Council of Florence
Ecumenical Council of the Catholic Church (1431–1445)
The Council of Florence was the seventeenth ecumenical council recognized by the Catholic Church, held between 1431 and 1445. It was convened in territories under the Holy Roman Empire. Italy became a venue of a Catholic ecumenical council after a gap of about two centuries (the last ecumenical council to be held in Italy was the 4th Council of the Lateran in Rome's Lateran Palace in 1215). It was convoked in Basel as the Council of Basel by Pope Martin V shortly before his death in February 1431 and took place in the context of the Hussite Wars in Bohemia and the rise of the Ottoman Empire. At stake was the greater conflict between the conciliar movement and the principle of papal supremacy.
The Council entered a second phase after Emperor Sigismund's death in 1437. Pope Eugene IV translated the Council to Ferrara on 8 January 1438, where it became the Council of Ferrara and succeeded in drawing some of the Byzantine delegates who were in attendance at Basel to Italy. Some Council members rejected the papal decree and remained at Basel: this rump Council suspended Eugene, declared him a heretic, and in November 1439 elected an antipope, Felix V.
After becoming the Council of Florence (having moved to avoid the bubonic plague in Ferrara), the Council concluded in 1445 with the promulgation of a decree of union with delegates of the Eastern Orthodox Church.
The union was not universally accepted among the Eastern Christian churches. The delegates of the Georgian Orthodox Church and the Church of Alexandria did not sign the decree of union.
The public source identifies “Council of Florence” as ecumenical Council of the Catholic Church (1431–1445). This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Council, Florence and Ecumenical.
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Place names and jurisdictional language are key evidence: both can reveal earlier catalogue descriptions and overlooked record series. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 19, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q321032. VIAF identifies the subject as 141123009. The Library of Congress control number is n50001247. Authority coordinates are 43.771, 11.254. 2 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1431, 1445, 1215 and 1437.
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This entry incorporates text from “Council of Florence” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.