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.[1] 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 Christen-
- ↑ 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).
