The Council of Florence Proclaims Reunion

The emperor John VIII Palaiologos sailed from Constantinople to Italy with the patriarch Joseph, bishops and court officials to hold a council of union; the pope, Eugene IV, paid for the journey. They landed at Venice and went on to Ferrara (Doukas, History 31.1–2 (Bekker pp. 212–213)). There, on 9 April 1438, Eugene declared with the assent of the emperor and the patriarch that an ecumenical council was in being (Council of Florence, Ferrara, session 4 (9 April 1438)). Plague drove it to Florence in January 1439 (Council of Florence, decree of 10 January 1439).

The Greek historian Doukas names Mark of Ephesus as the chief spokesman of the Greeks, and Bessarion of Nicaea and Isidore of Russia as the most learned of their bishops (Doukas, History 31.3–4 (Bekker pp. 213–214)). After many sessions the bull Laetentur caeli, “Let the heavens rejoice”, was issued on 6 July 1439 in the pope’s name with the agreement of the emperor and the Greek representatives. It defines that the Holy Spirit proceeds eternally from the Father and the Son as from one principle and by a single spiration, and that the Fathers’ phrase “through the Son” means that the Son too is, as the Greeks say, cause, and as the Latins say, principle of the Spirit’s subsistence. It declares that the words “and from the Son” were lawfully and reasonably added to the creed, that the Eucharist is truly consecrated in leavened or in unleavened wheat bread, each church keeping its custom, and that the souls of those who die truly penitent and in the love of God before making satisfaction are cleansed after death by cleansing pains and helped by the suffrages of the living. It defines that the Roman pontiff holds the primacy over the whole world as successor of Peter and true vicar of Christ, with full power to rule the whole church, as is also contained, it adds, in the acts of the ecumenical councils and the sacred canons; and it ranks the patriarch of Constantinople second after him, without prejudice to the privileges and rights of the Eastern patriarchs (Council of Florence, Florence, session 6 (Laetentur caeli)).

Doukas says that all the Greeks subscribed and took communion with the Latins, except Mark (Doukas, History 31.3–4 (Bekker pp. 213–214)). Mark then wrote to “all Orthodox Christians” against those who had signed, whom he called Greco-Latins. He went through the decree point by point, held that the pope is one of the patriarchs and that only if he is Orthodox, and told his readers to flee communion with the unionists (Mark of Ephesus, Encyclical Letter §§1–2, 6–7 (PO 17, pp. 449–451, 456–459)). Doukas, himself a supporter of the union, reports that when the bishops landed at Constantinople they told the crowd that they had betrayed their faith, and that when asked why they had signed they answered that they had feared the Franks and wished the hand that signed cut off (Doukas, History 31.9 (Bekker pp. 215–216)). When a united liturgy was celebrated in Hagia Sophia late in 1452, on 12 December by his dating, with the pope commemorated, the greater part of the clergy and monks, he says, would have none of it (Doukas, History 36.2–6 (Bekker pp. 253–255)).

At Florence the same council went on to issue bulls of union with the Armenians in 1439 and with the Copts in 1442 (Council of Florence, sessions 8 and 11). The Roman Catholic Church counts Florence among the ecumenical councils and renewed its definition of the papal primacy at the First Vatican Council (First Vatican Council, Pastor Aeternus chapter 3). The Orthodox Church did not receive the union: the encyclical of the Orthodox council held on Crete in 2016 names, among councils of universal authority, one held at Constantinople in 1484 “to refute the unionist Council of Florence” (Holy and Great Council, Encyclical I.3). Mark of Ephesus is honoured as a saint among the Orthodox; the handbook of the Orthodox Church in America calls him Saint Mark, says that he is venerated as one of the Three Pillars of Orthodoxy, and calls the union of Florence unjust and forced (Orthodox Church in America, The Orthodox Faith, vol. III, Fifteenth Century, The Great Schism in the Papacy, and the Conciliar Movement).