was
unnoticed by any one.

Eugenius held his council at Ferrara, and afterwards removed it to
Florence (A.D. 1438-9); and it seemed as if by his management the
Greeks, who were very poor, and were greatly in need of help against the
Turks, were brought to an agreement with the Latins as to the questions
which had been so long disputed between the Churches. The union of the
Churches was celebrated by a grand service in the cathedral of Florence.
But, as in former times,[90] the Greeks found, on their return home,
that their countrymen would not agree to what had been done; and thus
the breach between the two Churches continued, until a few years later
Constantinople was taken by the Turks, and so the Greek Empire came to
an end.

[90] See page 232.

CHAPTER XXVII.

NICOLAS V. AND PIUS II.

A.D. 1447-1464.

The next pope, Nicolas V., was a man who had raised himself from a
humble station by his learning, ability, and good character. He was
chiefly remarkable for his love of learning, and for the bounty which he
spent on learned men. For learning had come to be regarded with very
high honour, and those who were famous for it found themselves persons
of great importance, who were welcome at the courts of princes, from the
Emperor of the West down to the little dukes and lords of Italy. But we
must not fancy that these learned men were all that they ought to have
been. They were too commonly selfish and jealous, vain, greedy,
quarrelsome, unthrifty; they flattered the great, however unworthy these
might be; and in religion many of them were more like the old heathen
Greeks than Christians.

In the time of Nicolas, a terrible calamity fell on Christendom by the
loss of Constantinople. The Turks, a barbarous and Mahometan people, had
long been pressing on the Eastern empire, and swallowing up more and
more of it. It was the fear of these advancing enemies that led the
Greeks repeatedly to seek for union with the Latin Church, in the hope
that they might thus get help from the West for the defence of what
remained of their empire. But these reconciliations never lasted long,
more especially as the Greeks did not gain that aid from their Western
brethren for the sake of which they had yielded in matters of religion.
One more attempt of this kind was made after the council of Florence;
but it was vain, and in 1453 the Turks, under Sultan Mahomet II., became
masters of Constantinople.

A great number of learne