While, early in 1438, the fathers at Basle were pronouncing the suspension of the Pope, the latter opened, in the capital of the house of Este, a council, at which appeared shortly afterwards the Greek Emperor, John Palæologus, in whom the distress of his crumbling empire had aroused the hope of securing the assistance of the West by a union with the Church. A pestilence which broke out in Ferrara caused the removal of the synod to Florence, where in January 1439 it began its sittings, and on July 6 proclaimed the reunion of the two churches,[90] six weeks after the deposition of Eugenius IV. had been decreed by the council at Basle, which had degenerated into a _conciliabulum_, and which a few months later elected Duke Amadeus VIII. of Savoy, a powerless anti-Pope, under the name of Felix V. The bronze doors of the church of St. Peter’s in the Vatican, the work of two Florentine artists, though not the best specimen of the Florentine sculpture of that age, commemorate these events in the reliefs. The reconciliation between East and West could not be of long duration; the schism, a double one, as it was a question of doctrine as well as supremacy, and was deeply rooted in the feelings of the people, broke out again immediately afterwards. But for Florence, where also a reconciliation of the Armenians with the Church of Rome took place, the council formed an epoch in the world’s history. Eugenius IV. resided for four years in the city, while powerful regents, entrusted with full power, governed Rome. First, the cardinal-patriarch Giovanni Vitelleschi, for a time Archbishop of Florence, and involved in the catastrophe of Rinaldo degli Albizzi, as Luca Pitti was, six years later, in that which ended in his violent death; then Cardinal Ludovico Scarampi, likewise Archbishop of Florence at a time when this see needed a more worthy pastor than these prelates, wearing coat-of-mail and sword. It was precisely during these years that the Pope was more involved than suited his pastoral dignity in that endless confusion in the Romagna and the frontiers which occupied the last years of Filippo Maria Visconti, nor did his Holiness hold himself quite aloof from a share in Florentine party divisions. It would have been better for him if he had appeared there less as a temporal prince than as Pope. On March 25, the feast of the Annunciation, with which the year began, according to Florentine custom, he consecrated Sta. Maria del Fiore, where the solemn proclamation of union in the Church followed: two occurrences recorded on the large marble tablets which are to be seen on each side of the entrance to the new sacristy. After the consecration, the Gonfaloniere, Giuliano Davanzati, received the honour of knighthood. The church of Sta. Croce was consecrated in 1442, in the presence of the Pope, by Cardinal Bessarion, Archbishop of Nicæa, one of the few Greeks who remained in communion with the Latin church. Another memorial of