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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 January 2017
Eastern scholars have long accused John VIII Palaiologos of sacrificing the faith for temporal gain when he oversaw the Union of Florence. Westerners have blamed him for the union's ultimate failure. These competing narratives both err by too sharply differentiating between religion and politics, and allowing the opinions of John's contemporary critics to colour their interpretations of his actions. A contextual analysis of John's activities during and after the council finds his behaviour in keeping with the best elements of his tradition and suggests the potential for a new historiography of Ferrara-Florence which might help to dislodge entrenched ecclesial animosities.
1 A representative assessment of his political accomplishments is that of Nicol, Donald, who concludes that John ‘was not in the tradition of those emperors in Constantinople who had influenced the course of events’: The last centuries of Byzantium, 1261–1453, London 1972, 386 Google Scholar.
2 The Memoirs are edited with a facing French translation in Les “Mémoires” du Grand ecclésiarque de l’Église de Constantinople Sylvestre Syropoulos sur le Concile de Florence (1438–1439), ed. Laurent, V., Rome 1971 Google Scholar.
3 The original work in Russian is Ostroumov, Ivan N., Istoriia Florentiiskago sobora, Moscow 1847 Google Scholar, trans. by Popoff, Basil as The history of the Council of Florence, Boston 1971, 189 Google Scholar. Citations are from the English version.
4 Ibid. 160–2.
5 Ibid. 86–7.
6 Ibid. 106–7, 141.
7 Constantine Tsirpanlis, Mark Eugenicus and the Council of Florence: a historical re-evaluation of his personality, New York 1979, 27 Google Scholar.
8 Ibid. 46.
9 Geanakoplos, Deno J., ‘The Council of Florence (1438–1439) and the problem of union between the Greek and Latin Churches’, Church History xxiv (1955), 324–46 at p. 334Google Scholar.
10 Gill, Joseph, The Council of Florence (1959), Cambridge 2011 Google Scholar.
11 Ibid. 297, 396.
12 Barker, John W., Manuel II Paleologos (1391–1425): a study in late Byzantine statesmanship, New Brunswick, NJ 1969, p. xx CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
13 Nicol, Last centuries, 331.
14 Barker, Manuel II, 432.
15 Ibid. 193. Barker reads the text as ‘irascibly stubborn’, and interprets its publication as an ill-advised jab at those from whom Manuel was hoping to receive aid. Joan Hussey, by contrast, notes that Manuel says that his intent was not to attack the Latins but simply to explain the Greek point of view. She finds nothing vitriolic or off-putting in the work. The work is edited in Dendrinos, Charalambos, An annotated critical edition (edito princeps) of Emperor Manuel II Palaeologus’ treatise ‘On the procession of the Holy Spirit’, London 1996 Google Scholar.
16 Sphrantzes, George, Chronicon xxiii.5–7, in Giorgio Sfranze: Cronaca, ed. Maisano, Riccardo, Corpus Fontium Historiae Byzantinae xxix, 1990, 82 Google Scholar. The translation is taken from The fall of the Byzantine Empire: a chronicle by George Sphrantzes, trans. Marios Philippides, Amherst, Ma 1980, 50–1.
17 For a more detailed account of this incident see Nicol, Last centuries, 347–50.
18 Sphrantzes, Chronicon xxiii.4 at p. 80.
19 The standard work on the quasi-sacerdotal status of the Byzantine emperor is Dagron, Gilbert, Empereur et prêtre: étude sur le ‘césaropapisme’ byzantine, Paris 1996 Google Scholar, trans. by Birrell, Jean as Emperor and priest: the imperial office in Byzantium, Cambridge 2003 Google Scholar.
20 PG cxxxvii.752BC, trans. by Percival, Henry R. in The seven ecumenical councils (Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, second ser. xiv, 1994), 396 Google Scholar.
21 PG cxxxvii. 753A. Translation mine. ‘High priests’ in this context refers to bishops.
22 Geanokoplos, Deno, Byzantium: Church, society, and civilization seen through contemporary eyes, Chicago 1984, 150 Google Scholar.
23 Anthony is referring to John's father, Manuel ii.
24 Acta et diplomata graeca medii aevi sacra et profana, ed. Miklosich, F. and Müller, J., Vienna 1860–90, ii. 188–92Google Scholar, quoted in Papadakis, Aristeides, The Christian East and the rise of the papacy: the Church, 1071–1453 A. D., Crestwood, NY 1994, 346 Google Scholar. Donald Nicol dubs this account of the symphonia between Church and Empire ‘the Byzantine Myth’: Last centuries, 313.
25 Syropoulos, Memoirs viii.11 at p. 400, quoted in Gill, Joseph, Personalities of the Council of Florence and other essays, Oxford 1964, 119 Google Scholar.
26 The episode is reported by Scholarius, George: Oeuvres completes de Gennade Scholarios, ed. Petit, L., Sidéridès, X. A. and Jugie, M., Paris 1928–36, i. 428 Google Scholar.
