The Anti-Unionist Leader (1440–1444)

The four years in which Mark of Ephesus led the Orthodox resistance to the Union of Florence: his Encyclical Letter to all Orthodox Christians, the manifesto of the anti-unionist cause, with its naming of the unionists as “Greco-Latins” and its call to break communion with them; his refusal to recognize the unionist patriarch Metrophanes II; his attempted withdrawal to Mount Athos, his arrest, and his two-year confinement on the island of Lemnos; and his return as a confessor, culminating in the deathbed charge by which he handed the leadership of the cause to his old pupil George Scholarios.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox / Byzantine

The Encyclical Letter

The literary monument of Mark’s resistance is his Encyclical Letter (Epistula encyclica), addressed “to all Orthodox Christians everywhere and in the islands,” written most likely during his confinement on Lemnos around 1440–1441 (Mark, Encyclical Letter, ed. Petit, Patrologia Orientalis 17: 449–459; Gill, Personalities of the Council of Florence [1964]: 64; on the dating, Davies, JLARC 19.1 [2025]: 40). It is the foundational document of the post-Florence Orthodox opposition, and Kallistos Ware judged it “an archetypal delineation of Eastern Orthodox doctrine following the canons of the first seven ecumenical councils” (Ware, The Orthodox Church).

Its argument is uncompromising. Mark calls the unionists Graikolatinoi (“Greco-Latins”) and Latinophrones (“Latin-minded”), comparing them to the mythical centaurs — half one thing and half another — who confess with the Latins that the Spirit proceeds “from the Son” and partake of azymes, while with the Greeks they say “from the Father” and shun azymes (Mark, Encyclical, ed. Petit, PO 17: 450). He begs the faithful to “wholly refrain from cooperating” with the unionists, to flee communion with them “as one flees from a snake,” and he grounds this on the central dogmatic point — there is no middle way: “if the Latins do not at all depart from the correct Faith, we have evidently cut them off unjustly. But if they have thoroughly departed… then it is clear that they are heretics, and we have cut them off as heretics” (Mark, Encyclical, ed. Petit, PO 17: 453–457; Davies 2025: 40; English in Pogodin, St. Mark of Ephesus and the Florentine Union [1963]).

[Disputed: the date and place of composition of the Encyclical. The scholarly mainstream (Davies 2025: 40) places it during the Lemnos confinement, c. 1440–1441; some accounts date it to July 1440 from Ephesus. Devotional sites that head it “July 1444” are almost certainly in error, conflating it with the year of Mark’s death. The substance and standing of the letter are not in dispute; only its exact dating is.]

Alongside the Encyclical, Mark left a Confession of Faith (Homologia) — important enough that the unionist patriarch Gregory Mammas wrote a refutation of it — a letter to Scholarios urging him to resign his imperial offices (ed. Petit, PO 17: 460–464), and further treatises on the procession of the Spirit and on the eucharistic epiclesis. Together these works define the five fault-lines on which Mark stood against Rome: the Filioque, papal primacy, purgatory, the azymes, and the moment of eucharistic consecration (Davies 2025; on the works, Constas, “Mark Eugenikos” [2002]).

The Confession of Faith deserves a word, for it is the most concentrated statement of Mark’s mature position. In it he sets out the Orthodox faith point by point against the Florentine definitions, professing the procession of the Spirit from the Father alone, rejecting the Filioque and its addition, denying the Latin purgatory, and refusing the developed papal primacy — and he frames the whole as a confession, in the technical sense of a confessor’s witness, the public profession of faith for which one is prepared to suffer (Constas 2002; Davies 2025). That the unionist patriarch Gregory Mammas thought it necessary to answer the Confession at length is itself a measure of its weight: the document of a single exiled bishop had become a text the official Church felt obliged to refute (Davies 2025). Taken together with the Encyclical, the Confession gave the anti-unionist movement what a movement of resistance most needs — not merely a leader but a settled doctrine, set down in writing, around which the scattered opposition could organize and to which it could appeal.

Mark’s anti-unionist writings are also notable for what they do not do: they do not descend into mere abuse of the Latins or the unionists, but argue from Scripture, the canons, and the Fathers, in the same register he had used at the council. The polemical sharpness — the centaur image, the “flee as from a snake” — is real, but it serves a doctrinal argument rather than replacing it, and Mark is careful throughout to ground the rupture in specific, named points of faith rather than in animus (Mark, Encyclical, ed. Petit, PO 17: 449–459; Ware, The Orthodox Church). This is part of why his writings could function as the charter of a movement rather than the venting of a grievance: they told the faithful not merely whom to oppose but precisely what was at stake and why.

