MAXIMIAN, Archbishop of Ravenna, Saint. - Deacon of the Church of Pola, b. in 498, d. at Ravenna on 21 Feb. 556. From his native Istria he went to the court of Constantinople. On 14 Oct. 546, at Patras in Achaia, he was consecrated bishop of Ravenna by Pope Vigilius, at the will of Justinian. Before this date, the little that is known of his life is woven of legend. Agnellus of Ravenna inserted in his Liber pontificalis a few lines of M., which are all that remains of his writings, just as he also recalled a mission of his to Alexandria, before he ascended to the episcopate, perhaps to settle quarrels and theological questions.
But at Ravenna the personality of M. is alive in ecclesiastical history and in the monuments of the city. At first disliked by the clergy and the people, who in the struggle of the "Three Chapters" had ranged themselves almost entirely on the side of the schismatic party and therefore saw in M. the pastor imposed by the Byzantine court to crush this schismatic attitude, M. succeeded in his aim, so that he was subsequently regarded as the ideal bishop. The only metropolitan in Italy faithful to Vigilius, his work went beyond the boundaries of his Church and his province, extending to the territories of the ecclesiastical provinces of Milan and Aquileia, with forays also into the territory of the Roman metropolitan jurisdiction. First in the West he assumed, after 549 and before 554, the title of archiepiscopus, with a meaning far broader than the present one: not a simple metropolitan, but head of a group of metropolises. To him is due the consecration of the most celebrated Ravenna basilicas of S. Vitale and S. Apollinare in Classe, which he adorned with splendid mosaics. In the first, in the great historical panel on the left, next to Justinian, one still admires today the figure of the bishop "tall of stature, slender of body and emaciated, with the few hairs that form a crown about him," and who gazes with "pale gray eyes," as Agnellus describes him. In Ravenna, by his will, there also arose the basilica in honor of the protomartyr Stephen, in which he deposited relics of the titular saint and of 20 other saints, and that of S. Andrea Maggiore was renovated: both are today vanished. In Pola the basilica of S. Maria Formosa remained famous, of which very little remains today.
Of his munificence the famous ivory chair is a witness, bearing the monogram interpreted as Maximianus episcopus. From him began that Istrian patrimony which in the following centuries made the church of Ravenna famous and rich on the eastern shore of the Adriatic. A little-known and still little-studied activity of M. is the one recalled by Agnellus, which concerns the sacred liturgy.
He was buried in the basilica of S. Andrea Maggiore;
his name is entered in the Roman Martyrology under 21 Feb.
Bibliography4 works
scrittori ravennati, II, Faenza 1769, pp. 35-40; G. L. Amadesi,
In autisticum Ravennatum chronotaxim, Faenza 1783, pp. 161-62;
A. Testi-Rasponi, Annotazioni sulla storia della chiesa di Ravenna
dalle origini alla morte di t. Gregorio Magno, in Felix Ravenna,
33 (1929), pp. 29-49; C. Mohlberg, Maximianus von Ravenna und
die orientalische Quelle des Martyr. Hieronymianum, in Oriens
Christianus, 19 (1933), pp. 147-52; C. Cecchelli, La cattedra
di M., Roma 1936; Martyr. Romanum, pp. 69-70; G. Lucchesi,
Nuove note agiografiche ravennati, Faenza 1943.
Mario Mazzotti