The deputies from Bâle brought with them to Constantinople a comminatory decree of the Council against the pope. The emperor and patriarch had therefore to choose between the Council and Eugenius. Each had invited them, had offered to bear the expenses and menaced them in case of refusal. The deputies from Bâle were heard at a public session of the Synod and threatened that if the Council were not recognised, the nations of the West would make war upon the empire, and this notwithstanding the aid of the pope, whose decrees they insisted were null and void. The ambassadors from Eugenius, who had arrived with a band of three thousand crossbowmen, offered terms as to transport and convoy similar to those which the messengers from Bâle had proposed, and suggested that the proclamation calling the meeting of the Council might be issued in the emperor’s name. They were also heard in a public sitting of the Synod in September 1437, a few days after the audience of the deputies from Bâle. John and the patriarch decided to accept the proposal of Eugenius.[106] When the news reached the pope he at once issued a Bull fixing Ferrara as the meeting-place of the Council. In November 1437, the emperor, with a large suite, embarked. The imperial party arrived at Venice in the following February. The Venetians had been excommunicated by the Council of Bâle as adherents of Eugenius, who was their fellow-citizen, and, probably with a desire to induce the Greeks to throw in their lot entirely on the side of the pope, received John and the patriarch with unwonted honour. The doge and the senate in the ‘Bucentaur,’ with the galleys belonging to the republic and a crowd of gondolas, went out to receive them. Lodging was found for their followers on the Lido. Syropulus, who attended the patriarch and whose history from the Greek point of view is the most trustworthy narrative of these proceedings, was amazed at the display on the reception in Venice. ‘You could as easily number the leaves on the trees or the sands of the sea as the gondolas and galleys of the Venetians.’ Phrantzes is not less enthusiastic. He speaks of ‘Venice the marvellous, the most marvellous: Venice the wise, the most wise; the city predicted in the psalm, “God has founded her upon the waters.”’[107] The Greeks were shown the treasures of St. Mark, but Syropulus remarks that as they gazed upon them arose the thought, ‘These were once our own. They are the plunder of Hagia Sophia and our holy monasteries.’ Their departure for Ferrara was with a like magnificence. Twelve noble galleys and an innumerable number of gondolas, whose occupants and sailors were bright with silks of various colours, attended them. The imperial eagles were mingled with the gonfalons of St. Mark, and the city which more than any other lends itself to display has seldom presented a more brilliant spectacle.