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"5
which had been the glory of Greece and Byzantium.
In Italy he had known and admired Savonarola, whose
martyrdom in Florence he had witnessed, and he
_ wrote in the highest praise of the great Italian’s heroism.
Maxim’s own life was to bear many likenesses to that.
of his martyr friend.
Because he was unacquainted with the Slavonic
tongue, all Maxim’s work of translation had to be done
through other interpreters. He turned the old Greek
Psalter into Latin and his two assistants retranslated
into Slavonic. The fidelity with which Maxim went
about his task could not but make enemies among the
Russian clergy, as well as friends, and there was no
small amount of complaint at the changes the foreigner
insisted should be introduced into the old church books,
products of four centuries of uncultured copyists. When
at the end of a year and a half the task for which he
had come to Moskow was finished, Maxim craved the
Tsar’s permission to return to Mount Athos, but in-
stead of being permitted to depart, found himself faced
with a new task of translation and annotation which
would require several years. Maxim accepted the
commission and postponed his longed-for return to
his monastery.
A disciple of Savonarola’s, however, could not
live in Moskow and witness the low moral estate of
Russian folk, their careful observance of the forms
of religion and their woeful evasion of the real truths
underlying those forms, without protesting. His
plain speaking and his many treatises on the matter
of public morals did not increase Maxim’s friends.
Neither did his participation in a heated controversy
about monastic estates. And when, under a Metropoli-
tan who had been his opponent in such a dispute, he
dared publicly to criticise the Prelate for granting Vasili
a divorce from his barren wife, he was promptly accused of
heresy and mischievous alteration of the old church
books and condemned to close confinement in a monas-