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The Council of Florence: the Religious Event That Shaped the Era of Discovery by Nora Hamerman

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The Council of Florence: the Religious Event That Shaped the Era of Discovery by Nora Hamerman Click here for Full Issue of Fidelio Volume 1, Number 2, Spring 1992 , , COLUMBUS ANDTHE C HRISTIAN CONCEPTOF MAN The Council of Florence: The Religious Event That Shaped the Era of Discovery by Nora Hamerman n July 6, 1439, in the two decades. The strategic pur­ city of Florence, It­ pose of the Council, which was O aly, the assembled to join Eastern and Western Church hierarchy and imperial Christendom in the military authority of the Eastern Ortho­ defense of Constantinople, dox Church and the Pope and fa iled in 1453. Less than a cen­ bishops of the Roman Church tury later, the Council's aim of proclaimed a document of keeping Western European Union entitled Laetentur coeli, Christendom together was "Let the Heavens Rejoice" (SEE shattered by the Protestant box). After the Great Schism Reformation. in 1054 A.D., the Council of Yet, judged from the stand­ Florence had finally reunified point of universal history, the the Eastern and Western Council was possibly the most branches of Christianity. successful gamble mankind has The Council of Florence ever seen. It was the watershed took place under the immedi­ fo r the Florentine Renaissance, ate threat of war, plague, and which produced the greatest under conditions of extreme flowering of genius in the poverty. In fa ct, on several oc­ Cathedral of Florence, cupola built by shortest period known to his- casions the Council was nearly Filippo Brunelleschi. tory. To understand how that disbanded fo r lack of fu nds. result was deliberately brought Nonetheless, under these conditions it established, fo r about-in order to replicate it today-we must under­ the first time, the ecumenical principle of a unity of stand the principles shared by those who organized it. doctrine within a plurality of rites and customs; and the correlated notion, that doctrine could develop without The FiJio ue Principle changing in its essential truths. q These achievements came to fruition in the evangeli­ The Union of 1439 was proclaimed jointly by two young zation of the Americas, which we celebrate this year on men, the Greek John Bessarion and the Italian Julian the SOOth anniversary of Columbus' voyage to the lands Cesarini, from the pulpit of the Florentine cathedral of he called the Indies. Yet while the date 1492 is inscribed S. Maria del Fiore, under the great cupola, that had just in every schoolchild's memory, what happened in Flore­ been dedicated in 1436. The Bull stipulated accords on nce in 1439 is scarcely remembered. the doctrine of Purgatory, the primacy of the Pope, and The Council of Florence is often overlooked as an divergence of rites, but above all it registered agreement obscure moment of ecclesiastical history. In part, this is on the doctrine that had long distinguished the Western, because the union achieved in Florence did not survive Augustinian fo rm of the fa ith from the Eastern: the 23 © 1992 Schiller Institute, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without permission strictly prohibited. "Filioque" clause recited in the West in the part of the shadow of the robust promise of the twelfth and thir­ Nicene Creed which proclaims belief in the Holy Spirit, teenth centuries. Depopulation had begun at the outset the third person of the Trinity. of the fo urteenth century, as the impact of the practice This clause was understood to definethe necessity of of usury and slavery-whether de jure or de fa cto­ technological progress as an indispensable fe ature of the struck the poor and defenseless. doctrine of the Trinity, by stating that the Holy Spirit After a half-century of shockingly high mortality proceeds both from the Father and the Son (in Latin, rates, the outbreak of the Black Death in 1348 carried Filioque), who is both God and man. Eastern resistance off as much as fifty percent of the inhabitants in densely to the Filioque had persisted since the eighth century, populated centers like Florence. Recovery fr om this di­ when the doctrine was promoted by Charlemagne saster was slow throughout the continent. The plague against the Arian heresy, which denied the divinity of returned often, and population continued to fa ll. The Christ. Byzantium, ruled by a theocratic emperor who illusions of some, who had expected that a thinned-out saw himself in the direct line of descent from the pagan populace would mean more riches to go around fo r Roman emperors as both secular ruler and high priest, survivors, were shattered by the reality of the Christian was resistant to the implications of a theology that under­ teaching that money itself is sterile without human labor. mined autocracy by giving a major role to anyone but the Yet the Church's own credibility was wrecked by the Father-and