Andrew Louth - Syriac Christian Church

NOTES
1
LIFE AND TIMES
1 For Maximus’ life, see principally Sherwood (1952), 1–22.
2 In the account of his trial in 655, Maximus states that he was then 75
years old: PG 90:128C.
3 Printed in the Migne edition of Maximus: PG 90.68–109.
4 Maximus himself confesses, in his prologue to the Mystagogia that he
was privately educated and was not initiated into logoi technikoi (660B),
which Berthold plausibly translates ‘art of discourse’ (Berthold [1985],
183). But this is a topos, so perhaps is not to be taken seriously.
Maximus’ style has, however, little of the graces of rhetoric, while being
formidably learned at times.
5 Lackner (1967), 294f.
6 Lackner (1971). There is, as Lackner indicates, direct evidence from
Maximus’ own works that he had once been in the service of the
‘Emperor here below’ (Ep. 12:91.505B).
7 And finds support from Maximus’ own words in Ep. 12 (505B).
8 In the account of his trial in 655, Maximus states that Anastasius had
then been his disciple for thirty-seven years (PG 90:128C).
9 Brock (1973).
10 There is an echo of this tradition in the Syriac chronicle of Michael the
Syrian and another anonymous Syriac chronicle, which note that
Maximus was of Palestinian origin, from ‘Iasphin’: quoted in
Guillaumont (1962), 179, and noted by Lackner (1967), 291.
11 I do not, however, think it at all plausible simply to take the evidence of
the Syriac life for Maximus’ childhood, and then add on the Greek
evidence for the period from his time at the court of Heraclius, as
Kazhdan seems to do (Kazhdan [1991], 2, 1323f., s.v. ‘Maximos the
Confessor’): it is simply incredible that a Palestinian monk could have
become protoasecretis. Dalmais (1982) presents a more plausible case,
arguing that Maximus’ connections with the court were forged when he
was a monk in Chrysopolis, an émigré from Palestine, then overrun by