24
September 656 A.D. Maximus the Confessor Faces His Accusers
Graves, Dan. “Maximus the Confessor Faced Heretics.” Christianity.com. Jun 2007.
http://www.christianity.com/church/church-history/timeline/601-900/maximus-the-confessor-faced-heretics-11629730.html. Accessed 23 May
2014.
You are full of pride. You think that you are the
only Orthodox theologian, the only person being saved, and that everyone else
is a heretic and perishing!" Troilus and Sergius, agents of the emperor in
Constantinople, leveled their accusation against Maximus, the abbot of
Chrysopolis Monastery whom they were interrogating.
"When all the people in
Babylon were worshipping the golden idol, the Three Holy Youths* did not
condemn anyone to hell," retorted Maximus. "They did not concern
themselves with what others were doing, but took care only for themselves, so
as not to fall away from true piety."
He added, "God forbid that
I should condemn anyone, or say that I alone am being saved. However, I would
sooner agree to die than, having fallen away in any way from the right faith,
endure the torments of my conscience."
Maximus was a man of great
ability. Born in Constantinople around 580, he was well educated and served as
secretary to Emperor Heraclius. But in 626, Maximus became a monk. At that time
a heresy known as Monothelitism raged in the eastern half of the Roman Empire.
Monothelites taught that Christ's divine will had swallowed up and destroyed
his human will so that in effect he had only one will. Maximus stoutly denied
this.
Christ's incarnation was the
whole point of human history, Maximus argued, because it was intended to
restore the equilibrium lost when Adam fell into sin. If Christ was not fully
God and fully man, he said, then salvation was void.
Insisting on religious unity
among their subjects, emperors tried to force compromise teachings on them.
Many eastern bishops accepted these faulty doctrines, published in the Ecthesis and the Typos. Maximus rejected both.
At the end of 655, when he was
about seventy-five years old, Maximus was sent to Constantinople for trial.
Accused of conspiracy and the absurd charge of causing the loss of the
emperor's North African holdings, Maximus was sent into exile in Thrace, where
he suffered cold and hunger.
At the emperor's command, one of
the traitor bishops, Theodosius of Caesarea in Bithynia, went to see the old
abbot. With him were two officials, Theodosius and Paul. They met on this day, September 24,
656. Maximus shredded
their arguments so thoroughly that the bishop promised to submit. Maximus said
it was not to him, but to Rome that he must submit. Maximus was a strong
advocate of the primacy of the Pope--a fact that the Roman Church cites in
backing up its claim to authority over all Christians. Theodosius argued that the Lateran Council of 649 was invalid because
the emperor never authorized it. Maximus replied that if emperors made councils
valid, rather than pious faith, then several rigged councils held by wicked
emperors must be accepted even though what they taught was contrary to Orthodox
faith. The old abbot could not be moved from his staunch defense of true
doctrine.
Six years after this meeting,
Maximus, then in his eighties, was again dragged in for questioning. When he
refused to buckle to Sergius and Troilus, they cut out his tongue, lopped off
his right hand and sent him into exile again. His tough old body had taken all
the punishment it could bear: he died that August, unbroken in his confession
of the Christ he loved. Because of this, he is called Maximus the Confessor.
[*Maximus was referring to
Shadrack, Mesheck and Abednego, who refused to bow to an image that
Nebuchadnezzar had erected. The story is told in Daniel, a book of the Bible.]
Bibliography:
1. Berthold, George C., translator. Maximus Confessor: selected writings Translation
and notes by George C. Berthold. New York: Paulist Press, c1985.
2. Chapman, John. "St. Maximus of Constantinople" in The Catholic
Encyclopedia.
3. "Maximus the Confessor." Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church
for a summary of Maximus' life.
4. Various internet articles.
Last updated June,
2007
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