The Council of Florence, about which I have recently been reading Fr Gill's monumental work, is surely one of the more poignant, and I would say gallant failures of history. I feel also that it has a special interest for me as a Dominican, since the chief spokesman on the Latin Side in the theological debates was the Dominican John Montenero; a Greek Dominican bishop, Andrew Chrysoberges, played a prominent part in the negotiations that preceded and followed the Council; and finally the patriarch Joseph II, who died a few weeks before the union was proclaimed, was buried in the Dominican church of S. Maria Novella.

But for two more substantial reasons it is also of particular significance for subject this evening; it did achieve a union, however precarious and short-lived, between the Latins and the Greeks, and a union elicited from genuine hard discussion of the points at issue between the two Churches; and secondly it really settled once and for all the issue that Was dividing the Latin Church on whether or not a council has authority over the pope.