Maximus

ON SS. MAXIMUS, ABBOT, ANASTASIUS, MONK, AND ANOTHER ANASTASIUS LIKEWISE A MONK AND ROMAN APOCRISIARIUS, CONFESSORS,

AT CONSTANTINOPLE,

In the years 662 and 666.

PRELIMINARY COMMENTARY.

Maximus, abbot and confessor, at Constantinople (St.)

Anastasius, monk and confessor, at Constantinople (St.)

Another Anastasius, likewise a monk and confessor, at Constantinople (St.)

BY THE AUTHOR J. P.

§ I. The name and birth of St. Maximus; when he exchanged an illustrious office at court for the monastic institute.

Maximus, most illustrious by far for holiness of life, for learning, for writings, for the struggles endured for the orthodox faith, for exiles and troubles, The Saint, Maximus in fact and in name and also for the blood shed for it, excellently filled up the measure of so great a name, as will become clear both from the Man's Life and from this Commentary which we prefix to it. To the Saint's name St. Anastasius, priest and Roman apocrisiarius, of whom more below, alludes in his letter to Theodosius, priest of Gangra, which is extant in the Collectanea of Anastasius the Librarian of the Apostolic See, and is had among the various Works published by Sirmond, volume 3, column 375 of the most recent Venetian edition, where these words are read: "I therefore, a lowly man, wishing now to make in my discourse a memorial of those just men who suffered at Constantinople for the confession of the true faith against the Monothelites, and especially of Maximus, truly the greatest (for this the name Maximus implies)," etc. In the great printed Menaea, on the twelfth day of this month, among other praises with which the Greeks there praise him, he is called μέγιστος Μάξιμος. Maximus therefore in name, greater in deeds, nay truly and properly greatest, he stood forth. Rightly therefore John Zonaras, in his Annals, volume 2, page 87 of the royal Paris edition published in the year 1687, most deservedly also calls him μέγιστον Μάξιμον. To these may be added what will be given below in §7 toward the end. Of St. Maximus therefore we treat here in the first place; of the other two Anastasii the discourse will afterward be established.

[2] What pertains to the Saint's native land, his illustrious birth, the excellence of his talent joined with rare diligence and virtue, [flourished under the emperor Heraclius, holding an illustrious office in his court:] and also to his literary exercises from his earliest age, the author of the Life which we illustrate sets forth at number 3 and following in us. His birth, determined by him with no note of time, Cave the heterodox assigns to the year 580, in the literary history of ecclesiastical Writers, part 1, page 322. But now so many and so excellent gifts of nature and of grace, with which St. Maximus was

endowed, raised him to the highest dignity in the court of the emperor Heraclius. For that Admirable man, as the same biographer reports of him in the same place at number 6, "passing his age thus, although he strove much every day to escape vain glory and not to be entangled in the changes of this life,.. yet could not bring it about that he should lie hidden. But although he devised and did such things, nevertheless he is seized even against his will. Heraclius being at that time emperor, who summoned him most benevolently to the court, and appointed him chief of those who were of the royal registry": to whom how gracious and useful he was is subjoined there in a few words. Heraclius reigned from the year of Christ 610 to 641. Very far therefore from the truth do they stray who here thrust in Constantine Pogonatus, whom the Saint never saw as emperor, since he died certainly in the year 662; but Pogonatus only began to reign in the year 668.

[3] (but not under Constantine Pogonatus) Hence correct the Menology of Sirlet, which at the thirteenth day of August has it thus: "The commemoration of our holy Father Maximus the confessor, who under the emperor Constantine Pogonatus, being a supreme philosopher, illustrious in life and speech, leaving all things, became a monk." Correct likewise the great printed Menaea: "Maximus lived in the reign of Constantine, surnamed Pogonatus, grandson of Heraclius"; and the Synaxarium, which is in Combefis, volume 1 of the Works of St. Maximus, page LXXXIX, where it is said "in the reign of the emperor Constantine Pogonatus, grandson also of Heraclius, having been received with the greatest honors by the former emperors," etc. Finally the copy of the Life and Martyrdom of St. Maximus, to which is prefixed as writer Laurence, a monk of Rutium in Calabria, and of whom the discourse will return elsewhere, commits the same error, when it brings him upon the stage κατὰ τοὺς χρόνους τοῦ τῆς Ρὡμαίων βασιλείας κατάρξαντος Κωνσταντίνου, οἳ Πωγωνάτον ἐκάλουν. That is, "In the times of Constantine, whom they called Pogonatus, administering the empire of the Romans." More rightly has it our manuscript Compendium of the Contest of St. Maximus, which was taken from the Imperial library of Vienna, saying: Ὁ ὅσιος καὶ τρισμακάριστος πατὴρ ἡμῶν Μάξιμος ὁ ὁμολογητὴς ἦν ἐπὶ τῆς βασιλείας Κώνσταντος, υἱοῦ Κωνσταντίνου, ἐγγόνου δὲ Ἡρακλείου. "Our holy and thrice-blessed father Maximus the confessor was in the reign of Constans, son of Constantine and grandson of Heraclius." Under him certainly he willed his excellent confession for the faith of Christ and his heroic struggles to be attested and strengthened by his own blood, although he had long before been honored and in favor in the court of Heraclius: and this is confirmed in the cited Sirmond, column 368, where these words, translated from the Greek, are recorded: "We command thy glory to go to Bizya, and to bring Maximus the monk with much honor and gentleness, both on account of his old age and infirmity, and because he is ours from our forefathers, and was HONORABLE to them." Which last words Combefis, in the observations prefixed to the Life of St. Maximus in the volume cited, page XCVII, thus more clearly rendered: "Because he was a friend and intimate of my Forefathers, and was held dear by them."

[4] which office And immediately the same author says: "Which plainly suits duly a notary and first secretary; whose office it was not to be torn from the emperor's side, but always to be present with him. There are extant the most beautiful letters of Michael Psellus, both to other leading men of every rank, and especially to the notaries acting with the emperor ἐν ταξειδίῳ: namely when he was surveying the provinces, or also leading the army about, and generally acting outside the court and the city: as when he writes thus kindly to the notaries of Comnenus, as his followers and adherents, and companions of his counsels and labors and expedition: Τῷ κορυφαίῳ καὶ τῷ χορῶ, ἢ δὲ βούλησθε, τῷ μυσταγωγῷ καὶ τοῖς μύσταις. With almost equal dignity among us are those who in the court are of the more private and intimate counsels to the king himself, and as it were assistants in the governing of the state, whom we call secretaries for it. This same office was filled by St. Nicephorus the patriarch, under the emperor Nicephorus, and before he was set over that see: from which familiarity with the court came to him so great a sweetness and elegance of style as we marvel at in his Antirrhetics, which it has been permitted [*] to salute, joined with equal erudition and skill in ecclesiastical matters; and we grieve that they are not brought forth for the common use of the Church and for its shield, especially since splendid codices exist in the Royal, Séguier, and Colbert libraries at famous Paris," etc. Concerning St. Nicephorus, Patriarch of Constantinople, there may be consulted the chronological History of the Patriarchs of that See, which is had before our volume 1 of the month of August. But his Acts were illustrated in volume II of March at the thirteenth day, from page 293.

[5] Further, that phrase of the Greek Life of St. Maximus, ὑπογραφέα πρῶτον τῶν βασιλικῶν ὑπομνημάτων, in Combefis, page IV, is explained by observations. which he renders into Latin "chief of those who were secretaries to the emperor," but which our translator of the Life which we shall give rendered "chief of those who were of the registry," the Compendium of the Imperial library of Vienna thus expresses: Πρῶτος ἐν τοῖς μυστογράφοις γεγονὼς: that is, "having obtained the first place among the writers of secrets or notaries": whence the Saint's first prerogative among those who were the emperor's secretaries is confirmed. And this very thing the great printed Menaea clearly, though in barbarous Greek, signify in his eulogy, where the title πρωτασηκρίτου, "first secretary," is given him; but in the Office which is brought forward from the ancient Tillian codex at the thirteenth of August in Combefis, pages LXXXVII and following, it is written πρωτοασηκρίτις; and that word is likewise formed otherwise in Gretser, to be cited presently. But in the notes and observations on chapter 2 of the work of George Codinus Curopalates, which treats of the offices of the great church and of the court of Constantinople, and which was published at Paris in the year 1648, page 27, it is said of that word: "As it indicates the first secretary, so also the most excellent of all judges." Besides, thou wilt find other things noted in the same place. There may also be consulted Gretser in the Commentaries on the said Codinus, which are had in the edition of the same work which I designated, page 200. But of these things more than enough. Now let us proceed with the writer of the Life to other matters.

[6] He narrates at number 7 that the Saint, being wearied of fleeting things in the court, For what cause the holy Man bade farewell to the court, and likewise perceiving novelties being brought into the faith, when the sect of the Monothelites was violently shaking the Church, "came.. to the monastery which is situated on the opposite shore of the city of Constantinople near Chrysopolis." The cause of his withdrawal from the court the Compendium of the Imperial library of Vienna thus sets forth: Οὗτος τὴν τῶν Μονοθελητῶν κακίστην αἱρεσιν ἰδὼν πλατυνομένην καὶ κρατοῦσαν, καὶ ἐγγράφως ἀνατεθεῖσαν ἐν τῷ νάρτηκι τῆς ἁγίας Σοφίας ἐν Κωνσταντινουπόλει, καταλιπὼν τὰ βασίλεια, γέγονε μοναχὸς ἐν τῷ μοναστηρίῳ Χρυσοπόλεως. "He, beholding the most wicked heresy of the Monothelites spread abroad and prevailing, and also set up in writing in the narthex of St. Sophia at Constantinople, leaving the court, became a monk in the monastery of Chrysopolis." Du Cange, Christian Constantinople, book 3, page 16, says: "That those western porticoes, which serve as an elegant and magnificent vestibule to the church of Sophia, were in his age given the name of νάρθηξ or ferule, Silentiarius relates in part 2, verse 13." Du Cange also treats in the same place of the reason of that word or appellation; to which he subjoins various other things on pages 17 and 18, among which is this: "As the Nartheces.. were once outside the church, or rather outside the enclosures of the church,.. so in turn it must be held for certain that in later centuries the narthex was sometimes called that part of the sacred building which we today call the nave," as may there be seen at length. But, this brief digression being dismissed, let us return to our purpose.

[7] and embraced the monastic institute The great printed Menaea of the Greeks allege the same cause with the said Compendium why St. Maximus withdrew himself from the court, from which I cull these words, thus rendered into Latin by our Rader: "But after the pernicious opinion of the Monothelites, foreign to the Catholic faith,.. had foolishly and impiously prevailed,.. and they publicly set forth public decrees by which they confirmed their heresy, and these hung affixed in the very great church at Constantinople,.. execrating the society and communion of the impious, leaving political offices and magistracies, he chose rather to be abject in the house of God than to dwell in the tabernacles of sinners. Setting out therefore for Chrysopolis," etc. There may besides be consulted on this matter the Saint's sacred Office published by Combefis and recorded by us above. The monk of Rutium, lest the discourse run on longer than is fair, I pass by in silence. But Combefis, in his observations on the Life of St. Maximus, page XCVII, thinking this cause of his exchange of the court for the monastic retirement of Chrysopolis a mere conjecture of the writer of that Life, says: "He might indeed, in a monastery, though near the city — namely one which κατὰ τὴν ἀντιπέραν ηἰόνα, on the opposite shore, was situated at Chrysopolis in Bithynia near Chalcedon (they call it Scutari, on Gyllius's testimony) — seek there a station safe from the sea and its swell, and by the seclusion of the place flee the κοίνωσις of the soul, as the author calls it, that is, its defilement and contagion, from the society and intercourse of courtiers, attaining this above all thereby, that he should not be compelled by the duty of his office to favor Heraclius's more secret counsels. This however I judge a mere conjecture of the writer of the Life.

[8] it is inquired, "For Heraclius was not yet so openly zealous for the novelty, nor had the doctrine of the Monothelites yet become widespread in the court, when Maximus put on the monk's habit; nor was that faction chiefly of Heraclius and the court, but rather of the Clergy and bishops, Athanasius the Jacobite, Theodore of Pharan, Cyrus, Sergius, etc.; from which therefore, that he might keep himself safe, Maximus had to go out not only from the court and the city which a novator bishop ruled, but from its whole diocese, or certainly to seek hiding-places a little further off." This observation of Combefis seems to us so consonant with truth that we think it more probable that the holy Man withdrew himself from the noise of the court into the monastery of Chrysopolis not so much from flight from the Monothelite pestilence, as from contempt of fleeting things and desire of a more perfect life. But it may here be further asked at what time this befell. This argument Combefis treats on page XCVIII, and from what he adduces concerning it he confirms his opinion that the Saint withdrew from the court and laid down the office of first secretary, that he might enjoy his beloved solitude, and, being free from the cares and tumults of the world, might more freely devote himself wholly to God and to divine contemplation. What therefore makes for the question proposed we shall here report from him.

[9] The praised author indeed confesses that it is uncertain and likewise at what time at what time he exchanged the court robe for the cloak and the haircloth; yet that this befell long before the death of Sergius and the last times of Heraclius, in which the pestilent flame of the heresy burst out into the court and the city, is argued, he says, by the Saint's letter to Pyrrhus the hegumen, when the latter had invited him, being already a monk, to consent to his novelty, which he had drawn from Sergius as its author, and had undertaken to confirm in writing, Maximus defending himself on the ground that not of his life

by the novitiate of a monastic life lately taken up, nor by the study of theology lately saluted, after he had bidden farewell to the world; but both by the consciousness of his own untrained mind (let us say, of the highest modesty of mind, according to the reason of his institute) and by the rashness of the deed, that he should not precipitate his judgment. For in volume 2 of his works published by Combefis, in the letter of reply to Pyrrhus, page 346, he says: "There still flourish in me affections and vices, and I have a flesh exceedingly rebellious and prevailing over the law of the spirit. Nay, even if by hypothesis we should grant that nothing of faculty is lacking for that matter, who is so rash and bold as to presume to set his own ordinance above what has in this way been ratified by the divine suffrage of the priests?" What follows from this? Therefore, as Combefis concludes on page XCVIII, "long before the Ecthesis was published at Byzantium, the guilt of which very thing Maximus lays upon Sergius and the senate, and removes from the head of Heraclius, who, overcome by the prayers of Sergius and of the Constantinopolitan Clergy, and also inclined by the senate's indulgence, permitted it to be published in his own name: which perhaps was not yet issued when, being long since himself a monk, he sent such friendly letters to Pyrrhus, still prefect of monks; since these proposals of Pyrrhus made to Maximus seem to have been the preludes and as it were the forerunner of it, while the hydra of the new heresy was thus far muttering among the Clerics and awaiting the emperor's coming from Syria (whence its origin and beginnings), under whom it should publicly break out in the city; but it is not likely enough that it had already advanced in the court, and that weariness of it drove Maximus out, and bound him to a monastery from which greater storms were to be feared by him because of the nearness of the Constantinopolitan Clergy and of Sergius the novator patriarch." Thus he.

[10] But let us examine in what way the things which Combefis brought forward, this befell. to prove for what cause St. Maximus exchanged the court for the ascetic life, may afford some light for fixing approximately the beginnings of that more perfect institute. "That famous Ecthesis or formula and exposition of the faith, in which it was forbidden thenceforth to speak of either one or a twofold operation in Christ's dispensation, although meanwhile in it there is expressly asserted in Christ only one will, as the doctrine of all the holy Fathers.., was published not in this year, as has hitherto been believed by all, but in the preceding one," says Pagi in the Critique of Baronius at the year of Christ 639. "For Pope Martin, in the third Secretarium, or Action 3 of the Lateran Council, in Labbe, volume 6 of the Councils, column 83, says that it was done in the twelfth Indiction (the text has 'during the twelfth Indiction lately elapsed'), which began on the Calends of September of the preceding year of Christ. For after that Ecthesis was issued, Sergius gathered a pseudo-synod at Constantinople, wrote to the Syrian bishop of Alexandria, and in the month of December of the same year departed this life, as we shall presently show. Wherefore there is no doubt that that edict came forth in the preceding year, and that in the same year the synod of Constantinople was held." It will afterward be useful to remember these things when the discourse recurs to that Ecthesis. But now to our matter. Since therefore we cannot define the certain time at which St. Maximus hid himself away from the court into the monastery of Chrysopolis, we do not circumscribe it by a thesis, but by hypothesis and conjectures. What then if we say that this event befell about the year of Christ 630, and about the fiftieth of the Saint, since he was nearly eighty when he suffered those things which are narrated below in the Life in us at number 32, and died in the year 662, according to what is to be said in §7? Further, we shall try to confirm these conjectures from his other deeds, which we subjoin.

* read "quae"

§ II. The abbatial dignity in the monastery of Chrysopolis; the African journey undertaken by him, for what cause, at what time, and with what fruit.

There is a discussion of the time Our biographer in chapter 1, number 8, treats of the prefecture of the monastery of Chrysopolis conferred on St. Maximus, "for the monks had lately lost their prefect," as he there adds; but he sets down neither his name nor any note of the time at which this befell; so that here again we must as it were grope in darkness, and use conjectures, which we would have to be of no more weight than reasons to be adduced for our own opinions. We observe therefore from the words of the said biographer at numbers 8 and 9 that our Saint was of a quite mature and already advanced age when at last he permitted that burden to be laid upon his shoulders with great reluctance: and the reason of this observation is that among the various causes which make that office heavy, and which could rightly have moved the holy Man to shake it off, of which the biographer there treats, none is adduced from the prematureness of his age; whence it may be conjectured that he was set over the government of the said monastery about the year of Christ 639 or the following, at about the age of 59 or 60, especially because of those things which occur to us to be noted concerning his predecessor in the abbatial dignity. That this was Pyrrhus, who from that dignity was advanced to the see of Constantinople, the following things persuade us.

[12] at which St. Maximus In the compendious Chronography of St. Nicephorus these things are noted: Πύῤῥος πρεσβύτερος τῆς αὐτῆς, μοναχὸς καὶ ἄρχων τῶν μοναστηρίων, καὶ ἡγούμενος Χρυσοπόλεος. Στάσεως δὲ γενομένης αὐτῷ, παρῄτησατο· ἔτη β᾽, μῆνας θ᾽, ἡμέρας θ᾽. Which I thus render into Latin: "Pyrrhus, a priest of that same (church), a monk, and prefect of the monasteries, and hegumen of Chrysopolis. But a tumult being raised against him, he resigned the dignity after two years, nine months, nine days." In the History of the Patriarchs of Constantinople prefixed in us to volume 1 of August, the beginning of the episcopate of this Monothelite heretic is assigned at page *79 probably to the beginning of January of the year 639; but his exile to the year 641. We have therefore here Pyrrhus, hegumen, governor or abbot of the monastery of Chrysopolis; we have times which conveniently combine with our Abbot of the same monastery of Chrysopolis according to what has been said; why then should we not affirm from probable reasoning that this man succeeded him in the government, as we said, of the same monastery of Chrysopolis, besides that we do not know hitherto that there was another of the same name in the Constantinopolitan region? Which things being so, to return to what went before, we do not see anything to hinder us from connecting the beginnings of St. Maximus's abbatial dignity with some probability with the year of Christ 639 or the next following.

[13] Nor shouldst thou object the letter of the same Saint to the same Pyrrhus, was created abbot of which above at number 9, ἡγούμενον, hegumen, as is in its inscription, that is abbot; for neither that letter nor another to the monks of Sicily, which is extant in Combefis, volume 2 of the Works of St. Maximus, page 58, do we see to conflict with our system, because in neither does he call Pyrrhus his Superior or abbot: for although St. Maximus embraced the institute of the monastery of Chrysopolis about the year of Christ 630, at about the age of 50, according to our conjecture given above, yet it could have come to pass, nay in this system of ours it will have come to pass, that when St. Maximus wrote those letters Pyrrhus was indeed at that time prefect of other monasteries; but that afterward he was made abbot of Chrysopolis; and that whether he was a nursling of that monastery or of another, since he was among the few in favor with the emperor Heraclius: for as thou wilt find in the same place in us at page *78, from the History of St. Nicephorus, "Heraclius loved Pyrrhus, so much that he called him brother, because he had received the emperor's sister from the sacred font; at the same time because he knew that he had been a familiar of Sergius and had lived with him, he substituted him in his place as patriarch of the city of Constantinople." And these indeed are the things which have come into our mind concerning the beginning of St. Maximus's government of the monastery of Chrysopolis, and concerning his predecessor, which we set forth for a while as our system, or, if thou wilt, as a problem, to the judgment of the learned, leaving to anyone the fullest freedom either to embrace or to reject it and to find something better.

[14] But since so many mentions have now been made of the monastery "at Chrysopolis," as it is called in our Life at number 7, of the monastery of Chrysopolis, concerning which place some things are noted. we do not seem likely to act amiss if we subjoin some notices of that place from Pierre Gilles, On the Thracian Bosphorus, book 3, chapter 9; where thou wilt find that it was "a harbor most beautiful and best in size and in tranquillity..; and it is called Chrysopolis, as some say, from this, that the Persians, while they ruled, gathered into this place the heaps of gold exacted from the tributes of the cities: but, as many relate, from Chryses, son of Chryseis and of Agamemnon, who died and was buried there," on the occasion which is there reported; and it is added that "it can also be so called on account of the convenience of the harbor by those who are wont to purchase marvels with gold"; likewise that "Chrysopolis was the market-town of Chalcedon; where Xenophon relates that the Greeks who had served for pay in Cyrus's Persian expedition stayed seven days, selling the booty which they had taken..; afterward it was stripped of its walls," as is asserted from Strabo, when he says that Chrysopolis is a village. And indeed, as Gilles observes, "Likewise today it is not a city, but a loosely inhabited village with many buildings not continuous, embracing in circuit about two miles." And after some other things he says: "Finally Chrysopolis was rebuilt by the Turks, which had long lain deserted through the wars of the Persians and the Turks, so that no trace remains of the things which George Cedrenus says, that king Philip founded Chrysopolis, and built the monastery τῆς παναχράντου Θεοτόκου (of the all-immaculate Mother of God), and palaces for receiving the king and the royal children, and gardens, and a fish-pond: which, in the level of the valley where now are the chief buildings of Chrysopolis, I think to have been a lake, namely the remains of the ancient harbor. Although Chrysopolis is a suburb of Byzantium, yet almost all the Byzantines are ignorant where it was, because, the ancient name being obsolete, it has long been called Scutari — I know not whether from the Franks who once ruled at Byzantium, calling a shield 'chryson'; or rather from the station of the scutarii soldiers," etc. For the rest, of the monastery which, as we said, was situated at Chrysopolis, we have hitherto found nothing to teach the reader. Let us therefore follow the Saint as he departs hence.

[15] The African journey, not from zeal for propagating the orthodox faith "But since he knew old Rome to be pure from this detestable doctrine of the Monothelites, and likewise the African churches.., leaving these lands he departed thither, that he might likewise be a patron of the truth," on the testimony of our biographer at number 10, "and might dwell there with the orthodox." He had premised in the same place that that heresy had so prevailed that "the evil lay immensely open, and had well-nigh occupied the whole East and West." But Combefis, in his observations on the Life and Acts of St. Maximus published by him, page XCVIII, corrects the narrative of his biographer in these words, which suit ours also: "Maximus's setting out for Rome and into Africa the author so describes as if, when the whole East and West were already"

"infected with the heresy, and the sounder doctrine and ancient faith flourished nowhere but at Rome and in Africa, or also in the neighboring islands — nay, even in these wavering; and when there was danger lest this flame should shortly consume all things, he came to its aid.. Yet that he thought only of Africa when he left the places of Asia, and Bithynia, and Constantinople itself; and not from that zeal for the faith which the author invents, but from fear of the barbarians, namely the Persians, then so ravaging that whole region that not even the Imperial city itself seemed safe from them, Maximus himself is in more than one place a most weighty witness for us." He then cites the other or second letter of St. Maximus to Jordan (rather John) the priest, which is extant in him, volume 2 of the Works of the same Saint, and in which the Latin translator thus introduces the holy Man speaking from the Greek text, page 250: "And that thou wouldst summon me to thee, and place me again under thy wings; if only in truth all fear of foreign enemies has departed, from dread of whom, as one loving life, I crossed such spaces of sea." And immediately he says: "I would wish you most holy men to be entreated,… that ye would more certainly inform me, and would set forth in your letters to me the whole present state of affairs there, of what sort at last it is and prevails. For since I am but little strong in the senses of the mind, and am very weak.., and have a mind scattered and wandering through fear about many things, I would wish to cross over in safety."

