BOOK VIII.
FROM THE DEATH OF POPE BONIFACE VIII TO THE
END OF THE COUNCIL OF CONSTANCE,
A.D. 1303-1418.
CHAPTER IX.
THE GREEK CHURCH—CHRISTIANITY IN ASIA— CONVERSIONS.
During the last period of the Byzantine empire, the
relations of the Greek church with the papacy were mainly governed by political
circumstances. The emperors, in their need of assistance against the Mussulmans,
who pressed continually more and more on them, made frequent solicitations to
the Christians of the west, and, in order to recommend their cause, they
professed a zeal for the reconciliation of the churches. But in this they were
supported only by a small courtly party, while the mass of the Greeks held the
Latins in abomination; and, as the material aid, for the sake of which the
desire of unity had been professed, was not forthcoming, such concessions as
were made by the emperors or their representatives were usually disavowed with
abhorrence by their people. Such, as we have seen, had been the result of the
reconciliation which had been formerly concluded at the council of Lyons in
1274; and, in their resentment on account of the subsequent breach, Benedict XI
and Clement V encouraged Charles of Valois to assert by arms a claim to the
throne of Constantinople, in right of his wife. Clement gave to the enterprise
the character of a crusade, bestowed the privileges of crusaders on all who
should take part in it, and assigned to Charles a tenth of the ecclesiastical
revenues of France in order to furnish him with means. But nothing came of this
project.
At a later time, Andronicus II and his grandson of the
same name (who, after having been his colleague, assumed the whole government
in 1328) were driven by fear of the Ottoman Turks to make overtures to the
popes and to the western princes. In 1333 the younger Andronicus sent
a message to John XXII by two Dominicans who were returning from the east; and
in consequence of this two bishops were sent from Avignon to the court of
Constantinople. But the Greeks, in distrust of the sophistical skill
which they attributed to the western theologians, refused to have anything to
do with what they styled the Latin novelties; and the mission had no effect. In 1337 Benedict XII, wrote to Andronicus for
the purpose of confirming him in his desire of ecclesiastical unity; and two
years later, Barlaam, a Basilian monk of Calabria, who had acquired great
favour in the Byzantine court, appeared at Avignon with a knight named Stephen
Dandolo, bearing recommendations from the kings of France and Sicily. The
instructions of these envoys charged them to labour for the reunion of the
churches, while the need of assistance against the Turks was mentioned as a
secondary and comparatively trifling matter. But it was requested that the aid
might be sent at once, because the emperor would be unable, so long as the war
should last, to assemble the eastern patriarchs for the general council which
was proposed as a tribunal for the decision of the questions by which east and
west were divided. Even the Jews, said Barlaam, although the most ungrateful of
mankind, after having been miraculously fed by the Saviour, wished to make Him
a king; and, in like manner, assistance of this kind would prepare the minds of
the Greeks to welcome the proposals of religious union. The pope, however,
declined the project of a general council, on the ground that the doctrine of
the Holy Spirit’s procession had already been settled by some of the greatest
councils—even including (he said) the general council of Ephesus—and that he
could not allow it to be again brought into question. The proposal of a
compromise, by which each party should for the present be allowed to hold its
own opinions, was rejected, on the ground that the faith of the catholic church
could be but one. Other expedients suggested by Barlaam found no great favour;
nor was any hope of aid held out, except on condition that the Greeks should
first renounce their errors, and should send some of their number to be
instructed in the west.
Barlaam, on returning to the east after this fruitless
mission, became involved in a strange controversy with some monks of Mount
Athos and their supporters. These monks, who were styled hesychasts (or
quietists), imagined that by cultivating an ascetic repose they might attain to
behold the light of the Godhead. They are described as fixing their gaze on the
central part of their own persons, in the hope that through the contemplation
both their spiritual and their bodily eyes would be enlightened by the divine
radiance. Barlaam, it is said, designedly chose out one of the more simple
monks, whom the imperial chronicler John Cantacuzene describes as
little superior to an irrational animal, and, by affecting the character of a
disciple, drew from him answers which showed a very gross apprehension of
spiritual things; whereupon he denounced the whole community, as if the views
in question were shared by all its members. At Thessalonica, where he
first broached the subject, he was confronted by Gregory Palamas, a monk of Mount Athos, who enjoyed an
extraordinary reputation for ascetic sanctity; and, having fled in fearof the rabid monks to Constantinople, where he
persuaded the patriarch John to assemble a synod for the consideration of the
matter, he there again found Palamas his
opponent. The question of the light which the mystics of Mount Athos supposed
themselves to see brought on a discussion as to the light which shone around
the Saviour at His transfiguration. This light Palamas maintained
to be uncreated; while Barlaam argued that, if so, it must be God, forasmuch as
God alone is uncreated. But, he continued, since no man hath seen God at any
time, the hesychasts must hold the existence of two Gods—one, the invisible
maker of all things; the other, the visible and uncreated light. The decision
of the council was adverse to Barlaam, who, according to John Cantacuzene,
when he saw that the case was going against him, consulted the grand domestic (Cantacuzene himself),
acknowledged himself to have been in error, and was joyfully embraced by Palamas. But if this account be true, his submission must
have been insincere; for he soon after removed to Italy, where he joined the
Latin church, and wrote some letters in its behalf, which contrast strongly
with his arguments of an earlier time as a champion of the Greeks. Through the
interest of Petrarch, whom he had assisted in the study of Plato, he was
promoted to the bishopric of Gerace in 1342; and his equivocal
reputation as a divine is combined with a more creditable fame as one among the
chief revivers of Greek letters in the west.
