Maximus the Confessor
Byzantine monk who argued, in Africa and at Rome, that Christ has a human will as well as a divine one. Under the emperor Constans II he was taken to Constantinople, mutilated and exiled. The council of 680–681 defined the doctrine he had defended.
Theophanes, writing about 810, calls Maximus an abbot revered for his monastic life. He says that Maximus disputed in Africa with Pyrrhus, the former patriarch of Constantinople, and brought him for a time to renounce the doctrine of one will; that he then went to Rome and moved Pope Martin to gather a synod of bishops, which condemned that doctrine and proclaimed two wills and two operations in Christ; and that the emperor Constans had both men brought to the capital, tortured and exiled (Theophanes, Chronicle AM 6121 (pp. 331–332)). Elsewhere he adds that Constans had the tongue of Maximus cut out and his hand cut off, and he calls him “most wise” and a confessor (Theophanes, Chronicle AM 6160 (p. 351)).
The Third Council of Constantinople met a generation later. The parts of its acts cited in this wiki do not name him, but its definition of two natural wills in Christ, the human following the divine (Council of Constantinople (680–681), definition of faith), is the doctrine for which Theophanes says he suffered.
In the timeline
- AD 680 to AD 681, firm dateThe Third Council of Constantinople
A council called by the emperor Constantine IV defines that Christ has two wills and two operations, divine and human, never opposed. It condemns the teaching of one will and those who had upheld it, among them four patriarchs of Constantinople and Pope Honorius.