particularly by implying that development is fa ct that many of its highest prelates, including numerous necessary. Popes, had been complicit in usury and the related sin At the Council, the Byzantines finally agreed to the of simony, the selling of holy things for financial gain. Filioque. As recounted by historian Joseph Gill, their The schism of the West had led since 1373 to two, and first objection was legalistic. They attempted to prove after 1409, three competing Popes. In such a situation, that any "addition" to the Nicene Creed was fo rbidden the Church could not fulfill its traditional role as a by Scripture, but this argument was finallybeaten back peacemaker above warring parties. Moreover, Europe by the obvious point that the Nicene Creed itself, estab­ was racked with religious conflicts, such as the Lollard lished in the third century A.D., is an "addition" to Scrip­ and Wycliffite rebellions in England, and the Hussite ture. The Greeks were fo rced to concede that while the insurgency in Bohemia. fa ith could not change, it not only could, but indeed The grand design of the Conciliar Movement was to must, develop. convene church councils in order to restore Christian This victory by the Latin side fo rced discussion on­ unity, by carrying out reforms which everyone agreed to the central point of whether the Filioque was true. were needed, although the nature and extent of the During the lengthy debates, the Greek prelates were reforms were disputed. The conciliarists were active unmoved by the Aristotelian syllogisms presented by throughout Europe in the networks of intellectuals es­ some of the Western theologians. But in the end, tablished by the Florentine poet Petrarca. Petrarca was it was the massive evidence of the writings of the early an Augustinian Platonist, who committed himself to the Church Fathers, especially St. Basil fo r the Greeks and recovery of Plato's dialogues, which were unavailable in St. Augustine fo r the Latins, that moved them. The reliable translations in the West, and to the expulsion of principle they accepted was "patristic," fo r it was clearly Aristotle's authority from science. impossible that the great saints could have been in Until his death in 1374, Petrarca was the hub of an disaccord, and if read from the standpoint of this under­ international community of scholars who managed to lying principle of unity, it was also obvious that all the keep in touch through the duplication of letters. These Fathers accepted a concept of the Son's relationship to scholars sought to recover antique Greek and Roman the Holy Spirit, that could be expressed legitimately as manuscripts, to master the classical languages, and to the Filioque. build up lay piety and secular states, both in the monar­ chical and republican fo rms. Their Conciliar efforts in­ tensifiedin the 1390's, spurred by the carnage in western The Conciliar Movement Europe, but especially by the growing danger of Turkish At the outset of the fifteenth century, as the threat of the aggression in the East. Turkish aggression grew, Western Europe was in chaos, The first councils were inconclusive. Then, between presenting no possibility of a unified military resistance. 1410 and 1435, two general councils of the Roman France and England were torn into fe udal entities by Church were convened in the cities of Constance and the conflicts later called the Hundred Years' War. In Basel. most of Europe, the centralized nation-state was a The firstmajor reform was accomplished at the Coun- 24 cil of Constance in 1414-1418, where a single Pope, his first great work, The Catholic Concordance. But the Martin V, was elected, and the rivals all renounced their higher principle of concordance he sought, was not to claims. Under Martin V, the process of making peace be fo und in Basel. between France and England began to move fo rward, In 1437, Nicolaus of Cusa became the envoy of the even though in 1430, Joan of Arc was unjustly burned reigning Pope Eugene IV, whom he had previously at the stake fo r her efforts to restore France's nationhood. opposed. Eugene, who had taken refuge in Florence The papal legate, Cardinal Niccolo Albergati, persuaded after political troubles drove the papal court out of Rome, the powerful Duke of Burgundy to shift his allegiance had become convinced by the Florentine Christian Plato­ fr om England to France. By 1435, the basis for peace nists to convene an Ecumenical Council which would had been established. supersede the hopelessly divided Council of Basel. The conciliarists, who were concerned about greater participation by the national churches in the choice of The Traversari Conspiracy their bishops, and about control of finances,bel ieved that the reforms of the papacy in Constance were inadequate, Nicolaus of Cusa was recruited to this conspiracy by and fo rced the Pope to convene the Council of Basel in Ambrogio Traversari, the general of the Camaldulensian 1431.
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