Pope
Eugenius
IV awaited him
at Ferrara, where the Council was to sit.
at Ferrara, where the Council was to sit.
Cambridge Medieval History - v4 - Eastern Roman Empire
The danger to the Empire that was destined to revive the
proposals of union lay in a different quarter.
It may be said that it was during the long and disastrous reign of
Andronicus II (1282–1332) that the fate of Byzantium was sealed.
Religious disputes, ravages by the Catalan Company, Turkish invasions
of Asia Minor, civil war, all these calamities burst almost at once over
the Empire. Andronicus by his incompetence and invertebrate policy
destroyed the fabric reared by his father. It is not then surprising that
he could not maintain to the end the uncompromising attitude which he
had adopted towards the Latins.
In 1323, learning that a French fleet in the service of the Pope, com-
manded by Amaury de Narbonne, was on the point of setting sail for
Constantinople, he sent to the West the Genoese Bishop of Kaffa to pro-
pose a new union. Soon after, in 1326, he commissioned another Genoese
to bear a letter on the same subject to the King of France, Charles the
Fair. The king sent to Constantinople the Dominican Benedict of Como,
but the negotiations were kept secret, and Andronicus was compelled to
adinit to the ambassador how difficult it would be to propose a new union
to the Greeks'.
Meantime the Ottoman State, which had been allowed to form owing
to the weakness of Andronicus II, was becoming more and more a menace
to Constantinople. In 1334 Andronicus III became anxious, and sent over-
tures of union to Pope John XXII by two Dominicans who were returning
from the Tartars. The Pope gave them a favourable hearing and sent
them back to Constantinople, but they were unable to discuss the matter
publicly with the Greek clergy as they demanded.
In 1335, as a proof of his good will, Andronicus III consented to take
part in the Crusade organised by Benedict XII under the leadership of the
i Paris, Archives Nationales; Trésor des Chartes. See Omont, Bibliothèque de
ľ École des Chartes, 1892, p. 254.
## p. 615 (#657) ############################################
Clement VI and union
615
ביי
King of France. Finally in 1339 the Emperor sent secretly to Avignon
the Venetian Stephen Dandolo, and one of the most celebrated humanists
of Constantinople, the Calabrian monk Barlaam, Abbot of the Soter.
But these emissaries had not even official letters accrediting them to the
Pope. They had the difficult mission of inducing Benedict XII to pro-
inise the despatch of prompt aid to the East. It was only subsequently
that there could be any question of union. Barlaam pleaded his case
eloquently. “That which separates the Greeks from you,” he said, not
without justification, “is not so much the difference of dogmas as the
hatred they feel against the Latins, provoked by the wrongs which they
on their side have suffered. It will be necessary to confer some great
benefit upon them to change this feeling. " He added that the union
could not be effected by force; only a General Council could establish it,
and if the Greeks had not recognised the Council of Lyons it was because
the Greek emissaries had been appointed by the Emperor and not by the
Patriarchs of the East? . Barlaam had thus outlined the programme of
the future council which was intended to effect the union, but this idea
was so far premature, and the Pope offered an invincible opposition to
every argument. The despatch of Western help must in his view be
conditional on the recognition by the Greeks of the Council of Lyons.
The whole matter went no further than the exchange of fine promises.
There existed, however, at Constantinople a party favourable to the
union, which centred round the Empress Anne of Savoy and the nobles
of her country whom she had brought to Constantinople in 1326'.
Having become regent in the name of her son John V Palaeologus after
the death of Andronicus III in 1341, Anne of Savoy sent to Pope
Clement VI in the autumn of 1343 a gentleman of Savoy, Philip de
Saint-Germain, bearing instructions from the regent and the Grand Duke
Alexius Apocaucus. He was commissioned to express to the Pope the
attachment of the regent and of her son John V to the Roman Church,
and to pray for the despatch of a fleet and an army to defend Constan-
tinople against the attacks of the Turks, as well as against those of their
ally John Cantacuzene, who had proclaimed himself Emperor“.
Clement VI was extremely favourable to the union. In 1343 he was
occupied in organising with the help of Venice the naval league which
ended in the recapture of Smyrna from the Turks (1344). He wrote to
the Latin Patriarch Henry, who resided at Negropont, to the Dominicans
of Pera, and to the Venetian and Genoese colonies of Constantinople, to
invite them to exert all their efforts towards preparing the union. In
spite of his friendly inclinations, the Pope held the same point of view as
1 Gay, Le pape Clément VI et les affaires d'Orient, pp. 49–50.
? Ib. p. 115.
3 Ib. p. 46.
4 Ib. p. 47. These instructions are known from the answers of Clement VI
(21 and 23 Oct. 1342) and from Johu Cantacuzenus, III. 87, CSHB, p. 359.
CH. XIX.
## p. 616 (#658) ############################################
616
John VI Cantacuzene
his predecessors; the despatch of assistance must be conditional on the
abjuration of the schism.
At the time of the ill-starred Crusade of the Archipelago in 1346,
the heir to the Dauphiné, Humbert, treated with the regent, and the
question between them was the union of the Churches, but nothing
occurred beyond conversations, and the occupation of the island of Chios
by the Genoese only exacerbated the Greeks.
Meanwhile Western politicians regarded the union as more and more
desirable. When the prince Humbert, a disillusioned man, entered
the Dominican order, he founded scholarships at the University of
Paris, and reserved many of them for students belonging by birth to
“Greece and the Holy Land," whom he destined to teach Greek in the
convents of the Dominicans (1349)'. But these good intentions were
powerless before the hatred which divided the Greeks from the Western
nations. There were incessant conflicts in the countries still occupied by
the Latins. In 1364 the Greeks of Candia rose against the Venetians,
who wished to impose the Latin ritual on them, and terrible massacres
ensued? The anecdotes related at the same epoch by Petrarch to Urban
V leave no doubt about the feeling of the people towards the Latins.
Sometimes they riotously interrupted the Latin services, sometimes they
fumigated the churches frequented by the Latins, and lost no oppor-
tunity of treating them as dogs, “when they could do so with im-
punity. ";
John Cantacuzene, now master of Constantinople (February 1347),
sought to dissipate the justifiable distrust which his alliance with the
Turks had roused against him. Unlike his predecessors, he sent to the
Pope an official embassy to persuade him that, far from favouring the
Turks, he was prepared to fight them, and also to ask that the leader of
the coming crusade might act in concert with him. Clement VI, who
was by no means friendly towards Cantacuzene, gave a vague answer and
promised to send him an embassy, but three years elapsed before he
despatched to Constantinople two Dominicans, one a bishop in Venetia,
the other in Crete, with instructions to negotiate the religious union“.
John VI replied to these overtures by testifying his zeal for the
union, at the same time declaring that only a truly Ecumenical Council
could render it possible. The Pope, on his side, informed him that he
was favourable to holding a council, but that the existing state of Chris-
tendom made it impossible to assemble it”. Relations, however, still
continued between him and the Emperor, but nothing came of them.
p. 79.
1 Gay, op. cit.
2 Gibbons, The Foundation of the Ottoman Empire, p. 132. Gregoras, xxv. 17,
CSHB, p. 41.
3 Petrarch, Senilia, 7 (Gibbons, op. cit. p. 133).
+ Gay, op. cit. pp. 102–109.
6 Gay, op. cit. pp. 110–118. Cantacuzenus, 1v. 9, CSHB, pp. 59–60.
## p. 617 (#659) ############################################
John V Palaeologus
617
Under cover of the civil war between John Cantacuzene and John
Palaeologus, the Ottomans had gained a footing in Europe by the capture
of Gallipoli (1354), and had lost no time in overrunning Thrace. John V,
who held power after the abdication of Cantacuzene (1355), saw no
hope of safety except in complete submission to the Pope. In 1356 he
sent two ambassadors to Avignon with a document in which he pledged
himself to recognise the Pope as head of the Church, to obtain like
recognition from his subjects, to receive the pontifical legates with all
respect, and to send his son Manuel to Rome as a hostage. In return
he claimed prompt aid for Constantinople, of which the Pope would
bear the cost for six months. During that period a legate could go to
Constantinople, and collate whom he wished to ecclesiastical benefices.
As a clearer proof of his zeal the Emperor proposed to found at Con-
stantinople colleges where Latin would be taught, and he recognised the
right of the Pope to declare the throne vacant if he failed to execute his
promises.
Innocent replied to the Emperor by a gushing letter, writing also to
the Patriarch Callistus and the principal bishops, and sent two nuncios
to Constantinople. But, when the question of collecting the required
fleet was broached, the Pope could not obtain anything from the Latin
powers: neither Venice, nor Genoa, nor the King of Cyprus, nor even
the Knights of Rhodes, consented to the slightest sacrifice.
Meantime the position of the Ottomans in the Balkan peninsula
grew stronger day by day. In 1363 Murād compelled John V to sign
a treaty, tantamount to vassalage, which prevented him froin lending his
help to the effort made by the Hungarians and the Serbs, in response
to
the Pope's demand, to recapture Hadrianople. In 1366 Murād actually
took up his residence at Hadrianople, the first step towards the blockade
of Constantinople. At this crisis John V made fresh appeals to the Pope
for help, and, while Urban V preached the crusade, he himself paid a visit
to the King of Hungary towards the close of 1365, in order to remove
the scruples which the king felt in lending his help to schismatics, and to
affirm by oath the intention of himself and all his family to embrace the
Roman faith.
The Crusade, led by Amadeus VI, Count of Savoy, cousin of the
Emperor, succeeded in recovering Gallipoli from the Turks and in
rescuing John V, whose return to Constantinople was in danger of being
cut off by the Bulgarians. The Archbishop of Smyrna and the Latin
Patriarch of Constantinople actually embarked on the fleet of Amadeus VI,
which was returning to the West, with orders to announce to Urban V
that the Emperor would come and abjure the schism before him in
person (1367). Urban V lost no time in writing to the three sons of
the Emperor, to the Empress Helena, to John Cantacuzene (who had
retired to a convent), to the Patriarch Philotheus, to the people and
clergy of Constantinople, to exhort them to favour the union.
CH. XIX.
