St. Maximus the Greek (Mihail Trivolis, Arta, ca. 1470–Maksim Grek, Moscow, 1556): An Insight into His Personal Euchology
St. Maximus the Greek (Mihail Trivolis, Arta, ca. 1470–Maksim Grek, Moscow, 1556): An Insight into His Personal Euchology

Summary/Abstract: This text establishes a foundation for the argument that Maximus the Greek dedicated his life’s work to safeguarding and upholding ancient principles for individual spiritual practices, in opposition to the influence and control of the state and imperial authority. This task was accomplished through both his work as a translator and the author of sacred devotional texts and hymns associated with Byzantine hymnography and the Eastern Orthodox Christian tradition. Notably, it is his inner veneration of the Holy Theotokos that marks the primary sensibility of the defence of this intense, inwardly-focused faith in direct communion with the Divine. Maxim’s defence of the Eastern Orthodox Christian tradition was accomplished by the special guidance of the Holy Spirit as his personal internal principle that he used not only in the prayer (hesychastic, ascetical) and in the theological works (hagiographical, liturgical) but also in philological works (of editing, translating, redacting), and especially in exegetical texts. Therefore, the strong Byzantine patristic and monastic thought as the basis of his contemplative practice, formed in the years spent at the Holy Mount Athos, in the Holy Monastery of Vatopaidi, was the most important source of his authentic and divinely inspired, original Orthodox theology.Detailed consideration is especially given to his prayers. Among them, the most important place is reserved for “The Kanon to the Holy and Divine Spirit Parakletos”, which reflects several possible influences, such as the Akathystos hymn, the Great Kanon, and the individual canon, as was St. Constantin’s Kanon to St. Demetrius, all of which confirm the very archaic Byzantine and Slavonic sources that properly could serve Maxim for his Old Church Slavonic linguistic basis. Thus, his prayer is a highly original, monastic and deeply personal work that bears witness to his ascetic (hesychastic) practice. All of this tends to confirm that his grammatical and linguistic view of the Old Church Slavonic language was shaped well before his entrance to Muscovite Russia and that not only was he unjustly accused of heretical mistakes (and thereby imprisoned), was, more importantly, in Russia almost entirely and, possibly intentionally misunderstood. Nevertheless, and despite his suffering, until the end of his life, Maxim argued that his use of Slavonic language was spiritually guided and, therefore, sacred.

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