Page:The Fall of Constantinople.djvu/401

 i THE ELECTION. 383 The name of the Emperor of Rome had not yet lost its power. If the whole of Christendom could by one Reasons for ^. i /. euchpro- stroKO DO placcd ai:cain under the rule of a ca^.sar u things temporal as it was about to be in things spiritual, then indeed a great w^ork would have been accom- plished. The whole of the contemporary Western writers, without exception, advance as justification for the conquest of the New Rome the justice of punishing it for its schism, and the necessity of bringing about the union of Christendom under the rule of the Bishop of the Elder Rome. Hardly any other excuse is mentioned. No other, in the eyes of the West, was necessary. The Church of Christ ought to be in one fold and under one shepherd. It is difficult for us, who live under a condition of things so greatly altered, to conceive the overwhelming importance which the men of the thir- teentli century attached to this visible union of Christendom; and while we may admit that the Western writers were driven to find or to invent excuses for the destruction of Constan- tinople, it is impossible not to see that the union of the churches really possessed for them an importance which we can hardly comprehend. "God delivered the city into the hands of the Latins," says one Western writer,' " because the Greeks had asserted that the Ploly Ghost proceeded from the Father only, and celebrated the mass with leavened bread." " By the wickedness of its long schism this city had provoked the Divine wrath." ^ " As the Crusaders knew that it was rebellious and odious to the Roman Church, they did not think that the forcing upon it another ruler would be dis- pleasing either to the pope or to God." ' Similar expressions occur in the contemporary accounts with great frequency and evident belief in their force. This overwhelming sentiment in favor of the absolute and indispensable union of the churches (a union, moreover, which the Crusaders knew would be the only fact which ' Petrus Calo, writing about 1310 to the Roman Church. " Gunther, xi.
 * "Lectioncs Borteus. :" "Exuviaj Sac." ii.