[16] but from fear of hostile incursions He brings forward besides a letter given by St. Maximus to bishop Siricius (perhaps, as is set in the margin, of Cyzicus), and published among others in volume 2 of his Works, page 361, in which he is the author to him that he should recall the scattered and the fugitives: "Call," he says, "both those who are far off and those who are near, and bind them to thyself with the insoluble bond of the love of the spirit." But on what condition he asks this he straightway adds, saying: "Provided nevertheless that the fear of the expected incursion of the enemy has fled, and has utterly fled: on account of which cause exiles so long and so far from their country have had a foreign soil." But in another letter to the same man, which is had in the volume cited, page 362, the Saint bewails his own solitude, that others, leaving him, had already returned: "But," he says, "because I am swallowed up with great sadness, nor can I bear to be parted from them, either take me with them, and refresh me under your wings, or by your prayers strengthen me to bear bravely the grief which the very separation from those dearest to me brings on." Which things being so, and since the holy Man, when he mentions either his own exile or that of others, does not impute its cause to the heresy of the Monothelites, "lying immensely open, and well-nigh occupying the whole East and West," as the biographer above would have it; since finally our same Saint clearly and expressly indicates in the letter to John the priest recorded above that "from dread.. of foreign enemies.. he crossed such spaces of sea"; the cause of his flight seems to be traced back not to internal enemies, not, I say, to the said heresy, but to fear of the barbarians.

[17] They are therefore mere dreams of the βιογράφος, as Combefis says on page XCIX, the holy Man undertook, "that, the cause of the faith being already then given up for lost at Constantinople and in the whole East, nay and in the West, Maximus, thinking for that reason of Rome, came from Byzantium into Africa." He adds that the last word (the discourse is of the West) was either wanting in the Vatican codices, or had dropped out of Morin, or was removed by Baronius, "lest perhaps thereby the author should seem more clearly to take away credit from himself, while he besprinkles the Westerns with that stain which they did not deserve, whom it is clear shrank exceedingly from that heresy, and that very few of them gave in their hands as conquered to it." For the rest, that St. Maximus thought only of Africa and sought a protection in it, so that he might be there safe from the ravaging soldiery and the flood of the Persians, he affirms to have been sufficiently shown from what he had premised; nor is it necessary to heap up more on that matter. Hence therefore correct the monk of Rutium, who writes thus: ζήλῳ οὖν ἐπὶ τῆς ὀρθοδοξίας θείῳ πυρούμενος, πάντας ὁρῶν ὑποκύπτοντας σχεδὸν τῇ πλάνῃ, καὶ μηδένα λόγον τινα τῆς εὐσεβείας ποιουμενον. τὴν μονὴν αὐτὴν καταλιπὼν, τὴν πρεσβυτέραν Ρὥμην κατέλαβε. "Being kindled therefore with a divine desire for the orthodox faith, when he saw that almost all were succumbing to the error and holding religion in no esteem, leaving that same monastery, namely of Chrysopolis, of which the author had made mention, he came to elder Rome." Which, since the same author subjoins it immediately to what he had premised about the said monastery, of which the Saint was a nursling and afterward prefect, he seems tacitly to hint that he departed thence to take counsel for the tottering affairs of the faith, and that first indeed for that cause he betook himself to Rome; which nevertheless happened otherwise, as what follows will teach.

[18] For first the holy Man departed into Africa, and afterward sought Rome, although in Africa he bore himself excellently all the parts of a most valiant champion of the orthodox faith being excellently fulfilled in both places, as our biographer left noted below in us at number 18 and following; yet in such wise that he has at the same time left us room to add a good many other things which he both passed over and which nevertheless conduce to the deeds which we have in hand. Let us therefore for a while accompany the Saint as he sets out into Africa. Combefis in his observations on his Life and Acts, page XCIX, says: "That Maximus pleaded the cause of the faith in Africa, and strenuously attacked the heresy of the Monothelites which Pyrrhus, now patriarch, was everywhere spreading by tracts given out and by persons devoted to him sent under him (except those who, fugitives by a lot like Maximus's, being of their own accord imbued with it, by that occasion depraving the straight ways of the Lord, increased the fire, and, having chosen a dwelling in Africa, carried the flame thither), and that he most greatly animated the Africans, in emulation of John the Roman Prelate, to proscribe it, is most fully ascertained. John himself, in his Apology to the emperor Constantine, successor of Heraclius, when he flattered himself with Honorius as a patron, clearly declares those endeavors of Pyrrhus, when he thus says: 'For as much as we have learned from divers reports which have come to us in crowds, nay also from hearsay itself, all the western parts are scandalized and troubled, our brother Pyrrhus the patriarch by his letters sent hither and thither preaching certain new things and beyond the rule of faith, and hastening to draw to his own sense as it were Pope Honorius of holy memory our predecessor, which was utterly foreign from the mind of that Catholic Father.'

[19] about the year of Christ 640. "The heresy seems for a while to have been repressed and silent, Heraclius excusing himself to John the Roman Pontiff that the Ecthesis was not his; and Sergius not defending it too boldly, that so at least the crafty man might retain the name and communion of a Catholic. But when he was taken away, and a little after Heraclius, Pyrrhus seems to have acted more hotly, and such as John signifies him in the reported words of the Apology; namely, having obtained from the supreme dignity of his see license to promote a doctrine of which, while yet in lower rank, he had been the greatest helper to Sergius in framing and in spreading it widely." That Apology of Pope John IV for Honorius is had among the Collectanea of Anastasius the Librarian in Sirmond, volume 3 of the various Works, column 295 of the edition designated before; and in the chronological Synopsis which is prefixed to those same Collectanea, that Apology is knit to the year of Christ 641. But Baronius treats of St. Maximus's migration into Africa at the year 640. Which reckoning of time coheres not inelegantly with our chronological system concerning the year in which the Saint put on the monk's habit and in which he was created abbot. These things therefore being laid down and admitted, it follows that he withdrew into Africa about these years, namely in the sixtieth year of his age, the thirtieth of his monastic institute, and the first of his abbatial dignity, according to the above reckonings of time hypothetically distributed.

§ III. A letter written in Africa against an error that had arisen; a disputation there with Pyrrhus the Monothelite; his acts at Rome; his lucubrations; his journey to Constantinople.

The Saint's letter in Africa against an error that had arisen: Among the Works of St. Maximus in Combefis, volume 2, page 243, there is extant a letter to John the priest, in which he refutes an error which had arisen and was already growing rife concerning the resurrection of the dead, teaching "that the soul even after death understands (these words are prefixed to the letter), and loses none of the faculties which are in it by nature." And it begins thus: "On the second of the passing month of August of this first Indiction, our common friend delivered to me the venerable letters of your paternal holiness.." Then he says: "It has affected me with no slight grief that there, as ye wrote, a doctrine concerning the soul is too licentiously published abroad by some, while I consider with myself what strength an evil of this kind has here also received; what liberty it has obtained. But what fills me, established here, with greater sadness.. is this, that almost all, and especially the more illustrious monks, establish and teach a new doctrine concerning the resurrection," etc. Further, he ends the letter with this clause: "Wherefore I groan the more, and bewail my absence from you, since I have not near at hand the most powerful inspection and care of your paternal holiness, guarding and freeing me from harms, propping up with a word my very many and frequent falls." The first Indiction concurs with the year of the common era 643: whence we gather that the above-mentioned letter was drawn up by the Saint after he had withdrawn into Africa.

[21] But far greater commendation of his name was won for him by that famous and laurelled contest there with Pyrrhus, the Monothelite bishop of Constantinople, a famous disputation there with Pyrrhus the Monothelite: who was driven by the holy Man's unconquered arguments to abjure his heresy: of which matter our biographer treats at length at number 20 and following. It is well meanwhile to note some things here concerning that disputation. It may be read in Baronius in the Appendix to volume 8 of the Annals; but in Combefis in the volume cited from page 159. It was held in the year of Christ 645, namely in the third Indiction (as is clear from the title prefixed to that same disputation), in the month of July. The truth of the event is confirmed from the testimonies of ancient authors, whom one may see in the said Annals at the same year 645; where thou wilt besides find the usefulness of that excellent monument praised. As regards the place of the contest, Baronius there thinks that it was held at Carthage. But whether it took place there or elsewhere, certainly it took place in Africa: whence Photius erred in his Bibliotheca, codex 95, saying: "But the discourse itself indicates that he came down to this disputation at Rome, namely after he Pyrrhus, an exile being decreed against him, had fallen from the see of Constantinople." Besides, when our Father Louis du Mesnil, in volume 3 of his Work entitled The Doctrine and Discipline of the Church, etc., at the year 644, page 418, has these words: "Gregory the patrician and prefect of Africa summoned both, namely St. Maximus and Pyrrhus, to a conference, which in the month of July, in the third Indiction,"

"and therefore in the year six hundred and forty, was held before him," he wrongly combined the chronological reckonings; unless perchance this befell by the typesetter's fault. These things we have thought should be briefly observed concerning the Saint's deeds in Africa; but what he did at Rome the biographer reports at number 23, to whose narrative we adapt the following observations.

[22] That he set out for Rome in the year 645, Cave, assigned above at number 2, writes. his acts at Rome: That this certainly did not befall after the year of Christ 649, is established from an author of greater credit. For St. Theophanes in the Chronography, page 276 of the royal Paris edition, thus records: "Pope Theodore being taken away by death, Martin, a most holy man, is chosen Roman Pontiff. Then indeed Maximus, having crossed the sea from Africa to Rome, kindled the holy ardor of Pope Martin toward God: who, a synod of a hundred and fifty bishops being celebrated, smote with anathema Sergius and Pyrrhus, Cyrus and Paul; and promulgated more clearly set forth the twin wills and operations of God our Christ" — in the ninth year of the reign of Constans, in the eighth Indiction, that is in the year of Christ 649, in which also St. Martin, Pope I, ascended the See of Peter, and the Lateran synod was held. St. Maximus was therefore at Rome at that time; but how long he had been there before, or in what year he came thither, cannot be beaten out from these words of Theophanes. For the rest, Theophanes, attributing to that synod the number of a hundred and fifty bishops, gives us occasion to observe in passing some things concerning that number. In the Latin title of this council in Labbe, volume 6 of the Councils, column 75, a hundred and five bishops are set down. But in the notes of Binius, in the volume cited, column 385, these words are read: "That Martin the Pontiff was induced by St. Maximus the abbot to convoke this synod, Theophanes writes at the XIX year of Heraclius, in these words: 'But when Maximus had come to Rome, and had kindled Pope Martin to emulation, a synod of a hundred and ten bishops being gathered, they anathematized Sergius, Pyrrhus, Cyrus and Paul,'" etc. And at column 387, on the words of the title "a hundred and five bishops," of which I was just speaking, he says: "Such is the number of those who are found to have subscribed at the end of the fifth session." This number Anastasius the Librarian also notes, On the Lives of the Roman Pontiffs, in St. Martin. The Life which we are about to give after this Commentary thus records in us at number 23: "Wherefore the Saint was also the author to Pope Martin that he should summon to himself the orthodox from every quarter.., that under so many and so divine men," etc. "Who indeed, being gathered to the number of a hundred and fifty, the most wise Maximus being likewise present, did all things with reason and by the help of the Holy Spirit." But whether this discrepancy arose from this, that in the copies the alphabetic letters vary by which the Greeks mark arithmetical numbers, or from elsewhere, matters little to our purpose; and to have noted these things in passing is more than enough, since they add nothing to or take nothing from St. Maximus. That he was present at the said synod is gathered from the words of the Life just designated. Binius in the notes, of which a little before, says: "That in the acts of the council no mention of Maximus is found ought not to seem strange: since abbots, even though they were admitted to a synod, had not the faculty of deciding and subscribing, but only of giving counsel."

[23] his lucubrations, The author of the Life, after he had treated of that synod, goes on to the lucubrations of the most holy Abbot, both many in number and various in kind, as may be seen in him at number 24 and following. Baronius at the year 657 writes thus to our purpose: "It adds to the glory of so great a Martyr that he left behind him lucubrations worthy of his most noble talent and of the orthodox faith in which he was strong; of which, although while living he was despoiled by his adversaries (as has been said), yet, God protecting them, they could not utterly perish, but for the great part remained entire, of which we here set for thee an index.. copied from the Vatican storehouse, drawn from three volumes written in Greek and collected from Photius." Then his writings are enumerated, after which this exclamation is subjoined by Baronius: "Thus far the lucubrations of Maximus, who illustrated not the East only but also the West, and the more brightly because he sealed also by martyrdom what he wrote." But how much time and labor Combefis spent in the edition of the Works of St. Maximus is gathered both from the editor's dedicatory letter inscribed to the most eminent Cardinal de Bouillon, and from his preface to the reader. Casimir Oudin in the Commentaries on Ecclesiastical Writers, volume 1, column [ ], desiring a better order in the said edition, writes these words: "But although Francis Combefis employed most diligent care in seeking out and gathering from every quarter the Works of St. Maximus the monk, yet he does not observe a complete method in publishing them, which were printed at Paris in a somewhat tumultuary order." For the rest, the aforesaid bibliographer there from column [ ] weaves a dissertation on the writings of St. Maximus, in which chapter 1 treats of his manuscript Works which are extant in English libraries; in chapter 2 there is discourse of the printed Works collected together; chapter 3 shows that they can be distributed in the printed editions by another and more convenient method.

[24] Further, the notable praise of erudition in our holy Martyr Combefis trumpets forth with full mouth in volume 1, page CV, under the title "To Maximus, by way of eulogy." and the writings notable for erudition are praised. Why should I record Anna Comnena? For she willed it to be most attested in what price she held the singular wisdom of the holy Martyr, when concerning her mother the empress Irene, in book 5 of the Alexiad, page 147 of Poussines's edition, she committed to writing the following: "I remember that my mother the empress could not, even when the table being set she was called to supper, lay down from her hands the books which she read most eagerly, both of the other holy Fathers who treated of sacred doctrines, and especially of St. Maximus the philosopher and martyr. For she was delighted not so much by the explaining of natural questions as by the searching out of divine doctrines, in the understanding of which she both knew that the true fruit of genuine wisdom was placed, and sought it. I marveled seeing these things, and once, daring to say what I felt, I said: How does it please thee from level ground to look up to so great a height? For my part I tremble when I look, nor do I dare admit even with the tips of my ears mention of mysteries so sublime. For the style, as they say, of St. Maximus, raised most loftily above the use and grasp of human senses, and continually hovering in the most refined contemplations, brings a certain dizziness on readers. At this she, smiling, said: I know that fear to be praiseworthy. Neither do I approach these sacred books without trembling; yet I cannot be torn from them. Nay, wait thou for me a little, and when thou hast known enough of other writings in which it is fitting first to form the mind, then thou shalt taste the sweetness of these. The memory of these words has struck my heart, and I have fallen as it were into another sea of things to be narrated. But the law of history restrains and recalls me." The Vienna Imperial Compendium, extolling the most profound learning of St. Maximus, writes thus: Τίς ἀριθμήσει τὴν ἄβυσσον τῆς σοφίας, ἣν ὁ Θεὸς παρέσχε τῷ δούλῷ αὐτοῦ; πᾶσαν γὰρ οἰκουμένην οἱ ἔνθεοι λόγοι αὐτοῦ διέδραμον· ἄλλος Χρυσόστομος ἡμῖν γενόμενος. "Who could count the abyss of wisdom which God bestowed on his Servant? For his divinely inspired discourses have ranged through the whole world. He has become for us another Chrysostom." More eulogies of other monuments of his talent are then heaped up in the same place. Of the Saint's works Photius treats in the Bibliotheca, codex 192 and following. But now let us pass from the Saint's lucubrations to the unconquered fortitude of his mind, by which amid calumnies and reproaches, vexations and machinations of the heretics, he contended most bravely for the true faith and won the notable praise of a heroic victory.

[25] That triumphal arena fell to him at Constantinople; there is discussion of the time, but what was done in it our biographer describes at length and pathetically at number 29 and following, yet in such a way that he has given us occasion for further elucidation: which behold for thee, reader. The same writer of the Life indicates the time of the event when he records this: "When therefore Constans, grandson of Heraclius, still held the empire, and had passed in it now the ninth year,.. he orders the Saint to be brought as soon as possible to the palace"; upon whose coming to it followed that barbarous treatment which he there endured. Constans began to reign in the year of Christ 641, as Baronius has it (Pagi agreeing). But this ninth year of the same Constans he couples with the year of the common era 650, into which also he weaves the tragic vexations of St. Martin the Pope and of St. Maximus, of which our biographer makes mention. But he is refuted by the praised Pagi, who in his Critique at the same year, number VI, thus discourses of the reckoning of time: "Although St. Martin the Pope and St. Maximus the abbot were sent into exile by Constans Augustus only in the year six hundred and fifty-three, yet Baronius, deceived by a faulty version of Theophanes at the XX year of Heraclius Augustus, where he speaks in one continuous strain of the heresy of the Monothelites, begins the history of this persecution from the current year. For Theophanes says: 'Then Maximus, having crossed the sea from Africa to Rome, kindled the holy ardor of Pope Martin toward God'; the rest we have brought forward above at number 22; which things are there said to have been done in the ninth year of the emperor Constans, in the eighth Indiction."

[26] at which St. Maximus To which Pagi immediately subjoining the continuation of Theophanes's text — "Constans, grandson of Heraclius, hearing these things, stirred with fury, ordered the most holy Martin and Maximus to be brought to Constantinople, and them, being tortured, to be carried into exile to the regions of the Chersonese, and many besides of the Western bishops to be punished" — observes the following: "So Theophanes, whom Baronius did not see, but only Anastasius, who set forth Theophanes in these words: 'They more expressly preached and confirmed two wills and operations of Christ our God. But in the ninth year of his reign Constans, grandson of Heraclius, in the eighth Indiction, learning these things, being filled with fury, had St. Martin and Maximus brought to Constantinople, and, being tortured, banished them into exile at Cherson and other regions.' But Theophanes does not record the year in which Martin and Maximus were sent to Constantinople; but only the year in which the Lateran council was held, namely the IX of Constans, in the VIII Indiction."

[27] was brought to Constantinople These things being premised, the same Pagi, to confirm his own reckoning of time against that of Baronius, uses these arguments at number VII: "The year," he says, "in which this persecution began becomes evidently known to us from the IX letter of the same Martin to Theodore, XV in order, where he says that Calliopas the exarch with the army of Ravenna and Theodore the chamberlain entered Rome, when Martin himself was in the Constantinian church with all his Clergy from the sabbath day, namely of the month of June, as Martin straightway indicates, which day in the year 653 concurs with the fifteenth day of the month of June. But when Calliopas had sought him and had not found him, he said to the chief men of the Clergy:"

"'Tomorrow, which is the Lord's day, we will go to meet him and salute him, because today we had not time.' Further, on the Lord's day, which in the year 653 fell on the sixteenth day of the month of June, he announced to them that on the morrow he would in every way come to meet Martin and do him reverence. 'But I' (says St. Martin) 'was gravely sick from the month of October until the aforesaid time, that is, until the sixteenth of the Calends of July,' or until the sixteenth day of the month of June. Martin adds: 'Therefore on the second day of the week at daybreak he sends his chartulary, and certain of his retinue' — and therefore on the seventeenth day of the month of June, which in that same year fell on the second day of the week. Then Martin narrates that not long after the army came into the church, and that an order was presented by Calliopas the exarch to the priests and deacons, in which it was contained that Martin himself had irregularly and without law usurped the episcopate, and must be sent to the Royal city, another bishop being substituted in his place.

[28] was summoned from Rome "St. Martin afterward reports that by Calliopas's order he came with him to the palace on the same second day of the week, and that on the third day of the week (namely the eighteenth of June) all the Clergy came to him, and many who had prepared themselves to sail with him: 'On the same night, which dawns into the fourth day of the week, which was the thirteenth of the Calends of July, about the sixth hour, as it were, of the night,' he was led out of the palace and came to the port, namely the Roman one. Wherefore on the nineteenth day of the month of June, which in the year 653 falls on the fourth day of the week, the holy Pontiff was put on board a ship. 'And we came,' he says, 'on the Calends of July to Mesena' (namely Messina, as what follows certainly indicates), 'in which was the ship, that is, my prison. And not only at Messina, but also in Calabria: and not only in Calabria, which is subject to the great City of the Romans, but also in very many of the islands, in which my sins detained us for three months, did I obtain any compassion, except only in the island of Naxos, since there we spent a year.' Naxos or Naxus is one of the Cyclades islands set in the Aegean sea, where Martin was compelled to stay until the year 654. Baronius, taking no account of the cyclic method, which certainly designates these things as done in the year 653, and in no other of Martin's Pontificate, narrated them in the present year," namely of Christ 650. These things it has seemed good to transcribe hither at some length from Pagi concerning St. Martin for the sake of St. Maximus.

[29] Which things being so, it follows that St. Maximus was not summoned from Rome to Constantinople by the emperor Constans before the year of Christ 653. by the emperor Constans. He was therefore not called thither in the year 650, as Baronius thought; nor in the ninth year of the same Constans, as our biographer has it; but in the thirteenth, which concurs not with the ninth Indiction but with the eleventh. It follows besides from what has been said that Cave, whom I lately cited, strayed from the true reckoning of time when he noted these things, if by them he meant to conjecture the holy Man's departure from Rome and his arrival at Constantinople in the same year of Christ 655. He speaks therefore thus: "Since therefore Maximus so vigorously resisted the heretical stain with which the emperor Constans labored, in the year 655 he was brought by a military band from Rome to Constantinople together with Anastasius his disciple, and cast into prison. After some days he was led into the palace, that he might be arraigned on certain fabricated charges of treason and calumny against the emperor, of injury against Pyrrhus, and of Origenism; which when he had most brilliantly refuted," etc. I said above that the Saint was not summoned to Constantinople before the year of Christ 653; but in what year he came thither remains now to be inquired.

§ IV. The shameful contest against the Saint and his disciple at Constantinople; his first exile; two other contests elsewhere with the heretics; after which he is brought back toward Constantinople.

The encounter at Constantinople Our biographer at number 29 in us reports indeed of Constans that "he orders the Saint to be brought as soon as possible to the palace"; but in what year he landed at Constantinople he leaves unstated. The document which, rendered from Greek into Latin, is had in Combefis, volume 1 of the Works of St. Maximus, pages XXIX and following, and which is entitled "An account of the proceeding held between the lord abbot Maximus and his companion and the chief men in the secretarium," marks neither the day nor the year of his arrival; for it thus begins: "On the day on which they landed at this royal city — namely both the lord Maximus and his companion — about sunset, two officers coming with ten guardsmen took them from the ship.. And after some days they lead them out to the palace, and set the Old Man within, in the place where the senate and a great crowd besides had assembled." There follows then in the same place that infamous encounter held by the judges of Constantinople against the holy Man; in which what things were done, what asked and what answered, the author of the aforesaid Account sets forth in genuine colors. But since by our biographer the event is touched on summarily, if any one wishes to supply his brevity in reporting this so memorable contest of the Saint, let him consult that same Account; in which he will also find at page XXXIV how harshly and barbarously St. Anastasius was treated, whom indeed blows and fists rendered half dead. But from the words which stand toward its end — "The sacellarius says to him: How many years old dost thou say thou art? The holy Man answered, Seventy-five" — it seems to be gathered that that contest must be knotted to about the year of Christ 655, from which, if going backward thou descendest to the year 580, to which the modern heterodox above bound his birth, thou wilt count seventy-five years of his age contained in that chronological descent, and likewise the time of his arrival, when he reached Constantinople with his companion: for "they took them from the ship.. and after some days they lead them out to the palace," etc., as has just been said.

