The Life of St Maximus the Confessor

We know little about St. Maximus’ worldly life. He came from an old, distinguished family and was, it seems, favored by Emperor Heraclius—possibly even related to him. He was born about 580 in Constantinople. He received an excellent education. His biographer writes that St. Maximus received the ἐγκίkλιος παίδευσις. Sherwood is correct in writing that “this would mean that his training lasted from about his sixth or seventh year till his twenty-first, and contained grammar, classical literature, rhetoric, and philosophy (including arithmetic, music, geometry, astronomy, logic, ethics, dogmatics, and metaphysics), and also that it must have included his first contact with Aristotle and the Neo-Platonists (through the commentaries of Proclus and Iamblichus).” St. Maximus studied philosophy with a special love. Later on, St. Maximus’ great gift for dialectic and logic, and his formal culture with its great erudition, left their mark on his disputes with the Monothelites. His erudition was not merely restricted to ecclesiastical topics but included a wide range of secular knowledge.

From his youth St. Maximus was distinguished not only by his love for philosophy but also by his humility, by his character in general. As a young man he served at the palace in the imperial chancellery. The noisy and turbid life of the palace could hardly have given satisfaction to the born contemplator, especially among the Monothelite intrigues which were then beginning. Very soon he abandoned the world and left for the secluded monastery in Chrysopolis on the Asian waters across from Constantinople, not far from Chalcedon “where philosophy was flourishing at that time.” That he left the secular world, the world of imperial life and policy, to enter a monastery because and only because of the theological controversies then arising over Monenergism and Monotheltism, as his biographer suggests [ Patrologia Graeca 90, 72], is stretching the evidence and neglecting the contemplative character of St. Maximus. His biographer gives a reason—St. Maximus had been yearning for a life of quiet, καθ᾽ἡσυχίαν. He remained on good terms with the imperial court, as his letters to John the Chamberlain evidence.

It appears that St. Maximus made this significant decision in 613/614. In 1910 Montmason in his La Chronologie de la vie de Saint Maxime le Confesseur had so structured the life of St. Maximus that his entry into the monastery took place in 630. That date was challenged in 1927 by Grumel in his “Notes d’histoire et de chronologie sur la vie de Saint Maxime le Confesseur” [in Échos d’Orient]. Grumel’s argument was convincing and the date of 613/614 is now commonly accepted. St. Maximus’ attitude towards the humble “ordeal” [“podvig”] earned him the respect of his brethren in the monastery. His biographer relates that St. Maximus stood throughout the night in prayer. St. Maximus’ biographer stresses the ascetical and devotional life of St. Maximus at the monastery, claiming that the monks persuaded him to become their superior, their hegoumen. Scholars disagree. Some reject this as pious fiction—for example, von Balthasar. Some reject this claim based on the supposition that his great literary production could not have allowed him to manage a monastery. Such an argument does not necessarily follow from what we know of St Maximus’ abilities in the imperial chancellery. There what was appreciated was his ability to make quick decisions, there he was respected for his rapid decisiveness. Whether he became the hegoumen is not important. But there is no substantial evidence to accept or to deny it. It is true that his signature on the petition to translate the Acts of the Lateran Council into Greek reads Maximus monachus. It is also true that he is referred to as εὐλαβέστατος μοναχός. But this evidence indicates nothing more than the fact that he was a monk. Perhaps a more accurate interpretation is that he may very well have been elected hegoumen by the monks and that he did not accept this holy office out of humility. Though the chronology of these secluded years still remains somewhat unclear, it is clear that from this time on his life is inseparably connected with the history of the dogmatic struggle against the Monothelites.

The dogmatic struggle began to intensify. The Persians were successfully on the offensive, and in 626 they had reached the walls of Constantinople. Indeed, in 626 Constantinople was faced with the advance of two enemies, the Avars and the Persians. At some point St. Maximus set out for the Latin West. The argument that his departure was forced by the invasion of the Persians may well be accurate. His path, however, was long and difficult—at one point when he was on Crete he was engaged in controversy with the Severians. It appears that he stayed in Alexandria for some period of time. In any case we know that he reached Latin Africa—Carthage. It was here, according to his biographer, that St. Maximus organized an Orthodox opposition to the Monothelites. “All inhabitants not only of Africa but also of the nearby islands revered Maximus as their mentor and leader.” Apparently, St. Maximus did a great deal of traveling around the country, entered into contact with the bishops, established close contact with the imperial governors of Africa, and carried on an extensive correspondence.

The main event of this African period of St. Maximus’ life was his dispute with Pyrrhus, the deposed Monothelite Patriarch of Constantinople. In June of 645 the famous dispute took place. A detailed record of this dispute, made apparently by notaries who were present, has been preserved. Under the intellectual challenge of St. Maximus, Pyrrhus yielded. He set off with St. Maximus for Rome where he publicly renounced the heresy of Monothelitism. His ordination was then recognized by Rome and he was received into the communion of the Roman Church. It appears that Rome also recognized him as the legitimate patriarch of Constantinople. Pyrrhus’ change did not last for long. At the council of 648 under Pope Theodore in Rome he was again excommunicated as someone who had fallen anew into heresy. In 652 Pyrrhus again became Patriarch of Constantinople.

