Dmitry Gerasimov

Who is Dmitry Gerasimov?

Dmitry Gerasimov, was a Russian translator, diplomat and philologist; he also provided some of the earliest information on Muscovy to Renaissance scholars such as Paolo Giovio and Sigismund von Herberstein.

Gerasimov presumably lived in Novgorod for the most of his life and worked mainly with Novgorodian clerics. In his youth he studied in Livonia, where he learnt Latin and German. These languages he put to extensive use in his translations of religious texts, and as an interpreter on Muscovite embassies to Emperor Maximilian I, Prussia, Sweden and Denmark. In 1525 he was an ambassador in his own right to Pope Clement VII, when the Grand Duke Vasily III desired to join the anti-Ottoman League. During his stay in Rome, Dmitri related details to Giovio of the geography of Russia and the northern countries. This information was compiled by Giovio into a separate book, and subsequently mapped by Battista Agnese in Venice and was a pattern for most 16th-century maps of Muscovy.