HAP. mercenary troops of the duke of Milan were at the gates; and LXVI. as they occupied Romagna, it was not without difficulty and danger that the pope, the emperor, and the bishops, explored their way through the unfrequented paths of the Apennine.61 Yet all these obstacles were surmounted by time and policy. The violence of the fathers of Basil rather promoted than injured the cause of Eugenius; the nations of Europe abhorred the schism, and disowned the election, of Felix the Fifth, who was successively a duke of Savoy, a hermit, and a pope; and the great princes were gradually reclaimed by his competitor to a favourable neutrality and a firm attachment. The legates, with some respectable members, deserted to the Roman army, which insensibly arose in numbers and reputation; the council of Basil was reduced to thirty-nine bishops, and three hundred of the inferior clergy; while the Latins of Florence could produce the subscriptions of the pope himself, eight cardinals, two patriarchs, eight archbishops, fifty-two bishops, and forty-five abbots, or chiefs of religious orders. After the labour of nine months, and the debates of twenty-five sessions, they attained the advantage and glory of the reunion of the Greeks. Four principal questions had been agitated between the two churches: 1. The use of unleavened bread in the communion of Christ's body. 2. The nature of purgatory. 3. The supremacy of the pope. And, 4. The single or double procession of the Holy Ghost. The cause of either nation was managed by ten theological champions: the Latins were supported by the inexhaustible eloquence of cardinal Julian ; and Mark of Ephesus and Bessarion of Nice were the bold and able leaders of the Greek forces. We may bestow some praise on the progress of human reason, by observing, that the first of these questions was now treated as an immaterial rite, which might innocently vary with the fashion of the age and country. With regard to the second, both parties were agreed in the belief of an intermediate state of purgation for the venial sins of the faithful; and whether their souls were purified by elemental fire was a doubtful point, which in a few years might be conveniently settled on the spot by the disputants. The claims of supremacy appeared of a more weighty and substantial kind; yet by the Orientals the Roman bishop had ever been respected as the first of the five patriarchs; nor did they 61 The wars of Italy are most clearly represented in the thirteenth volume of the Annals of Muratori. The schismatic Greek, Syropulus (p. 145,) appears to have exaggerated the fear and disorder of the pope in his retreat from Ferrara to Fiorence, which is proved by the acts to have been somewhat more decent and deliberate. 2 Syropulus is pleased to reckon seven hundred prelates in the council of Basil. The error is manifest, and perhaps voluntary. That extravagant number could not be supplied by all the ecclesiastics of every degree who were present at the council, nor by all the absent bishops of the West, who, expressly or tacitly might adhere to its decrces. scruple to admit, that his jurisdiction should be exercised CHAP. agreeable to the holy canons; a vague allowance, which might LXVI. be defined or eluded by occasional convenience. The procession of the Holy Ghost from the Father alone, or from the Father and the Son, was an article of faith which had sunk much deeper into the minds of men; and in the sessions of Ferrara and Florence, the Latin edition of filioque was subdivided into two questions, whether it were legal, and whether it were orthodox. Perhaps it may not be necessary to boast on this subject of my own impartial indifference; but I must think that the Greeks were strongly supported by the prohibition of the council of Chalcedon, against adding any article whatsoever to the creed of Nice, or rather of Constantinople.63 In earthly affairs, it is not easy to conceive how an assembly of legislators can bind their successors invested with powers equal to their own. But the dictates of inspiration must be true and unchangeable; nor should a private bishop, or a provincial synod, have presumed to innovate against the judgment of the Catholic church. On the substance of the doctrine, the controversy was equal and endless; reason is confounded by the procession of a deity; the gospel, which lay on the altar, was silent; the various texts of the fathers might be corrupted by fraud or entangled by sophistry; and the Greeks were ignorant of the characters and writings of the Latin saints.64 Of this at least we may be sure, that neither side could be convinced by the arguments of their opponents. Prejudice may be enlightened by reason, and a superficial glance may be rectified by a clear and more perfect view of an object adapted to our faculties. But the bishops and monks had been taught from their infancy to repeat a form of mysterious words; their national and personal honour depended on the repetition of the same sounds; and their narrow minds were hardened and inflamed by the acrimony of a public dispute. tions with the Greeks. While they were lost in a cloud of dust and darkness, the Negotia pope and emperor were desirous of a seeming union, which could alone accomplish the purposes of their interview; and the obstinacy of public dispute was softened by the arts of private and personal negotiation. The patriarch Joseph had sunk under the weight of age and infirmities; his dying voice breathed the councils of charity and concord, and his vacant benefice might tempt the hopes of the ambitious clergy. The ready and active obedience of the archbishops of Russia and 63 The Greeks, who disliked the union, were unwilling to sally from this strong fortress (p. 178. 