St. Mark of Ephesus (1394-1444)

Manuel Eugenikos, a teacher of rhetoric who became a monk and, in 1437, Metropolitan of Ephesus, the see of St John, in order to go to the council of union at Ferrara and Florence as the leading theologian of the Greek delegation. For fifteen months, with the empire asking for Western help against the Turks, he argued the Filioque, purgatory, the epiclesis and the papal claims, and when the decree of union was put before the Greeks he alone of the bishops present would not sign it. At home he became the voice of those who rejected it, and they were most of the Church: the clergy and people of Constantinople would not receive the union, and the Eastern patriarchs repudiated it. He died in 1444, asking that no one who had accepted it pray at his funeral. Glorified in 1734. Feast: January 19.