Greek side, from taking further part in the discussions. The emperor was bent on union at anj' price. At the end of the session of March 24, the pope sent word to the patriarch that the Greeks must either express their assent to the Roman view, or return home bj^ Easter, April 5. From this time the emperor vacillated : on the one side was his conscience, and also the fear that the whole East would brand him as a traitor to ortho- doxy ; on the other hand was his desire for the aid of the West in maintaining his falling empire. Policy triumphed. Moreover, the Greeks were far from home, and -without money, and they received nothing on ac- count of the allowance promised them by the pope from the time of their arrival in Florence until May 22. The emperor summoned a meeting of the Greek bishops, March 30, in the apartment of the invalid pa- triarch Joseph, and other such meetings followed. The discussions were stormy. Dositheus of Jerusalem de- clared that he would rather die than be false to the creed and " Latinize." Mark declared that the Latins were not only schismatics, but heretics. It was final- ly agreed that a committee of twenty should be ap- pointed, ten from each side, to lay down the doctrine of the procession in a form that might be accepted by both sides. "After many unsuccessful endeavors, thej- drew up a profession of faith upon the subject of the procession of the Holj^ Spirit, in which they de- clared as follows :' That the Holy Spiiit is from all eternity from the Father and of the Son ; that he from all eternity proceedeth from both, as from one only principle, and bj' one onlj^ spiration; that by this way of speaking it is signified that the Son also is, as the Greeks express it, the cause^ or, as the Latins, the^jr.'w- ciple of the subsistence of the Holy Spirit equallj' with the Father. Also we declare that what some of the holy fathers have said of the procession of the Holj' Spirity>o?« (ex) the Father hy (per) the Son is to be taken in such a sense as that the Son is, as well as tlio Father, and conjointly with him, the cause or principle of the Holy Spirit ; and since all that the Father hath he hath, in begetting him, communicated to his only begotten Son, the paternity alone excepted ; so it is from the Father from all eternity that the Son hath received this also, that the Holv Spirit proceedeth from the Son as well as from the Father.' In the same de- cree the council declared that it was lawful to conse- crate unleavened bread as well as that which had been leavened; and upon the subject of purgatory, that the souls of those who die trulj' penitent in the love of God, before bringing forth fruit meet for repentance, are purified after death by the pains of purgatorj"-, and that they derive comfort in those pains from the pray- ers of the faithful on earth, as also l)y the sacrifice of the mass, alms, and other works of pietj% Concerning the primac}' of the pope, they confessed the pope to be the sovereign pontiflT and vicar of Jesus Christ, the head of the whole Church, and the father and teacher of all Christians, and the governor of the Church of God, according to the sacred canons and acts of the oecumenical councils, saving the j)rivileges and rights cf the Eastern patriarchs.
After various conferences, the decree of union was drawn up in due order, in Greek and in Latin ; it was then read and signed by the pope, and by eighteen car- dinals, by the Latin patriarchs of Jerusalem and Gre- nada, and the two episcopal ambassadors of the duke of Burgundy, eight archbishops, forty-seven bishops (who were almost all Italians), four generals of monas- tic orders, and forty-one abbots. On the Greek side, it was signed bj' the emperor John Palsologus, by the vicars of the patriarchs of Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem (the patriarch of Constantinople had lately died), and by several metropolitans. This decree was published on the Gth of July, 1439, after which the Greeks, to the number of thirty, left Florence, and ar- rived at Constantinople, February 1, 1440. The union thus formed was of very short duration. See Greek
Church. After their departure, the council continued its sittings ; and in the next session, held September 4th, the fathers at Basle were declared to be heretics and schismatics. In the second, November 22d. a very long decree was made upon the subject of the union of the Armenians with the Roman Church. This decree runs in the name of the pope only. In the third, Mar. 23, 1440, the anti-pope Amadeus, whom the council at Basle had elected pope (Felix V), was declared to be a heretic and schismatic, and all his followers guilty of high treason ; a promise of pardon being held out to those who should submit within fifty days. In the fourth session, 4th of Februarj-, 1441, a decree for the reunion of the Jacobites of Ethiopia with the Roman Church was published, signed by the pope and eight cardinals. Andrew, the deputy of John XI, the patri- arch of Alexandria, received it in the name of the Ethi- opian Jacobites. In the fifth session, 2Gth of April, 1442, the pope's proposal to ti-ansfer the council to Rome was agreed to, but o\\\y two sessions were held there, in which decrees for the union of the Syrians, Chaldeans, and Maronites with the see of Rome were di-awn up" (Landon, Manual of Councils, s. v). On the return home of the Greeks, Xhey found no welcome : Mark of Ephesus was held up as the true representa- tive of orthodox}', and the signers to the union were denounced as recreants. Most of those who liad sign- ed their names recanted, saying, "Alas ! we have been seduced by distress, bj- fraud, and by the hopes and fears of a transitory life. The hand that has signed the union should be cut off, and the tongue that has pronounced the Latin creed deserves to be torn from the root."