Wednesday, August 24, 2022

Pope Eugene IV and Byzantine Emperor John VIII Formally Agreeing to Forbid Arbitrarily Introducing Debates on Palamism at the Council of Florence

  

Fortunately for everyone, Pope Eugene and the Byzantine emperor John VIII (1392-1448) had already formally agreed to forbid arbitrarily introducing debates on Palamism into the public discussions. (Christiaan Kappes, The Epiclesis Debate at the Council of Florence [Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 2019], 6)

 

. . . The plot proved to be rather complex. In his main outline, Pope Eugene independently concluded in 1437, from the Franciscan study of Palamism, that agreement on the essence-attributes doctrine did not constitute a necessary condition of union. Simultaneously, in the same year, John VIII, Mark of Ephesus, and George-Gennadius Scholarius had studied Scotism, which was argued by Scholarius—as witnessed shortly after Florence—and which Scholarius argued to be equivalent to the doctrine of Palamas on the essence and energies of God. For his part, Mark appears to have employed Scotism against the Dominicans on Trinitarian debates in Florence. There were Dominican attempts to make the Palamite debate in public, but both Pope Eugene and Emperor John agreed to table the discussion until proper time could be allotted for a full debate (which never in fact came about). (Ibid., 256 n. 29)