MASSIMILIANO, santo, martire. - The name of this martyr was preserved in the ancient martyrologies with variants and uncertainties of identification. In 1680 the authentic acts were published for the first time at Oxford (BHL, 5813).
M., the son of a soldier named Victor, was martyred at Tebeste in Numidia on 12 March 295, following his refusal to serve in the Roman army when ordered to do so by the proconsul Dion. M. considered military service incompatible with his profession of Christian faith. His body, carried to nearby Carthage by a matron named Pompeiana, was buried near the martyr Cyprian. In the Roman Martyrology he is erroneously listed under the name Mamilian as a Roman martyr.
Bibliography3 works
Emanuele Romanelli
MAXIMILIAN I of Wittelsbach, duke and elector of BAVARIA. - B. at Munich on 17 April 1573, d. at Ingolstadt on 27 September 1651. He is one of the most conspicuous figures of the German Catholic reaction movement in the age of the Counter-Reformation. He succeeded his father William in the Duchy in 1597 and continued his work directed toward the restoration of Catholicism in Bavaria, with the help of the Society of Jesus.
Foundations of schools, colleges, seminaries and confraternities helped to give Bavaria once again its old Catholic appearance, under a regime of strict supervision by the Duke. In 1603 the Emperor charged him to intervene at Donauwörth to re-establish the Catholic worship demanded by the minority against the Lutheran majority of the population. M. occupied the city and held it. When in 1608 the Palatine elector Frederick V, in defense of Lutheranism, created the Evangelical Union of the princes, M. immediately set against it the Catholic League with the support of the Pope and of the King of Spain (1609). The conflict between the two organizations, however, did not break out openly, because the Protestants lost the support of Henry IV of France (d. in 1610). But in 1619, when the religious rebellion broke out in Bohemia, Frederick was called there and proclaimed king by the rebellious Bohemians; but he in turn appeared with the arms of the Catholic League in defense of the Emperor and won the victory of the White Mountain (8 Nov. 1620). The reward was the granting of the electorate taken from the rebel Frederick V; the imperial expedition into the Palatinate of 1623 reconfirmed the grant. M. remained throughout the whole Thirty Years' War at the side of the Emperor, though secretly negotiating with Richelieu when the absolutist assertions of Ferdinand II seemed to him dangerous for the independence of his State. In the Peace of Westphalia he managed to secure the acquisition of the Palatinate.
BIB.: F. Stieve, Das kirchliche Polizeiregiment in Bayern unter Maximilian I., Munich 1876; id., Die Politik Bayerns (1591-1607), ibid. 1878; id., Kürfürst Maximilian I. von Bayern, ibid. 1882; F. Bezold, Kaiser Rudolf II. und die Heilige Liga, ibid. 1886; H. Stöcklein, Das Papstschwert des Kürfürsten Maximilian I. von Bayern, Gotha 1931; W. Goetz, Die Politik Maximilians I. von Bayern und seiner Verbündeten 1618-51, 3 vols., Leipzig 1942.
Francesco Cognasso
MAXIMILIAN I of Habsburg, king of the Romans and