John viii Palaiologos was born in 1392. He was crowned co-emperor by his father Manuel ii in 1421 and became sole autokrator of the eastern Roman Empire in 1425. He died in 1448. He is remembered principally for two things: overseeing the final stages of the slow political demise of the empire, which was sealed by the fall of Constantinople five years after his death, and for brokering a fleeting union of the Churches of East and West at the Council of Ferarra-Florence. Historians judge him, according to their interests, by his handling either of the Turkish threat or of ecclesiastical matters. In neither sphere does he typically satisfy his critics.Footnote 1 The harshest criticism is levelled by those interested in the religious aspect, which is the focus of this paper. Easterners who repudiate the union sealed in Florence regularly accuse him of privileging the temporal, political interests of the empire over the eternal, spiritual interests of the Orthodox Church. Westerners who favour the terms of Florence blame his weak leadership in the aftermath of the council for the failure of the union to take root.
Both of these positions misunderstand John. They often make the mistake of reading his dilemma through a modern lens that too sharply differentiates between religion and politics to appreciate adequately the context within which he operated. Furthermore, they have approached the sources with a less than critical eye when it comes to their assessments of John, allowing the editorialising of his contemporaries to colour their interpretations of his actions. This is largely the case because church historians have been more interested in negotiating between the polemics which followed the Council of Florence than in careful historical analysis of John's person in his own context.
After examining in more detail the two prevailing schools of thought, this article examines the evidence for John's thought and activity before, during and after the council: the ideological inheritance from his father Manuel ii with respect to the handling of the Turks and the prospect of ecclesiastical union with the West, as well as the tradition of the Byzantine emperor's place in the Church current in his day and how this informed his actions; during the council itself, John's relations with Mark of Ephesus and the manner of leadership that he exercised; following the council the reasons for his apparent lack of enthusiasm for enforcing the union. What emerges is a new picture of John viii Palaeologus which allows the brightness of his virtues as a Christian emperor to shine even through the darkness of his circumstances.
Two prevailing views
The eastern critics stand largely in the tradition of the anti-unionist Sylvester Syropoulos, grand ecclesiarch of Hagia Sophia, upon whose Memoirs of the council they rely for their version of events.Footnote 2 The most complete account of this position remains that of Ivan Ostroumov, who argues that ‘the union of churches proclaimed in Florence was (a) undertaken without the Greeks being persuaded of the justice of the Latin doctrine; (b) unlawfully brought to pass; and (c) very lawfully rejected’.Footnote 3 Integral to his argument for the first point is his contention that John viii's overriding concern to secure military aid against the Turks caused him to marginalise truth and dogma, so that John did not concern himself with whether the terms of union were orthodox.Footnote 4 He is accused of forcing the discussions in the direction of union despite the pleas of his churchmenFootnote 5 and silencing those who stubbornly stood between him and his aim of securing military aid no matter the cost.Footnote 6 Ostroumov's contention is that neither John nor the Greeks whose arms he twisted were honestly converted to the opinions to which they appended their signatures. The union was a duplicitous means to the emperor's ends, and the greater contingent of Greek churchmen allowed themselves to be persuaded and used for his purposes.
Though more recent scholars avoid the vitriol and openly polemical language of Ostroumov, still his thesis survives in qualified form. Constantine Tsirpanlis, for example, reiterates that ‘John viii was motivated rather by political expediency than by the idea of union of the two churches.’Footnote 7 Tsirpanlis highlights occasions where John intervened in discussions and declares that the theological proponents of union (Bessarion of Nicaea, Isidore of Kiev and George Scholarius) operated with the backing of ‘the emperor's influence and power’.Footnote 8 Deno Geanakoplos concurs. Concerning the council's resolution he writes that
Urged on by the Latinophiles, under pressure from the Pope, who, owing to policy, financial difficulties, or both, did not pay the Greek subsistence for five months – pushed by the emperor, who in the end ordered Mark himself to remain silent, and goaded even by reports of an imminent Turkish attack on Constantinople, the last of the Orthodox finally yielded.Footnote 9
These scholars agree that John's concern was political rather than religious and that he used his position as head of the Orthodox delegation to force the council in the direction that he wanted it to take. Some suggest that John's failure to propagate the union in Constantinople was due to his own lack of religious conviction, testifying further to the notion that he was only in the game for military aid.
