Maximus the Confessor

Life and named reception

Benedict XVI’s audience of June 25, 2008 presents Maximus as a saint and Eastern Church Father, born around 580 in Palestine. It connects Christ’s human will with salvation, recounts Maximus’s participation in the Lateran council of 649, and describes his trial, mutilation and exile to Colchis, where he died on August 13, 662. [1]

The Orthodox Church in America commemorates Maximus on January 21 and describes a saint, monk and defender of Christ’s two wills. Its life gives Constantinople as his birthplace, also around 580, and narrates court service, monastic leadership, controversies, suffering and exile. This differs from the audience’s birthplace account. Its devotional narratives and chronology remain attributed rather than silently harmonized. The OCA’s hymns praise his teaching of Christ’s two natures, wills and energies. This calendar supplies a named Orthodox witness, not a survey of every Orthodox church. [2] [3]

This is the seventh-century Confessor, distinct from Maximus of Turin and Maximus the Greek. The historical volume attributes the dialogue to him in its title and work headings. Read that Latin rendering as one selected work, while examining other attributed items individually rather than assuming the volume authenticates the whole collection. [4] [5]

The historical English definition of Constantinople III supplies a useful comparison for the controversy. Nature concerns the divine or human reality and its proper characteristics; person identifies the one Son whose willing and actions these are. Natural will belongs to the nature rather than introducing another personal subject. Operation, corresponding to the language of energy in the OCA hymn, concerns acting rather than merely wanting. The definition preserves human willing and acting within the one Christ. Issued in 681, it postdates Maximus’s death; its formula is not presented as a quotation from his ascetic dialogue or as a critical glossary of his Greek. [6]

Read the Liber asceticus

The Latin Liber asceticus follows questions from a brother and answers from an elder across forty-five sections. Read the complete Latin Liber asceticus. The speakers serve the dialogue’s literary purpose; the brother is not identified here with a particular historical disciple. The title, dialogue, notes and qualified Greek variants form the reading. The parallel Greek dialogue and following works remain outside it. [5]

The opening question asks why the Lord became human. The elder answers through a sequence of creation, transgression, incarnation, commandments, passion and resurrection, culminating in the gift of the Spirit. Salvation provides the purpose of the practical teaching that follows. This is not simply a list of techniques for gaining composure: its account of discipline depends on the saving action and continuing help of Christ. The following questions ask how the baptized can keep the commandments and imitate their Lord. [5, §§1–5]

The brother asks for a shorter formulation because he cannot hold many instructions in memory. The elder gathers them into love of God and neighbor. Renunciation concerns attachments that cause people to fight over food, possessions, reputation and relationships. The objection matters: these things were created by God, so rejecting their misuse must not become a claim that creation itself is evil. The reply distinguishes their good use from preferring them to another person’s good. [5, §§6–7]

Loving an enemy then becomes the test case. The brother has abandoned possessions but still cannot love someone who harms him, even when he refrains from retaliation. External renunciation has therefore not settled the inner problem. The elder answers by explaining Christ’s purpose: resistance to temptation preserves love of God, while patient response to hostility preserves love of neighbor. The dialogue presents this as a struggle against the instigator of hatred rather than a victory won by hating the person who injures us. [5, §§8–17]

This argument uses hostile language about Jews, scribes and Pharisees in its account of Christ’s opposition. Later passages compare Christian hypocrisy with those figures and employ degrading racial imagery. These expressions belong to the historical text and its Latin rendering; they are preserved for study, not endorsed as descriptions of Jewish people or other communities. Recognizing the dialogue’s turn toward its own monastic audience helps explain its rhetoric without excusing the language or making that rhetoric a neutral historical account. [5, §§11–16, 32, 36–37]

The next movement makes vigilance practical. Three virtues organize the elder’s answer: love addresses anger, abstinence addresses desire, and prayer joins the mind to God. The brother asks what patience means and how these practices work. The discussion of abstinence describes bodily restraint within this ascetic setting; it is historical religious instruction, not a modern medical prescription. The sequence also prevents prayer from becoming detached from conduct toward other people. [5, §§18–24]

The question about continual prayer raises an ordinary difficulty: reading, psalmody, conversation and service involve many thoughts. The elder does not answer by abolishing those activities. He describes continued reverence, love, hope and trust in God through what one does and what happens. Paul’s endurance supplies the example. Continual prayer is thus explained through a sustained orientation that can accompany activity, rather than a demand that the brother utter one formula without interruption. [5, §§25–26]

A long scriptural warning follows the brother’s question about lacking compunction. Prophetic and apostolic passages become a challenge to negligence, hypocrisy and failure to love. The elder includes his own community in the accusation. His charge that religious observances without charity are alien to God makes the warning more specific than an attack on outsiders. Bodily practices can coexist with an unchanged heart; a claim to faith does not cancel the demand for the corresponding works. [5, §§27–37]

The brother finally fears that no hope of salvation remains. Reading only the preceding threats would miss the reply: what exceeds human strength remains possible with God. The elder gathers invitations to repentance and examples of divine mercy, then returns to mutual forgiveness, care for the oppressed, feeding the hungry and welcoming those without shelter. The dialogue moves from accusation to appeal and practical charity; its severe judgments should not be extracted as though despair were its final instruction. [5, §§38–42]

Section 42 returns to forgiving other people and showing mercy. The historical Latin below belongs to that appeal, following the brother’s fear that salvation is impossible. It is the preserved rendering, not a newly supplied English translation.

