powers of eloquence
and persuasion, he infused doubts into the minds of others of the monks
and anchorites of Mount Athos. Arguments were used on both sides;
conversations arose upon these subjects; arguments grew into
disputations, conversations into controversies, till at last, from the
most peaceful and regular of communities, the peninsula of the holy
mountain became from one end to the other a theatre of discord, doubt,
and difference; the flames of contention were lit up; every thing was
unsettled; men knew not what to think; till at last, with general
consent, the unhappy intruder was dismissed from all the monasteries;
and, flying from the storm of angry words which he had raised on all
sides around him, he departed from Mount Athos and retired to the city
of Constantinople. There his specious manners, his knowledge of the
language of the Latins, and the dissensions he had created in the
church, brought him into notice at court; and now not only were the
monks of Mount Athos and Olympus divided against each other, but the
city was split into parties of theological disputants; clamour and
acrimony raged on every side. The Emperor Andronicus, willing to remove
the cause of so much contention, and being at the same time surrounded
with difficulties on all sides (for the unbelieving Turks, commanded by
the fierce Orchan, had with their unnumbered tribes overrun Bithynia and
many of the provinces of the Christian emperor), he graciously
condescended to give his imperial mandate that the monk Barlaam should
[here the two cats became vociferous in their impatience for the fish]
be sent on an embassy to the Pope of Rome; he was empowered to enter
into negotiations for the settlement of all religious differences
between the Eastern and Western churches, on condition that the Latin
princes should assist the emperor to drive the Turks back into the
confines of Asia. The Emperor Andronicus died from a fever brought on by
excitement in defending the cause of the ascetic quietists before a
council in his palace. John Paleologus was set aside; and John
Cantacuzene, in a desperate endeavour to please all parties, gave his
daughter Theodora to Orchan the Emperor of the Osmanlis; and at his
coronation the purple buskin of his right leg was fastened on by the
Greeks, and that of his left leg by the Latins. Notwithstanding these
concessions, the embassy of Barlaam, the most important with which any
diplomatic agent was ever trusted,