The standard narrative in western scholarship is Joseph Gill's recently reprinted The Council of Florence.Footnote 10 He contends, contrary to the eastern narrative, that John allowed dissenters to the union, particularly Mark of Ephesus, too much freedom both during and after the council. John did well, he says, to make Mark one of two premier spokespersons of the Greek Church (alongside Bessarion of Nicaea), so that both pro-union and anti-union voices might be given a hearing, but when it became clear that the consensus of those gathered was moving in the direction of union, John was remiss in allowing Mark the freedom to remain in obstinate opposition to the decisions of the Church Catholic made in council. John's protection of Mark from the closing days of the council through to its ratification and after their return to Constantinople, where he presented no obstacle to Mark's anti-unionist campaign, was a failure of the exercise of his office as ‘defender of the Church’.Footnote 11
In addressing these two perspectives on John's role at Florence, it is important first to consider two important influences on John's self-understanding as an Orthodox Christian emperor: his father's influence and Byzantine Imperial tradition. When this is borne in mind, it is clear that he in fact lived up to some of the highest ideals of the Byzantine imperial vocation as he understood it.
John and his father Manuel
John's father, Manuel ii, was an international figure like few emperors before him. As a boy he spent time as a political hostage in Hungary and Venice.Footnote 12 As a young co-emperor he was forced to accompany the Turkish sultan on campaign against Greeks living outside the reduced borders of the empire. Later, as sole emperor and with Constantinople under siege, he ventured west as far as London seeking financial and military aid against the Muslim advance. For three years he toured the courts of Europe.
Two ideological trends important for John's formation can be discerned in the life of Manuel. The first is his disposition toward the Turks. As a young, perhaps hot-headed man Manuel incurred the wrath of his father by unilaterally leading an expedition to reclaim the territories of Macedonia and Thessaly from Turkish occupation. His meagre gains were short-lived, and the Turkish backlash cost the empire greatly. The consequences of this youthful bluster seem to have tempered him a great deal, for, toward the end of his reign, Manuel established cordial relations with the Turks, even neglecting an opportunity to have Sultan Mehmed i assassinated, against the counsel of many at his court.Footnote 13
The second important aspect of Manuel's reign is his approach to church relations. Though his father, John v, had pursued western aid ardently by means of religious promises and had actually died in communion with Rome, Manuel seems never to have entertained the prospect of conversion. He took an interest in theology, authoring a number of theological texts on diverse topics.Footnote 14 During his years abroad in the West (1399–1403) he personally engaged in debates over the theological issues dividing East and West, even composing a treatise, On the procession of the Holy Spirit, while in Paris in 1402, which treated not just the question expressed in the title but other divisive issues as well, especially papal primacy.Footnote 15 Manuel evinces no animosity toward the Latins, but he adhered to his traditional faith and saw no realistic prospect for union without some movement on the part of the Latins toward the Greeks.
Manuel endeavoured to convey his perspective on these issues to John. There exists a remarkable account of a conversation between father and son where Manuel ties together his thoughts on managing both the Turk and the question of Church unity. George Sphrantzes, imperial advisor, relates the following interaction, which occurred sometime between 1421 and 1425. Manuel begins:
‘My son, we truly, certainly know that the impious dread the day we come to terms and unite with the Franks; they believe that if this happens they will suffer because of us a great misfortune at the hands of the Christians of the West. Well then, as far as this synod is concerned, continue to study and plan it, especially when you need to frighten the impious. But do not bring it about, as I perceive our side unable to find a way of uniting and achieving peace and harmony; they will attempt to restore the original state. As this is impossible to achieve, I fear that a worse schism may develop and we will have nothing to protect us from the impious.’ It seemed that the emperor disagreed with his father, as he said nothing but got up and left. His memorable, late father grew thoughtful, looked at me [Sphrantzes], and said: ‘My son the emperor is fitted to be an emperor, but not at the present moment. For he has great visions and plans but ones that were needed in the good old days of our ancestors. Today, as our affairs consume our attention, the empire needs not an emperor but an administrator. And I fear that his ideas and actions will bring about the downfall of our house. For I foresaw his plans and what he expected to accomplish with Mustafa, and I saw the results of his actions, which brought us into some danger.’Footnote 16
The ‘Mustafa’ of whom he speaks is a reference to John's plot, hatched against his father's advice, to meddle in the Ottoman succession of 1421. Its failure was followed by extensive retaliation by the Turks, which cost the empire many lives and ended in a peace agreement even more unfavourable to the Byzantines than the one broken by John's bold but, in hindsight, disastrous scheming.Footnote 17 Boldness, then, was one of John's qualities. In this way he was not unlike his father as a young man.
