FERRARA-FLORENCE, COUNCIL OF. The council of Ferrara and Florence was the culmination of a series of futile mediaeval attempts to reunite the Greek and Roman churches. The emperor, John VI. Palaeologus, had been advised by his experienced father to avoid all serious negotiations, as they had invariably resulted in increased bitterness; but John, in view of the rapid dismemberment of his empire by the Turks, felt con strained to seek a union. The situation was, however, complicated by the strife which broke out between the pope (Eugenius IV.) and the oecumenical council of Basel. Both sides sent embassies to the emperor at Constantinople, as both saw the importance of gaining the recognition and support of the East, for on this practically depended the victory in the struggle between papacy and council for the supreme jurisdiction over the church (see BASEL, COUNCIL OF). The Greeks, fearing the domination of the papacy, were at first more favourably inclined toward the conciliar party; but the astute diplomacy of the Roman representatives, who have been charged by certain Greek writers with the skilful use of money and of lies, won over the emperor. With a retinue of about 70o persons, entertained in Italy at the pope's expense, he reached Ferrara early in March 1438, and in the following month the Union Synod was solemnly inaugurated on the 9th of April 1438. After several months of negotiation, it seemed for several reasons advisable to transfer the council to Florence. There ensued long debates and negotiations on the filioque, in which Markos Eugenikos, archbishop of Ephesus, spoke for the irreconcilables; but the Greeks under the leadership of Bessarion, archbishop of Nicaea, and Isidor, metropolitan of Kiev, at length made a dec laration on the filioque (4th of June), to which all save Markos Eugenikos subscribed. On the next topic of importance, the primacy of the pope, the project of union nearly suffered ship wreck; but here a vague formula was finally constructed which, while acknowledging the pope's right to govern the church, attempted to safeguard as well the rights of the patriarchs. On the basis of the above-mentioned agreements, as well as of minor discussions as to purgatory and the Eucharist, the decree of union was drawn up in Latin and in Greek, and signed on the 5th of July by the pope and the Greek emperor, and all the members of the synod save Eugenikos and one Greek bishop who had fled; and on the following day it was solemnly published in the cathedral of Florence.
The council, however, desirous of negotiating unions with the minor churches of the East, remained in session for several years, and seems never to have reached a formal adjournment. The decree for the Armenians was published on the 22nd of November they accepted the filioque and the Athanasian creed, rejected Monophysitism and Monothelitism, agreed to the developed scholastic doctrine concerning the seven sacraments, and con formed their calendar to the Western in certain points. On the 26th of April 1441 the pope announced that the synod would be transferred to the Lateran ; but before leaving Florence a union was negotiated with the Oriental Christians known as Jacobites. The Decreturn pro Jacobites, published on the 4th of February 1442, is, like that for the Armenians, of high dogmatic interest, as it summarizes the doctrine of the great mediaeval scholastics on the points in controversy. The decree for the Syrians, published at the Lateran on the 30th of September 1444, and those for the Chaldeans (Nestorians) and the Maronites (Monothelites), pub lished at the last known session of the council on the 7th of August 1445, added nothing of doctrinal importance. Though the direct results of these unions were the restoration of prestige to the absolutist papacy and the bringing of Byzantine men of letters, like Bessarion, to the West, the outcome was on the whole disappointing. Of the complicated history of the "United" churches of the East it suffices to say that Rome succeeded in securing but fragments, though important fragments, of the greater organizations. As for the Greeks, the union met with much opposition, particularly from the monks, and was rejected by three Oriental patriarchs at a synod of Jerusalem in ; and after various ineffective attempts to enforce it, the fall of Con stantinople in 1453 put an end to the endeavour. As Turkish in terests demanded the isolation of the Oriental Christians from their western brethren, and as the orthodox Greek nationalists feared Latinization more than Mohammedan rule, a patriarch hostile to the union was chosen, and a synod of Constantinople in 1472 formally rejected the decisions of Florence.