## p. 618 (#660) ############################################
618
Manuel Palaeologus in the West
On 18 October 1369 John V, received at Rome with the greatest cere-
mony, presented his profession of faith to the cardinals. On 21 October
he solemnly abjured the schism before the Pope on the steps of the basilica
of St Peter. But this was only a personal abjuration, and was not
binding on the Greeks. Thus the voyage of John V to Italy failed to
produce the results anticipated from it. His conduct at Venice ended
in his being thrown into prison for debt, and, when after this humiliation
he passed once more through Rome in 1370, he could not obtain from
the Pope the smallest subsidy.
It was in vain that in 1373 his ambassadors scoured Europe and
actually reached France, where Charles V made them vague promises. In
vain Pope Gregory XI, fully aware of the danger which the Ottomans were
threatening to Europe, wrote urgent letter after letter to the crowned
heads, to Louis, King of Hungary (1372 and 1375), to Edward III, King
of England (1375). The sovereigns and their knights assumed the cross
with stately pomp, for it was a time of splendid festivals and eloquent
speeches; but no profitable results followed. John V, abandoned by all,
had ended in 1373 by acknowledging himself the vassal of Murād and
handing over to him his son Manuel as hostage.
Manuel, who became Emperor in 1391, renewed the same pressing
appeals by embassies to the Western sovereigns. This time the King of
Hungary, Sigismund, directly threatened by the Turks, backed up the
Byzantine demands, and Pope Boniface preached the Crusade which
terminated in the disaster of Nicopolis (1396), although its object had
been the deliverance of Constantinople. In 1397 Manuel sent his uncle
Theodore Cantacuzene to Paris. The King Charles VI refused per-
mission to his brother the Duke of Orleans to start for the East, but
he promised 600 men-at-arms, who were placed under the orders of
Marshal Boucicaut, and succeeded in clearing the immediate approaches
to Constantinople and breaking the blockade.
At the advice of Boucicaut himself, Manuel adopted the policy of
visiting the West personally in order to plead more effectually the cause of
Constantinople. He set out on 10 December 1399, passed through Venice,
Padua, and Milan, made another solemn entry into Paris on 3 June 1400,
landed in England, was received in London on 21 December by Henry
IV, returned to France in February 1401, and remained in Paris until
November 1402. After a stay at Genoa, he went to take ship at Venice
(April 1403), and on 15 June following he was back in Constantinople? .
The Emperor had found everywhere a courteous and splendid
welcome. At Paris and at London, in particular, he and his suite owed
much to their being objects of public curiosity. He was overwhelmed
with banquets; the most complimentary speeches and the fairest promises
were lavished on him. During his stay in Paris he even had a con-
troversy on the Procession of the Holy Ghost with a doctor of the
1 Collected texts by Lambros, Neoshellenomnemon, XIII. pp. 132–133.
## p. 619 (#661) ############################################
The Battle of Angora, 1402
619
Sorbonne, but this was only a showy passage of arms without any results.
As a crowning misfortune, the West was torn by the Schism, and Manuel
appears to have negotiated at the same time with the two Popes,
Benedict XIII and Boniface IX. The latter sent on 27 May 1400 an
encyclical, exhorting all Christians to arm for the defence of Constanti-
nople, and promising them the same indulgences as for a crusade; but
everyone turned a deaf ear to his appeals, and the travels of Manuel
were, when all is summed up, as useless for the cause of the union as for
that of the crusade.
The salvation of Constantinople came from a wholly unexpected
quarter, from the Mongols of Tīmūr. While Manuel was in France
the Ottoman power was broken at the battle of Angora (20 July 1402),
and the dynastic discord which followed the death of Bāyazīd gave some
years of respite to the remnant of the Byzantine Empire. It would
have seemed natural to utilise this lull for negotiating the union and
preparing a new crusade, but this was the period when the civil wars in
France, and even more the Great Schism, distracted the West. Further,
it seems that the easily- 7-won successes of Manuel in the midst of the
Ottoman intrigues had greatly quenched his zeal for the union. From
1402–1417 he took no action in the West, and did not even send a
representative to the Council of Pisa (1409).
It was only when the Turkish menace was renewed that Manuel came
once more into touch with the West. In 1417 he sent to Martin V an
embassy which appeared at the Council of Constance. After the siege
of Constantinople by Murād II (1422) an embassy, headed by John
Palaeologus with Francesco Filelfo as interpreter, went the round of
the Western courts. The Pope Martin V, who was strongly in favour
of the union, proposed that a council should be held in Italy, and offered
100,000 forins to defray the travelling expenses of the Greeks (1423).
The same Pope authorised in 1425 marriage between Greeks and Latins,
and granted indulgences to those who would go to the aid of the Greeks.
Deceived by the friendly attitude of Manuel, he nominated the Cardinal
of Sant'Angelo to be legate at Constantinople, and sent two nuncios to
inform the Emperor of the fact. Manuel, who had just made terms with
Murād II, rejected the proposals of the Pope, and let him understand
that no union was possible before the Ecumenical Council was held (1425).
It is hard to say whether the cynical words, which Phrantzes attributes
to him on his death-bed, can be taken as exact? . He is said to have
recommended his son not to consider the union as anything except a
weapon against the Turks. “Propose,” he said to him, “a council; open
negotiations, but protract them interminably. . . . The pride of the Latins
and the obstinacy of the Greeks will never agree. By wishing to achieve
the union you will only strengthen the schism. ” True or not, these
words define excellently the policy which he had himself followed.
1 Phrantzes, 11, 13.
CH. XIX.
## p. 620 (#662) ############################################
620
The Greeks and the Council of Basle
Nevertheless, the union appeared to all who reflected upon the subject
as an essential condition of salvation for Christian Europe menaced by
the Turks. At Constantinople even, and in the very convents of Mount
Athos, a party of resolute unionists was formed, of which the most
authoritative representatives were Isidore, Igumen of St Demetrius at
Constantinople, and Bessarion, a native of Trebizond, subsequently a
monk in the Morea. The idea of an ecumenical council, which would
finally solve all dogmatic or disciplinary difficulties and put an end to
all misconceptions, is from this time onwards equally popular in the
West and in the East.
In 1431 John VIII Palaeologus sent envoys to the Pope in order to
come to some agreement with him as to holding the council which had
been talked of for more than a century. The Greek clergy would have
preferred it to be held at Constantinople, but the Emperor accepted an
Italian town on condition that the Pope undertook to defray all the
travelling expenses of the Greeks. The envoys on their way learnt of the
death of Martin V and retraced their steps, but a new embassy was sent
to the new Pope, Eugenius IV.
At this moment an Ecumenical Council, called by Martin V before his
death, assembled at Basle to work at the reform of the Church. The
Council of Basle took in hand the problem of the Greeks, and on 19 October
1431 asked the Pope to despatch envoys on this subject to Constanti-
nople. But soon a veritable feud broke out between the Fathers assembled
at Basle and Eugenius IV. The Pope, under pretext of giving satisfaction
to the Greeks, endeavoured to transfer the Council to Italy. In order to
render this transference impossible, the Council of Basle tried to bring
the Greeks to join with it in order to conclude the union. An embassy
from the Council arrived at Constantinople in 1433, charged with in-
forming the Emperor that the Council was superior to the Pope, that it
was under the protection of the Emperor Sigismund, and that if the
Greeks consented to come to Basle they would receive money and troops
for the defence of Constantinople.
The Emperor entertained these proposals favourably, and sent to
Basle his brother Demetrius and the Abbot Isidore. But at the same
time he was exchanging letters and embassies with Eugenius IV. By a
singularly rapid change the legate Christopher Garatoni, sent to Con-
stantinople in 1434, accepted the proposal that the Council should be
held in the imperial city. He returned to Italy with two ambassadors
of John VIII in 1435, and this decision was at once communicated to the
Council of Basle, which formally refused to admit it.
A second deputation, consisting of the Dominican John of Ragusa, a
canon of Constance, and a canon of Orleans, left Basle in 1435. It was
empowered to offer the Emperor financial help, with a first instalment of
9000 Alorins in a bill on the banks of the Medici, on the condition that
the council was held in the West. After a three months' journey the
## p. 621 (#663) ############################################
The Council at Ferrara, 1438
621
mission reached Constantinople 24 September 1435. The Pope's legate
Christopher Garatoni appeared in his turn (1436). Each party then
tried to outbid the other, and to attract the Greeks to its side by offer-
ing the greatest advantages. The Emperor, vacillating as ever, sent
two ambassadors, one, Manuel Bulotes, to the Pope, the other, John
Dishypatus, to Basle.
At the same time the choice of the city where the union was to be
concluded roused violent storms in the Council of Basle. The majority
had fixed on Avignon, the minority, supported by John Dishypatus,
pronounced in favour of Florence or Udine. On the voting-day each
party had prepared its decree and the uproar was so great that it almost
came to blows. A bishop of the minority forcibly seized the seal of the
Council, and, after sealing the decree started off to convey it to the Pope
(7 May 1437).
Eugenius IV, considering the decree of the minority as alone valid,
appointed an embassy to announce the fact at Constantinople. On the
way it took up at Crete 300 archers intended for the defence of the city.
The ambassador of Basle, John of Ragusa, was still there. He was speedily
ignored, and John VIII concluded a treaty with the Pope, who undertook
to put at his disposal the necessary ships and escort.
After six years of wearisome negotiations the Council of Union was
finally convened. In order to invest it with a truly ecumenical character
the Emperor asked the three Eastern Patriarchs to send representatives
to it. The Abbot Isidore, nominated Archbishop of Kiev, was intended to
bring over the Great Prince of Russia, and delegations were secured from
the Prince of Moldo-Wallachia and the Iberian clergy. Conferences of
theologians, in which the partisans and the opponents of the union con-
fronted each other, were assembled in order to discuss the concessions
that could be made to Rome.
John Palaeologus, accompanied by his brother the Despot Demetrius,
by the Patriarch Joseph, seventeen metropolitans, and a large number of
bishops and igumens, left Constantinople on 24 November 1437 and
arrived at Venice on 8 February 1438.
Pope Eugenius IV awaited him
at Ferrara, where the Council was to sit. The most important question,
if we leave aside the preliminary difficulties which emerged at the inter-
view of the Pope with the Patriarch, was to determine the procedure to be
followed. The Emperor, whose thoughts were mainly fixed on the defence
of Constantinople, wished to await the delegates of the princes, in order
to settle first of all the political and military question. But the numerous
theologians of the rival camps did not agree to this. After the opening
of the Council (9 April 1438) commissions were nominated for the pur-
pose of solving the fundamental divergences between the two Churches:
the Procession of the Holy Ghost, the use of unleavened bread, the
nature of the pains of purgatory, the primacy of the Pope.
