"Do you deny that it has taken you a long time to come to grasp what the West teaches on such issues as original sin, purgatory, and the Trinity?"
Oh, please Jo. Are you seriously suggesting that the carefully nuanced theological points discussed today bear any relationship to what the Latin Church taught even in the years leading up to Vatican II, let alone in 1440?
Please, Kolo. Are you seriously suggesting that the Eastern "lower clergy" even CARED what was happening in the West regarding theology in the 1200-1400's? Did they subscribe to "Western Theology" Quarterly? Did they read the writings of Aquinas, Bernard, Anselm, and Scotus in Latin???
You are merely diverting the conversation from the point you tried to make - that the "lower clergy" was theologically competent to know Western theology of the 1200-1400's, so that after Florence, the Eastern Bishops who went to Florence to discuss theology with their Western counterparts were clueless after months-long discussions about the West - while the Eastern "lower clergy" back home KNEW that their own bishops were being hoodwincked by those tricky Western schismatics...
I find that theory untenable. The "lower clergy" resisted ecumencism after Florence for political reasons and deeply seated bias vs anything West (judge the Hesychast controversy) and had NOTHING to do with the "lower clergy"'s knowledge of the West and what they taught.
Regards