The controversy begun by Barlaam was kept up by his
pupil Gregory Acindynus; but repeated judgments
were pronounced against their opinions, and at a great synod, held at
Constantinople in 1350, it was declared, with a show of patristic authority,
that the light of Mount Tabor was uncreated, although not of the substance of
God, while Barlaam and Acindynus were cut
off from the body of the church, and were declared to be incapable of
forgiveness after death.
The death of Andronicus III, in 1341, left the empire
to his son John Palaeologus, a boy nine years old, who was under the
guardianship of the grand domestic, John Cantacuzene. After a time Cantacuzene,
alarmed by the intrigues of a party which included the empress-mother and
patriarch John of Apri, endeavoured to seize the
empire, as the only means of securing his own safety; but he was driven into
exile, from which he delivered himself by the fatal measure of calling the
Turks into Europe as his allies—giving his daughter in marriage to their leader Orkan, on condition that she should be allowed to preserve
her religion. The empire was now shared by John Palaeologus, his mother, Anne
of Savoy, and Cantacuzene, who became the father-in-law of the young
prince and held the chief power in his own hands. While Cantacuzene was
in exile, the empress-mother had addressed a letter to Clement VI, expressing a
strong desire to unite her subjects with the church in which she had herself
been brought up, and entreating the pope to send her assistance in the meantime. Cantacuzene now
sent ambassadors to the court of Avignon; and the reception which they met with
from Clement led him to believe that a reconciliation was certain, and that a
crusade was to be undertaken in his behalf. But, although he repeatedly
protested to the envoys whom Clement sent to Constantinople that he would
gladly give his life for the re-union of the churches, he declared that the
guilt of the separation lay on the Latins, who had caused it by their
innovations and assumptions; and that he would not submit his conscience to any
less authority than that of a council fairly gathered from the whole church.
The pope is said by Cantacuzene to have expressed his
willingness to try this course; but the negotiation was broken off by the death
of Clement, and by the
forced abdication of the emperor, who spent his last years as a monk on Mount
Athos, where he employed himself in composing an uncandid history of his own
time.
But John Palaeologus, when thus rid of his guardian,
was of all Greek emperors the most inclined to make concessions to Rome. As the
son of a western princess, whose influence over him still continued, he felt
nothing of the bigoted prejudice with which the Greeks in general regarded the
Latins; and his dangers both from the Turks and from Cantacuzene’s son
made him ready to seek for assistance from the west on any terms. In 1355 he
made overtures to Innocent VI, offering to send his son Manuel to the pope, to
have him instructed in Latin under the superintendence of a legate, and to
establish schools for teaching Latin to young Greek nobles; and promising, if
he should fail as to any of these proposals, to abdicate in favour of his son,
who should then be wholly under the control of the pope. A Carmelite,
Peter Thomasius, was thereupon sent to the
Byzantine court, and made an easy convert of the emperor. In 1366 John
subscribed in Hungary a form of faith agreeable to that of the Latin church,
and professed homage to the pope; he renewed his assurances to Urban V; and in
1369, while Constantinople was under siege by Amurath,
the pope’s return from Avignon was adorned by the presence of the eastern
emperor as well as by that of the emperor of the west at Rome. John
acknowledged the Roman supremacy, and the double procession of the Holy Spirit;
he did homage to the pope in St. Peter’s by bending the knee, and by kissing
his feet, hands, and mouth; he assisted at a mass celebrated by Urban; and he
performed that “office of a groom” which the Christians of the west had been
persuaded to connect with the memory of Constantine the Great. But all these
compliances were ineffectual as to the object for which they were made. The
pope’s exhortations to the knights of Rhodes, to the king of Cyprus, to the
Venetians and the Genoese, that they should help the emperor against the
enemies of Christendom, were unheeded. It was in vain that John endeavoured to
enlist the great condottiere Hawkwood in
his service. He himself, on his way homewards, was arrested for debt at Venice;
and he found himself at last obliged to conclude a humiliating treaty with the
Turks.
The advance of these assailants continued without
check. In 1395 Bajazet, who from the brilliant rapidity of his movements
acquired the name of Ilderim (lightning),
penetrated into Hungary, and boasted an intention of subduing Germany and
Italy, and of feeding his horses with oats at the high altar of St. Peter’s at
Rome. The princes and nobles of France were roused by an embassy from king
Sigismund of Hungary to hasten to his aid against the infidel invaders; and a
brilliant array of 100,000 men set out, vaunting that, if the sky should fall,
they would support it on the points of their lances, and indulging in visions
of carrying their victorious arms even to the deliverance of Jerusalem. But the
foolhardy confidence of these crusaders—their luxury, licentiousness, and want
of discipline—proved fatal to the enterprise. Disdaining the advice of Sigismund,
which was founded on his knowledge of the Turkish mode of warfare, they were
utterly defeated at the battle of Nicopolis. Some of their leaders were
slain; others, among whom was the count of Nevers (afterwards noted as John the
Fearless, duke of Burgundy), were made prisoners, and were detained for ransom,
before the arrival of which not a few of them had perished under the cruel
usage of their captors. The failure of this expedition roused much
indignation against the rival popes, whose pretensions distracted western
Christendom, and made any combined action of its nations impossible.
