Page:Russian Church and Russian Dissent.djvu/52

Rh and his people's religious birthright. He passionately apostrophized the metropolitan as a recreant priest, treacherous to his holy trust, a false teacher, and heretic.

A synod of bishops immediately condemned and disavowed the action of the council. Isidore was deposed and sentenced to confinement; he escaped from his prison to Rome, where, by favor of the pope, he enjoyed the barren title of Bishop of Russia, and, at the fall of the Byzantine empire, was made patriarch of Constantinople under the jurisdiction of Rome.

Gregory, one of Isidore's disciples, and a partisan of the union, became metropolitan of Kiev in 1443, by the protection of Casimir, King of Poland; he endeavored, unsuccessfully, to extend his sway over the see of Moscow, and was, with his doctrines, excommunicated by the Russian bishops, who preserved the Muscovite Church steadfast in the ancient faith, while Kiev and Southern Russia fell under the domination of the pope.

At Constantinople, although the people and the great body of the Church rejected the acts of the council and persevered in asserting their independence of papal authority, the emperor and the patriarch acquiesced in the union. As henceforth any Orthodox patriarchal confirmation of a metropolitan in Russia was impossible, Jonah of Riazan, who had been elected prior to Isidore's appointment, remained, by common consent, in charge of the Church, and in 1448 was formally consecrated as its head by a synod of bishops. He endeavored in vain to bring the Churches of Poland and Lithuania under his control, and for his efforts was excommunicated by the pope; despairing of success against the will of the Polish king, at that time a more powerful potentate than the great prince of Russia, he abandoned the attempt and relinquished the empty title of Kiev, to as-