Council of Florence - Background

Background

The initial location at Basel reflected the desire among parties seeking reform to meet outside the territories of the Papacy, the Holy Roman Empire, or the kings of Aragon and France, whose influences the council hoped to avoid. Ambrogio Traversari attended the Council of Basel as legate of Pope Eugene IV.

The council was convened at a period when the conciliar movement was strong and the authority of the papacy weak. Under pressure for ecclesiastical reform Pope Martin V sanctioned a decree of the Council of Constance (9 October 1417) obliging the papacy to summon general councils periodically. At the expiration of the first term fixed by this decree, Pope Martin V complied by calling a council at Pavia. Due to an epidemic the location transferred almost at once to Siena (see Council of Siena) and disbanded —owing to circumstances still imperfectly known— just as it had begun to discuss the subject of reform (1424).

The next council fell due at the expiration of seven years in 1431; Martin V duly convoked it for this date to the town of Basel, and selected to preside over it the cardinal Julian Cesarini, a well-respected prelate. Martin himself, however, died before the opening of the synod.

The Council at Basel opened with only a few bishops and abbots attending, but it grew rapidly and to make its numbers greater gave the lower orders a majority over the bishops. It adopted an anti-papal attitude, proclaimed the superiority of the Council over the Pope and prescribed an oath to be taken by every Pope on his election. When the Council was moved from Basel to Ferrara in 1438, some remained at Basel, claiming to be the Council. They elected Amadeus VIII, Duke of Savoy, as Antipope. Driven out of Basel in 1448, they moved to Lausanne, where Felix V, the Pope they had elected and the only claimant to the papal throne who ever took the oath that they had prescribed, resigned. Next year, they decreed the closure of what for them was still the Council of Basel.

The new council was transferred to Florence in 1439 because of the danger of plague at Ferrara, and because the city of Florence had agreed, against future payment, to finance the Council. The Council had meanwhile successfully negotiated reunification with several Eastern Churches, reaching agreements on such matters as the Western insertion of the phrase "Filioque" to the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed, the definition and number of the sacraments, and the doctrine of purgatory. Another key issue was papal primacy, which involved the universal and supreme jurisdiction of the Bishop of Rome over the whole Church, including the national Churches of the East(Serbian, Greek, Wallachian, Bulgarian, Russian, Georgian, Armenian, etc.) and nonreligious matters such as the promise of military assistance against the Ottoman Turks. Some perhaps feeling political pressure from the Byzantine Emperor, accepted the decrees of the Council. Others did so by sincere conviction, such as Isidore of Kiev, who suffered greatly for it. Only Bishop Mark of Ephesus, however, refused to accept the union and became the leader of opposition back home. The Russians, upon learning of the union, angrily rejected it and ousted any prelate who was even remotely sympathetic to it. Despite the religious union, Western military assistance to Byzantium was meager and Constantinople fell to the Ottomans in May of 1453. The Council declared the Basel group heretics and excommunicated them; and the superiority of the Pope over the Councils was affirmed in the bull Etsi non dubitemus of 20 April 1441.