**MAXIMUS** the **CONFESSOR**, Saint. – Born in Constantinople in 580, died in exile on 13 August 662. He is also called Maximus of Chrysopolis, from the place where he became a monk. The title “Confessor” signifies that he endured torments for the faith without immediately dying.
**I. LIFE.** – He received an exceptionally thorough education (especially in Aristotle); around 610 he was summoned to the court of Heraclius as first secretary, but soon abandoned this position (613–14) to become a monk at Chrysopolis (Scutari) on the Asiatic shore opposite Constantinople. When the Persian invasion of 626 forced him to flee, he was never again able to return to his monastery. From 626 to 646 he lived in proconsular Africa. In 646 he was in Rome, whence he was seized by imperial police, like Pope Martin I, ostensibly for betraying imperial interests but in reality to compel him by force to abandon Roman orthodoxy and subscribe to Monothelite doctrines. After a preliminary hearing, Maximus was condemned on 14 September to exile and imprisonment at Perberis. Brought back to the capital in 662, since he remained steadfast in his faith, his tongue and right hand were cut off, and he was then condemned to perpetual exile. He died the same year, a prisoner in the fortress of Schemari in the land of the Lazi (now the Batum region in Transcaucasia). Feast day: 13 August.
**II. WRITINGS.** – The list of his works (about sixty) contains no synthetic treatise. If he ever intended to write one (cf. PG 90, 252C), he never carried it out. Nearly everything he wrote is polemical, commentary, or ascetical exegesis. 1) Polemics against Monophysitism, prior to the Monothelite controversy: eleven opuscula or letters (see titles in DThC, X, 1, col. 451); against Monothelitism, about twenty opuscula (cf. ibid.), the most important being the *Disputatio cum Pyrrho* (PG 91, 287–354). 2) Commentaries: a) *Quaestiones ad Thalassium in difficiliores Sacrae Scripturae locos* (ibid., 90, 234–786), his most important work along with b) the *Ambigua in Gregorium Nazianzenum* (ibid., 1061–1418); c) *Scholia in sancti Dionysii libros*, printed with the works of Pseudo-Dionysius (ibid., 4, 14–576); most of these scholia, however, especially in content, belong to John of Scythopolis (H. U. von Balthasar, *Das Scholienwerk des J. von S.*, in *Scholastik*, 15 [1940], pp. 17 ff.); d) *Mystagogia*, a symbolic explanation of the liturgy (PG 91, 657–718); e) *Expositio brevis orationis dominicae* (ibid., 90, 871–910); f) *Centuries* (ibid., 959–1426): four centuries. *De charitate*, the work of Maximus most often copied and even translated into Arabic (G. Graf, *Geschichte der christlichen arabischen Literatur*, I, p. 372); two centuries on *Tritoni* and the Incarnation, to which is added a century published by Epifanović (see op. cit. in bibliography). As for the five centuries of *Diversa capita ad theologiam et oeconomiam spectantia deque virtute et vitio*, they were extracted in the eleventh century by an unknown compiler (perhaps Anthony Melissa?) from Maximus’s genuine works, with other material drawn from elsewhere (Th. M. Disdier, in *Échos d’Orient*, 30 [1931], pp. 168–78). The *Alia capita ex Vaticano* that follow are by Elias Ecdicus and appear under his name in PG 127, 1129–76 (Th. M. Disdier, in *Échos d’Orient*, 31 [1932], pp. 17–43). The *Loci communes* (PG 91, 721–1017) are no longer considered authentic (cf. V. EHRHARD, ALBERT, *Zu den “Sacra Parallela” des J. Damascenus und den “Florilegium” des Maximos*, in *Byzantinische Zeitschrift*, 10 [1901], pp. 394–415). Also to be mentioned is the *Liber asceticus* (PG 90, 911–56): a dialogue between a young monk and his spiritual father; and the *Brevis enarratio Christiani Paschatis*, or *Computus ecclesiasticus* (ibid., 19, 1217–80).
**III. DOCTRINE.** – Despite the scattered character of his literary output, there is in the thought of Maximus the Confessor a unity or at least a central focus around which everything is grouped: namely, Christology—not only because most of his writings relate to the Monophysite or Monothelite controversies, but because these disputes themselves provided him the occasion to clarify (often drawing on Aristotle) metaphysical and theological notions and principles that he would later apply in other areas.
Drawing the final conclusions from the doctrine of Chalcedon, he maintained that true union does not dissolve the elements into a higher, confused essence but perfects them in their own proper being. In this way both the transcendence of God and his immanence are preserved, which excludes pantheism; the hypostatic union of Christ and his two natures: a denial of Monophysitism; the duality of will and operation in the incarnate Word within the absolute moral harmony of *physis* and *gnome*: a refutation of Monothelitism. And since the spiritual life of the Christian is an imitation of that of Christ, these same principles allow the development of a doctrine of *deification* even to the point of identity through grace, without falling into the docetism of certain Gnostics. Throughout, Maximus proves himself at once a profound philosopher, a subtle dialectician, a theologian gifted with a keen sense of orthodoxy, and—by the very clarity of his distinctions—a genius eminently capable of reconciliation. This last trait is especially evident in the question of the procession of the Holy Spirit, where Maximus, a precursor of the Council of Florence, affirms the identical meaning of the Greek formula *ex Patre per Filium* and the Latin *ex Patre et Filio* (PG 91, 133 ff.). Finally, this most brilliant of Byzantines is also a convinced defender of the primacy of the Pope.
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