dom. It is also to his everlasting credit that he alone of the Western princes afterwards kept his word and really did send help against the Turk. In the Emperor's train were two bishops who also deserve to be remembered with honour by every one who cares for the cause of union between the Churches, Isidore, Metropolitan of Kiev, and Bessarion, Metropolitan of Nicæa. Both were eager for the union, and both worked hard all the time to overcome the barriers. Bessarion was one of the greatest men of his age. Afterwards he became a great leader of the Renaissance, and he is famous as a scholar and patron of letters, while we remember him, too, as always a staunch and loyal friend to the Holy See from the Eastern Church. But among the Byzantine bishops was also Mark Eugenikos, Metropolitan of Ephesus, as determined an enemy of any compromise with the Latin heretics as Isidore and Bessarion were friends of reunion. The council had already been opened on January 8, 1438, at Ferrara, the Byzantines arrive on February 28th. It sat at Ferrara for nearly a year (sixteen sessions); then in January, 1439, the Pope proposed that it should move to Florence because the pest had broken out at Ferrara. An even weightier reason seems to have been that his finances were running out (all the time he was royally entertaining the Emperor and his seven hundred followers), and that the city of Florence had offered to lend large sums of money if the council came there. The idea that he wanted to get the Greeks further away from the sea-board and therefore more entirely in his own power (afterwards suggested by some of them[1]) is quite absurd. In any case they could not get away until he lent them his ships again. The council now stayed at Florence till the Byzantines went back home in August, 1439.[2] There were at first endless disputes as to how the Fathers should sit, what rank each was to have, and so on. The Emperor very nearly left the council because the ambassador of the Duke of Burgundy would not do
- ↑ This is Syropoulos's idea.
- ↑ As its decrees were published there it is generally called the Council of Florence. Not to have to remember two dates, one may connect it with the date of that publication and impress on one's mind: The seventeenth general council (reunion with the Eastern Churches) at Florence in 1439.
