Maximianus

ON ST. MAXIMIANUS

PATRIARCH OF CONSTANTINOPLE.

AD 434.

Maximianus, Patriarch of Constantinople (Saint)

BY G. H.

The memory of St Maximianus is celebrated among the Greeks, and indeed in the Menologion of Basil Porphyrogenitus the Emperor, composed nearly seven hundred years ago, this encomium is offered concerning his country and deeds: On the same day, Born at Rome April 21, the memory of St Maximianus, Patriarch of Constantinople. Maximianus, the great Priest of Christ, had come forth from ancient Rome, the son of rich and noble parents. But when a care of no small business was offered him, initiated as Priest at Constantinople, he departed from Rome, setting out for Constantinople: where on account of his good character and manifold learning, and also on account of the sanctity of his life and morals, and his vigilant zeal for equity, he was initiated as a Priest of the holy Church of Constantinople by Sisinnius, the most distinguished and most praised Patriarch: whose integrity and examples in all virtues he plainly expressed, and with Nestorius expelled constantly so remaining, until the heretic Nestorius was condemned, who had succeeded the most holy Sisinnius. When therefore he had been expelled, Maximianus, as a champion of the Christian faith and of orthodox religion, by the common vote of all—of the Emperor, is created Patriarch, the Clergy, and the people—was ordained Patriarch of Constantinople: and at last, when he had holily and religiously governed the flock of Christ, and had kept and defended the Church safe from all scandals, and had presided over it for two years and five months, he rested in peace. he presided for 2 years 5 months. Thus far the Menologion of the Emperor Basil, with which agree the things read in the Ms. Synaxarion of the Parisian Collège de Clermont, in which at the end is added: His festive solemnity is celebrated in the Church of the Holy Apostles, built by Constantine the Great and his mother. He is called in the said Synaxarion not Maximianus, he is venerated in the church of the Apostles but contracted Maximus, as also in the printed Menaia and the Menologion of Sirletus he is remembered in this excessive brevity as "Our Holy Father Maximus, Patriarch of Constantinople." If his country and the occasion of his dignity on account of the expulsion of Nestorius and his other virtues had been indicated, it would have been known that Maximianus of Roman birth was meant; and more easily would his memory have been inserted into the Roman Martyrology.

[2] Nestorius was deposed in the Third General Council at Ephesus, in the year 431, by more than two hundred Bishops, which began to be held toward the end of June: whose Acts are extant in two volumes printed at Paris from the royal press, and in the latter volume, which is the sixth of all the Councils, chapter 14, page 257, these things are read: "When seven and seven Bishops from both parties had come to Constantinople, the Emperor ascertained with certainty by 14 legates of the Ephesine Synod that the holy and ecumenical Synod, with canonical and legitimate order observed in all things, had deposed Nestorius. Therefore, having approved the sentence of the legates of the Synod, he condemns indeed the Orientals, but punishes Nestorius with exile. Moreover to those who had come as legates from the holy Synod, he enjoins: that they should betake themselves to the church, and there create a Bishop for the holy Church of Constantinople. created, They, entering the church, create Maximianus Bishop." And then shortly a Synodal letter was sent at Constantinople, reported in chapter 16, in which it is asserted that they, diligently attending to this matter, judged it fair, as soon as the most holy and most beloved of God in all things, Maximianus, had been appointed Bishop of the great city, to send letters and to subjoin Synodal letters to them. There follows in chapter 17 the copy of the letter written by Maximianus, when he was created Bishop, to Cyril, Archbishop of Alexandria, where among other things he writes this: "Because we have been promoted to the Archbishopric of this great city, writes to St Cyril of Alexandria and asks for his prayers. deign, most beloved of God, both to support us with your prayers, and to inform us with your counsels, and finally to attend us with all zeal of kindness; that by this means that saying of Scripture may be fulfilled in us: 'A brother that is helped by his brother is like a strong city…' Prov. 18, 19 Since then you have become worthy of Christ the Lord, because you have taken up your cross and followed Him; do not fail to entreat Christ on our behalf, considering the ornaments of fraternal virtue to be your own prerogatives. Farewell in the Lord, and pray for me, most beloved of God and most holy brother and fellow-minister."

