Maximus the Confessor

Andrew Louth

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2005
• ISBN:
  9781134814909
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Ancient History
• Index: History

St Maximus the Confessor, the greatest of Byzantine theologians, lived through the most catastrophic period the Byzantine Empire was to experience before the Crusades. This book introduces the reader to the times and upheavals during which Maximus lived. It discusses his cosmic vision of humanity and the role of the church. The study makes available a selection of Maximus' theological treaties many of them translated for the first time. The translations are accompanied by a lucid and informed introduction.

Texts

GENERAL INTRODUCTION TO THE TEXTS

According to Anna Comnena, the daughter of the Byzantine Emperor Alexius I (Emperor: 1081–1118), founder of the Comnene dynasty, her mother, Irene, was fond of reading the works of St Maximus, ‘the philosopher and martyr’ (especially at mealtimes!). Anna found this strange, for, she said, ‘the man’s writing, so highly speculative and intellectual, makes the reader’s head swim’. Challenged by her daughter, Irene replied, ‘I myself do not approach such books without a tremble. Yet I cannot tear myself away from them. Wait a little and after a close look at other books, believe me, you will taste the sweetness of these’ (Sewter 1969, 178–9). Maximus is, without any doubt, a difficult writer, at any rate when he begins to explain matters at length. His Centuries may be fairly straightforward, but once he allows himself to develop his ideas, his sentences become long and involved, and he seems positively shy of full-stops! Even the immensely learned Photius, Patriarch of Constantinople in the ninth century, found him ‘unclear and difficult to interpret’ (Henry 1962, 80). It is perhaps this that has deterred translators. But, as the Empress Irene said, in these works one will come to ‘taste their sweetness’: I hope there are not too many asperities in my English to disguise still further that sweetness.

The translated texts that follow more or less cover the whole of St Maximus the Confessor’s writing career. The first is one of his early letters written from the monastery of St George in Cyzicus shortly before 626, and the last two are short works that belong to the period in the early 640s, when Maximus had come out against Monothelitism, before his departure for Rome in 646. Most of these translated texts are drawn from his Ambigua, his discussion of difficulties in the writings of St Gregory the Theologian (and one from the works of Denys the Areopagite).

These Ambigua exist in two distinct collections, one addressed to John, Bishop of Cyzicus, and the other to a certain Abbot Thomas, described as Maximus’ ‘spiritual father and teacher’ (the two collections are consequently often called the Ambigua ad Joannem and the Ambigua ad Thomam). The Ambigua ad Joannem are the earlier, to be dated to the very beginning of Maximus’ African stay, that is 628–30; the Ambigua ad Thomam belong to 634 or shortly after, as it is clear from them that the Monenergist controversy has broken. As printed in Migne’s Patrologia Graeca (following the Greek manuscripts consulted for Oehler’s edition), these two collections are printed together, the later placed—confusingly—before the earlier (in their joint enumeration the prefatory epistles to the dedicatees are not counted). This arrangement of the two collections appears to go back to Maximus himself, as in the first of the opuscula (645–6), he retracts an unfortunate monenergist phrase from what he calls ‘the seventh chapter of the Difficulties in the great Gregory’ (Opusc. 1:33A: this is the reading of all the Greek manuscripts).¹ The two collections must, however, have circulated separately, since the manuscript from which Eriugena translated the Ambigua in the ninth century contained only the earlier collection (which he enumerated counting the prefatory epistle as the first). It is, in fact, evident that the works of Maximus the Confessor were soon preserved as the works of one of the great Fathers of Orthodoxy (in Africa and Palestine, at least, if not for several centuries in Constantinople itself). Several of the letters and treatises have scholia appended to them (which are printed in the Migne text), which summarize the main points of the work: as these are unlikely to go back to Maximus, I have omitted them from my translation.

The Ambigua, or Books of Difficulties, are perhaps the most important source for Maximus’ theological thinking. He was very fond of presenting his thought as a collection of propositions, especially in his Centuries, but in his Difficulties we can follow the route of his thinking. This is also true of the other works that have been translated here: his remarkable treatise of love (Ep. 2) and the two brief Christological treatises.