The opponents of the union, at whose head was Mark of Ephesus,
08. XX.
## p. 622 (#664) ############################################
622
The Council at Florence, 1439
suppress the
demanded that it should first be discussed “whether it is permitted to
add to the Creed,” thinking thus to block the union by this preliminary
question. It was in vain that Bessarion asked that the question should
be put in this form: “is the Filioque lawful? ” The point of view of Mark
of Ephesus prevailed, and on 14 October began a long series of oratorical
sessions, in which Greeks and Latins confuted each other in turn and
quite fruitlessly. The form of a debate by picked opponents was then
tried, but, after a brilliant oratorical tournament which lasted several
days between Mark of Ephesus and Julian Cesarini, the discussion had
inade little advance. Then the plague, which was raging at Ferrara and
had already made several victims in the Council, decided the Pope to
remove the Council to Florence (10 January 1439).
Taught by the experience of Ferrara, the Pope and the Emperor
resolved to quicken the discussions. It was arranged that there should
be a public session three times a week, and that on the other days mixed
commissions should transact preliminaries for the union. But fresh and
endless debates on the Procession of the Holy Ghost began again for a
month between Mark of Ephesus and John of Ragusa. Another change
of method was tried. On 30 March it was decided to
open
discussions, and to substitute conferences between unionists of both sides.
But the negotiations touching the union did not start before 13 April.
After a series of preliminaries, the Greeks ended by agreeing on the
identity of the formula qui ex Patre Filioque procedit, and qui ex Patre
per Filium procedit (3 June). The union was now in sight.
Concurrently with these theological discussions, political harmony
was being promoted. The Pope undertook to preach the crusade for the
defence of Constantinople, to maintain permanently a force of 300 soldiers
to guard the city, and to supply galleys in event of a siege. Then, in order
to accelerate matters, the Pope put into the hands of the Emperor's
delegates schedules, on which were noted the doctrines to be accepted on
the points in dispute. It was their duty to get the Greeks to subscribe to
them.
On 12 June an agreement was reached about the nature of the pains
of purgatory, on 15 June about the eucharistic bread, unleavened or
leavened, on 20 June about the words of consecration. But when the
doctrine of the primacy of the Pope was touched upon, the whole dis-
cussion nearly began de novo. Heated debates were held, and the Em-
peror talked of leaving. Finally, on 26 June Bessarion proposed a formula
of conciliation, which recognised the universal authority of the Pope as
“the representative and vicar of Christ,” the rights and privileges of the
Eastern Churches being reserved. Nothing now was left but to draw up
the decree of union which, translated into Greek, was approved by the
Pope and the Emperor on 5 July. The next day, 6 July, in the
cathedral of Florence, under the dome completed by Brunelleschi in
1436, the decree was read in Latin by Cardinal Julian Cesarini and in
## p. 623 (#665) ############################################
The Union of Florence
623
Greek by Bessarion; the two prelates then kissed each other, and all the
members of the Council, the Emperor at their head, bent the knee before
the Pope.
Finally, after the close of the Council the union was completed by
the declarations of assent which the Eastern Churches sent to the Pope,
each like the Greek Church retaining its liturgical and disciplinary uses.
On 22 November 1439 the union was accepted by the delegates of Con-
stantine, Patriarch of the Armenians, on 5 February 1441 by the Jacobites
of Syria. On 2 September 1441 the Pope received an embassy of Con-
stantine, King of the Ethiopians, and on 25 February 1443 he announced
in an encyclical that the Ethiopians had adhered to the union. Finally,
on 26 April 1442 Eugenius IV promulgated at St John Lateran the
constitutions for the Syrians, the Chaldeans, and the Maronites.
For the first time since 1054 the unity of the Church seemed restored,
and even the last scattered remnants of the heretical sects, most of which
had been separated from the Church since the fifth century, had ended
by returning to the fold. Whereas at the Council of Lyons the union
had been imposed upon the Greek clergy by the will of the Emperor, at
Florence its representatives had come voluntarily to debate with the
Latins. The most obstinate opponents of the union, such as Mark of
Ephesus, had been able to bring forward their objections without fear.
The question seemed settled for all time to come, and Christendom, united
in one and the same communion, would be able to devote itself to the
crusade against the Turks. In order to cement this union more closely,
on 18 December 1439 the Pope admitted Bessarion, Archbishop of Nicaea,
and Isidore, Archbishop of Kiev, to the College of Cardinals.
Unhappily by signing the union at Florence John Palaeologus had only
accomplished a part of his task. It was now necessary to make the clergy
and the people of Constantinople accept it. On his return to his capital
(1 February 1440) the Emperor encountered an obstinate opposition. If
Ducas may be believed', when the Venetian ships with John VIII and his
suite on board entered the Golden Horn, the travellers were greeted with
ribaldry and insults. Many bishops who had subscribed to the decree of
union protested that their signatures had been extracted from them by
force. The Patriarch Joseph had died at Florence, and the Emperor
had to exercise great pressure on the clergy of St Sophia to induce them
to nominate a unionist successor, Metrophanes, Bishop of Cyzicus.
The opposition was led by the Emperor's own brother, the Despot
Demetrius, and notably by Mark of Ephesus, whose submission John VIII,
notwithstanding the solicitations of the Pope, had not succeeded in ob-
taining. Mark soon became very popular and was venerated as a saint.
He began a very active campaign against the union in the monasteries
of Constantinople and on Mount Athos, where the monks refused to
1 Ducas, 31 (MPG, clvii. col. 1013).
CH. XIX.
## p. 624 (#666) ############################################
624
Byzantine opposition to the Union
communicate with the unionists. In the end Mark was ordered to return
to his diocese of Ephesus. Imprisoned in the island of Lemnos, he con-
tinued his propaganda and won over to his views the Emperor's private
secretary, George Scholarius, who had faithfully served the Council.
In order that the union might triumph at Constantinople, the
Western Crusade, on which it had been conditional, ought to have been
rapidly organised, and ought to have won sufficiently decisive victories to
release Constantinople from the grip of the Turks. In spite of the dis-
turbed condition of the East the Pope tried to keep his promise so far
as possible. In 1443 an army commanded by Cardinal Julian Cesarini
joined forces with John Hunyadi and Vladislav I, King of Hungary. The
Sultan Murād II suffered a sanguinary defeat before Niš. On 24 Decem-
ber 1443 the crusaders entered Sofia: the road to Constantinople was
open. Unfortunately the leaders of the Crusade were unable to follow up
their victory. On 15 July John Hunyadi signed a truce with Murād.
Julian Cesarini refused to recognise it. The crusaders continued their
march in Bulgaria, but the disaster that befel them at Varna on 10 Novem-
ber 1444 wrecked all the hopes of Christendom. Constantinople was
nearing its death-throes.
This serious defeat and the death of John VIII (31 October 1448) in-
creased the boldness of the opponents of the union. The new Emperor,
Constantine XI, brother of John VIII, had been one of its most deter-
mined partisans. George Scholarius dared to propose that his corona-
tion should be deferred until he had given pledges for his orthodoxy.
Threatened with prosecution, George took refuge in a monastery, and
under the name of Gennadius succeeded Mark of Ephesus, who died in
1447, as head of the opponents of the union.
Under his influence an anti-unionist council, at which the three
Eastern Patriarchs were present, assembled in St Sophia in 14501. The
Patriarch Gregory, elected since 1443, was cited to appear there to justify
himself, and on his refusal he was deposed and replaced by the monk
Athanasius. Gemistos Plethon violently attacked the Latin doctrine of
the Holy Ghost, denounced the pressure which the Emperor had brought
to bear on the bishops to force them to admit it, and resisted the
ambitious schemes of Bessarion. A list of Latin errors was drawn up
in twenty-nine articles and published. The Patriarch Gregory was
obliged to fly to Italy.
At the moment when the blockade of Constantinople was tightening
again, and on the eve of the accession of Mahomet II, no demonstration
could be more inopportune. On 11 October 1451 Pope Nicholas V called
upon Constantine XII to proclaim solemnly the union at Constantinople,
to bring back the Patriarch Gregory, and to compel the clergy to mention
1 The exact date is uncertain. Mansi, Concilia, xiii, 1365 seq. Vast, Le Cardinal
Bessarion, p. 133.
## p. 625 (#667) ############################################
Fall of Constantinople
625
the name of the Pope in the liturgy. The decree was brought to Con-
stantinople by Cardinal Isidore of Kiev in 1452. He negotiated with
the opposing party, lavished promises and threats, and ended by bringing
over part of the superior clergy.
Finally, on 12 December 1452 the union was solemnly proclaimed in
St Sophia in the presence of Constantine, the legate, and the Patriarch
Gregory, who officiated together with the assistance of 300 priests. But
the infuriated populace rushed to the monastery of Pantokrator, where
they found written by Gennadius on the door of his cell a prophecy
which threatened the Empire with its coming slavery to the Turks. In
that fanatical crowd, already attacked by what has been called “siege-
fever," the conviction spread that the Panagia (the Virgin) would herself
defend her city, as in the times of Heraclius and of Photius. While
the crowd was shouting in the streets “Death to the Azymites ! ” the
Grand Duke Lucas Notaras declared that he would rather see the turban
at Constantinople than the hat of a Roman cardinal. Henceforward
the church of St Sophia, where the union had been proclaimed, was
deserted by the people, and remained empty until that gloomy vigil of
28 May 1453 which preceded the capture of Constantinople.
Obliged to choose between the safety of the Empire and the autonomy
of their Church, the Greeks resolutely sacrificed their political inde-
pendence to their hatred of the West and to their antipathy to Rome.
There is no doubt that their attitude diminished the good-will of the
Western nations, as is proved by a curious question put to the Pope on
the point, whether a Christian had the right to go to the assistance of
schismatic Greeks'. Besides this, the new régime which the Greek
Church was about to experience had already been working for many
years in the provinces occupied by the Turks. The bishops, nominated
by the Patriarchs, were everywhere recognised by the conquerors as the
civil and religious heads of the Christian community? Mahomet II
therefore had no difficulty in extending this régime to the whole Empire
by requiring, immediately after his entry into Byzantium, the election
of a new Patriarch; this was Gennadius, the leader of the opponents of
the union.
