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UNION ACCOMPLISHED 127 Union was signed and all was ready for its formal proclama- Union tion. Earth and heaven were called upon to rejoice that the puX;a, dividing wall between the Churches of the West and East had lf/ 9 u ' been broken down. In August, the Act of Union was pub- lished with imposing solemnity in the cathedral and a Te Deum was sung in Greek. The embassy from Constantinople had been greatly impressed by the dissensions among the Latins. No French or German bishops had taken part in the meetings at Eerrara or Florence. Fifty out of the sixty-two bishops who were present were Italians, the remainder Spaniards or Burgundians. When the latter were admitted to the Council they saluted only the pope, doing this with the manifest intention of slighting the emperor. The adherents of Bale were, indeed, openly hostile, and as they were known to have great influence among the princes of the West, the Greeks lost the illusion that if they came to an agreement with the pope, aid would gladly be sent from the great Catholic states. It had been with difficulty that the emperor and the court party in Constantinople had persuaded the Churchmen to go to the West. While the former were willing to make many sacrifices, even perhaps to accept the pope's supremacy, in the hope of obtaining aid against the Turks, when they recognised that the influence of Eugenius was not what they had believed it to be, they were less urgent, and cer- tainly less able, to coerce the distinguished ecclesiastics who had been persuaded to accompany them. All were, indeed, miserably disappointed and disillusionised. Though the emperor never wavered in his determination to come to an agreement which would aid in the preservation of his empire, his own brother, Demetrius, refused to sign the Act of Union. Mark of Ephesus would not attend at the solemn proclama- tion, nor were George Scholarius or Gemistes or any of the bishops from Georgia present. The bishop of Heraclia, on his return to Venice, was required to recite the Creed in St. Mark's, but he did so with the omission of the Filioque clause. The same bishop declared on his return to Constanti-