humanist, even in prophecy. There is a poetic quality to his denunciation of the three evil passions: 'love of sweets, praise and silver' (slastoliubie, slavoliubie, srebroliubie).™ He defends his efforts to correct faulty translations in Russian churchbooks, and pleads with those who have placed him in monastic imprisonment at least to let him return quietly to his library: 'If I am wrong, subject me not to contempt, but to correction, and let me return to Athos.'61 Maxim always felt close to this center of the contemplative life and of Hesychast spirituality. Opposition to clerical wealth and ' dogmatism forged a link between his early humanist teachers from Italy and his later monastic followers from the upper Volga. ¦jf* Mj^om opposed the Josephite defense of monastic wealth not only for f bringmg_^a_MaspJiemous, servile, Jewish love of silver'62 into holy places, I but jSscTforJ^ J In the course of hliTsustained' Hebate^wTth tffiTTosiphite Metropolitan /f Daniel of JMoscow, Maxim voicesThe fear that the church is coming under J the authority of ^??????????^??^?^???? than 'just rules' (pravila) -thus . anticipatmgjthe_ opposition between 'crook^dn?sXLand^4nith'-(krivda-pravda) which was to become so important in Russian moral ^pjlilosoghy.63 In a sEllful dialogue, Maxim likens the Josephite argument that monastic property is a common trust to a group of sensualists' justifying their relations with a prostitute on the grounds that she 'belongs to us all in common.'64
Maxim gradually turned to political writings denouncing Tsar Vasily Ill's divorce, ancTunsuccessfully attempting to make young Ivan IV 'the just' rather than 'the terrible.' Maxim's political philosophy was moralistic
•? /? rv
and conservative: a kind of moral rearmament program designed by a sympathetic foreigner for the less- educated leader of an underdeveloped area. All ponflict can be resolved without changing' the social order. The firstTask is to infuse the prince with moral fervor. 'Nothing is so necessary to those rulingon earth as justice';65 but no prince can ultimately be just without the accompanying virtues of personal purity and humility.66
The fall of Byzantium was a moral warning to Muscovy against pride
and complacence in high places rather than an_assurance that Moscow was
now the 'third Rome^Tn a letter ?6~ young Ivan TV Maxim implies that
adherence to the~true faith will not in itself guarantee God's favor to an
unjust prince, because evil Christian kings have often been struck down,
and a just pagan like Cyrus of Persia enjoyed God's favor 'for his great jus
tice, humility, and compassion.'orMaxim juxtaposed the classical Byzantine
idea of a symphony of power between imperial and priestly authority to the
Muscovite arguments for unlimited tsarist power. Like his friend Karpov,
Maxim explicitly said that the tsar should not interfere^rf the ecclesiasticaO^
sphere, and implfedjthat he was ?????^^??????^by a higher
moral la?
This foreign teacher was revered, however, not for the logicjrfJiifL
arguments or the beauty of his style but for the depth of his piety. In his early~yeaTTTfe argued for a crusade to liberate Constantinople and for a preventive war against the Crimean khan;68 but as time went on, the simple Pauline ideals of good cheer, humility, and compassion dominate his writings. In and out of monastic'prisons, confronted with false accusations, torture, and near starvation, Maxim underscored with his own life his doctrine of love through long-suffering. Far from showing bitterness toward the ungrateful land to which he had come, he developed a love of Russia, and an image of it different from that of the bombastic Josephite monks in the Tsar's entourage.
Maxim shows almost no interest in the mechanics of rule or the possibilities of practical reform, but he feelscompassion for the oppressed and sorrow,.fpr the wealthy in Muscovy, He is convinced thaT'the heart of a mother grieving for her children deprived of the necessities of life is not so full as the soul of a faithful Tsar grieving for the protection and peaceful well-being of his beloved subjects.'69 Whatever its faults, Russia is not a tyranny like that of the Tatars. She bears the holy mission of Christian rule in the East, through alt her harassment from without_and corruption from within.
Toward the end of his life and during the early years of Ivan the Terrible's reign, Maxim transposes the image of the fallen church in Savonarola's De ruina ecclesiae into that of a ruined Russian empire.
Maxim describes how in the midst of his travels he noticed a woman in black weeping by a deserted path and surrounded by wjld animals. He begs to learn her name, but she refuses, insisting that he is powerless to relieve her sorrow and would be happier to pass on in ignorance. Finally, she says that her real name is Vasiliia (from the Greek Basileia, 'Empire'), and that she has been defiled by tyrants 'unworthy of the title of Tsar' and aban- donedjjyherown children foQhe love of silver and sensual pleasure. Prophets have ceased to speak of her, and saints to protect her. 'And thus I sit here like a widow by a desolate roadlh a cursed age.'70
Here, liTessence, is the idea of 'Holy Rus' ': humiliated and suffering, yet always compassionate'¦¦: a wife and mother faithful to her 'husband' and /'children,' the ruler and subjects of Russia, even when mistreated and deserted by them. Although the idea has been traced to Maxim's pupil Kurbsky,71 and shown to have first acquired broad popularity during the troubles of the early seventeenth century,72 the concept of 'Holy Rus' ' as an ideal opposed to the mechanical and unfeeling state finds its first expression in Maxim.
At the same time, Maxim linked the Hesychast ideal of continual prayer outside established worship services to the humanist ideal of a universal truth outside the historical truths of Christianity. He implored his readers to pray without ceasing that Russia would 'put away all evil, all untrutrTTjind^embrace the truth.'73 'Truth' (pravda) already carried for Maxim some of that dual meaning of philosophic certainty and social justice which the word carried for later Russian reformers. Like many of these figures, Maxim was frequently accused of sedition, and died a virtual prisoner^
After his death, Maxim (like Nil Sorsky before him) gradually came to be officially revered for the very pious intensity which the official church had feareu^^rKt^vTghrtcrdiseipline difring'bis lifetime?4 But his efforts to leaven the Muscovite ideology with riumanistic ideals failed. Archimandrite Artemius of the monastery of St. Sergius, who had been a learned follower of Nil and a devoted patron of Maxim, was banished to Solovetsk for heresy by the council of 1553-4. Artemius later fled to Poland like Maxim's pupil, Kurbsky-both of them remaining faithful to Orthodoxy, but despairing of any further attempt to blend humanist ideals with the Muscovite ideology.
Maxim_had?efused to participate in the church council of 1553-4, just as Nil hud opposed the condemHation