Thus for four centuries the Byzantine Emperors and the Popes
indefatigably laboured to stay the schism which divided Christendom
since 1054. Whether their object was to conclude an alliance against
a common enemy, or to make Constantinople a rampart against Asiatic
invasion, the necessity of first attaining religious union always thwarted
their wish for agreement.
1 Jorga, Notices et extraits pour servir à l'histoire des croisades au xve siècle,
4th series, p. 46.
Jorga, op. cit. pp. 32-34 (extraits d'un rapport daté de 1436 sur les rapports
entre les Turcs et l'Eglise grecque).
2
C. MED. H. VOL. IV. CH. XIX.
40
## p. 626 (#668) ############################################
626
Conclusion
This much-desired union was, in truth, the ambition of the Christian
policy of the last four centuries of the Middle Ages, but to the reasons
for its failure, which the analysis of the facts has shewn, we must add a
more profound cause. The Christian policy, the European policy we
might say, which surpassed in breadth the narrow standpoint of the
territorial policy of the various states, was clearly grasped only by the
great Popes of the Middle Ages, such as Gregory VII, Innocent III,
Gregory X, and by Byzantine Emperors such as Alexius I, Manuel Com-
nenus, and Michael Palaeologus; but their views were different and their
interests irreconcilable. The Caesars of Byzantium, at least until Manuel
Comnenus, cherished the illusive hope of regaining the heritage of the
Caesars of Rome; for them the union was but a means of rebuilding
their sovereignty in the West, or of saving it in the East. The Popes,
on their side, saw in the union under them the unity of the restored
Church, a Christendom united in one communion and forgetting its
private quarrels, which were veritable civil wars, in order to repel the
infidel and make the whole world the kingdom of Christ.
Between these two conceptions agreement was impossible, and this
explains why the union could only be realised in periods of crisis, whether
by violent conquest as in 1204, or in the face of an imminent peril as
in 1274 or in 1439. On the contrary, every time the situation improved
the pontifical doctrine and the imperial doctrine came into conflict,
without any real hope of conciliation. .
It is thus easy to see why the union, realised at three separate
times, had on each occasion so ephemeral an existence. The abnormal
conditions in which it was concluded doomed it to early failure. In 1204
the union imposed by force lighted in the heart of the Greeks an un-
quenchable hatred. The union of 1274 was tainted in its core by the
violent pressure which Michael Palaeologus brought to bear on his clergy.
The union of 1439, although debated by an Ecumenical Council, came
too late. When the house is blazing it is too late to settle disputes
about ways of preventing fire.
## p. 627 (#669) ############################################
627
CHAPTER XX.
THE MONGOLS.
In attempting to give an account of the Mongols, the historian is
confronted with many serious obstacles. At the outset, it would seem as
though the stories of these wandering tribes could never be co-ordinated ;
the incidents of their history are so heterogeneous in character, that it
seems an impossible task to pick out a connecting thread running through
them all. The internal events, which should assist the historian in tracing
the development and confederation of the various tribes, baffle and retard
him. The early history is shrouded in myth and mystery. At so late an
epoch in the progress of humanity, the student might not unreasonably
expect trustworthy evidence and records. But, in reviewing the early period
of the Mongolian State, it is a matter of exceptional importance to
separate the historical elements from the fictitious, and this is a task
involving much discrimination and patience. Every piece of information
seems, on its own merits and taken by itself, to be petty and negligible ;
nor is it easy to discover any positive relation of any consequence between
disconnected and sporadic occurrences. There are no central figures, no
outstanding personalities, before the time of Jenghiz. The darkness is
broken by no brilliant flashes but only by tiny gleams that serve but to
intensify the obscurity. We cannot mark cause and effect; we cannot ex-
plain, by the recognised canons of historical judgment, the phenomena
displayed by the Mongol history. On the other hand, if the events of
their internal progress are sporadic and disconnected, if they seem to
violate the normal course of national growth, when we come to examine
the external events and the expansion of these savage tribes, we find
ourselves confronted by facts that are equally inexplicable. Insignificant
at home and enormous abroad may be said to sum their salient
characteristics, in any case during the earlier periods. It is precisely on
account of their foreign relations that a knowledge of the Mongols is
essential to the student. Without their effect on the human race outside
their borders, the Mongols could be suffered to remain in obscurity.
The difficulties that await the investigator are not exhausted. He has
to work with a telescope instead of a microscope. Not only has a vast
extent of territory to be kept under constant observation, but movements
and actions among neighbouring peoples must be watched closely. The
history of the Mongols knows no geographical boundaries. The settled
CH. XX.
4042
## p. 628 (#670) ############################################
628
Extent of the Mongol invasions
limits of nations were swiftly and ruthlessly overthrown. Unchecked by
human valour, they were able to overcome the terrors of vast deserts, the
barriers of mountains and seas, the severities of climate, and the ravages
of famine and pestilence. No dangers could appal them, no stronghold
could resist them, no prayer for mercy could move them. Wherever their
fancy roamed, their hordes followed. Flourishing cities perished in a night,
leaving no memorial but ruins and mounds of piled-up corpses. The
quiet that followed the Mongol invasions was not the calm that settled on
a world wearied of strife, eager to foster once again the fruits of civilisation:
it was the gasp of expiring nations in their death-agony, before the eternal
silence of the tomb. They made their deserts and they called it peace.
To follow the destinies of the Mongols, it is necessary to think in con-
tinents not in countries, for like an irresistible torrent the armies of the
Khans swept over the map of Asia and Europe. A knowledge of no
single language will suffice to equip a student for the task of investigating
the Mongol races with any profundity. Besides the Tartar languages,
some acquaintance is essential with the languages of the peoples with whom
the Mongols came into contact. Their armies ranged over all Central
Asia, pushing on eastwards to China and westwards to Russia and even
to Germany. As a result, the student must be prepared to deal with
sources in many tongues, and with more freedom and greater facility than
is the case when dealing with other nations.
But if this combination of circumstances invests a study of the Mongols
with difficulty, it constitutes an equally potent reason for undertaking the
task. We are confronted with a new power in history, with a force that
was to bring to an abrupt end, as a deus ex machina, many dramas that
would otherwise have ended in a deadlock, or would have dragged on an
interminable course. The very magnitude of the Mongol influence and
the colossal area of their operations should prove an additional incentive
to the student, and render an attempt to estimate the nature and scope
of the changes which ensued alike attractive and fruitful.
In Europe the Mongols overran Russia, Hungary, and Silesia; to the
upheaval which they brought about, the establishment of the Turkish
Empire, and consequently the growth of the Renaissance, must be directly
attributed. This same upheaval reacted on the contests between Saracen
and Crusader and, nearer home, on the antagonism of the Papacy and the
Empire. The extermination of the Assassins (1256), a task beyond the
power of Europe or Syria, was a matter of comparative ease to the Mongols.
Before the terror which their name inspired, Europe seemed utterly
demoralised and incapable of resistance, and, had not the Mamlūks in-
tervened (1260) and beaten back the invaders at a critical moment, there
is little doubt but that a great portion of Europe would have succumbed to
Tartar rule.
The convulsion caused by the Mongols in Europe, great though it was,
cannot be compared to that produced in Asia. The destruction of Baghdad
## p. 629 (#671) ############################################
Unification of Asia
629
and the overthrow of the Caliphate (1258), the annihilation of the Kin
or Golden Dynasty which ruled the northern half of China (1234), the
conquest of Southern China, of Khwārazm, Persia, and the surrounding
countries, the establishment of the rule of the Moguls in India, are some
of the events any of which alone would suffice to make a knowledge of
the Mongol power indispensable to the general historian. It is not accurate
to regard the Mongols merely as a ravaging horde. After sacking Baghdad,
Hūlāgū founded an observatory; after conquering China, Kublai es-
tablished a university at Cambalu (Pekin). The “scourge of God” does
not smite blindly. It is a noteworthy phenomenon that a successful
barbarian attack on civilisation, however destructive be its ravages at the
moment, is ultimately followed by a great revival, and this revival may
often be traced to the very catastrophe which seemed destined to
overwhelm culture in irretrievable ruin. In the sphere of religion, this
may be observed by the Assyrian (B. C. 587) and Roman (A. D. 70) conquests
of Judaea, which, in the end, created and strengthened the diaspora and
made the outer world acquainted with the moral teachings of the
Pentateuch and Prophets. In the spheres of the arts and humanities,
the Roman conquest of Greece, the Turkish conquest of the Byzantine
Empire, are instances which go to prove how the accumulated stores of
learning may be released and rendered accessible to a wider circle. The
Arab conquest of Spain gave the light of science, medicine, philosophy,
and poetry to Europe in the Dark Ages. The capture of Jerusalem led
directly to the establishment of the schools in Jamnia, the ruthless perse-
cution of Hadrian produced the academies of Babylon, and“ on the day
when the Temple was destroyed, the Messiah was born. ”
The same statement may be made of the Mongols. The fall of Baghdad
transferred the seat of the humanities to Egypt. At the same time it
dispersed many scholars and humanists who survived the debacle. Their
dispersion throughout the Muslim lands brought academic strength to
the places where they settled, while the removal of the literary centre of
gravity from Baghdad to Cairo facilitated the access of the Western world
to the culture of the Orient. But, apart from mere negative results, the
growth of the Mongol power was responsible for other developments in
the East. The first and foremost of these was the unification of Asia.
This must not be interpreted in the modern sense of political unity or
homogeneity. The Mongol government secured tranquillity within its
vast borders. The roads were open and a traveller could, as things went,
count upon a safe journey, unless he had the misfortune to pass within
range of the Emperor's funeral cortège, in which case his fate was death.
There was complete religious toleration, and it is only a superficial judg-
ment that will ascribe this to spiritual indifference on the part of the
Mongols. Economic changes were also introduced; thus the service of posts,
· The later Mogul Emperors hated, and tried to disown, their Mongol origin.
CH. XX.
## p. 630 (#672) ############################################
630
Mongol and Tartar
though utilised by the Arabs previously, was largely increased, and the use
of paper money was sanctioned by Gaikhātū Khan in 1294 and previously
by Kublai. No nation can claim to excel in every branch of human activity,
and the deficiency of the Mongols in the domain of literature was made
good in other directions.