[3] Thus he, to whom St Cyril in his response in chapter 18 among other things writes back thus: "Opportunely, as I think, and suitably at this time, when your integrity has obtained that desired priesthood, it is permitted to us to say with the Prophet: 'Let the heavens rejoice from above, and let the whole earth exult and cry out with joy': for the mouth which spoke great things against the glory of our Savior no longer exalts itself: nor does the horn any more raise itself on high, he is praised by St Cyril for his right faith which was wont to do this: nor does it speak iniquity any more against God, with the Lord who redeemed us denied… 1 Par. 16, 31 Therefore we also congratulate you, having right and blameless faith. For there has risen up a minister of the sacred things, whom a sufficient and long time has commended to you, and the very experience of affairs has adorned: and who has spent much time in bearing solicitude for you, and has brought forth venerable grey hairs. For it was fitting, it was fitting that a wise and experienced Ruler be given to the chosen flocks of our Savior: one whose mind was filled with pastoral industry, pastoral industry and who knew how to feed them with good fodder and in a place of pasture: who finally was proved in the very affairs as a faithful and sincere steward. For those who have established themselves to live thus, Christ receives, and judges worthy of every honour… He, as we hope, will bring aid to your holiness, and will gladden the same with heavenly gifts by his helping hand: and who is to be aided by Christ. so that rightly handling the word of truth, and following the faith of the holy Fathers as certain footprints, you may praiseworthily persevere through the mercy and benevolence of Christ our Savior… I beseech the Lord that you be well and mindful of us, most reverend and most beloved of God, brother." The same St Cyril in chapter 19, to Juvenal the Bishop and the other legates of the Council sent to Constantinople, by whom St Maximianus had been elected: "The beauty of the dogmas of truth has shone forth, with the Bishop ordained according to the decree of God and the Council through your holiness, the most reverend and worshipper of God Maximianus: whom also long age has adorned, established not in idleness and delights, but in labours and virtue, and who has been adorned with much care of affairs on behalf of truth and the dogmas of piety. Rejoicing therefore with all the churches and peoples there established, adorned with long age passed in labours I shall rightly proclaim: 'Blessed be the Lord, because he hath visited and made the redemption of his people.' Luke 1, 68 Thus the good Shepherd has driven the malignant beast from the sacred and divine hall, and has chosen a most wise and illustrious teacher of all virtue: whom we also believe to be adorned in every good, and endowed with venerable and outstanding virtue, to govern the people established by his hand."

[4] The Synod of Ephesus had sent a letter to St Celestine the Pope concerning the ejected Nestorius, and the election of St Maximianus in his place; and this Patriarch himself also sent a letter concerning his election to the same Pope. By St Celestine the Pope But these two are not extant; yet the response of St Celestine to both is extant. And in the letter indeed to the Synod of Ephesus, chapter 20, concerning St Maximianus he inserts these things: "We have read the praises written by your brotherhood concerning him, and none of ours could wonder, because you spoke of things known. The arena of good acts has always exercised him: such we have learned him to be, as our Teacher instructed the Priest to be, he is held a true Israelite, so that fittingly in the judgment of all he may deserve to hear: 'Behold