[31] befell about the year 655. In the chronological Synopsis which is prefixed to the Collectanea of Anastasius the Librarian cited above at number 1, at the year of Christ 655 there is likewise assigned ".. the conference of St. Maximus with the judges in the palace at Constantinople, and his exile at Bizya." That year of the contest indeed coheres with the year 580 of the same Saint's birth; but since neither does that heterodox writer prove it, nor is it established for us from elsewhere; and since we do not see why the Saint may not have begun it in the year 578 or thereabouts, neither is the year 655 established for us from the said seventy-five years, in which according to what has been said the present contest befell; and which, on Pagi's opinion concerning the Saint's departure from Rome, ought to be about the year 653, if in the same year in which he was summoned thence he reached Constantinople; but from what will be said below from the same Pagi concerning the twofold disputation of St. Maximus, it seems to follow either that he did not arrive there until after two years, that is, in the year of Christ 655 — which does not seem likely — or, what appears exceedingly consonant with truth and with the writer of the Life, that the Saint had long been living at Bizya before there came thither Theodosius the bishop, of whom will be spoken below; for, as the biographer writes in us at number 40, "Long afterward they send to the Saint in exile (at Bizya) that Theodosius," etc. But now, since we have not at hand other ancient documents which may lead us to a further knowledge of the time, and the discrepancy here of one year or another is slight, there is no reason to detain the reader with more. But now it is well to set forth some things to be observed concerning the word "sacellarius" which occurred above.

[32] Information about the Sacellarius who had the encounter with the Saint. Combefis in the Life and contest of St. Maximus, page XV, sets this little note in the margin: "The sacellarius, president of Maximus's trial: was he the Patriarchal one, whose was the care of the monasteries? Perhaps rather the imperial one." Our Gretser, in his Observations and Emendations on George Codinus Curopalates, On the Offices and officials of the great church and of the court of Constantinople (of which Work we spoke before at number 5), chapter 3, collected various things pertaining to this office; which, since they can there be consulted by the curious reader, and it would be long to transcribe them all hither, we shall excerpt from them only certain chief points. He sets down therefore two sacellarii among the Greeks, one namely the great, the other the lesser: he adds that both took care of, watched over, and expended the moneys of the church; and that thence arose the chief reason of this appellation, taken namely from "sacculus," that is, from the ecclesiastical treasury over which they presided; besides this, that the greater sacellarius bore the care of the monasteries, both those which were within the city of Constantinople, and τῶν Περατικῶν, that is, those which are in Pera or Peraea, which today is called Galata, thou wilt find there; but that the lesser had in his power the Catholic churches. That the emperors of Constantinople also had their own sacellarii we learn from Theophanes, who in the Chronography, page 279, records these things of Heraclius: "The emperor sets another general over them, Baanes by name, and equips Theodore the sacellarius.. against the Arabs." And page 306: "Justinian applied himself to the erecting of the palace buildings. He founded the dining-hall thereafter called by the name of Justinian, and the walls of the palace. Over this work he set.. Stephen the Persian, his sacellarius." Add St. Gregory the Great, who in book 4, letter 34, to Constantina Augusta, writes thus: "As in the parts of Ravenna the piety of our Lords has a sacellarius with the first army of Italy, who may make the daily expenditures for cases as they arise," etc. There may also be consulted what Du Cange collected on this word in the Glossary to the writers of middle and low Latinity, volume 3. Now let us look again at our Saint.

[33] These things therefore being endured by him at Constantinople with a manly and truly heroic breast, The contest of the Saint held with Theodosius the bishop the holy Man carried off exile, an honorable reward indeed of his unconquered constancy. And this exile was the first of several others; concerning which the biographer in us, chapter 5, says: "Counsel being taken, the emperor and the patriarch.. condemn the Just man to exile, leading him away at once to the little town of Bizya." Of that place our Annotations on the said chapter treat at letter b. Of the time mention was made at number 31 above, and will further be made on occasion of that famous disputation which was there held between St. Maximus and Theodosius the bishop. The writer of the Life whom we are elucidating treats of it at number 40 and following. Baronius at the year 656 says: "There follows the year of Christ six hundred and fifty-six, in the fourteenth Indiction; in which by the emperor Constans an embassy is decreed to Maximus the confessor, an exile at Bizya, a city of Thrace, whereby he might bring him into the error of the Monothelites. Those who were sent were men of most illustrious dignity, namely Theodosius and Paul, patricians, and likewise distinguished with Proconsular dignity; and together with them Theodore, bishop of Caesarea, a man of all"

"his sect the most learned. All the things which happened in this embassy and in the mutual encounter with Maximus were written by some one who was present. Two fragments of which acts, when we had found them recited in the fourth Action of the seventh ecumenical synod, a great desire blazed up in our mind of searching out the acts themselves entire: but the writings of Maximus which are preserved in the Vatican library being seen, and they not being found; when we had already fallen from the hope of finding them any more, it happened unexpectedly that we found them woven into the Life of Maximus himself.

[34] "Those therefore who were sent by the emperor, when they had long conferred with Maximus, that they might recall him from what he had begun at Bizya in Thrace, and bring him back with honor to Constantinople, were so far from obtaining this that rather, by the supreme power of truth, he drew them to his own opinion, and compelled them to swear that, the heresy being cast off, they would embrace the Catholic faith; and so they returned to the emperor, that they might bring him also to the same opinion." Pagi at the said year, number 1, says: "Baronius accurately assigns to the present year the famous conference held between St. Maximus and Theodosius, bishop of Caesarea in Bithynia, and the two consuls who were with him, when he came to the fortress of Bizya, situated in the province of Thrace, where St. Maximus was passing his exile. But the copy which he used was in some points defective, and besides this conference, which ought to have been placed after the 'Account of the proceeding held between the Lord abbot Maximus and his companion and the chief men in the secretarium,' which is certainly to be assigned to the preceding year, was in that copy placed before the praised Account; and thence it came about that the most learned Annalist deferred that same Account to the following year. Some years after Baronius's death Sirmond published the Collectanea of Anastasius the Librarian, in which among other things are contained both the Account or Conference of St. Maximus with the chief men in the secretarium, and the Conference of the same holy Martyr with Theodosius bishop of Caesarea; and besides, in those same Collectanea the Conference of Maximus with the chief men precedes the other Conference in order as in time." Thus Pagi, who then sends the reader to Combefis, in whom both Conferences are more correct, as he observes, and the one which was held in the said year is there exhibited entire; whereas in the Collectanea of Anastasius it is mutilated at its end; just as the Conference of St. Maximus with the chief men in the secretarium is not had entire in Baronius.

[35] which another there followed. This first conference of the Saint with the nobles at Constantinople was therefore followed by a second held at Bizya in the year of Christ 656, which is marked with this title in the Collectanea of Anastasius the Librarian, column 355: "A volume containing an account of the doctrines which were discussed between St. Maximus and Theodosius, bishop of Caesarea in Bithynia, and the consuls who were with him"; or "of the acts," as the Greek inscription has it, "in his first exile," namely at Bizya. The event is rightly recited by Baronius at the said year 656: for in the very opening of the disputation these words are marked: "Therefore on the ninth of the Calends of September, which has now passed, of the fourteenth Indiction, there went out to him in the exile in which he was placed and kept, that is, to the fortress of Bizya, the aforesaid bishop Theodosius, sent, as he said, in the person of Peter, prelate of Constantinople," etc. And so τῇ εἰκοστῇ τετάρτῃ τοῦ Αὐγούστου, as is in the Greek text, that is, on the twenty-fourth of August, bishop Theodosius with Paul and Theodosius the consuls, as is straightway subjoined in that Account, went to Bizya; where, when he had come, he set forth his questions to the Saint; and this conference, as Pagi rightly observes at the said year, number 3, was committed to writing in the current XV Indiction, which began on the Calends of September of this year of Christ.

[36] Then St. Maximus is transferred These things being thus transacted at Bizya, Theodosius, being about to depart from that place, as our biographer reports at number 45, "that he might report to those who were in the royal city.., returned to Byzantium, accompanied by the two consuls who had followed him. Eight days having elapsed, that Paul, himself also adorned with consular honor, goes out to the Saint": to whom it had been commanded by the emperor that, going to Bizya, he should bring back the Saint with reverence and veneration as a friend and familiar of the emperor's Forefathers, and should place him in the monastery of Theodore at Rhegium. Having therefore brought him, the consul left him in that monastery, and came to the emperor to announce it. But these things are thus confirmed and amplified from the Account or Conference which I just now cited, column 368: "But after the aforesaid men departed on the sixth of the Ides of September of the present fifteenth Indiction, Paul the consul went out again to Bizya to abbot Maximus, bearing an order containing the following form: 'We command thy glory to go to Bizya, and to bring Maximus the monk with much honor and gentleness, both on account of his old age and infirmity, and because he is ours from our forefathers, and was honorable to them. (And place him in the venerable monastery of St. Theodore, which lies near Rhegium.) And to come and announce it to us: and we will send to him from our person two patricians, who shall declare to him what things have pleased us, we loving him from the heart and being loved by him; and they shall come to announce to us his coming.' Therefore when that same consul had brought him and had placed him in the already named monastery, he returned to announce it." The year and month are clear from what was said before; but not so the place to which the Martyr was transferred.

[37] Pagi, at the year just designated by us, number 4, says: to the monastery of St. Theodore before the city of Constantinople. "The emperor's order provided that Maximus should be brought to Constantinople, and placed in the monastery of St. Theodore." Du Cange, book 4 of Christian Constantinople, page 190, speaks thus to the present purpose: "That the sacred building of St. Theodore was built by Justinian before he reigned, πρὸ τῆς πολεως ἐν χώρῳ καλουμένῳ Ρησσίῳ, 'before the city in the place called Rhessium,' Procopius is the authority, book 1 On Buildings, chapter 4. Whether Rhessium or Rhesium was the same as Rhegium, as learned men think, is not altogether established, although the gate which is by writers called that of Rhegium seems by others to be called that of Rhesium. Anna Comnena, book 8, page 226, on occasion of the Scythians running out even to the neighboring places of the city of Constantinople, commending the celebrity of the sacred building, narrates these things: 'They stormed towns.., not even reverencing the neighborhood of the chief city, so as not to dare to attempt the boroughs nearest to it, and to advance in their brigandage even to the torrent called Deep, so commonly named, a place so near Constantinople that to the church of Theodore, greatest among the martyrs, situated there, there was a daily concourse from the city of those visiting the Saint's memorial for the sake of religion and supplication: but on the return of the Lord's day the city almost poured itself out, and all, being carried in pious pilgrimages through the suburbs to that sacred building, were wont there to persevere in continual devotion the whole night and the whole day, either about its circuit, or in the vestibule, or in the rear part of the church, until this Scythian tumult.'" And these things indeed concerning the place to which our Martyr was led from Bizya by the order of the emperor Constans: but by what engines his unconquered constancy was assailed there we shall presently set forth.

§ V. The Saint's constancy at Rhegium assailed in vain by blandishments; a blasphemy against the Virgin Mother of God wrongly imputed to him.

The enemies of the faith Since the biographer touches on that event quite briefly at numbers 46 and 47, and it is of such a kind as deserves to be corroborated at more length from elsewhere, it has seemed good from that authentic and most credible document — the Account, I say, or Conference which was held at Bizya, and of which there was treatment above — to supply that brevity and to confirm the matter itself. And so at column 368 these things are narrated: "On the morrow there come to him Epiphanius and Troilus, patricians, with much apparel and display *; and also Theodosius the bishop, and they go up to him into the catechumeneum of the church of that monastery (of St. Theodore, of which has already been spoken), and the accustomed salutation being made they sat down, compelling him also to sit: and Troilus, beginning the discourse held with him, said: The Lord of the world has bidden us come to thee and tell you what has seemed good to his divinely strengthened empire. But tell us first whether thou wilt do the emperor's command or no. Maximus said: My lord, let me hear what his pious empire has commanded, and necessarily I will answer: for to that which is unknown to me, what answer am I to give? But Troilus persisted, asserting: It cannot be that we say anything unless first thou say whether thou wilt or wilt not do the emperor's command.

[39] sent to pervert St. Maximus's orthodoxy "And when he had seen them insisting yet more on his delay, and looking more bitterly, and answering more harshly, with all who were with them and with those secular dignitaries themselves excited, abbot Maximus answering said: Since ye do not suffer your servant to be told what pleases our lord and emperor, behold, I say, God and the holy angels and all of you hearing, that whatsoever he shall command me concerning any matter whatever belonging to this world, which is to be destroyed and to perish, I will readily do. And Troilus, straightway rising, said: Pray for me *, I shall go. For this man does nothing. And a great and vehement tumult being made, and much disturbance and confusion, Theodosius the bishop said to them: Tell him the answers, and learn what he confesses: for so to return, and to say nothing and to hear nothing, is not reasonable. And then Epiphanius the patrician said: This the emperor signifies to thee through us, saying: Since the whole West, and those in the East who work subversions, look to thee, and all stir up quarrels because of thee, being unwilling to agree with us in the cause of the faith,

[40] while nothing avails by blandishments, "'may God make thee to be pricked in heart, that thou mayest communicate with us in the Type which has been set forth by us: and we will go out by ourselves to the Chalce *, and will kiss thee, and will lay our hand upon you, and with all honor and glory will lead you into the great church, and will stand with our very selves where the emperors are wont to stand, and will alike hold the assembly, and will partake of the undefiled and life-giving sacraments of the life-giving Body and Blood of Christ, and will proclaim thee again our father, and there will be joy not only to our Christ-loving and royal city, but also in the whole world. For we know most certainly that, if thou communicate with this holy throne, all will be united to us who because of thee and thy teaching have cut themselves off from our communion.'

[41] "And abbot Maximus, turning to the bishop, said with tears: they profit nothing, Great lord, we all await the day of judgment: thou knowest what things were ordained and defined upon the holy Gospels, and upon the life-giving"

"cross, and upon the image of God and our Saviour Jesus Christ, and of the most holy ever-Virgin Mother who bore him. And the bishop, his face bowed down, says to him with a milder * voice: And what have I to do, since something else has pleased them? And abbot Maximus said to him: And why didst thou touch the holy Gospels, and those who were with thee, when there is no fulfilment in you of the things which were said? Truly all the power of heaven would by no means persuade me to do this. For what account should I give — not to say to God, but to my own conscience — if for the sake of human glory, which by its own nature has no substance of saving, I should deny the faith of him who cherishes it?" These things I have transcribed from the ancient Latin version of Anastasius the Librarian in Sirmond, mentioned before; which may be compared with the more recent one published by Combefis. But that the reader may not stick at the word "Chalce," which occurred above: to the great palace the Chalce, χαλκῆ, a dining-hall so called, served in place of a vestibule, as may be seen in Du Cange, Christian Constantinople, book 2, page 113, where that place is afterward set forth at length. Concerning the Type mentioned before, see the Annotations on chapter 3 of the Life, letter p.

[42] But after the most bitter enemies of the orthodox faith and of its Champion saw they vex him with blows, curses and injuries, that they profited nothing by soft words, they came from these to blows and most atrocious injuries. The writer of the Life may be consulted concerning that scurrilous rabble against the Saint at number 47: whose narrative I here again confirm and set forth at greater length from the Collectanea of Anastasius the Librarian, column 369: "And at that word all rising, being rendered unstable with fury, by pluckings and pushings and tearings they crippled him, from head to nails vying with one another in wetting him with spittle: the stench of which, until the garments in which he was wrapped were washed, exhaled far off. And the bishop rising said: It ought not to have been done thus, but only to hear from him an answer, and to go in and announce it to our good lord. For canonical matters are disposed in another way. And when the bishop had with difficulty answered them so that they should be quiet, they sat down again, and with ten thousand injuries and unthinkable curses dishonoring him, with much fury and harshness Epiphanius said: Say, thou uttermost of evil men, devourer of citizens, hast thou followed out these words as though thou heldest us and our city, and the emperor too, for heretics? Truly we are more Christian and orthodox than thou..

[43] "And abbot Maximus answering said," etc. His noble replies may be seen at column 370. remitting nothing at all of his heroic constancy. Nor indeed does the Saint remit even the least of his heroic constancy because of the harsh words of Epiphanius, who at column 371 says: "Truly, in my judgment, we shall bring thee into the city, and set thee bound in the market-place, and will bring in mimes and actresses and prostitute harlots and all the common folk, that every man and every woman may both smite thee with the palm and spit in thy face.. And they say: If we deal with this man, we shall neither eat nor drink. But let us rise and dine, and go in and tell what we have heard. And they went in with anger on the vigil of the Exaltation of the precious and life-giving Cross." That these things were done at Rhegium near Constantinople in the aforesaid monastery of St. Theodore is gathered from what we brought forward at the end of paragraph 4. Our biographer in chapter 6, number 48, says: "After an interval of time they bring the Saint to Constantinople"; and then he narrates his torments, his exile and his death. But because from elsewhere other things are supplied us which happened in that interval of time, things worthy to be known and recorded in the praised Collectanea immediately after the narrative which we have just given, we judge that they should here be inserted. And so at the cited column 371 these things stand:

[44] The blasphemy falsely charged upon him "And on the morrow at daybreak Theodosius the consul went out to the aforesaid abbot Maximus, and took away from him whatever he had, saying to him in the person of the emperor: Since thou hast not wished honor, it has been removed far from thee, and go where thou hast judged thyself worthy to be.. And the said Theodosius the consul, having taken him, delivered him to soldiers. And they led him as far as Salambria. And they stayed there two days, until one of the soldiers went to the camp: and he said to the whole army: The monk who blasphemes the Mother of God has come hither. And this they did that they might stir up the army against the aforesaid abbot Maximus, as though he had blasphemed the Mother of God. And after two days that soldier, returning, carried him into the camp, and the praetor, or rather the deputy of the praetor, being divinely pricked in heart, sent to him the chiefs of the bands, and priests and deacons, and the reverend keepers of the standards. Whom when the already named abbot Maximus perceived to have come, he rose and made a 'metanoea': and they in turn made theirs, and they sat down, bidding him also sit.

[45] against the Virgin Mother of God "And a certain very aged and honorable man said to him with reverence: Father, since certain persons have scandalized us concerning thy holiness, that thou dost not call our Lady the most holy Virgin the Mother of God, I adjure thee by the holy and consubstantial Trinity that thou tell us the truth, and wipe this scandal from our heart, lest we be hurt, being unjustly scandalized. And, a metanoea being made, he rose, and stretching his hands to heaven said with tears: He who does not call our Lady, most laudable, most holy, undefiled, and venerable to every intellectual nature, truly made the natural Mother of God who made heaven and earth and the sea and all things that are in them, let him be anathema and catathema from the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, the consubstantial and supersubstantial Trinity, and from every supercelestial power, and from the choir of the holy Apostles, Prophets, and the countless throng of the holy Martyrs, and from every spirit made perfect in righteousness, now and always, and forever and ever. Amen.

[46] he excellently "And all, weeping, prayed for him, saying: May God strengthen thee, Father, and make thee worthy to finish this course without offence. And these things being said, many soldiers gathered to hear the many good words which were being stirred up. And when a certain one of the praetor's household perceived that the army was being gathered in numbers and edified, and blamed what was being done (what he suspected, God knows), he ordered him to be seized and sent out two miles outside the camp, until they should have made their assembly and those should have come who were to lead him to Perberis. But the Clerics, moved by divine love, went on foot those two miles, and came, and saluted him, and prayed for him, and carrying him with their own hands set him upon a beast: and they returned in peace to their places: and he was brought to Perberis into custody, in which he was held with continual vexations." Thus there; which things here and there need a little explanation.

[47] "As far as Salambria": in the Greek text in Anastasius the Librarian, page 371, and in Combefis, page LXIV, it is written ἕως Σαλεμβρίας, "as far as Salembria." refutes. This name is formed otherwise elsewhere; we think, however, that the same place is meant. Charles of St. Paul in the Sacred Geography, page 224 of the Amsterdam edition, writes Selymbria; which he places among the bishoprics of the Patriarchate of Constantinople in Thrace, a province of Europe, and in the map at page 205 it is marked on the coast of the Propontis. There may be seen Ptolemy, book 3, chapter 11, and volume XI of the Councils of Hardouin's edition, column 851. Strabo, book 7, writes Σηλυβρία, Selybria, and interprets its name as Σήλυος πόλιν, because the word βρία, "bria," Θρακιστὶ, that is, in the tongue of the Thracians, means a city. Just above there followed "leaders of the bands"; which Combefis renders at page LXIV as "men of advanced military rank and centurions." On which matter the same author may be consulted at page CVI, as also Du Cange in both Glossaries. What was above obscurely reported of the Saint, "he made a metanoea" (in the Greek it is ἔβαλε μετάνοιαν), is rendered in Combefis, page LXIV, "and prostrate on the ground and on his knees he saluted them." There deserve to be reported the things which Baronius, on occasion of other words uttered by our St. Maximus, in which the same Greek expression occurs, noted at the year of Christ 656; and they are the following: "As regards this passage of Maximus," he says, "know that in the interpretation of the Greek words famous translators have slipped — Anastasius, Perionius, Gentian Hervet, Godfrey Tilmann, and others — while the same words, whether in John Damascene, or in the fourth action of the second Nicene council from the same Acts of St. Maximus, or in the Latin version of the Life of St. John Chrysostom written by George, patriarch of Alexandria, or in the Liturgy of the same St. John Chrysostom, or elsewhere, they explain in almost the same manner as 'to do penance,' 'to be led by penitence,' 'to send penitence,' or (as Perionius rendered) 'to cast in a desire': whom Billius, correcting in the thirty-second scholium on the first Oration of St. John Damascene on images, likewise emends the other translators who fell into error, when he has it thus: 'Casting a desire upon John: in Greek βαλὼν μετάνοιαν τῷ Ἰωάννῃ. Which locution the translator seems not to have sufficiently understood: for βαλεῖν μετάνοιαν is, for honor's sake, to cast oneself at another's feet, and with venerating mind to prostrate oneself before him, and as it were to ask a blessing from him. In the Euchologion of the Greeks the Deacon in many places τῷ ἱερεῖ τρεῖς μετανοίας βάλλει, that is, after the manner of a penitent bows himself thrice before him. Nay more, in the sacred histories of the Greeks, when any one met a man of exceptional sanctity, he was said βαλεῖν τὴν μετάνοιαν to him, that is, to fall at his knees.'" From these things it is abundantly understood what the Greek phrase βαλὼν μετάνοιαν means, whose signification, because most probably the translator of our text which I cited above did not grasp it, he ineptly and obscurely said "he sent a metanoea." But now I suspect that the words "anathema" and "catathema" are joined together above for the sake of greater force. Certainly that both words are often joined, Du Cange observes in the Greek Glossary, column 608, and proves by examples. As for "Perberis," where St. Maximus was sent into custody, as has just been narrated, I have not yet found it in the geographers. In Combefis's Greek text, page LXV, it is ἀπενέχθη ἐν Περβέροις; but in the Latin version, "He was led away to Perbera." But in the Hypomnesticon, which is extant in Combefis, that place is said at page LXXXIII to be of the region of the Thracians. But these things being thus observed, let us return to our purpose. The Saint was afterward led away to Constantinople together with the two Anastasii; where what barbarous torments especially St. Maximus and his disciple St. Anastasius endured, the author of the Life teaches in us at chapter 4; but that in the enduring of the same there must be joined to both these Champions St. Anastasius the apocrisiarius, we are presently about to show.

* pomp or ostentation

* Greek: Εὔξασθέ

μοι, that is, "Pray well for me," or "second my wishes with your prayers."

* read "Chalcem": for in the Greek it is χαλκῆν.

* read "mœstiori": for in the Greek it is στυγνοτέρᾳ

§ VI. The barbarous sentence passed against our three Saints and carried into execution at Constantinople; a miracle.

St. Maximus with the two Anastasii "After an interval of time they bring him to Constantinople; and together with him his disciple Anastasius, and the other Anastasius, whom we said was the apocrisiarius; and when those wicked and accursed men had torn them with revilings.. they hand them over to the torturers, that they may execute the sentence pronounced upon them"; as our biographer writes in the place just cited, and then subjoins the execution of that sentence, which is confirmed from the second Volume of our holy father Maximus concerning the things which were done in his first exile, that is at Bizya, and in Combefis, page LXV and following, are thus rendered from the Greek into Latin: "Assuredly therefore thou, Anastasius, being clothed with the black cloak of the curse and imprecation of the whole people, being freed from a canonical hearing and thrust out from it, shalt be carried to that station and seat of gehenna which thou hast chosen; the most noble and sacred senate, which is with us and governs all things with equal counsel, being about straightway to take up judgment from us, and to inflict upon thee, as shall seem good to it, by a just animadversion, what things are appointed by the civil laws, on account of those so great blasphemies of thine, and the machinations of thy rebellious mind. For against these things the present synod has passed sentence: and since it, by the help of almighty Christ our true God, has by decree ratified what was fitting against you, Maximus, Anastasius and Anastasius, and it remains that for the things impiously said and done by you ye be subjected to the severer penalties of the laws (although for this reason, because no such penalty is at hand as could seem worthy of your offences and blasphemies, we leave you to the just judge who will inflict greater), in the present world the use of life is granted you as it were as a gain.