From Sphrantzes's report, it appears that John had it in his mind early to accomplish the great deed of reuniting the Churches. The combined might of Christendom could then throw back the Turkish advance. We do not know whether John agreed with his father's view that a failed attempt at union would find the empire in even worse straits than it was before, though the possibility cannot have been far from his mind. Yet it appears from the reaction reported by Sphrantzes (as well as the attempt that John would make later) that he disagreed with his father's conviction that a union was out of reach, much as he had believed, contrary to Manuel's counsel, that his plot with Mustafa would succeed in crippling the Ottomans and placing an amenable ally on the sultan's throne. Sphrantzes himself, from his privileged vantage point, gives just this interpretation; though with the advantage of hindsight he writes that John was wrong to ignore Manuel's advice.Footnote 18
Protector of the Church
Perhaps the most important point of ideology for interpreting John's actions at the council of Florence is his understanding of the place of the emperor in the Orthodox Church, the product of centuries of development in culture, canon law and theological reflection.Footnote 19 The sources are unanimous in acclaiming him ‘defender’ and ‘protector’, but what did this mean in practice? The position of the emperor, according to eastern canon law, is not among the clergy, but neither is it entirely among the laity. According to the sixty-ninth canon of the Quinisext council, ‘It is not permitted to a layman to enter the holy altar, though, in accordance with a certain ancient tradition, the imperial power and authority is by no means prohibited from this when he wishes to offer his gifts to the Creator.’Footnote 20 The noted canonist Theodore Balsamon explains this canon by asserting that emperors are not really laymen at all, but having an ‘anointing from the Lord … they enter into the holy altar, they burn incense, and they bless using the trikirion just as the high priests do’.Footnote 21 The emperor's unique anointing signifies a position that mingles priestly and lay elements. Like the Old Testament kings of Judah, he was thought to bridge the gap between the ‘secular’ and the ‘sacred’ by directing earthly powers toward the service of the faith.
The orthodoxy of emperors was obligatory and a perpetually necessary condition for enjoying the good faith and loyalty of their subjects. From the fifth century, every emperor was required before his coronation to pledge to uphold the Nicene Creed and the decisions of all the duly held and ratified church councils both ecumenical (first four, then later seven) and local.Footnote 22 When Basil i, grand duke of Moscow, wrote to Constantinople in 1393 that Orthodox Christians in his lands ‘have a church, but we have no emperor, nor do we reckon one’, he was given a stiff reply. Patriarch Anthony iv answered:
[The emperor] is anointed with the great chrism and is elected emperor and autocrator of the Romans, that is, of all Christians; and in every place and by every patriarch, metropolitan, and bishop the name of the emperor is commemorated wherever there are Christians … For Christians it is not possible to have a Church and not to have an emperor, for the empire and the church have a great unity and community, and it is impossible to separate them. Christians reject only the heretical emperors, but the most powerful and holy emperorFootnote 23 is, by the grace of God, quite orthodox, and very faithful; he is the champion and defender and advocate of the Church, and no bishop can abstain from mentioning him.Footnote 24
Anthony understands the role of the emperor to be champion, defender and advocate of the Church. But Anthony is also clear that the emperor does not have the authority to determine heresy and dogma on his own. The Church judges him concerning his orthodoxy. The Church adheres to him for protection when he is orthodox, but rejects him if he is a heretic.
