The Beard That Cost Him the Papacy

If only he had shaved that morning.

Basilios Bessarion grew up in an Eastern Orthodox community in present-day Turkey in the early 15th century. He become a monk, then an abbot, and was eventually appointed to be a metropolitan bishop by the Byzantine Emperor John VIII Palaeologus, with whom he attended the ecumenical Council of Florence with hopes to reunite eastern and western Christianity. Though Bessarion was originally against reunion with Rome, he quickly changed his mind and became the most important Eastern Orthodox advocate for reunion at the council. Pope Eugene IV was so impressed by him that he made Bessarion a cardinal. From that point on, Bessarion lived and worked in Italy.