Maximus the Confessor
Maximus the Confessor ( " Maximus the Confessor "; Greek Maximos Homologetes ) (* 580, † 13 August 662) was a Greek monk and theologian.
Life
Maximus the Confessor came from wealthy East Roman family and was born around 580 in Constantinople Opel. From 610 he was secretary of the Emperor Heraclius. 613/614 he retired as abbot in the neighboring monastery Chrysopolis at Chalcedon (now Scutari, district of Istanbul ), later ( 624/25 ) to Cyzicus back. Maximus fled 626 before the advancing Persians first to Asia Minor to Crete and Cyprus in 628/630 then to North Africa. There he fought against Monophysitism, which rejected the two natures, and monotheletism.
630 was able to make peace with the Persians, Heraclius; but the respite was short-lived. 641 boarded the only 11 -year-old Constans II the Eastern Roman -Byzantine throne. At that time Islam had already conquered Egypt and Syria and came to Constantinople Opel (see Islamic expansion). The first concern of Constans and his senatorial advisors was, therefore, to secure unity of the faith by the unity of the empire and so in view of the crisis to strengthen its defense force. Since there had never been able in the past three centuries to achieve doctrinal consensus in Christianity, put the Imperial Government on the strategy to ban religious disputes simply. Constans forbade therefore in his typos of 648 officially any discussion or any dispute between the "orthodox " Christians who followed the creed at the Council of Chalcedon ( 451), the Monophysites and the Monothelites who claimed that in spite of the two natures in the person of Christ, the divine and the human, reign in him, only one will ( Thelos ), namely the divine.
Maximus refused the imperial decree and continued to pursue relentlessly those who he believed to be heretics. Already 645/46 he went to Rome and ran the convocation of a council, which was to condemn the two different schools of thought again. At this time Theodore was I. Pope. This refused to Paul to recognize a Monothelites, as the new Patriarch of Constantinople Opel, and put him on 649. Its predecessor, Pyrrhus I, excommunicated him. These processes, and especially the convening of the Lateran Synod by Theodore successor Martin I in 649, violated massively against the edict of the emperor. Also Maximus took part in the Lateran Synod. On it the Monothelitism and Monophysitism was condemned. Then he and Martin was arrested for treason by imperial excubitores and brought to Constantinople Opel. In addition, they threw Maximus of having the usurper Gregory, who had risen to 646 against the emperor supported. The choice Martins had for the Pope anyway never agreed Constans II. Maximus and Martin were to him simply rebels who threatened the national defense and the inner peace and had supported his enemies. Theological issues occurred in the face of these allegations completely into the background - for Constans it came to refusing obedience, not about religious differences.
Maximus was therefore made 653 in Constantinople Opel in court, imprisoned and then banished to 655 to Thrace. In the same year, the Arab fleet destroyed under the Caliph Muawiyah the Byzantine fleet. Constans Constantine left Opel beginning 662 and moved to Italy in order to organize resistance. In the same year Maximus refused again, the imperial typos of 648 to obey. As punishment, his tongue was cut out and his right hand chopped off. A little later he was exiled to Lazika in today's Georgia, where the Black Sea, he died of his injuries in fort Schemarion on 13 August 662.
Work
Maximus left about 90 fonts. He mastered Greek and Latin in addition, possessed basic knowledge of Aristotelian dialectic and was strongly influenced by Neoplatonism. It is important, among other things his commentary on Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite.
To 636 he noticed the face of the advancing Arabs (Muslims ), whose religion he understood as Jewish:
" What could be more terrible than the evils attending that currently cover the civilized world? A barbaric desert nation overruns another country as if it were their property, our civilization is destroyed by wild and untamed beasts in human form. These beasts are Jews and disciples of the Antichrist. Christians must repent in order to repel the invaders. "
After the Roman Martyrology he is assigned as a saint August 13.