Isidore of Kiev

   Metropolitan of Russia (qq.v.) who signed the decree of the union of the churches at the Council of Ferrara-Florence (qq.v.) in 1439. A former Greek monk at Mistra (q.v.), Isidore had previously represented John VIII Palaiologos (q.v.) at the Council of Basil in 1434. Upon his return to Moscow (q.v.) in 1440 Grand Duke Basil II threw him into prison, rejecting both union with the papacy (q.v.), and any further ties with Byzantium (q.v.). Isidore escaped to the West, where he became a papal ambassador for Nicholas V (q.v.), in which capacity on 12 December 1452 he proclaimed church union in Constantinople (q.v.). When the city was captured by the Ottomans (q.v.) in 1453, he exchanged the red robes of a cardinal for the clothes of a beggar in order to escape death. He was later ransomed by a Genoese merchant.