27 Constantine himself set the example for emperors at council in his handling of Nicaea: Cameron, Averil, ‘Constantine and the “peace of the Church”’, in Mitchell, Margaret and Young, Frances (eds), The Cambridge history of Christianity, I: Origins to Constantine, Cambridge 2006, 538–51 at p. 545CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Edwards, Mark, ‘The beginnings of Christianization’, in Lenski, Noel (ed.), The Cambridge companion to the age of Constantine, Cambridge 2012, 137–58 at pp. 146–7Google Scholar.
28 For examples see Gill, Personalities, 111, 117–18; Ostroumov, History, 10, 16; Tsirpanlis, Mark Eugenicus, 27; and Geanakoplos, ‘Council of Florence’, 84–5. More recent historians of medieval society, and particularly Byzantine society, have come to realise the inseparability of religion and politics in pre-modern Europe: Dagron, Emperor and priest is a case in point. However, this advance in understanding has yet to be felt in the historiography on the Council of Florence as it stands.
29 See Syropoulos, Memoirs ii.34; iii.13 at pp. 138–40, 174.
30 Andreas de Santacroce advocatus consistorialis: acta Latina Concilii Florentini, ed. Hofmann, G., Rome 1955, 223 Google Scholar, quoted in Gill, Council of Florence, at p. 254.
31 This was Sphrantzes's assessment, writing from his retirement in a monastery after repudiating the Latin union. He professes both his earnest desire for a proper union and his conviction that the result of the Council of Florence was directly responsible for the loss of Constantinople: Sphrantzes, Chronicon xxiii.1–8 at pp. 80–4.
32 Gill, Council of Florence, 205–6.
33 The so-called ‘Palamite councils’ of 1341, 1344, 1347 and 1351.
34 Gill reports John's behaviour, which caused no small delay to the proceedings, as strange and odious because he failed to take note of John's gout, which is now well known: Council of Florence, 142. See Nicol, Donald M., Byzantium and Venice: a study in diplomatic and cultural relations, Cambridge 1988, 377 Google Scholar. For a first-hand account see Pero Tafur: travels and adventures (1435–1439), ed. and trans. Malcolm Letts, New York 1926, 175.
35 Syropoulos, Memoirs iii.26 at p. 188, quoted in Gill, Personalities, 112.
36 Black, Antony, ‘Popes and councils’, in Allmand, Christopher (ed.), The new Cambridge medieval history, VII: c. 1415–1500, Cambridge 1998, 65–88 at p. 71Google Scholar.
37 Syropoulos, Memoirs viii.5–6; x.3 at pp. 394–6, 476–8.
38 Gill attributes John's desire not to lose Mark to the fact that he was an official patriarchal legate, and without him the ecumenicity of the council would be in question: Council of Florence, 127. However, each patriarchate in fact had two legates, and the emperor had already twice changed Mark's status – first from legate for Alexandria to legate for Jerusalem, then to legate for Antioch: Syropoulos, Memoirs iii.3; iv.43 at pp. 164, 246–48. That John had the authority to make such appointments and that he ensured that Mark remained a patriarchal legate speaks further to John's high regard for him.
39 Syropoulos, Memoirs vii.33 at p. 384. Syropoulos attributes this to John's supposed desire to prevent Mark from running away, though it is unclear why John would have been concerned with that given that he made no effort to detain him once they reached Constantinople.
40 Syropoulos, Memoirs vi. 46–7 at pp. 342–8.
41 Quae supersunt actorum graecorum Concilii Florentini necnon descriptionis cuiusdam eiusdem (pars I & II), ed. Gill, Joseph, Rome 1953, 393–6Google Scholar.
42 Ibid. 432–36. See also Syropoulos, Memoirs ix.21–2 at pp. 454–8, and Gill, Council of Florence, 256–60.
43 The seat of education in the empire by this date was the Peloponnesus, and the leading intellectuals there (some of whom were included in the Greek delegation) had become impressed by the recent blossoming of the medieval Latin intellectual tradition. See, for instance, Angold, Michael, ‘Byzantium and the West, 1204–1453’, in Angold, M. (ed.) The Cambridge history of Christianity, V: Eastern Christianity, Cambridge 2006, 53–78 at pp. 69–73Google Scholar. See also Judith Ryder, ‘Byzantium and the West in the 1360s: the Kydones version’, and to a lesser extent Harris, Jonathan, ‘Constantinople as city-state’, in Harris, J., Holmes, C. and Russell, E. (eds), Byzantines, Latins, and Turks in the eastern Mediterranean world after 1150, Oxford 2012, 345–66, 119–40 at pp. 131–3Google Scholar. In the same volume, Catherine Holmes offers an enlightening survey of the malleability of the boundary between Latin and Greek forms of Christianity in practice around the Mediterranean, which gives reason to think that a widespread acceptance of union among the people would not have been out of reach: ‘“Shared worlds”: religious identities – a question of evidence’, 31–60.
