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I wish to express my gratitude to Warren Treadgold and John Giebfried for their helpful comments on an early draft of this paper. Thanks also to the anonymous reviewer, who helped me better to contextualise my argument and communicate it with more force.
John viii Palaiologos was born in 1392. He was crowned co-emperor by his father Manuel ii in 1421 and became sole autokrator of the eastern Roman Empire in 1425. He died in 1448. He is remembered principally for two things: overseeing the final stages of the slow political demise of the empire, which was sealed by the fall of Constantinople five years after his death, and for brokering a fleeting union of the Churches of East and West at the Council of Ferarra-Florence. Historians judge him, according to their interests, by his handling either of the Turkish threat or of ecclesiastical matters. In neither sphere does he typically satisfy his critics. 1The harshest criticism is levelled by those interested in the religious aspect, which is the focus of this paper. Easterners who repudiate the union sealed in Florence regularly accuse him of privileging the temporal, political interests of the empire over the eternal, spiritual interests of the Orthodox Church. Westerners who favour the terms of Florence blame his weak leadership in the aftermath of the council for the failure of the union to take root.
Both of these positions misunderstand John. They often make the mistake of reading his dilemma through a modern lens that too sharply differentiates between religion and politics to appreciate adequately the context within which he operated. Furthermore, they have approached the sources with a less than critical eye when it comes to their assessments of John, allowing the editorialising of his contemporaries to colour their interpretations of his actions. This is largely the case because church historians have been more interested in negotiating between the polemics which followed the Council of Florence than in careful historical analysis of John's person in his own context.
After examining in more detail the two prevailing schools of thought, this article examines the evidence for John's thought and activity before, during and after the council: the ideological inheritance from...