MAXIMUS THE CONFESSOR

MAXIMUS THE CONFESSOR, monk, theologian, St. (580–662). Maximus is arguably the greatest of Byzantine theologians and was also a writer on exegesis, liturgy (q.v.), doctrine, and ascesis (q.v.). Trained for court service in Constantinople (q.v.), where he served until ca. 614 as Imperial Secretary to Emperor Heraclius, he left the capital in his early thirties for the monastic life. Never ordained, he spent years in several different monasteries, including on Cyprus where he became acquainted with Sophronius (later Patriarch of Jerusalem), who seems to have introduced him to ascetic literature. He arrived finally in Byzantine North Africa in 626. From there, and later from Rome, he led the battle against the Monothelite Formula (see Christology) proposed by Heraclius as a device for ending the schism over the Council of Chalcedon (qq.v.). His activities peaked with the convocation of the Lateran Synod by Pope Martin I (qq.v.) at Rome in 649. Arrested together with the pope, Maximus paid for his opposition with torture and death in exile in 662, as Martin had earlier.

His theology, a synthesis of real genius and spiritual depth, prevailed nineteen years later at the Sixth Ecumenical Council (q.v.) at Constantinople. It combined the insights of the ascetic tradition with the triadology and anthropology of the Cappadocians, the Christologies of Cyril of Alexandria and Leo of Rome with that of Justinian and the Fifth Ecumenical Council, and the thought of late Neoplatonism through Dionysius the Areopagite (qq.v.). Its heart lay in the defense of created freedom (q.v.) and change (kinesis) as positive, and the vision of Christ as the one in whom that freedom and growth are accomplished. Created freedom was fulfilled once and for all in the economy (q.v.) of the Incarnate Word, and now and to come in the appropriation of Christ-which appropriation is the human vocation and glory. His thought provided a later basis for the defense of the holy icons by Joh n of Damascus, for the fiery advocacy of mystical experience by Symeon the New Theologian, and of deification as real and presently available by Gregory Palamas at the close of the Byzantine era (qq.v.). Due to the difficulty of the Greek, most of his writings-other than the Centuries on Charity-are not available in English.