Church, centred in Rome, met those of the Eastern Church, centred
in Constantinople, which was still Christian, for the purpose of
discussing various matters, not the least of which was the protection
of the Eastern Church against the Infidel. Not only was Constantinople
continually threatened by the Turks, and in need of arms as well
as sympathy, but the two branches of the Church were at enmity over
a number of points. It was as much to heal these differences as to
seek temporal aid that the Emperor John Palaeologus, the Patriarch
of Constantinople, and a vast concourse of nobles, priests, and
Greek scholars, arrived in Italy, and, after sojourning at Venice
and Ferrara, moved on to Florence at the invitation of Cosimo. The
Emperor resided in the Peruzzi palace, now no more, near S. Croce;
the Patriarch of Constantinople lodged (and as it chanced, died, for
he was very old) at the Ferrantini palace, now the Casa Vernaccia,
in the Borgo Pinti; while Pope Eugenius was at the convent attached
to S. Maria Novella. The meetings of the Council were held where we
now stand--in the cathedral, whose dome had just been placed upon it
all ready for them.

The Council failed in its purpose, and, as we know, Constantinople
was lost some years later, and the great empire of which John
Palaeologus was the last ruler ceased to be. That, however, at the
moment is beside the mark. The interesting thing to us is that among
the scholars who came from Constantinople, bringing with them numbers
of manuscripts and systems of thought wholly new to the Florentines,
was one Georgius Gemisthos, a Greek philosopher of much personal
charm and comeliness, who talked a bland and beautiful Platonism that
was extremely alluring not only to his youthful listeners but also
to Cosimo himself. Gemisthos was, however, a Greek, and Cosimo was
too busy a man in a city of enemies, or at any rate of the envious,