[Sidenote: Peculiar position of the Eastern Church.]
The state of external isolation in which the Church of the Eastern Empire was placed by the { 137} Schism of A.D. 1054, had a tendency to increase its exaggerated spirit of conservatism, which was also encouraged by the indolent unenterprizing temper of the Greeks of the later empire, whose blood had not been quickened by the same admixture of races as had given new life to the worn out nations of the West. [Sidenote: Effects of the Crusades.] Under these circumstances the crusades were hardly less a cause of terror to the Greeks than were the advances of the Turks themselves, and tended to widen rather than to heal the unhappy breach between the Latin and Greek Churches. [Sidenote: Unjustifiable proceedings of the Latins.] The foundation of a Latin Patriarchate at Jerusalem, after the taking of that city in A.D. 1099, could not but be accounted an usurpation on the part of the Pope, which was, however, far surpassed in injustice by the erection of a Latin empire and a Latin Patriarchate in Constantinople itself, A.D. 1204. During the time that this oppressive arrangement lasted (i.e. till A.D. 1261) the rightful Patriarch took refuge at the court which the Eastern emperors held at Nicaea in Asia Minor, and the fugitives there clung to their national Church, and her rightful independence. [Sidenote: Attempts at reunion.] The Emperor Michael Palaeologus, after driving out the Latins from Constantinople, endeavoured once more to effect a reunion between East and West, partly from political and partly from personal motives, and a formal act of union was signed, A.D. 1274. Neither the Greek Clergy nor the Greek people would, however, consent to give up their own national religious customs, nor to acknowledge the supremacy of the Pope; and this shadow of union died out with the death of the Emperor, its originator. [Sidenote: Invasion of the Turks.] In the fourteenth century { 138} the Turks were treacherously invited over to Europe as allies of the usurper, John Cantacuzenus (A.D. 1347-A.D. 1353), and so firm a footing did they gain, that the rightful Emperor, John Palaeologus (A.D. 1341-A.D. 1391), found himself obliged to appeal to Rome for aid, promising in return to reconcile the Greek Church to the Roman communion. The affairs of Western Europe, were, however too unsettled to admit of such aid being afforded, and the Emperor was obliged to give up all his possessions to the Turks, except Constantinople, Thessalonica, part of the Morea, and a few islands. Another appeal was made, with the same results, by his son, Manuel Palaeologus (A.D. 1391-A.D. 1425). [Sidenote: New attempts at reunion.] John VII. (A.D. 1425-A.D. 1448) opened fresh negociations with the West, and he and the Patriarch of Constantinople, together with twenty-one other Eastern Bishops, appeared (A.D. 1438) at the Council of Ferrara (afterwards transferred to Florence). At this council a decree of union was once more signed by the Greeks, on condition of their receiving aid against the Turks (A.D. 1439). This fresh attempt at union was repudiated by the Eastern Church at large, but a troop of French and Italian crusaders started for the East. Constantinople was, however, doomed, and the good and brave Constantine Palaeologus (A.D. 1448-A.D. 1433) was the last, as he was one of the best, of the Greek emperors. [Sidenote: Fall of Constantinople] The city fell, after an obstinate defence, on the 29th May, A.D. 1453, and Constantine was among the slain. The Turks pillaged and slaughtered indiscriminately, and turned into a mosque the beautiful Church of St. Sophia, built by the Emperor Justinian in honour of the "Holy Wisdom" of God.