain Mersaite, a Madhi, a half-mad fanatic at the head of
five hundred dervishes. He claimed to be of the blood of Mahomet and
to possess prophetic powers. He foretold that the capture of the city
would happen when he gave the signal, for which all were to be ready.
The sultan had sat down before the walls in the middle of June, but his
primitive bombs, his wooden towers, and his attempts to undermine the
walls were of no avail. Mersaite prophesied a capture on August 24. On
that day the defenders of the foss were rained upon with showers of
arrows and a general assault was made, but the two Theodosian walls,
which were defended by crowds of citizens, were far too strong to be
captured by the simple fanatical onslaught of dervishes. The Greeks
fought valiantly, the young Emperor John being at their head and on
horseback, in the peribolos outside the Romanus Military Gate, formerly
knowm as the Pempton. Upon the failure of the attack by the dervishes,
Murad suddenly raised the siege and the Greeks pursued the retreating
army and captured some of their rude guns.[101] The immediate cause of
the raising of the siege of Constantinople is variously stated. Manuel
had sent aid to the adherents of Mustafa, the younger brother of Murad,
aged only six years, and had thus strengthened the revolt which had
been raised in his favour in Asia Minor. It was of more importance
to Murad to put an end to this Turkish rising than to persist in his
attempt to capture the city.[102]
[Sidenote: Death of Manuel, 1425.]
In 1425 Manuel, whom Ducas describes not incorrectly as a wise and
moderate prince, died, after a reign of thirty-four years.
[Sidenote: John, 1425–1448.]
John, sometimes called the Fifth and sometimes the Seventh of that
name, now became sole emperor, and reigned from 1425 to 1448. The two
features of his reign which make all incidents in it that are not
connected with them of comparative insignificance, are, first, the
steady almost unchecked progress of the Turks in south-eastern Europe
and in Asia Minor: the encroachment of an overwhelming flood, now
apparently receding in one direction, but again sweeping over every
obstacle in another, and in reality always steadily advancing and
submerging all the Christian populations in the Balkan peninsula: and,
second, the efforts of the emperor and those about him to save the
remnant of the empire by obtaining the help of Europe.
John’s reign was spent in one continuous effort to obtain assistance
from the West to save the city and to check the progress of the Turks.
Like his predecessors, he addressed himself to successive popes.
Perhaps nothing brings more vividly before the reader of European
history the power of the occupants of the pontifical chair than the
fact that it was taken for granted that from the pope, and the pope
alone, that Western aid could be obtained. We have seen that former
emperors had looked to the kings of France and England and to other
princes, but their aid was sought only on the advice and with the
support of Rome. In justice also it must be admitted that no princes
recognised so completely as did a long series of popes the expediency
and duty of defending Constantinople as the first outwork of the
defences of Europe against the forces of Asia, and of aiding its
emperors in their efforts to check the Turkish invasion. They were
the prime ministers of Western Europe and almost the only persons who
regarded the Eastern question as statesmen.
Unfortunately, while the popes saw the necessity of preventing the
progress of the barbarians, they attached conditions to their offers
of help which made them unacceptable and which indeed were impossible:
namely, that the Greeks should accept the Union of the Churches, with
which Union was associated the supremacy of the pope.
A succession of pontiffs during the two hundred years preceding
the Moslem conquest of the city worked for Union with marvellous
persistency. The same passionate desire for reunion is not less
manifest now in the occupant of the chair of St. Peter; but modern
efforts are made with this essential difference, that while in the
period which concerns us it was believed that reunion could be imposed,
every one now recognises that if it is to be brought about, it must be
by voluntary and full consent.
[Sidenote: Errors in West regarding Orthodox Church.]