[49] is condemned at Constantinople "And this same clemency being for a while set aside, by exact discipline and strictness of the laws we ordain that straightway the most illustrious prefect, who is at hand for us, taking Maximus and both the Anastasii into his praetorium of most ample dominion, shall beat their backs with scourges, and shall cut out from the very root within the organ of your boldness — of Maximus and of both the Anastasii — that is, your blasphemous tongue; and then also shall take away with iron the right hand which ministered to your blasphemous reason and mind; and when, thus mutilated of your execrable members, he shall have led you round together and traversed all the twelve regions of the imperial city, he shall deliver you to perpetual exile and besides to continual custody, that thenceforth, and as long as life shall remain, ye may bewail your errors full of blasphemy, the curse and imprecation which ye devised against us being turned upon your own heads. The prefect therefore took them, and, when they had been tortured with other torments, cut off their members, and, leading them through the whole city in a shameful procession, banished them to Lazica." Thou seest, reader, that the same punishments were inflicted on St. Maximus and on both the Anastasii, namely a shameful and public scourging, the cutting off of the tongue and of the right hand, and also exile to Lazica; which supply us with matter for further observation on this argument.

[50] For our biographer at number 49 extends the scourges indeed to all three, to scourges, the cutting off of the right hand and then in the course of his narrative reports that St. Maximus and his disciple Anastasius had their tongues cut out and their right hands cut off; but of St. Anastasius the apocrisiarius he does not affirm these things, saying only at number 51: "Then after that ignominious leading about they drive him into a most distant exile together with Anastasius the apocrisiarius, those impure men doing this one noble thing, that they separated the Saints from themselves." Theophanes in the Chronography, page 288 of the royal Paris edition, narrates only that St. Maximus was mutilated of tongue and right hand, writing thus: "In this year also were done the things which regard St. Maximus and his Disciples, since they were contending against the Monothelites for the maintaining of the right opinion of the faith. Since Constans could not draw them away into a perverse sense, he cut off that tongue of the Saint, flowing with divine wisdom and blooming with various erudition, together with his right hand: inasmuch as it had written many things against his impiety, together with his Disciples (these were both the Anastasii), which they too copied out word for word, as is known to all lovers of learning." And at page 292 he declares these things of the emperor Constans: "Besides, he mutilated the most learned confessor Maximus of his tongue, and cut off his hands.. and at length subjected the twin Anastasii, approved disciples of the confessor and martyr Maximus, to exile and torments." The verb ἐχειροκόπησεν, which from the Greek text of Theophanes is rendered in the Latin "cut off his hands," ought, in agreement with what has been said above of the Saint's amputated right hand, and with what we shall further say below, to have been rendered in Latin in the singular number "cut off his hand": for besides that χειροκοπέω means "to cut off a hand," we know moreover from many trustworthy documents of antiquity that one hand, namely the right, was cut off from our Martyr, but not also the left; whatever the Vienna Compendium may seem to assert of both hands — which punishment also it extends not to both the Anastasii, but to St. Maximus and to one of them.

[51] For it records these things of St. Maximus and the two Anastasii: and the cutting out of the tongue. Μετὰ τοῦτο μὴ θελήσαντος αὐτοῦ τῷ σκοπῷ αὐτῶν ἐξακολουθῆσαι, τὰς χεῖρας καὶ τὴν γλῶσσαν ἀκρωτηριάζουσι, καὶ ἐν Λαζικῇ εἰς ἐξορίαν πέμπουσι. Τοὺς δὲ δύο μαθητὰς αὐτοῦ ὁμονύμους Ἀναστασίους, τὸν μὲν πρεσβύτερον ἴσα τῷ διδασκάλῳ τιμωρησάμενοι, ἐν ἀλλοδαπεῖ κατεδίκασαν· Τὸν δὲ ἕτερον εἰς κάστρον τῆς Θράκης ἐξέπεμψαν. "After these things, since the holy Man would not comply with their purpose, they cut off his hands and tongue, and send him into exile in Lazica. But his two disciples of the same name, the Anastasii, the elder of them, after they had punished him with the same punishment as his master, they banished into a foreign land; but the other they sent away into a fortress of Thrace." Cedrenus in his account of Constans reports these things: "Constans cut off St. Maximus's.. tongue and hand." But Zonaras, under the same emperor, says: "He afflicted Maximus and both his disciples with a most cruel punishment." The Roman Martyrology on this day makes mention of the Saint's hands and tongue being cut off; but to the two Anastasii and to several others it attributes divers torments and hard exiles; but the great printed Menaea of the Greeks report him indeed as punished in tongue and hand; but of the two disciples, that the elder Anastasius had his tongue and hand cut off just as his master; and that the younger was sent into a certain fortress of Thrace, and there ended his life. The Menology of Sirlet says of St. Maximus: "His hand and tongue were cut off"; but of the torments of the Anastasii it there has nothing. The Office of those three Saints, which is extant from the Tillian codex in Combefis, page LXXXVII, assigns a punishment common to all three in these words: "Holy Fathers, after your members were cut out, ye wrought as though no hurt had been inflicted on your body, speaking with tongueless mouth and subscribing the divine decrees with your hands."

[52] Of the aforesaid torments St. Anastasius the apocrisiarius was a partaker, For indeed that the punishment of the amputated tongue and hand pertains also to St. Anastasius the apocrisiarius is most certainly gathered from the Hypomnesticon, which records the following to our purpose: "Those who shall read these copies of that present sacred letter of that Sacred one *, obeying God who searches the reins and hearts, ought most firmly to believe that in it, God being the witness of truth, they were transcribed from that very letter which was written with his own hand — nay, that we may speak more truly for the notability of the miracle, with the finger of God — namely of the holy father and our master the lord abbot Anastasius, priest and apocrisiarius of the elder and most renowned city of Rome, and a much-contending, great and truly new martyr of the truth, written by him (after he had suffered, as has been said, at Byzantium, together with his fellow-contender and truly philosopher — nay rather wise unto God — and great fellow-martyr of Christ our true God and Saviour, Maximus; that is, when the precious and sacred and truly divinely-moved tongues and hands had been cut off from within, with stripes and most bitter torments, from which they endured a flow of blood and a procession through the whole city, such as truly no man of even an evil life ever endured. And unless God alone, who brought forth all things from nothing that they might be, and raises the dead, had preserved these men from such cruelty toward them, and from so great a flux of blood — no cautery being in any way granted them, nor any styptic laid, according to custom, on the cuttings of their hands and tongues for the staunching of the blood — to the shame of their adversaries, they would from that time have delivered up to the God whom they longed for their own truly holy and without doubt blessed souls.

[53] as is established by a most trustworthy testimony; "But all these things those truly most profane and most wretched apostates from truth did against them for no other cause than for that truly worst and mere envy which the ancient enemy the demon sowed in them, as also in their like, the Jews, since they could not even in the least resist the wisdom which had deservedly been granted them by God, namely for the true truth, and only because they were unwilling to communicate with them in their so public and godless impiety)" — thou seest here, reader, a long gap enclosed in a parenthesis, which wretchedly separates what precedes from what is now to be reported: to remedy which evil, take up again those preceding words before the parenthesis, "from that very letter which.. were transcribed with his own hand.. namely of the holy.. Lord abbot Anastasius.., written by him," and go on with the text — "with that very right hand of his which had been cut off, and of which only a stump remained (that is, without palm and fingers), by an unlooked-for device: namely when he had bound together for himself two very small and slender pieces of wood; nay, that I may speak more truly, by divine power and grace, just as also his truly divine and invisible tongue spoke utterly readily and without hindrance, although it had been cut away from within at its very root, as Lebarnicius, patrician of Lazica, related to us with terrible oaths, having by God's dispensation been made an eyewitness of this very thing himself, being at first incredulous * about this glorious and mighty miracle.

[54] "Nay, Theodore also, protosecretary of the praetorium of the prefect of Constantinople, before this man related to me himself also with dreadful oaths, it is established; since he had been privy to their holy sufferings, as the lord and master of such matters; glorifying and praising and giving thanks to God for such a miracle and for their so confident courage; because, like a dog or a stag after much running or from thirst or heat *, so they let loose and delivered up their tongues, as also their hands, although Maximus was a holy man of very short stature and weak in body, as is manifest to all. Wherefore the adversaries, wounding their own minds the more abundantly at so great and such alacrity of the Saints, inwardly"

"most wicked and truly inhuman, like truly wild beasts, cut these off, not only in that letter thus written by him, but also in many other books and volumes of his studies: of which we ourselves have by divine providence been made not only inspectors, but by God's grace, at his bidding, have merited to receive a part of them as our lot; and these too written with a like device and hand — nay, as has been more truly said, with the finger of God, as is read to have been done in the time of great Moses — namely by the providence and co-operation of almighty God alone, who, being the lover of goodness and of men, works great wonders in his Saints, and glorifies those who truly glorify him both by unswerving work and by word and truth." To these add from the Invective against the Constantinopolitans on behalf of St. Maximus, which is noted as written by a certain monk and is produced in Combefis, page LXXXV, where he says: "They punished St. Maximus, that third light among theologians, in tongue and right hand, and condemned the two Anastasii, his twin disciples of old, by a like sentence."

[55] And these things indeed conduce abundantly, first, to confirming what our writer of the Life records [from which likewise we have that he spoke without a tongue, and wrote without a hand.] concerning the mutilation of St. Maximus and of one Anastasius at numbers 49 and 50. Secondly, to supplying his silence concerning St. Anastasius the apocrisiarius, of whom he sparingly and barely says that he was driven together with those two others into a most distant exile, the other things which we proved above to suit him from elsewhere being passed over in silence. Thirdly, to strengthening and extending the miracle of speaking without a tongue, which the writer of the Life narrates below in us at number 50. But the other troubles and struggles of St. Anastasius the apocrisiarius for the defence of the orthodox faith we shall bring forward elsewhere.

[56] Baronius therefore at the year 657, after reporting the cutting off of the tongue and right hand of St. Maximus and of Anastasius, etc., Wrongly therefore does Baronius say that he was spared. wrongly adds this: "But they had spared to inflict the said punishments on the other Anastasius, having regard to the office of apocrisiarius which he had held." Combefis at page CI, after he had said that the cutting off of tongue and right hand was common to our three Champions from the documents which he there cites, subjoins these words: "Baronius is worthy of pardon, from whom those monuments and the Anastasian collection lay hid: but the divination — namely that the savage beasts spared his (Anastasius the apocrisiarius's) right hand out of reverence for the Apostolic See, and because he had acted as its apocrisiarius — is in itself frivolous. For what reverence for that See was in those men who had so raged against Martin, its supreme prelate, and held this Anastasius most hateful; a man forsooth strenuous, skilled in both tongues, and a most keen vindicator of the Roman faith; so that even Theodosius, bishop of Caesarea in Bithynia, a man otherwise more humane, refused to set out for Rome with him as guide and companion, on account of the many contentions and quarrels he had had with him of old, and preferred Maximus as the companion of his journey and helper in the business?" Consult the disputation which was held at Bizya between St. Maximus and the said Theodosius, volume 1 of the Works of St. Maximus published by Combefis, page LVI.

* that is, of the Saint

* read "confidens"

* that is, from heat

§ VII. The Saints thrust into various places; the death of one Anastasius and of Maximus; likewise the glory of the latter's tomb; whether the laurel of martyrdom is to be attributed to St. Maximus and his two fellow-soldiers; the age of the Saint and of one of his disciples.

The death of one St. Anastasius What our biographer narrates at number 53 concerning what was done in the exile in Lazica we confirm from elsewhere, and illustrate by a note of the time and of other circumstances which are wanting in him. There is published in the Collectanea of Anastasius the Librarian cited above, column 375, the letter of Anastasius, priest and apocrisiarius of Rome, to Theodosius, priest of Gangra; but in Combefis from page LXVII: of which this is the superscription: "To my lord in all things most holy, my spiritual father honorable before God and master, Theodosius the priest, Anastasius the lowly, by God's mercy priest and monk, servant of the servants of God." But the text of the letter among other things reports thus: "When we had come to the region of the Lazi, friends of Christ, on the sixth of the Ides of June of the fifth Indiction" (which concurs with the year of Christ 662), "straightway they separated us from one another by the command of him who had then by lot merited to preside over those who were there, plundering all things, even to a single needle and thread, whatsoever we had acquired for necessary uses both from you and from other friends of Christ. And that most holy man, I mean the lord abbot Maximus, being able to sit neither on a beast of burden nor in a vehicle because he was laid low in infirmity, they, having plaited twigs and woven from them as it were a little bed, carried and bore him away, and shut him up in the fortress called Schemarum, near the people who are called Alans.

[58] befell "But the lord abbot Anastasius and me, a sinner, they set upon horses and led away and shut up — him indeed in the fortress called Scotori of Apsilia, which is near Abasgia; but me in another fortress whose name was Buculus, of the region which was called Mesimiana, on the borders of the aforesaid Alans: which fortress indeed those same Alans are known now to hold, having taken it. Then after a few days, both I and blessed Anastasius being taken from the aforesaid fortresses, him indeed they sent to the fortress named Suanias, when he was already half dead both from the multitude of torments and stripes which we endured at Byzantium, and from the hardships and straits which have here been inflicted upon us. Whence also in the midst of the way, as some say, but as others assert, as soon as he was thrust into the fortress of Suania to which he had been sent, he died. I conjecture therefore that about the eleventh or the ninth of the Calends of August he fell asleep in the Lord. For on the fifteenth of the Calends of August we were both brought by the command of the then prince to the place which was called Mucurisis, to be presented in the midst of the army of the friend of Christ, when he was already, as we said before, half dead. And from that time I saw him no more. For immediately they sent him indeed, as has been said, to the fortress of Suania; but me to the fortress which is called Thacyria near Iberia. Hence therefore I conjecture that about the eleventh or the ninth of the Calends of August of the fifth Indiction he fell asleep in the Lord, as has been said." To the various places recorded above our Annotations on chapter 6 of the Life will bring light.

[59] The day of his death, which is here marked by conjecture and by a disjunctive particle, in the year 662, in which also St. Maximus, by the aforesaid death, and of which our biographer at number 53 writes, "Nor could the day be known on which he departed hence," as his namesake — Anastasius, I mean, the apocrisiarius — wrote, is distinctly determined, as also the day on which St. Maximus passed to the Lord, likewise rightly noted by the praised biographer at number 54, in the Hypomnesticon in these words at page LXXXIII in Combefis's edition; but in Sirmond's at column 399: "Likewise also Anastasius his disciple, from the eleventh Indiction" (this concurs with the year of Christ 653) "of the past cycle, through three exiles, namely of Bizya and of Perberis of the region of the Thracians, and the aforesaid one of Lazica, amid many afflictions and intolerable hardships, and such athletic contests, ten years being completed, passed to the kingdom above; holy Maximus indeed, as has been said, in the month of August, on the thirteenth day, in the fifth Indiction, having foretold by divine revelation that his falling asleep in the Lord would be after fifteen days, as has already been set forth; but his holy martyrdom for the truth in Christ our God not a few years before; but his disciple Anastasius in the month of July, on the twenty-fourth day of the same Indiction."

[60] This narrative, plainly authentic and above all exception, gives us occasion to note the following. after a short sickness was extinguished. We observe therefore first that St. Maximus and his disciple Anastasius, abbot or monk, made an end of living in the same year in which they came into the region of the Lazi, namely of the common era 662. Whence it follows that what the Synaxarium inserted into his Office and published by Combefis from the Tillian codex, page XC, affirms of St. Maximus falls to the ground: "He is sent into exile into Lazica; and there enduring life for three years.. being consumed by a short sickness he rested in the Lord." With the same error labor also the great printed Menaea of the Greeks and the Vienna Imperial Compendium. The foregoing is confirmed from the letter to Theodosius, priest of Gangra, cited a little before, in which these words stand: "Further, the martyr of Christ God, namely the lord abbot Maximus, when he was consigned to custody in the fortress mentioned above, a divine vision being granted him, called some of those who were in the fortress and said to them: On the thirteenth day of the month of August now at hand, of the fifth said Indiction" (not the fifteenth, as it is wrongly given in Sirmond's edition), "on the seventh day of the week, the Lord will take me: which also came to pass. Therefore on the thirteenth day of the aforesaid month of August of the past fifth Indiction, according to his divine prophecy, on the seventh day of the week, leaving those present, he went to the Lord."

[61] Deservedly therefore Lambeck, in the Commentaries on the Imperial Library of Vienna, book 8, page 127, takes the most eminent Baronius to task with these words: "For the rest, be it said without injury to so great a Cardinal, and one so well deserving of the Catholic Church, It is therefore not rightly referred by Baronius to the year 657. the death of St. Maximus is there wrongly referred" (he had cited volume 8 of the Annals from the year of Christ 640 to 657) "to the year of Christ six hundred and fifty-seven: since indeed it is certainly established that he truly died in the year of Christ six hundred and sixty-two, as that most learned theologian of the Society of Jesus, James Sirmond, clearly and solidly demonstrates in the chronological synopsis which is prefixed to the Collectanea of Anastasius, Librarian of the Holy Apostolic See, published at Paris from the Nivellian press in the year 1620 in octavo. See there especially the letter of Anastasius the apocrisiarius, disciple of St. Maximus himself, to Theodosius, priest of Gangra, page 196, and the Hypomnesticon of Theodosius and Theodore, monks and brothers german, living in the same times, page 264. The same is also confirmed by the Reverend Father Philippe Labbe, S. J., in the technical Chronology at A.D. 662, and in the historical Chronology at the same year: likewise in the historical and philological Dissertation on Ecclesiastical Writers, volume 2, page 72 and several following." From the true reckoning of time therefore Bellarmine also strayed, On Ecclesiastical Writers, when he asserts that he died in the year of the Lord 660. Baillet likewise here deserves the censor's rod, when in the historical Collection on St. Maximus at the thirteenth of August, inserted in the Lives of the Saints which he published, he relates that God set an end to his troubles on the said thirteenth day of August, namely in the year 662, or not later than the twenty-first day of January of the year 663.

For the day and year of his death have come down to posterity so clearly and certainly that they do not admit that disjunctive particle.

[62] The glory of his tomb is declared The author of the Life which we are illustrating, when he has reported the death of St. Maximus, briefly treats of the prodigy by which the Lord adorned after his death his Servant, tortured while he lived by so many troubles. "But the sepulchre," he says, "in which his sacred body was laid, three bright torches illumine from that time after the first hour of the night, filling the beholders, as is fitting, with wonderful astonishment, and showing the most ample grace of the most bounteous God toward his Servant." To which a great weight of authority accrues from the letter of St. Anastasius the apocrisiarius to Theodosius, priest of Gangra; where, after the praised writer of the letter had reported the prophecy by which St. Maximus foretold his own death (the words we gave a little before), he goes on thus: "Further, another miracle also which is divinely wrought at his holy tomb, and which even to the present those who inhabit that fortress and the region about it behold and proclaim, and which has come also to certain of the princes and magnates, is worthy to be made manifest by letter to you most holy men also, and through you to all the Saints who are there, unto the glory and praise of God, who works wonders in his Saints and glorifies them. It is this: three light-bearing lamps every night illumine the holy tomb of that holy Martyr."

[63] and confirmed. But that notable miracle is confirmed from the Hypomnesticon, in which it is reported with these testimonies: "Further, the holy and memorable and best, and in all things — nay, divinely — wise, and great champion of the truth and their fellow-martyr" (mention had a little before been made of Sts. Martin and Euprepius), μέγιστος, "who is also Maximus" (for this, as we indicated before, the name of Maximus implies in the Latin word), "whose holy tomb also every night exhibits lamps from the day on which he is known to have fallen asleep even to the present, and forever, shining upon all and making plain the confidence which he has with God, as the letter set before us commends: and we ourselves have by our own hearing been made hearers from many princes and inhabitants of that place, who with oaths confidently proclaimed such a miracle as true. But of those who with their own gaze saw these lamps, one is the very Count of that Chemarean [*] fortress, by name Mistrianus, who, keeping watch with his soldiers, beheld them not once nor twice, but many times, and first openly proclaimed all these things, since we were not able to go thither on account of the difficulty of the ascent of that mountain, that is, of the summit of the Caucasus, than which there is no higher mountain upon earth, and the winter season, and moreover the confusion of the nations which prevails in those parts." Observe here in passing that St. Maximus is above called a martyr; such as he is also called by Anna Comnena, whose text we cited in the preliminary Commentary at number 24. By the same title he is honored elsewhere also (see the same Commentary, numbers 59 and 62). Besides this, in Bellarmine, On Ecclesiastical Writers, he is called "a most illustrious Martyr"; and deservedly: for since his life was almost a continual martyrdom, and so it was not so much that he failed of martyrdom as that martyrdom failed him — being tortured by most grievous and most frequent and likewise long-lasting cruelties, which he empurpled with the blood also of his cut-out tongue and amputated right hand, although he did not die by a violent punishment — nothing hinders us from attributing to him the singular laurel of martyrdom. And the same we would have understood with proportion of his two fellow-soldiers the Anastasii, whom nevertheless, as also St. Maximus, we have in the title set at the beginning of this our Commentary named confessors, because by that name our same Saint is announced in the Greek calendars, as will be seen a little later. But we return to his sepulchre. Of his tomb or sepulchre the Vienna Imperial Compendium thus records: Ἐτάφη ἐν Λαζικῇ ἐν τῷ μοναστηρίῳ τοῦ ἁγίου Ἀρσενίου, ἔντα καὶ ἰασεις πλεῖσται γίνονται. "He was buried in Lazica in the monastery of St. Arsenius: where also very many healings take place." With which agree the monk of Rutium and the great printed Menaea. Of Lazica, so often already recorded, consult our Annotations on chapter 6 of the Life to be subjoined to this Commentary, letter k.

[64] But concerning the years of age in which the Saint completed the course of his life, The age of the Saint and of one of his disciples. a few things occur to be noted by us. For that he reached a great old age is clear from these documents. In the Vienna Imperial Compendium he is called πρεσβύτης καὶ πλήρης ἡμερῶν, "an old man and full of days." And in the same place the author had premised: Περὶ γὰρ τὰ ἐννενήκοντα ἔτη λέγεται γεγονέναι. "He is said to have attained about ninety years." The monk of Rutium says: Πλήρης ὢν ἡμερῶν ὁ μέγας. "The great Man was full of days." And these things indeed prove that he departed from life in a great old age. But whether he survived to about the age of ninety — although we have nothing at hand from elsewhere whereby to define it certainly and precisely — yet it seems must be said that he was more than eighty, from what was set forth above at the beginning of §4. For being asked how many years old he said he was, he answers: "Seventy-five." But that question was there knit by us to the year of Christ 655; and if to the said seventy-five years thou addest the other seven which he survived, thou wilt have the year of Christ 662, in which he died; and the eighty-second year of the holy Man's age. But in what year of his age one of St. Maximus's disciples departed this life, it is permitted to gather from this, that in the Account indicated before in §4, after the sacellarius had asked the Saint's age, he subjoins these words: "But how many years has.. thy disciple?" The holy Man answered, "Thirty-seven." Further, that question was there woven by us into about the year of Christ 655. Add seven years, and thou wilt come to the year 662, in which one of the Anastasii, as we saw a little before, completed the course of his life, and thou wilt count about the 44th year of his age. But if the question falls upon the other of the disciples, Anastasius the apocrisiarius, it follows that he made an end of living about the 48th year of his age, since his death befell in the year of Christ 666, from what is to be said in the next paragraph, in which, according to the reckoning of time, we shall look into the things done by him after the death of his Master (for concerning what happened while he was living there was treatment in §6), supplying the biographer, who left them unstated.

* perhaps "Schemareos"

§ VIII. The deeds of St. Anastasius the apocrisiarius after the death of St. Maximus; his death, age, eulogy, further information about him, his disciples.

