Page:The Fall of Constantinople.djvu/414

 396 THE FALL OF CONSTANTINOPLE. by an army of Bulgarians, Wallacliians, and Comans, and his subsequent death or murder, Philip still hoped that he might be named to the imperial throne. When Henry, the brother of Baldwin, was named as his successor, Philip treated him as a usurper, continually spoke of his own rights through his wife, and appears to the last to have hoped that all Europe might again be brought under his rule, as the caesar univer- sally recognized. The great consolation of Innocent was that the union of the two churches had been effected ; but, as we have stro?edii ^" seen, he doubted whether even this could be brought union of about effectually, since the conduct of the Latins had outraged the members of the Orthodox Church. Subsequent events showed that he was entirely right. The Latin conquest of Constantinople caused so deep a hatred to the Church of the West that there was never a chance asjain of a union between the two being accomplished. Upwards of two centuries later futile attempts were made at Ferrara and Florence to bring about such a union in presence of the ever -constant danger of the Mahometan progress, but the events of 1203-1204 made the endeavor a ridiculous failure. Xor was the anticipation of the difficulties of union in the mind of Innocent w^ithout justification for other branches of the Orthodox Church. Eussia was the great convert of the Greek Church. Innocent sent a mission to that country to invite its archbishops and bishops to submit themselves to Rome, in order that their Church might not be left out of his fold, and called attention to the fact that the Greek Church, from which they had hitherto derived their aid, had now be- come united under him. The mission obtained no satisfac- tory result. The Russian remained loyal to the Orthodox Church. Its aversion to that of the Elder Rome appears even to have been increased by this mission, and in a short time it placed itself under allegiance to the Patriarch of Nica3a, w^ho soon took the position which had been occupied by the Patri- arch of Constantinople. It is beyond my purpose to give an account of the rule of the Latin emperors of Constantinople. The events which fol-