St. Maximus is also known as “the Theologian”, and as “Maximus Confessor”. He was born in Constantinople around the year 580 and died in exile on 13 August, 662. He worked with Pope Martin I against the Monotheist heresy and attended the Lateran Council of 649. He was one of the chief doctors of the theology of the Incarnation and of ascetic mysticism.
He came from a noble family in Constantinople. He became the first secretary to Emperor Heraclius. He has greatly valued, but despite the favor of the emperor, Maximus resigned to the world and gave himself up to contemplation in a monastery at Chrysopolis. He became abbot there- but seems to have left this retreat on account of its insecurity from hostile attacks.
Falsely accused of treason due to his defense of the orthodox faith, he was arrested and forcibly returned to Constantinople, where he spent several miserable years in prison, and at age 82 received his final sentence:
He has anathematized and with him St. Martin and St. Sophronius. The prefect was ordered to beat them, to cut out their tongues and lop off their right hands, to exhibit them thus mutilated in every quarter of the city, and to send them to perpetual exile and imprisonment. A long letter from the Roman Anastasius tells us of their sufferings on the journey to Colchis where they were imprisoned in different forts. He tells us that St. Maximus foresaw in a vision the day of his death, and that miraculous lights appeared nightly at his tomb. The monk Anastasius had died in the preceding month; the Roman lived on until 666.
St. Maximus died for orthodoxy and obedience to Rome. He has always been considered one of the chief theological writers of the Greek Church and has obtained the honorable title of the Theologian. He may be said to complete and close the series of patristic writings on the Incarnation, as they are summed up by St. John of Damascus.