St. Maximus the Confessor

Born in Constantinople of a noble family, Maximus rose to become first secretary to the emperor Heraclius. In his early thirties he resigned all worldly office and entered the monastery of Chrysopolis across the Bosphorus, where he was tonsured and took up the strict ascetic life.

When the empire and patriarchate adopted monothelitism, the doctrine that Christ had only one will, Maximus left the East and travelled to North Africa and Rome, persuading bishops and councils that the doctrine was a betrayal of Chalcedon. At the Lateran Council of 649, called at his urging, monothelitism was condemned.

For this he was arrested and brought back to Constantinople. He was tried, exiled, brought back, tried again, and finally, when he refused to recant, his tongue was cut out and his right hand cut off, that he might neither speak nor write the truth he confessed.

He was exiled to the Caucasus, where he died on August 13, 662. Twenty years later the Sixth Ecumenical Council of 681 affirmed everything he had taught and condemned everything he had opposed. The Church gave him the name 'Confessor' for the witness of his maimed body and silent tongue.