It is necessary to begin a sketch of the Mongols with a brief account
of their origin, and an explanation or rather an enumeration of the names
by which they are known.
proposals of union lay in a different quarter.
It may be said that it was during the long and disastrous reign of
Andronicus II (1282–1332) that the fate of Byzantium was sealed.
Religious disputes, ravages by the Catalan Company, Turkish invasions
of Asia Minor, civil war, all these calamities burst almost at once over
the Empire. Andronicus by his incompetence and invertebrate policy
destroyed the fabric reared by his father. It is not then surprising that
he could not maintain to the end the uncompromising attitude which he
had adopted towards the Latins.
In 1323, learning that a French fleet in the service of the Pope, com-
manded by Amaury de Narbonne, was on the point of setting sail for
Constantinople, he sent to the West the Genoese Bishop of Kaffa to pro-
pose a new union. Soon after, in 1326, he commissioned another Genoese
to bear a letter on the same subject to the King of France, Charles the
Fair. The king sent to Constantinople the Dominican Benedict of Como,
but the negotiations were kept secret, and Andronicus was compelled to
adinit to the ambassador how difficult it would be to propose a new union
to the Greeks'.
Meantime the Ottoman State, which had been allowed to form owing
to the weakness of Andronicus II, was becoming more and more a menace
to Constantinople. In 1334 Andronicus III became anxious, and sent over-
tures of union to Pope John XXII by two Dominicans who were returning
from the Tartars. The Pope gave them a favourable hearing and sent
them back to Constantinople, but they were unable to discuss the matter
publicly with the Greek clergy as they demanded.
In 1335, as a proof of his good will, Andronicus III consented to take
part in the Crusade organised by Benedict XII under the leadership of the
i Paris, Archives Nationales; Trésor des Chartes. See Omont, Bibliothèque de
ľ École des Chartes, 1892, p. 254.
## p. 615 (#657) ############################################
Clement VI and union
615
ביי
King of France. Finally in 1339 the Emperor sent secretly to Avignon
the Venetian Stephen Dandolo, and one of the most celebrated humanists
of Constantinople, the Calabrian monk Barlaam, Abbot of the Soter.
But these emissaries had not even official letters accrediting them to the
Pope. They had the difficult mission of inducing Benedict XII to pro-
inise the despatch of prompt aid to the East. It was only subsequently
that there could be any question of union. Barlaam pleaded his case
eloquently. “That which separates the Greeks from you,” he said, not
without justification, “is not so much the difference of dogmas as the
hatred they feel against the Latins, provoked by the wrongs which they
on their side have suffered. It will be necessary to confer some great
benefit upon them to change this feeling. " He added that the union
could not be effected by force; only a General Council could establish it,
and if the Greeks had not recognised the Council of Lyons it was because
the Greek emissaries had been appointed by the Emperor and not by the
Patriarchs of the East? . Barlaam had thus outlined the programme of
the future council which was intended to effect the union, but this idea
was so far premature, and the Pope offered an invincible opposition to
every argument. The despatch of Western help must in his view be
conditional on the recognition by the Greeks of the Council of Lyons.
The whole matter went no further than the exchange of fine promises.
There existed, however, at Constantinople a party favourable to the
union, which centred round the Empress Anne of Savoy and the nobles
of her country whom she had brought to Constantinople in 1326'.
Having become regent in the name of her son John V Palaeologus after
the death of Andronicus III in 1341, Anne of Savoy sent to Pope
Clement VI in the autumn of 1343 a gentleman of Savoy, Philip de
Saint-Germain, bearing instructions from the regent and the Grand Duke
Alexius Apocaucus. He was commissioned to express to the Pope the
attachment of the regent and of her son John V to the Roman Church,
and to pray for the despatch of a fleet and an army to defend Constan-
tinople against the attacks of the Turks, as well as against those of their
ally John Cantacuzene, who had proclaimed himself Emperor“.
Clement VI was extremely favourable to the union. In 1343 he was
occupied in organising with the help of Venice the naval league which
ended in the recapture of Smyrna from the Turks (1344). He wrote to
the Latin Patriarch Henry, who resided at Negropont, to the Dominicans
of Pera, and to the Venetian and Genoese colonies of Constantinople, to
invite them to exert all their efforts towards preparing the union. In
spite of his friendly inclinations, the Pope held the same point of view as
1 Gay, Le pape Clément VI et les affaires d'Orient, pp. 49–50.
? Ib. p. 115.
3 Ib. p. 46.
4 Ib. p. 47. These instructions are known from the answers of Clement VI
(21 and 23 Oct. 1342) and from Johu Cantacuzenus, III. 87, CSHB, p. 359.
CH. XIX.
## p. 616 (#658) ############################################
616
John VI Cantacuzene
his predecessors; the despatch of assistance must be conditional on the
abjuration of the schism.
At the time of the ill-starred Crusade of the Archipelago in 1346,
the heir to the Dauphiné, Humbert, treated with the regent, and the
question between them was the union of the Churches, but nothing
occurred beyond conversations, and the occupation of the island of Chios
by the Genoese only exacerbated the Greeks.
Meanwhile Western politicians regarded the union as more and more
desirable. When the prince Humbert, a disillusioned man, entered
the Dominican order, he founded scholarships at the University of
Paris, and reserved many of them for students belonging by birth to
“Greece and the Holy Land," whom he destined to teach Greek in the
convents of the Dominicans (1349)'. But these good intentions were
powerless before the hatred which divided the Greeks from the Western
nations. There were incessant conflicts in the countries still occupied by
the Latins. In 1364 the Greeks of Candia rose against the Venetians,
who wished to impose the Latin ritual on them, and terrible massacres
ensued? The anecdotes related at the same epoch by Petrarch to Urban
V leave no doubt about the feeling of the people towards the Latins.
Sometimes they riotously interrupted the Latin services, sometimes they
fumigated the churches frequented by the Latins, and lost no oppor-
tunity of treating them as dogs, “when they could do so with im-
punity. ";
John Cantacuzene, now master of Constantinople (February 1347),
sought to dissipate the justifiable distrust which his alliance with the
Turks had roused against him. Unlike his predecessors, he sent to the
Pope an official embassy to persuade him that, far from favouring the
Turks, he was prepared to fight them, and also to ask that the leader of
the coming crusade might act in concert with him. Clement VI, who
was by no means friendly towards Cantacuzene, gave a vague answer and
promised to send him an embassy, but three years elapsed before he
despatched to Constantinople two Dominicans, one a bishop in Venetia,
the other in Crete, with instructions to negotiate the religious union“.
John VI replied to these overtures by testifying his zeal for the
union, at the same time declaring that only a truly Ecumenical Council
could render it possible. The Pope, on his side, informed him that he
was favourable to holding a council, but that the existing state of Chris-
tendom made it impossible to assemble it”. Relations, however, still
continued between him and the Emperor, but nothing came of them.
p. 79.
1 Gay, op. cit.
2 Gibbons, The Foundation of the Ottoman Empire, p. 132. Gregoras, xxv. 17,
CSHB, p. 41.
3 Petrarch, Senilia, 7 (Gibbons, op. cit. p. 133).
+ Gay, op. cit. pp. 102–109.
6 Gay, op. cit. pp. 110–118. Cantacuzenus, 1v. 9, CSHB, pp. 59–60.
## p. 617 (#659) ############################################
John V Palaeologus
617
Under cover of the civil war between John Cantacuzene and John
Palaeologus, the Ottomans had gained a footing in Europe by the capture
of Gallipoli (1354), and had lost no time in overrunning Thrace. John V,
who held power after the abdication of Cantacuzene (1355), saw no
hope of safety except in complete submission to the Pope. In 1356 he
sent two ambassadors to Avignon with a document in which he pledged
himself to recognise the Pope as head of the Church, to obtain like
recognition from his subjects, to receive the pontifical legates with all
respect, and to send his son Manuel to Rome as a hostage. In return
he claimed prompt aid for Constantinople, of which the Pope would
bear the cost for six months. During that period a legate could go to
Constantinople, and collate whom he wished to ecclesiastical benefices.
As a clearer proof of his zeal the Emperor proposed to found at Con-
stantinople colleges where Latin would be taught, and he recognised the
right of the Pope to declare the throne vacant if he failed to execute his
promises.
Innocent replied to the Emperor by a gushing letter, writing also to
the Patriarch Callistus and the principal bishops, and sent two nuncios
to Constantinople. But, when the question of collecting the required
fleet was broached, the Pope could not obtain anything from the Latin
powers: neither Venice, nor Genoa, nor the King of Cyprus, nor even
the Knights of Rhodes, consented to the slightest sacrifice.
Meantime the position of the Ottomans in the Balkan peninsula
grew stronger day by day. In 1363 Murād compelled John V to sign
a treaty, tantamount to vassalage, which prevented him froin lending his
help to the effort made by the Hungarians and the Serbs, in response
to
the Pope's demand, to recapture Hadrianople. In 1366 Murād actually
took up his residence at Hadrianople, the first step towards the blockade
of Constantinople. At this crisis John V made fresh appeals to the Pope
for help, and, while Urban V preached the crusade, he himself paid a visit
to the King of Hungary towards the close of 1365, in order to remove
the scruples which the king felt in lending his help to schismatics, and to
affirm by oath the intention of himself and all his family to embrace the
Roman faith.
The Crusade, led by Amadeus VI, Count of Savoy, cousin of the
Emperor, succeeded in recovering Gallipoli from the Turks and in
rescuing John V, whose return to Constantinople was in danger of being
cut off by the Bulgarians. The Archbishop of Smyrna and the Latin
Patriarch of Constantinople actually embarked on the fleet of Amadeus VI,
which was returning to the West, with orders to announce to Urban V
that the Emperor would come and abjure the schism before him in
person (1367). Urban V lost no time in writing to the three sons of
the Emperor, to the Empress Helena, to John Cantacuzene (who had
retired to a convent), to the Patriarch Philotheus, to the people and
clergy of Constantinople, to exhort them to favour the union.
CH. XIX.
## p. 618 (#660) ############################################
618
Manuel Palaeologus in the West
On 18 October 1369 John V, received at Rome with the greatest cere-
mony, presented his profession of faith to the cardinals. On 21 October
he solemnly abjured the schism before the Pope on the steps of the basilica
of St Peter. But this was only a personal abjuration, and was not
binding on the Greeks. Thus the voyage of John V to Italy failed to
produce the results anticipated from it. His conduct at Venice ended
in his being thrown into prison for debt, and, when after this humiliation
he passed once more through Rome in 1370, he could not obtain from
the Pope the smallest subsidy.
