Listed 22 sub titles with search on: Religious figures biography Saints for wider area of: "THESSALONIKI Province MAKEDONIA CENTRAL" .
APOLLONIA (Ancient city) THESSALONIKI
d. unknown, feastday(Catholic): June 17.
THESSALONIKI (Town) MAKEDONIA CENTRAL
280 - 305
Feastday: October 26
d.c. 304, feastday: October 8 (Catholic). Martyr. He was executed at Thessalonika under Emperor Diocletian, although the account of his martyrdom is considered dubious in its details.
d. 1st century, feastday: August 4
d. fourth century, feastday: November 9
Bishop of Gaza in Palestine, b. at Thessalonica about 347; d. at Gaza, 26 February, 420. After five years in the Egyptian desert of Scete he lived five years in a cave near the Jordan. In spite of his impaired health, he frequently visited the scene of the Resurrection. Here he met the Asiatic Mark, at a later date a deacon of his church and his biographer. To effect the sale of the property still owned by Porphyrius in his native city, Mark set out for Thessalonica and, upon his return, the proceeds were distributed among the monasteries of Egypt and among the necessitous in and around Jerusalem. In 392 Porphyrius was ordained to the priesthood, and the relic of the Holy Cross was intrusted to his care. In 395 he became Bishop of Gaza, a stronghold of paganism, with an insignificant Christian community. The attitude of the pagan population was hostile so that the bishop appealed to the emperor for protection and pleaded repeatedly for the destruction of pagan temples. He finally obtained an imperial rescript ordering the destruction of pagan sanctuaries at Gaza. A Christian church was erected on the site of the temple of Marnas. In 415 Porphyrius attended the Council of Diospolis. The "Vita S. Porphyrii" of Mark the Deacon, formerly known only in a Latin translation, was published in 1874 by M. Haupt in its original Greek text; a new edition was issued in 1895 by the Bonn Philological Society.
N.A. Weber, ed.
Transcribed by: Kenneth M. Caldwell
This text is cited July 2004 from The Catholic Encyclopedia, New Advent online edition URL below.
d. 5th century, feastday: June 26
d. 304, feastday: December 30
d. 250, feastday: May 28
Cardinal and sometime Metropolitan of Kiev
or Moscow, b. at Thessalonica
(Saloniki) towards the end of the fourteenth century; d. at Rome, 27 April, 1463.
He was one of the chief Eastern defenders of reunion at the time of the Council
of Florence. The date of his birth is unknown, nor is his nationality certain.
He has been variously described as a Bulgar and a Greek. In any case all his education
was Greek. He arrived at Constantinople,
became a monk, and was there made hegumenos of the monastery of St. Demetrius.
He had evidently received an unusually complete education: 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 Emperor John VIII (1425-48) 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. 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 of Moscow
(or was his title Kiev? He
is constantly called Bishop of Kiev,
though he certainly went to Moscow
and stayed there. They were two separate sees. Kiev was the old metropolis of
Russia. Moscow was made so
about this time). As soon as he arrived he began to arrange a Russian legation
for the council about to be held at Ferrara.
The Russian tsar, Vasili II (1425-62), 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 Sept., 1437, travelled
by Riga and Luebeck,
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 Bessarion he steadfastly worked for the union, and
never swerved afterwards in his acceptance of it.
After the council, the pope (Eugene IV, 1431-47) made him his legate
for all Russia and Lithuania.
On his way back news reached Isidore, at Benevento,
that he had been made Cardinal-Priest of the Title of St. Peter and St. Marcellinus.
This is one of the few cases in which a person not of the Latin Rite has been
made a cardinal. From Budapest
in March, 1440, he published an encyclical calling on all Russian 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
the tsar and most of the bishops and people would have none of it. Then, at the
tsar’s command, six Russian bishops met in a synod, deposed Isidore, and
shut him up in prison. He escaped, fled to Rome,
and was graciously received by the pope in 1443. Nicholas V (1447-55) 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 (P.G., CLIX, 953). 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. Pius II
(1458-64) later gave him two titles successively, those of Patriarch of Constantinople
and Archbishop of Cyprus,
neither of which he could convert into real jurisdiction. He died at Rome
on 27 April, 1463.
Adrian Fortescue, ed.
Transcribed by: John Fobian
This text is cited May 2004 from The Catholic Encyclopedia, New Advent online edition URL below.
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