ABSTRACT
In the autumn of 1437 the Byzantine delegation, including the Byzantine emperor John VIII Palaiologos and the patriarch Joseph II, boarded Venetian galleys and sailed to Italy to participate at the council for the union of the Latin and Greek Churches. This journey was the outcome of lengthy negotiations among the Byzantines, especially the Byzantine emperor and his officials, and the Latins, including the pope, the doge of Venice and the dignitaries of the Council of Basle. In the history of the Middle Ages one can hardly find another example of a similar journey involving the travel of such a considerable diplomatic and religious delegation. It was a massive logistic undertaking since approximately seven hundred Byzantines with all their belongings, including clothes, books, other personal items and even horses had to be transferred safely to Italy at the end of autumn with unfavourable weather and pirates lurking in the Aegean.1 Sylvester Syropoulos, an ecclesiastical official and member of the Byzantine delegation who travelled to Italy for the Council of Ferrara-Florence provides us with an eyewitness account that describes important events before, during and after the union of the Churches.2 Syropoulos’s Section IV, in particular, focuses on the journey to Italy and the stay of the delegation in Venice, and later in Ferrara and Florence.3 His description of the journey provides abundant information on travelling conditions in the Mediterranean in the fifteenth century, on trade and merchant ships, on
1 The number of the Byzantine delegates had already been agreed upon as early as in 1430 between John VIII and Pope Martin V when the terms of the ecclesiastical council and the travelling arrangements of the delegates were negotiated. For the text of this agreement see Eugenio Cecconi, Studi storici sul concilio di Firenze (Florence, 1869), no VI (English translation in Joseph Gill, The Council of Florence (Cambridge, 1959), 43-4. I owe thanks to V. Andriopoulou who pointed me to the appropriate reference for the agreement of the terms.
