Never the Twain shall meet? Latins and Greeks learning from each other in Byzantium

This volume of papers, like the conference, was conceived as a means of shedding
light on the mutuality of theological and philosophical methods and interests in the
two halves of the former Roman Empire in its final period, to emphasize the lively intellectual engagement between “Latins” and “Greeks” of the Palaeologan period as well
as the long-lasting repercussions of the dialogue between them. Historically speaking,
the volume concentrates primarily on the period from the reconquest of Constantinople in 1261 by Michael VIII Palaiologos up to the aftermath of the Fall of Constantinople to the Ottomans in 1453, a period covering cataclysmic political, philosophical and
theological developments, including the ill-fated but tremendously important attempt
at ecclesial union at the Council of Florence-Ferrara (1437–39) and the stream of Greek
emigrés to the West once their capital city had fallen; it was a period that saw the
end of the Middle Ages and a new world discovered in 1492, transforming all previous conceptions of East and West. A reader equipped only with general knowledge of
the Fourth Crusade of 1204, which resulted in the subjugation of Constantinople under Frankish power for six decades, and formed by perceptions of some fundamental
dichotomy between Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy, cannot but be astonished to discover not only translations of Augustine and Thomas Aquinas into Greek
at this time along with an appropriation of Western scholastic ideas and methods in
Constantinople but also an impressive knowledge of Latin theology and philosophy
among Byzantine intellectuals throughout the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.