The Council of Ferrara-Florence (1438-9)

he union of the Churches decided at the Council of Lyons was almost immediately annulled. Nonetheless, in the century and a half that followed, views in favour of union were expressed from time to time. Among its advocates were Barlaam of Calabria, Demetrios Kydones and his disciple, Manuel Kalekas and the archbishop of Smyrna, Paul, who were countered by such anti-unionists as Neilos Kabasilas. Then history repeated itself. A new attempt at union was made at the Council of Ferrara-Florence for reasons that were similar to those that had led to the meeting at Lyons, but with different protagonists. However, the situation was now more tense and the impact on intellectual life greater for two main reasons.

The first was that the decisions of the Council of Ferrara-Florence meant total submission of the Byzantines to the Latins. The second reason was that the Council had been preceded in Byzantium by heated debates which had also affected the issue of union, since the disputes concerned the differences between traditional Byzantine theological thought and the innovatory concepts that were also of Western provenance. The controversies, such as that opposing hesychasm and Western scholastic philosophy and the Renaissance, for instance, may have been philosophical, but the manner in which the intellectuals of the times expressed themselves in defending their views, inevitably reflected their general attitude (positive or negative) towards the West and therefore towards the union of the Eastern and Western Churches. Anti-unionists such as George Gennadios Scholarios and the metropolitan of Ephesus, Mark Eugenikos, stressed the dogmatic differences between the Churches as well as their concern over the ability of the Eastern Church to maintain an equilibrium of forces with the Western Church and not to end up totally subjugated to it. On the other hand, unionists such as Cardinal Bessarion of Trebizond and George Gemistos Plethon emphasised the importance of the intellectual supremacy and of the high level of education of the West, as well as the essential similarities in the way of life and the ease of contact that existed between the people of Byzantium and the Latins.