It is the notion of ‘defender’ to which John appeals when he describes his own role at the council to those present:
I am the defender of the Church. The job of the defender … in the present matter seems to me to have a double aspect – the one to preserve and defend the dogmas of the Church and to furnish liberty to those who wish to speak on their behalf so that they may bring forward without hindrance whatever sound doctrine they like to pronounce, and to restrain and rebuke those who assail it in a contentious and hostile spirit: the other to hold together and preserve ours in concord, that all may agree in one decision and opinion.Footnote 25
John understood his prerogative to defend the dogmas of the Church not as a licence to legislate dogma in a state of controversy but rather as an obligation to ensure order and liberty so that the truth might be revealed in dialogue and a consensus ultimately reached. In fact John had occasion to perform this role at least once prior to the Council of Florence. Mark of Ephesus had been accused of teaching heretically about predestination. John summoned him to trial to defend himself in the presence of other esteemed theologians, who each rendered their assessment before John acclaimed their judgement. Mark was duly acquitted.Footnote 26 This episode demonstrates John's understanding of the task of emperors at council: the emperor convened councils and presided over them, but his presidency was as a chairman rather than a magistrate. The considerable power of emperors to influence the proceedings of councils was not unlimited and was most often exercised for the sake of concord rather than partisanship. They had no vote, and if they often exercised persuasion and pressure to great effect, they were understood to be within their rights to do so, as long as pressure did not become coercion.Footnote 27
Another element to John's self-understanding as defender of the Church involves his desire to secure military aid against the Turks. It is too easy for modern scholars to make a hasty and uncritical distinction between ‘secular’ or ‘political’ aims on the one hand and ‘religious’ aims on the other. This language is found throughout the work of modern scholars of both East and West.Footnote 28 And yet this way of thinking is nowhere found in the sources. John was always open about the fact that one of his most important objectives, certainly the most pressing, in pursuing union was to secure military aid against the Turkish advance,Footnote 29 yet no one at the time appears to have criticised him for it. Likewise, Pope Eugene, on more than one occasion, held out the prospect of ‘political’ salvation to the Greek embassy in order to convince them to not give up discussion, and there is no record in the sources of Mark of Ephesus or any other anti-unionist calling foul. The following is a representative appeal:
Union however once achieved, both the western princes and all of us will be greatly rejoiced and will provide generous help for you. And our aid will be a source of great alleviation to the Christians dwelling in the East and to those in the power of the infidel. I exhort you then, brethren, following in the precept of our Lord Jesus Christ, let there not be division in the Church of God, but be urgent, be vigilant, let us give glory to God together. Our union will produce abundant help to the soul; our union will give great honour to the body; our union will bring dismay to our enemies both corporeal and incorporeal; our union will cause rejoicing among the Saints and angels and gladness in heaven and on earth.Footnote 30
The Greeks responded favourably to this exhortation. The Byzantine mind (like the medieval mind in general) did not perceive a conflict but a convergence of interest between the civic and religious spheres. The salvation of the empire was the salvation of the Church and vice-versa. Only after the union was signed did anti-unionists who deemed it false deplore the emperor and those who followed him for sacrificing the faith for temporal gain. In their eyes, if the faith were abandoned, then the empire was indeed of merely temporal significance. An authentic union, it was thought, could have brought salvation to both Church and empire, whereas an inauthentic union condemned both.Footnote 31 John's desire to secure military aid is therefore wrongly understood as a competing interest vis-à-vis his faithfulness to Orthodoxy. Rather, it is entirely commensurate with and appropriate to his duty as ‘defender of the faith’ in all its aspects.
John at Council
Previous scholarship on the council has highlighted what at first glance seems an inconsistency in John's leadership. Some of his actions seem to be geared toward driving the Greeks into union, while others forestall its progress. One of John's first acts as organiser of the Greek party was to appoint Mark of Ephesus and Bessarion of Nicaea as the two Greek spokesmen. No one else was permitted to speak in official sessions. Open discussions were held only privately among the Greeks as they prepared statements for presentation to the Latins. He also instructed his party not to speak with the Latins about the contentious Palamite doctrine of the essence and energies of God,Footnote 32 disagreement over which persisted in the Greek Church until the fifteenth century despite a series of conciliar decrees in its favour.Footnote 33 John knew that his delegation was of divided mind on the issue, and did not want it to become a distraction. Both of these rules were manifestly intended to ensure that the Latins were presented with a united front – an obvious advantage in debate.
