Apparently irreconcilable differences, mainly doctrinal, had kept the two great Churches of Christendom at loggerheads for six centuries; and, within the last two centuries, ever since the soldiers of the Fourth Crusade had sacked Constantinople at the instigation of their Venetian paymasters, the quarrel had grown more bitter. But now that the Ottoman Turks, who had been gnawing at the Eastern Empire for generations, were almost at the gates of Constantinople, Pope Eugenius realized that the chances of reconciliation had never been better. The Eastern Emperor, John Paleologus, had appealed for help in the name of Christ, and was even prepared to make submission to the Pope if soldiers and seamen from the Catholic west would help to save Byzantium from impending calamity. The Pope accordingly decided to summon a Great Council to meet in Italy without further delay.
He did not only have the unity of the Church in mind. There was already another Council in session at Bâle; and this Council, called into existence by the German Emperor, had proposed various reforms in the Church and propounded doctrines which the Pope was not prepared to accept. He had, therefore, attempted to dissolve it. Declining to disperse, the obstinate delegates at Bâle had proclaimed their intention both of making radical changes in the finances of the Curia and of coming to terms with the Eastern Church. But the Pope was not prepared to listen patiently to suggestions of a reduction in papal income; and as for any settlement with the Eastern Church, he was determined to make it himself. So, to put an end to the messages passing between Bâle and Constantinople, the Pope issued an invitation to the Eastern Emperor to come to meet him at Ferrara.
Towards the end of 1437 John Paleologus sailed for Venice, accompanied by the Patriarch of Constantinople and their attendant bishops, theologians, scholars, interpreters and officials – a huge concourse of delegates, seven hundred strong. The great assembly began their deliberations at Ferrara on 8 January 1438. The town was overcrowded and very cold; there were disagreements about precedence; there were quarrels about rites. The Catholic bishop refused to allow the Greeks to celebrate Mass in their own way in his churches; the Patriarch expressed his strongest disapproval of the ban; the Pope was edgy and ill at ease. There were reports that his enemies were hatching plots against him in nearby Bologna, a city which theoretically formed part of the Papal States but which, after declaring itself independent, was now under the lordship of the Bentivoglio family. The Pope was further worried by his embarrassing shortage of money. He had to pledge his towering medieval castle at Assisi as security for the large sums he had borrowed. But even so, he was obliged to stop paying the expenses of his numerous Greek guests.
Cosimo heard of the troubles at Ferrara with satisfaction. He had been much annoyed when that city had been chosen in preference to Florence as a meeting-place for the Council. Any city that acted as host to so important a conference would benefit not merely financially but politically and culturally too. If unity between the Churches were to be achieved this could not but reflect honour upon the place where Christendom was once again made whole. Besides, closer contact with the rulers of the Eastern Empire might well bring much new business to the bankers, traders and merchants of Florence, while conversation with the Greek scholars in the Emperor’s entourage would be a relaxation and a delight. When plague broke out in Ferrara towards the end of the year, Cosimo’s hopes were fulfilled. His brother, Lorenzo, arrived in the city with assurances that Florence was a much healthier place, that there was ample accommodation there for which no charge whatsoever would be made, and that the Council could avail itself of a loan of 1500 florins a month for as long as the delegates remained in session. Lorenzo’s offer was immediately accepted, and preparations were made for leaving Ferrara at once.
The entry into Florence of the Eastern Emperor and his enormous train of attendants was not as impressive as the city’s officials had planned. A fierce winter storm of torrential rain drove the thousands of expectant observers off the streets and brought them down from the roof-tops where they had clustered to watch the great procession pass by. The banners and standards lay bedraggled beneath the window-sills; the sounds of the trumpet blasts were carried away by the wind. Cosimo, who had himself been elected Gonfaloniere for the occasion, confessed himself much relieved when the city’s guests were safely installed in their lodgings.
The Pope and his suite were lodged in the monastery of Santa Maria Novella; the Patriarch was given apartments in the Palazzo Ferranti in the Borgo Pinti; the Eastern Emperor and his attendants moved into the palaces and houses of the exiled Peruzzi family where they were presented with wine and candles, crystallized fruits, marzipan and sweetmeats. The meetings of Council committees were held in Santa Maria Novella, while full sessions took place in Santa Croce.
Attending these sessions as a spectator, Vespasiano da Bisticci was profoundly impressed by the learned speeches and the skilful manner in which the interpreters translated Greek into Latin and Latin into Greek. Yet, as the days passed, it became only too clear that little headway was being made and that tempers on both sides were becoming excessively frayed. A principal point at dispute concerned the origin and nature of the third Person of the Trinity, the Greek opinion in this matter being strongly contested by the Pope’s spokesman and his principal adviser, Ambrogio Traversari. Ancient texts were produced, and the Greeks’ arguments confounded when a nervous delegate, alarmed by a passage which he recognized as being unfavourable to their case, attempted to scratch it out but in his haste and anxiety scratched out a different one. The Emperor endeavoured to compose the uproar which this attempted fraud produced by suggesting that other and more authoritative manuscripts should be fetched from Constantinople, a proposal that brought forth from a Roman cardinal the magisterial rebuke, ‘Sire, when you go to war you should take your arms with you, not send for them in the middle of the battle.’
To the Florentine citizens, however, the Council proved a delightful spectacle. The sight of the bearded men from Constantinople walking through the streets in their astonishingly opulent clothes and their bizarre head-dresses, attended by Moorish and Mongol servants and accompanied by strange animals, was a never-ending source of interest as well as an inspiration to many a Florentine painter from Gentile da Fabriano to Benozzo Gozzoli.
Ultimately, after lengthy private discussions between Traversari and the patient and clever Johannes Bessarion, Archbishop of Nicaea, a compromise on the delicate subject of the Holy Ghost was reached; and this opened the way for agreement on other matters, including the partial authority of the Papacy over the Eastern Church. The crucial document setting forth the terms of the oecumenical compromise was solemnly signed on 5 July 1439; and the following day, during a ceremony in the Cathedral, this dramatic pronouncement was made: ‘Let the heavens rejoice and the earth exult, for the wall which divided the Western and Eastern Churches has fallen. Peace and concord have returned.’
The words were spoken by Cardinal Cesarini in Latin, and by Archbishop Bessarion in Greek. Then the Italian cardinal and the Greek archbishop embraced each other and, joined by all the other prelates and the Eastern Emperor, they knelt before the Pope. Afterwards their message to the Christian world, celebrating the triumph of reason, was inscribed on one of the great stone pillars which were to support the Cathedral dome.
But the concord thus joyfully celebrated was of brief duration. No sooner had the delegates returned home to Constantinople than the agreement reached in Florence was so strongly denounced that it had to be abandoned; and the Emperor was to find that the protestations of sympathy and promises of help against the Turk which he had received in Italy were to count for little. Fourteen years later the Sultan’s janissaries were to clamber over the smoking walls of Constantinople and the severed head of its last Emperor was to be displayed to the jeers of its conquerors at the top of a column of porphyry.