Saint Maximus the Greek Day

In the 2nd half of the 15th century, a son was born into the famous family of the Greek dignitary Emmanuel Trivolis, who was baptized in Orthodoxy by Michael Educated and religious people gave him a good philosophical education At the age of ten, the boy was sent to Europe, where he studied and traveled through Italy, Germany, and France After spending a lot of time there, Mikhail became interested in Catholicism and accepted the faith in the monastery of St Mark and served as a monk His life changed in 1504 The Greek preacher brought liturgical manuscripts to Florence, which fascinated the young monk He went to Athos to a monastery, where he prayed a lot, read the sacred scriptures, and a year later he took monastic vows at the Vatopedi Monastery, becoming Orthodox He read the works of St Maximus the Confessor and at the dedication took his name The Monk Maxim, being God-obedient, collected monastic alms for 10 years, read books from the monastery library, wrote works, calling on God The Grand Duke of All Rus' Vasily of Moscow wished to translate the Greek-Slavic manuscripts and appealed to the Greek church to send an educated person who knew the Scriptures In 1518 Maxim was sent to Moscow In the Kremlin he was received with honors and assigned to the Chudovy Monastery Not knowing Russian or Old Slavonic, the monk set to work Dmitry Gerasimov and Vlas Ignatov were given to help him Being scribes and translators, they set to work The first work was the biblical Psalter This work was highly appreciated by Prince and Metropolitan Varlaam Maxim filed a petition to return to Greece But it was rejected and the monk was left He translated other scriptures and began to study the Russian language with diligence, and after three years he was able to speak and translate scriptures The year 1524 would be a turning point in the life of Father Maxim; he was arrested and sent to the Simonov Monastery There he was until the April trial of 1525 He was accused of having relations with the Turks, disagreement with the Grand Duke to send his wife to a monastery due to infertility, and errors made during the translation Metropolitan Daniel, who replaced Varlaam, was an opponent of Maxim He spent 6 years imprisoned in a cell, removed from the church The musty smell and poor conditions greatly undermined the health of Maxim’s father But here an appearance of an Angel occurred, encouraging the sufferer And he, inspired, wrote a canon dedicated to this with charcoal on the wall of his imprisonment Then there was a trial again, which eased the conditions of imprisonment Father Maxim was transferred to the Tverskoy Monastery under the supervision of the bishop, who turned out to be a sensitive person and allowed Maxim to write and read books and go to church The bishop personally asked the prince to improve the conditions of the prisoner, honoring Maxim Despite the petitions of the monk himself, Patriarch Dionysius of Constantinople and Patriarch Joachim, Maxim received freedom only in 1551 He was sent to the Trinity-Sergius Lavra, where he met with Prince Ivan the Terrible and predicted his future Here he died in 1556 on January 21, old style (February 3) His relics were buried near the walls of the monastery A beautiful tomb and a small chapel were later built on the grave Miracles happened there, people prayed and were healed 35 years after his death, he was ranked among the local saints by the church In 1998, Maxim was canonized as a saint by the entire Orthodox Church