193. 195. 202, of Syropulus.) The shame of the Latins was aggravated by their producing an old MS. of the second council of Nice, with filioque in the Nicene creed a palpable forgery! (p. 173.) 64 Ως εδω (said an eminent Greek) όταν εις ναον εισέλθω Λατίνων ο προσκυνω τινα των uxure uyver, smal ude gropi? Tive (Syropulus, p. 109.) See the perplexity of the Greeks (p, 217, 218. 252, 253. 273.) CHAP. Nice, of Isidore and Bessarion, was prompted and recom 1.XVI. pensed by their speedy promotion to the dignity of cardinals. Bessarion, in the first debates, had stood forth the most strenuous and eloquent champion of the Greek church; and if the apostate, the bastard, was reprobated by his country,65 he appears in ecclesiastical story a rare example of a patriot who was recommended to court-favour by loud opposition and welltimed compliance. With the aid of his two spiritual coadjutors, the emperor applied his arguments to the general situation and personal characters of the bishops, and each was successively moved by authority and example. Their revenues were in the hands of the Turks, their persons in those of the Latins; an episcopal treasure, three robes and forty ducats, was soon exhausted: the hopes of their return still depended on the ships of Venice and the alms of Rome; and such was their indigence, that their arrears, the payment of a debt, would be accepted as a favour and might operate as a bribe. The danger and relief of Constantinople might excuse some prudent and pious dissimulation; and it was insinuated, that the obstinate heretics who should resist the consent of the East and West, would be abandoned in a hostile land to the revenge or justice of the Roman pontiff.68 In the first private assembly of the Greeks, the formulary of union was approved by twenty-four, and rejected by twelve, members: but the five cross-bearers of St. Sophia, who aspired to represent the patriarch, were disqualified by ancient discipline; and their right of voting was transferred to an obsequious train of monks, grammarians, and profane laymen. The will of the monarch produced a false and servile unanimity, and no more than two patriots had courage to speak their own sentiments and those of their country. Demetrius, the emperor's brother, retired to Venice, that he might not be witness of the union; and Mark of Ephesus, mistaking perhaps his pride for his conscience, disclaimed all communion with the Latin heretics, and avowed himself the champion and confessor of the orthodox creed. In the treaty between the two nations, several forms 63 65 See the polite altercation of Mark and Bessarion in Syropulus (p. 257,) who never dissembles the vices of his own party, and fairly praises the virtues of the Latins. For the poverty of the Greek bishops, see a remarkable passage of Ducas (c. 31.) One had possessed, for his whole property, three old gowns, &c. By teaching one and twenty years in his monastery, Bessarion himself had collected forty gold florins; but of these, the archbishop had expended twenty-eight in his voyage from Peloponnesus, and the remainder at Constantinople (Syropulus, P. 127.) いす Syropulus denies that the Greeks received any money before they had subscribed the act of union (p. 253.) yet he relates some suspicious circumstances; and their bribery and corruption are positively affirmed by the historian Cacas. The Grecks most pitecusly express their own fears of exile and perpetual slavery (Syropul. p. 196:) and they were strongly moved by the emperor'e threats (p. 260.) **I Lad forgot another popular and orthodox protester; a favourite hound. It was of consent were proposed, such as might satisfy the Latins, CHAP. without dishonouring the Greeks; and they weighed the scruples LXVI. of words and syllables, till the theological balance trembled with a slight preponderance in favour of the Vatican. agreed (I must entreat the attention of the reader,) that the Holy Ghost proceeds from the Father and the Son, as from one principle and one substance; that he proceeds by the Son, being of the same nature and substance, and that he proceeds from the Father and the Son, by one spiration and production. It is less difficult to understand the articles of the preliminary treaty; that the pope should defray all the expenses of the Greeks in their return home; that he should annually maintain two galleys and three hundred soldiers for the defence of Constantinople; that all the ships which transported pilgrims to Jerusalem, should be obliged to touch at that port; that as often as they were required, the pope should furnish ten galleys for a year, or twenty for six months: and that he should powerfully solicit the princes of Europe, if the emperor had occasion for land forces. deposed at A. D. 1438, of the Florence. The same year and almost the same day, were marked by Eugenius the deposition of Eugenius at Basil; and, at Florence, by his Basil, reunion