the Christian Church were exposed would induce the orthodox to yield
something of their ecclesiastical forms and phrases. It was evident that
foreign aid could alone save Constantinople, and it was absurd to imagine
that the Latins would fight for those who treated them as heretics and
who would not fight for themselves. The crisis therefore compelled the
Greeks to choose between union with the Church of Rome or submission to
the Ottoman power. They had to decide whether the preservation of the
Greek empire was worth the ecclesiastical sacrifices they were called
upon to make in order to preserve their national independence.

In the mean time the emperor Constantine celebrated his union with the
papal Church, in the Cathedral of St. Sophia, on December 12, 1452. The
court and the great body of the dignified clergy ratified the act by
their presence; but the monks and the people repudiated the connection.
In their opinion, the Church of St. Sophia was polluted by the ceremony,
and from that day it was deserted by the orthodox. The historian Ducas
declares that they looked upon it as a haunt of demons, and no better
than a pagan shrine. The monks, the nuns, and the populace publicly
proclaimed their detestation of the union; and their opposition was
inflamed by the bigotry of an ambitious pedant, who, under the name of
Georgius Scholarius, acted as a warm partisan of the union at the Council
of Florence, and under the ecclesiastical name of Gennadius is known in
history as the subservient patriarch of Sultan Mahomet II. On returning
from Italy, he made a great parade of his repentance for complying
with the unionists at Florence. He shut himself up in the monastery
of Pantokrator, where he assumed the monastic habit and the name of
Gennadius, under which he consummated the union between the Greek Church
and the Ottoman administration.

At the present crisis he stepped forward as the leader of the most