The PriestMartyr Isidor

Commemorated on January 8

The PriestMartyr Isidor was priest of the Nikol'sk church in the city of Yur'ev (Derpto, at present Taru in Estonia). According to the terms of a treaty concluded in 1463 between the Moscow Greatprince Ivan III and the Livonian knights, the latter were obligated to extend to the Orthodox at Derpto every protection. But the Livonian knights broke the treaty and began to try forcing the Orthodox into the Unia. Presbyter Isidor bravely stood forth in defense of Orthodoxy. He preferred to accept a martyr's crown rather than submit to the Catholics. Blessed Isidor together with 72 of his parishioners were drowned in the ice-hole, cut open on the feast of Theophany after the blessing of waters in the River Amovzha (or Emaiyga, now Emajogi). In Spring, during a time of flooding, the undecayed bodies of the holy martyrs, and among them the fully-vested body of the PriestMartyr Isidor, were found by Russian merchants journeying along the River bank. They buried the saints around the Nikol'sk church.