In the fourteenth century it never seems to have occurred either to
popes or emperors that people cannot be compelled to change their
religious opinions. The idea was that the great mass of people
were ready to accept any opinion sanctioned by the ordinary civil
authorities. The early negotiations leave the impression that the
Churchmen of the West thought that the emperor and the patriarch could
bring about a Union by their simple decree, could change the profession
of belief and obtain the admission of papal supremacy without the
voluntary consent of even the Greek ecclesiastics. It never appears
to have dawned upon Roman Churchmen that the members of the Orthodox
Church might refuse to accept Union and a change in belief when these
had been accepted by the civil and religious chiefs. Such a view showed
ignorance at once of the character, always intensely conservative,
and of the history of the Orthodox Church. Without entering into a
discussion of how far the population of the capital and the empire was
Greek by race, it is sufficient to recall that Greek was the language
of the people, that all that they knew of history and philosophy, all
their methods of thought, their theology and literature, had come
to them in Greek forms. They thought and spoke as Greeks. Most of
them gloried in being Greek. In matters of philosophic and religious
speculation the Greek mind was more acute, and more subtle, than the
Western mind. In theological questions, probably all classes were
more interested than the corresponding classes in the West. If in
the course of centuries the common people had ceased to take that
keen interest in matters of theological speculation which caused the
artisan or tradesman to neglect his immediate occupation in order to
ask his customer’s opinion on the merits of the latest heresy, it was
largely because the great formulas of Christian belief had, as it
was believed, received their final adjustment. If any questions were
unsolved--as, for example, that of the Inner Light--the population was
always ready to take an interest in them; but it deeply resented any
attempt to dogmatise without full discussion. It especially resented
the determination of such questions by a foreign authority. The Greek
Churchmen considered themselves, and probably rightly, as better
versed in theology than those of Rome. They had the tradition of being
admittedly superior in learning to their brethren in the West, and,
though ready at all times to discuss, would not consent to be dictated
to by the bishop of Rome.
The Catholic Church not only made the mistake of disregarding the
traditional susceptibilities of the Eastern people, who invariably,
after 1204, associated the rule of Rome with the abominations of
the Latin occupation; of disregarding also the universal interest
felt in the Orthodox Church on theological questions, but it greatly
underrated the authority and influence of the Orthodox clergy when
such authority and influence were in conflict with the emperor or even
with the emperor and patriarch combined. Much has been written of what
is called Caesaropapism: that is, of the combination of the secular
and ecclesiastical powers which were supposed to be vested in the
emperors. At various times the autocrat undoubtedly assumed much of
the power which in the Holy Roman Empire in the West was left to the
popes. At other times, however, and in some matters at all times, the
patriarch of Constantinople exercised a jurisdiction independent of
the emperor. The religious sanctions possessed by the Church were not
to be set aside even by or for him. We have seen, for example, that
when the Emperor Michael the Eighth had usurped the crown and blinded
the infant John so as to prevent him coming to the throne, though the
ecclesiastics seemed to have considered it expedient that he should
retain the office he had usurped, the patriarch Arsenius and the
prelates associated with him could not be either coaxed or frightened
into granting him absolution, and that it was not until Arsenius and
his successor, Germanus, had ceased to occupy the patriarchal throne
that the emperor could succeed in having the anathema removed.[103]
Many other examples could be given which show that it is an error to
suppose that the patriarchs were merely or even usually the creatures
of the emperors. When questions of dogma arose the head of the Orthodox
Church supported by his clergy was jealous of the secular power. The
history of Constantinople during the time between the Latin and the
Moslem conquests of the city abounds in illustrations showing that the
Church would not consent to dictation from the emperors, and that the
clergy would not blindly follow the patriarch. But, when dictation was
supposed to come from Rome, the great mass of clergy and people were,
as they had been from the time of Photius, on the side of their Church
and, if need be, against the emperor.
It must be remembered also that the Eastern Church had steadily refused
to admit the supremacy of the Western. It had never regarded the
phrase ‘under one fold and one shepherd’ as indicating that the whole
Church of Christ should be under the government of one bishop. It had
never admitted that the ‘One Shepherd’ should be other than Christ,
and had therefore constantly denied the supremacy of the pope. One
Empire, one Church, one Head of the Church was a Western theory which
had never made much way in the later Roman empire. The movements in
the West which placed the imperial power in commission, giving to the
emperor the supreme secular, and to the bishop of Rome the supreme
ecclesiastical, authority had no corresponding movement in the East.
