never rose above an object to be kept in view, to the Greeks of the East it presented itself as the only condition on which they could claim the help which might save them from gradual extinction. And this became even more apparent than hitherto after the reconquest of Constantinople by the Greeks; for it seemed as if the prospect of a peaceful reunion of the Churches alone might remove the pretext now given to the princes of the West for a new crusade directed against Constantinople. This was no imaginary danger; for Charles of Anjou and Naples had made himself the champion of the dispossessed Latin Emperor and was preparing to attack. So Michael Palaeologus who had rewon Constantinople for the Greeks and himself, made overtures to Pope Urban IV; and negotiations were thus begun which ended in the appearance of Greek delegates at the second Council of Lyons in 1274. These accepted, on behalf of the Greek Church and empire, the primacy of Rome and the Latin Creed. In return, the Bulgarian Church was once more restored to its own Metropolitan at Achrida. But all Michael's coercive efforts failed to make the union acceptable to his own clergy and people. It was so difficult to carry out the promised assimilation of the Greek to the Latin forms that the Popes became impatient; and when Nicholas III, the opponent of Charles of Sicily, was succeeded by Martin IV, the tool of that ambitious monarch, the excommunication launched by the new Pope against the Eastern Emperor was merely a preliminary step to the general attack on the empire planned by Charles. Michael's son and successor Andronicus entirely repudiated the agreement made at Lyons; but the misfortunes of Charles in Sicily removed the serious danger of invasion from the West. Overtures for ecclesiastical union were not renewed until the conquests of the Turks in the Balkan peninsula forced the Greeks to seek external aid. [Sidenote: Internal condition of Church.]