MASSIMO THE GREEK. - Born ca. 1470 in Arta in Epirus from the "Orthodox" Trivolis family, died near Moscow in 1556. He lived in the circles of the Florentine and Paduan 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. After leaving the convent, he departed from Italy for Greece and re-entered, this time as a non-Catholic, under the name M. in the Vatopedi monastery on Mount Athos. As a missionary, he then preached in Greece, Egypt, and Wallachia.
At the request of the Muscovite Grand Duke Vasily III Ivanovich, he was invited to Moscow in 1516. There he devoted himself to translating the Psalter from Greek into Latin; a Russian would then retranslate it from Latin into Church Slavonic. M. published many other writings. Soon, because of this translation and also due to his involvement in internal Russian political disputes, he was brought before the tribunal of Metropolitan Daniil and ultimately sentenced to severe confinement in a monastery (1531). After many intercessions, under Tsar Ivan the Terrible (v.), he was permitted to live in the Troitse-Sergievskaya Lavra, not far from Moscow, where he died.