High Middle Ages · Europe · Religion

1274

Second Council of Lyon attempts reunion

1274

Byzantine envoys to a papal council at Lyon nominally agreed to church union in exchange for western protection against Charles of Anjou. The reunion was repudiated in Constantinople and would never take hold. Thomas Aquinas had died on his way to the council. The failed reunion deepened Orthodox suspicion of Latin Christianity, a bitterness that would persist through the fall of Constantinople and beyond.