44 There were other issues, of course, which were debated, but in point of fact, once the Greeks were persuaded to compromise on the filioque, the union seemed a foregone conclusion and the remaining items on the agenda were dealt with very quickly. Whereas seven months had been spent on the one issue, the other three items identified for debate – leavened versus unleavened bread in the eucharist, purgatory and the papal primacy – were all dispatched in a matter of weeks. The questions of purgatory and the azymites had been discussed at length in unofficial sessions prior to the official opening of the council in Ferrara, and they did not present a serious obstacle, while the formula concerning primacy went back and forth a number of times as each side made successive edits to make it palatable for each. Finally a settlement was reached on an exceedingly ambiguous statement that seemed to affirm what each side wanted: Gill, Council of Florence, 415.
45 For a more detailed account of what follows see Jacob N. Van Sickle, ‘How difficulties in transmitting the texts of Basil's Adversus Eunomium 3.1 and Maximus’ Letter to Marinus led to the rise and fall of Ferrara-Florence’, in Steinhauser, Kenneth and Dermer, Scott (eds), The use of textual criticism for the interpretation of patristic texts, Lewiston, NY 2013, 431–50Google Scholar.
46 Alexakis, Alexander, ‘The Greek patristic testimonia presented at the Council of Florence (1439) in support of the Philioque reconsidered’, Revue des études byzantines lviii (2000), 149–65Google Scholar.
47 By this time the West recognised nine others as well.
48 Chalcedon (451) stands out in this respect.
49 1 Timothy iii.15.
50 From the Greek perspective, that is. The Second Council of Lyon (1272–4) was regarded as such by the Latins.
51 This, in fact, was the rationale that popes from the time of the Second Council of Lyon in 1272 (where the Emperor Michael viii signed a pledge of union with Rome on behalf of his Church that was never acknowledged in Constantinople) until Martin v (Eugene's predecessor) had offered for refusing to meet with the Greeks in another council. From their perspective, the Second Council of Lyon was an ecumenical council where resolution to the issues dividing the Churches had already been made and was no longer up for debate. The fact that the schismatic Greek Church repudiated the council of 1272 did not alter its ecumenical status: Gill, Personalities, 287–92.
52 See Meyendorff, John, The Byzantine legacy in the Orthodox Church, Crestwood, NY 1982, 32 Google Scholar.
53 This dynamic led to a still unresolved debate among Orthodox theologians in the modern era over how a council in fact becomes indisputably ecumenical. For a survey of the issue see Ware, Timothy, The Orthodox Church, London 1993, 251–4Google Scholar. For a recent challenge to the common view first articulated by Khomiakov see Alfeyev, Hilarion, ‘The reception of the ecumenical councils in the Early Church’, St Vladimir's Theological Quarterly xlvii/3–4 (2003), 413–30Google Scholar.
54 Gill, Council of Florence, 402, quoting Eugenicus, John, Letter to Constantine, in Παλαιολόγεια καὶ Πελοποννησιακά, ed. Lambros, S., Athens 1912–30, i. 124 Google Scholar.
55 Gill, Council of Florence, 402–3, and Personalities, 123.
56 Idem, Council of Florence, 296.
57 Dukas: Historia Turco-Byzantina, ed. Grecu, Vasile, Bucharest 1958, xxxi.9, lines 2–5Google Scholar. Translation mine.
58 Petite, Gennade Scholarios, iv. 479, quoted in Gill, Personalities, 116.
59 Petite, Gennade Scholarios, iii. 99–100, quoted in Gill, Personalities, 117.
60 Documents relatives au Concil de Florence, ed. L. Petite, Patrologia Orientalis xv, xvii, vol. ii. 481, quoted in Gill, Personalities, 117.
61 For a lucid account of this short-lived crusade and its aftermath see the introduction to Imber, Colin, The Crusade of Varna, 1443–45, Aldershot 2006 Google Scholar.
62 This is an organising theme in Dagron, Emperor and priest, but see especially pp. 116–24, 199–200.
63 1 Tim. ii.2, quoted in the Liturgy of St Basil the Great: ΙΕΡΑΤΙΚΟΝ, Rome 1950, 199.
64 On the generally positive and hopeful attitude toward reunion among the Greeks leading up to and at the opening of the council see Blanchet, Marie-Hélène, Georges-Gennadios Scholarios (vers 1400–vers 1472), Paris 2008, 260–315 Google Scholar. A colourful example of this sentiment is Sphrantzes's exclamation, immediately after bemoaning the outcome of Florence, that he wished that ‘the union of the churches had come about properly, even if it had cost me one of my eyes’: Chronicon xxiii.4 at p. 84.
65 Blanchet, Georges-Gennadios Scholarios, 274–5.
66 Pelikan, Jarislav says of the council that ‘At no time before or since have the doctrinal differences between the East and the West been discussed as thoroughly’: The spirit of Eastern Christendom (600–1700), Chicago 1974, 280 Google Scholar.