In Rome St. Maximus experienced a great influence and authority. Under his influence Monothelitism was condemned at local councils in Africa in 646. In 649, again at the recommendation of St. Maximus, the newly elected Pope Martin I convened a large council in Rome, known commonly as the Lateran Council. In addition to the 150 western bishops attending the council, there were 37 Greek abbots who were at this time living in Rome. The Lateran Council promulgated a well-defined and decisive resolution about the unmingled natural will and energy in Christ. This was a sharp reply to the demand to sign the Typos of faith which had been sent from Constantinople. The Typos—τύπος περὶ πίστεως—was issued in 648 by Constans II, the goal of which was to command silence on the dispute of the wills in Christ. The Typos was rejected at the Lateran Council, as was the earlier Ekthesis of Heraclius—the ἔκθεσις τῆς πίστεως was an imperial edict drawn up by Patriarch Sergius to respond to the synodical letter by St. Sophronius, Patriarch of Jerusalem, a letter which has been preserved in the acts of the Sixth Ecumenical Council. The Lateran Council also excommunicated and anathematized the Monothelite patriarchs Cyrus, Sergius, Pyrrhus, and Paul. The acts of the Lateran Council, together with an accompanying papal letter, were sent everywhere, “to all the faithful.”

Severe retribution soon befell the defenders of orthodoxy, who had disobeyed the imperial will. The emperor Constans immediately reacted but encountered difficulty—the exarch sent to Rome had joined the papal opposition. Finally in 653 Pope Martin was seized by a military force, conveyed to Constantinople, tried in 654, and then exiled to Cherson in 655, where he died later that year. In Constantinople Pope Martin I, who had formerly been an apocrisarius of the papal see at Constantinople, was imprisoned with common criminals, and was exposed to cold and hunger.

At the same time St. Maximus was taken. His trial did not take place until May of 655. He was tried [cf. Patrologia Graeca 90, 109-129. For English translation, see Maximus the Confessor: Selected Writings in the Classics of Western Spirituality series, pp. 15-31] in Constantinople as an enemy and criminal of the state, as a subverter of ecclesiastical and civil peace. The trial was murderous and tempestuous. The biography of St. Maximus preserves a detailed and vivid account of it, in the words of one of St. Maximus’ disciples, Anastasius—who was also arrested along with St. Maximus.

The political charges were not merely a pretext. The secular defenders of the heresy were more than anything irritated by St. Maximus’ spiritual independence and his steadfast denial of the emperors’ rights in questions of faith—the denial of imperial power by authority of the Church. They were also irritated by the fact that in his calm profession of innocence St. Maximus was fighting against a whole swarm of appeasers of the imperial office. This seemed to be self-importance, as if he were placing his own will above everything else, for he said: “I think not of the unity or division of Romans and Greeks, but I must not retreat from the correct faith … It is the business of priests, not emperors, to investigate and define the salutary dogmas of the Catholic Church.” An emperor of Christians is not a priest, does not stand before the altar, does not perform the sacraments, does not bear the signs of the priesthood.

They argued long and insistently with St. Maximus and, when he still proved adamant, they passed a sentence exiling him to a fortress in Byzya in Thrace. In captivity they continued to try to persuade him. In 656 a court bishop was sent by the new patriarch, Peter, but St. Maximus refused to change his mind. He was moved then to the monastery of St. Theodore at Rhegion where again the authorities prevailed upon him to change his mind, to surrender to the will of the emperor. Again he refused. They then sent him into exile for a second time, still in Thrace, but this time to Perberis where he stayed for the next six years. In 662 St. Maximus, his monk and disciple Anastasius, and Anastasius the apocrisisarius were brought back to Constantinople, where a council was to be held. Back in Constantinople St. Maximus and his disciples underwent bloody torture—the tongues and the right hands of the condemned seem to have been cut out. They were then sent to a more remote exile in Lazica—on the southeast shore of the Black Sea. On August 13, 661 St. Maximus died, broken not only by age but also by the inhumane treatment he had received.

Many legends about the life of St. Maximus have been preserved. Very soon after his death his biography, or panegyric, was composed. After that a Memorial Record was written by Theodosius of Gangra, a holy monk from Jerusalem—perhaps it was he who composed the biography? Along with this, the records of St. Maximus’ disciple, Anastasius the apocrisirarius, and the latter’s letter to Theodosius about the trial and the last years of St. Maximus’ life, have been preserved. Theophanes also has much to say about St. Maximus in his Chronographia, much of which is close to biography.

It is obvious that the sufferings and the “ordeal” [“podvig”] of the unbending defender of the faith made a strong impression on his contemporaries. A vivid and reverential memory of St. Maximus was maintained at the place of his death in the Caucasus. With the victory over the Monothelites and the triumph of orthodoxy at the Sixth Ecumenical Council in 680/681 St. Maximus’ great martyr’s ordeal was appreciated, and he was highly honored in Byzantium as a great teacher and preacher of Christ who incinerated the impudent paganism of the heretics with his fire-bearing word. He was respected both as a writer and thinker and as a mystic and ascetic. His books were the favorite reading both of laymen and monks. Anna Comnena, for example, tells us: “I remember how my mother, when she served dinner, would often bring a book in her hands and interpret the dogmatic places of the holy fathers, particularly by the philosopher and martyr Maximus.”

*From Chapter Six, "St. Maximus the Confessor" in The Byzantine Fathers of the Sixth to Eighth Century, Vol. 9 in The Collected Works of Georges Florovsky, ed. Richard S. Haugh, tr. Raymond Miller, Anne-Marie Döllinger-Labriolle, and Helmut Wilhelm Schmiedel (Vaduz, Europa: Büchervertriebsanstalt, 1987), pp. 208-253 at 208-212. Two more parts to follow on "The Writings of St Maximus" and "The Theology of St Maximus."