The Monk Maximos the Confessor
Commemorated on January 21, August 13
The Monk Maximos
the Confessor was born in Constantinople in about the year 580 and raised
in a pious Christian family. In his youth he received a very diverse education:
he studied philosophy, grammatics, rhetoric, he was well-read in the authors of
antiquity and he mastered to perfection theological dialectics. When Saint
Maximos entered into government service, the scope of his learning and his
conscientiousness enabled him to become first secretary to the emperor
Heraclius (611-641). But court life vexed him, and he withdrew to the
Chrysopoleia monastery (on the opposite shore of the Bosphorus – now Skutari),
where he accepted monastic tonsure. By the humility of his wisdom he soon won
the love of the brethren and was chosen hegumen of the monastery, but even in
this dignity, in his own words, he "remained a simple monk". But in
633 at the request of a theologian, the future Jerusalem Patriarch Saint
Sophronios (Comm. 11 March), the Monk Maximos left the monastery and set off to
Alexandria.
Saint Sophronios was
known in these times as an implacable antagonist against the Monothelite
heresy. The Fourth OEcumenical Council (year 451) had condemned the Monophysite
heresy, which confessed in the Lord Jesus Christ only one nature (the Divine,
but not the Human nature, of Christ). Influenced by this erroneous tendency of
thought, the Monothelite heretics introduced the concept that in Christ there
was only "one Divine will" ("thelema") and only "one
Divine effectuation or energy" ("energia"), – which sought to
lead back by another path to the repudiated Monophysite heresy. Monotheletism
found numerous adherents in Armenia, Syria, Egypt. The heresy, fanned also by
nationalist animosities, became a serious threat to church unity in the East.
The struggle of Orthodoxy with the heresies was particularly complicated by the
fact, that in the year 630 three of the Patriarchal thrones in the Orthodox
East were occupied by Monothelites: at Constantinople – by Sergios, at Antioch
– by Athanasias, and at Alexandria – by Cyrus.
The path of the Monk
Maximos from Constantinople to Alexandria led through Crete, where indeed he
began his preaching activity. He clashed there with a bishop, who adhered to
the heretical opinions of Severus and Nestorius. At Alexandria and its
surroundings the monk spent about 6 years. In 638 the emperor Heraclius,
together with the patriarch Sergios, attempted to downplay the discrepancies in
the confession of faith, and the issued an edict: the so-called
"Ecthesis" ("Ekthesis tes pisteos" – "Exposition of
Faith), – which ultimately decreed that there be confessed the teaching about
"one will" ("mono-thelema") operative under the two natures
of the Saviour. In defending Orthodoxy against this "Ecthesis", the
Monk Maximos recoursed to people of various vocations and positions, and these
conversations had success. "Not only the clergy and all the bishops, but
also the people, and all the secular officials felt within themselves some sort
of invisible attraction to him, – testifies his Vita.
Towards the end of
638 the patriarch Sergios died, and in 641 – the emperor Heraclius also died.
The imperial throne came to be occupied by the cruel and coarse Constans II
(642-668), an open adherent of the Monothelites. The assaults of the heretics
against Orthodoxy intensified. The Monk Maximos went off to Carthage and he
preached there and in its surroundings for about 5 years. When the successor of
patriarch Sergios, patriarch Pyrrhos, arrived there in forsaking
Constantinople because of court intrigues, and being by persuasion a
Monothelite, – there occurred between him and the Monk Maximos an open
disputation in June 645. The result of this was that Pyrrhos publicly
acknowledged his error and even wanted to put into writing to Pope Theodore the
repudiation of his error. The Monk Maximos together with Pyrrhos set off to
Rome, where Pope Theodore accepted the repentance of the former patriarch and
restored him to his dignity.