In 1391 John Palaeologus was succeeded by his son
Manuel, who was able to obtain the services of John le Maingre,
one of the most distinguished soldiers in the late unfortunate crusade, and
afterwards famous under the name of Boucicaut. By his advice Manuel, who
had already applied by letter both to Boniface IX and to the French
king, undertook in 1400 a journey into western Europe for the purpose of
begging assistance. Both in France and in England he was received with great
honours; but although Charles VI, in addition to bestowing a pension on him
until his fortunes should improve, promised him 1200 fighting men for a year,
and although Henry IV vowed a crusade, and taxed his people as if for the
relief of the Greek empire, no effective aid was to be gained.
Manuel, by adhering to his own religion, by refraining from all interference in
the controversy between the popes, and by passing through Italy in the year of
jubilee without visiting Rome, offended Boniface IX, who charged him with
irreverence towards an image, and discouraged the idea of assisting him. He
had been forced to submit to terms dictated by Bajazet; and but for the
overthrow of that conqueror by Timur, at the battle of Angora, while Manuel was
yet in the west, the fall of the Byzantine empire would probably have been no
longer delayed.
During this time there was frequent correspondence
between the popes and the Armenian church, and projects of union were
entertained with a view to an alliance against the Mussulman power. But the Armenians
failed to satisfy the popes entirely as to their orthodoxy; and the help which
they obtained from the west was insufficient to protect them against their assailants.
In 1367 Armenia fell under the yoke of the Mamelukes; and the Christians were
soon after exposed to persecution at the hands of the conquerors.
In other quarters also, where the Mahometans extended their conquests, the Christians
suffered severely, and many were put to death for their religion, while others
apostatized.
The period which we are surveying was disastrous for
the Christianity of the further east. Although the popes continually flattered
themselves with the hope of gaining the Mongols, who were now pushing their conquests
far and wide, these for the most part embraced the religion of Islam; and the
hopes of conversion which from time to time were held out by the envoys of
Asiatic princes, on condition of an alliance against their Mussulman or other
enemies, invariably proved to be delusive.
In China, where, as we have already seen, the Franciscan
John of Monte Corvino laboured until about the year 1330, the propagation of
the gospel was carried on with much success, chiefly by other members of the
same order. But in 1369 the Chinese drove out the Mongols, and established a
system of jealous exclusion of all foreigners; in consequence of which the
Christianity of China soon became extinct.
The great Asiatic conqueror Timur (or Tamerlane)
appears to have observed an equivocal policy in matters of religion, and is
described by some as friendly to Christians; but, whatever his own belief may
have been, he outwardly, and as a matter of policy, at least, conformed to
Islam. At the end of the period, a few scattered communities, chiefly
Nestorian, were all that remained to represent the Christianity of Asia.
In Europe the end of the fourteenth century witnessed
the conversion of the last considerable people which had until then professed
heathenism. Lithuania, under its great-prince Jagello,
had by conquests from Russia become a kingdom in all but name. In 1382 Jagello, whose mother had been a Christian, made proposals
of marriage to Hedwig, who by the death of her father, Lewis, king of Hungary
and Poland, had become heiress of the latter kingdom. He offered that he and
all his people should be baptized, and that his territories should be united
with Poland. The advantages of this arrangement outweighed both the contract
into which she had already entered with an Austrian prince, and her personal
dislike of Jagello. Jagello was
baptized by the name of Ladislaus. Bishoprics were established at Wilna and
in seven other towns; and the king set vigorously about the fulfilment of his
promise as to the conversion of his people. These were at first unwilling to
change their religion; but when they saw temples and altars overthrown, the
sacred groves cut down, and the serpents which had been objects of worship
killed, their faith in their old gods was shaken, and they rushed to baptism in
such multitudes that it was found necessary to lead them in companies to the
bank of the river, where a whole band was sprinkled at once, and all the
members of it received the same baptismal name. Ladislaus himself
travelled about the country, teaching the Lord’s prayer and the decalogue; and
the work of conversion was forwarded by the white woollen dresses, of Polish
manufacture, which were bestowed on the neophytes. Although,
however, the profession of Christianity thus became general in Lithuania,
Aeneas Sylvius cites a Camaldolese monk,
named Jerome of Prague, who visited the country in the beginning of the
fifteenth century, as testifying that the worship of fire and of serpents was
still widely kept up in it.
The conversion of the Finns and of the Laplanders is
also referred to this period; but it would seem to have hardly reached more
deeply than to the reception of baptism, and of the priestly benediction in
marriage.
