Discussions on Purgatory at the Council of Ferrara-Florence and Church Doctrine of the State of Souls after Private Judgement

Abstract

This article attempts to trace the influence of the Purgatory controversy at the Council of Ferrara-Florence (04.06–17.07.1438) on the theological tradition of subsequent centuries. First of all, the question is considered as to what extent the academic theology of the 17th–19th century, based on the so-called «Symbolic books», follows the position of St. Mark Eugenicus, who was the first to formulate a systematic Orthodox answer to the problem of Purgatory. Comparison of the texts of the Mark’s speeches with the doctrine concerning the fate of souls after the private judgment of God, expressed in the «Orthodox Confession of the Eastern Church» by patr. Dositheos Notaras (the text is better known as the «Epistle of the Eastern Patriarchs» of 1723), has shown that the «Confession» closely follows St. Mark’s views in all its main positions and reproduces his judgments quite accurately. The general conclusion about the relative closeness of the doctrine of Purgatory (with the exception of the idea of a «cleansing fire», in which suffering allegedly has a propitious meaning) to Orthodox views turns out to be quite exactly consistent with the position of St. Mark. All this allows concluding that the widespread opinion about the «Latin pseudomorphosis» of Orthodox doctrine in the dogmatic documents of the early Modern period turns out to be incorrect, at least in this respect.

Keywords

• mark eugenicus
• greco-latin polemics
• council of ferrara-florence
• purgatory
• symbolic books