Council of Florence
- When
- 1438–1445 AD
- Where
- Ferrara and Florence
- Kind
- Rapprochement
Signed a reunion of the eastern and western churches that the eastern churches went home and repudiated.
With the Turks at the walls, the Byzantine emperor and patriarch came west with a large delegation to negotiate union in exchange for military help. After months of argument over the filioque, purgatory, azymes and papal primacy, a decree of union was signed in 1439 by everyone present but Mark of Ephesus. It did not hold: the delegates were repudiated on their return, the clergy and people of Constantinople rejected it, and the promised help never materially came. Constantinople fell in 1453. Unions agreed at the same council with the Armenians, Copts and others were similarly short-lived. Florence is remembered in the west as a reunion council and in the east as the type of a union imposed under duress.
Bodies it bears on
Party to it
Either side of it
The whole timeline, from the apostolic communities to the present.