John also did his best to maintain respect and dignity. To mask his debilitating gout, he would not be seen with his feet touching the ground. He rode everywhere on horseback or was carried on a chair or palanquin.Footnote 34 He also insisted, though unsuccessfully, on being regarded as the summoner and president of the council. A remark John made to Patriarch Joseph before leaving Constantinople explains his fastidiousness: ‘If [the Church] makes a dignified showing there, it will be honoured by them and be a credit to us. But if it is seen to be shabby, it will be despised and counted for nothing by them.’Footnote 35 John was anxious to debate not from a position of weakness but of strength.
John was also shrewd in choosing to approach the papacy when he did. Eugene and his predecessor Martin, with whom discussions about a council were first initiated, were dealing with their own problems in the form of the Conciliarist movement. The goal of Conciliarism was to subordinate the authority of popes to regular general councils. It was spawned in the universities and fostered by western princes eager to diminish papal power. At the Council of Basle (convened in 1431) Conciliarist sentiment was running high and threatened to undermine papal primacy in the West. The pope stood to gain a great deal of prestige and credibility in the eyes of those wavering over his authority if he could forge a reunion with the East at an ecumenical council arranged by him and held under his presidency. John, who was well aware of Eugene's predicament, recognised the moment for the great deed which his father had not thought possible. The papacy would surely be open to dealing favourably with the Greeks. Further, by insisting that the reunion council be held in Italy rather than at Basle, where the Conciliarist Council was still on-going and to which the Greeks had been invited, John put Eugene in his debt by giving him the leverage that he needed to pull the plug on the Conciliarist programme at Basle and reorganise his support in friendlier territory.Footnote 36 All this manoeuvring for advantage speaks to his intention from the outset to represent well the eastern faith and secure a favourable union. It does not suggest a man bent on making whatever concessions might be necessary to achieve his ends.
The most illustrative of John's activities are his interactions with Mark. It was clear early on that Mark was the most articulate and adamant voice in the embassy against the Latins’ theology. Yet John retained him as spokesman. He asked Mark to compose the statements of Orthodox teaching on the procession of the Holy Spirit and the nature of the eucharist for presentation to the Latins as dialogue pieces. He called on Mark alone to speak in moments of confusion in the official sessions.Footnote 37 On one occasion, Mark had given up on the prospect of union and escaped from the city on horseback. Although his absence would undoubtedly have paved the way for a quick and easy union, John sent his own bodyguard to usher him back.Footnote 38 On three occasions Pope Eugene demanded that Mark be punished for intransigence, and John protected him – even escorting him home from the council in the, presumably safer, imperial entourage.Footnote 39
But it is also reported by Syropoulos that John unduly directed the discussions toward union and by the end of the council even forced Mark into silence. When it seemed to a majority of the Greeks that no agreement could be reached on the subject of the addition of the filioque to the common creed, John refused the request to adjourn and pressed his embassy to continue discussion by tabling the question of adding words to the creed and addressing instead the doctrine of the filioque itself as the Latins desired.Footnote 40 For the last two sessions, devoted to discussing the filioque, John is reported to have forbidden Mark's presence.Footnote 41 In the end, when an impasse on the question of union was reached – the majority supporting union, the minority in opposition and no minds left to be changed – John ordered the Greeks to a vote, which resulted in union.Footnote 42 From that point on, he forbade Mark (the only dissenting hierarch still present after the others had fled the city) from voicing objections. But he also did not force him to sign along with the rest nor did he subject him to discipline.
What can be made of this apparently erratic behaviour on John's part? Surely we are again prevented from concluding that John was after a speedy union at any cost. Nor does it appear that he resented Mark of Ephesus’ stubborn refusal to compromise. From the beginning John felt it necessary not only to allow Mark his voice, but to require it of him. John must have realised that Mark represented the opinion of a large and influential sector within his empire – one influenced by popular, monastic theology with little appreciation for Western scholasticism. While the bulk of the Greek delegation was classically educated and westward leaning,Footnote 43 Mark, though he had likewise enjoyed this education as a young man, had also immersed himself in the monastic, Palamite theology and ascetical practice that many well-born Greeks did not appreciate. Mark was the only articulate spokesman at hand for the majority theological opinion of the Eastern Church. On the other hand, as it became clear towards the end of the council that Mark stood alone on the issue of the filioque and, moreover, that he was not able to offer convincing reasons for denying the validity of the teaching, John can hardly be faulted for moving ahead without him.