of the Greeks and Latins. In the former synod (which June 25. he styled indeed an assembly of demons,) the pope was branded with the guilt of simony, perjury, tyranny, heresy, and schism;70 and declared to be incorrigible in his vices, unworthy of any title, and incapable of holding any ecclesiastical office. In the Reunion latter he was revered as the true and holy vicar of Christ, who, Greeks at after a separation of six hundred years, had reconciled the A. D. 1438, Catholics of the East and West, in one fold, and under one July 6. shepherd. The act of union was subscribed by the pope, the emperor, and the principal members of both churches; even by those who, like Syropulus," had been deprived of the right of voting. Two copies might have sufficed for the East and West; but Eugenius was not satisfied, unless four authentic and similar transcripts were signed and attested as the monuments of his victory. On a memorable day, the sixth of July, who usually lay quiet on the foot-cloth of the emperor's throne; but who barked most furiously while the act of union was reading, without being silenced by the soothing or the lashes of the royal attendants (Syropul. p. 265, 266.) 70 From the original Lives of the Popes, in Muratori's Collection (tom. iii. P. ii. tom. xxv.) the manners of Eugenius IV. appear to have been decent, and even exemplary. His situation, exposed to the world and to his enemies, was a restraint, and is a pledge. 71 Syropulus, rather than subscribe, would have assisted, as the least evil, at the ceremony of the union. He was compelled to do both; and the great ecclesiarch poorly excuses his submission to the emperor (p. 290-299.) 72 None of these original acts of union can at present be produced. Of the ten MSS. that are preserved (five at Rome, and the remainder at Florence, Bologna, Venice, Paris, and London,) nine have been examined by an accurate eritic (M. de Brequigny,) who condemns them for the variety and imperfections of the Greek signatures. Yet several of these may be esteemed as authentic copies, which were subscribed at Florence before (26th of August 1139) the final CHAP. the successors of St. Peter and Constantine ascended their LXVI. thrones; the two nations assembled in the cathedral of Florence; their representatives, cardinal Julian and Bessarion archbishop of Nice, appeared in the pulpit, and, after reading in their respective tongues the act of union, they mutually embraced in the name and the presence of their applauding brethren. The pope and his ministers then officiated according to the Roman liturgy; the creed was chanted with the addition of filioque; the acquiescence of the Greeks was poorly excused by their ignorance of the harmonious, but inarticulate, sounds;73 and the more scrupulous Latins refused any public celebration of the Byzantine rite. Yet the emperor and his clergy were not totally unmindful of national honour. The treaty was ratified by their consent: it was tacitly agreed that no innovation should be attempted in their creed or ceremonies; they spared, and secretly respected, the generous firmness of Mark of Ephesus; and on the decease of the patriarch, they refused to elect his successor, except in the cathedral of St. Sophia. In the distribution of public and private rewards, the liberal pontiff exceeded their hopes and his promises: the Greeks with less pomp and pride, returned by the same road of Ferrara and Venice; and their reception at Constantinople was such as will be described in the following chapter.74 success of the first trial, encouraged Eugenius to repeat the same edifying scenes; and the deputies of the Armenians, the Marionites, the Jacobites of Syria and Egypt, the Nestorians and the Ethiopians, were successively introduced, to kiss the feet of the Roman pontiff, and to announce the obedience and the orthodoxy of the East. These Oriental embassies, unknown in the countries which they presumed to represent,75 diffused over the West the fame of Eugenius; and a clamour was artfully propagated against the remnant of a schism in Switzerland Final peace and Savoy, which alone impeded the harmony of the Christian world. The vigour of opposition was succeeded by the lassitude of despair: The council of Basil was silently dissolved: and Felix, renouncing the tiara, again withdrew to the devout or delicious hermitage of Ripaille. A general peace was Their re turn to Constanti nople, A. D. 1440, of the church, The separation of the pope and emperor (Memoires de l'Academie des Inscriptions, tom. xliii. p. 287-311.) 73 Huwde ws anμos escrev oavat (Syropul. p. 297.) 74 In their return, the Greeks conversed at Bologna with the ambassadors of England; and after some questions and answers, these impartial strangers laughed at the pretended union of Florence (Syropul. p. 307.) 75 So nugatory, or rather so fabulous, are these reunions of the Nestorians, Jacobites, &c. that I have turned over, without success, the Bibliotheca Orientalis of Assemanus, a faithful slave of the Vatican. 76 Ripaille is situate near Thonon in Savoy, on the southern side of the lake of Geneva. It is now a Carthusian abbey; and Mr. Addison (Travels into Italy, vol. ii. p. 147, 148, of Baskerville's edition of his works) has celebrated the place and the founder. Aneas Sylvius, and the fathers of Basil, applaud the |