a man truly an Israelite, in whom there is no guile.' John 1, 47 Do not these praises of yours fit him? Such a successor the blessed simplicity of Sisinnius of holy memory sought, that his place should be held only by one like himself. We know by what journey the holy Brother and fellow-Bishop of ours Maximianus, by what stipends gradually, reached the summit of the priesthood. Not the glory of riches, not as one eager in power, as is wont to be in those who aspire, did the leaps of honours raise him: by the vote of the poor, to whom, as a faithful and prudent servant, he gave food in due time, he has been set over all the goods of his Lord; and a faithful servant and prudent: and yet, even if there was desire for the episcopate, he desired it only for the sake of a good work, as the Apostle says. 1 Tim. 3, 1" Given on the Ides of March, with Aëtius and Valerius as Consuls. This is the year of Christ 432. In his letter to Maximianus himself, chapter 22, the same Pope Celestine writes thus: "We have seen and embraced your brotherhood in your letters, and we have inspected such holiness of yours as we had known, glorious in simple purity, and clearer through the splendour of mind than through speech. That Church returns to itself and to its state, of whose faith we always gloried, which now has received you as Ruler by divine judgment; after it cast out him who besieged it… Follow the examples of former Pontiffs, [he is exhorted to follow the examples of his predecessors, so that he may cultivate his Church.] by whom you have been instructed and nourished; the knowledge of the most blessed John in preaching, the vigilance of St Atticus in purging away heresies, the simple purity of your predecessor Sisinnius, whose successor we believe you to be; so that we may, as we were accustomed, rejoice over that Church. Gather the scattered, and exercise your pious soul, such as we know you to have, upon those whom the troubler had dispersed. Gather your peoples to the breasts of their mother, recall those whom the enemy had drawn away with the sprinkled taste of poison… It is a wide field, dearest Brother, in which you may exercise the glory of a vigilant Shepherd and a kind Priest, and pour in the taste of Christian wholesomeness; so that it may be clear that you could do more in repairing than he was able to do in harming, who preferred to be an imitator of the devil than of Christ." Given on the Ides of March, with Aëtius and Valerius, Most Illustrious Men, as Consuls. The rest can be read there, as can those things which in chapter 21 the same Pope Celestine then wrote to the Emperor Theodosius the Younger, whom he beseeches that to Maximianus, to such a priest of that Church on account of his merit, elected in this manner, and with the consent of the holy congregation which was present ordained, to compose the state of the Church, with the aid of the Emperor Theodosius sought and to root out every wound of depraved heresy from its root, he may furnish arms, lest the things which have been cut off dare to sprout again.

[5] These things St Celestine wrote in this same year 432, having died on April 6, to which day we have given his Acts. He was succeeded by St Sixtus III, whose Acts we have illustrated on March 28. To him John Patriarch of Antioch wrote in chapter 27 that he assented to the ordination of Maximianus, the most holy and most religious Bishop of the holy Church of Constantinople: he is admitted by John of Antioch, and in a booklet sent to St Cyril of Alexandria, chapter 28, the same John confesses that he receives the ordination of the most holy Bishop Maximianus. How much labour St Cyril employed, that all the most holy and most pious Bishops might approve the ordination of Maximianus, is indicated in chapter 35 in his letter to Acacius, Bishop of Melitene, and in chapter 38 in his letter to Donatus, Bishop of Nicopolis of old Epirus; but also in chapter 39 concerning the peace restored to the Churches he writes thus to St Maximianus himself: "It was plainly without any doubt, [St Cyril attributes the peace restored to the Church to the prayers of St Maximianus.] that the prayers of your holiness were altogether effective, since the Saviour of all is wont promptly and eagerly to assent to the prayers of those who love Him… The members of the ecclesiastical body, torn apart, have been united among themselves, and now nothing remains which separates through discord the ministers of the Gospel of Christ. All of us however are adorned by one faith, since we have expelled Nestorius the inventor of impieties from the sacred enclosures, and have shut out the false Shepherd from the noble flock. And this illustrious work too has been accomplished by your prayers… and so by your holiness, and all the rest by whom the perfect body of the holy Synod was constituted, assenting and concurring to this, we have been led back to concord. Blessed be our Saviour, who has stilled this tempest, and restored the tranquillity of concord: and that through the prayers and intercessions of your holiness and all the others, who having right and sincere faith offer adoration and service to Him in spirit and in truth." Finally St Sixtus the Pope testifies in chapter 41 in his letter to St Cyril of Alexandria that he wrote several letters to St Maximianus: several letters were sent to him by St Sixtus the Pope, but we lament that these are not extant. The same Sixtus in the letter to the aforementioned John of Antioch, which is the second among his letters in volume 7 of the Councils, thus speaks: "Let not clear and perspicuous belief, the greater one, be disturbed by any admixture of mire: it has, approved to us, a man, our Brother and fellow-Bishop Maximianus, Priest of the Church of Constantinople, there consecrated by divine judgment: so that the sweetness of simplicity succeeding, may overcome the disease of sickness which the poisons of cunning had infused into those who were lulled to sleep: who cannot there preach anything other than we believe: who testifies that he had lived at Rome. except what, being placed with us by my predecessors, he frequently heard." Given on the 15th day before the Kalends, with Theodosius for the 14th time and Maximus as Consuls. This is the year 433, where what we said above is confirmed, that St Maximianus was born at Rome and educated in the orthodox faith.