The emperors were only heads of the Church in the same sense as the
king of England is in all matters ecclesiastical supreme. The emperors
and ecclesiastics were usually agreed in not allowing the supremacy of
the bishop of the elder Rome.
To the popes, however, the Union of the Churches was indissolubly
associated with the admission of papal supremacy. It would be going too
far to say that they desired Union exclusively to obtain recognition of
such supremacy, but it may safely be said that they never lost sight
in all their negotiations for Union of the necessity of obtaining
its recognition, and that, in the opinion of many ecclesiastics both
Western and Eastern, such supremacy was the most important object aimed
at.
Murad’s unsuccessful attempt, in 1422, to capture Constantinople made
it evident to the emperor that aid from Western nations was absolutely
necessary if the empire or even the city was to be saved. The pope also
recognised both the importance of saving the empire and its extreme
danger, and held out hopes of aid if Union were accepted. The imminence
of the danger was patent to all. When John became sole occupant of the
throne, in 1425, the empire was surrounded by Turkish armies. Nearly
the whole of Asia Minor was in their hands. Large armies had invaded
Hungary; Bulgaria had ceased to exist; Serbia was a vassal of the
sultan. In Macedonia and even in Thrace the Turks had made a desolation
and held many cities. If the city of Paris were worth a Mass, the
empire was worth a tenfold acknowledgment of the pope’s supremacy.
The emperor, the nobles, and a considerable part of the clergy came to
believe that they must purchase aid on any conditions or see the city
captured. Questions of dogma, the addition of the _Filioque_ clause,
the use of unleavened bread, the condition of souls in purgatory, were
to them matters of secondary importance when the very existence of
their country was at stake. Even papal supremacy appeared to John and
many laymen worth accepting in return for the despatch of soldiers who
would resist the Turkish invasion.
We have seen that many attempts at Union had been made by all the
emperors since the recapture of the city, but that they had all failed,
that the traditional conservatism of the Orthodox Church, its stubborn
resistance to the slightest change of dogma or ritual, all intensified
by the traditions of the Latin occupation, had been more powerful than
the energy and influence of popes and emperors combined.[104]
[Sidenote: The great attempt at Reunion.]
The last and greatest attempt to bring about a Union was now about to
be made, and deserves fuller notice than has been given to any which
preceded it.
In 1429, in the fourth year of his reign, John sent to request the pope
to despatch a messenger to Constantinople to treat of Union. Eugenius
gladly complied and sent a friar to arrange conditions with the emperor
and patriarch. It was agreed that the canonical method of arriving at a
binding conclusion on matters of dogma should be adopted. The matters
in dispute were to be submitted to a Council of the Church at which
John and the patriarch were to be present.
Meantime Eugenius employed his influence during the next three or
four years to induce the Venetians and Genoese to unite against the
common enemy, to give aid to the knights in their defence of Rhodes,
and to prevent any attacks upon the empire from the West. So far all
looked promising. Unfortunately, however, at this time the Latin Church
itself was divided. Rival popes, one in Italy, the other at Avignon,
had denounced each other as pretenders. A Council of the Church opened
at Bâle in March 1431 was by a papal Bull ordered to be transferred
to Bologna after the expiry of eight months. The principal reason
assigned for the transfer was the greater convenience of John and the
imperial party. Eugenius had taken this step without consultation
with the cardinals, and the change of place was at once strenuously
opposed. A majority of the Council refused to obey and replied that
as the Bohemians, the followers of John Huss, had been formally cited
to appear at Bâle, the place of meeting could not be changed. As to
the convenience of the representatives of the Greek Church, ‘the peace
of Germany is not to be sacrificed for the old song which has rung
in the ears of Europe for three centuries and ended in nothing, the
reconciliation of the Greek and Latin Churches.’[105]
The Council was supported in its opposition to Eugenius by the Emperor
Sigismund, by the duke of Milan, and by many kings, princes, bishops,
universities, and cities. Only four cardinals remained on his side.
