Andrew Louth - Syriac Christian Church

LIFE AND TIMES 5
about the religious attachment of the court, and second, his love for a
life of quiet prayer. The latter reason is perfectly plausible, 7 but the
former is problematic. By 618 Maximus had already made sufficient
progress in the monastic life to have acquired a disciple, the monk
Anastasius, who was to be his companion for the rest of his life. 8 Six
or seven years later (624/5), Maximus had left his monastery at
Chrysopolis for the monastery of St George at Cyzicus (now Erdek, on
the south coast of the Sea of Marmara).
It is from this period at Cyzicus that Maximus’ earliest writings
have been usually dated: several letters, including four to John the
Cubicularius (one of the Palace eunuchs) in Constantinople, and
several of his treatises on the spiritual life, notably The Ascetic Life
and the four Centuries on Love (the second letter, to John the
Cubicularius, translated below, is itself a remarkable brief treatise on
love). It is also from his time at Cyzicus that Maximus came to know
the Bishop of Cyzicus, John, to whom the earlier Books of Difficulties
is addressed: doubtless it grew out of discussions that took place
between the learned monk and his bishop. It seems, however, that the
Difficulties were not themselves composed at Cyzicus, but after
Maximus had arrived in North Africa. For after only a few months at
Cyzicus, in 626, Maximus and the monks of St George fled south. The
year 626 saw the great siege of Constantinople. The Persian army,
having conquered Syria and Palestine, crossed Asia Minor and
together with the Avars and the Slavs, who were approaching
Constantinople through Thrace, made an ultimately unsuccessful
attempt to take the Queen City: the Asiatic coast of the Sea of
Marmara and the Bosphorus were the subject of raiding by the
advancing Persians, and many fled, including Maximus and his
companions. Maximus ended up in Carthage in North Africa: on the
way it seems that he spent some time in both Cyprus and Crete. It is
usually argued that Maximus arrived in North Africa by 630. The
reason for this is his close association with Sophronius, a learned
monk who had been born in Damascus and in 634 was elected
Patriarch of Jerusalem. He had already left North Africa in 633,
when he went to Alexandria, and yet Maximus regarded him as his
spiritual father and abbot and must have been at his monastery called
Eucratas in North Africa long enough for such a relationship to have
developed.
So far the account of Maximus’ life has been drawn from the Greek
Life and the evidence of his own writings. But about twenty years ago,
a Syriac Life of Maximus was discovered in the British Museum by Dr
Sebastian Brock, which tells rather a different story. 9 According to
this account, Maximus was born in the village of Hesfin, east of Lake
Tiberias (the ‘Sea of Galilee’ of the New Testament) in Palestine, 10 the