The Union of Florence, Crusade and Ottoman Hegemony in the Black Sea

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CHAPTER 3 The Union of Florence, Crusade and Ottoman Hegemony in the Black Sea

The fourth crusade had accentuated the breach between Byzantines and Western Europe despite the efforts of the popes and emperors to put an end to the schism. The mutual distrust and the different politics objectives have undermined all the attempts of union between East and West.1 The Ottoman threat was an important topic in the negotiations about the union, from the end of the fourteenth and in the first half of the fifteenth century. As the Byzantine empire was unable to contain the Ottoman expansion, Emperor Manuel II travelled to Western courts in an attempt to gain military support but the deliverance of his capital was eventually due to Ottomans’ defeat at Ankara and the ensuing struggle for power between Bayezid I’s sons.2 Manuel’s successor, Emperor John VIII continued the quest for Western support and suggested that the Church Union should be discussed by a council of both Latin and Greek clergy. The idea was well received by Pope Eugenius IV who saw the event as an opportunity to gain prestige and strengthening his position in his dispute with the Council of Basel.3 The Council of Ferrara-Florence was organised in close connection with the anti-Ottoman crusade but its success proved to be very fragile. Despite their traditional roles, the pope and the Byzantine emperor did not dispose of the instruments to compel their subjects to accept the Union. The Pope was confronted by a serious opposition gathered around the council of Basel, while in the Byzantine territories the decision encountered resistance, even hostility. Moreover, the emperor had no authority to impose the Union outside the empire, in other Greek-Orthodox countries. Although a Byzantine delegation went to Basel in 1434, claiming that the Patriarch of Constantinople had under his control not only the Byzantine territories but also the realms of Albania, Georgia, Trebizond, Crimea, Wallachia, Moldavia and Russia, the

1 Deno J. Geanakoplos, Byzantine East and Latin West: Two Worlds of Christendom in Middle Ages and Renaissance (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1966), 84–86. 2 Nevra Necipoglu, Byzantium between the Ottomans and the Latins (Cambridge University Press, 2009),18. 3 John Meyendorff, The Orthodox Church Its Past and Its Role in the World Today (Crestwood: St. Vladimir Seminary Press, 1996), 51.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ��8 | doi ��.��63/9789004353800_005 The Union Of Florence, Crusade And Ottoman Hegemony 109 reality was quite different.4 Constantinople’s authority over these territories was rather symbolical and should not be confounded with the pope’s jurisdic- tion in the West. The only prerogative of Constantinople consisted in the appointment of the metropolitans but, even in such case, there were sometimes serious clashes between the Patriarchy and the local rulers. Sometimes, as in the Moldavian case, the lords imposed their own candidates as metropolitans, thus defying the patriarch’s and the emperor’s authority. In those circumstanc- es, the decisions of the Council of Florence had little chances to be embraced by realms which had already took their distance from the Byzantine empire. This rejection of the Florentine Union had crucial and long-lasting conse- quences particularly in Central-Eastern Europe. The new appointed metropolitan of Kiev continued Gerasimos’s policy of re- ligious union but he was a Greek, and therefore saw things from the Byzantine point of view, not fully considering the political reality of Eastern Europe. In 1434, Isidor, the prior of the monastery St. Demetrios of Constantinople, joined the Byzantine delegation which went to Basel,5 and in 1436 he was appointed metropolitan of Kiev and of entire Russia. Isidor’s appointment and that of metropolitan Damian for Moldavia were part of the Byzantine preparations for the Council: both were sent to their eparchies to return with a lay deputation until the arrival of the council’s ships.6 The destination was still unknown to them and the Byzantine delegates had to choose between the ships of the council and those of the pope while arguing with one another. After a first unsuccess- ful attempt to dissolve the council, late in 1431,7 Pope Eugene IV tried to find a technicality to end the sessions of the Council and was successful in early 1438 in transfering the council to Ferrara. The pope’s controversial move against the council was compared by an important supporter of the conciliar movement with Lucifer’s rebellion.8 It caused a huge dispute within the Catholic Church, which lasted an entire decade and which, for a while, appeared to lead to a new schism.9 The polarization of the Catholic world between the pope and the

4 Eugenio Cecconi, Studi storici sul Concilio di Firenze, I (Firenze, 1869), LXXXVI. 5 Joseph Gill, The Council of Florence, (Cambridge University Press, 1959), 54–55. 6 Vitalien Laurent (ed.), Les « memoires » du grand ecclésiarque de l’Église de Constantinople Sylvestre Syropoulos sur le Concile de Florence (1438–1439), (Rome, 1971), 162–163 and 596–597. 7 Loy Bilderback, “Eugene IV and the First Dissolution of the Council of Basle”, Church History, 36 (1967), 3: 243–253. 8 Jesse D. Mann, “The Devilish Pope: Eugenius IV as Lucifer in the Later Works of Juan de Segovia”, Church History, 65 (1996), 2: 186–196. 9 Joachim W. Stieber, Pope Eugenius IV, the Council of Basel and the Secular and Ecclesiastical Authorities in the Empire, (Leiden-Boston: Brill, 1978), 44–56.