St. Anastasius the apocrisiarius himself sets forth Anastasius himself, after he had in his letter to Theodosius, priest of Gangra, already praised several times, treated of the death of St. Maximus and of the lights divinely kindled at his tomb, and also of the things narrated by us from him above at number 62, "Meanwhile," as he immediately subjoins, "the things which have befallen me a sinner and a lowly man after these things, and in what state I am, I shall in like manner make known in very few words. For when I had spent two months in the aforesaid fortress of Thaciria lying sick, and had obtained a little rest, the then prince sent me again to the parts of Apsilia and Misimiana, to be consigned to custody in the fortress of Phustae. And, to speak plainly, for seven months he led and led me about through all the aforesaid regions naked and unshod and on foot, and oppressed with cold and hunger and thirst, wishing assuredly to wipe me also from this life. But God, foreseeing I know not what over me a lowly man, who brings forth all things by his salutary providence, has until now preserved me in this life of many tribulations and misery.

[66] what things befell him "After some days therefore the aforesaid prince is driven out thence. And then another succeeding seemed to have compassion. Among which he brought me, received from the already mentioned fortress of the Phustenses, near his own house. And after a year, moved by diabolical working, he sends me to the aforesaid fortress; but God, who measures back to those who measure to others, on the same day on which he drove me out, was himself driven hence, and becomes a fugitive in the region of the Abasgi, lovers of Christ. And, counsel being received from the friends of Christ who were there, the princes, that it was better to have compassion than to persecute me, the least of men, and to receive a prayer from me rather than a groan (for the princes of Abasgia, friends of Christ, have compassion on me a lowly man, although they knew me not), he promised them indeed that if he should go out thence and be restored to his princedom, he would perform all things which might be for my comfort and refreshment. Then after a few days, being helped I know not whence, he goes out indeed again and recovers his princedom; yet none of the things which he promised to God and to the oft-named princes, friends of God, did he carry into effect. But on the contrary, being led by the hands of wicked men, he forgot his promise; and ordered that I should be taken from the fortress of the Phustenses and sent more speedily into the fortress of the Schemarenses.

[67] "Meanwhile it came to pass, while they were leading me into the already named fortress, in the last that he was again driven out, and became a fugitive where he had been at first. But God stirred up his spirit in a man zealous for good, who has in himself the fear and likewise the love of God, and truly, in accordance with his name, possesses a mind watchful * according to God; who with God now presides over the region, and, moved by a condescension or compassion imitating God, brought me back from the road to the oft-named fortress of Schemarum, and settled me about five signs distant from his divinely-guarded house in a place truly befitting monks, furnishing most liberally the necessary uses of the body. For all which may Christ the true God, through the intercession of the Mother of God who bore him according to the flesh, the ever-virgin Mary, and of all the Saints, protect him together with his beloved sons and their honorable and altogether praiseworthy mother…

[68] "But what in the midst of the things which have been said escaped me, I shall not be slow to say. years of his life. It is plainly this. That when it had been announced to me" (the book which he had before praised there) "by the lord Stephen of holy memory concerning the unity and concord which was there brought about among all, one toward another and toward God, through the orthodox confession, I was filled with spiritual gladness — as I speak before God — and rendered thanksgiving hymns to the merciful God for so great and such a good, sinner though I be.. And I salute you, honorable before God, and all the Saints who are with you, and through you the holy Catholic and Apostolic Church of God which is there, asking that memory be made of me, a sinner namely and a prisoner, in your holy prayers directed to God,"

"in the holy and venerable places, and supporting me with your precious and much-desired lines , and consoling and praying for me the least of men, that I may be made worthy of the sight of your countenance — although it be rash to say it — before I too depart from this wretched life of many tribulations." That this letter was drawn up by St. Anastasius in the last times of his life is gathered from this, that after he had praised for his apostolic labors Stephen "coming into this region, as he asserted," he says, "at the request of my humility," the praised St. Anastasius then subjoins these words: "These good things therefore being here set right by his own coming, that noble man on the Calends of January of the VIII Indiction, which has just passed, fell asleep in the Lord with the prince of Abasgia, the friend of Christ." For the eighth Indiction concurs with the year of the common era 665; but in the next following year St. Anastasius exchanged his troublesome life for the blessed and heavenly one, as will become clear from what I subjoin.

[69] He died therefore in the year of Christ 666, on the Lord's day, the V of the Ides of October. The year of his death, a eulogy, For in the scholium which is subjoined to his aforesaid letter these words are declared: "But this our holy Father and martyr Anastasius also, who wrote this letter, died on the Lord's day, at the third hour, on the fifth of the Ides of October, when at the holy assembly there was said [*], 'Holy things to the holy,' in the tenth Indiction." These things are consonant with the Hypomnesticon, from which for the greater confirmation of what has been said we bring forward these words, with the short eulogy of the Saint which is added: "When he too had fought the good fight, had truly kept the orthodox faith, and had consummated the course of martyrdom, on the eleventh day of the month of October, on the first day of the week, at the third hour, when there was said amid the holy Offices, 'Holy things to the holy'" (see the Euchologion published by Goar, page 81), "in the tenth Indiction; having himself also foretold the day of his holy deposition to certain who were with him three months before; and very many other miracles being wrought by the co-operation of the most holy and all-effecting Spirit, both in that same place" (mention had just been made of the fortress of Thusumis) "and in his two exiles, namely at Trebizond and at Mesembria, and very many being converted to the truth and enlightened. Who, when they had lived and endured in this holy and most blessed contest of many sweats.., the aforesaid holy Anastasius indeed, priest and Roman apocrisiarius, from the sixth Indiction" (which falls in the year of Christ 648) "of the past cycle even to the tenth Indiction, in all his aforesaid three exiles, being afflicted with divers removals, and with tribulations and hardships and straits neither middling nor small, endured twenty years." Now receive some things which are reported of this Saint on insufficient foundation.

[70] and further information about him. Combefis from page CI says: "He had been famous at court, notary of the Augusta under the emperor Heraclius; when perhaps Maximus, serving that same Heraclius in a like office, was joined to him in friendship, and so that both stood as it were comrades, in the secular as in the Religious and Christian warfare, and not the one the disciple of the other. Maximus was greater in the light of knowledge, and by it a master of the world, though a mere monk; which he himself says in the Conference with Theodosius: whereas Anastasius was a priest, and, if he was a monk, a hieromonk: for this is not sufficiently known from the monuments; and beyond these to invent anything is not to me sufficiently liberal or cautious according to historical faith. Yet the author of the Invective ἄνωθεν (that is, mentioned above) writes that he was a disciple of Maximus, as also the other Anastasius, as if he too had long adhered to him. Yet Maximus himself never calls him a disciple, as he does the other Anastasius; but by a more honorable name, MY LORD, or something of the sort. Doubtless he was a Roman, since he so understood the Latin tongue, of which Maximus acknowledges himself unskilled; and having long lived in the East and in the court itself, he had made the Greek likewise familiar to himself: by both of which a companion to Maximus, and for the office of apocrisiarius of the Roman Church, perhaps a priest of that very Church, he strenuously defended the faith: by whose constancy in defending it he brought upon himself so great hatred of the Monothelites." Thus Combefis. But observe, 1., that St. Anastasius was a monk is clear from what was said above at the beginning of the seventh paragraph. 2. He is called a disciple of St. Maximus by Theophanes and elsewhere, as was reported in §6. 3. Those words which we gave from the Hypomnesticon before at number 69 — "St. Anastasius, priest and Roman apocrisiarius" — seem to be referred to the same place, and so the Saint seems to have been rather a priest of the Roman Church than of the Greek. 4. Combefis in the index of volume 1 to his notes, at page 738, recalls what he had reported above concerning the office of notary: "I was deceived," he says, "in what I wrote of the office of notary in the court, which is declared of the other Anastasius." Consult our Annotations on chapter 5 of the Life, which we shall afterward give, letter d.

[71] Two of his disciples. But now, since a wise and perfect disciple is the glory and perfection of the master, we think we shall not act amiss if from the praised Hypomnesticon we bring forward two disciples of St. Anastasius the apocrisiarius, eminent in virtue and in apostolic labors, especially since we do not know whether they are anywhere noted in the Sacred Calendars of the Greeks (certainly we have not yet found them in them), so that some place may here be given by us also to their excellent memory, a not slight part of the praise redounding also upon our Saint, under whose training they flourished. After therefore the things which I just now reported from the Hypomnesticon, these follow: "But to his disciples Theodore and Euprepius, german and holy brothers, sons of Plutinus , that most blessed imperial baker, that is, he who is over all the public bakers, namely of those who pay out the rations of all the schools, which is called Tetransiton , adorned with precious riches and divers dignities and divine virtues, and with virginity, which is greater than all these — through which namely, as I think, they merited also to be honored with holy contests and crowns for Christ, as chaste and clean of heart, since they themselves shall see God — after the first exile of their master and ours at Trebizond, many alms and offerings being made, when they wished to flee to Rome, they too were straightway seized in the same persecution near Abydus for that same and sole cause, and because they had refused to be defiled with them by so evident an impiety in the profane and utterly godless imperial Type, which was made at the suggestion of those who were of the church of Constantinople; and being published, that is, stripped of all the substance which was theirs, and of the dignities which they held; and receiving deadly scourgings from the prefect, and being sent into exile at Cherson, and there often forcibly separated from one another, and assigned to the camps of the nations lying about: the younger brother indeed, who, being truly in all things true to his name, was called Euprepius *, having completed the ninth year in such a contest dear to God, went to the Lord in the month of October, on the twenty-sixth day, in the XIV Indiction" (which answers to the year of Christ 671). "But the other, who was also the elder brother, and who was deservedly called by the Lord the gift of God, enduring from the same sixth Indiction even to the said tenth Indiction of the present cycle — that is, until the holy rest in the Lord of their most holy father and master and ours, Anastasius the priest (who were truly most wretched and orphaned on account of so great a rarity and scarcity of the word of truth and of all spiritual food..) — is passing his twentieth year, still persevering in athletic sweats and contests in that same exile of Cherson, namely the already mentioned brother Theodore, who with his own hand also deigned to give us many little works of the Saints, as we were journeying thither for the visiting and venerating of him, and of Martin of precious memory, the supreme and truly universal Pope and great martyr of the truth."

* that is, by a name suiting him, of Gregory, which means "watchful"

* that is, letters

* perhaps "porrectis"

* perhaps "diceretur"

* Combefis: "Plutimi"

* perhaps "Tetrasiton," from the Greek τετράσιτος, a fourfold ration.

* that is, suitably to the name εὐπρεπὴς, comely, beautiful, etc.

§ IX. The cult from the Greek and Latin calendars; some observations on this occasion.

[72] The name of St. Maximus Most celebrated is the memory of St. Maximus among the Greeks, after the illustrious ornaments of his heroic virtues, and after so many and so great struggles, exiles, torments and troubles endured for the orthodox faith, being noted in their sacred calendars, and that on three occasions and on different days, namely on the twenty-first day of January, and also on the twelfth and on the thirteenth day of August. The great printed Menaea treat of him on the said twenty-first day of January, and thus announce him: "Of our holy father Maximus the confessor." On which day also they perform a sacred Office in his honor. The Canon, of which this is the acrostic,

Ὁ παμμέγιστος Μάξιμος δοξάζεται

"The hero, in name and in fact Maximus, is celebrated":

that Canon, I say, which is there said to have been composed by John Damascene (but to Combefis, page XCII, this does not seem so), both praises the Saint excellently and makes mention of his two disciples, who together with him were partakers of the contest and of the victory. Then, after his announcement is repeated, these three little verses follow:

Ἀχειραγλωτίος χεῖρα καὶ γλῶτταν φύεις Καὶ χερσὶ Θεοῦ, Μάξιμε, ψυχὴν δίδως Εἰκάδι πρώτῃ πότμος Μαξίμου ὀσσ᾽ ἐκάλυψεν.

"Thou writest without a hand, thou speakest tongueless, Father, And thou deliverest thy soul, Maximus, into the hands of God. On the first after the twentieth, death closed thine eyes, Maximus."

[73] on three different days The poet's allusion is so clear that it needs no explanation. The truth of the matter was set forth and confirmed above in §6. The eulogy or summary of his life which is had in the cited Menaea errs when it writes that St. Maximus lived under Constantine Pogonatus. See what was said beforehand in §1, number 3. It is besides false that he departed from life on the twenty-first day of January: since it is most certainly established that this befell on today's thirteenth day of August, as was said in §7, number 59. He is marked meanwhile on the twenty-first day of January in the Typicon which bears the name of St. Sabbas, and in the Calendar of the Ruthenians published by Possevino, volume 2 of the Sacred Apparatus, page 368. Among the Latins, Molanus follows the Greeks in the Additions to his Usuard of the year 1573; who repeats the memory of the same Saint on this thirteenth day of August, as also the said Typicon and the Calendar of the Ruthenians do. But the Typicon at this thirteenth day advises that his feast is then indeed kept; but that the Office is sung on the twelfth of the same month. The feast of which I was speaking is celebrated on the thirteenth in the great Menaea on account of the Saint's translation. For after his announcement they thus subjoin: "The translation of the body of our holy Father Maximus the confessor": which is honored there with these little verses:

Κινοῦσι σου, Μάξιμε, πιστοὶ τὴν κόνιν, Δηλοῦντες ὡς ζῇς ἐξαμείβων καὶ τόπους. Μαξίμου ἀμφὶ τρίτην νεκρὸν δεκατη μετέθηκε.

"Thy ashes, O Maximus, the Faithful move, And show that thou livest, though thou changest places. The thirteenth translated thy bones, Maximus."

[74] occurs in the sacred calendars. Combefis, in the Office of St. Maximus which he gives in the second place, citing the printed Menaea of the 13th of August and the 21st of January, adding that his feast is likewise kept in them, at page XCVI reads these two last verses somewhat differently, and thus renders them into Latin joined with the first: "The Faithful move thy ashes, Maximus; showing namely that thou, changing one place for another, didst about the thirteenth depart from human affairs." But that author reports them obscurely and ineptly. For first, the discourse here is not of the day of death, but of the translation of the relics. Secondly, the day of St. Maximus's death is in the Menaea themselves, though wrongly, marked on the twenty-first day of January, as has already been shown. But as regards ἀμφὶ, whether the poet wished a certain force to be in that preposition or not, I have passed it over in the third verse, and have rendered it "the thirteenth" in a round number, that is, the thirteenth namely of this month of August: on which same day in the Menaeum of Chifflet these words are noted: Μετάθεσις Μαξίμου ὁμολογ. That is: "The translation of Maximus the confessor." But because that day was for the Saint the birthday to a better life, the Slavo-Russian Menology of Sparwenfeld more rightly announces him then simply thus: "Of our most blessed Father Maximus, confessor." Sirlet's Menology also commemorates him on the same day, no mention being made of the translation of the body. It is gathered from what has been said that the Arabo-Egyptian Martyrology, translated from the Arabic tongue into Latin by Gratia Simonius, is quite singular, when on this day there is noted in it not only "the Translation of the body of St. Maximus," but there is added besides "and of his companions." Now St. Maximus was by antonomasia a confessor; but what hinders us from calling both him and his Fellow-soldiers martyrs, according to what was said at number 63?

[75] Wilt thou have a few out of the many ornaments of his praises which occur in the Saint's Office? The Saint is honorably addressed with his disciples in the sacred Office: Receive them from Combefis, page 92 and following, thus rendered there from the Greek into Latin: "Guide of the right faith, teacher of piety and of honor, light of the world, divinely inspired glory of monks, wise Maximus, lyre of the spirit, holy father, intercede with Christ our God.. Maximus plainly greatest, thou didst shine as the truest herald of the pious faith of Christ and as a witness by thy blood.. The base of the priests, the foundation of doctrines, the trumpet of wisdom, highest summit of the martyrs and firmament of the faithful, the admirable Maximus, rises today upon the world by his memory.. Together with thee, Maximus, both most blessed disciples fulfil the contest, being made thy companions in the struggle: wherefore also they have obtained equal rewards. The Church of Christ, abundantly drunk with the streams of thy blood, brings forth in flower the doctrine of thy divine sowing, received by paternal tradition, O holy Man. By the madness of the tyrant thou wast banished into exile: but thou didst find Jesus, blessed Man, comforting thee.. Thy hand is cut off; yet it writes with the divine finger as with pen and ink, thy tongue being cut out, with thy holy blood.. Thou standest before the divine tribunal with the Martyrs, whose companion thou wast in zeal for the faith." Let these suffice concerning the cult of St. Maximus among the Greeks, which was propagated also to the Latins.

[76] The Roman Martyrology prescribes these things to be recited every year concerning him and his disciples on this day: he is inscribed in the Roman Martyrology. "At Constantinople, of St. Maximus the monk, notable for learning and for zeal of Catholic truth: who, when he was strenuously contending against the Monothelites, being banished to the Chersonese by the heretical emperor Constans, his hands and tongue being cut off, gave up his spirit. Then also two Anastasii, his disciples, and several others, experienced divers torments and hard exiles." We, following the Roman Martyrology, have placed our Saint in the title which is prefixed above to this Commentary at Constantinople; although he ended the course of his life elsewhere; on which matter the same Commentary, §7, may be consulted. In the aforesaid title we have also announced both Anastasii at Constantinople: which city, namely, was one of the chief arenas of our three Martyrs, since there was passed and carried into execution that cruel and altogether barbarous sentence against them, of which I spoke above in §6. But if any one wishes to restore our three Saints, recalled by the Roman Martyrology, and by its example by us, to one and the same day, to their own proper days: he will give Maximus on this day, according to what was said at numbers 59 and 60; Anastasius the monk on the 24th day of July, as thou hast above at number 59; and finally Anastasius the apocrisiarius on the 11th day of October, from number 69. Which of both Anastasii Castellan also observed in his additions and corrections, page 971, where he calls the former, whom I called a monk, an archimandrite; but he advises that his namesake the apocrisiarius should be set at the 11th day of October, in the same place, page 985. And concerning the archimandrite, as he calls him, it may be asked whether he was truly such.

[77] It is true indeed that both Anastasii were monks. And of the Apocrisiarius this is gathered from §7 of this Commentary, where the inscription of his letter to Theodosius, priest of Gangra, is discussed: [On this occasion it is asked whether one of the two Anastasii was an archimandrite:] and indeed in the same place, in the body of the said letter, he calls Anastasius "lord abbot"; whence it would seem to follow that that namesake was not merely a monk, but was also hegumen of some monastery, or archimandrite, as Castellan just now called him; unless indeed all monks generally, especially those venerable for age and holiness of life, were by Latin and Greek writers called abbots, as may be seen in Du Cange in the Latin-barbarous Glossary. There may also be consulted on this matter volume 1 of July, at the 1st day, page 146, the Annotations on chapter 3 of the Life of St. Symeon Salus, letter g; in the course of which Life that Saint is so often called abbot, although he was nothing else than a monk. Nor shouldst thou say that Anastasius in the place cited above is not called abbot simply, but "lord abbot": for neither is this a sufficient argument that he was an archimandrite or hegumen: for to St. Symeon Salus also there is said Κύρι ἀββᾶ, "lord abba," as thou mayest see in the volume cited, page 152. Of the monastic profession of St. Maximus something must now be observed.

[78] and likewise whether St. Maximus was a Canon Regular or a Benedictine monk. Ghini in his Natales reckons him among the holy Canons on this thirteenth day of August; as though forsooth, because Theodosius the bishop gave him "a linen tunic and a dark cloak," as it is there in his eulogy, it were straightway permitted to point out the canonical habit as with a finger by saying with Ghini in a marginal note: "Behold the Canon's habit." How frivolous this is, everyone sees. Add that nothing compels the adding of the word "linen": for in the Life rendered from Greek into Latin, which we are about to commit to the press, at number 45 it is said: "A tunic and a dark cloak being given," etc. Nor does Combefis's version at page XXIII disagree: "And a tunic being given as a little gift (in the Greek it is στιχάριον; concerning which word, however, Du Cange's Greek-barbarous Lexicon may be seen) and a cloak of dark color." But Wion seems all but to drag the same Saint over to his own monks, when he weaves him among the Saints of the Benedictine Order at the 13th of August in the Tree of Life, part 2, book 3, page 266: although in the same place he adds in the notes: "Whether however he was of the Benedictine Order, I do not yet hold for certain." But St. Maximus, from what was set forth before in §§1 and 2, was indeed first a cenobite and then abbot of the monastery of Chrysopolis in the territory of Constantinople: but of what institute of life or of what Order's rule the monks of that place made profession, is not added. We meanwhile do not look for a monk of the Benedictine Order in that place in the seventh century of Christ; whom we have by no means found expressed among other Benedictine hagiologists — Dorganius, Ménard, Bucelinus — who followed Wion.

§ X. Notices of some of the documents cited above; the Acts.

Notices are given of the Hypomnesticon, In the course of this our preliminary Commentary we have repeatedly cited the Hypomnesticon, which in Latin thou mightest rightly call a Memorial or Commentary; and since it is an exceedingly precious monument of antiquity and of great credit and authority, receive the following notices concerning it. The chief matter of the narrative rests on the letter of St. Anastasius the apocrisiarius. Recall what was said above in §6, number 52. But to whom that letter was written, and when it came to them, is said in the praised Hypomnesticon in these words: "There was therefore sent to us this most sacred and aforesaid letter written with his own hand, nay divinely, together with the God-speaking testimonies and syllogisms appended to it, from that same exile of theirs, that is the Lazican, which we both have and keep, with that same instrument with which he wrote, divinely given to him, that is, the aforesaid two slender sticks, and with other blessed gifts and presents of his, holy and venerable, and also with all his goods after God, namely the studies of his books and the compositions of his own hand, as truly most sacred praises and relics. And it was given to us truly least of men, namely to Theodosius and Theodore, german and guileless brothers, humble and sinful monks, by Gregory the monk and abbot of the monastery of St. John the Baptist of the region of the Albanians, which is called Batararu, on the twentieth day of the month of August of the eleventh Indiction, which has passed us by" (and which was still running in the year of Christ 668), "as we were returning from the region of the oft-named Lazi." Of the Account of the proceeding, or the contest at Constantinople, there was treatment in the Commentary, §4: whose author our biographer in the Life in us at number 33 affirms to have been the Saint's disciple. The description likewise of the other contest, which was held at Bizya (consult concerning it our preliminary Commentary from number 33), the same biographer at number 40 attributes to "Anastasius, of whom above," he says, "I made mention"; who therefore, according to the writer of the Life, seems to have been the author of both those documents. But that Anastasius will not have been the apocrisiarius, since he does not add to him that character, but the other of the same name.

[80] The Life which we indicated before under the name of the monk of Rutium The Life written by the monk of Rutium, is headed with this title, Βίος καὶ μαρτύριον τοῦ πατρὸς ἡμῶν Μαξίμου τοῦ ὁμολογήτου, taken, as is added, "From the Ambrosian codex N. 152, containing the Lives of the month of August, written 400 years ago by a certain monk Laurence in the monastery of Rutium, which is in Calabria, and thence afterward brought in 1607." That this Life is shorter than the Acts which we have from the manuscript of the Duke of Savoy, to be indicated presently at greater length, and that its context is interrupted by various gaps of gnawed leaves, and that it was transcribed for us at Milan, we indicated long ago in the Greco-Muscovite Ephemerides before volume 1 of May, page IX. Its Greek opening begins thus: Καὶ πῶς ἂν τὴν παρὰ τῶν φιλοκάλων μέμφιν ἐγκλίνοιμεν, μὴ τὸν ὁμολογήτην καὶ πολὺν ἐν λόγῳ

Μάξιμον τὸν κλεινὸν προτιθέντες εἰς μέσον, καὶ τὰ τοῦ μεγάλου τούτου καὶ ὑπερφυῆ κατὰ τῶν αἱρετικῶν ἀνδραγαθήματα, καὶ δὲ καὶ τὴν ἄθλησιν αὐτὴν διηγούμενοι; Which we thus interpret in Latin: "For indeed how could we avoid the stain of accusation among men zealous for what is honorable, if we should not bring forward into the midst the confessor renowned in the speech of many, the illustrious Maximus, and should not commemorate the notable and manly deeds of this great Man against the heretics, nay rather his very contest?"

