MASSIMO the GREEK. — Born ca. 1470 at Arta in Epirus into the “Orthodox” Trivolis family; died near Moscow in 1556. He lived in the circles of the Florentine and Po Valley Renaissance in Florence, Venice, and Mirandola. Influenced by Savonarola, he became a Latin Catholic and entered the monastery of S. Marco in Florence, where he lived from 1502 to 1504. Having left the convent, he departed Italy for Greece and again entered, as a non-Catholic under the name of M., the Vatopedi monastery on Mount Athos. He subsequently preached as a missionary in Greece, Egypt, and Wallachia.
At the request of the Muscovite grand duke Vasilij III Ivanovič, he was sent to Moscow in 1516. There he devoted himself to translating the Psalter from Greek into Latin; a Russian retranslated it from Latin into Church Slavonic. M. published many other writings. Soon, on account of this translation and also because he became involved in disputes concerning Russian domestic politics, he was brought several times before the tribunal of Metropolitan Daniel and finally condemned to severe confinement in a monastery (1531). After many intercessions, under Tsar Ivan the Terrible (v.), he received permission to live in the Troizo Sergievskaja Lavra, not far from Moscow, where he died.