Each treatise has its own introduction, and also notes to elucidate the argument and the sources Maximus used. Like all the Fathers, the most important source for Maximus is the Bible: as well as quoting from the Bible, he very frequently alludes to it, and his allusions are often valuable in indicating the direction of his thought. For the Old Testament, the text of the Bible with which Maximus was familiar was the ancient Greek translation, the Septuagint (the ‘Seventy’ (LXX), so called after the seventy elders who were thought to have made the translation in Ptolemaic Egypt in the third century BC). References to the books of the Old Testament are therefore to the Septuagint (of which there is, alas, no up-to-date English translation). Where this differs in a major way from the Hebrew Bible (the basis of all modern English translations), I have indicated this. In the case of the Psalms, it needs to be remembered that the enumeration in the Hebrew Bible is usually one more than that of the Septuagint (which is the same as the Latin Vulgate).² The two books of Samuel and of Kings in the Hebrew Bible are the four books of Kingdoms in the LXX (so 1 Sam.=1 Kgd; and 1 Kgs=3 Kgd).

Maximus’ other main source is the writings of earlier Fathers (he rarely seems to be using directly the works of pagan philosophers, even though he seems to have a good grasp of their teaching in many areas). Maximus’ sources, and his use of them, are of considerable interest, since, as we have already seen, Maximus constitutes an important stage in the building up of this tradition of authorities: John of Damascus, whose collation of authorities has been most influential, both in the East and the West, was clearly guided in his choice by the use Maximus had made of the Fathers. I have done my best to identify Maximus’ sources (and have been greatly assisted by the annotations to Jeauneau’s edition of Eriugena’s translation of the earlier Ambigua), but I am sure that I have overlooked many instances (Maximus rarely identifies his sources, though sometimes indicates that he is citing an authority by prefacing it with ‘they say’, or by referring it to ‘the saints’). I have used what I hope are readily understandable references, and only given references to modern critical editions where it is a matter of close borrowing, and citation of a modern edition is necessary for locating the reference with any hope of success.³

I have used the text printed in Migne, Patrologia Graeca, vol. 91, except for the opuscula, where by the kindness of Professors C. Steel and B. Markesinis, I have been able to work from the text of the new (yet to be published) critical edition.

LETTER 2: ON LOVE

INTRODUCTION

This letter is one of the earliest surviving works of St Maximus, written during his brief stay at the monastery of St George in Cyzicus which ended in 626 (letter 3, also to John, is in thanks for a gift to the monastery of St George). It is addressed to John the Cubicularius, a courtier in Constantinople. Like several other letters to John, it is in the second person plural, which suggests that it was written to a group (of courtiers?) in Constantinople who looked to Maximus as their spiritual father, a relationship that probably went back to Maximus’ time as a monk at Chrysopolis, just over the Bosphorus from the capital, and had maybe grown out of friendships formed when Maximus was protoasecretis in the imperial court. The letter is an encomium of love, both spendidly expressed and profound in its teaching. As Maximus’ first editor said, ‘Truly this is Maximus at his best’: vere maximum agit Maximus (PG 91:393D).

It needs little introduction. But a few points might be made. First, it is archetypally Maximus in its combination of philosophical learning and quite practical, and also demanding, spiritual teaching. Maximus uses philosophical terminology to develop his understanding of love, most strikingly, perhaps, in the very abstract definition of love he provides (401D). But his teaching is quite practical: however splendid a concept love is, its touchstone is care for one’s neighbour (401D). Second, Maximus’ teaching here is, compared with his later teaching, incautiously expressed: he uses language, about there being one will between God and human beings, that he will later retract (see 396C and n. 6). Finally, nonetheless, we find here Maximus’ teaching in its characteristic breadth: at one pole is self-love, ‘the first progeny of the devil and the mother of all passions’ (397C), which cuts the human being off from God and from other human beings; at the other pole is deifying love, that breaks down all barriers, and transfigures the human person, revealing the true glory of the image of God. In between, there is sketched an analysis of the passions that tear the human person apart, of the virtues that build it up again, and the way in which the Incarnation makes such restoration possible.

TEXT¹

392D	To John the Cubicularius
	You, the God-protected ones, cleave through grace to holy love towards God and your neighbour and care about appropriate
393A	ways of practising it. Already when I was present with you I had learnt, and now I am absent it is no less true, that you suffer those things that are, and are said, to belong to divine love, in order to possess this divine thing, which in its power is beyond circumscription or definition. For you not only do good to those who are present, but you long to do good to those who are absent, however great the distance in space, and thus on each occasion I learn of the greatness of the largess of your love both from what has come to pass amongst you, and also from your honoured words, in which I can see the form of the d...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• THE EARLY CHURCH FATHERS
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Preface
• Abbreviations
• Introduction
• Texts
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index