[81] We have at hand another transcript marked with this title: and of the Vienna Imperial Compendium. Μηνὶ Αὐγούστῳ ιγ᾽. Ἄθλησις ἐν ἐπιτόμῳ τοῦ ὁσίου πατρός ἡμῶν Μαξίμου τοῦ ὁμολογήτου. That is: "In the month of August, the thirteenth. A compendium of the contest of our holy father Maximus the confessor." The opening of the narrative is: Ὁ ὅσιος καὶ τρισμακάριστος πατὴρ ἡμῶν Μάξιμος ὁ ὁμολογήτης ἦν ἐπὶ βασιλείας Κώνσταντος υἱοῦ Κωνσταντίνου. "Our holy and thrice-blessed father Maximus the confessor lived in the reign of Constans, son of Constantine." That Compendium we have several times cited before, and it was taken from a manuscript codex of the Imperial library of Vienna, concerning which more in volume II of this month, at the 8th day, page 344. The author of the said Compendium, after he had made mention of the city of Rome and also of Honorius its bishop, casts upon him the stain of heresy, saying Ὅστις Ὁνώριος αἱρετικὸς ὑπῆρχεν. The case of Pope Honorius is most well known to theologians; but since it may be read in them and in the defenders of the authority of the Holy See, it will be enough for us here to send the reader to them. Francis Pagi in the Breviary of the Roman Pontiffs, volume 1 from page 398, treats this controversy at length; where the reader will find that the said Honorius was free from Monothelism and was deceived by the Monothelites; that likewise he did not extinguish Monothelism; that he was negligent in the cause of the faith; that his policy favored the Monothelites; that for this cause, and not for heresy, he was condemned by the sixth synod. Besides this, after the praised author had examined two letters of Honorius, he accuses him of too great levity and easiness. Finally, from this, that the same Pontiff consecrated a patriarch opposed to the Monothelites, the same Pagi thus concludes: "Since therefore Honorius did not consecrate John Maro, patriarch of the Maronites, before the latter had made a profession of faith in which he confessed not only two natures but also two wills in Christ; nothing clearer can be adduced for proving the orthodoxy and right faith of Honorius." To have assigned these few things is more than enough for the plan of our design.

[82] What Baronius concerning St. Maximus Baronius in volume 8 of his Annals inserted the deeds of St. Maximus, and brought them forward from the year of Christ 640 to 657, "which are had," he says at the said year 640, "at the end of his works, written in Greek in three Vatican codices. They were turned into Latin by that man learned as well as pious, Pierre Morin, doctor of Paris." But at the year 656, where the same founder of the Annals, treating of the embassy to St. Maximus, an exile at Bizya, a city of Thrace, on occasion of the things which were done in that embassy, has it thus: "Two fragments of which Acts, when we had found them recited in the fourth Action of the seventh ecumenical synod, a great desire blazed up in my mind of searching out the Acts themselves entire. But the writings of Maximus which are preserved in the Vatican library being seen, and they not being found.., it happened unexpectedly that we found them woven into the Life of Maximus himself." But before he reports from their context the things done by St. Maximus in that exile, he premises this concerning their credit and their writer: "Receive therefore now those very Acts worthy of Annals, most faithfully copied by a shorthand-writer, and collected by Anastasius the disciple of Maximus together with the other deeds of the same Saint: which John, bishop of Ephesus, likewise professes, namely that his deeds were most faithfully committed to writing by that same Anastasius." Thus Baronius.

[83] wove into his Annals. From the apostrophe of the author of the Life to St. Maximus, which stands in Baronius at the year 657 in these words: "But to thee indeed, most holy Father, great is the glory and splendor of the present things, since the Lord has honored thee even more here: but far greater and by far most excellent is that lot bestowed on thee, those heavenly honors, when thou standest by the great light," etc.; from that discourse likewise which follows in the same place, and which, on Baronius's testimony, "is found written only in one volume" (since there are three Vatican codices in which the same Acts of St. Maximus and of his Companions are contained), "added, as may be seen, by a notary who wrote those Acts for the sake of a certain bishop by name Nicholas, most devoted to that same holy Maximus." For it runs thus: "This discourse of ours to thee, O best of Fathers and most loving of sons, is altogether inferior to the deeds themselves (as I myself know), but in desire, as I think, yields to none," etc.; from both these discourses, I say, if thou comparest it with our Life at number 55 and following, thou wilt find shining forth in both places the same characteristics of narration, so agreeing with one another that it becomes manifest from this indication alone that the same hand bestowed labor on both copies. But who that prelate Nicholas was, and at what time he lived, is unascertained for want of further peculiarities; by the help of which, had they been sufficiently added, something might have been dug out from elsewhere concerning the time in which the Saint's Acts were committed to writing.

[84] The Life of St. Maximus Combefis published in Greek and Latin in volume 1 of the Works of that same Saint published by him: The Life was published in Greek and Latin by Combefis: in whose preface he says, "a Life or panegyric written long after his death, and neither with sufficiently keen judgment nor from approved monuments." But afterward, among other things which he observes concerning it at page XCVII, the praised editor sets down these words for memory: "The Life of St. Maximus, after its fragments already produced for the most illustrious Father of the Annals at the year of Christ 640 and following from the version of Pierre Morin and from the Vatican Codices, representing it entire from a royal codex, I have thought I should do a work worth while if… I shall annotate a few things upon it, excepting those things pertaining to it which have been briefly noted in the margin on both his Conferences or Hearings, or also discussed in fuller notes upon them. For not all things in it are exact enough, nor such as entire credit is due to them without further examination, as is clearer than light from the said Conferences or public Acts." He then subjoins his observations on the Life; of which account has been taken by us in this Commentary.

[85] I have before me a Greek copy of the same Life "From a manuscript codex," as is prefixed to it, our Savoy copy: we give it to the press "of the Duke of Savoy, Βίοι διαφόρων Ἁγίων, Lives of various Saints," with this title: Βίος καὶ πολιτεία τοῦ ἁγίου πατέρος ἡμῶν καὶ ὁμολογήτου Μαξίμου. That is: "The Life and conversation of our holy father and confessor Maximus." Besides, another copy is at hand rendered into Latin with this title: "The Life and contest of St. Maximus the confessor, or the encomium of St. Maximus." That this Life was given its Latinity by the translator James Pontanus, S. J., is indicated immediately in the same copy. I do not indeed read there from what codex or copy the praised translator drew his version; but from whatever one he drew it, it matters little, since in Pontanus's interpretation we have the substance of the same things which are recorded in the copy of Combefis and in the Savoy one, whatever be the case about accidentals. It was sent to us in 1667 by Father Gabriel Cossart from the writings of Father Sirmond sent to him by the translator, on the testimony of Daniel Papebroch, who wrote this. Further, the translator is abundantly known to the learned, who, being learned in Latin and Greek, left not a few monuments of the labor bestowed in the faculty of both tongues, as may be seen in the Library of Writers of the Society of Jesus. He was by nation a Bohemian, of Brüx or Pons as his native place, but educated in Germany. In the same place thou wilt find also the man's praises, who ended his life at Augsburg on the 25th day of November in the year of Christ 1626, in the 84th of his age and the 63rd of his Religious profession, as is there said.

[86] It has seemed good to us to commit his Latin version to the press in preference to that of Combefis, both because, so far as we know, it has not yet been published anywhere, which Pontanus turned into Latin; and because it pleases us more. And indeed whether it be not better and less contorted than that of Combefis, we leave to be judged by the reader who will compare both, if it shall seem good. Let us meanwhile exhibit some specimen of both versions. Combefis begins the Life thus: "Since the life of all who ever shone with religious piety is useful and profitable (being namely an exhortation to virtue, and sharpening minds by the emulation of what is good and honorable), then most of all that of the divine man and confessor Maximus, by how much it is greater and more illustrious than all, by so much also does it avail more for procuring fortitude to minds, and is more excellent for helping all. For Maximus was not only adorned with an exceptional cultivation of life, but was also pleasing and ready in speech, and vigorous also in the glory of the contest, and surpassing all comparison; the mere remembering of whom knows how to bring much delight, and instils no small love and allurement of virtue into religious minds. Wherefore the discourse now undertaken by us, which is to relate his deeds and virtues, would indeed wish and greatly desire to bring into the midst and represent each of his deeds, that both the memory of them may be made sweeter and may lay up great favor with the hearers; but it cannot either embrace all at once, or even discharge the due praise of those which it embraces, because even the least works and deeds of that admirable Man are too great to be attained by any force of speech."

[87] his rendering pleasing us more than that of Combefis, Thus Combefis; but Pontanus rendered these things thus into Latin: "Whereas the life of all those who have ordered it in conformity with the divine laws is useful and fruitful, as inciting to virtue and sharpening us to the practice of righteousness; then indeed that of St. Maximus the confessor, by how much it is more illustrious and in every way more notable, by so much also is it found more effectual for arousing fortitude and most ready of all for procuring profit to minds. For that Man not only lived with admirable holiness, but besides was sweet in speech, and incomparable in the nobility of his contest: the mere memory of whom begets no common delight, and implants in those who love God the love of virtue. Wherefore we also, being now about to speak of his praises, desire indeed and greatly esteem it to bring into the midst and explain each of the things done by him, that both by their commemoration the discourse may become more pleasant, and the great expectation of the hearers may be fulfilled: yet we do not see how we may either embrace all at once,"

"or celebrate with due praises the things which we have embraced (due, I say, to him who by his excellence surpasses all force of speech), and attain even the least things performed by that singular Man." Thus Pontanus; whom, if the reader compares with Combefis, he will find a great difference in expressing the same things in Latin: in Latin, I say: for which of the two more closely attained the genuine sense of the biographer, we forbear to inquire at leisure at greater length.

[88] What has been furnished in our edition. For the rest, the copy which we commit to the press we shall here and there purge of faults perhaps thrust into it by the copyist's fault; nor shall we neglect to consult also the two other copies which we mentioned, namely the Combefisian and the Savoy one, as will become clear from the Annotations both in the margin of the text and on its chapters, into which after our custom we have divided it. But when some things occur in the course of the narrative enclosed in these marks [], remember that they are taken from the Greek text of Combefis and of the Duke of Savoy, unless I shall have indicated otherwise. And these indeed are the things of which we wished to forewarn the reader. It remains therefore now that we subjoin the

ACTS

Written by an Anonymous author,

Rendered into Latin by the Reverend Father James Pontanus of the Society of Jesus.

Maximus, abbot and confessor, at Constantinople (St.)

Anastasius, monk and confessor, at Constantinople (St.)

Another Anastasius, likewise a monk and confessor, at Constantinople (St.)

By an Anonymous author.

THE AUTHOR'S PROLOGUE.

To the greatness of the things to be narrated Whereas the life of all those who have ordered it in conformity with the divine laws is useful and fruitful, as inciting to virtue and sharpening us to the practice of righteousness; then indeed that of St. Maximus ^a the confessor, by how much it is more illustrious and in every way more notable, by so much also is it found more effectual for arousing fortitude and most ready of all for procuring profit to minds. For that man not only lived with admirable holiness, but besides was sweet in speech, and incomparable in the nobility of his contest: the mere memory of whom begets no common delight, and implants in those who love God the love of virtue. Wherefore we also, being now about to speak of his praises, desire indeed and greatly esteem it to bring into the midst and explain each of the things done by him, that both by their commemoration the discourse may become more pleasant, and the great expectation of the hearers may be fulfilled: yet we do not see how we may either embrace all at once, or celebrate with due praises the things which we have embraced (due, I say, to him who by his excellence surpasses all force of speech), and attain even the least things performed by that singular Man.

[2] Wherefore, since it is not easy and ready the author confesses himself unequal. to review all things in words, if I too shall not without reason pass over certain things, I think that I shall not on that account be in fault: since no one else so far at least as we know before us has descended to treat of all his affairs, doubtless because he found the work difficult both in the attempt and in the accomplishment. But that we may not seem altogether to pass over so exceptional a subject, and may neither pursue the whole (which we by no means can) nor leave the whole (which I think would be hurtful and not free from blame), of necessity I shall set about speaking, although I am not ignorant that I shall speak most ineloquently and far below the dignity of the matter. For in this way we shall both perform what is in us, and shall pay you what we owe, namely a discourse concerning him, since you demand it, if you demand anything, admitting no excuse. And if we shall also insert certain other things done at that time, not even this will be altogether foreign to our design, nor unsuited to those times in which, as ye know, mighty storms were stirred up against the truth. But we shall first begin our narrative concerning the Saint, for whose sake we have set about speaking, from a little further back, as we shall be able.

ANNOTATIONS.

CHAPTER I.

His birth, upbringing, studies of letters, life at court and monastic life, his departure because of the Monothelites.

[He is born at Constantinople, having most noble parents and an excellent disposition:] He had for his country the chief of cities, the great city of Constantine, which is also commonly called new Rome: but for parents, persons second to few in ancestral nobility and worldly brilliance, who held nothing more precious than piety, the love and practice of virtue, that they might be made illustrious by these rather than by the splendor of their family. And they, when this Blessed one had been brought forth into the light ^a and in his earliest infancy washed in the saving font, that he might even then be purified, and might do none of those things which are among boys' pleasures, nor occupy his mind with those childish sports, lest his still simple and tender nature should be drawn to slackness and softness of manners, forming that Noble one by harder and manly things, engendered in him the highest inclination to honorable actions, and brought it about that he should devote himself with his whole heart to virtue. Nay, he himself, having both obtained a nature apt and suitable, and having received an upbringing of this kind, even while yet weak in age, had in himself indications of virtue, like certain shadows and outlines, no obscure images and signs of his future excellence. Which types and characters of virtue, I say, as the coming years increased and established the indication, and as his reason and thought and all things at once tended toward better and more perfect things, he brought to perfection.

[4] with the studies of the liberal arts, But after, busying himself with all liberal learning, as was fitting, he began to go to masters, what shall I say of how great a knowledge he acquired for himself in a short time? Grammar and the rest of the circle of disciplines he cultivated with the highest diligence. In the art of oratory he reached the highest summit. To the lectures of philosophy he brought so much industry that no one attained to him even in any degree. For heaping up the goodness of his talent with equal zeal and diligence, he excelled abundantly in every kind of letters, of each of which, when he used them, he sometimes derived no small help toward better things. But philosophical expositions he pursued and loved more ardently, and preferred to all the rest. For because he knew that the knowledge and science of things is contained in philosophy, and that it is placed in contemplation and in action, discoursing of nature and of the world, and generally of any other matters whatsoever, on this account also he bestowed more labor upon it, and thought of it day and night. Yet not indiscriminately nor inconsiderately: but repelling and casting away the sophistic part, and so far as it cleaves to fallacies and captious arguments; but admitting and embracing that which is occupied with doctrine and principles, and other notions and proofs established by reason and order.

[5] especially the philosophical, he wonderfully excels. For what had he to do with a deceitful proposition, and the weaving of spurious syllogisms, and conclusions of this kind, and whatever else there is by which true wisdom is defiled (far be it that I should say these things of him); or when did he ever meditate any such thing, or at length bear with an equal mind anything wrongly done by others, and incline his mind even a little to it? Wherefore he was an object of admiration to all; being furnished with such learning, such virtue, and besides with such moderation and humility, that nothing lifted him up to arrogance nor puffed him up with self-esteem: not the greatness of his family, not his excellent progress in all erudition, not the loftiness of his virtue, nor anything else besides out of all things; but he had so given himself to modesty that in this alone he placed both the holiness of life and all honors, and esteemed it more than if any one should give him at once whatever glory there is among men.

[6] Further, that Admirable man, passing his age thus, although he strove much every day Having lived most graciously in the court of the emperor Heraclius to escape vain glory and not to be entangled in the changes of this life (nearness to which he judged a great hindrance to virtue), yet could not bring it about that he should lie hidden, and that the common benefit should not flow forth to others. But although he devised and did such things, nevertheless he is seized even against his will, Heraclius ^b at that time being emperor, who summoned him most benevolently to the court and appointed him chief of those who were of the royal registry ^c. Whom likewise, as being such a man and born in so great a family, he employed in all the affairs which he had in hand, and used as a minister and helper in the fairest matters. For he was most intelligent in discerning, and by far most apt in giving counsel, and most ready for suitable and extempore speech: with whose company both the emperor himself and his nobles were wonderfully delighted, and never ceased to hold him in high regard.

[7] But he, esteeming these things — namely renown and moneys and honor, he embraces the monastic life, and whatever is mingled with vain ambition — of little worth in comparison with philosophy, and likewise perceiving novelties being brought into the faith, when the sect of the Monothelites was violently shaking the Church ^d, [leaves all things, judging it certainly a defilement of the mind to be occupied in matters of this kind; and to the solitary life, for he had long been held by a desire of quiet,] he comes in earnest to the monastery, namely which is situated on the opposite shore at Chrysopolis ^e, and there delivers himself over to the spiritual philosophy at that time flourishing in it; he is shorn, and is clothed with a garment woven of hair; with which he continually mortifies his body; nor does he give himself to fasting only and to other afflictions, but, applying himself also to standing through whole nights and to long prayers, he thence raises his mind, and, drawing it away from fleeting and perishable things, before its departure from the body looses it from those bonds. For he who before also had accustomed himself to the contests and labors of a more perfect life, and had lived by philosophy, after he consecrated himself to them, scarcely either preferred or practiced anything else; and since likewise he had not a few fellow-soldiers in the Religious institute, he surpassed all, and wonderfully obtained authority ^f above all: who were so far inferior to him in virtue that by common consent they sent messengers, and asked him with prayers that he would be willing to preside over them and to undertake the prefecture (for they had lately lost their prefect ^g).

[8] But he at first, repelling it as a heavy burden, and is promoted to the prefecture of the monastery, rejected the petition with steadfast mind, neither softening at their words nor yielding at all to their entreaties. But when he saw them press more keenly and threaten force, with difficulty he gives in his hands, and takes up the prefecture ^h, thinking that he was taking up not so much a prefecture or command as a ministry liable to render an account; whereby one may rather be made astonished and on every side full of anxieties, while he looks not only to himself, and considers how he himself may live free from all fault, but also how his subjects may usefully order their life and walk by a better way. For he considered with himself that for those who by themselves have to do with virtue it is altogether lawful to choose at their pleasure either greater or lesser things to do: to whom also, when they do not undertake exceptional actions, pardon is ready; but that for him to whom the governance of others is committed, if he relaxes even a little of his diligence, danger is at hand; and not for himself alone, but likewise for those whom he governs, since he

must not only be most upright, but must besides always add to his virtue, if by his example he is to lead his subjects also to better things, since they look upon his life as an archetype, and thence turn aside either to virtue or to the contrary, namely to vice.

[9] which office he discharges excellently: Weighing these things, the divine Maximus was tormented, and, wasting away in the great leanness of his body, was distressed with care for his disciples. And therefore he ceased not, now to exhort all together, now each singly, and now with gentler, now with sharper words, to perfection, and now to instruct them with even speech without any harshness, now to do the same with austere and stern speech, according as he perceived each one affected either in disposition or in temper. And thus indeed he bore himself toward his own, and with such a mind performed the office of this prefecture.

[10] but he departs from his own, that he may oppose the Monothelites. But when he saw, as we said above, the heresy of the Monothelites then spreading further and further, and being daily enlarged by the standard-bearers of impiety, he gave himself to groanings and most bitter mourning, pitying in a still greater degree those who were partakers of the crime. But what he himself should do he did not see, since the evil lay immensely open and had well-nigh occupied the whole East and West ⁱ. Whence in such great difficulties he found this alone profitable both for himself and for the common cause: for since ^k he knew old Rome to be pure from this detestable doctrine, and likewise the African Churches, and other places with the islands lying round about, leaving these lands he departed thither, that he might likewise be a patron of the truth, and might dwell there with the orthodox; not without reason, nor without labor and trouble, so great a journey being accomplished, since he postponed all things to this noble zeal. Of which setting out perhaps the monks whom he ruled were the persuaders to him: whose separation, although he judged it grievous and intolerable, yet he could do nothing else than what was counselled him, since the times pressed and offered the opportunity of departing. But indeed while we hasten forward we have passed over what lies between, namely the beginning of this wicked and abominable opinion, which so greatly disturbed the Church, and drove many into a like fall. And so, when we shall have of necessity said a few things upon this, we shall thereafter pursue the rest of our subject.

ANNOTATIONS.

CHAPTER II.

The Saint against the heresy of the Monothelites excellently promotes Catholic truth in Africa.

The heresy of the Monothelites under the emperor Heraclius: Heraclius ^a being emperor and Sergius ^b pontiff of Constantinople, at first ^c indeed Heraclius himself, and all his ministers, and likewise all the magistrates and those holding offices, stood by the orthodox faith, and confessed and preached two natures in Christ and two actions or operations and wills. But when he (alas!) after many trophies over the enemy, and that famous valor in subduing the Persians ^d, turned aside from sound doctrine, the churches also at the same time began to turn aside, no small part of the people also being turned to the contrary. But the cause of the change for the emperor was that Athanasius, patriarch (as he was called) of the Jacobites ^e, a deceiving man, and of all men most skilled in confounding and disturbing the truth. He went to Heraclius as he was staying at Hierapolis in Syria ^f, and, insinuating himself craftily and maliciously, so ensnared the man with feigned affections that at his exhortation — of Athanasius, I mean — he even received the council of Chalcedon, which teaches two natures hypostatically united in Christ. For Heraclius desired, as the event itself declared, to join both Athanasius himself (to whom he also promised the see of Antioch) and moreover others, whomsoever he saw dissenting, with that synod; although by folly and levity of mind, besides that he brought no one to it, he smeared upon himself the reputation of a perverse doctrine.

[12] Athanasius therefore, when he had, as has been said, in various ways made him wholly his own, which various bishops, rendered him somewhat wavering concerning the two operations and wills of the two natures. Thence he persuades him that his opinion should be referred to Sergius of Constantinople: and that that Cyrus, bishop of Phasis, should also be summoned: for he affirms that he too will hear what is to be thought of this; and that what pleases these will please him also. For the perverse man knew that they laid down one operation and one will. After therefore Heraclius summoned Cyrus to himself, and set forth by letter to the patriarch what had seemed good, and found both alike favoring the doctrine of one will, and agreeing without doubt in the same sense, presently he becomes wholly of the contrary party, and, to speak more truly, believes that there is in Christ rather ἀθέλητον (that is, no will) than μονοθέλητον (that is, one or a single one).

[13] Wherefore without delay he writes also to the first Roman See of the imported doctrine, the ringleaders of the same, thinking as it were that he would commit a crime unless he should imbue others also, wheresoever in the world they were, with his own leaven, and communicate the pestilent heresy. But this divine Man, judging his endeavor an open fraud, and offended by the wicked and depraved opinion, not only met it with contradicting writings and powerful refutations, and overthrew what was asserted; but he also execrated those who held and defended those things. Further, with Heraclius he profited nothing, who had admitted into his breast a wickedness not merely outward but inmost. For he hastened a little after to fill also the church of Alexandria with this plague, Cyrus, a partner of the same opinion, being sent thither to hold the bishopric ^g, that Alexandria too, approving the same, might perish by the same destruction. Then Cyrus also, having met with Theodore, bishop of the Pharanites, who likewise pertinaciously followed the Monothelites, makes with him a union ὑδροβαφῆ ("dipped in water" ^h, for so it was called), by which word I think is meant a faint and watery dye, and as it were mingled, and such as thou couldst not distinguish, and preserving neither color purely, so that those men might, in whichever way they will, disturb, confound and mingle the operation introduced by them, and that it should be neither understood nor named as simple, nor as double, nor as neither (which is what is true to say).

[14] strove to establish by the worst arts And these men indeed persuaded of their view those whom they deceived, and, decreeing one operation and one natural will, gave occasion to the Jacobites ⁱ and Theodosians ^k to boast against our faith, and to hoot down the synod of Chalcedon ^l with laughter and reproaches. Who also with malicious mind boasted that the very council of Chalcedon supported their opinion and laid down one nature: that this was clear from this, that it asserted one operation. Which it would never have done, they say, unless it had revered true reason or truth, and had more perfectly comprehended the matter. But since at that time Sophronius ^m presided over the church of Jerusalem, a man illustrious in piety and virtue, all the orthodox bishops, being gathered to him, together with him call into accusation and hurl an anathema against those who professed one natural operation in Christ and one will only; commending and adorning with praises those who together with two natures confessed and defended also a twofold operation and will.

[15] and to propagate, But this holy Man, wishing to declare this doctrine more fully, discourses of it point by point, and sends his dissertation ⁿ to John ^o of Rome, and Sergius of Constantinople, and Cyrus of Alexandria, bishops; condemning these indeed and esteeming them of no account; but on the contrary celebrating that other, John I mean, as was fitting, and extolling him with six hundred praises. Which when it had also come to the ears of that stupid Heraclius, falling into fear and anguish, he ponders various things with himself, and turns his mind hither and thither, nor has he any way at last to change the newly fabricated doctrine, blushing perhaps at a wretched [p] and boiled-over [q] change, and at a sudden passing over to the other side. And so he breaks himself off from both parties, namely from those who assert two operations and those who assert one, that detestable Sergius also persuading him to this, as one who knew him easy and pliable to everything, and feared lest at length he should see him torn away from their own tribe, and therefore suffered the Emperor to act foolishly at his own pleasure. This [*] Heraclius therefore, rejoicing as it were at an unhoped-for gain, by written letters and by an edict [r], as it is called, establishes the absurdity.

