Maximus the Greek (1470–1555)

SERGEY TROSTYANSKIY

Maximus the Greek (Michael Trivolis) was an Orthodox writer, translator, and exegete. Born to a noble Greek family, he moved to Italy where he received a classical educa­tion. In Florence he heard Savonarola’s sermons and was deeply affected by them. He also had encounters with some great Renaissance humanists. In 1502 he became a Dominican monk but resigned from the monastery soon afterwards. In 1505 he moved to Mount Athos where he became a monk in the monastery of Vatopedi. In 1516 he was sent by the ecclesiastical authorities to Moscow to work on translations of patris­tic commentaries on the Psalter. He also worked on revisions of Slavonic texts of the Bible and other liturgical books. Later in his life he became involved in the controversy racking the Russian Church over the legiti­macy of ecclesiastical (and especially monas­tic) possessions, in the party of those who opposed the holding of monastic estates (non-possessors). Acting as an agent of the patriarch of Constantinople, he argued against the proposed autocephaly of the Russian Church, and as a consequence he was arrested and tried in 1524. He was sen­tenced, excommunicated, and forbidden to write. Soon after his death he was canonized as a saint and martyr. His legacy in Russia exalts him as a symbol of the learned monk, upholder of the patristic tradition, reformist defender of Christian simplicity, and a symbol of the emergence of the Russian Church from its Byzantine infancy.

REFERENCES AND SUGGESTED READINGS

Geanakoplos, D. J. (1988) “The Post-Byzantine Athonite Monk Maximos ‘the Greek’: Reformer of Orthodoxy in Sixteenth-Century Muscovy,” Greek Orthodox Theological Review 33,4: 445–68. Obolensky, D. (1988) Six Byzantine Portraits. Oxford: Clarendon Press.