The question of the filioque, which posed by far the most difficult obstacle to union,Footnote 44 had after a long-winded discussion come to centre on the bare words of the Church Fathers.Footnote 45 The Latins assembled an arsenal of proof-texts in support of their contention that the filioque had been taught explicitly in Latin Christendom well back into the patristic era. They were also able to point to a few crucial texts from the Greek Fathers that appeared to say the same thing. Today we know that the Greek Fathers were unaware of any such teaching; their writings are therefore not surprisingly ambiguous on the subject. There were, however, a few crucial passages, particularly in the works of Basil of Caesarea, that seemed clearly to support the Latin doctrine. It was the conviction of all that the Fathers could neither collectively err on a point where they agreed, nor could there be a different dogma taught in the Fathers of the East and West, since both were inspired by the same Spirit. By this logic, and given the fact that there were no clearly condemnatory passages in the eastern Fathers on the question of filioque while there appeared to be substantial consensus among the western Fathers in support of the doctrine, in addition to a few eastern examples, the teaching encapsulated by filioque seemed undeniable. The only argument that Mark could make, and he did so, was that the texts of the Fathers as they were read in council were corrupt. This was a hard case to sell (though as it happens he was correct on most countsFootnote 46 ), and so it is no surprise that John went ahead with the union despite Mark's protests. It is, however, a testament to John's respect for Mark that, given the seemingly untenable position that he took, Mark was not punished for contravening what John hoped would be acclaimed an ecumenical council.
The fact that John understood Florence as an ecumenical council in the ancient tradition of the seven recognised in the EastFootnote 47 is also an important context for understanding his actions. While on the one hand he considered it his duty to ensure that the proceedings were just and open, he was also determined that there would be a resolution to the issues that they had been called to examine. Ecumenical councils did not adjourn without determining the issue(s) that they had been called to examine. It was not unusual for a decision reached in council not to satisfy everyone present,Footnote 48 but there was no precedent for simply declaring a deadlock and going home. Indeed, even to acknowledge that such an impasse was possible would be to admit at the start that those present did not represent ‘the ecumenical Church’ which is by definition the ‘pillar and ground of the truth’Footnote 49 and therefore always competent to proclaim it. One of the difficulties of Florence, which complicated its progress and eventually its reception, was that there had never been an ‘ecumenical council’ held by two separated communions.Footnote 50 John had to surrender sole presidency of the council, the tradition with which he was familiar, but he was still driven by his understanding of the role that he should play and the precedent of earlier councils to find a path toward consensus.
On the other hand, the understanding of those present that they constituted an ecumenical council added yet another layer of confusion to the aftermath of the council. From the perspective of the West, if a council was declared ecumenical by the competent authorities – in this case the pope and the emperor – then it was so, and its decisions were binding.Footnote 51 In the East, however, there were precedents for councils that enjoyed the outward signs of being ecumenical, yet whose decisions failed to take root among the greater part of the Church, and they were later disavowed. These included the so-called ‘Robber Council’ of Ephesus in 449 and the iconoclast Council of Hieria in 754.Footnote 52 Thus there was room in the eastern mind to consider the anti-unionist sentiment that subsequently exploded in the east a legitimate challenge to the authenticity of the council and not automatically to discount it as schismatic or heretical as western observers did. This inherent tension with respect to ecumenical councils – that they must operate from the start as though they are already ecumenical, but that their ecumenicity was liable to question after the factFootnote 53 – had always been an unavoidable risk for the emperors who convened them and whose fortunes were bound to them.