[16] When the Severians [s] found this written out, not only at home and among themselves, the council of Chalcedon and Catholic truth being hooted down, but even in taverns and baths, casting jibes, they prated these things with shameless mouth: "Before this the Nestorianizing Chalcedonians (for so they called us, although we spurned the opinion of Nestorius) returned to a sound mind, and ceased to think ill, being joined with us through one operation into one nature of Christ. But now, condemning what was well, they have lost both, confessing neither one nor two natures in Christ." There was therefore then to be seen confusion and disturbance in the churches, when both pastors and peoples, and princes and subjects were losing their senses, and there was none that understood, none that sought after the Lord. For who, I pray, would lead the multitude to saving things, when the Prelates were thus disposed, and the Emperors and bishops, instead of making laws as at other times and framing decrees, were sanctioning impiety and compelling all to obedience; and rending into pieces the whole [*] tunic of the Church, and giving occasion of hurt [t] to those who mock and accuse our affairs after the manner of Momus [u]?

[17] For the rest, a short time intervened, when Sergius, the sower of the perverse doctrine, a manifold hydra, they contend. departed from life, all the dregs of vengeance being laid up for him there (in the other world, I mean). On his throne Heraclius set Pyrrhus [x], who himself also was of the opposing faction and opinion, and asserted the same things as his predecessor. But after not long Heraclius himself also fulfilled his last day [y], Constantine his son took up the sceptres, whom Pyrrhus, on account of the dullness of his manners, with the help of that Martina, a wicked woman and most practiced in evil-doing, when he had taken off by poison [z], made his son Heraclonas [*] by name his successor — the bishop designing, forsooth, a noble deed and worthy of his gentleness. But the senate, hating Heraclonas, quickly stripped him of the empire, and at the same time overthrew both the impious Pyrrhus and the Augusta, the partner of his manners [aa]. Then therefore that noble man paid these penalties, being driven from his throne and from the city, because he had contrived an unjust murder. Afterward Constans [bb], son of the slain Constantine, entered upon the empire, who chose Paul as bishop of Byzantium [cc], himself also somewhat [dd] favoring that reprehensible doctrine of the Monothelites.

[18] But now we must return to the affairs of Maximus, which subject we had proposed to ourselves, St. Maximus acts against this impious doctrine although we have turned our narrative to others, of whom indeed we promised at the beginning that we should of necessity make mention. After therefore the holy Man determined, on account of [ee] the wicked opinion creeping at Constantinople, to set out for Rome, as we taught above, first in passing he came into conference with the African bishops, whom by setting forth reasons and arguments, and by his divine tongue, he strengthened in the faith, and taught and instructed how they might with less trouble escape the demands and sophistic discourses of the adversaries. For that most prudent Man was not ignorant that much dexterity, experience, and skill in disputing is required for smiting adversaries, and for bowing down their necks raised against true knowledge. Wherefore in all ways he sharpened and equipped them, anointed them with his discourses like athletes for contending strenuously, and filled them with a nobler spirit. For although they excelled him in throne or episcopal dignity, yet in wisdom and understanding they were not to be compared with him; to say nothing of the rest of his virtue and glory in all things. Hence they both yielded to his words, and obeyed his admonitions and counsels without resistance.

[19] with the African bishops: whom he leads to the execration of the same. For they perceived in him a lofty and plainly singular life, but a speech rich and copious, flowing not drop by drop but in a whole river; and a prudence and a general state of mind not to be compared with any. For which cause not only all the priests and bishops, but likewise all who governed peoples and multitudes, depended wholly upon him in all things, and clung to him as to a magnet: and the same happened to them as they commonly say happens to iron with that stone, or also as to those held fast by the songs of the Sirens [ff], of whom the poets tell. But when these had learned that the Roman Pontiff had then proclaimed an assembly of bishops, that, all conspiring in common, he might subject the wicked doctrine to execration and anathema, they too were stirred up by the exhortation and persuasion of the divine Maximus to do the same; not only those who were in Africa and the neighboring islands, but also any who were in other places there, applying themselves to the work and accomplishing so honorable a thing: for all had him as their teacher and leader, and helper in the things which were being done.

ANNOTATIONS.

p. I suspect we should write "nupera." For in Combefis's copy, page IX, and in our Savoy one, there stands τὸ ὑπόγυον (but write ὑπόγυιον), which means recent or new.

q. Or "driven by or from a boiling"? For in Combefis, page IX, and in the Savoy copy is read: Καὶ τὴν ἀθρόαν πρὸς τὰ ἐναντία μετάθεσιν; which in Combefis's edition are rendered thus: "And of a purpose suddenly turned to contrary things," etc.

r. Of this famous edict or Ecthesis the preliminary Commentary treats at number 10.

s. There was a twofold sect of Severus and the Severians, of which one belongs to the 2nd century, the other to the sixth. Of the latter is the discourse here: and of that Severus who propagated the errors of the Eutychians, and stood forth as a pertinacious assailant of the council of Chalcedon, treat Theophanes in various places, Baronius in volumes 6 and 7, and also our chronological History of the Patriarchs of Antioch prefixed to volume IV of July, pages 91 and 100.

t. I should rather read "of rejoicing": for in Combefis and in the Savoy copy it is ἐφήδεσθαι.

u. Most well known is that god in the fables, whose nature it was proper to produce no work himself, but most freely to carp at the works of the other gods: whence his name. For μῶμος in Greek sounds "reproach." See among the Adages in Manutius τῷ Μώμῳ ἀρέσκειν, that is, "to satisfy Momus."

x. Probably at the beginning of January of the year 639, according to what was said in the preliminary Commentary, number 12.

y. In the year of Christ 641; of the month and day Pagi may be seen at that year, number 2.

z. In the poison administered the narrative of Theophanes, page 275, agrees. But Nicephorus, patriarch of Constantinople, in the historical Breviary, saying nothing of poison, reports that Constantine was afflicted with a long sickness (νόσῳ χρονίᾳ), page 19: where several other things pertaining to the present matter may be read.

aa. Of Pyrrhus, Martina and her son being expelled, Theophanes just cited also makes mention; who at page 283 adds these words: "But Martina's tongue being cut off, and Heracleonas's nostrils being cut away," etc. But Nicephorus, patriarch of Constantinople, in the Breviary just designated, narrates Pyrrhus's departure thus at page 21, as though he had gone into voluntary exile on account of the tumult of the people: "When Pyrrhus learned these things," he says, "on the following night he enters the church. There, having saluted all the sacred things, and having taken off his omophorion and laid it on the sacred table, he said: I do not abdicate the priesthood, but I yield to a contumacious people. Thence going out secretly," etc.

bb. In the year of Christ 641, as Pagi judges, and as is clear from this, that the emperor Constans promoted Paul to the see of Constantinople, if our biographer narrates truly. For he was promoted in the year 641, as will presently be said.

cc. Theophanes at page 275 narrates these things thus: "But Constans, son of Constantine, obtains the empire, and Paul, himself also a heretic, is raised to the throne of Constantinople" — namely in the year 641, in the month of October, as may be seen in our chronological History of the Patriarchs of Constantinople, page *79.

dd. Nay rather a crafty, perfidious and shifty heretic; who first secretly promoted the Monothelite poison under the pretence of preserving a false peace, and afterward openly persecuted the orthodox and Pope Martin himself. Consult, if thou wilt, the same chronological History, page 79 and following.

ee. See what was said in the preliminary Commentary from number 15.

ff. The Sirens, sea-monsters celebrated in the fables of the poets, in their upper part bore the likeness of a maiden; the lower ending in a fish's tail, as is most well known. These are feigned to have been three in number, who, while they dwelt on the Sicilian shore, lured sailors passing by into shipwreck by the sweetness of their song. Not unknown too is the fable of Ulysses. See more in the mythologists. Hence the biographer's allusion is clear.

* Combefis and Savoy: Εἴτέν τοι. "Hence."

* Combefis and Savoy: ἄτμητον, "uncut."

* elsewhere he is called Heracleonas and Heraclius.

CHAPTER III.

The refutation of Pyrrhus the Monothelite; his acts at Rome for the orthodox faith; the Works he wrote.

Pyrrhus the Monothelite Some time passed thence, and John, prelate of Rome, departed from the body to the Lord ^a, whose throne Theodore ascended, no less a successor in orthodoxy than in the prelacy ^b. Meanwhile Pyrrhus also, being driven from the imperial city, comes into Africa, and holds discourses with the divine Maximus, setting forth to him his own reasons and in turn hearing his. And when both had come to questions and contradictions, how shall I now worthily report either the Saint's solutions with probability and truth in each problem, or Pyrrhus's overthrow in each of the things which were said, and his assent? For the latter proposed as something impregnable and by no means to be solved that there is in Christ one will, and affirmed that the truth could not be comprehended otherwise. But he, although he objected on the other side that this one is according to the hypostasis, yet divided him according to the pair of natures, with which he correspondingly divided also the wills, and demonstrated this most firmly, and so that nothing could be adduced against it.

[21] disputing with him And Pyrrhus again, in place of two wills, introduced also two willers, knitting absurdity to absurdity. But the Saint rejected and refuted this as wonderfully abhorrent from reason and inconsequent. "For if it be granted," he says, "that with the wills there be introduced also willers (for I shall use the words of that blessed tongue), then altogether with the willers also wills, according to the reasoning consonant with reason"

"antistrophe or inversion they will be introduced, and there will be found, according to you, of the superessential or more than good and supreme Deity, the beginning of all things, on account of its one will, one hypostasis also, according to Sabellius; but on account of the three persons, as many wills likewise, and so three natures, according to Arius. Since according to the decrees and canons of the Fathers a difference of wills brings also a distinction of natures." But why should I recount that disputation ^c point by point, when, if I did it even of set purpose, I could scarcely accomplish all? So long and various and exquisite is their exposition.

[22] It is permitted therefore to readers to know more accurately from that very volume ^d composed by the Saint, abjures the heresy; but then returns to his vomit. both the Saint's own questions and answers with prudence and most apt reasonings in all things, and Pyrrhus's propositions incoherent and refutable, nay rather ill-concluded and senseless: who, utterly despairing, sets, as they say, an ox upon his tongue ^e, and condemns his own inability to speak: which, although he shapes and varies it in many ways and twists it every way, yet he could not have it as a helper in any of the things he wished. And so he asked pardon for his deeds, at once abjuring in writing his doctrine of one will, and he brought a document to the Roman Pontiff, and was received by him as gladly as can be told. But indeed the foolish man, full of madness, as if nothing new had befallen him, at Ravenna again followed his former opinion, and like a dog returned to his own vomit ^f. Which when it was reported to the divine Maximus, and to the bishop of the first See named by us, in a common assembly they pronounce sentence against him ^g, and at length cut off and cast away the wretch as a putrid and in every way incurable member. Who, although thus treated, yet did not desist from shamelessness and from raising his brow still higher, but with a more arrogant onset flies again upon the throne of Constantinople ^h, and receives a second time the bishopric as the reward of impiety.

[23] At Maximus's exhortation a council is convoked at Rome, But since ⁱ it then befell that Theodore also, the Roman Pontiff, departed from among men ^k, a man, as is plain, renowned for many and great labors and for piety, that most holy Martin is set in his see, himself also excelling in remarkable charisms and most famous for holiness of life. Whose virtue the divine Maximus loving, he was often with him, and in what things the matter required he communicated with him what he ought ^l. Wherefore he was also the author to him that he should summon the orthodox to himself from every quarter, and gather a numerous synod, that under so many and so divine men the sound faith might obtain a firmer and irrefragable confession; but the invention of the adversaries might more evidently and notably fall. Who indeed, being gathered to the number of a hundred and fifty ^m, the most wise Maximus being likewise present, did all things with reason and by the help of the Holy Spirit, and set down all the acts, as was fitting, in registers, and vehemently defended the true doctrine, and each for his part seriously took counsel in public.

[24] And ⁿ they smote all the masters of the foolish doctrine with a sacred execration, in which the ringleaders of the Monothelites are condemned. Books being written namely Sergius, and Pyrrhus, and Paul, and Peter ^o, who had impiously presided at Constantinople; likewise Cyrus of Alexandria and Athanasius of Antioch, bishops, and their ministers. With these besides they transfix with anathema the Type [p], as it was called, which the wicked emperor Constantine (otherwise Constans) issued [q] and publicly set forth to the holy Church, filled with blasphemies: but the divine Maximus, for the confuting of the impious and the confirming of the pious, having composed disputations and letters, and our faith being demonstrated by proofs drawn from reason and from holy Scripture, sows the truth everywhere through the world; whose arguments he will know severally who shall read a commentary or index of them [r]. Further, from that time dwelling continually at Rome, just as if, departing from Byzantium, he had determined with himself to inhabit this city (although Africa, being seized with a certain more ardent love of him, had kept him longer with herself), but having Rome, as I said, thenceforth for his lodging, he profited by his discourse many who came daily to him, conversing with them of useful matters, and by the books zealously composed by him advancing them to the highest step of a higher life, and persuading them to embrace virtue alone, and to tear themselves from these lower and perishable things, so that by none of these, I say, could the mind be subdued, since by itself it is borne upward, and is so framed as to be borne to things above. For that man most full of God was held by an incredible zeal to draw all to virtue, and to make them desirous and lovers of it, being so lovable and desirable in himself, and transferring wholly to himself one caught in his love.

[25] ascetical and dogmatic Wherefore he wrote also those many and excellent books, teaching a way manifold and at the same time happily leading thither, so that he should not leave even a little space unfilled; now discoursing of life and of the more perfect discipline; now of morals and of diligence in restraining the passions, and of doing all things with reason and counsel. Again elsewhere of doctrines, and of the things in which knowledge is laid up, and which those higher spirits scarcely attain with a human mind, thence testing our desire and lifting it up to more divine things. And now indeed he treats of abstinence from present things, and of the enticements of the senses to be avoided: now of patience and endurance, and of the rest of greatness of mind in temptations, although they seem horrible and intolerable. But now I omit his commentaries on the sacred prayers, and those written in the form of letters, and those pertaining to the sorrow and compunction of the soul; but those elaborated by the Saint on charity, and comprised as it were in brief chapters that they might be more welcome to all, I would commemorate, and would most gladly bring forward something of them, did I not persuade myself that no one is ignorant of them, especially of those to whom virtue and charity are dear.

[26] his vastest and profoundest This [s] only I shall say, that he who has read them even several times will both know genuine charity, and will hold hatred of every kind in hatred, and will restrain a way exulting not according to reason, and will press down raging desire, and will draw his mind away from concrete and perishable things, and will raise it to things kindred [t], and will conform himself wholly to more divine things. But indeed he could wonderfully and most readily write little books extempore, and dictate chapters in the form of admonition. But for expounding the Scriptures and perceiving their hidden senses he was not less skilled or inferior to any. Nay rather, whose is that more hidden and mystery-filled consideration of the Scriptures, and that deep interpretation of the senses? Whose the declaration of the more obscure and more sublime and least obvious things of the old and new Testament alike? Whose those anagogical [u] discourses, and subtler senses, and expounding of secrets?

[27] wisdom For in what manner he himself wished to refine his mind, calling it away from all material representation, that it might be able without any hindrance and with knowledge to attain what is above knowledge, and to ascend to the supreme contemplation, so also he drew his speech away from the grosser thoughts of things falling under the senses, and from vulgar diction, and, advancing more inwardly, called upon the abyss of abysses, namely of more sublime words and understandings. For who, to omit the rest, when he has read through the work written in a hundred and five chapters by that admirable Man, in which he unfolds the secrets of the old and new Testament, would not admire and celebrate the mind of the expounder, and a genius so pregnant with exceptional senses, and the sublimity of the things perceived by him, and the rest of his theoretic [x] and more anagogical explanation of them? Besides, thou mayest see his loftiness in speaking equally also in the scholia composed on the writings of Gregory the Great. For in these, since there are many things difficult to explain and obscure, especially dogmatic and theological ones concerning the Trinity, he both knew their sense and force, and rendered them more open by the light of a more divine knowledge. And he so expounds him that he matches him not only in notions and in more recondite consideration, but also in excellence of elocution and in diction.

[28] Then, after this Noble man perceived he commended to posterity. that the little works also of Dionysius the Areopagite, which that divine man composed on the heavenly and ecclesiastical Hierarchy [y], were in most places wrapped in darkness, he applied himself to these also, and, as far as it could be done, illustrated and explained them with a clearer discourse and interpretation, not, as one might say, with a light arm and perfunctorily, but penetrating them and wonderfully digging out the hidden sense. But the things which are of the sacred Mystagogy [], these he declared μυστικωτέρως [], setting forth what is meant by the priests' entrance into the church: what the chair of the high priest: what the order of those standing about him, and the rite of psalmody and reading, and the closing of the doors, and the preceding salutation, and the entrance of the faithful, and the prostration of the not yet initiated in the vestibule, and, to speak summarily, whatsoever things are performed at that dread hour in the sacred rites. And these things, so far as I can judge, no one's discourse has therefore clearly explained, although many have discoursed upon them. But he alone who arranged them deserves also to speak of them, as indeed he did speak, and has attained in his mind the knowledge of such great matters. But how long shall the narrative be of the Saint's disputations and books and other labors? To recall all of which, and to commit them singly to writing, seems to me like one's numbering the sands of the sea, or the stars one after another. Omitting therefore to write more of them, I shall turn my discourse to other things, and shall now rather commend to memory his most illustrious endurance in vexations.

ANNOTATIONS.

shaking out a drop, he wrote with his own hand the abrogation and condemnation of Pyrrhus and of the rest who should communicate with him. There may besides be consulted our chronological History of the Patriarchs of Constantinople, page *81.

p. That Type or formula of faith enjoined silence concerning one or two wills or operations in Christ. A copy of it is recited in the Lateran council in Labbe, volume 6, from column 231. Baronius also may be approached at the year 648.

q. "During the sixth Indiction," from the Account of the proceeding in Combefis, page XXXV, begun in the month of September in the year 648. But how St. Maximus with his disciple opposed himself to the heretical Type may be read in the same Account.

r. Of the holy Man's lucubrations the preliminary Commentary may be consulted at number 23.

s. This long digression, down to "When therefore Constans," number 29, is not in our Greek Savoy transcript.

t. I should say "genuine," that is, sincere and stable.

u. Ἀνάγω is "I lead up": νοῦς ἀναγωγικὸς, the mystical sense, or when the literal sense, as they call it, is turned into the spiritual: unless thou preferrest that there are here indicated discourses of this sort which seek out the remotest senses by their interpretation. See also the Hierolexicon published by Macri.

x. I should write "theoreticam," that is, contemplative, in Greek θεωρετικήν. The same Hierolexicon may be consulted.

y. Whether the works which are circulated under the name of St. Dionysius the Areopagite are truly his is disputed among the learned. There may be consulted Labbe's Dissertation on Ecclesiastical Writers, volume 1, page 258, and the Appendix of Addenda and Corrigenda, page 765 and following.

* that is, the discipline of sacred things

* that is, more mystically

CHAPTER IV.

The Saint's orthodox faith exercised in vain by various calumnies and vexations at Constantinople.

By the command of the emperor Constans he goes to Constantinople, When therefore ^a Constans [*], grandson of Heraclius, still held the empire, and had passed in it now the ninth year, and had allowed great license to those who thought ill, as also to himself in the same boat, and had filled all things with a pernicious pestilence, the rest being carried as it were into harbor, he falls into no small anxiety concerning the things done at Rome, because he had heard that all who had assembled there dissented from him and had undermined his doctrine. And ^b since he was not ignorant of the author (for how should he be ignorant of him who shone upon all, and lifted up his speech in a high place like a kindled torch?), he orders the Saint to be brought as soon as possible to the palace ^c, thinking that if he had conquered this man he would have all the rest in his power. And with him he takes care that his disciple Anastasius be brought, with another of the same name and of the same manners, who was also apocrisiarius of the Roman Church ^d.

[30] Besides, he sets before himself at Byzantium at a short interval the most holy Martin also, with several Western bishops, whither likewise St. Martin the Pope is summoned. being exasperated against them, as is likely, on account of their opposing opinion. But what things, and how great, that wicked man inflicted by way of contumely upon Martin, prelate of holy things, heaping a thousand injuries upon him, and punishing the innocent with blows (O impious hands!), and at last condemning him to a most remote exile, namely at Cherson ^e, and doing the like to his bishops — for narrating all these things here there is now no leisure for one hastening to the things which are proper to Maximus. Several perhaps are partly already pursuing them in writing, partly have pursued them, as I suppose, honoring that man and adorning his life and manners ^f. We according to our strength shall satisfy our design.

[31] This holy Man therefore, being seized by the hands of murderers, When he arrived there, St. Maximus is most unworthily treated and all men's eyes being fixed upon him, let us see with what receptions first, how courteously he was received, and with what judgment his cause was transacted by those good lawgivers ^g. For as soon as he reached Byzantium ^h, as he came out of the ship certain men sent by the Emperor meet him, and by the mere sight of him show much bitterness of mind, insolently seize the Saint, still unshod and without a cloak, and violently lead him away by the road into the city, his disciple following and groaning at the things which were being done: and having led him away, they thrust him into a dark little house, nor do they even grant him the fellowship of his disciple. Some days having intervened, they lead the Just man into the palace, the whole senate presiding and gazing upon him with fierce countenances like certain dragons. And then indeed they commit the judgment upon him to the sacellarius ⁱ, who excelled in dignity, a man skilled in speaking and in inventing tales; but of all men the most skilled in wickedly corrupting the truth.

[32] What wickedness did this man omit? What shameful thing did he not dare? and vexed: From what threats and insults against the Saint did he refrain? Not revering his venerable old age (for he was nearly eighty ^k years old), not the flourishing grace in his countenance, not his composed manners and the rest of his becoming and most honorable state; and that when that most iniquitous man had nothing either of right or consonant with reason wherewith to accuse the Just man's deeds, but showed only, so to speak, his own stupidity and shamelessness of manners and utmost wickedness. Who, although he showed himself so shameless, yet, since he could by no means answer suitably to the aptly knit and coherent discourses of the Saint, tried in vain to confound everything, openly betraying his malevolence and his exceedingly notable wickedness.

[33] he is assailed with calumnies, Further, all the things then said and done, and with what calumnies they assailed the innocent man, who thought that they would be covered by a lie, the Saint's own good disciple records point by point in a special Commentary ^l: whence it will be permitted to one who wishes to read all word for word and to know it more fully. It will not however be amiss if we too narrate a few things thence and insert them in this discourse, that we may not utterly pass over such matters, especially since we are about to report those acts not by narrating but, as one might say, in passing. When therefore that unhappy sacellarius had the Saint in his sight, he straightway began at the outset to terrify him with harsher discourses and threats, calling him wicked and a traitor and an enemy to the Emperors, and by all the most unworthy names. But when Maximus asked why he said these things of him, and what treason he had committed, he began to invent calumnies, such as it was fitting only he should devise, and to produce witnesses in a manifest lie, and even to prate against the Saint that he had betrayed great cities, Alexandria, I say ^m, and Egypt ⁿ, and Pentapolis ^o, "which," he says, "thou hast withdrawn from the borders of our empire, and hast now added to the Saracens, whose greatest friend and chief intimate thou art."

[34] which he refutes, and endures with patience. But when the Saint repelled this perverse contrivance of his with an irrefutable discourse, and showed that it was nothing but a mere accusation (for what had he to do with seizing cities, for which he rather wished safety?), when, I say, he made no progress, the shameless man enters upon another way, feigning certain dreams and shadows and phantasms or spectres, in which [p] there were echoings of voices of greater and lesser, and the titles of Emperors, and that a sharper voice sounded for the emperor of the West rather than of the East — here too bringing in accusers and calumniators and producing them in public. For which the pious Man, groaning the more, said: "I give thanks to my God, since I have been delivered into your hands and am loaded with charges of this kind, that by these involuntary things the things which I voluntarily branded upon myself may be blotted out, and that I may wipe away the stains contracted in my life. Yet, to answer a few things to these: I am not an interpreter of dreams [*], nor do I so abound in time as to occupy my mind with these visions. But since ye wished so to accuse me as even to cite witnesses, and those not such as knew but such as had heard from those who knew, since those, as ye say, have departed from life, why did ye not from the beginning, while the former men still survived, require an account of the dreams? For thus ye would have been free from trouble, and I should have paid the penalty as in a manifest matter.