It was in vain that in 1373 his ambassadors scoured Europe and
actually reached France, where Charles V made them vague promises. In
vain Pope Gregory XI, fully aware of the danger which the Ottomans were
threatening to Europe, wrote urgent letter after letter to the crowned
heads, to Louis, King of Hungary (1372 and 1375), to Edward III, King
of England (1375). The sovereigns and their knights assumed the cross
with stately pomp, for it was a time of splendid festivals and eloquent
speeches; but no profitable results followed. John V, abandoned by all,
had ended in 1373 by acknowledging himself the vassal of Murād and
handing over to him his son Manuel as hostage.
Manuel, who became Emperor in 1391, renewed the same pressing
appeals by embassies to the Western sovereigns. This time the King of
Hungary, Sigismund, directly threatened by the Turks, backed up the
Byzantine demands, and Pope Boniface preached the Crusade which
terminated in the disaster of Nicopolis (1396), although its object had
been the deliverance of Constantinople. In 1397 Manuel sent his uncle
Theodore Cantacuzene to Paris. The King Charles VI refused per-
mission to his brother the Duke of Orleans to start for the East, but
he promised 600 men-at-arms, who were placed under the orders of
Marshal Boucicaut, and succeeded in clearing the immediate approaches
to Constantinople and breaking the blockade.
At the advice of Boucicaut himself, Manuel adopted the policy of
visiting the West personally in order to plead more effectually the cause of
Constantinople. He set out on 10 December 1399, passed through Venice,
Padua, and Milan, made another solemn entry into Paris on 3 June 1400,
landed in England, was received in London on 21 December by Henry
IV, returned to France in February 1401, and remained in Paris until
November 1402. After a stay at Genoa, he went to take ship at Venice
(April 1403), and on 15 June following he was back in Constantinople? .
The Emperor had found everywhere a courteous and splendid
welcome. At Paris and at London, in particular, he and his suite owed
much to their being objects of public curiosity. He was overwhelmed
with banquets; the most complimentary speeches and the fairest promises
were lavished on him. During his stay in Paris he even had a con-
troversy on the Procession of the Holy Ghost with a doctor of the
1 Collected texts by Lambros, Neoshellenomnemon, XIII. pp. 132–133.
## p. 619 (#661) ############################################
The Battle of Angora, 1402
619
Sorbonne, but this was only a showy passage of arms without any results.
As a crowning misfortune, the West was torn by the Schism, and Manuel
appears to have negotiated at the same time with the two Popes,
Benedict XIII and Boniface IX. The latter sent on 27 May 1400 an
encyclical, exhorting all Christians to arm for the defence of Constanti-
nople, and promising them the same indulgences as for a crusade; but
everyone turned a deaf ear to his appeals, and the travels of Manuel
were, when all is summed up, as useless for the cause of the union as for
that of the crusade.
The salvation of Constantinople came from a wholly unexpected
quarter, from the Mongols of Tīmūr. While Manuel was in France
the Ottoman power was broken at the battle of Angora (20 July 1402),
and the dynastic discord which followed the death of Bāyazīd gave some
years of respite to the remnant of the Byzantine Empire. It would
have seemed natural to utilise this lull for negotiating the union and
preparing a new crusade, but this was the period when the civil wars in
France, and even more the Great Schism, distracted the West. Further,
it seems that the easily- 7-won successes of Manuel in the midst of the
Ottoman intrigues had greatly quenched his zeal for the union. From
1402–1417 he took no action in the West, and did not even send a
representative to the Council of Pisa (1409).
It was only when the Turkish menace was renewed that Manuel came
once more into touch with the West. In 1417 he sent to Martin V an
embassy which appeared at the Council of Constance. After the siege
of Constantinople by Murād II (1422) an embassy, headed by John
Palaeologus with Francesco Filelfo as interpreter, went the round of
the Western courts. The Pope Martin V, who was strongly in favour
of the union, proposed that a council should be held in Italy, and offered
100,000 forins to defray the travelling expenses of the Greeks (1423).
The same Pope authorised in 1425 marriage between Greeks and Latins,
and granted indulgences to those who would go to the aid of the Greeks.
Deceived by the friendly attitude of Manuel, he nominated the Cardinal
of Sant'Angelo to be legate at Constantinople, and sent two nuncios to
inform the Emperor of the fact. Manuel, who had just made terms with
Murād II, rejected the proposals of the Pope, and let him understand
that no union was possible before the Ecumenical Council was held (1425).
It is hard to say whether the cynical words, which Phrantzes attributes
to him on his death-bed, can be taken as exact? . He is said to have
recommended his son not to consider the union as anything except a
weapon against the Turks. “Propose,” he said to him, “a council; open
negotiations, but protract them interminably. . . . The pride of the Latins
and the obstinacy of the Greeks will never agree. By wishing to achieve
the union you will only strengthen the schism. ” True or not, these
words define excellently the policy which he had himself followed.
1 Phrantzes, 11, 13.
CH. XIX.
## p. 620 (#662) ############################################
620
The Greeks and the Council of Basle
Nevertheless, the union appeared to all who reflected upon the subject
as an essential condition of salvation for Christian Europe menaced by
the Turks. At Constantinople even, and in the very convents of Mount
Athos, a party of resolute unionists was formed, of which the most
authoritative representatives were Isidore, Igumen of St Demetrius at
Constantinople, and Bessarion, a native of Trebizond, subsequently a
monk in the Morea. The idea of an ecumenical council, which would
finally solve all dogmatic or disciplinary difficulties and put an end to
all misconceptions, is from this time onwards equally popular in the
West and in the East.
In 1431 John VIII Palaeologus sent envoys to the Pope in order to
come to some agreement with him as to holding the council which had
been talked of for more than a century. The Greek clergy would have
preferred it to be held at Constantinople, but the Emperor accepted an
Italian town on condition that the Pope undertook to defray all the
travelling expenses of the Greeks. The envoys on their way learnt of the
death of Martin V and retraced their steps, but a new embassy was sent
to the new Pope, Eugenius IV.
At this moment an Ecumenical Council, called by Martin V before his
death, assembled at Basle to work at the reform of the Church. The
Council of Basle took in hand the problem of the Greeks, and on 19 October
1431 asked the Pope to despatch envoys on this subject to Constanti-
nople. But soon a veritable feud broke out between the Fathers assembled
at Basle and Eugenius IV. The Pope, under pretext of giving satisfaction
to the Greeks, endeavoured to transfer the Council to Italy. In order to
render this transference impossible, the Council of Basle tried to bring
the Greeks to join with it in order to conclude the union. An embassy
from the Council arrived at Constantinople in 1433, charged with in-
forming the Emperor that the Council was superior to the Pope, that it
was under the protection of the Emperor Sigismund, and that if the
Greeks consented to come to Basle they would receive money and troops
for the defence of Constantinople.
The Emperor entertained these proposals favourably, and sent to
Basle his brother Demetrius and the Abbot Isidore. But at the same
time he was exchanging letters and embassies with Eugenius IV. By a
singularly rapid change the legate Christopher Garatoni, sent to Con-
stantinople in 1434, accepted the proposal that the Council should be
held in the imperial city. He returned to Italy with two ambassadors
of John VIII in 1435, and this decision was at once communicated to the
Council of Basle, which formally refused to admit it.
A second deputation, consisting of the Dominican John of Ragusa, a
canon of Constance, and a canon of Orleans, left Basle in 1435. It was
empowered to offer the Emperor financial help, with a first instalment of
9000 Alorins in a bill on the banks of the Medici, on the condition that
the council was held in the West. After a three months' journey the
## p. 621 (#663) ############################################
The Council at Ferrara, 1438
621
mission reached Constantinople 24 September 1435. The Pope's legate
Christopher Garatoni appeared in his turn (1436). Each party then
tried to outbid the other, and to attract the Greeks to its side by offer-
ing the greatest advantages. The Emperor, vacillating as ever, sent
two ambassadors, one, Manuel Bulotes, to the Pope, the other, John
Dishypatus, to Basle.
At the same time the choice of the city where the union was to be
concluded roused violent storms in the Council of Basle. The majority
had fixed on Avignon, the minority, supported by John Dishypatus,
pronounced in favour of Florence or Udine. On the voting-day each
party had prepared its decree and the uproar was so great that it almost
came to blows. A bishop of the minority forcibly seized the seal of the
Council, and, after sealing the decree started off to convey it to the Pope
(7 May 1437).
Eugenius IV, considering the decree of the minority as alone valid,
appointed an embassy to announce the fact at Constantinople. On the
way it took up at Crete 300 archers intended for the defence of the city.
The ambassador of Basle, John of Ragusa, was still there. He was speedily
ignored, and John VIII concluded a treaty with the Pope, who undertook
to put at his disposal the necessary ships and escort.
After six years of wearisome negotiations the Council of Union was
finally convened. In order to invest it with a truly ecumenical character
the Emperor asked the three Eastern Patriarchs to send representatives
to it. The Abbot Isidore, nominated Archbishop of Kiev, was intended to
bring over the Great Prince of Russia, and delegations were secured from
the Prince of Moldo-Wallachia and the Iberian clergy. Conferences of
theologians, in which the partisans and the opponents of the union con-
fronted each other, were assembled in order to discuss the concessions
that could be made to Rome.
John Palaeologus, accompanied by his brother the Despot Demetrius,
by the Patriarch Joseph, seventeen metropolitans, and a large number of
bishops and igumens, left Constantinople on 24 November 1437 and
arrived at Venice on 8 February 1438.
Pope Eugenius IV awaited him
at Ferrara, where the Council was to sit. The most important question,
if we leave aside the preliminary difficulties which emerged at the inter-
view of the Pope with the Patriarch, was to determine the procedure to be
followed. The Emperor, whose thoughts were mainly fixed on the defence
of Constantinople, wished to await the delegates of the princes, in order
to settle first of all the political and military question. But the numerous
theologians of the rival camps did not agree to this. After the opening
of the Council (9 April 1438) commissions were nominated for the pur-
pose of solving the fundamental divergences between the two Churches:
the Procession of the Holy Ghost, the use of unleavened bread, the
nature of the pains of purgatory, the primacy of the Pope.
