The Epiclesis Debate at the Council of Florence

Salient aspects of Mark’s youth may convince us that he was disposed toward ecclesiastical union and Latin theology before he arrived upon the shores of Italy. Mark was educated in an extremely pious family. Evidence for polemics is entirely absent from Eugenicus’s family’s preconciliar literary production. Mark’s family tree attests to three generations of religiosity. First and foremost, his grandfather Manuel Eugenicus (fl. 1384–92) made a name for himself as an iconographer. His notoriety was such that he was commissioned to paint in Iberia (present-day Calendzhiha, Georgia). Thereat, he was hired to decorate the Church of St George in that ancient cradle of Christianity. Unlike Mark’s father and brother, his grandfather did not prove to be well-educated. This is evidenced by the fact that Eugenicus has been found to make notable orthographic errors among his iconographic productions. Mark’s biological father George evinced his family’s religious piety by composing ecclesiastical offices and dedicated himself to the education and formation of youth as an abecedarian. Mark’s own education was anything but narrow, for he studied under the most lettered minds of his age. Initially, Mark was placed under the yoke of John Chortasmenos (c. 1370–c. 1437), who was a logician and patriarchal notary. Thenceforth, Mark undertook a liberal education from the famed humanist, George Gemistos Plethon (c. 1355–1452/4). Plethon taught him to read Homer, Plato, and other authors of antiquity. Thenceforward, after his father’s untimely death, Mark took up the reigns of his father’s school in 1410. At some later point in Mark’s formation, he likely had theological exchanges with one of our aforementioned theologians, whom he designated as a “champion of Orthodoxy”; namely, Makarios Makres. Again, Makres was a preliminary negotiator for the upcoming council. In his own works, Makres had traced out a philo-Latin course whereby he positively (if latently) employed wholesale passages of Demetrius Cydones’ translation of Thomas Aquinas into his own theology. Unprejudicially, Mark praised Makres for his genuine Orthodoxy and excellence. A talented philologist in his own right, Mark would have effortlessly uncovered latent passages of Aquinas in the works of yet another eminent figure, whom he also admired, namely, Joseph Bryennius (c. 1350–c. 1431). Though never an understudy of Bryennius (who was in Cyprus during the years of 1402 to 1412), Mark and Bryennius collaborated in theology. Bryennius likely gave Mark an initial flare for anti-Thomistic apologetics. Though chronological precision is wanting, Mark’s quasi-tutelage under Bryennius predates his formal study (1437) of Neilus Cabasilas. In his preconciliar, preparatory period Mark did his research under the aegis of Emperor John VIII. Within the tomes of Makres and Bryennius, Mark’s acute intellect had long accustomed itself to read Scholastic parentheses, which typically departed from classical vocabulary and syntax. Though precise dates are wanting for his studies with Makarios and Bryennius, Mark only took up theological studies after leaving the eremitical state on the isle of Antigone in the Sea of Marmara (c. 1420–22). Thereafter, upon his transfer to the Monastery of Mangana in Constantinople (1422), he took formal monastic vows and incessantly researched within the monastery’s vast library. Notably, Mark’s first period of literary production can be controversially categorized as totally irenic (c. 1426–31), that is, prior to formal negotiations for the Council of Ferrara-Florence under the auspices of Pope Eugene IV (fl. 1431–39). Mark’s only hint of interest in theological controversies at that time stems from a congratulatory letter to Patriarch Joseph II (1422). Similar to his model Makres, Mark simply professed his faithful adherence to the long-standing Greek opposition to innovations to the creed with respect to the filioque. As Makres’s opposition to the filioque had not inhibited him from negotiating with Latins for a new ecumenical council, neither did Eugenicus assume the posture of an anti-unionist for encouraging his patriarch to press for the traditional Byzantine position. In effect, this epistle is the only piece of preconciliar literature that hints at Mark’s distraction from his hesychastic bliss from about the time of his move to Constantinople (1422) until his encounter with Dominican anti-Palamite apologetics (1430s). In his second (apologetic) period, after profound study (c. 1427) of the works of Gregory Palamas, Mark likely came upon contemporary anti-Palamitical literature, which inspired Eugenicus’s own apologetic works in the 1430s. Mark focused his energies on Manuel Calecas. Because of Mark’s acquaintance with Bryennius, who was long familiar with Demetrius Cydones and Manuel Calecas, Mark probably came to know anti-Palamite theology. In short, Mark’s early biography only gives the impression that he was a well-educated, well-rounded scholar, who embraced a peaceful monastic life until the time at which he came across Calecas’s polemical works. Since no one had adequately refuted the latinophrôn Thomist-become-Dominican, Mark obliged himself to respond.