Our Father Among the Saints Jonas, Metropolitan of Kiev.
Our holy Father Jonas, Metropolitan of Kiev, was tonsured at the age of twelve in one of the Galician monasteries and later struggled in the Simonov Monastery in Moscow. About 1430, he became Bishop of Ryazan and Murom. In 1432 he was chosen as a candidate for Metropolitan of Kiev. (The Metropolitan’s residence had been transferred from Kiev to Vladimir about the year 1280, and then to Moscow in 1328, yet the Metropolitan continued to be called “of Kiev” until Saint Jonas, the last to be so called. After the fall of Constantinople, the successors of Saint Jonas took the title Metropolitan of Moscow. This is why Metropolitans Theognostus, Cyprian, Photius, and Jonas are sometimes called “of Kiev” and sometimes “of Moscow.”)
Upon arriving in Constantinople to receive consecration, however, Jonas learned that Isidore had been appointed to the see by the Ecumenical Patriarch Joseph, without the knowledge of the Muscovite prince and clergy. In 1438, at the Council of Florence, both Patriarch Joseph and Metropolitan Isidore became Uniates; in 1441, therefore, Isidore was driven from his see, and in 1449 (according to some, 1448), Saint Jonas was made Metropolitan by the Russian bishops. He reposed on March 31, 1461. (See also Oct. 5.)
The above account is taken from the Great Horologion,
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