Isidore of Kiev

Isidore of Kiev ( * 1380-1390 in Thessaloniki, Byzantine Empire, † April 27, 1463 in Rome, Papal States ) and Isidore, in Southern and Western Europe, also known as Isidore of Thessalonica, was a Greek bishop and church leaders in the 15th century and supporters of the Union Church of Florence.

Isidore of Thessaloniki

As Isidore was born at the end of the 14th century, his birth city of Thessaloniki was already first briefly under the rule of the Ottoman Turks ( 1387-1391, 1394-1402, 1430-1912 final ). The son of Greek or Hellenized Bulgarian parents received a theological education in the monastery of St. Demetrius of Constantinople Opel. In 1434 he was sent by the Byzantine Emperor John VIII to the Council of Basel to win the support of the papacy in the struggle against the Turks.

Isidore of Moscow

1437 Isidor from the Greek Orthodox Patriarch Joseph II to the metropolitans of Kiev and All Russia determined ( which, however, since 1326 no longer in Kiev, but resided in Moscow ). With Emperor John, Basilius Bessarion and a Russian delegation he took in 1438 in part at the Council of Ferrara, but fell out with his Russian co-religionists because of his espousal of the Church Union plans of the Byzantine emperor, which was finally approved in relocated to Florence council in 1439. Isidore worship of the Latin culture and theology was no majority among orthodox Greek or Russian believers.

Pope Eugene IV made ​​Isidor legate for the whole of Russia and Lithuania, and in 1439 to Cardinal and appointed him in 1440 as Cardinal Priest of St. Peter and Marcellinus in Rome. In Budapest Isidor issued a call to the Russian Church, but on his return in 1441 he was deposed by the Moscow Grand Prince Vasily II after he proclaimed the Church Union in the Kremlin. He was the last Greek Metropolitan of the Russian Orthodox Church, which from now on by Konstantin Opel went their separate ways. Isidore was sent to prison, but managed to escape and reach Rome in 1443. Pope Nicholas V sent him along with 200 soldiers as legate to Constantinople Opel, where he again in the Hagia Sophia announced in 1452 a short-lived Church Union.

Isidore of Constantine Opel

In the final fall of Constantinople to the Turks was to escape only through exchange of clothing, he was appointed in Rome already in 1451 by Pope Nicholas Cardinal Bishop of Sabina - a titular, which previously held Bessarion. Pope Pius II elevated him even to the Uniate Archbishop of Cyprus and in 1458 formally to the Patriarch of Constantinople Opel ( not to be confused with Patriarch Isidore in the 14th century), where the Turks but with Gennadius Scholarius employing an optical other non - Uniate Greeks.