A Greek Démarche on the Eve of the Council of Florence

Abstract

Despite the superabundance of material available for the historical preliminaries and the progress of the Council of Ferrara-Florence, there is a source which to all intents and purposes has been neglected and has, therefore, remained outside the purview of the historiography concerning this critical Council. In more than one respect this source sheds significant light on the attitudes, mechanics and state of mind of at least some Greek sections and their aspirations in the matter of the union of the Greek and Latin Churches. The source is not an official document but, as we shall presently see, a memorandum or, to use Foreign Office jargon, a minute by a highly placed official who was not either in his private or public capacity in any way involved in the matter reported. The memorandum demands attention on several counts. It records an unexpected approach on the part of some Greeks to the duke of Milan shortly before Eugenius IV decided to transfer the Council from Ferrara to Florence. The record reveals, like a flashlight, how much diplomatic activity was going on in the corridors of power, in the couloirs, in the backrooms safely removed from the gaze of the public, of the annalists, official shorthand writers, and the forerunners of the modern journalists and of the media, that is to say, the diarists, eavesdroppers and reporters appointed by the various European courts at the seat of the Council. This memorandum or minute is the only source that informs posterity of an abortive, but nonetheless very symptomatic approach intended to settle the question of the union by radical means. Above all, the memorandum faithfully reflects the age-old Byzantine ideology which reached back into the somewhat hazy ancient Roman period and which had matured over more than a millennium that manifestly linkedNea Romawith Roman antiquity. The core and tenor of this approach associates historical continuity with historical Roman law, a combination that had served as the very ingredient, nay, as theanimathat gave birth to, and shaped the future of, the Church in Byzantine realms.