Maximus of Ephesus
The Holy Martyr Maximus, who suffered at Ephesus
Martyr · d. c. 250, at Ephesus
Commemorated 30 April — Martyrdom at Ephesus
Maximus is a martyr of Ephesus commemorated on April 30, of whom the Byzantine books preserve only a single line — that he suffered for the faith of Christ and was perfected by the sword. The Latin tradition, which keeps the same day, transmits a little more and probably older matter: that he was a layman and a merchant of the city, that he was arrested in the persecution of Decius about the year 250, that he confessed Christ before the proconsul, was beaten and racked, and was finally stoned to death. The two traditions agree on the man, the place and the fact, and differ on the manner of his death.
What the record contains
The Greek synaxaria for April 30, after the notice of the Apostle James the son of Zebedee, add the bare commemoration "of the holy martyr Maximus," with the formula that stands for beheading — he was perfected by the sword. Nothing else is transmitted in the Byzantine books: no parentage, no dialogue with the judge, no relics, no shrine. The modern Orthodox calendars reproduce exactly this: that he suffered for his faith in Christ and was run through with a sword.
The Latin martyrologies, keeping the same date and the same city, transmit the outline of a short passio of an ordinary kind. In this account Maximus was not a soldier or a cleric but a merchant, a layman of Ephesus; when the edict of the emperor Decius (249–251) was published and the Christians of the city were required to sacrifice, he refused, was denounced and brought before the proconsul of Asia, and confessed himself a Christian. He was beaten and racked, and when neither the scourging nor the rack moved him he was handed over to be stoned, and so died, about the year 250. The persecution of Decius was the first genuinely empire-wide requirement of sacrifice, enforced by certificates of compliance; it fell with particular weight on the great cities of Asia, and Ephesus, the metropolis of the province, was one of its principal theatres. A merchant — a man of some visibility in the market but of no rank to protect him — is exactly the sort of Christian the Decian machinery caught first.
The tradition is honest in its thinness, and this entry does not pad it. That the Church remembered the name of an Ephesian shopkeeper for seventeen hundred years, with no legend attached to make him interesting, is itself the point of his commemoration.
Feast and commemoration
April 30 (church date; New Calendar civil April 30, Old Calendar civil May 13), the same day as the Apostle James the son of Zebedee, whose feast the day principally is. Maximus has no proper office; he is commemorated in the synaxarion reading and, where he is honoured liturgically, with the commons of a martyr. The Latin West keeps him on the same 30 April, which — the coincidence of date across two traditions that were not copying one another on this point — is a modest argument that the commemoration is old.
Hymns
Apolytikion — Tone 4 (common of a martyr)
Thy martyr Maximus, O Lord, in his contest received an incorruptible crown from Thee our God; for possessing Thy strength, he cast down the tyrants and shattered the feeble insolence of the demons. By his intercessions save our souls.
Iconography
Having no narrative life and no shrine, Maximus is painted only in the general type of the lay martyr: a man of mature years in tunic and mantle, holding the cross of confession in his right hand, the left open before the breast, and identified by the inscription Ο ΑΓΙΟΣ ΜΑΞΙΜΟΣ. Where the Latin account is followed he may be shown with stones at his feet or in the hands of his executioners, as martyrs of that death are distinguished from those of the sword. He appears, if at all, among the ranks of martyrs in a menologion row for April rather than in a panel icon of his own. No pre-1900 image of him has been identified for this repository; the menologion cycles that would supply one do not extend to the end of April.
Disputed questions
- Sword or stones? The Greek synaxarion's formula (ξίφει τελειοῦται, "he is perfected by the sword") is the standard shorthand of the Byzantine distichs and is sometimes used loosely for a violent death; the Latin passio is specific about stoning after scourging and the rack. Where a bare Byzantine formula and a narrative Latin notice conflict on a detail of this kind, the narrative is generally the older witness and the formula the later simplification — but the question cannot be settled, and both are recorded here.
- The date of the martyrdom. The Latin notice places him under Decius (c. 250); the Greek books give no emperor at all. Some Western lists put him under Decius' successors. The third century is secure; the year is not.
- "Of Ephesus" or "of Asia"? Both epithets are found; they are not in conflict, since Ephesus was the metropolis of the province of Asia, and some notices simply say that he suffered "in Asia."
- Not to be confused with the many other Maximuses of the calendar, and in particular: Maximus the Confessor, the great theologian (Jan 21 / Aug 13); Maximus, Quintilian and Dadas, martyrs of Dorostorum (Apr 13) — commemorated in the same month, which makes the confusion easy; Maximus Kavsokalyvites (Jan 13); and Maximus of Moscow, the fool-for-Christ (Nov 11 / Aug 13). He is also entirely distinct from the pagan Maximus of Ephesus, the Neoplatonist philosopher and theurgist who taught the emperor Julian the Apostate and was executed about 372 — a namesake of the same city who is sometimes turned up in his place by search tools and reference works.