Nevertheless he fearlessly denounced the Council as a Synagogue of
Satan. For a while the more he threatened the more the dignitaries of
the Church flocked to Bâle. Eugenius in vain endeavoured to extort
from the Emperor Sigismund the dissolution of the Council as the price
of his consent to place the imperial crown on his head. Sigismund
would not yield, and Eugenius had to crown him. With the exception
of Venice and Florence, all Western Europe was against Eugenius. An
insurrection in Rome forced him to leave the city, and he escaped in a
mean disguise. He was driven for a while to withdraw his denunciations
and to admit the legality of the Council and of its acts.
A temporary reconciliation was of short duration. The claims of the
rival parties were incapable of reconciliation. The Council was
determined to limit the power of the pope; the pope would endure no
limitation.
Two years were lost in useless negotiations. John strongly urged that
the Council should consider the question of Union without delay, and
sent a representative to Bâle in October 1433. When the members refused
by a two-thirds vote to remove to Italy the emperor’s representative
suggested that the meeting-place should be Constantinople. The Council
in 1434 declared against this proposal, but offered to pay the expenses
of the Greeks if they would come to Bâle. The latter, possibly from
their ignorance of the geographical situation of the city, refused to
go thither. Other places were suggested and the pope again gave his
approbation for Bologna or some other place in Italy.
Representatives arrived in Constantinople from both the Synod at
Bâle and the pope, who were again in opposition to each other. To
such an extent had these hostilities grown that the Council declared
Eugenius guilty of perjury and schism and incapable of holding any
ecclesiastical office. Eugenius retorted by calling them an assembly of
devils.
The deputies from Bâle brought with them to Constantinople a
comminatory decree of the Council against the pope. The emperor and
patriarch had therefore to choose between the Council and Eugenius.
Each had invited them, had offered to bear the expenses and menaced
them in case of refusal. The deputies from Bâle were heard at a public
session of the Synod and threatened that if the Council were not
recognised, the nations of the West would make war upon the empire, and
this notwithstanding the aid of the pope, whose decrees they insisted
were null and void. The ambassadors from Eugenius, who had arrived with
a band of three thousand crossbowmen, offered terms as to transport and
convoy similar to those which the messengers from Bâle had proposed,
and suggested that the proclamation calling the meeting of the Council
might be issued in the emperor’s name. They were also heard in a public
sitting of the Synod in September 1437, a few days after the audience
of the deputies from Bâle. John and the patriarch decided to accept the
proposal of Eugenius.[106]
When the news reached the pope he at once issued a Bull fixing Ferrara
as the meeting-place of the Council. In November 1437, the emperor,
with a large suite, embarked. The imperial party arrived at Venice in
the following February. The Venetians had been excommunicated by the
Council of Bâle as adherents of Eugenius, who was their fellow-citizen,
and, probably with a desire to induce the Greeks to throw in their
lot entirely on the side of the pope, received John and the patriarch
with unwonted honour. The doge and the senate in the ‘Bucentaur,’ with
the galleys belonging to the republic and a crowd of gondolas, went
out to receive them. Lodging was found for their followers on the
Lido. Syropulus, who attended the patriarch and whose history from
the Greek point of view is the most trustworthy narrative of these
proceedings, was amazed at the display on the reception in Venice. ‘You
could as easily number the leaves on the trees or the sands of the sea
as the gondolas and galleys of the Venetians.’ Phrantzes is not less
enthusiastic. He speaks of ‘Venice the marvellous, the most marvellous:
Venice the wise, the most wise; the city predicted in the psalm, “God
has founded her upon the waters.”’[107]
The Greeks were shown the treasures of St. Mark, but Syropulus remarks
that as they gazed upon them arose the thought, ‘These were once our
own. They are the plunder of Hagia Sophia and our holy monasteries.’
