The Byzantine-Poetic Path of the Works of St. Maximus the Greek (Mikhail Trivolis, *Arta, ca. 1470 – St. Maximus the Greek, †Moscow, 1556)

Abstract

<jats:p>Maximus the Greek has been frequently misunderstood because of his individual use of the Slavic language. Born as Mikhail Trivolis in the Greek town of Arta, he received his humanist education in North Italy, particularly in Florence and Venice, where he was engaged in the process of the first editions of printed books and where he would constantly deal with manuscript samples. His original, authorial work, as preserved in his manuscripts, reflects his awareness of firm Orthodox theology and at the same time a special attention to grammatical rules. The paper shows how his use of the (Slavic) language was at all times intentional and at the same time profoundly influenced by the metrical rules of liturgical emphasis. Through such attitude, Maximus the Greek managed to create his own, deeply personal language and to express the complexity of Byzantine patristic, hagiographic and iconographic issues. Finally, he successfully established his Orthodox theological system, significantly marked with the poetic effect that strongly inspired his theological works.</jats:p>

Dante Alighieri (1265–1321) and St Maximus the Greek (1470–1556): Two Authors on the Edge of Two Epochs (Pre-case Biographical studies for the Comparison of the Author’s Creative Vision – The Triangle Composition)

“…From then, around 1536, he began to write his own apologetically marked, and polemically involved theological works, most of them also imbued with a highly distinct monastic attitude. The character of prayers and the humble position he was evoking were formally framed also by the hymnographical and liturgical quality of his texts [9]. However, he was writing in his own personal form of the Old Church Slavonic language (idiolect), which was hard to understand not only for his Russian contemporaries but also for modern scholars.…”