In the year 647 the
Monk Maximos returned to Africa. And there, at a council of bishops
Monotheletism was condemned as an heresy. In the year 648, in place of the
"Ecthesis", there was issued a new edict, commissioned by Constans
and compiled by the Constantinople patriarch Paul, the "Typus"
("Tupos tes pisteos" – "Pattern of the Faith"), which
overall forbade any further deliberations, whether if be about "one
will" or about "two wills", as regarding the acknowledged
"two natures" of the Lord Jesus Christ. The Monk Maximos thereupon
turned to the successor of the Roman Pope Theodore, Pope Martin I
(649-654), with a request to examine the question of Monotheletism at a
conciliar consideration by all the Church. In October of 649 there was convened
the Lateran Council, at which were present 150 Western bishops and 37
representatives of the Orthodox East, amongst which was also the Monk Maximos
the Confessor. The Council condemned Monotheletism, and its defenders – the
Constantinople patriarchs Sergios, Paul and Pyrrhos, were consigned to
anathema.
When Constans II
received the determinations of the Council, he gave orders to arrest both Pope
Martin and the Monk Maximos. This summons took 5 years to fulfill, in the year
654. They accused the Monk Maximos of treason to the realm and locked him up in
prison. In 656 he was sent off to Thrace, and again later brought back to a
Constantinople prison. The monk, together with two of his students, was
subjected to the cruellest torments: for each they cut out the tongue and cut
off the right hand. Then they were sent off to Colchis. But here the Lord
worked an inexplicable miracle: all three of them found the ability to speak
and to write. The Monk Maximos indeed foretold his own end (+ 13 August 662).
On the Greek Saints-Prologue (Calendar), 13 August indicates the Transfer of
the Relics of Saint Maximos to Constantinople, but possibly it might apply to
the death of the saint. Or otherwise, the establishing of his memory under 21
January may be connected with this – that 13 August celebrates the Leavetaking
of the Feast of the Transfiguration of the Lord. Over the grave of the Monk
Maximos shone three miraculously-appearing lights, and there occurred many an
healing.
The Monk Maximos has
left to the Church a large theological legacy. His exegetical works contain
explanations of difficult places within the Holy Scripture, also Commentary on
the Prayer of the Lord and on the 59th Psalm, various "scholia"
("marginalia" or text-margin commentaries) on treatises of the
PriestMartyr Dionysios the Areopagite (+ 96, Comm. 3 October) and Sainted
Gregory the Theologian (+ 389, Comm. 25 January). To the exegetical works of
Saint Maximos belongs likewise his explication of Divine-services, entitled
"Mystagogia" ("Introduction concerning the Mystery").
To the dogmatic works
of the Monk Maximos belong: the Exposition on his dispute with Pyrrhos, and
several tracts and letters to various people. In them are contained expositions
of the Orthodox teaching of the Divine Essence and about Hypostatic-Persons of
the Holy Trinity, about the Incarnation of God, and about the
"theosis" ("deification", "obozhenie") of human
nature.
"Nothing in
theosis is the product of human nature, – the Monk Maximos writes in a letter
to his friend Thalassios, – since nature cannot comprehend God. It is only but
the mercy of God that has the capacity to endow theosis unto the existing... In
theosis man (the image of God) becomes likened to God, he rejoices in all the
plenitude that does belong to him by nature, since the grace of the Spirit doth
triumph within him and because God doth act within him" (Letter 22).
To the Monk Maximos
belong also works concerning the anthropologic (i.e. concerning man). He
deliberates on the nature of the soul and its consciously-personal existence
after the death of a man. Among his moral compositions, especially important is
his "Chapters on Love". The Monk Maximos the Confessor wrote likewise
three hymns in the finest traditions of church hymnography, following the lead
of Saint Gregory the Theologian.
The theology of the
Monk Maximos the Confessor, based on the spiritual experience of the knowledge
of the great Desert-Fathers, and utilising the skilled art of dialectics worked
out by pre-Christian philosophy, was continued and developed upon in the works
of the Monk Simeon the New Theologian (+ 1021, Comm. 12 March), and Sainted
Gregory Palamas (+ c. 1360, Comm. 14 November).
© 1996-2001 by translator Fr. S. Janos.