Council of Florence

This article includes a list of general references, but it lacks sufficient corresponding inline citations. Please help to improve this article by introducing more precise citations. (January 2018) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

The neutrality of this article is disputed. Relevant discussion may be found on the talk page. Please do not remove this message until conditions to do so are met. (May 2022) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

Council of Basel–Ferrara–Florence
Council of Florence in the Nuremberg Chronicle (1493)
Date	1431–1449
Previous council	Council of Constance
Next council	Fifth Council of the Lateran
Convoked by	Pope Martin V
President	Cardinal Julian Cesarini
Attendance	very light in first sessions, eventually 117 Latins and 31 Greeks
Topics	Hussites, East–West Schism, Western Schism
Documents and statements	Several Papal bulls, short-lived compromise of reunion with the Eastern Orthodox Church, reunion with delegation from the Armenians
Chronological list of ecumenical councils

Part of a series on the
Ecumenical councils of the Catholic Church
Renaissance depiction of the Council of Trent
4th–5th centuries
Nicaea I (325) Constantinople I (381) Ephesus (431) Chalcedon (451)
6th–9th centuries
Constantinople II (553) Constantinople III (680–681) Nicaea II (787) Constantinople IV (869–870)
12th–14th centuries
Lateran I (1123) Lateran II (1139) Lateran III (1179) Lateran IV (1215) Lyon I (1245) Lyon II (1274) Vienne (1311–12)
15th–16th centuries
Constance (1414–18) Basel–Ferrara–Florence (1431–42) Lateran V (1512–17) Trent (1545–63)
19th–20th centuries
Vatican I (1869–70) Vatican II (1962–65)
Catholicism portal
v t e

The Council of Florence is the seventeenth ecumenical council recognized by the Catholic Church, held between 1431 and 1449. It was covened in territories under the Holy Roman Empire. Italy became a venue of a Catholic ecumenical council after a gap of about 2 centuries (the last ecumenical council to be held in Italy was the 4th Council of the Lateran in Rome's Lateran Palace). It was convoked as the Council of Basel by Pope Martin V shortly before his death in February 1431 and took place in the context of the Hussite Wars in Bohemia and the rise of the Ottoman Empire. At stake was the greater conflict between the conciliar movement and the principle of papal supremacy.

The Council entered a second phase after Emperor Sigismund's death in 1437. Pope Eugene IV translated the Council to Ferrara on 8 January 1438, where it became the Council of Ferrara and succeeded in drawing some of the Byzantine ambassadors who were in attendance at Basel to Italy. Some Council members rejected the papal decree and remained at Basel: this rump Council suspended Eugene, declared him a heretic, and then in November 1439 elected an antipope, Felix V.

After becoming the Council of Florence (having moved to avoid the plague in Ferrara), the Council concluded in 1445 after negotiating union with the Eastern Orthodox Church. This bridging of the Great Schism proved fleeting, but was a political coup for the papacy. In 1447, Sigismund's successor Frederick III commanded the city of Basel to expel the Council of Basel; the rump Council reconvened in Lausanne before dissolving itself in 1449.