Refusing the Unionist Patriarch

After Florence the patriarchal throne passed to the unionist Metrophanes II (formerly bishop of Cyzicus), installed on 4 May 1440, whom the anti-unionists derided with a play on his name (Davies 2025: 39). The emperor had first tried to make Mark himself patriarch — which Mark refused, since the office would have required him to implement the union — and appointed Metrophanes instead (Davies 2025: 39, from Syropoulos 12.4). On the very day of Metrophanes’ installation Mark left the capital for his (Ottoman-held) see of Ephesus, and from there continued to lead the opposition; he, his brother John, and Antonios of Herakleia “declined to celebrate the Sacraments under the new Ecumenical Patriarch” (Davies 2025: 26, from Syropoulos 12.10). Gill’s own summary of these years is the standard one: Mark “was active with voice and pen persuading the hesitant, confirming the persuaded and exciting the convinced to open and undying opposition to union” (Gill, The Council of Florence [1959]: 166).

Arrest and Exile to Lemnos

Mark’s health was failing, and he resolved to withdraw to Mount Athos — to retire among the monks who were the heart of the resistance and to rally them — setting out without the unionist patriarch’s permission. He got no further than Lemnos: the Byzantine imperial authorities apprehended him on the island and placed him under house arrest, by a standing directive of Emperor John VIII, at the fortress of Moudros (John Eugenikos, Synaxarion, ed. Pétridès 1910: 106; Davies 2025: 40). There he remained for about two years, in illness, harsh conditions, and hardship, continuing all the while to encourage the anti-unionists by letter (John Eugenikos, Synaxarion [Pétridès 1910: 106]; Pogodin 1963). The islanders, the tradition adds, credited their deliverance from an Ottoman naval raid to his intercessions.

[Disputed: the dates of the Lemnos exile. The start is unanimously 1440 (Mark’s departure from Constantinople is given as 4 or 15 May 1440), and the duration as about two years. The end-year is contested: the popular Lives and Encyclopedia.com give release in 1442; Davies (2025: 40), following John Eugenikos’ Synaxarion (Pétridès 1910: 106), gives 4 August 1443 — a date that coincides with the death of the unionist patriarch Metrophanes II (1 August 1443) and falls on the feast of the Seven Youths of Ephesus. Both traditions agree on the feast (4 August) and differ only on the year (1442 vs. 1443).]

Released, he returned to Constantinople, received “as a saint and confessor,” a “new confessor” (νέος ὁμολογητής), and retired to the Monastery of St. George of the Mangana, his illness preventing the withdrawal to Athos he had hoped for (John Eugenikos, Synaxarion [Pétridès 1910: 106]; Davies 2025).

Handing the Leadership to Scholarios

The last and most consequential act of Mark’s resistance was to secure a successor. His old pupil George Scholarios (see Constantinople and Formation) had been conciliatory at Florence and had left the council before signing; in 1440 he wrote to Mark wishing to study the controversy before taking a side, and Mark replied critically, imploring him to resign his imperial offices (Mark, Letter to Scholarios, ed. Petit, PO 17: 460–464; Davies 2025: 22). By 1444 Scholarios had openly declared for the anti-unionists, and on his deathbed Mark formally bestowed on him the leadership of the cause (Davies 2025: 22). The deathbed address survives (Mark, Oratio ad amicorum coetum ac nominatim ad Georgium Scholarium, ed. Petit, PO 17: 484–491): in it Mark refuses communion with the unionist patriarch “neither in this life nor after my death,” declares that “the farther I stand from him and those like him, the nearer I am to God,” and turns to the one man in whom he had found a successor. The scene — the teacher charging his first pupil to carry his fallen standard — is treated in full in The Death of Mark (1444).

Scholarios would keep the charge. He led the anti-unionists through the fall of Constantinople and became, as Gennadios II, the first ecumenical patriarch under Ottoman rule, formally repudiating the union and becoming, in Gill’s phrase, its “most uncompromising enemy” (Gill 1959). The line of resistance that ran from Mark’s refusal at Florence reached, unbroken, into the patriarchate of the captive Church.

References

Mark Eugenikos. Encyclical Letter; Letter to George Scholarios; Address on the Day of His Death. Ed. Louis Petit, Patrologia Orientalis 17. Paris, 1923, pp. 449–459, 460–464, 484–491. (The “Greco-Latins”; the no-middle-way argument; the charge to Scholarios.)
Davies, Ewan. “Mark of Ephesus (1392–1444): Revisiting the Sources.” Journal for Late Antique Religion and Culture 19.1 (2025): 18–54. (Metrophanes II; the refusal of the patriarchate; the Lemnos exile and its dates; the handing of leadership to Scholarios.)
John Eugenikos. Synaxarion of Mark of Ephesus. Ed. S. Pétridès, Revue de l’Orient chrétien 15 (1910): 97–107. (The arrest on Lemnos; the return as a confessor.)
Gill, Joseph. The Council of Florence. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1959. (Mark “with voice and pen”; Scholarios as the union’s enemy.)
Pogodin, Archimandrite Ambrose. St. Mark of Ephesus and the Florentine Union. Jordanville, NY: Holy Trinity Monastery, 1963. (English translation of the Encyclical; the Lemnos confinement.)
Ware, Kallistos. The Orthodox Church. London: Penguin, rev. ed. 1993. (Assessment of the Encyclical.)