nople they found every one in an uproar against them. They had betrayed the Orthodox faith, they had all become Azymites, Creed-tamperers, cheese-eaters, dogs, heretics, hypocrites and Latins. Mark of Ephesus was the hero of the hour. But the Emperor kept to what he had done. The successor of old Joseph II (who had died at Florence) was Metrophanes II (1440–1443), also a friend of the union, and when he gave his blessing in public the people turned away their faces not to be defiled by a Latinizer's prayer. But the Pope's name was restored to the diptychs, and officially the Byzantine Church was in communion with Rome. John VIII died in that communion, and his brother, the last Emperor Constantine XII (1448–1453), was also determined to uphold it. On the very eve of the fall of the city—on December 12, 1452—he held a great feast of the union; and when the hero-Emperor fell before the walls of his city he, too, died a Catholic. But the help from the Franks did not come. Eugene IV did everything he could to send it; he unceasingly wrote to the Western princes, imploring them to prevent the awful calamity that was at hand; but they would not listen. At least the Pope did what he himself could; he sent two galleys and three hundred soldiers, but of course so small a number could not make much difference.
It was not till after the fall of Constantinople that the union was formally repudiated by the Byzantine Church. Mohammed the Conqueror naturally did not want the Christians over whom he ruled to be friends with the great Western Powers, so the cause of "Orthodoxy" found a new champion in the Turkish conqueror, of all people.[1] As soon as he had taken the city he sent for the leader of the schismatical party, George Scholarios (who seems to have been a layman), and had him made Patriarch (p. 241). Scholarios became Gennadios II (1453–1456). But it was not till 1472 that a synod at Constantinople solemnly rejected the union and anathematized the Council of Florence and all who accepted its decrees. During the thirty-three years then, between 1439 and 1472, the Byzantine Church was, at any rate officially, in communion with the Holy See. But the people of the city, now as wildly fanatical and intolerant
- ↑ One Turk—Murad—even wrote a polemical treatise against the union!