Their departure for Ferrara was with a like magnificence. Twelve noble
galleys and an innumerable number of gondolas, whose occupants and
sailors were bright with silks of various colours, attended them. The
imperial eagles were mingled with the gonfalons of St. Mark, and the
city which more than any other lends itself to display has seldom
presented a more brilliant spectacle.
Meantime the pope had threatened excommunication against the fathers
of the Church who should continue to sit at Bâle, and had given them
four months within which to present themselves at Ferrara. Their reply
was a formal deposition of Eugenius.
[Sidenote: First meeting of Council.]
Upon the arrival of the imperial party at Ferrara and after long
negotiations regarding questions of precedence, it was decided that
the first meeting of the Council should be held on March 9, 1438, and
it was so held, the business being merely formal. Four cardinals,
twenty-five bishops, and other nobles had previously received the
patriarch and conducted him to the pope, who rose from his throne,
embraced him, and led him to a seat near him similar to those occupied
by the cardinals. No decision could be taken during the four months’
delay. As the recalcitrants did not come in at the appointed time, a
further postponement of two months was granted, probably for the reason
that the pope knew that the princes of the West were still disposed
rather to sympathise with the Council than with him. All this delay
was in the highest degree irksome to the Greeks. Many of them had
left their homes without much hope of arriving at a reconciliation,
but when on reaching Ferrara they realised the discord which existed
in the Roman Church itself not a few concluded that before anything
could be done to complete the Union a reconciliation must take place
among the Catholic factions themselves. During their long wait the
restrictions imposed upon their movements aroused their suspicions.
They complained that they were treated as prisoners. They could not
leave the city without a permit. Three of the leading men who escaped
to Venice were ignominiously brought back. They again escaped and this
time found their way back to Constantinople. Nor was the treatment
of the ecclesiastics such as might have been expected from hosts to
guests. The bishop of Ferrara refused to allow the Greeks to celebrate
in one of his great churches, declaring that he would not permit it to
be polluted. The emperor and patriarch, for political reasons among
others, were impatient to return, and did their utmost to urge on the
work for which they had left their homes.
[Sidenote: Business of Council commences.]
In October the second meeting of the Council was held. By this time a
considerable number of the fathers of the Church had made submission
to Eugenius and had arrived in Ferrara. Gibbon’s remark that ‘the
violence of the fathers of Basil rather promoted than injured the cause
of Eugenius’[108] is just. The delay had undoubtedly strengthened
the papal authority. Hence at the second meeting of the Council its
business began at once to progress. Six Latin and six Greek theologians
were selected to formulate the questions in difference. These related
to the Procession of the Holy Ghost; the nature of the penalties of
purgatory; the condition of souls before the last judgment; the use of
unleavened bread in communion, and lastly, the supremacy of the pope.
Meantime plague had broken out in Ferrara. Five only out of the eleven
cardinals remained, and all that had been done was to formulate the
points of difference. For some reason which is not quite clear, the
Council was transferred to Florence. The unhealthiness of the city was
alleged, but Syropulus says that the plague had ended. The Greeks were
extremely reluctant to go to so remote a place as Florence, but they
finally consented, in the hope of speedily concluding their mission.
At Florence the Council got fairly to work. Cardinal Julian Cesarini,
who had been president of the Council at Bâle, and John, the head of
the Dominicans in Italy, were the champions on the Latin, and Isidore
of Russia, Bessarion, and Mark, bishop of Ephesus, on the Greek side.
Long, weary, and profitless discussions took place on the subject of
the Double Procession. Two questions were involved: first, was the
doctrine itself orthodox--that is, did the Holy Ghost proceed from
the Father alone or from the Father and the Son; second, assuming the
Double Procession to be orthodox, by what authority had the Latin
Church, claiming to speak as the Universal Church, presumed to add to
the Nicene Creed the words _Filioque_, which proclaimed the disputed
dogma, before the decision of a General Council had been pronounced.
