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202 DESTEUCTION OF THE GEEEK EMPIEE days to the Morea. There he was shortly afterwards joined by Demetrius who had withdrawn his opposition and accepted the situation. The party opposed to the Union had now become sufficiently strong to call together a Synod, which met in the autumn of 1450. The three patriarchs of the East were present, and under their guidance the assembly declared the patriarch Gregory to be an enemy of the Orthodox Church and deposed him. In his stead they appointed Athanasius. During the interval between the death of John and that of Murad, on February 3, 1451, the Christian cause looked more hopeful. Scanderbeg had maintained himself suc- cessfully in the field, Murad had been compelled a second time to raise the siege of Croya. In four separate battles the Turkish armies had been defeated. In the siege of Sventigrad they lost thirty thousand men, and, though the brave Albanian failed in capturing the city and had to raise the siege, his campaign was a triumph. It seems to have been generally recognised that young Mahomet, the successor of Murad, had even before his accession determined to lay siege to the city. The emperor, therefore, once more renewed the efforts of his predecessors to obtain foreign aid. Once more the insuperable obstacle to the Union of the Churches, the rigid refusal of clergy and people, came to the fore. Constantine, like his predecessors, tried and failed to coerce the Church. Athanasius, the new patriarch, declared himself ready to maintain the Orthodox faith and declined to recognise the acts of the Council of Florence. When Constantine asked aid from Eome, he found that the deposed Gregory had taken refuge there, and while the patriotism of the latter led him to seek the pontiff's help against the Turks, his Catholicism compelled the pope to espouse his cause. Nicholas the Fifth sum- moned the emperor, as the price of his support, to replace Gregory and to take the measures necessary for formally completing the Union agreed to at Florence. Constantine was willing to do what he could, but knew the temper of his subjects. He knew himself to be distrusted by them for