Abstract

During the 1430s and 1440s, several attempts were made to reunite eastern and western Christendom which culminated in the Council of Florence in 1439. These attempts around and after the Council of Florence provided a frame within which the Livonians could stage their political interests, using the larger political context of the quarrels between the Council of Basel and the Pope. This article demonstrates three aspects of Livonia's involvement.

The first episode traces the impact of the pro-unionist Metropolite Isidore of Kiev and his voyage to Florence in 1437–38. When the Lithuanian Grand Duke Vytautas died in 1430, both his brother Sigismund and his cousin Svitrigaila claimed the throne. With the mediation of the Livonian Teutonic Order and the support of some Russian princes, Svitrigaila presented himself to the Council of Basel and to the Pope as the executor of the Union of the Orthodox Church. Isidore was therefore challenged by Vytautas's successor Sigismund who rejected to provide his safe passage through Samogitia. The Teutonic Order had to arrange Isidore's journey from Livonia to Germany. The second episode concerns the warfare of the Livonian Teutonic Order against Novgorod in the early 1440s. Novgorod was an early and active centre of antiunionist and anti-Isidorian sentiment in Russia. In 1443 the Livonian Teutonic Order opened a military campaign against Novgorod, but the military activities failed so that in 1448 peace was brought about. The remarkable presence of the anti-schismatic rhetoric in the records of the Teutonic Order in the 1440s suggests a connection between the Union of Florence and the Order's war against Novgorod. The last episode traces the impact of the indulgence money collected in the Order's territory for fighting the infidels and schismatics. In 1448, the Pope allowed the Order to keep two thirds of the money collected in the indulgence campaign to support the Union because the Order had staged its warfare against Novgorod as a fight against the infidels. The Livonian relations with the papal Council of Florence were nevertheless ambivalent. In the conflict between the Council of Basel and Pope Eugene IV, the Livonian clergy and local bishops supported the conciliarist side. The Teutonic Order remained officially neutral, but informally gained the Pope's support against his main local opponent, the Archbishop of Riga. The Livonians contributed to the Union mostly by presenting local political issues with the political vocabulary used in actual discussions at the “legitimising offices” in Europe – the Pope and the Council. In contrast to this verbal contributions, the real support for the Union was consumed by acute political conflicts in the region.