St. Maximos the Confessor (580–662)

ANDREW LOUTH

Monk and theologian. Born in Constantino­ple (though an alternative nearly contempo­rary Syriac life makes him a native of Palestine), in 610 Maximos became the head of the imperial chancery under Emperor Herakleios. Soon, he withdrew from public life and became a monk, first at Chrysopolis, opposite Constantinople, and later at Kyzikos, on the Erdek peninsula. When the Persians laid siege to Constantino­ple in 626, he fled with other monks to North Africa. As a monk he retained his contacts with the court, as his correspondence dem­onstrates, and quickly became a renowned theologian. His early works – up to the early 630s – are addressed primarily to monks, and are concerned with the ascetic life and the interpretation of Scripture and the fathers. One besetting problem in the monastic cir­cles known to Maximos was Origenism, which had provided a metaphysical context for understanding monastic asceticism. In these early works, Maximos corrects Ori- genist errors and provides an alternative metaphysical understanding of the goal and purpose of asceticism. Drawing on the Cap­padocian fathers and the Alexandrine tradi­tion of Athanasius and Cyril, combining this with the ascetic wisdom of Evagrios Pontikos and the Egyptian desert, and also with Dionysius the Areopagite’s cosmic, liturgical vision, Maximos set out a theology cosmic in scope, with intensely practical ascetic impli­cations, that focused on the church’s liturgy, where the drama of salvation drew in the participation of humankind.

The Persian occupation of the eastern provinces of the empire in the 610s and 620s exposed the weakness of the empire caused by christological divisions, and led to attempts to reconcile those who accepted the Christology of Chalcedon (451) and those, called by their opponents “Monophy- sites,” who rejected it. In 633, during Maximos’ African sojourn, a dramatic reconciliation was achieved in Egypt, on the basis on the doctrine that Christ had a single “divine-human” (theandric) activity, the doctrine known as “Monoenergism.” This was opposed by Sophronios, Maximos’ abbot in North Africa, soon to be patriarch of Jerusalem. Next, a refinement of Mono- energism known as “Monothelitism,” the doctrine that Christ had a single (divine) will, became the favored imperial christolog- ical compromise, and from the end of the 630s Maximos took on Sophronios’ mantle and became the principal theological oppo­nent of Monothelitism, arguing that it compromised Christ’s perfect human nature. He sought to solve the problems raised by Christ’s having two wills by distinguishing between the natural will (Christ having both a divine and human natural will) and the gnomic will (gnome: Greek for “opin­ion”) involved in deliberating over moral decisions, that was absent in Christ. His attack on Monothelitism eventually took him to Rome, where the christological heresies were condemned at the Lateran

Synod of 649. By this time it was Islam that threatened the empire; Maximos and Martin’s actions were regarded as seditious. The architects of the synod – Pope Martin and Maximos – were arrested, condemned, and exiled: Martin to the Crimea, where he died in 655, and Maximos to Lazica, in Georgia, where he died in 662.

SEE ALSO: Council of Constantinople III (680–681); Monophysitism (including Miaphysitism); Monothelitism

REFERENCES AND SUGGESTED READINGS

erthold, G. (trans.) (1985) St. Maximus the Confessor. Classics of Western Spirituality. New York: St. Paul Press.

Louth, A. (1996) Maximus the Confessor. London: Routledge.

Thunberg, L. (1965) Microcosm and Mediator: The Theological Anthropology of Maximus the Confessor. Lund: C. W. K. Gleerup.