Page:The Greek and Eastern churches.djvu/418

392 termination by the last act in the tragedy of the Eastern Empire. While the Christians were quarrelling the Turks were advancing. At the capture of Constantinople by Mohammed, Isidore was one of the many Greeks who fled to Italy. No one had earned a better right to an asylum at Rome, and there he was rewarded with the phantom title of "Patriarch of Constantinople."

A shadowy attempt to maintain the papal authority which Isidore had vainly tried to introduce into Russia was made in the appointment of one of his followers named Gregory as metropolitan of Kiev. But although he was recognised by Casimir, the Prince of Lithuania, Gregory was never acknowledged by the Church in Russia or even in Lithuania. The schism was maintained for some time by the appointment of a succession of Latin metropolitans at Kiev; but these men had no following. They can only be regarded as papal agents resident in a country over which they exercised no authority and in which they were not in any way recognised by the people or the Church.

The fall of Constantinople, which makes the year 1453 a landmark in the history of Europe, while it was followed by disastrous effects on the Greek Church in the dominion of the Turks, only had an indirect influence on the Church in Russia. Ecclesiastically the immediate consequence was the gaining of independence. The Russians were no longer made to look to the imperial patriarch for the appointment of their chief pastor. The metropolitan was now elected by a council of Russian bishops. Still, there was no breach of Church unity; the Russian Church remained in communion with the oppressed Greek Church, as a branch of the one holy orthodox Church, and was still nominally subject to the patriarch of Constantinople. Jonah, who had been appointed after a vacancy of eight years to succeed the deposed Isidore, was the last primate who bore the title "Metropolitan of Kiev." His successors were named "Metropolitan of Moscow and of all Russia," Thus the change which had