their examination and study. The patriarch selected for the purpose Maximus, a Greek monk of Mt. Athos, distinguished for leaxning, piety, and ability. He applled himself assiduously to the task, discovered and corrected many errors which had crept into the Church books by the negligence of transcribers, and, by his emendations, restored the ritual in its original purity. His virtues, the wisdom of his counsels, his unaffected piety and religious zeal, greatly endeared him to the prince. Notwithstanding his frequent requests, now that his labors were ended, for permission to return to his convent home, Vassili would not consent, but retained him near his person.
In 1519 Pope Leo X. urged the Russian monarch to unite with the Christian princes of Europe, for the glory of God, against the Turks. He suggested that Constantinople was his legitimate inheritance as son of a Greek princess. He further offered to raise the see of Moscow to a patriarchate, preserving all the "allowable" practices of the Eastern Church, thus speciously disguising, while asserting, his assumption of jurisdiction. Vassili, however, mindful of the Te Deums celebrated by Leo for the great victory of the Lithuanians over the "heretic" Russians at Orscha, declined his advances, and refused others of a similar nature from Clement VII.
Vassili's attachment to the national religion was sincere, but he was impatient of clerical dictation. He forced Barlaam, for his uncompromising austerity, to retire from the primacy, and raised Daniel to his place. The new metropolitan was a man of elastic principles, of narrow, selfish views, unscrupulous, complaisant, devoured by ambition and by jealousy of Maximus, a foreigner.
In common with most of the clergy, Daniel was fanatically attached to the ancient ceremonies of the Church
