Highlights of the History of St. Maximus The Theologian

These highlights are given for those who would like to pursue the life, theological insight, and spirituality of St. Maximus The Theologian.

Venerable Maximus was born in 580, a citizen of Constantinople and a nobleman. He became a high-ranking courtier at the court of the Byzantine Emperor Heraclius, and later became a monk and the abbot of a monastery at Chrysopolis, opposite Constantinople and not far from the capital. He was a mighty spiritual giant who was broken by nothing, and whose image does not fade with time. He became known as Venerable Maximus The Theologian or The Confessor.

He was regarded as the greatest defender of the nature of Christ against what was called the Monothelite heresy, which developed from the heresy of Eutyches. Eutyches asserted that there is only one nature in Christ, so the Monothelites asserted that there is only one will in Him - the Divine. This heresy was diametrically opposed to the long accepted Apostolic doctrine that Christ had two wills - the divine and the human. St. Maximus resisted this assertion and found himself in opposition to both the Emperor and the Patriarch. His work gave a bedrock towards the Church doctrine of The Trinity.

He faced a period when Emperor Constans II, the successor to the Emperor Heraclius, issued his infamous "Typus" Declaration, formally accepting the Monothelite teaching as official dogma.

Venerable Maximus remained unshaken in his holy convictions. By his efforts, one Council in Carthage and one in Rome stood firm, and both these Councils anathematized the Monothelite teaching. Venerable Maximus' arguments on behalf of Orthodoxy were so powerful that, after a public debate on the faith with Pyrrhus, the Monothelite Patriarch of Constantinople, the latter renounced the heresy in 645.

St. Maximus' sufferings for the truth went beyond description. He was tortured by hierarchs, spat upon by the masses, beaten by soldiers, persecuted, and imprisoned. Finally, they cut off his right hand and tongue, so that he could not proclaim or defend the truth, either by word or pen. They then dispatched him to confinement in Lazov, a region of Mingrelia in the Caucasus. He died on August 13, 662, having foreseen in a vision the day of his death.

In giving a bedrock to the doctrine of The Trinity, Venerable Maximus suffered the dual role of the persecuted and the prophet. His life, even until now, is regarded as a faithful indicator of how one may follow after Christ by a path of conviction and a commitment to detail. His steadfastness to endure persecution was inspired by the lives of Daniel and his contemporaries in the Old Testament as well as the life and teaching of St. Paul of the New Testament.