ABSTRACT
The Council of Ferrara-Florence (1438-39) involved weighty discussion of major theological problems that had for centuries divided the roman and Byzantine Churches. The achievement of ostensible agreement between them was an extraordinary achievement, unique in the history of the two Churches, even if the union broke down soon afterwards. This achievement will appear all the more surprising if we look closely at the very opening of the council, on the arrival of the Byzantine delegation at Ferrara. Friction and misunderstanding between the two parties broke out at once; small questions of protocol looked as if they might derail the council before it had even begun. The concern on both sides with questions of precedence and details of protocol may strike a modern observer as preposterous, considering the importance of the issues at stake and the perilous situation of Christian Europe at the time, in face of the mounting threat from the Ottoman Turks. But questions of precedence related to issues of primacy; and these were at the heart both of the schism between rome and Constantinople, and of the tensions between throne and altar recurrent throughout the Middle Ages.