After many meetings among the Greeks alone, it was decided that as the
Latin Church held that the Procession was not from two ‘principles’ but
from one, and this by one operation, its teaching was in accord with
that of the Orthodox Church, which acknowledged that the Procession is
from the Father but through the Son. The scholars who brought about
this agreement were Bessarion and George Scholarius, the latter of whom
was destined afterwards to play an important part during the siege of
Constantinople. The declaration of the Greeks was approved at a meeting
of the Council.
Greater difficulty arose on the second point, of the conduct of the
Latin Church in adding the clause to the Creed. The emperor was at
length convinced, or professed to be, that the clause had formerly
existed in the Creed at the time of the Seventh Council,[109] but it
required all his influence to persuade some of the Greek ecclesiastics
who were not convinced of this fact to avoid an open rupture. The
debates were obstinate and angry. But emperor and pope were determined
on Union, and each used all his influence and authority to convince or
compel the more refractory to obedience. Finally, it was decided that
the words _Filioque_ had been lawfully and with good reason inserted in
the Creed.
The question of purgatory and the condition of souls in the
intermediate state occasioned little or no difficulty. On the use of
unleavened bread, however, the controversy became so violent that
on five different occasions the Greek bishops were with difficulty
prevented from leaving the Council. It was at length decided that each
Church might maintain its usage in regard thereto.
The most dangerous question, after that of the Double Procession,
regarded the pope’s supremacy, and was apparently not made the subject
of a public discussion.
[Sidenote: Union accomplished, July 14, 1439.]
In July 1439, after twenty-six sittings of the Council, the Union was
signed and all was ready for its formal proclamation. Earth and heaven
were called upon to rejoice that the dividing wall between the Churches
of the West and East had been broken down. In August, the Act of Union
was published with imposing solemnity in the cathedral and a _Te Deum_
was sung in Greek.
The embassy from Constantinople had been greatly impressed by the
dissensions among the Latins. No French or German bishops had taken
part in the meetings at Ferrara or Florence. Fifty out of the sixty-two
bishops who were present were Italians, the remainder Spaniards or
Burgundians. When the latter were admitted to the Council they saluted
only the pope, doing this with the manifest intention of slighting the
emperor. The adherents of Bâle were, indeed, openly hostile, and as
they were known to have great influence among the princes of the West,
the Greeks lost the illusion that if they came to an agreement with the
pope, aid would gladly be sent from the great Catholic states.
It had been with difficulty that the emperor and the court party in
Constantinople had persuaded the Churchmen to go to the West. While the
former were willing to make many sacrifices, even perhaps to accept
the pope’s supremacy, in the hope of obtaining aid against the Turks,
when they recognised that the influence of Eugenius was not what they
had believed it to be, they were less urgent, and certainly less able,
to coerce the distinguished ecclesiastics who had been persuaded
to accompany them. All were, indeed, miserably disappointed and
disillusionised. Though the emperor never wavered in his determination
to come to an agreement which would aid in the preservation of his
empire, his own brother, Demetrius, refused to sign the Act of Union.
Mark of Ephesus would not attend at the solemn proclamation, nor were
George Scholarius or Gemistes or any of the bishops from Georgia
present. The bishop of Heraclia, on his return to Venice, was required
to recite the Creed in St. Mark’s, but he did so with the omission
of the _Filioque_ clause. The same bishop declared on his return to
Constantinople, that he would rather his right hand had been cut off
than that it should have subscribed the Union. In order to avoid the
scandal of an open rupture, the four copies of the decree did not
mention the supremacy of the pope. Other copies signed only by the
Latin bishops were not recognised as authentic by the Greeks.[110]
The patriarch, a man of eighty, died just before the decree of the
Union was signed, and was buried in the Baptistery of Florence.
Religious animosity dogmatised over his grave about his opinions. Some
of the Greeks subsequently pretended that his death was one of the
several causes which rendered the Council illegal. Some of the Latins
maintained that he had left a declaration of his acceptance of the
Roman doctrine, and even of the supremacy of the pope.