After Union
Such factors make clear the inadequacy of Joseph Gill's assessment of the aftermath of the Council of Florence in Constantinople. Gill cites a letter of John Eugenicus, Mark's brother and co-propagator of anti-unionism, to support what he argues was a double standard among the anti-unionists and grounds for convicting John of laxity in enforcing the union:
And the church recognised [the Emperor John's] authority. It was precisely on the grounds that the emperor ‘is the foundation and support of the people, … the foundation of sound doctrine for the Church of Christ and is called and is the protector and defender of the Church and champion of sound and pure faith’ that John Eugenicus justified his own and his friends’ refusal to acknowledge [John's militantly pro-unionist brother and successor, Constantine xi] as emperor.Footnote 54
Gill argues that if John Eugenicus and his anti-unionist confreres held such a high view of Imperial authority, then they were remiss in defying the union sealed under John viii, but he also maintains that if the emperor had been more heavy-handed in enforcing the union, his conservative subjects would have fallen in line behind him because of the divine authority of his office. However, John Eugenicus’ letter is better understood as expounding the nuanced sentiment of Patriarch Anthony iv only half a century earlier. It was indeed the emperor's duty to protect the ‘sound and pure faith’ but he was not thought to possess the authority to define it unilaterally in a state of controversy, which is how anti-unionists perceived the situation after Florence and precisely what they accused Constantine ix of doing. For this reason there are no grounds for thinking, as Gill suggests, that an imperial decree or show of force by John would have availed in bringing his people into line. John's authority within the Eastern Church was not what Gill, nor the contemporary Latin critics whom he cites,Footnote 55 seem to think it was. The emperor was not pope of the east, and he could not theoretically, far less practically, force such a large body of dissenters to conform.
Even before the participants left Florence there were signs that the union was in trouble. Pope Eugene was invited to concelebrate a liturgy with the Greek hierarchs, but he refused. Likewise the Greeks withheld from participating in the eucharist of the Roman mass.Footnote 56 John was rebuffed in his request to have Latin bishops removed from cities where there was already a Greek bishop, so that the one Church might be under one hierarchy. According to both Syropoulos and the historian Doukas, some of the hierarchs that had signed were already regretting their decision before they landed in Constantinople. When their ship entered harbour, the call came from shore, ‘How is it with us? How went the synod? Did we perhaps emerge victorious?’ The response was not heartening: ‘We have betrayed our faith’, they declared. ‘We have elected impiety instead of piety. We have abandoned the pure sacrifice and have become azymites.’Footnote 57
John was greeted in Constantinople with the unhappy news that his wife had died only a few days before his return. That much is recounted in all the sources. However, only Syropoulos suggests (and scholars often repeat uncritically) that it was grief over her death that prevented John from immediately enforcing the union that he is supposed to have so desperately wanted. Sphrantzes, the emperor's confidant, does not remark at all on John's grief, which we might expect if it was particularly protracted or debilitating. It seems more likely that Syropoulos, whose Memoir was written in large part as an indictment of John, latches onto the fact of Maria's death as an excuse for John's inaction because he cannot bring himself to see John in a light favourable to the anti-unionist cause.
By contrast, other anti-unionists are quite gracious to John in their later writings. They attribute his reluctance to quash anti-union sentiment in the empire to genuine misgivings over having formalised the union in the first place. In a panegyric written about 1452, George Scholarius, by then a converted anti-unionist, says the following of John:
But for one thing alone could he be censured, namely this ecclesiastical confusion, and this he shared in involuntarily; voluntarily he stood apart from it. Under some pressure to dissimulate, all the same he showed what he really was by deeds and evident signs both to God and to the right-minded, and he, practically alone, was the cause for us of retrieving that defeat.Footnote 58
Elsewhere he writes:
We often took to the late most excellent emperor, and we well know how he thought about what he had done and how he was satisfied with our answers and praised those who acted thus and abominated those otherwise disposed. Of this we are all witnesses, each and all having heard it from his own words and lips. But he, filled with a groundless dread about his kingdom and lest to the Latins he might seem dishonourable, kept his promises.Footnote 59
In addition, Mark of Ephesus reports the following story in a letter written late in life, which corroborates George's portrait of John in the aftermath of the council. He relates that an anti-unionist monk was being insubordinate to his abbot – a unionist appointed by John. The matter was mentioned to the emperor. In reaction, according to Mark, ‘he said nothing but confessed openly that he regretted the action and laid the blame on those who had submitted and signed’.Footnote 60