42. Alii igitur alios diligamus, et a Deo dilige- mur. Alii in alios longa patientia ac lenitate simus, eritque Deus ut indulgeat peccatis nostris. Ne red- damus malum pro malo, et secundum peccata no- stra non recipiemus ⁴⁷. Delictorum enim nostrorum indulgentiam, in fratrum indulgentia inveniemus; 392 Deique misericordia, in proximi eleemosyna abscondita est. Idcirco Dominus aiebat: Dimittite et dimittetur vobis ⁴⁸. Et: Si dimiseritis hominibus delicta eorum, etiam Pater vester cœlestis dimittet vobis peccata vestra ⁴⁹. Et rursum: Beati miseri- cordes, quoniam ipsi misericordiam consequentur ⁵⁰. Et: In qua mensura mensi fueritis, remetietur vobis ⁵¹. En, Dominus salutis nobis modum indixit, æter- namque nobis potestatem dedit, ut efficiamur filii Dei ⁵²: atque adeo nostra salus in nostra deinceps voluntate posita sit.

Read section 42 with its surrounding dialogue: generated local lines 1272–1288.

The closing sections unite wholehearted self-offering, hope in God, repentance and the pursuit of peace. Section 43 connects becoming divine through God with the incarnation. This is the dialogue’s account of participation, not a claim that creatures become God by nature. Section 44 distinguishes baptism from repentance for subsequent sins; the final section brings the exhortation into praise of Christ with the Father and Spirit. The conclusion returns practical love to the Christological purpose with which the work began. [5, §§43–45]

Continue with Christ’s two natural wills. The ascetic dialogue provides a related account of obedience and salvation; it is not itself substituted here for Maximus’s detailed controversies over Christ’s wills.

Edition, apparatus and access

These readings follow the named historical editions. Translation, attribution and research qualifications remain available below.

Major writings and further reading

The source volume’s contents lead beyond this dialogue to Questions to Thalassius, Questions and Doubts, expositions of Psalm 59 and the Lord’s Prayer, Chapters on Love, theological chapters and other collections. These titles show how the historical edition organizes its material. They are further-reading leads; each attribution needs its own study. Lives, acts, prefatory notices and indexes bring other authors and editors into the volume and should be distinguished from Maximus’s writing. [4]

Follow the Latin dialogue from its opening question about the incarnation through the struggle to love an enemy and its concluding appeal to mercy. The works listed above offer further paths into Maximus’s theology beyond this ascetic conversation. [4] [5]

Internet Archive labels this scan as not in copyright in the United States. Google’s digitization notice describes public-domain entry with country qualifications and requests attribution and personal noncommercial use. Credit is retained to Google for digitization and Stanford University Libraries for the collection. [4] [7]

The modern Catholic and OCA accounts offer reception through brief attributed paraphrases and links. Read their recognition claims alongside the historical work, attending to their biographical differences and the transcription’s visible uncertainties. [1] [2] [5]

Sources and further reading

Texts and editions

4. Patrologia Graeca 90, scanned 1865 manifestation. Title page at physical PDF page 6; volume contents at page 753. The scan’s column numbering and provider catalogue dates require separate treatment.
7. Internet Archive record for the scanned PG 90 volume. Item-specific metadata, retrieved October 12, 2026, labels possible copyright status NOT_IN_COPYRIGHT and region US. Google’s usage notice is at physical PDF page 1; Stanford collection marks are at page 2. These are attributed provider statements, not worldwide rights certification.

Catalogues and scholarship

5. Liber asceticus, forty-five-section historical Latin transcription. Printed columns 911–956, generated local lines 1–1366, mapped to twenty-three physical scan leaves. Notes restart after 99; attached Greek editorial variants and visible transcription qualifications are retained. This reading unit excludes the parallel Greek dialogue and following Photius and Charity material.
6. Constantinople III, Definition, historical NPNF2-14 English rendering, local lines 90–155. Comparison for nature, person, natural wills and operations; Percival is editor, individual translator unidentified. A later council definition, distinct from Maximus’s own writings.

Life and reception

1. Benedict XVI, General Audience, June 25, 2008, “St Maximus the Confessor.” Named Catholic biographical and theological reception; English translator unnamed.
2. Orthodox Church in America, “Venerable Maximus the Confessor,” January 21 calendar. Named Orthodox commemoration and hagiographical biography.
3. OCA, troparion and kontakion for Maximus. Contemporary English liturgical reception; hymns not reproduced.

Back to Fathers & Saints

Paul M. Blowers’s Maximus the Confessor: Jesus Christ and the Transfiguration of the World (Oxford University Press, 2016) studies Maximus’s ascetic teaching, vision of creation and role in the controversy over Christ’s will. It offers a sustained scholarly setting for the dialogue available here.