МАЭ № 7591-1

Maxim, bishop of Belgorod

1968 (?)

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Maxim, the Bishop of Belgorod (died in 1190). The presumed author of four clauses in the Apostolic Precepts and Gregory the Theologian’s Homily to Priests, where the confessors are instructed to be attentive and considerate toward the confessants and to avoid being unduly strict. He is mentioned in the Hypatian Codex under 1187 and 1190. Maxim’s sarcophagus over his cell in Kievan Belgorod (now Belogorodka village near Kiev) was opened up by Academician B.A. Rybakov in 1968. Gerasimov’s reconstruction of Maxim’s head is apparently his last work, which he was not destined to publish or describe. The bust shows an elderly man with a thin protruding nose. He wears a stole with three pairs of crosses (only two upper pairs are represented).

Anthropological plastic reconstructions, lifetime masks. 19th - 20th centuries