These first-hand accounts tell a more plausible story than do Syropoulos and his modern disciples. While it is true that they are no disinterested observers, Scholarius at least, as one who had signed the union which he now repudiated (as had Syropoulos), had every reason to parrot Syropoulos's narrative and separate himself from John. It seems, therefore, that John's grief at the death of his wife notwithstanding, his tolerance of the anti-unionists after returning to Constantinople was no accident. It appears rather that he genuinely came to question the ecumenicity of the council, even if as a matter of honour or simply for lack of a better course he continued publicly to support its decision. It is impossible to say whether John ever became intellectually convinced of the anti-unionist position, but he seems at least to have come to doubt what had earlier seemed so clear: that the opinion of the learned men of East and West gathered in Florence, so overwhelmingly of one accord, represented the infallible mind of the Church. The result of the agreement made there had certainly failed to deliver the salvation for which all had hoped. The promise of military aid came in the form of a crusade launched in 1443, which failed to attract any of the major European powers. A force comprised mainly of Hungarians was defeated in November 1444 at the city of Varna, 280 miles from Constantinople. Hungary itself was plunged into civil war, and European resistance to the Turkish presence in Europe was broken.Footnote 61 In this state of uncertainty and unrealised expectations, we find John acting as was fitting for a Christian emperor according to the best elements of his tradition. He would not use the power of his office to enforce dogma upon the Church. He used it rather to prevent molestation and ensure freedom of expression for those who spoke sincerely on behalf of sound doctrine as they understood it.
Was John wrong to think that such salvation was possible? Or that a real and lasting union of the Churches was within reach? With the benefit of hindsight it is easy to answer both questions in the affirmative, but in the moment John had many good reasons to make the attempt. Moreover, it is misguided to read into his dilemma an artificial division between the two questions, because for John and his contemporaries they were really one and the same. The emperor had long been regarded in the east as a Basileus in the biblical tradition of David and Solomon, who was responsible both for the security and the religious purity of his subjects.Footnote 62 These two ends were thought to be inextricably related, each guaranteeing the other. The right faith and sanctity of the empire's inhabitants guarantees divine protection, while security is an ideal condition for living a life ‘in all godliness and holiness’.Footnote 63
When, at the start of the synod, the Greek delegation found the Latins more unyielding than they had hoped, John pressed on despite some resistance from his party not because he was insensitive to matters of faith, but because the western-leaning element of his delegation gave him hope (perhaps a false hope) that a workable resolution could in fact be reached by the fair-minded constituents of his party, among whom he counted Mark.Footnote 64 That he remained committed throughout to a real and lasting union (the professed desire of all those present, including MarkFootnote 65 ) and not one of expediency is shown by his unwillingness to marginalise Mark of Ephesus when it became clear early on that he was the least willing to entertain union on the terms that the Latins were prepared to offer. John pressed on with Mark for months in an effort to find a solution to the impasse and only abandoned hope of convincing him after he had made himself appear ridiculous by standing in lonely opposition to the very reasonable-sounding arguments of members of his own party. Being no theologian himself, John can hardly be faulted for acting as he did in the end, especially given the expectations placed upon him by the very tradition which his eastern detractors charge him with betraying. In fact, he appears to have lived up to the very best of that tradition. And after his efforts toward union had proved fruitless, he displayed a level of Christian humility lacking in many of his august predecessors.
Apart from redeeming the legacy of a Christian emperor, the new appreciation of John viii sketched in this paper might contribute to a better understanding of at least two historically significant phenomena. The first of these is the Council of Florence itself, as important an event as any in the history of the relations between Christians of East and West.Footnote 66 A new historiography of this momentous event is long overdue. Just as the older, competing historiographies have served to perpetuate and ossify our long-standing divisions, a new historiography better attuned to the religious and cultural contexts of both East and West has the potential to contribute in a significant way to contemporary Christian dialogue. A second narrative in need of continual revision is that of the religious authority of the emperor in the Byzantine Church. As Dagron and others are beginning to show, and the case of John viii makes plain, the traditional understanding of ‘Caesaropapism’ in the Greek East is seriously flawed, but a critical, nuanced appreciation of the example of the eastern empire is indispensable to any discussion of the question of relations between Church and State that seeks to be rooted in the history of Christian experience.