[6] St Maximianus survived until the year 434, in which Socrates asserts that he died, in book 7 of the Ecclesiastical History, chapter 40, with these words: "Maximianus, when he had peacefully presided over the Church for two years and five months, he died in the year 434, April 12, on Maundy Thursday, died, with Areobindus and Aspar as Consuls, on the twelfth day of April. It happened moreover that it was the week of fasting, near the feast of Easter; and that day was called the fifth, namely on Maundy Thursday." Now in the said year 434 Easter was celebrated on April 15, with the lunar cycle 17, solar 23, letter G being Dominical. The same things from Socrates are found in Nicephorus, book 14 chapter 37. But besides two years and five months he had presided over his Church eighteen days more; if, as Socrates writes in the said book 7 chapter 36, elected in the year 431 on Oct. 25. Maximianus was elected to the episcopate on the twenty-fifth of October, with Bassus and Antiochus as Consuls. Liberatus in his Breviary on the Nestorian cause, chapter 7, has these things concerning his ordination: "When four months had passed after the condemnation of Nestorius, Maximianus was ordained Bishop, in life indeed a monk, in order a Priest, constant indeed in the true faith, almost unlearned in speech, and who preferred rather to live in quiet." Socrates in chapter 4 of the said book 7 speaks thus: "When a period of four months had passed after the abdication of Nestorius, Maximianus was designated Bishop, a man cultivating the monastic kind of life, in rank a Priest: having obtained long since the reputation of piety, because he had at his own expense undertaken the construction of monuments, he had before built tombs. in which pious men departing from this life might be buried. He was however unlearned in speech, and proposed to himself a quiet life, and least molesting others, to pass along." In Christopherson, in the translation of this passage, it is read "a space of two months passed," whereas the Greek has: τετραμηνιαίου διαδραμόντος χρόνου. Which also Nicephorus cited above has, who also hands down that monuments were constructed by him, how he was held unlearned, though these four months were not entirely complete. He seems to be called unlearned, either because he himself, a Roman, did not speak Greek so exactly, or because in the controversies of the faith then agitated he was not eminently instructed. But that he was sufficiently knowing concerning those things which pertain to the priestly and episcopal state, his letters and his very election show. Furthermore the Emperor Theodosius, as Liberatus says in chapter 8, calling to himself Maximianus the Bishop and very many other Bishops found at Constantinople, considered how the dissension of the Churches might be removed. prudent in giving counsel But they said: that this could not otherwise be accomplished, unless first there should be created and preferred one bond of faith, and John the Bishop of Antioch should anathematize Nestorius and his disapproved dogmas. And the Emperor rejoicing greatly over this, Aristolaus the Tribune was sent to accomplish this very thing, etc. From which his industry and prudence in giving counsel shines forth.

[7] With St Maximianus dead, as Socrates relates in chapter 40, the Emperor Theodosius, lest again in the election of a Bishop dispute should arise and the Church be disturbed, without delay, the body of Maximianus not yet buried, his body is buried by his successor St Proclus, with the Bishops present, commanded that they should elect Proclus and place him on the episcopal throne. Proclus therefore being ordained, took care of the funeral of the body of Maximianus. In the Menologion of the Emperor Basil on October 24, in the encomium of St Proclus, it is said that this man was made Bishop of Constantinople, while the body of the deceased Maximianus still lay in the sanctuary of the most holy and great Church of God. perhaps April 21? Did therefore that burial on April 21, the Sabbath after the Paschal feast, give occasion that the day of deposition should be celebrated among posterity by ecclesiastical rite? It could also have been translated on that day later to the Church of the Holy Apostles: or on that day translated. in which we have shown above that a festive solemnity was wont to be celebrated on this day.