The opponents of the union, at whose head was Mark of Ephesus,
08. XX.
## p. 622 (#664) ############################################
622
The Council at Florence, 1439
suppress the
demanded that it should first be discussed “whether it is permitted to
add to the Creed,” thinking thus to block the union by this preliminary
question. It was in vain that Bessarion asked that the question should
be put in this form: “is the Filioque lawful? ” The point of view of Mark
of Ephesus prevailed, and on 14 October began a long series of oratorical
sessions, in which Greeks and Latins confuted each other in turn and
quite fruitlessly. The form of a debate by picked opponents was then
tried, but, after a brilliant oratorical tournament which lasted several
days between Mark of Ephesus and Julian Cesarini, the discussion had
inade little advance. Then the plague, which was raging at Ferrara and
had already made several victims in the Council, decided the Pope to
remove the Council to Florence (10 January 1439).
Taught by the experience of Ferrara, the Pope and the Emperor
resolved to quicken the discussions. It was arranged that there should
be a public session three times a week, and that on the other days mixed
commissions should transact preliminaries for the union. But fresh and
endless debates on the Procession of the Holy Ghost began again for a
month between Mark of Ephesus and John of Ragusa. Another change
of method was tried. On 30 March it was decided to
open
discussions, and to substitute conferences between unionists of both sides.
But the negotiations touching the union did not start before 13 April.
After a series of preliminaries, the Greeks ended by agreeing on the
identity of the formula qui ex Patre Filioque procedit, and qui ex Patre
per Filium procedit (3 June). The union was now in sight.
Concurrently with these theological discussions, political harmony
was being promoted. The Pope undertook to preach the crusade for the
defence of Constantinople, to maintain permanently a force of 300 soldiers
to guard the city, and to supply galleys in event of a siege. Then, in order
to accelerate matters, the Pope put into the hands of the Emperor's
delegates schedules, on which were noted the doctrines to be accepted on
the points in dispute. It was their duty to get the Greeks to subscribe to
them.
On 12 June an agreement was reached about the nature of the pains
of purgatory, on 15 June about the eucharistic bread, unleavened or
leavened, on 20 June about the words of consecration. But when the
doctrine of the primacy of the Pope was touched upon, the whole dis-
cussion nearly began de novo. Heated debates were held, and the Em-
peror talked of leaving. Finally, on 26 June Bessarion proposed a formula
of conciliation, which recognised the universal authority of the Pope as
“the representative and vicar of Christ,” the rights and privileges of the
Eastern Churches being reserved. Nothing now was left but to draw up
the decree of union which, translated into Greek, was approved by the
Pope and the Emperor on 5 July. The next day, 6 July, in the
cathedral of Florence, under the dome completed by Brunelleschi in
1436, the decree was read in Latin by Cardinal Julian Cesarini and in
## p. 623 (#665) ############################################
The Union of Florence
623
Greek by Bessarion; the two prelates then kissed each other, and all the
members of the Council, the Emperor at their head, bent the knee before
the Pope.
Finally, after the close of the Council the union was completed by
the declarations of assent which the Eastern Churches sent to the Pope,
each like the Greek Church retaining its liturgical and disciplinary uses.
On 22 November 1439 the union was accepted by the delegates of Con-
stantine, Patriarch of the Armenians, on 5 February 1441 by the Jacobites
of Syria. On 2 September 1441 the Pope received an embassy of Con-
stantine, King of the Ethiopians, and on 25 February 1443 he announced
in an encyclical that the Ethiopians had adhered to the union. Finally,
on 26 April 1442 Eugenius IV promulgated at St John Lateran the
constitutions for the Syrians, the Chaldeans, and the Maronites.
For the first time since 1054 the unity of the Church seemed restored,
and even the last scattered remnants of the heretical sects, most of which
had been separated from the Church since the fifth century, had ended
by returning to the fold. Whereas at the Council of Lyons the union
had been imposed upon the Greek clergy by the will of the Emperor, at
Florence its representatives had come voluntarily to debate with the
Latins. The most obstinate opponents of the union, such as Mark of
Ephesus, had been able to bring forward their objections without fear.
The question seemed settled for all time to come, and Christendom, united
in one and the same communion, would be able to devote itself to the
crusade against the Turks. In order to cement this union more closely,
on 18 December 1439 the Pope admitted Bessarion, Archbishop of Nicaea,
and Isidore, Archbishop of Kiev, to the College of Cardinals.
Unhappily by signing the union at Florence John Palaeologus had only
accomplished a part of his task. It was now necessary to make the clergy
and the people of Constantinople accept it. On his return to his capital
(1 February 1440) the Emperor encountered an obstinate opposition. If
Ducas may be believed', when the Venetian ships with John VIII and his
suite on board entered the Golden Horn, the travellers were greeted with
ribaldry and insults. Many bishops who had subscribed to the decree of
union protested that their signatures had been extracted from them by
force. The Patriarch Joseph had died at Florence, and the Emperor
had to exercise great pressure on the clergy of St Sophia to induce them
to nominate a unionist successor, Metrophanes, Bishop of Cyzicus.
The opposition was led by the Emperor's own brother, the Despot
Demetrius, and notably by Mark of Ephesus, whose submission John VIII,
notwithstanding the solicitations of the Pope, had not succeeded in ob-
taining. Mark soon became very popular and was venerated as a saint.
He began a very active campaign against the union in the monasteries
of Constantinople and on Mount Athos, where the monks refused to
1 Ducas, 31 (MPG, clvii. col. 1013).
CH. XIX.
## p. 624 (#666) ############################################
624
Byzantine opposition to the Union
communicate with the unionists. In the end Mark was ordered to return
to his diocese of Ephesus. Imprisoned in the island of Lemnos, he con-
tinued his propaganda and won over to his views the Emperor's private
secretary, George Scholarius, who had faithfully served the Council.
In order that the union might triumph at Constantinople, the
Western Crusade, on which it had been conditional, ought to have been
rapidly organised, and ought to have won sufficiently decisive victories to
release Constantinople from the grip of the Turks. In spite of the dis-
turbed condition of the East the Pope tried to keep his promise so far
as possible. In 1443 an army commanded by Cardinal Julian Cesarini
joined forces with John Hunyadi and Vladislav I, King of Hungary. The
Sultan Murād II suffered a sanguinary defeat before Niš. On 24 Decem-
ber 1443 the crusaders entered Sofia: the road to Constantinople was
open. Unfortunately the leaders of the Crusade were unable to follow up
their victory. On 15 July John Hunyadi signed a truce with Murād.
Julian Cesarini refused to recognise it. The crusaders continued their
march in Bulgaria, but the disaster that befel them at Varna on 10 Novem-
ber 1444 wrecked all the hopes of Christendom. Constantinople was
nearing its death-throes.
This serious defeat and the death of John VIII (31 October 1448) in-
creased the boldness of the opponents of the union. The new Emperor,
Constantine XI, brother of John VIII, had been one of its most deter-
mined partisans. George Scholarius dared to propose that his corona-
tion should be deferred until he had given pledges for his orthodoxy.
Threatened with prosecution, George took refuge in a monastery, and
under the name of Gennadius succeeded Mark of Ephesus, who died in
1447, as head of the opponents of the union.
Under his influence an anti-unionist council, at which the three
Eastern Patriarchs were present, assembled in St Sophia in 14501. The
Patriarch Gregory, elected since 1443, was cited to appear there to justify
himself, and on his refusal he was deposed and replaced by the monk
Athanasius. Gemistos Plethon violently attacked the Latin doctrine of
the Holy Ghost, denounced the pressure which the Emperor had brought
to bear on the bishops to force them to admit it, and resisted the
ambitious schemes of Bessarion. A list of Latin errors was drawn up
in twenty-nine articles and published. The Patriarch Gregory was
obliged to fly to Italy.
At the moment when the blockade of Constantinople was tightening
again, and on the eve of the accession of Mahomet II, no demonstration
could be more inopportune. On 11 October 1451 Pope Nicholas V called
upon Constantine XII to proclaim solemnly the union at Constantinople,
to bring back the Patriarch Gregory, and to compel the clergy to mention
1 The exact date is uncertain. Mansi, Concilia, xiii, 1365 seq. Vast, Le Cardinal
Bessarion, p. 133.
## p. 625 (#667) ############################################
Fall of Constantinople
625
the name of the Pope in the liturgy. The decree was brought to Con-
stantinople by Cardinal Isidore of Kiev in 1452. He negotiated with
the opposing party, lavished promises and threats, and ended by bringing
over part of the superior clergy.
Finally, on 12 December 1452 the union was solemnly proclaimed in
St Sophia in the presence of Constantine, the legate, and the Patriarch
Gregory, who officiated together with the assistance of 300 priests. But
the infuriated populace rushed to the monastery of Pantokrator, where
they found written by Gennadius on the door of his cell a prophecy
which threatened the Empire with its coming slavery to the Turks. In
that fanatical crowd, already attacked by what has been called “siege-
fever," the conviction spread that the Panagia (the Virgin) would herself
defend her city, as in the times of Heraclius and of Photius. While
the crowd was shouting in the streets “Death to the Azymites ! ” the
Grand Duke Lucas Notaras declared that he would rather see the turban
at Constantinople than the hat of a Roman cardinal. Henceforward
the church of St Sophia, where the union had been proclaimed, was
deserted by the people, and remained empty until that gloomy vigil of
28 May 1453 which preceded the capture of Constantinople.
Obliged to choose between the safety of the Empire and the autonomy
of their Church, the Greeks resolutely sacrificed their political inde-
pendence to their hatred of the West and to their antipathy to Rome.
There is no doubt that their attitude diminished the good-will of the
Western nations, as is proved by a curious question put to the Pope on
the point, whether a Christian had the right to go to the assistance of
schismatic Greeks'. Besides this, the new régime which the Greek
Church was about to experience had already been working for many
years in the provinces occupied by the Turks. The bishops, nominated
by the Patriarchs, were everywhere recognised by the conquerors as the
civil and religious heads of the Christian community? Mahomet II
therefore had no difficulty in extending this régime to the whole Empire
by requiring, immediately after his entry into Byzantium, the election
of a new Patriarch; this was Gennadius, the leader of the opponents of
the union.
