the hope of getting help from the Western princes against the Turk. But when they got back home and found that no help came the union was soon rejected by the Byzantine Church. The story of the Council of Florence in 1439 is an almost exact repetition of the same thing. Sore beset by the Turks, despairing of help save from the Franks, the last Emperor but one, John VII, came to the council with a great following, to make peace with Pope Eugene IV. Again the Eastern bishops (except one, Mark of Ephesus) agree with the Latins, and the reunion is proclaimed. But it was very unpopular at Constantinople; it lingered on, at any rate in form, for one generation, and was finally repudiated after the fall of the city by a Synod of Constantinople in 1472. Other Eastern Churches, either wholly or in part, the Armenians, Copts, Abyssinians, Maronites, some Jacobites, one Nestorian bishop, were also reunited to the Catholic Church at Florence. The Uniate Churches date from this council. Cardinal Bessarion, who had been the chief promoter of the union among the Easterns, eventually came to live at Rome, and was one of the greatest of the Renaissance scholars.
