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LXVI.

bates, had stood forth the most strenuous and elo- CHAP. quent champion of the Greek church; and if the apostate, the bastard, was reprobated by his country*, he appears in ecclesiastical story a rare example of a patriot who was recommended to courtfavour by loud opposition and well-timed compli ance. 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, were soon exhausted t; 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 t. The danger and relief of Constantinople might excuse some prudent and pious dissimulation; and it was insinuated, that the obstinate heretics who should

resist

* 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.).

Syropulus denies that the Greeks received any money before they had subscribed the act of union, (p. 283.); yet he relates some suspicious circumstances; and their bribery and corruption are positively affirmed by the historian Ducas

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CHAP. resist the consent of the East and West, would be abandoned in a hostile land to the revenge or justice of the Roman Pontiff *. 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 t. In the treaty between the two nations, several forms of consent were proposed, such as might satisfy the Latins, without dishonouring the Greeks; and they weighed the scruples of words and syllables, till the theological balance trembled with a slight preponderance in favour of the Vatican. It was agreed, (I must intreat the attention

of

The Greeks most piteously express their own fears of exile and perpetual slavery, (Syropul. p. 196.); and they were strongly moved by the Emperor's threats, (p. 260.).

I had forgot another popular and orthodox protester; a favourite hound, 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.).

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of the reader), that the Holy Ghost proceeds from CHAP. 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 expences of the Greeks in their return home; that he should annually maintain two gallies 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 gallies for a year, or twenty six months; and that he should powerfully solicit the princes of Europe, if the Emperor had occasion. for land-forces.

at Basil, A. D.

1458,

The same year, and almost the same day, were Eugenius marked by the deposition of Eugenius at Basil; deposed and at Florence, by his re-union of the Greeks and Latins. In the former synod, (which he styled in June 2 deed an assembly of dæmons), the Pope was branded with the guilt of simony, perjury, tyranny, heresy, and schism; and declared to be incorrigible in his vices, unworthy of any title, and incapable of holding any ecclesiastical office. In the latter, he Re-union was revered as the true and holy vicar of Christ, Greeks of who, after a separation of six hundred years, had Florence, reconciled the Catholics of the East and West, in

one

* 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 lestraint, and is a pledge.

of the

A. D.

1435,

July 6.

CHAP.
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one fold, and under one 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 t. On a memorable day, the sixth of July, the successors of St Peter and Constantine ascended their 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 chaunted with the addition of filioque; the acquiescence of the Greeks was poorly excused by their ignorance of the harmonious, but inarti

culate,

*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. 290-292.).

+ 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 critic, (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 August 1439) the final separation of the Pope and Emperor, (Memoires de l'Academie des Inscriptions, tom. xliii. p. 287-311.).

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culate, sounds; and the more scrupulous Latins CHAP. refused any public celebration of the Byzantine rite. Yet the Emperor and his clergy were not totally unmindful of national honour. The treaty

Constan

A. D.

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 Their repomp and pride, returned by the same road of Fer- turn to rara and Venice; and their reception at Constan- tinople, tinople was such as will be described in the following chapter t. The success of the first trial encouraged Eugenius to repeat the same edifying scenes; and the deputies of the Armenians, the Maronites, 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 ‡, diffused over the West the fame of Eugenius; and a VOL. XII. clamour

I

Ημιν δε ως ασημοι εδοκεν Qara, (Syropul. p. 297.).

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.).

So nugatory, or rather so fabulous, are these re-unions of the Nestorians, Jacobites, &c. that I have turned over, without success, the Bibliotheca Orientalis of Assemanus, a faithful slave of the Vatican.

1440, Feb. 16

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