Isidore of Kiev

Isidore of Kiev was born in southern Greece in circa 1385. He arrived at Constantinople, became a monk, and was there made hegumenos of the monastery of St Demetrius. He knew Latin well, and had considerable fame as a theologian. He was also an accomplished orator; he seems from the beginning to have been eager for reunion with the West.

It was the time when the Court of Constantinople, on the eve of its final destruction by the Turks, was considering the chance of rescue from the Western princes as a result of reuniting with Rome. In 1434 Isidore was sent to Basle by John VIII Palaiologos (1425–1448) as part of an embassy to open negotiations with the Council of Basle. Here he made a mellifluous speech about the splendour of the Roman Empire at Constantinople. On his return he continued to take part in all the preparations for reunion among his own people.

Isidore's Sluzebnik liturgical book

In 1437, Isidore was appointed Metropolitan of Kiev and all Rus' (seated in Moscow) by Emperor John VIII Palaeologus to draw the Russian Orthodox Church into communion with the Roman Catholic Church and secure Constantinople's protection against the invading Ottoman Turks. Grand Prince of the Grand Duchy of Moscow Vasili II (1425–62) met the new Metropolitan with hostility. However, Isidore managed to persuade him to ally with Catholicism for the sake of saving the Byzantine Empire and the Orthodox Church of Constantinople.

After Isidore had received funding from Vasili II, he went to Florence to attend the continuation of the Council of Basel in 1439. He was made a cardinal-presbyter and a papal legate for the provinces of Lithuania, Livonia, all Rus' and Galicia (thenceforth referred to as “the Ruthenian (Ukrainian Catholic) cardinal). During this Council, Isidore fervently defended the union between the Churches of East and West, but he was opposed only by the secular representative from Rus' - ambassador Foma (Thomas) of Tver. Finally, the union agreement was signed and Isidore returned to Eastern Europe. In 1437 he was sent by the Byzantine Patriarch Joseph II (1416–39, a conspicuous friend of reunion, who died a Catholic at Florence) to be Metropolitan in Moscow. As soon as he arrived he began to arrange a Rus' legation for the council about to be held at Ferrara. Vassili II made difficulties about this, and let him go eventually only after he had promised to come back with "the rights of Divine law and the constitution of the holy Church" uninjured. Syropulus and other Greek writers charge Isidore with perjury because in spite of this he accepted the union.

Isidore set out with a great following on 8 September 1437, travelled by Riga and Lübeck, and arrived at Ferrara on 15, August, 1438. On the way he offended his suite by his friendly conduct towards the Latins. At Ferrara and at Florence, whither the council moved in January, 1439, Isidore was one of the six chief speakers on the Byzantine side. Together with Basilios Bessarion he steadfastly worked for the union, and never swerved afterwards in his acceptance of it.

After the council, Pope Eugene IV made him his legate for all Rus' and Lithuania. On his way back news reached Isidore, at Benevento, that he had been made Cardinal-Priest of the Title of Ss Peter and Marcellinus. This was one of the few cases at the time in which a person not of the Latin Rite was made a cardinal.

From Buda, in March 1440, he published an encyclical calling on all Rus' bishops to accept the union, but when he at last arrived in Moscow (Easter, 1441), and proclaimed the union in the Kremlin church, he found that Vasily II and most of the bishops and people would have none of it. Then, at Vasily's command, six Rus' bishops met in a synod, deposed Isidore, and shut him up in prison.

In September 1443, after two years of imprisonment, Metropolitan Isidor escaped to Tver, then to Lithuania and on to Rome. He was graciously received by the pope in 1443. Pope Nicholas V (1447–1455) sent him as legate to Constantinople to arrange the reunion there in 1452, and gave him two hundred soldiers to help the defence of the city. On 12 December of that year he was able to unite three hundred of the Byzantine clergy in a celebration of the short-lived reunion.

He saw the taking of the city by the Turks on 29 May 1453, and only escaped the massacre by dressing up a dead body in his cardinal's robes. While the Turks were cutting off its head and parading it through the streets, the real cardinal was shipped off to Asia Minor with a number of insignificant prisoners, as a slave. Afterwards he wrote an account of the horrors of the siege in a letter to Nicholas V.

He escaped from captivity, or bought himself free, and came back to Rome. Here he was made Bishop of Sabina, presumably adopting the Latin Rite. Pope Pius II (1458–64) later gave him two titles successively, those of Latin Patriarch of Constantinople and Archbishop of Cyprus, neither of which he could convert into real jurisdiction. He was Dean of the Sacred College of Cardinals from October 1461.

The Grand Duchy of Moscow princes denounced the union with Rome, but Isidore persisted. On his return from Italy, during his first Pontifical Divine Liturgy in the Cathedral of the Dormition in the Moscow Kremlin, Isidore had a Latin Rite crucifix carried in front of the procession and named Pope Eugene IV during the prayers of the liturgy. He also read aloud the decree of unification. Isidore passed a message to Vasili II from the Vatican, containing a request to assist the Metropolitan in spreading the Union in Rus'. Three days later, Isidore was arrested by the Grand Prince and imprisoned in the Chudov Monastery. He was denounced by certain Rus' clergymen, who were under pressure of Vasili II, for refusing to renounce the union with "heretical Rome".

Cardinal Isidore is portrayed by İzzet Çivril in 2012 film Fetih 1453. In the film, the Cardinal is depicted to be a prisoner after the fall of Constantinople.