[Sidenote: John returns to Constantinople, August 1439.]
The two persons who had shown themselves sincerely desirous of
accomplishing a Union were the pope and the emperor. The former, who
had paid the expenses of the Greek mission, now urged foreign states to
prepare and send forth armies in aid of the Greeks. On the departure of
John, in August 1439, for his capital, the pontiff not merely promised
all the aid he could furnish, but undertook to maintain, at his own
expense as long as he lived, three hundred men in the imperial service.
He at once sent two well-armed galleys, and declared that he would
furnish twenty ships of war during a period of six months. Eugenius and
John had loyally stood by each other, and so far as depended upon them
the Union had been accomplished.
With the object of giving effect to the decisions arrived at, the pope
retained Bessarion and Isidore, both of whom he made cardinals. The
latter, we shall see, was present at Constantinople during the final
siege. He was metropolitan of Russia, and on his return to Moscow
proclaimed the Union. He gave dire offence by naming the emperor
before the grand duke, and the pope before the patriarch.
In 1442, the pope once again summoned certain princes, and especially
Ladislaus, king of Poland and Hungary, to aid Constantinople, Cyprus,
and Rhodes against the Turks. He, however, was at war in Italy, and
consequently unable to furnish the aid which he had promised. Ladislaus
was permitted to retain the Peter’s pence on condition that he would
employ it in raising troops against the infidels. The pope persuaded
Alphonse of Aragon to furnish armed galleys, and granted indulgences
to all who sided in the struggle against unbelievers. But all attempts
to arouse a general crusading spirit failed. With a few exceptions,
those who went to fight the battles of Christendom against Murad
belonged to nations whose vital interests were at stake. Many causes
contributed to this result, and among them the awakening to new life
in Italy. The Renaissance which was now in progress substituted the
classic spirit for the Hebraic. Paganism itself, among scholars and
statesmen, was in competition with Christianity, and the great movement
which was destined to give birth to modern Europe and which was greatly
assisted, as we shall see, by the Greek scholars from Constantinople,
was antagonistic to the crusading spirit. A common Christianity was no
longer a bond of union to those who were dreaming of a classic revival
and of a return to pagan ideals. Except to men who were outside the
influence of the new movement, the pope and churchmen appealed in vain.
News of the accomplishment of the Union was received in Constantinople
with mingled feelings. Hopes had been damped. The advantages to be
gained by sacrificing their Orthodox Faith were found to be doubtful.
The conservative party, led by Mark of Ephesus, gained greatly in
strength. Finding that the emperor had consented to the appointment of
a new patriarch who accepted the Union, Mark resumed his denunciations
both of it and of the Latin Church. The patriarchs of Syria and Egypt
refused to recognise the decisions of Florence and threatened with
excommunication the priests ordained by the patriarch of Constantinople.
[Sidenote: Death of John, October 1448.]
John lived nearly eight years after his return to Constantinople from
Florence and died in October 1448. The events which happened during
this interval relate principally to the marvellous success of the Turks
over the armies of Central Europe, and will be better told in the
story of their progress. It is sufficient to say that these disasters
hastened his death.
During his reign the condition of the empire had undergone little
change. Though when first associated with his father he had headed the
war party, he recognised after the siege of the city in 1422 that his
father’s dying counsel to keep on friendly terms with the Turks was
wise. This policy, as we have seen, did not prevent him from doing all
he could to obtain aid from the Western powers. He had paid the price
which Rome exacted and never lost hope that such aid would come. At the
same time he was ready to join with the Hungarians and other Christian
nations, even at considerable risk of precipitating an attack upon
the city. His power, however, was too small to make any co-operation
outside the capital and the Straits of much value. He did what he
could. He repaired and strengthened the city walls.[111] He kept the
fleet in at least as good a condition as he had found it. He was
probably justified in believing that his wisest course was to obtain
all the aid possible from the West, to be ready to co-operate, and in
the meantime to keep quiet. His pliant policy delayed the siege of the
city and thus for a while averted the final calamity.