Page:Nicolae Iorga - My American lectures.djvu/49

 gave proof that a foreign conqueror was not sufficient to destroy the principles of its existence.

At the end of this adventurous empire, the Patriarch, whose nomination had evaded the Venetians, remained a titular bishop of Constantinople, residing in his own country in the West. But Orthodoxy restored was doomed to suffer unending humiliation at the hands of the great western church which alone could withstand the Turk and other enemies.

At Lyons, the ambassadors of Michael Palaeologue brought to the Pope all that was necessary to prepare for the union of the two churches. Notwithstanting the resistance of the Greek clergy, Latin propaganda was encouraged by such declarations and offers. In the quarrel of the Hesychastes, represented by a Greek monk who came from the Calabrian province of orthodoxy, Barlaam, there was undoubtedly an influence of western conceptions. To this end also the marriages of the emperors with the Latin princesses of Savoy and of Monteferrat certainly helped.

But not only in Byzantium, but also in each of the Balkanic and Danubian States and territories, the Holy See worked for the expansion of its authority. In the 9th century, as the apostolic function of gaining souls for the western church was confided to the Carolingians, direct negotiations were commenced with the chief of the Slavs in the middle Danube, the Moravian « king », and with the pagan Khan of the Touranian Bulgarians established in the Balkan peninsula: the latter succumbed to the flattering overtures of the Byzantine emperor and became his orthodox « son », being baptised in the name of the imperial Michael.

At the outset, the Hungarian duchy, a barbarian extension of the Moravian state, whose chiefs were unlawfully