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 DYNASTIC STEUGGLES IN EMPIKE 89 which made him examine them as a statesman. It is probably true, as Gibbon suggests, 1 that in his appeals to Kome he was greatly influenced by his mother, Anne of Savoy. She had been brought up as a member of the Latin Church and, though compelled on her marriage to change her name and her religion, she yet remained attached to the Church and country of her childhood. Her struggles during the minority of her son had not tended to make her look with favour on the Orthodox, and her influence upon her son's mind was probably sufficient to make him regard with as much favour the Church to which his mother had belonged as that of which he was now the temporal head. He had come to regard the differences between the two Churches as matters rather for ecclesiastics than for states- men. He personally was ready to accept the Union of the Churches and even papal supremacy in religious matters, provided that in return he could obtain aid from the West against the enemies of the empire. But, whatever were his own sentiments towards the Church of Kome, his conduct during the long period of thirty-five years showed that he felt the need of external aid if the empire were to be saved. His reign is one long series of efforts to obtain it. He was ready to humiliate himself, to use all his powers of persuasion for Union, provided that the pontiffs would induce Western rulers to fight the Turks. Hope was probably stimulated in the empire by the fact Kenewed that the pope and the West generally seemed at last to by popes recognise that, in their own interest, measures should be Modems, taken to defend the empire. Moreover, the danger was now so pressing, not only to the Greeks but to Europe, that it appeared possible to obtain aid without submitting to the humiliating conditions hitherto imposed. While John knew that to persuade the Orthodox Church to acknowledge any of its doctrines as heretical, and especially to induce the ecclesiastics to accept the supremacy of the pope, was almost impossible, he professed himself ready to make his own submission. The Union of the Churches could be 1 Vol. vii. p. 87.