[35] Other charges "But, as it appears, neither is the truth so, nor have my accusers set before their eyes him who searches hearts. For may I not see my Lord, nor be numbered among Christians (for I have nothing else to imprecate upon myself), if I either saw or framed in my mind or told to others a lying dream, being forsooth glad at an unhoped-for gain." Afterward they bring against him a third accusation also, when they saw the second refuted, which I have not judged should be set down in my discourse, since it is not only incredible but also childish and ridiculous [q]. And since the good judges did not abstain from a fourth lie either, they bring in a certain Gregory [r], who should affirm that the Saint's disciple had said at Rome that it is not lawful, nor consonant with reason, that a king should be called a priest, as one who had learned this very thing from his Master. But neither here did an answer fail the holy Man. For withstanding this Gregory to the face, he showed that other things were then said, other things now objected.

[36] "For when he had come to Rome," he says, "he spoke of union, falsely fastened upon him the holy Man refutes. and that we should receive the Type, in which that much-vaunted doctrine of one will in Christ was set forth and described. Against these things indeed we both spoke and made objection, and set forth the things which we thought would be fitting and useful for us. Wherefore I acknowledge as neither mine the things which are now brought forward, nor my disciple's, who is accused, with whom (I call God to witness) I never communicated anything. This however I am conscious to myself of having said, not to the disciple but to Gregory himself (which not even he will altogether deny, unless"

"he shall plainly deny his own self), that to decide and dispute concerning doctrines belongs rather to priests than to kings, since to them it is granted to anoint, [and] to lay on hands, and to offer the heavenly bread, and to stand at the altar, and to do all the other things which are more divine and more sacred. These things I both said then and say now: for which let him who will either absolve or condemn me: for a man cannot be wronged by men, even if he suffer the most atrocious things of all."

[37] After these things, not having what to do, they who had placed their hope in a lie, They try to fish out another accusation from Anastasius the Saint's disciple. leading the Just man out from the judgment, bring forward his disciple Anastasius, whom they terrify with words and threats, compelling him to speak against his Master, namely that he had been abusive against Pyrrhus when the latter came into disputation with Maximus. Nor do I see why those liars devised that. But when Anastasius answered otherwise than they expected, and that he had not only in no way hurt him, but had followed him with all honor and had received him most kindly as a well-wisher, they beat his head and cheeks with fists and slaps, and, the truth being thus requited, they order him again to be laid up in prison. Then again they call the Saint in, as though by no means content with what had gone before, and again they tempt him who was greater than every temptation. They say therefore that he follows the doctrines of Origen, and agrees with him in all things. When he presently washed away that frivolous and easily refuted charge, freely testifying that whoever approved his opinions and received his ravings was separated from God and from the lot of Christians, they ask again about Pyrrhus and about what was said at that time in that disputation, putting on the mask of kindness and feigning fairness as on a stage.

[38] Besides, in what way he had torn himself away from the communion of the Patriarch. With new devices And when they had likewise proposed other questions and interrogations and also their own Type, and had affirmed that it ought to be honored, which he so vehemently execrated and despised, and, to be brief, when they had adduced all the things which they thought could not be evaded or dissolved, and had spared neither threats nor insults; at length, when they saw themselves conquered in all things, and, as the proverb has it, caught by their own feathers, the session being dismissed, they hastened to the Emperor, announcing how bravely the Man resisted and showed himself unconquered, and that Maximus would not be forced even by punishments to assent to them. Not long after, others come to him, now returned to custody, thinking that by frequently attacking him and terrifying him with words they would soften him. And they who had come declared [s] that they were sent by the Patriarch, who set forth these things also to the Saint as they were able: "Ho, thou," they say, "of what church art thou" (for I shall use their very words) — "of Byzantium, of Rome, of Antioch, of Alexandria, of Jerusalem? Behold, all with the provinces subject to them are united. If therefore thou too art of the Catholic Church, be united, lest perchance, framing a new way of life, thou suffer what thou dost not expect."

[39] [they strive to draw St. Maximus away from the unity of the Catholic church, but in vain.] To whom that Blessed man answered fitly and prudently: "The Lord, when he had said that the Catholic Church is the right and saving confession, therefore also pronounced Peter blessed for having excellently confessed, upon which the God of all things affirmed that he would build such a Church. Nevertheless I desire to know the confession upon which the union of the churches has been made; which if it has been rightly made, neither shall I be a stranger to it." Then the messengers say: "Although we have no commands upon this, nevertheless we shall speak, that thou mayest be plainly without excuse. We assert two operations on account of the distinction, and one on account of the union." Here Maximus: "Do ye say that the two operations have on account of the union been made one; or besides these another?" "No," they say; "but these two, one on account of the union." "We are freed from troubles," he replied, "since we have devised for ourselves a faith that does not subsist, and a God without existence. For if we confound two into one on account of the union, and again divide one into two on account of the difference, there will be neither unity nor duality of operations, since they always destroy one another, and make him in whom they inhere destitute of operation and utterly non-existent. For that which has by nature no motion which cannot be taken away, and which is not variable and mutable by any principle of change on the other side, according to the doctrine of the Fathers is void of all essence, since it has not operation essentially as its own character, whereby namely it may be known. This therefore I cannot assert, nor have I been taught by the holy Fathers to confess it. Wherefore, since ye have the power, do to us what ye please." They, when they found nothing to oppose, announce to him what had seemed good to the lords of affairs: that it was lawful for them to smite with anathema one who did not obey, and besides to inflict the decreed death. But he thus meekly and humbly: "What has been decreed by God concerning me," he says, "let it now be brought to accomplishment, unto his glory foreknown from all eternity." But then indeed they defer to carry out what they had determined.

ANNOTATIONS.

p. In Combefis's and in the Savoy copy it is ἐν οἷς, "in which," as also stands here; but the Latin construction requires that for it thou either substitute, with Combefis's version, "and in these," or for "resonare" put "resonent."

q. See it, if thou wilt, in Combefis, page XXXI, in the Account of the proceeding, of which above.

r. The Account of the proceeding in the same place adds "son of Photinus."

s. That is, "they said": for the verb "autumo," besides other things, also means "I say" (see the Latin Lexicons), and the sense requires this in this place. And just below it is said, "Then the messengers," etc. But in the writing of St. Maximus to Anastasius the monk, his disciple, published in Greek and Latin among the Collectanea of Anastasius the Librarian, column 348, it is thus narrated: "Yesterday, which was the eighteenth day of the month, on which the solemnity of the holy Mid-Pentecost was kept, the patriarch signified to me, saying: Of what church art thou?" The rest may be read in the same place. But when the said solemnity is celebrated among the Greeks Leo Allatius reports, On the perpetual agreement of the western and eastern Church, where after the addenda he has a dissertation on the Sundays and weeks of the more recent Greeks, in which he records these things: "The fourth Sunday and the week following is called.. the fourth Sunday from Easter or that of the Paralytic: whose Office is sung on the Sunday, and ends on the second and third day of the week. For on the fourth, from matins, the feast of Mid-Pentecost (the Greeks call it μεσοπεντηκοστὴν) is begun." More in the same place about that feast.

* Our Greek Savoy manuscript: Κωνσταντίνῳ

* in the Greek of Combefis and Savoy ὀνειροσκόπος, that is, an inspector and interpreter of dreams.

CHAPTER V.

The Saint's acts at Bizya with Theodosius the bishop, and the victory won by him; he is carried to Rhegium.

The Saints driven into exile But counsel being taken, the Emperor and the Patriarch, just like Pilate and the Jews concerning my Jesus, condemn the Just man to exile ^a, leading him away at once to a little town by name Bizya ^b; and at the same time they carry off his disciple Anastasius to a certain uncomfortable place, situated in the farthest borders of the Romans, called by the barbarians Perberis ^c. With the same inhumanity they treat his namesake, who had been, I say, the Apocrisiarius of Rome. Long afterward they send ^d to the Saint in exile that Theodosius, bishop of Caesarea, and Paul and another Theodore [*], both endowed with consular dignity, who discoursed many and various things, now flattering, now threatening, now asking something that they might hear it, which things the Commentary ^e written by Anastasius, of whom I made mention above ^f, sets forth in detail. It will not however perhaps be amiss if we too say a few things of it, here also narrating in passing. For thus we shall the better know this Man's mind unconquered in all things. For although many shook him and tried in manifold ways to push him, he nevertheless remained wholly firm in his footing and immovable in his opinion.

[41] the constancy But come, let us see what things those whom we have named set forth to the Saint. First they ask about his state, and how he was, seeking this in friendly, or rather flattering fashion. When he had answered, "As it has already been predefined and appointed by divine providence concerning the end of my life, so I am," they asked again what this very thing was, "to foreknow" and "to be already appointed and predefined," and what difference there is between the two. The Saint answering that the one, namely to foreknow, belongs to those things which are in our power, that is, of thoughts, words and works, from which virtues and vices take hold of us: the other, to be predefined, pertains to those things which are not in our power, but which befall us from without against our will, and to various assaults, and finally to other things having the sense of a penalty.

[42] And while that most divine man discoursed candidly upon each of these, is assailed by the heretics: and what kind of tribulations are inflicted on us for the punishing of sins, and what kind likewise for probation or for a dispensation, justly and — since it cannot be otherwise expressed — profitably, they meanwhile, leaving these things, reported the matters for which they had come, inviting him to communion and to the approval of the things which they had done. But when he objected on the other side the novelty stirred up in the Church and the confusion of faith, then Theodosius of Caesarea rises up to dispute with him, and, asserting that there was nothing contrary in these things nor foreign and far removed from right reason, he built up and defended that one operation and will. The Saint, refuting the absurdity of this discourse, says: "If it be granted that one operation of the Deity and of the humanity be spoken of, then altogether both the theological doctrine and the account of the dispensation ^g will be confounded, and — what is absurd — the Trinity will be a quaternity, because the flesh will have been connatural with the Word. Since according to the Fathers, of those whose essence is one, there will also be one operation. Nay, the things which indicate and constitute the Divinity and the humanity will be taken away: nay rather both will come to a perfect non-existence; since it will be lawful neither to understand nor to speak of one operation or will, nor of two, which follows from these words of yours and from your newly fabricated doctrine."

[43] And Theodosius among many other things, as though doubting, Theodosius, bishop of Caesarea, said: "What if that which was done by dispensation ^h is not to be received as a ratified doctrine: as also now the Type which is set forth by us was made by way of dispensation, not dogmatically?" Then the Saint: that it is neither consonant with reason nor fair to assent to novelties of this kind, and that they are of teachers not true but impostors, who are not to be heard, and, as far as may be, are to be shunned and fled from as far as possible, lest by intercourse with them we should seem to be infected with some contagion. The legates, as if by these words they had lost the faculty of speech, were long silent, their faces meanwhile cast down to the ground. But Theodosius, when he had collected himself, sought out at leisure other questions, which he thought would be for him as it were certain impregnable citadels. When therefore he had set forth these opinions, and had snatched up and put together certain simple expressions, not examined by the mind, and had affirmed that Maximus admitted them, he besides raised certain questions concerning a hypostatic operation, and a certain natural and proper will, for the recounting of which a longer discourse than is now needful would be required.

[44] After therefore Theodosius did these things, and the Saint easily overthrew all the circuits and sums of his discourse and reasonings, is so refuted by him that he yielded his hands as conquered for a while. at length, wearied and having nothing then to bring forward against them, he attempts by another way to draw the Saint to himself; addressing him more kindly, and signifying that he too wished scandals and stumbling-blocks to be removed from the midst, and the former peace to be restored to the Church. "Which is not done otherwise," he says, "unless we now set out to the Romans, and stir them to a covenant and reconciliation, breathing namely and thinking one thing with them." At which discourse the Saint, being wonderfully gladdened, it can scarcely be told how great a joy he felt in his mind, with what praises he honored him who had spoken such things. Who, although his body was so afflicted and exhausted with exercises and with age, yet showed a ready will to hasten again to Rome, and to accomplish what should be for the good of the Church, if only this were really done and were not empty words. When Theodosius confirmed his words with an oath, and touched the undefiled Gospels (although the foolish man performed none of these things, following forsooth the will of the Emperors), the Saint, exulting the more, prepared himself wholly for the journey, and revolved with himself what things would profit both them and the Romans.

[45] The Saint is carried to Rhegium; Then Theodosius, being about to depart from that place, that he might report to those who were in the royal city, again saluting the Saint with outstretched right hand, and giving him a tunic and a dark cloak ⁱ, thus returned to Byzantium, accompanied by the two consuls who had followed him. Eight days having elapsed, that Paul, himself also adorned with consular honor, goes out to the Saint: to whom it had been commanded by the Emperor that, going to Bizya, he should bring back the Saint with reverence and veneration as a friend and familiar of the Emperor's Forefathers ^k, and should place him in the monastery of Theodore at Rhegium ^l. Having therefore brought him ^m, the consul left him in that monastery, and came to the Emperor to announce it.

[46] where his constancy being vainly tempted with blandishments, On the following day there come to him Epiphanius and Troilus, both patricians, together with Theodosius, bishop of Caesarea, whom the Saint trusted would fulfil his promises, since he did not perceive his deceitful mind, being himself very far from all guile. Who, having conversed very much with him, and having promised on the Emperor's behalf that he would adopt him as his father and would raise him above all, if only he would join and agree with them, and would in common embrace their decrees with them; and that, while he was separated and dissenting, almost the whole East and the West dissented and were separated together with him; when they had said and set forth other things besides which seemed to them likely to help, and had mingled that shapeless Type up and down with all that they said, and had learned that the Saint was not moved even a little by their discourses, but cried out with a loud voice: "All the power of the heavens shall not persuade me to what ye demand of me (for what," he says, "shall I answer, I say not to God, but to my own conscience, if for a vanishing glory I should now abjure the faith which saves me?)" —

[47] afterward he is afflicted with blows and reproaches. After therefore they knew him thus disposed, and especially complaining of Theodosius as having so rashly and to their own hurt offered words and an oath in vain; then, rising up, they did diligently what they willed, and what such men are wont to do. For some pounded him with their fists (O wicked hands!), stirring up also their servants and attendants to the same audacity. Others struck him with blows of the fist, others with slaps, others pushed him hither and thither, others spat in his face, as the soldiers and the wicked people did to my Jesus: nor did they cease to load him with spittle — men truly deserving to be spat upon — before they [so] filled his whole face that they flooded his mean and worn garment, and that from the abundance an intolerable stench arose, which no one else, but only those foul and most impure men, deserved to smell. Nor would those most shameless mortals have desisted from that deed, had not Theodosius of Caesarea, repressing their onset, turned them elsewhere. Who also, as though those men more shameless than dogs had done nothing (for what better shall I say?), again a little after set forth to the Saint questions and inquiries and certain other trifles; which, when they saw them to be vain and of no moment in themselves, laboring only in vain and playing the fool ⁿ, and carrying off whatever served for his use and necessity, the perverse men withdraw.

ANNOTATIONS.

the fable from book 6 of Ovid's Metamorphoses. But what he says, "in the Caenian region," displeases Salmasius, because Stephanus says: "Βιζύη, πόλις Θρᾴκης, τὸ τῶν Ἀστῶν βασίλειον. Bizye, a city of Thrace, the royal seat of the Astae." It was therefore in the Astic region, if the chorographer judged truly. A view of the places is exhibited in the cited Cellarius in the map of ancient Thrace at page 838.

* read "Theodosium"

CHAPTER VI.

The torments inflicted at Constantinople upon the Saint and upon Anastasius his disciple; their exile, as also that of the other Anastasius; the death of the first two; the glorious tomb of Maximus; the biographer's apostrophe.

Cruelly both he himself, After an interval of time they bring him to Constantinople, and together with him his disciple Anastasius, and the other Anastasius, whom we said was the Apocrisiarius: and when those wicked and accursed men had torn them with revilings, and had condemned them by anathema, and indeed all the orthodox both dead and living, they hand them over to the torturers, that they may execute the sentence pronounced upon them ^a, not utterly stripping them of life (that, being inhuman, they might show something of humanity), but inflicting on them a punishment more bitter than death. The Prefect ^b therefore, having received them and brought them into the praetorium, first indeed orders the divine Maximus, stretched out by four men, to be beaten with raw sinews, the wicked man pitying neither his old age, nor his wrinkled limbs, nor that body consumed with fasting and labors; but he beats him so cruelly that on account of the abundance of the flowing blood the pavement beneath was all reddened, and all his flesh was consumed, and not the least thing in his limbs was left sound and unhurt.

[49] Then that beast passes over also to the disciple, and afterward to his namesake, then Anastasius, his disciple, are beaten, and their tongue is cut out; and lays upon them also many stripes. And, when they were filled with weals, heralds being also employed who, while they were being scourged, should cry out these words ("Those who do not obey the imperial ordinances, and remain in contumacy, deservedly suffer such things"), while they still breathed a little they cast them into prison, and on the following day [*] they set the Saint again before them, and his disciple with him, all covered with weals, all swollen, all burning with blows: and although he was thus laboring with pains, they nevertheless do not spare to punish him with other more cruel penalties, nature being utterly cast away. For that theological tongue, pouring forth discourses more abundant than rivers, they wickedly cut out from the very throat and the adjoining epiglottis, that, the instrument of voice being taken away, at once both speech and doctrine through speech might be taken from him, and that thereafter he might remain silent and without voice. But indeed, good Maximus, though thy tongue was cut out, thou wast not about to be silent, nor to fail to sound forth those most sweet discourses. But he who makes the tongues of infants eloquent, and gives the dumb to speak and the deaf to hear, he made thee too beyond expectation to utter a voice, and to speak, and to bring forth words more articulate than before.

[50] But after they had done the same in the disciple Anastasius, but they speak without it: then their right hand is cut off: and had cut out his tongue also from the root, the same grace confirmed him too, and wonderfully gave him the faculty of speaking richly and copiously without the instrument of voice. On account of which those wicked men, stirred with greater envy, applied another and newer torment to the Noble men, thinking as it were that they would do them a wrong unless they should try every atrocity in tormenting those whom it would have been far better to take out of the midst by giving them to death — which they themselves also desired — than to be tortured with such punishments. For, the Saint being bound with slender cords and pressed on all sides with torments, with knife and mallet they cut off his right hand and cast it on the ground. Presently, attacking with the same fury Anastasius, the companion of his contest, they inflict the same punishment on him, that he might altogether enjoy an equal glory; whom, lacking tongue and hand, they cast out of the praetorium, hurry into the market-place and lead about, display their amputated members, raise confused shouts, and assail them with reproaches and jeers.

[51] [The exile of both, as also of Anastasius the apocrisiarius; the divine vengeance.] Then after that ignominious leading about they drive them into a most distant exile, together with Anastasius the Apocrisiarius ^c, those impure men doing this one noble thing, that they separated the Saints from themselves. But the divine justice was not wanting, although it often defers its wrath: but a little after it exacted penalties from the wicked Emperor, suffering him, driven far off to Syracuse in Sicily, to endure a most pitiable death. For being deservedly hateful to the Byzantines because of his deeds, and vehemently odious, when he feared lest he should suffer some evil from them, he departed thence with his wife and children. And when he had entered a bath to wash, one of his servants inflicted with a vessel a deadly blow upon his head, and shattered his whole skull, and took away the unhappy man's life ^d.

[52] Constantine labors excellently to root out Monothelism. But after his son Constantine ^e (for so he was called) was set upon the sceptres with his brothers Heraclius and Tiberius, he judged that he must by no means walk in the same way as his father, lest he should receive a like reward. Wherefore, the Fathers being gathered from every quarter, and a great synod being established, which is also called the sixth of the ecumenical ones ^f, while he indeed accomplished by it many other things worthy of memory, he also more brightly promulgated two wills and operations of Christ in two natures, those being subjected to execration and anathema who should introduce and assert that μονοθέλητον doctrine. This same thing before ^g at Rome the chief bishop Agatho, received into the See after ^h Martin, being impelled by the divine spirit, had performed. For he too declared the perpetrators of the crime accursed and estranged from the Church. But these things indeed were done later.

[53] Another exile of the Saint and of both the Anastasii; one of them dead in it. When therefore they had carried off Maximus, as we were saying, into exile, it befell him to suffer many things on the journey, and to endure many pains, as being one who could sit neither on a beast of burden nor in a litter, because he was utterly worn out with those afflictions and a thousand torments. Wherefore, placing him on a wicker pallet, and carrying him with difficulty and labor, they bear him a long road ⁱ, and shut him up in a certain fortress of Alania ^k (they call it Schemarium ^l), and leave him destitute of all care. And when they had brought his excellent disciple with his namesake by the same road, they separate both from their master, and them from each other ^m, changing many places ⁿ one by one, and leading them far from the region of the Abasgi ^o. Whence it befell also that one of them, wearied with much affliction, gave up even that spirit which alone remained to him. Nor could the day be known on which he departed hence, as his namesake wrote — Anastasius, I mean, the apocrisiarius [p].

[54] The death of St. Maximus, and the glory of his tomb. Further, when the divine Maximus was shut up in that castle of Alania, and ministered to himself in the necessities of the body, although he was of great age [q], as we have said, a certain divine vision was offered him from heaven, which

both made him more certain of the day of his death [r] and summoned him to those tabernacles. And when that day came (namely the thirteenth of August [s]), leaving human affairs he flies away to heaven [t], truly worthy of heaven and of that dwelling. But the sepulchre [u] in which his sacred body was laid, three bright torches illumine from that time after the first hour of the night, filling the beholders, as is fitting, with wonderful astonishment, and showing the most ample grace of the most bounteous God toward his Servant [x].

[55] But to thee indeed, O most holy Father, great truly is here the glory and brightness, The author of the Life invokes him, since the Lord has thus honored thee above others: but far greater and most excellent is that heavenly lot bestowed on thee there, when thou standest by the great light, and receivest into thyself the splendor of the blessed Trinity, the prince of light, and — what is most to be wondered at — being made God by union, and wholly deified by participation, and endowed with an unspeakable Deification. Wherefore, having obtained such glory, help again and again us who still swim in the present world, and pass over this long life most exposed to perils, that, with thee as pilot and guide, this unstable sea being sailed over without burden, we may stand in a tranquil and eternal harbor, where is the blessed life and most tranquil rest.

[56] This discourse of ours, O best of Fathers and most loving of sons, and indicates by whose impulse he wrote it. is indeed, as I myself confess, altogether inferior to thy deeds; but in love inferior to none, as I think. But the cause and author of the discourse was that hierarch or prelate most devoted to thee, who has abundantly obtained both the name and the likeness of the manners of him who was the chief shepherd of the flock of Myra (Nicholas). He, being always wonderfully studious of thy writings, both greatly loves thee, and holds it a delight to utter thy most sweet name. To whom mayest thou grant in return to dwell with thee in the same tabernacle, since he too, as thou seest, undertakes a contention for what is honorable and good, and would deliver up his very soul, if only it were permitted to accomplish and attain in fact that for which he contends [y].

ANNOTATIONS.

p. In the letter to Theodore of Gangra. See the preliminary Commentary, number 58. But that St. Anastasius died on the 24th day of July in the year 662 thou wilt find proved from elsewhere in the same place at number 59.

q. Of the Saint's age the Commentary treats at number 64.

r. "Having foretold by divine revelation that his falling asleep in the Lord would be after fifteen days," as thou hast in the same place at number 59 from the Hypomnesticon.

s. In the same place also the day of death is marked as the 13th of August, which accordingly is rightly noted by the biographer. And it befell on the seventh day of the week or Saturday, as is clear from the Commentary, number 60.

t. In the year 662, and not 657. Consult what was said in the same place at numbers 60 and 61.

u. Of the place of the sepulchre mention was made in the same place, number 63.

x. This miracle is confirmed in the preliminary Commentary, numbers 62 and 63.

y. The Savoy manuscript has this clause: ᾧ πρέπει πᾶσα δόξα, τιμὴ, καὶ προσκύνησις. "To whom belongs all glory, honor and adoration," etc. The copy of the Life in Combefis also appends the clause.

* Combefis: τὸ ἑξῆς, "thereafter"