Thus for four centuries the Byzantine Emperors and the Popes
indefatigably laboured to stay the schism which divided Christendom
since 1054. Whether their object was to conclude an alliance against
a common enemy, or to make Constantinople a rampart against Asiatic
invasion, the necessity of first attaining religious union always thwarted
their wish for agreement.
1 Jorga, Notices et extraits pour servir à l'histoire des croisades au xve siècle,
4th series, p. 46.
Jorga, op. cit. pp. 32-34 (extraits d'un rapport daté de 1436 sur les rapports
entre les Turcs et l'Eglise grecque).
2
C. MED. H. VOL. IV. CH. XIX.
40
## p. 626 (#668) ############################################
626
Conclusion
This much-desired union was, in truth, the ambition of the Christian
policy of the last four centuries of the Middle Ages, but to the reasons
for its failure, which the analysis of the facts has shewn, we must add a
more profound cause. The Christian policy, the European policy we
might say, which surpassed in breadth the narrow standpoint of the
territorial policy of the various states, was clearly grasped only by the
great Popes of the Middle Ages, such as Gregory VII, Innocent III,
Gregory X, and by Byzantine Emperors such as Alexius I, Manuel Com-
nenus, and Michael Palaeologus; but their views were different and their
interests irreconcilable. The Caesars of Byzantium, at least until Manuel
Comnenus, cherished the illusive hope of regaining the heritage of the
Caesars of Rome; for them the union was but a means of rebuilding
their sovereignty in the West, or of saving it in the East. The Popes,
on their side, saw in the union under them the unity of the restored
Church, a Christendom united in one communion and forgetting its
private quarrels, which were veritable civil wars, in order to repel the
infidel and make the whole world the kingdom of Christ.
Between these two conceptions agreement was impossible, and this
explains why the union could only be realised in periods of crisis, whether
by violent conquest as in 1204, or in the face of an imminent peril as
in 1274 or in 1439. On the contrary, every time the situation improved
the pontifical doctrine and the imperial doctrine came into conflict,
without any real hope of conciliation. .
It is thus easy to see why the union, realised at three separate
times, had on each occasion so ephemeral an existence. The abnormal
conditions in which it was concluded doomed it to early failure. In 1204
the union imposed by force lighted in the heart of the Greeks an un-
quenchable hatred. The union of 1274 was tainted in its core by the
violent pressure which Michael Palaeologus brought to bear on his clergy.
The union of 1439, although debated by an Ecumenical Council, came
too late. When the house is blazing it is too late to settle disputes
about ways of preventing fire.
## p. 627 (#669) ############################################
627
CHAPTER XX.
THE MONGOLS.
In attempting to give an account of the Mongols, the historian is
confronted with many serious obstacles. At the outset, it would seem as
though the stories of these wandering tribes could never be co-ordinated ;
the incidents of their history are so heterogeneous in character, that it
seems an impossible task to pick out a connecting thread running through
them all. The internal events, which should assist the historian in tracing
the development and confederation of the various tribes, baffle and retard
him. The early history is shrouded in myth and mystery. At so late an
epoch in the progress of humanity, the student might not unreasonably
expect trustworthy evidence and records. But, in reviewing the early period
of the Mongolian State, it is a matter of exceptional importance to
separate the historical elements from the fictitious, and this is a task
involving much discrimination and patience. Every piece of information
seems, on its own merits and taken by itself, to be petty and negligible ;
nor is it easy to discover any positive relation of any consequence between
disconnected and sporadic occurrences. There are no central figures, no
outstanding personalities, before the time of Jenghiz. The darkness is
broken by no brilliant flashes but only by tiny gleams that serve but to
intensify the obscurity. We cannot mark cause and effect; we cannot ex-
plain, by the recognised canons of historical judgment, the phenomena
displayed by the Mongol history. On the other hand, if the events of
their internal progress are sporadic and disconnected, if they seem to
violate the normal course of national growth, when we come to examine
the external events and the expansion of these savage tribes, we find
ourselves confronted by facts that are equally inexplicable. Insignificant
at home and enormous abroad may be said to sum their salient
characteristics, in any case during the earlier periods. It is precisely on
account of their foreign relations that a knowledge of the Mongols is
essential to the student. Without their effect on the human race outside
their borders, the Mongols could be suffered to remain in obscurity.
The difficulties that await the investigator are not exhausted. He has
to work with a telescope instead of a microscope. Not only has a vast
extent of territory to be kept under constant observation, but movements
and actions among neighbouring peoples must be watched closely. The
history of the Mongols knows no geographical boundaries. The settled
CH. XX.
4042
## p. 628 (#670) ############################################
628
Extent of the Mongol invasions
limits of nations were swiftly and ruthlessly overthrown. Unchecked by
human valour, they were able to overcome the terrors of vast deserts, the
barriers of mountains and seas, the severities of climate, and the ravages
of famine and pestilence. No dangers could appal them, no stronghold
could resist them, no prayer for mercy could move them. Wherever their
fancy roamed, their hordes followed. Flourishing cities perished in a night,
leaving no memorial but ruins and mounds of piled-up corpses. The
quiet that followed the Mongol invasions was not the calm that settled on
a world wearied of strife, eager to foster once again the fruits of civilisation:
it was the gasp of expiring nations in their death-agony, before the eternal
silence of the tomb. They made their deserts and they called it peace.
To follow the destinies of the Mongols, it is necessary to think in con-
tinents not in countries, for like an irresistible torrent the armies of the
Khans swept over the map of Asia and Europe. A knowledge of no
single language will suffice to equip a student for the task of investigating
the Mongol races with any profundity. Besides the Tartar languages,
some acquaintance is essential with the languages of the peoples with whom
the Mongols came into contact. Their armies ranged over all Central
Asia, pushing on eastwards to China and westwards to Russia and even
to Germany. As a result, the student must be prepared to deal with
sources in many tongues, and with more freedom and greater facility than
is the case when dealing with other nations.
But if this combination of circumstances invests a study of the Mongols
with difficulty, it constitutes an equally potent reason for undertaking the
task. We are confronted with a new power in history, with a force that
was to bring to an abrupt end, as a deus ex machina, many dramas that
would otherwise have ended in a deadlock, or would have dragged on an
interminable course. The very magnitude of the Mongol influence and
the colossal area of their operations should prove an additional incentive
to the student, and render an attempt to estimate the nature and scope
of the changes which ensued alike attractive and fruitful.
In Europe the Mongols overran Russia, Hungary, and Silesia; to the
upheaval which they brought about, the establishment of the Turkish
Empire, and consequently the growth of the Renaissance, must be directly
attributed. This same upheaval reacted on the contests between Saracen
and Crusader and, nearer home, on the antagonism of the Papacy and the
Empire. The extermination of the Assassins (1256), a task beyond the
power of Europe or Syria, was a matter of comparative ease to the Mongols.
Before the terror which their name inspired, Europe seemed utterly
demoralised and incapable of resistance, and, had not the Mamlūks in-
tervened (1260) and beaten back the invaders at a critical moment, there
is little doubt but that a great portion of Europe would have succumbed to
Tartar rule.
The convulsion caused by the Mongols in Europe, great though it was,
cannot be compared to that produced in Asia. The destruction of Baghdad
## p. 629 (#671) ############################################
Unification of Asia
629
and the overthrow of the Caliphate (1258), the annihilation of the Kin
or Golden Dynasty which ruled the northern half of China (1234), the
conquest of Southern China, of Khwārazm, Persia, and the surrounding
countries, the establishment of the rule of the Moguls in India, are some
of the events any of which alone would suffice to make a knowledge of
the Mongol power indispensable to the general historian. It is not accurate
to regard the Mongols merely as a ravaging horde. After sacking Baghdad,
Hūlāgū founded an observatory; after conquering China, Kublai es-
tablished a university at Cambalu (Pekin). The “scourge of God” does
not smite blindly. It is a noteworthy phenomenon that a successful
barbarian attack on civilisation, however destructive be its ravages at the
moment, is ultimately followed by a great revival, and this revival may
often be traced to the very catastrophe which seemed destined to
overwhelm culture in irretrievable ruin. In the sphere of religion, this
may be observed by the Assyrian (B. C. 587) and Roman (A. D. 70) conquests
of Judaea, which, in the end, created and strengthened the diaspora and
made the outer world acquainted with the moral teachings of the
Pentateuch and Prophets. In the spheres of the arts and humanities,
the Roman conquest of Greece, the Turkish conquest of the Byzantine
Empire, are instances which go to prove how the accumulated stores of
learning may be released and rendered accessible to a wider circle. The
Arab conquest of Spain gave the light of science, medicine, philosophy,
and poetry to Europe in the Dark Ages. The capture of Jerusalem led
directly to the establishment of the schools in Jamnia, the ruthless perse-
cution of Hadrian produced the academies of Babylon, and“ on the day
when the Temple was destroyed, the Messiah was born. ”
The same statement may be made of the Mongols. The fall of Baghdad
transferred the seat of the humanities to Egypt. At the same time it
dispersed many scholars and humanists who survived the debacle. Their
dispersion throughout the Muslim lands brought academic strength to
the places where they settled, while the removal of the literary centre of
gravity from Baghdad to Cairo facilitated the access of the Western world
to the culture of the Orient. But, apart from mere negative results, the
growth of the Mongol power was responsible for other developments in
the East. The first and foremost of these was the unification of Asia.
This must not be interpreted in the modern sense of political unity or
homogeneity. The Mongol government secured tranquillity within its
vast borders. The roads were open and a traveller could, as things went,
count upon a safe journey, unless he had the misfortune to pass within
range of the Emperor's funeral cortège, in which case his fate was death.
There was complete religious toleration, and it is only a superficial judg-
ment that will ascribe this to spiritual indifference on the part of the
Mongols. Economic changes were also introduced; thus the service of posts,
· The later Mogul Emperors hated, and tried to disown, their Mongol origin.
CH. XX.
## p. 630 (#672) ############################################
630
Mongol and Tartar
though utilised by the Arabs previously, was largely increased, and the use
of paper money was sanctioned by Gaikhātū Khan in 1294 and previously
by Kublai. No nation can claim to excel in every branch of human activity,
and the deficiency of the Mongols in the domain of literature was made
good in other directions.
It is necessary to begin a sketch of the Mongols with a brief account
of their origin, and an explanation or rather an enumeration of the names
by which they are known.
